Sunday, February 17, 2002

My Internet connection went out for a little while tonight, so I picked up Richard Saul Wurman's Information Anxiety 2, which has been sitting on my desk for a few months now. I was flipping through it more than reading it, as I like to go back and read the stuff in the margins. Today I noticed that on page 143 is a section titled "The Right to Copy." Here's the part I want to highlight: "One of the biggest questions unanswered today in the communication industry is copyright. The ability to copy - the proliferation of the technology of copying - has turned the nature of copyrights on its head. The whole notion of copyright is threatened when you, number one, can copy everything and, number two, are faced with so much which is available that can be copied. In 1976, I wrote a fable where the laws of copyright are changed to the right to copy. It recognized that every good idea should be a public idea. The only thing that should be copyrighted are bad ideas. We should be protecting the flow of bad ideas." I recognize this isn't the most revolutionary idea anymore, nor may it be the first time you've heard it. I do think that it's the copyright debate in a nutshell, though - the acknowledgment that "laws of copyright are changed to the right to copy." And if the copyright owners can just take away your right to copy, then they can make sure their laws are enforced. Of course, that's the crux of the problem for libraries. If you can't copy something, it's probably because you can't get your hands on it (even electronically, so to speak) unless you actually purchase the item yourself, which you then can't copy or loan to someone else. That pretty much leaves libraries out in the cold, which ultimately leaves all of our users out in the cold. Think about your life, because I'm sure there's a time when you used a library, whether you needed something for a paper, you checked out something good to read, you wanted to look up a magazine article, needed to use their computers, whatever. At some point in your life, I'm willing to bet you've used a library and its resources. Now think about how that may change for future generations. 10:30:14 PM  Permanent link here

I had a report that the "open links in new window" script on my site doesn't work on IE 5.5 5.1 for Macs. I stole the script from Dynamic Drive because I'm not a programmer, but I'd like this feature to work cross-platform, cross-browser. Does anyone have or know of a script I can steal that works on at least all of the major browsers? Suggestions solicited.  TIA. 9:00:25 PM  Permanent link here

A Technology Timeline (Adobe Acrobat PDF) [via Slashdot] Virtual retinal displays, glasses based - 2003 Frequest use of multiple Net identities causes personality disorders - 2005 One billion Bluetooth devices worldwide - 2005 60% of internet accesses from mobile devices - 2005 50% of traffic on mobile networks will be data - 2005 Paper and coins largely replaced by electronic cash - 2007 MP3 Net downloads dominate over CD distribution - 2010 Desktop computer as fast as human brain - 2015 Creation of the Matrix - 2025 Thought recognition as everyday input means - 2025 National Library of Congress available in sugar cube sized device - 2030 Fascinating reading that demands you print this out, highlight your favorites, and discuss amongst yourselves. Personally, I hope the "brain add-ons" get here before 2033. 8:52:43 PM  Permanent link here

"Another sign of developers supporting Radio as a platform is the work being done by Seth Dillingham and Brian Andresen at Macrobyte. With Radio at $40, and the economy so tough, they're going to do something bold -- they're going to release Conversant for Radio 8 and Frontier. It's a very powerful environment for doing Web apps." [Scripting News] Now this might put Conversant back in the running in my investigations.... 8:15:04 PM  Permanent link here

Speaking of Brent, tonight at dinner he told us that he's going to be a genius when he grows up and invent a velcro suit that sticks to a velcro wall, just like the one in Big Fat Liar. We can only hope! 7:40:12 PM  Permanent link here

A few years ago, I bought my first Palm, the first III version. It changed my life forever, and I began preaching the gospel to anyone who would listen (and even those that wouldn't). A couple of years later, I got a Palm IIIxe because I was running out of room on my old PDA and because the screen on the newer ones was so much easier to read. Then last year, I got a Sony Clie 710, at which point I had two old Palm IIIs sitting around. I gave Sheree the IIIxe, but we never really got it installed. Now, she's in the middle of running a referendum for our home library, and with everything going on, she needs some help with the information overload. Enter again the Palm. I turned it on today for the first time in a few months, so naturally the batteries were dead. As we were bringing it back to life, 6-year old Brent saw the original Palm III and asked if he could have it. Now that's progress. He'll probably be playing with his before Sheree is. I'm waiting for the fallout when 7-year old Kailee finds out about this.... I figure I can fill it with educational software, stuff like Diddlebug, and games. Is there educational software available for that a 6-year old can use? I'll be finding out, but if you know of any, please send them along! 7:38:43 PM  Permanent link here

One Librarian's Page "One Librarian can change the profession. One Librarian can improve a community. One Librarian's opinions matter. Every Librarian should be One Librarian." [Library Stuff] Another great link from Steven that includes, among other things, Here to Stay 3.0 - "The 2002 version of the original Top Ten Reasons the Internet Will Not Replace the Public Library as revised by the author from the  1995 SLJ article." Very timely. 7:12:14 PM  Permanent link here

A Novel Idea Takes Wing in the Windy City  "Mayor Richard M. Daley last fall asked every citizen in this city of 3 million to read Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." The response to One Book, One Chicago was electric. The novel about a white lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in a Southern town in the 1930s was checked out of public libraries more than 6,500 times in seven weeks. The paperback made its way up from 250th to 51st place on Amazon.com's national sales list. The Chicago Bar Assn. held a mock trial of the courtroom drama depicted in the novel, in costume. The Chicago Public Library staged a marathon weekend screening of the movie version, starring Gregory Peck. And Daley, a popular mayor who is fond of planting flower beds and commissioning art to beautify the city, asked library officials to pick out a spring book. (They did, Elie Wiesel's "Night.") Ever since, communities across the country have embraced the idea of reading a book together." [via Library Stuff] I'll see your Oprah and raise you one Chicago Public Library. 6:38:54 PM  Permanent link here

First we had Chapter-A-Day, now we have Book-a-Minute SF/F. Nowhere near complete, but fun. It reminds me of the cassette John Moschitta made back in the 80s called "10 Classics in 10 Minutes." It was hilarious (especially "Gone with the Wind" and "Romeo and Juliet"), and now I will have to go dig through my ancient cassettes to see if I can find it. (FYI, John is the fast-talking guy in the old FedEx commercials.) Interestingly, searching Google for information about him brought me to the Web site for James Gleick's book Faster, which is on the Shifted Reading List. Supposedly it has some newer material than the book, too, as Gleick finds "recent news, oddites, or phenomena" that strike him as "pertinent or amusing." So now, in addition to all of the books on TSRL that I haven't read, I have to find time to go read through this site, too. 4:14:08 PM  Permanent link here

Deep Sky Weblogs "From the referrer logs: a page with an image map. The image is a field of distant galaxies. Each galaxy is a link to a weblog. Cool." [More Like This WebLog] My Dad and I have always been fascinated by this picture, and now it's a clickable image map! 1:50:56 PM  Permanent link here

Yee-haw! Moving my blog to my own server seems to have cleared up my publishing problems. Now I can publish carefree like the rest of the Radio world! I'm stoked! 9:08:00 AM  Permanent link here

The ABC's of In-Dash MP3's "The Mazda MP3 is probably the first car to be named after a feature of its sound system." [The New York Times: Technology] Drool, drool, drool. I bought a new car last November, and when I was doing research, I found that Hyundia and Ford were the only dealers that had an in-dash MP3 system that came pre-installed. Of course, the Hyundia dealer I actually talked to had no clue what I was talking about, so I knew we were still a-ways off on this. Who knew Mazda was already busy naming a car! Unfortunately, this article is mostly about MP3 technology, rather than informative about the car itself. BTW, there are companies that make MP3 CDs of audiobooks, much like you buy regular CD audiobooks at the store. Those MP3 audiobooks would work in this car, as well as any other MP3-compatible stereo (home or car). 9:06:38 AM  Permanent link here

"Murphy-willing we should have that feature ready to roll tomorrow or Tuesday. You can see it working on Jake's test Radio site. He's a late night worker (I'm early morning) so he won't read your comments until around 4PM Pacific." [Scripting News] Score! Userland is adding comments to Radio! Knowing them, I'm sure I'll be able to subscribe to my comments feed in order to monitor them, just like I can with YACCS. I'm really impressed with the way Userland is continually enhancing Radio. Good job, guys! 8:58:47 AM  Permanent link here

BlahBlahBlog points us towards a Scientific American article on memes from October, 2000, that I missed the first time around. I'm thinking of taking a poll to see if we can identify top library memes. Whaddaya think? I think we'll find that we need a few good ones to jumpstart some discussion. Okay, it's officially a poll. Send in your thoughts and I'll summarize and post them. 8:51:46 AM  Permanent link here