|
 |
Thursday, March 07, 2002 |
This Is a Real Quest for Maps
"When David Rumsey decided to take his private collection of 19th and 20th century maps public, even the world's largest library couldn't handle the load. So, rather than donate his vast collection of 150,000 maps to the Library of Congress, Rumsey decided to put it online.
The result is an extraordinary online compilation of more than 6,500 high-resolution digital images from one of the largest private collections in the United States....
With the GIS browser, users can overlay multiple maps from different time periods with current geospatial data, like roads, lakes, parks, aerial photos and satellite imagery. They can also create, save and print their own custom maps to trace changes in a geographic area's history, population or culture." [Wired News]
Very cool. One big thank you to Mr. Rumsey!
6:56:59 PM Permanent link here
|
|
Finally, a newspaper takes the lead and lets me start customizing the information I want from them. The NY Times is now offering a service that lets you Create a Times News Tracker Alert. [via MeFi]
"Create a Times News Tracker alert and begin receiving FREE e-mail notification when articles that match your interest are published. First define your news topic with keywords or phrases, then set your delivery schedule and name your alert."
Frankly, I can't believe it's taken this long to get to this point, but hopefully other newspapers will follow suit. Question - is there a way to do this kind of personalization via RSS so that my alerts show up in my news aggregator instead of my emailbox? That would be a major grail for me.
We were just talking about this type of service at work today, specifically the Northern Light product that they have been successful selling to corporations. One person touted NL as a better solution than an RSS news aggregator for a corporation, and in a way I see her point. It's the subject access that's bothering me about blogs. They are very different services, with very different goals, but what would be the best way to combine the two? Especially internally. I'll have to think on this one.
5:29:12 PM Permanent link here
|
|
Here I am doing a demo of Radio, blogging, and RSS for SLS special librarians. And they are very special!
1:12:51 PM Permanent link here
|
|
The Sacred Heart Palm Project
"Walk into the main hall at the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School (CSH) in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood on any given Monday morning and you’ll see a huddle of students holding their Palm IIIc PDAs toward a wall-mounted, infrared beaming station. Like bees around a hive, the group is collecting information invisibly.
In fifteen seconds they’ll have downloaded their weekly class schedules, their homework assignments for every class, as well as the school calendar, sports schedule and daily announcements from what they call an 'electronic cubby hole....'
Maggie, a senior, passes a group of ninth-graders in the hall using their Palms, takes a quick look and says, 'I’m soooo jealous of you guys.' It’s the ultimate compliment and an unsolicited validation of coolness....
On the first day of school, the entire freshman class—all 54 of them—were presented with brand new Palm IIIc handheld organizers, instead of Texas Instruments scientific calculators. With an educational discount from Palm, supplemented with funding from CSH, costs for the students’ parents was a wash...." [Design Interact]
Hmmmm... do they have a school library and is the librarian involved in any of this? Inquiring minds want to know!
10:31:15 AM Permanent link here
|
|
Heh, heh. Finally got off my butt and did produced search box code for SWAN's online catalog. Of course, the NOBLE Swap Shop stuff made it a million times easier, but I still had to modify it and write it up. I just did a demo of it at the SWAN Quarterly meeting, and it was met with much approval. Hooray, they're moving forward!
Actually, I have to give major kudos to the SWAN folks (both the staff and those at the member libraries) because they've made the default Innovative catalog much more usable and user-friendly. And they're not stopping, either.
10:22:15 AM Permanent link here
|
|
Bush and Real-Life Accessibility
"When Stevie Wonder sat down at the keyboard center stage, President Bush in the front row got very excited. He smiled and started waving at Wonder, who understandably did not respond. After a moment Bush realized his mistake and slowly dropped the errant hand back to his lap. "I know I shouldn't have," a witness told us yesterday, "but I started laughing." [at RoyalTS, via meryl's notes]
10:17:19 AM Permanent link here
|
|
Downloading Files and Storms
"And now one of these downloaders for hire (at about $12 an hour), Numair Faraz, has stepped forward to say that Mr. Greene's claim that three students downloaded 6,000 files from easily accessible Web sites isn't even true. For starters, Mr. Faraz, 17, isn't a student: he left school to start his own technology business. But more to the point, he says that the group didn't spend two days downloading music; they spent three. And most revealing, he says that most of the music wasn't even downloaded from publicly accessible Web sites.
Speaking about Mr. Greene, Mr. Faraz said, 'He said it took two days to do all the stuff, and we did it for three days from 9 to 6 and left the computers on all night long, except we'd come back and the computers would be frozen.'
'I was the only one who used Bearshare and Kazaa extensively,' he continued, referring to two popular file-exchanging programs. 'And half of my files never completed: they were halfway downloaded or not downloaded at all.'
As for the two others, both students at the University of California at Los Angeles, he said they hardly even used file-sharing sites. Instead, he said, they used AOL Instant Messenger, a chat program, to receive songs, which friends sent them from their hard drives. This not only means that the songs weren't on public Web sites, but also that there is no guarantee that they were ever illegally downloaded, since some could have been from CD's purchased by students and ripped into their hard drives.
Mr. Faraz estimated that 4,000 of the songs were sent as private messages using Instant Messenger, and a few songs were legitimate authorized downloads from the Web site MP3.com." [The New York Times: Technology]
Apologies for the extensive quoting, but this is just too funny. As Andy says, "now that's comedy." Bad day for both the MPAA and the RIAA! Somehow, I don't think Greene will go back on national television shows now.
7:56:43 AM Permanent link here
|
|
Dave P. says:
"If you're looking to get wireless in libraries, the simplest solution is probably to get some local nerds to stop by on a Saturday afternoon and hook up a donated Airport Base Station or two. Much easier than trying to find a tech-person on a regular basis, or trying to procure the hardware through channels. As for maintainance, once it's up and running, it keeps running. If you find the right nerds, they'll probably even donate a base station (at $300 per base-station, it's a distinct possibility)."
But how many local nerds are visiting the library? These days, even the smallest library needs a tech consultant because with all of the use our computers get, they go down a lot. Let me stress "a lot." But I'd encourage any and all local nerds to go meet their local public librarians and help jump-start them on the road to wireless. Let them know that there are folks out there who would use this service, because a lot of libraries don't think there is a need.
7:49:59 AM Permanent link here
|
|
Moviegoing Set Record in 2001, Despite 9/11 Shock
"Hollywood pinned a medal on itself for a job well done. Even after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, and with the country in a recession, movie admissions for 2001 turned out to be the highest since 1959. And a record number of films — 20 in all — reached the $100 million mark.
Valenti called last year the 'greatest box office year in film history,' with total receipts of $8.41 billion." [at MSNBC, via Slashdot ]
So let me get this straight. MPAA President Jack Valenti wants to ruin the tech industry, impose draconian copyright laws, and eradicate "fair use" because otherwise his industry will be ravaged by pirates? I wonder what type of surgery he had to be able to talk out of the other side of his mouth like that....
7:42:09 AM Permanent link here
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
|
|
|
