Monday, July 01, 2002

Happy Canada Day, Raymond!. And to all other Canadians and Canadian-wannabes... [CY News] Thanks, Catherine.  Aw Shucks -- I didn't know that there are any Canadian-wannabes... 4:03:34 PM

More Harvard Internet Law liveblogging. Donna Wentworth of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society is also live-blogging the Internet and Law conference at Harvard, and doing a damned fine job of it, too. Link Discuss (Thanks, Hylton!) [Boing Boing Blog] 3:52:41 PM

Review of The Book of Zope. Freshmeat: The Book of Zope "If you're new to Zope and are trying to decide between The Zope Book and The Book of Zope, I would recommend The Book of Zope. If you're an experienced Web programmer, you might prefer the more terse approach in The Zope Book. The Book of Zope has more examples and lots of useful charts that are a huge help to a newbie. For a technical book, the layout is quite nice, one of the nicest I've seen. After you've read The Book of Zope, the next book for you to read would be Zope: Web Application Development and Content Management, an intermediate-level book. The ultimate Zope introductory book has yet to be written, but The Book of Zope is a pretty good first attempt, and is highly recommended." [ZopeNewbies] 3:51:39 PM

Free as in Books? [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] donkeyDevil writes "Forget free software, contribute to free books! The Chronicle has an interesting story about bookcrossing.com's effort to track feral books through their captors. Read about it, then do it. (Although the focus of the story is on Bay Arean book releasors, it looks like you'd have a better chance of snagging a free book here.)" 3:51:11 PM

Glue, Gaia, and the services grid. Graham Glass, the wizard behind The Mind Electric, is "100% sure" that grid computing is the future. To prepare for it he's building Gaia, which in its first incarnation will be used to do simple, lightweight clustering and load-balancing of web services. Those services, initially, will be Java-based and written in TME's SOAP toolkit, Glue, but Graham's working on .NET bindings as well. ... [Jon's Radio] 3:50:10 PM

Swarming MP3 streamer -- never run out of bandwidth again!. Streamer is a swarming MP3 streamer. Every listener to a Streamer Internet radio station relays for other users, so that you can never run out of bandwidth -- think of Onion Networks' and Blue Falcon Networks' technology, except that this is free and GPLed. I wish that the CBC would adopt this for their Internet radio streams, which are 99 percent busied-out and have a lot of rebuffering problems. I've got tons of upstream bandwidth in San Francisco, so I could handily relay CBC Toronto for other Bay Areans who wanted to listen to it, giving everyone a faster connection and saving money for CBC besides. Link /.) [Boing Boing Blog] 3:49:33 PM

I wuz robbed. Today I was in a hurry, walking down to my local subway station, the 16th and Mission BART, and, as usual when I'm too late to take Valencia, this took me past the cluster of drug-dealers who hang out on my corner, in the north Mission. I was wearing the groovy MiG goggles I'd bought last month in London at the Camden Market and have been using as shades, and this big drug dealer cornered me and started harassing me to try them on. Then he started rambling about what he does for a living, just talking a load of really boring rounder horseshit that probably sounds good and Elmore Leonardy when you say it to yourself in your head but just sounds banal and incoherent when you're standing on a corner. He's a big guy and so I "let" him try on my shades. Then it transpires that he wants me to buy drugs from him in exchange for my goggles. I explain that I'm not in the market for drugs, but he won't give back my shades and he's talking more bullshit. Finally I say, "So, you're robbing me, right?" and more bullshit ensues. I repeat the question a couple times, then walk off. I'm really pissed. Really, really pissed. I really liked those goggles and clearly this guy decided he wanted to just fuck with me for the hell of it. Short of flying to London, I can't replace them, ever. (Update: an alert reader pointed out a mail-order site, so I've replaced them) I could go to the cops, but here's the thing: if I do, he'll know who did it and he might shoot me. If I don't go to the cops, though, I am going to walk past this guy twice a day for the rest of my tenure in this apartment and he's going to know that I'm a soft touch and I'm bound to be in for more harassment. This corner is visible from a nearby police station -- cops who park their cars there can easily and continuously see the swarms of crack, heroin and grass dealers who congregate on my corner. It sure doesn't feel like reporting a petty robbery is going to make a difference. I asked the advice of two transit cops whom I ran into on BART. They said that cops see busting the dealers in the north Mission as a futile exercise, since the system just dumps them back out on the street. They recommended writing to the SF District Attorney's office, just let him know that there's political will to do something about this. This is the kind of thing that drives me completely nuts about San Francisco. There is visible corruption, felony crimes, and human degradation everywhere, far more so than any other city I've been to in North America or Europe (excluding Naples). There are people squatting and taking dumps, there are streets whose sidewalks are lined with tents and whose gutters are lined with sealed, fermenting 40 oz. malt liquor bottles filled with urine deposited by tent-dwellers who don't want to live in their own piss. Everywhere you go in the city, you step through drifts of discarded pipes, needles, condoms. The taxes here are extraordinary -- comparable to Ontario, certainly -- but the evidence of government spending is nowhere to be seen, from the potholes to the prostitutes, from the limping transit to the visible and desperate pervasive poverty. OK, I'm ranting here. Getting robbed -- even getting robbed in such a minor and meaningless way -- sucks, and it rattles you and makes you bitter and angry. This crap makes me want to move, if not back to Toronto then at least to some yuppies-and-dogs neighborhood like Noe Valley or Pacific Heights, where my rent will be even more extortionate (you would not believe how much money I pay for my tiny apartment in my filthy, dangerous, feces-strewn neighborhood). OK. I'll stop now. Thanks for reading. Update: a few hours later. Let me clarify here that I'm not advocating any kind of round-em-up-and-ship-em-off policy. I am no great fan of the penal system, the war on some drugs, nor am I unaware of the social factors that give rise to the problems in my neighborhood. But there are damned few places where these problems are this visible and dramatic. I don't have a solution, but I do know that other cities in this state, country and continent don't suffer to this degree. There must be a lesson in one of them. There are many things to love about SF and about the Mission. First and foremost, there's the EFF, as good a reason to stay here as any I can imagine -- working for the EFF is a dream come true, and the benefits thereof far outweigh the problems of this neighborhood. There's the concentration of amazing, witty, intelligent, thoughtful and technically literate people in the Bay Area. On a good day, SF is a geek's Shangri-La, with excellent nerd and art culture on every corner. There's the vibrancy of the Mission, the vast majority of good people who are running small businesses, making merry and who greet me with a smile when I walk past. Getting robbed makes you bitter. If I could have stepped around this guy, I would have, but I couldn't and I ended up getting robbed. I've written to the SF District Attorney's office to point out the drug-dealers on my corner and their seeming truce with law enforcement. There's a great sushi joint, Country Station Sushi, right on the corner where I was robbed. The family that runs it are world-champion taiko drummers, and I feel for them, feel for their struggling business that is effectively barricaded by the dealers on the corner. It's not fair. I don't have a solution, but it doesn't seem like the city can go on like this. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 3:49:02 PM

The new issue of The Serials Librarian is devoted .... The new issue of The Serials Librarian is devoted to E-Serials Cataloging: Access to Continuing and Integrating Resources via the Catalog and the Web. The special issue is edited by Jim Cole and Wayne Jones. Only abstracts of the articles are free online. [FOS News] 3:48:16 PM

OAIster has launched version 1 of its search inter .... OAIster has launched version 1 of its search interface. OAIster digs content out of the deep internet and makes it available through the OAI protocol (see FOSN for 3/4/02). [FOS News] 3:47:50 PM

OCLC has released a White Paper on the Information .... OCLC has released a White Paper on the Information Habits of College Students, reporting the results of a December 2001 study that will become the baseline of a series of annual updates. Abstract: "This study concentrates on the web-based information habits of college students and their use of campus library websites, in particular, finding that college and university students look to campus libraries and library websites for their information needs. As confident and savvy users of electronic information resources, college students value access to accurate, up-to-date information with easily identifiable authors. They are aware of the shortcomings of information available from the web and of their needs for assistance in finding information in electronic or paper formats." (Thanks to Shirley Hyatt.) [FOS News] 3:47:31 PM

The Jeffrey Young article (previous posting) conta .... The Jeffrey Young article (previous posting) contains a short summary of Elsevier's restrictive policy on self-archiving. I just posted an item to the FOS forum noting that Elsevier's web site describes a slightly less limited policy and that in a recent interview Elsevier's CEO described a much less limited policy. [FOS News] 3:47:14 PM

Mary Minow has written a very detailed and compreh .... Mary Minow has written a very detailed and comprehensive guide to libraries deciding whether works are in the public domain or otherwise eligible for digitization and free online distribution. (Thanks to LIS News.) [FOS News] 3:46:52 PM

Powerpoints of the presentations at the Interactiv .... Powerpoints of the presentations at the Interactive Electronic Publishing Conference, "Multimedia Content & Tools: Towards Information & Knowledge" (London, May 30-31) are now online. (Thanks to EuroCRIS News.) [FOS News] 3:46:36 PM

The University of Toronto Department of Medical Bi .... The University of Toronto Department of Medical Biophysics tried to organize a debate on the merits of the Public Library of Science. But it was a bust --debaters on both sides supported it. So the debate became a discussion of whether PLoS was still necessary in light of other initiatives like HINARI and the Budapest Open Access Initiative. A most heartwarming failure. (Thanks to Jim Till.) [FOS News] 3:31:16 PM

Jeffrey Young, 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scho .... Jeffrey Young, 'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output: Online collections by institutions may challenge the role of journal publishers, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 5. An excellent overview of institutional eprint archive projects in the US, from OAI-compliant archives e.g. at CalTech to unique systems like MIT's DSpace. Young also interviewed archiving proponents who could address concerns about archiving, administrators on the rate of adoption, librarians on implementation details, and Elsevier on FUD. [FOS News] 3:29:37 PM

Computer Challenges to emerge from eScience. Quote: "If you read the report it will become apparent just how important community building and collaborative working is to the initiative." Comment: UK initiative via "duncan" [Serious Instructional Technology] 3:28:27 PM

Omniglot - An online guide to more than 100 writin .... Omniglot - An online guide to more than 100 writing systems (alphabets and languages). [FOS News]  Neat site. 3:27:02 PM

Richard Wiggins, OCLC Extends Digital Library Offe .... Richard Wiggins, OCLC Extends Digital Library Offerings, Information Today, July 1. On OCLC's new CONTENTdm software for assembling, managing, and searching the contents of a digital library. [FOS News] Is this the Box that we've been wanting to build and/or find? 3:26:02 PM

Elisabeth Winter and Gail Dykstra, E-Libraries Com .... Elisabeth Winter and Gail Dykstra, E-Libraries Comes into Its Own, Information Today, July 1. On the E-Libraries 2002 Conference (New York, May 14-16). [FOS News] Quote: Looking Ahead The morning of day two featured a kickoff session on another copyright issue: "The Debate on Scholarly Publishing." In this panel discussion, Carol Tenopir, a professor of library science at the University of Tennessee, and Michael Eisen, an assistant adjunct professor at the University of California­Berkeley, went head to head over the feasibility of placing the copyrights to scholarly works in the public domain, where they would be free of the existing access fees that publishers charge. According to Eisen, open access to scholarly works maximizes their value, benefiting both users and researchers. The current economic model in publishing by which revenues are made through collecting access fees to digital works is "archaic," he said. Recognizing that publishing takes money, however, Eisen suggested that publishers be paid in one upfront fee that's built into research costs. After this, the copyright should be in the public domain. Tenopir countered that, while she agreesthe current system needs to evolve, too much unilateral change may not be the best answer. Instead, she proposed that we use technology to facilitate access alternatives based on the nature of the work (its discipline, use, etc.). When a corporate librarian in the audience asked, "Who bears the cost of publishing in the private sector?" Eisen answered that in his view, the new economic model should offer publishing services "a la carte," allowing researchers who edit and prep their articles in-house to pay only for the service of publication. Tenopir then asked the audience, "Does this make anyone else nervous? What are the implications of this?" Judging by the number of hands in the air, the session could have lasted far into the day but unfortunately had to end unresolved. Later on the second day, the two-part session "New Services, New Tools" addressed some ways in which library tools are being brought more closely in line with how people actually look for information. In "Emerging Generations of Web Search Tools," Heting Chu of the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University explained the evolution of online searching. Among the criteria she used to rate Web search tools were information covered, retrieval approach (content based, etc.), and output (ranked, personalized, etc.). We're currently in the second generation of Web search, Chu told us, having moved from basic tools to those that provide multimedia, ranked results, and that allow simultaneous search and browse. The third generation, which is still in the making, will feature multimedia and text in the same results sets, concept- or meaning-based indexing and searching, and personalized output according to users' specifications. In "Process for Developing E-Reference Services," Stephen Marvin of West Chester University discussed how his library sees the Internet as a tool, rather than as a competitor. Libraries have the advantage of being both physical and online, he said, and so can be anywhere users need them. Marvin stressed that his library promotes information fluency over information literacy, as it is more detailed and requires more critical thinking. E-mail reference, he said, does not change what services the library provides, just where and how. "It goes where the users are, using what they don't have—time and patience." 3:24:49 PM

Jon Schull on visualizing blogthreads. Jon Schull has been playing with a way to visualize a sequence of related blog items: ... [Jon's Radio] 3:22:13 PM

Interview with social network researcher Valdis Krebs. Once you draw one of these maps, you can measure that map... You can measure the picture. It allows you to find whose the key player. Who's in a position of power. Who's in a position to bridge one community or one group together. Who has the most connections. Who has too many? Where are there gaps? In a corporation, you might look at a map and ask yourself, "Why aren't there connections between marketing and sales?" In an urban community, it might be, "Why aren't there connections between this street and that in the neighborhood?" [elearningpost] 3:21:51 PM

Five reasons people don't tell what they know. There are many reasons why people are reluctant to share what they know. They are busy and don't have time to share. They forget to share. They don't want the additional work and responsibility that goes with sharing. They are assigned to projects they feel are unworthy of their contribution (a derisive term for is WOMBAT--waste of money, brains and time). But, as common as these conditions may be, they were not the responses I found most often in my research. Here are the top five reasons why people don't tell what they know... [elearningpost] 3:20:53 PM

How to Design Recyclable Learning Objects. Unfortunately, after five years of struggling with the challenge of finding that world, I have come to the conclusion that I am simply not smart enough to lead the way to the Promised Land of e-learning, where milk and honey flow from the earth and learning objects can be plucked like ripe fruit from fig trees...I have therefore set my sights somewhat lower. Rather than aiming to create seamlessly and instantly reusable learning objects, I try to think about which pieces of my e-learning courses are likely to be useful in other courses and whether I can invest a little extra time in the design now in exchange for saving a little more time later. [elearningpost] 3:20:17 PM

Wiring the New Docs. Just as technology is transforming the practice of medicine and the experiences of patients, it is also changing the way tomorrow’s doctors are being trained. Today’s medical students have an unprecedented arsenal at their disposal—from simulators that breathe and respond to treatment like real patients (and sometimes even die), to pocket-size personal digital assistants (PDAs) that can hold entire medical texts, to CD-ROMs that enable students to listen to the sound of nearly every known heart condition, and more. [elearningpost] Some friends and I were just talking yesterday about how modern information technology could revolutionize medicine. 3:19:37 PM

Get Off the Web [OLHeader]  "For the last week or so I have engaged in a running argument with journalism professor Eric Meyer and some others on the online-news mailing list about a variety of issues mostly related to deep linking. I've been sick these past two weeks, so this dispute has been good for me: some off-the-cuff writing with an axe to grind and forum in which to vent a little." It's interesting to read the perspective of someone who is so against deep linking and Stephen Downes' response. 1:59:25 PM

© Copyright 2002 Raymond Yee.