Archive for the ‘Information Tools and Technologies’ Category

France to Google: Non

Stop!Google has stumbled a step in its path towards world domination after a court in France ruled that the search engine company is breaking French law with its Google Books project, handing down a daily fine equivalent to $15,000 until the data in question is completely removed.

The case marks yet another instance in which the European Union and its member nations have exhibited a more progressive stance on copyright protection, and more aggressive stance against corporate interests, as evidenced by their recent $1.5 billion fine against Microsoft.

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Pocket-Sizing the Public Library

E-readers are all the rage these days. From the Amazon Kindle and its electronic paper display from E Ink Corporation, to the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android operating system for smartphones, society is at a tipping point in the transition from print to digital media consumption. Mobile computing devices are closer than ever to delivering the “pleasant” experience of reading a printed book, and the imminent arrival of network-enabled (Wi-Fi AND 3G) Kindle-type devices may further hasten this metamorphosis.

tiny books

Soon we will be able to fit an entire library of books in our backpack or even our pockets. Are libraries prepared for this brave new world?

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Online Social Marketing at the Sunnyvale Public Library

I admit it: I’m a lazy bastard. I was recently given an assignment to investigate the marketing activities at my local library, and despite the fact that I live only half a mile from the Sunnyvale Public Library, I decided to investigate only the library’s online marketing efforts.

The definition of lazy

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Transitive Technology Lust

In the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1 of Ambient Findability, Peter Morville exhibits an unnatural fondness for his Palm Treo 600, which he uses to demonstrate that “findability serves as a useful lens for seeing where we’ve been and what lies ahead” on the “emerging shoreline that connects the land of atoms and the sea of bits.”

Modern masonry, courtesy of Palm, Inc.

Modern masonry, courtesy of Palm, Inc.

Which is great. And maybe even right. But at the risk of sounding shallow, using a soon-to-be outdated device is not the way to make a point about the future. To further Morville’s analogy, the Treo 600 is a marker at the edge of a riptide that has since sucked us in and out to sea. Today we are riding that wave of convergent technology like a modern-day Jeff Spicoli, using iPhone apps to order pizza at innappropriate moments.

Anatomy of the Delicious Edit Bookmark Page

Delicious Edit Bookmark Button

Edit Bookmark is perhaps the most commonly used feature of the Delicious collaborative tagging platform, aside from the Save a Bookmark feature. I use it all the time, as do most members of the Delicious community. But how well do we really know Edit Bookmark?

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Califa 2009 Digitization Symposium

Today I’m attending my first academic conference, the 2009 Digitization Symposium, hosted by the Califa Library Group. Most of the other attendees here are library professionals, but the conference sounds interesting and it is local–and cheap. So I hauled my bike on to Caltrain and headed for the SF Public Library.

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What the World Needs Now is Another Online Social Network

When I was first coaxed into joining Friendster back in March 2003, I had no idea that social networks would become such a BFD. Or maybe I just didn’t get it. I mean, I’m not a social butterfly by nature, and I can only play “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” for so many days before getting bored. But most of all, I think I was resistant to participate because social networks seemed kind of creepy to me.

In the beginning, social networks creeped me out

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