content divergent

Who owns the digital version of books?

2009-12-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

Interesting article about licensing of older works (print) and ownership...But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth.

Call for papers (Intellectual Property conference)

2009-12-14T15:56:00.001-08:00

Call for papers: Conference on Intellectual Property, Iona College, New Rochelle, NY April 30-May 1, 2010; (cfp deadline: Feb. 5, 2010) Iona College announces the Second Conference on Intellectual Property to be held at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY, April 30 – May 1, 2010. The keynote address will be presented by James Boyle.* In our second year, the Conference on

Everything I know about work life, I learned in Dungeons & Dragons

2009-12-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

Interesting post about Dungeons & Dragon play and how it relates to work:One spell, used well, can be more powerful than an entire book full of spells. I first met Ivan when he showed up for a game in Steve's standard D&D world. Ivan drew up a first-level wizard character who had almost no hit-points and only one wimpy spell: cast an illusion. Whereupon Ivan's character cast an illusion of a

National Historical Park database with Edison-era sound recordings

2009-12-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

Sounds interesting....---------------The National Park Service (NPS) Library Program recently loaded the Thomas Edison National Historical Park (TENHP) MARC-format database of recorded sound holdings into the NPS Voyager catalog. The NPSVoyager catalog is available for public searches on-line at http://www.library.nps.gov/ .The TENHP database in Voyager includes MARC-format data for the 10,000

Google Policy Fellowship for Librarians

2009-12-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

Apply for 2010 Google Policy Fellowship with ALA Washington Office The ALA Washington Office will be participating in the Google Policy Fellowship program for the summer of 2010. Google Policy Fellows work for ten weeks during the summer at ALA Washington or at other public interest organizations involved in debates on broadband and access policy, copyright reform, online privacy, and open

Call for Papers (Web apps conference)

2009-12-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

I'm writing to remind you that the submission deadline for the USENIX Conference on Web Application Development (WebApps '10) is approaching.Please submit your paper titles and abstracts by January 4, 2010, and your complete papers by January 11, 2010.The Call for Papers, with submission guidelines, can be found at http://www.usenix.org/webapps10/cfpb/WebApps '10 is a new technical conference

Game dynamics in the real world

2009-12-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

I read this post about game dynamics in "real life" (aka not a game), which started a thought chain... In a nutshell, game dynamics in social media and in IRL (in real life, whatever that really means, I live mostly online... lol) appear in:Rewards and points to play, such as frequent flyer programs and Las Vegas casinos/resortsFacebook is a game because of its immediacy and real time

How many people on the 'net doing what?

2009-12-03T11:27:00.001-08:00

I'm always leery of statistics as I have a hard time believing they are ever accurate... but whoa is this kind of cool:You can read more about it here, including where the numbers come from.

Apps vs. maps (Verizon vs. AT&T)

2009-12-02T13:11:00.001-08:00

In case you didn't hear, AT&T (iphone, among others) dropped the lawsuit against Verizon's ad campaign (playing on the " an app for that" by comparing the 3G coverage of AT&T to Verizon with a visual map). Read more at mashable and elsewhere.I thought it was a really clever and hardhitting ad campaign, which is saying alot in the sea of ads we all see everyday.

Drupal 7 news

2009-12-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

The Drupal community is eagerly anticipating the unwrapping of its newest version 7 release. While there is speculation on when the official release date will happen, the end result will be a number of significant enhancements. The underlying focus has been on improving usability. In fact, an internationally renowned design firm was engaged to spearhead the efforts and facilitate community based

on web standards and accessibility

2009-12-01T13:16:00.000-08:00

To me, true accessibility is building one site that works for everybody, disabled or not, and whatever user agent or operating system they prefer. And that is the web I want to build and use.Yup. A good post on web standards and accessibility.

rainy day haiku

2009-12-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

I do not think myumbrella is big enoughto tackle this rain--funny, how facebook status updates turn out... I had no clue that a created a haiku until a literary friend pointed it out.

on usability....

2009-11-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

Just passing along an interesting post about usability.

Creating digital art via touch

2009-11-29T14:48:00.000-08:00

Touch screens aren't the only way of doing this. Shillito is leading a team that has developed software that allows artists to receive physical feedback when designing virtual 3D objects.The team's approach uses a haptic device called Falcon, which vibrates and moves to allow users to "feel" virtual objects. Originally developed for 3D gaming, Falcon is a cross between a joystick and a mouse. As

Tips to eek out web performance

2009-11-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/ yslow from yahoo is a great site, as is some of the firebug stuff.

RDA webinar & tools

2009-11-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

“RDA is being developed as a new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world.” A webinar/presentation about RDA, which the cataloging world has been abuzz about is located here http://tinyurl.com/yexxlynAlso, a couple of demos out (just demos, not product):A small demo example for what "open development" could do:http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/content.htmVery

3D modeling using a webcam

2009-11-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

Pretty cool....http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/humble-webcam-t.php

w3c cheat sheet

2009-11-25T10:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/11/w3c_cheatsheet_for_developers.html"This cheatsheet aims at providing in a very compact and mobile-friendly format a compilation of useful knowledge extracted from W3C specifications — at this time, CSS, HTML, SVG and XPath —, completed by summaries of guidelines developed at W3C, in particular the WCAG2 accessibility guidelines, the Mobile Web Best Practices, and a

Virtual identity / authority file

2009-11-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

Well, this would seem to be a match made in heaven for the goals of the semantic web -- because regardless of the schema and mapping, I think there is going to have be some kind of established form/identity.... and considering my cataloger tendencies (lol), well, I can't help but love this project.... ---------------The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) has moved to beta phase and is

What's up with wolfram alpha?

2009-11-23T14:46:00.001-08:00

Interesting little post about wolfram alpha and plans for the future:But Alpha may yet confound the sceptics. Last month, Wolfram released an application programming interface, or API, that allows anybody to build software or websites that use Alpha's abilities. "Alpha is a technology platform that allows one to inject computable knowledge into any application or computer system," says

Google Key Word Significance -- new webmaster tool

2009-11-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

Well, this is interesting... some thoughts on a new tool in the google webmaster's toolbox.... Just goes to show that mining content doesn't always tell you relevance. Sometimes controlled vocabularies (subject headings) and taxonomies (categories) are a GOOD thing... Sigh...Here is what Google says the keyword significance list is for: Below are the most common keywords Google found when

Blue beanie day -- support the semantic web

2009-11-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

Arches @ noon. Nov. 30.The 3rd annual Blue Beanie Day will be celebrated on Monday, November 30th, 2009see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136079874938On Monday, November 30, 2009 thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.Join the fun!The 2009 event page is here:http://www.facebook.com/

Join us -- new Drupal and Expression Engine Groups

2009-11-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

Hola! I'm chairing the ATHDrupal group and for now, I am just "helping" the EEATH group (I hope a Chair rises organically in the group).ATHDrupal is a new regional Drupal group (forming out of the ashes of UGA Drupal Group). We would like to invite anyone interested in Drupal to join us. We hope to have some f2f meetings -- perhaps, semesterly (and also, to connect up with DrupalAtlanta at some

Mendeley, a global IR?

2009-11-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

Some of you probably know about this project....------------"Mendeley offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the ‘cloud’, making it easier to share those documents with their peers but there’s an important ’social’ element too (if that’s the right word)."..............."[UK] London-based Mendeley, which calls itself “the Last.fm

You think you have a culture of innovation? Are you sure?

2009-11-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

As the Chair of the Emerging Technologies Group for the Libraries, I sometimes struggle with what the group members (including me) should be doing -- are we a "thinking" body or a "doing" body? Do we just do research and make recommendations? Or do we try to implement/move forward our recommendations, and to what degree? How do we facilitate innovation? How do we facilitate new technology? Do we