Ramblings, citations and "brainwaves" of a college librarian in Toronto. 475 square feet refers to the size of my home, not the size of my office or library.



McAfee SiteAdvisor


Ever get viruses by clicking on Google hit list links? Viruses your security settings or virusware miss? McAfee has a great new service to warn you about links that cause pop-ups, file downloads, or link to known trusted sites. Great for speedy clickers like me.



If you've ever been to this mall, you'll be amazed how much illegal product is out in the open. No matter how many times the RCMP raids the place, the stuff comes back. Think, music, movies and video games. See also the Times Square Mall at Leslie and Highway 7. The entertainment industry needs to wake up and price their product lower to eliminate the incentive to frequent these vendors. I'm shocked at the retail penetration these vendors (pirates) have in a city region like Toronto.


Cute Company Ticker Symbols


Harley Davidson (HOG)
Premium Standard Farms (PORK)
Sotheby's (BID)
Anheuser-Busch (BUD)
Cheesecake Factory (CAKE)
Starwood Hotels (HOT)
Olympic Stel (ZEUS)


Audio Tours of Places


I'm throughly addicted to audio tours of places, be they buildings, city districts or road tours. The first one that I came across several years ago was Invisible5.

"Invisible-5 is a self-guided critical audio tour along Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It uses the format of a museum audio tour to guide the listener along the highway landscape. "

In terms of libraries, audio tours have mixed results. Some are just too lame. One better example is:

Ohio University Libraries

When it comes to buildings I want a video tour, short clips about different places on the tour. I want my students to make a tour for the library this way. Each group is responsible to produce a different segment of the tour. I'll string it all together...


Problematic Online Lists


There are all kinds of lists on the web, to "fight back". Want to get back at pigs who holler at women? Goto Holla Back NYC to read harassment stories and see pictures of the offenders. Want to know which professors are too biased on campus? Goto Daniel Pipes' Campus-Watch. Want to know who performs abortions? - the 'Nuremberg Files' list full contact information (often including their homes) for more than 200 doctors and workers from abortion clinics around the country.

From a professional perspective, should we help people find these problematic lists? On a continuum, you have everything from lists of "family friendly" (think ultra-conservative) hotels to rate my professor, to hate speech lists (Mel Gibson, you made it!), to lists of conspiracy operatives. Where do you draw the line?

Quite the interesting infosphere is emerging.

Update: Hollabackcanada is here.


Google Jockeying


"A Google jockey is a participant in a presentation or class who surfs the Internet for terms, ideas, Web sites, or resources mentioned by the presenter or related to the topic. The jockey's searches are displayed simultaneously with the presentation, helping to clarify the main topic and extend learning opportunities."

EDUCAUSE 2006

So are Google Jockeys information pimps, or ho-s? I'm confused...

What does the audience do, read the screen? Who reads text on a data projector screen? Do you need a secretary to take minutes, to prepare and disseminate a bibliography?

Maybe it only works with pictures...but aren't there copyright issues in doing this in the classroom?


Newspapers' Web Audience Soaring


"Nearly 55 million people (more than one in three active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites in the second quarter of 2006, a 29.4 percent increase from the same period a year ago, according to a new custom report by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America"

Newspaper Association of America

Luckily, most have given up on charging subscription rates for current content, instead charging for archived content. My guess on why the numbers are up. I think alot of people see current news as a public service, they should not have to pay to access it. It should be supported by ad revenue. Want something from the past, okay, I'll pay a small amount. I think $3 is the magic number today. Many have tried $10, but that is the same as a music CD, why should I pay that much? It is even too much for an archived video clip. A bit more than a typical public transit fare seems fair.

I wish more archival content was available for sale at low cost. For video content, people are flocking to Youtube.com, for now...


Google Maps rules Web 2.0


Gawker Stalker uses Google Maps to turn celebrities into marked targets. Rather than just publish photos, stories of the celebrity siting and overheard conversations, the entries are mapped using Google Maps. Enquiring minds want to know, so they too can go hunting. Everyone can play the paparazzi role playing game!

There is not a day that goes by that I wonder, what we did before Google Maps? I like having access to maps at the point-of-need, usually when I have to buy something. Mapping the store or service point is expected as part of my online experience. Whether it is Google Maps or MapQuest. Also, since my old car does not have a GPS unit, I print lots and lots of Google Maps, to find my way around the city. Google is really good at having difficult to find "unassumed streets" in its database.

Google Maps Mania is a great place to stay on top of these Web 2.0 mash-ups.



Lee Gomes (Wall Street Journal) wrote a nice piece (March 1st, 2006: B1) about the race to aggregate "original content" on web sites/portals. It seems much of what is out there, in terms of original content, not published by traditional media sources, is paraphrased/plagiarised content. Editors/writers are given sources to integrate into a piece, by changing things here and there, to bypass copyright infringement filters in search engines. Cut-and-paste, search-and-replace collages passed off as "original content". Endless permutations of the same piece, integrating popular search engine keywords.

How much do you get paid to do this kind of work? $100 for 50 five hundred word articles! You get what you pay for. Even if the work is outsourced to India.

And we wonder why students are cheating...

Why do I care? "Legitimate information...risks being crowded out by junky, spammy immitations." Like email, spam is beginning to render the web useless as a publication and dissemination medium.



Lee Gomes (Wall Street Journal) wrote a nice piece (March 1st, 2006: B1) about the race to aggregate "original content" on web sites/portals. It seems much of what is out there, in terms of original content, not published by traditional media sources, is paraphrased/plagiarised content. Editors/writers are given sources to integrate into a piece, by changing things here and there, to bypass copyright infringement filters in search engines. Cut-and-paste, search-and-replace collages passed off as "original content". Endless permutations of the same piece, integrating popular search engine keywords.

How much do you get paid to do this kind of work? $100 for 50 five hundred word articles! You get what you pay for. Even if the work is outsourced to India.

And we wonder why students are cheating...

Why do I care? "Legitimate information...risks being crowded out by junky, spammy immitations." Like email, spam is beginning to the web useless as a publication and dissemination medium.


Recommender Systems Gone Awry


When shopping on the web, we've become accustomed to expect customer reviews (tainted by marketers or not) alongside products, to help us choose one from a set of alternatives. Reviewers are beginning to have a bit too much fun writing fictional, highly creative reviews of products, especially taking them out of context. See Amazon.com reviews for Tuscan Whole Milk to see what I'm talking about.

Not as fun as some mock travel disasters, on travel advise web sites, reviewers post to slander specific hotels and resorts, but I'm glad to see unbounded creativity embedding itself in these new virtual environments. I'm always leary of unedited postings. There's no reputation feedback mechanism. I'm not big on anonymous postings. I want to know who I'm listening to, what else have they said in the past, what other people said about them, etc.

Without it, in time, as Wikipedia demonstrated, you get a sort of free-for-all.



BookMooch
Every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish.

There is no cost to join or use this web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.

You receive a tenth-of-a-point for every book you type into our system, and one point each time you give a book away. In order to keep receiving books, you need to give away at least one book for every two you receive.

A different take on Book Crossings' "Catch and Release" program.

Share books you don't want, don't toss 'em in the trash or recycling bin!


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