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April 29, 2004
The Perfect Blogging Pitch
The Social Software Weblog has been running a contest to find the perfect elevator pitch that could be given in the following situation:
A business executive, with whom you have been trying to arrange a meeting, is available for a condensed pitch from you on a one minute elevator ride.It is your goal to convince this attentive business leader — who has heard about weblogs — to sponsor and resource a critical mass of weblogs in his/her organization so that their benefits can be demonstrated in a meaningful way.
It’s a long elevator ride to the top floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago — [1,354 feet at 1600 feet/minute!] — visual aids are not available and your entry will be judged on your ability to present your pitch “on the fly” — just text.
Lee LeFever won the contest with the following response.
First, think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders. The value it provides is context — the Journal allows readers to see themselves in the context of the financial world each day, which enables more informed decision making.
With this in mind, think about your company as a microcosm of the financial world. Can your employees see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would more informed decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news sources?
Weblogs serve this need. By making internal websites simple to update, weblogs allow individuals and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside the company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and access internal news, providing context to the company — context that can profoundly affect decision making. In this way, weblogs allow employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through increasing their awareness of internal news and events.[The Social Software Weblog]
Substitute “library” for “company” and maybe “information” for “business,” and you may also be prepared for that influential elevator ride.
Posted by Geoff at 08:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Mena on Moveable Type 3.0
Users of Moveable Type will be interested in Mena Trott's recent posting on the upcoming release of MT 3.0. I don't think I will be disappointed. Much of Six Apart's work has gone into developing TypeKey, a comment registration tool to help quel the infestation of spam hitting many unprotected weblogs.
Movable Type 3.0 is not the fabled Pro version as originally described. We had always imagined Pro as being a feature packed version that would contain all the features ever requested. What we've learned in the past year is that every user wants a different set of features, and we need to create a product that is not just feature-packed, but robust, extensible and geared toward a specific audience. Movable Type 3.0 and on will not be the solution for everyone, and that's okay. For some users, TypePad makes more sense. For others, non-Six Apart tools make more sense. [Mena's Corner: Where's the Beef?]
Posted by Geoff at 08:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 28, 2004
Home for a Rest
An NYU student has made his home in the library after he couldn't afford standard housing. "I thank everyone who helps me get through the day, and makes me realise that although I'm poor and live in a library ... that I'm learning a lot about life, and that I will make it through this." [Student set up digs in NY library]
Posted by Geoff at 11:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 26, 2004
Blogging Résumé
I was catching up on some of the Shifted Libarian's last posts, and noticed her pointer to John Udell's discussion of blogs as a living resume.
Alf Eaton writes today: I think the MP3 blogs (which are essentially annotated playlists) might well be taking the middle ground in the P2P vs music industry wars - I hope that the record industry will begin to see the value in what these grassroots enthusiasts are doing to promote their music. On the other hand, a large part of making these playlists under current laws involves turning your back on the major labels and concentrating on the music libre, the 'free music', the stuff that wants to be shared. Those artists that make their tracks freely available online are the ones that will benefit most from the collaborative filtering and recommendation networks that are being set up. [Hublog]Let's extend that remark: Any professional whose work is visible on the Net will become part of the conversation that establishes reputation and creates opportunity. The blog is an active résumé that enables you to participate — by proxy — in that conversation. [Jon's Radio]
Randy and I make mention of this concept in our upcoming blog talk in Jasper. A co-worker, new to reading blogs, commented to me the other day that she was shocked by how many ideas and interesting conversations are taking place on the various blogs. I feel like I'm part of a discussion when I blog, and I do think my blog offers others a good idea of the types of things I'm interested in within our profession. There are a few people I know that I would love to see start blogging. It would be really interesting to see what's on their reading list or to hear the ideas percolating in their brains.
If you haven't tried blogging, now is the time! Use a blog as a fancy way of bookmarking, and before you know it, you will be adding annotations and commentary, and letting others join in on your good ideas. You could have yourself a living résumé before you know it.
Posted by Geoff at 07:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ALC 2004
This is a test post for the blogging session at Jasper. If only there was Internet access — we could blog the conference!
Posted by Geoff at 07:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 22, 2004
The Cult of Mac Blog
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Where does the time go?! Sometimes you're so busy, all you want to do is ditch your job, jump in your car, and head off down the highway. Even better if you can do it listening to your ipod..
The first car with an integrated iPod -- a dinky Smart car -- will go on sale in Europe next month, according to Tech Digest. Available for about $22,500, Smart's two-seater i-move features a 20-GB iPod and built-in charging cradle that hooks directly into the sound system. Only 70 of the cars are available. According to Macworld UK, most European countries have banned short-range FM transmitters commonly used in the United States to beam tunes to car stereos. Smart will introduce its cars to the United States in 2006, though importers are doing a roaring trade, according to reports. The i-move was displayed at Macworld Paris last fall. MacBidouille has pictures of the interior and a very nifty QuickTime VR (download the 1.3-MB SIT file and open in QuickTime). [from The Cult of Mac Blog, a sweet little Apple-friendly blog from the hip folks at Wired
Posted by Geoff at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 15, 2004
A9 Launched
Amazon quietly launched A9 yesterday, although as many others have noted, it didn't stay under the radar for long.
A9 is not powered solely by its own search technology but rather by that of Google, Amazon and Alexa, another Amazon subsidiary. Unlike Google, A9 displays search results with expandable columns to the right, which open up book-related listings or a personal history of search queries. It also displays Google-sponsored ad listings. Data stored on its servers can even tell people which sites they've visited—and when. (Web surfers must register to see their personalized search history.)A9's toolbar lets users search the Web, Amazon, the Internet Movie Database and Google; it also can look up definitions. What's novel about it is that it can keep a diary of notes about any visited Web pages and then store them for access on any computer. [CNET]
It is interesting to see how intertwined search services are becoming, and A9 riding Google is certainly not the last coupling that will happen. I'm guessing A9 will—or maybe already has—stolen the thunder from Google's recent endeavour into personalization.
Posted by Geoff at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 13, 2004
More on Georgia State University Libraries
I was really intrigued to see Teri's posting of “new papers” published this month from GSU faculty. What a great attention grabber for the library news site. Not only is it just plain interesting to see what kind of research is coming out of one's own institution, it seems also to be a great strategy for drawing people to the blog, including those folks who don't mind seeing their name in the headlines. It also shows that the library is paying attention to what faculty are doing, supporting and recognizing their efforts, and drawing attention to the fact that we are all in this crazy game together.
…And hey, who is to say that there won't be the occasional librarian to also have a paper published who could make the list!
Posted by Geoff at 09:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Georgia State University Libraries Blog
GSUL has a very nice library news blog (and feed) for library news, as well as subject specific blogs/feeds covering areas such as Issues in Scholarly Communication and Science News. This is a good example of using blogs to take current awareness services to the next level without overwhelming the intended audience with too much information.
Posted by Geoff at 08:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Virtual Reference Librarian's Handbook
Interesting discovery. I'm falling behind on my library literature…
The Virtual Reference Librarian's Handbook
Author: Anne Grodzins Lipow; $85.00 (Usually ships within 24 hours)
Posted by Geoff at 08:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sauce Reader
Sauce Reader is the latest news aggregator to hit my desktop. So far, I'm pretty impressed. The integrated blog posting tool is nice, although for some reason, category assignments aren't posting in my MT blog. I love the “Design,” “Code” and “Preview” tabs for editing and viewing the actual posting. As for the aggregator itself, it has a very clean interface, with good display and searching options. The search feature directly into engines like Technorati is a nice touch. Importing the OPML from Sharp Reader went smoothly, although be warned that a bug exists where the startup screen will loop if the program encounters a problem before the import completes. My wireless conection dropped off and this seemed to cause a snag (which I later confirmed iis a reported issue as discussed in the support forum). Sauce Reader runs much faster than Sharp Reader on both my work station and my laptop at home. I'll be keeping this one around for a while.
Sauce Reader v1.3 (BETA) releasedVersion 1.3 of Sauce Reader is a huge leap from 1.2.1. We've fixed more than 100 bugs and added the following major features:
- Sauce Reader is now an integrated weblogging environment with posting support.
- User interface further cleaned, streamlined and improved.
- Auto archiving.
- Search folders.
- Flagging of items.
- Limited keyboard shortcut improvements.
Upgrade notes:
- Users of v1.2.1 will be automatically updated to the new version. Note that this process will clean up your data and may repair your search database.
- Unfortunately, users of versions 1.2 or earlier will need to download and install v1.3 manually. This is due to problems with the auto-updater code in those older versions.
Posted by Geoff at 07:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Stewart on Air America
Worth a listen…
Jon Stewart and Al Franken on Air America
Here's Matt Haughey's 66MB Zip of Jon Stewart being interviewed on Al Franken's Air America show last night. 66MB Zip Link (via Whole Lotta Nothing)
Posted by Geoff at 05:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Male Nextgen Librarians
Hmm. 'Younger' is relative, and 'Nextgen' is a bit vague, but I am a male librarian.
Wanted! A Few Good Men
Now that I've got your attention, I'm looking for younger male librarians to interview for an upcoming “Nextgen” column in Library Journal. If you are a male nextgen librarian and wouldn't mind answering a few questions via e-mail, please drop me a line at rachel@lisjobs.com. Please feel free to forward this to colleagues, and excuse crossposting.
Posted by Geoff at 05:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 12, 2004
Cover Songs
The database of Second Hand Songs could come in handy the next time you decide to challenge the music geek.
Find out who performed the original version of a particular song, or who covered that song.Unlike many related sites, we try to be as complete as possible (not just artist and song title, but also songwriters and albums) and order the data in a reusable and maintainable way.The database already contains 17542 songs (5648 originals, 11222 cover songs and 672 songs with samples), 7058 albums and 10470 artists (performers and songwriters).
Posted by Geoff at 08:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Paper Blogs
LJBook is a free (at least for now) service that offers to turn your blog into a book. That's right, a few clicks and you can take your blog from an online site to a printed .pdf that you can hold in your hands. I haven't tried it, although I probably would have if it didn't mean surrendering my login information and password (what can I say, I've put a lot of sweat into the blog and at this point, I'm not very keen on letting someone else get their hands on it, even if it is for only a few minutes). I'm not sure my blog would translate well into paper form. However, something like Randy's family history blog, would probably make a better candidate.
A LJ Book is a book with all your entries extracted from your LiveJournal, DeadJournal or UJournal (and WordPress - WP beta here - MovableType - MT beta Here)!It's a PDF Document ready for printing. It's produced in about 3-4 minutes.
Posted by Geoff at 08:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Links re: Blogging and Tenure
I came across an interesting posting discussing bloging and tenure. I'm doing some digging for a few upcoming conferences and started to notice how many more academics have joined the blogging cosmos since last I looked. The link to Rhetorica lists just a smattering of the academic blogs in existence, I'm sure to increase with services like UThink beginning to pop-up. Nevertheless, the posting on blogging and tenure...
I think of blogging as scholarship-in-process -- that is, in motion, live, and in-progress, whether it leads to publication, presentation, or edification. I've accumulated a number of bookmarks on this subject and thought I'd share a shortlist of them for anyone reading this who is interested. [PEDABLOGUE]This little tangent started when I came across Univ. of PEI's School of Business blogs site, which has some interesting project management blogs, of which I'm trying rather unsuccessfully to write a paper about today.
Posted by Geoff at 04:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 11, 2004
Newsmap
Newsmap is a fascinating and very pretty visual snapshot of the content captured by Google News. It wasn't very surprising to see the Pope and Bush capturing most of the attention in today's headlines.
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it. [About, Newsmap]
:: Happy Easter, everyone!
Posted by Geoff at 03:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 09, 2004
International Alliance for Information Literacy
The newly formed International Alliance for Information Literacy is seeking new member organizations. The founding members are: Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy (ANZIIL), European Network on Information Literacy (EnIL) (European Union), National Forum on Information Literacy (United States), ORDINFOlit (Scandinavia).
Upon a recommendation from the Prague Conference of Information Literacy Experts held September 20-23, 2003, the following organizations are committing to creating an International Alliance for Information Literacy. The evolving purpose for the Alliance is to facilitate the sharing of information and expertise on information literacy across regions and nations of the world. The ultimate goal of the Alliance is to facilitate people's participating effectively in the Information Society, as part of the basic human right of life long learning. The Alliance will consist of organizations that act as nodes around the world. Member organizations will generally be regional or national organizations that are broadly based, including representation from the economic development, education, health, human services, librarianship, public policy, and information and communications technology sectors.
Posted by Geoff at 12:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google Personalized
Google Personalized web search delivers custom search results that are based on a profile you create describing your interests. For example, people with an interest in the outdoors will see different relevant sites for a search on “bass” than people who are interested in music. Google Personalized web search is currently available in test mode on Google Labs, where you can create and save your profile and see results tuned to your preferences. Your results can be instantly rearranged by dragging a slider at the top of the page to go from no personalization to full personalization or anywhere in between.
I created a profile, did a few sample searches, but wasn't overly impressed with the results. Has anyone else given this a try? I think this is an interesting idea, but I'm not convinced that profiling is the way to go. I 'google' for work, for play, for convenience, for necessity, and one static profile is never going to reflect the context of whatever particular search I'm trying to do. Profiling seems to be much better suited to News pages, or other types of browsable content that users can read for current awareness or general information.
Posted by Geoff at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bob Dylan learns Victoria's Secret?
Britney Spears, Beyonce Knowles and Pink pushing Pepsi products isn't at all shocking. But Bob Dylan selling lingerie? Not the first commercial coupling I would have imagined.
Is Bob selling out? I don't know. Dylan is one of my favourite artists of all time. I'm hoping this was a momentary lapse in judgement, which is entirely possible given the subject matter, that is an offer to head over to Europe to spend a weekend with a handful of supermodels. At least he has always been honest. In an opening clip from the commercial, taken from a 1965 press conference, Dylan declares that if he was to sell out and endorse a product, it would be women's undergarments. At least he waited 40 years.
BTW - A quick Google news search will bring you a number of great headlines: Bob Dylan's Thong Song; Knock Knock Knockin' on Commercialism's Door; Rainy day women Nos. 12 and 35 - in Victoria's Secret lingerie; Hey Mr. Lingerie Man; Fly, lady, fly: Dylan's lovesick for underwear angel.
Posted by Geoff at 09:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 08, 2004
University of Minnesota Libraries Launches UThink
And away they go!! University of Minnesota Libraries has officially launched UThink, the first campus-wide blogging initiative I know of to be undertaken by a library. I've been following their progress for some time and will be very anxious to hear more about the reactions they get from their user community and the best practices they discover re: the administration of such a system. Well done UML!!
Posted by Geoff at 10:14 AM | Comments (2)
April 07, 2004
XML.com: Hacking the Library
New site to watch -- XML.com: Hacking the Library
"Kendall Clark tries to figure out if he can make the librarians and the geeks happy at the same time." Wow. Talk about a challenge... [thanks for the link, Peter]
Posted by Geoff at 04:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 05, 2004
Kinja, the weblog guide
Kinja, "the weblog guide," has been launched in beta.
Kinja is a weblog portal, collecting news and commentary from some of the best sites on the web. Visitors can browse items on topics, everything from food to sex. Or they can create a convenient personal digest, to track their favorite writers. Weblogs are much talked about, but still challenging to navigate for the average web user. Kinja is designed to bring weblog writers to a broader audience, by making it easier to explore topics, posts and writers.Kinja is an interesting albeit redundant twist on more advanced blog indexes like Technorati. Pretty packaging, tho. More on Kinja from the New York Times.
Posted by Geoff at 04:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 02, 2004
Google Moves to Block RSS Scraping
Google isn't playing well with RSS...
A Web developer's attempt to create customized RSS (define) feeds from the popular Google News portal has run afoul of the search technology powerhouse.Google issued a cease-and-desist order against British programmer Julian Bond with a warning that the creation of a news feed from the results of Google News was against its terms of reference.According to Bond, the company requested the removal of RSS-powered Google News headlines from his Ecademy business networking site and made it clear Webmasters are not allowed to display headlines from Google News on third-party sites. He posted the order on a mailing list dedicated to syndication discussions. A Google spokesman was not immediately available for comment. [Google Moves to Block RSS Scraping]Perhaps this will provide some incentive for Google to start displaying the little orange buttons on their news site, or to at least broaden their API services. We will just have to wait and see.
Posted by Geoff at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)
The XML Files: All About Blogs and RSS -- MSDN Magazine, April 2004
MSDN offers up a what is and a how to on blogging and RSS in The XML Files: All About Blogs and RSS -- MSDN Magazine, April 2004 Nothing new here, other than their highlighting of .NET blogging applications.
Posted by Geoff at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)
Executive Blogs
Another foot forward for business blogs...
Web logs, known as blogs, have mostly been the province of the young and trendy. Now, two senior executives of a trade organization, the Association of National Advertisers, have begun writing blogs.The blogs, which are appearing at ana.net/blog, are being written by Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive of the association, based in New York, and Dan Jaffe, executive vice president for government relations, who heads the Washington office.
Having Mr. Liodice and Mr. Jaffe become bloggers is part of recent efforts to persuade members and potential members "to think of this as a more contemporary A.N.A.," Mr. Liodice said yesterday. The group, founded in 1910, represents 340 companies that spend about $100 billion a year in marketing communications.
[middle of page, New York Times]
Posted by Geoff at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)
National Summit on the Future of Heritage Work in Canada
A preliminary Executive Summary of the National Summit on the Future of Heritage Work in Canada report is now available. An article on the 8Rs will be published in Feliciter, Volume 50, Number 2 (2004).
On March 23, the Canadian Library Association (CLA), the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) and the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) hosted a national summit on the future of human resources in the heritage sector. This was the first time these associations have joined efforts in a concerted way to tackle this pressing issue.This one-day summit gave an opportunity for more than 40 leaders representing national heritage associations to review the results of the research study on succession planning and the future of human resources requirements for Canadian museums, libraries and archives. Entitled the Future of Heritage Work in Canada, the study was conducted over the past year by 8Rs, a University of Alberta-based consulting organization commissioned by three associations with financial support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Posted by Geoff at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)
Suber's List of Actions
In the latest SPARC OPen Access Newsletter, Peter Suber announces that that he has put together a very valuable list of "actions" dealing with university library subscriptions and public statements against rising journal costs. The list, which begins in Fall 2003, can be found at: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#actions
It's notable how many of the public statements mention the need to cultivate alternative forms of scholarly communication, and open access in particular, as part of the overall solution. It's notable how many recommend that faculty withhold their labor as authors, referees, and editors from journals that aggravate the problem rather than advance the solution. It's notable how often faculty were persuaded to endorse the cancellations despite the harm it does to their research projects and careers. It's notable how often faculty, librarians, and administrators (and at Berkeley, also graduate students) agreed on their long-term interest (in a better publishing system and better journals forever) and put it ahead of their short-term interest (journals next year).Peter is absolutely correct that diplomacy and polite debate are clearly beginning to fall to the wayside in favour of more forthright arguments against the excessive profits of some publishers and the tightening purse strings of many university libraries.
New reading from Nature Open Access Forum:
Ann Okerson, "On being scientific about science publishing, " (April 1, 2004)
Jan Velterop, "The myth of 'unsustainable' Open Access journals," (April 1, 2004)
Posted by Geoff at 09:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack