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Tuesday, April 23, 2002 |
For Bruce:
"Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public's expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability." [via bOing bOing]
11:53:31 PM Permanent link here
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"Fast-Talk Telephony is a search engine that can be integrated into applications such as call centers that should help operators find specific parts of conversations. Fast-Talk's ability to search all major forms of digital audio is an important plus, Meta Group analyst Earl Perkins says. But Fast-Talk's inability to read or convert existing analog files is a serious limitation, he says; it handles only digital audio files.
Advanced Legal Technologies and Court Reporting Consultants, two Stephenson, Va., sister firms that provide technology to attorneys and court reporters, may find the ability to search recorded phone calls useful for clients who log conference calls, telephone press conferences, and earnings calls.
The technology has helped transform the businesses, says Tonie Wallace, CEO of both companies. Obtaining transcripts of court proceedings has been a source of frustration for the legal community. With demand for searchable text logs of meetings, depositions, and trials at an all-time high, a backlog of up to 30 days is stalling attorneys' courtroom efforts and leaving defendants stranded in jail. Fast-Talk's search tool, which the vendor says can search 20 hours of audio files in one second with 98% accuracy, could eliminate the backlog and cut transcription costs by more than half, Wallace says.
Wallace's companies have integrated the Fast-Talk search engine into their SearchWAV service, which records legal proceedings onto notebook computers and provides a transmission of the recordings to clients. 'This technology revolutionizes not only the court-reporting business, but the legal environment in general,' she says. Wallace hasn't used Fast-Talk Telephony but says she'll consider adopting it if the demand is there." [InformationWeek, via Gary Price]
Imagine this for reference interviews! ("No, you said the book had a green cover and was short, not red and tall.") Actually, this would be cool at SLS because we could review phone conversations with staff at our member libraries, which is still our primary means of communication with them.
Gary also adds the following:
"See Also: Direct to the Fast-Talk Web Site
See Also: You Can Demo Similar Search Technology That Converts Creates Mechanically Creates Searchable Transcripts Using Voice Recognition Technology
1) Speechbot (Demo From Compaq)
Search over 14,000 hours of radio broadcasts. Then listen online using RealAudio.
2) Demo of Virage Technology using PBS Lehrer NewsHour Programming
Keyword search content from the television program beginning in February, 2001. View online using RealVideo."
11:49:26 PM Permanent link here
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This just in: Jack Valenti Invents Internet3!
"Then there is the mysterious magic of being able, with a simple click of a mouse, to send a full-length movie hurtling with the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) to any part of this wracked and weary old planet."
Consumers respond: we don't want your movies, even at the speed of light. Which, we're not sure how we would really watch at that speed anyway.
Maybe this is a new form of copyright protection since there are no technologies available to record movies transmitted at that speed....
11:30:39 PM Permanent link here
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"Convenience, not entertainment, drives Web surfers to at least consider giving up their dial-up Internet connections for broadband.
Most consumers thinking about leaving the dial-up crowd for the Internet equivalent of the fast lane are motivated by the 'always-on' aspect of broadband, as well as its surfing speed and download capacity, Jupiter Media Metrix said today.
While about one quarter of dial-up Net surfers are mulling whether to make the switch to broadband within a year, only 26 percent want it so they can watch video and 15 percent are interested in listening to audio, a Jupiter survey found." [NewsBytes]
Does this really surprise anyone? And what audio are folks going to install broadband for if the smaller webcasters close down because of CARP fees and restrictions? Are these folks referring to MP3 file sharing? Now that really would point out an unfilled need, wouldn't it? More:
"The Internet research company has projected that home penetration for broadband will reach 40 percent by 2006, up from 15 percent last year. At-work and college-area high-speed connections will become the norm within 18 months, Brooks said.
Big, established ISPs that offer plenty of content, not smaller upstarts, will win the broadband battle, Jupiter said.
'When you look at where the broadband audience goes and who's aggregating it, it's the same big portals - the AOLs, MSNs and Yahoos - that that are aggregating the largest broadband audiences,' he said. AOL and Microsoft's MSN have been aggressively pushing broadband for only the past six months, Brooks noted...."
But that will change over time, just like savvy web surfers are forsaking the portals. News aggregators will play a big part in this shift. More:
"Higher-income households still dominate the U.S. broadband market, but the survey found that dynamic to be changing. Today nearly a third of broadband households make under $50,000, up from just over a quarter two years ago."
Which is why libraries are essential points of internet access, especially high-speed access. That "third of broadband households" is on the higher side of $50,000.
11:20:48 PM Permanent link here
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" 'The amount you have to pay for CDs is horrendous,' says Gregory. Instead, he's joined the parade of fans who buy blank CDs in bulk (costing between 25 and 50 cents each) and then add the CD cover artwork by checking Internet sites such as www.CD-cover-search.com. His CD burner cost less than $100 and he can copy a CD in about three minutes.
'Burning a CD is a good thing,' he says, 'because you get to see if you like the band, and then you can go to their shows, where you help them by buying tickets and merchandise. I'm not trying to rip off the band. And a lot of times, kids will buy the CDs after they've burned a CD, just to support the band.'
The RIAA's Rosen, however, sees some of this as bogus logic. 'It's in vogue to diss record companies. That gives fans the license to say, 'Well, we're only hurting record companies. We're not hurting the artists,'' she says. ''People sometimes think `If an artist is well known enough and I've heard of them, they have a lot of money and I don't care. And if an artist is unknown, they ought to be grateful to me for spreading their name around.' So they create this sort of rationalization.'
Rosen does a lot of public speaking at schools and she prods the students to think about what they're doing by burning CDs, since the artists aren't getting any royalties from that. 'Analogies are what really work best,' she says. 'I ask them, `What have you done last week? They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, `Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too? Would that bug you?' So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people...' [via LibraryPlanet]
I wonder what analogy Joe Byrd would use to illustrate the point of artists not getting royalties? Perhaps it would go something like this: "Oh, you wrote a song and a record company paid you for it? Wouldn't it bother you if the record company could just take that song and make money off it without paying you? Would that bug you?"
"The reasons are debatable, but signs of a record industry swan dive are everywhere. There have been recent bankruptcies by the National Record Mart and Northeast One-Stop (the No.1 supplier of music for Newbury Comics), Valley Records in California, and a stunning move by EMI Records to lay off 1,400 employees globally and drop 400 acts.
It's also notable where the people who still buy music are buying it. Chains like Tower and Virgin are down 8 to 9 percent, according to SoundScan, while mass merchants such as Wal-Mart and Target (that is, stores that sell many other products besides CDs) are up 6 percent. That has a negative impact on the selection of music in record stores, because obviously, those retailers focus on the faster-selling hit-making acts, rather than exposing a lot of new, lesser-known CDs that sell fewer copies and take up space."
Maybe this is also evidence of the fact that folks are shopping around for the lowest prices on already over-priced CDs.
" 'We have got to do something to protect intellectual property. It's just not right to steal,' says Albhy Galuten, vice president of new media for Universal Records. 'We're not living in the Renaissance when the Medicis funded artists. We live in a capitalist society.'
'This is a sociological problem and we have got to work it out,' adds Galuten. 'I find it incredibly ironic that some people will spend an extra $1,000 on their hard drives just so they can store more music, but they won't pay for the music...' "
Why ironic? I'd call it proactive, if anything. The record labels refuse to offer consumers what they want - legal digital music that is portable to their MP3 players, stereos, and PCs. So folks go out and get the equipment they need to in order to fill this market gap. There isn't a single service out there that duplicates with digital music what I experience with CDs, so how could I possibly pay for it? If you want digital music, of course you're going to need a bigger hard drive. Yet the music industry doesn't understand that they could be the ones making money off filling up all of that space.
"And Elvis Costello doesn't mince words when he says, 'If you're a carpenter and you make a chair, and then somebody comes around your workshop and takes the chair away, you call the police. There isn't any gray area. It's just stealing.'
'Why should it be any different with music?' he asks. 'If music is all free, then why not go and make up your own songs? Music isn't just in the air. Somebody has to determine the order in which these tones and rhythms are played and arranged and recorded. The woolly idea that music should be for free is ridiculous.'
Yet even Costello acknowledges that, at least in terms of the big record companies, 'They've loaded the game so the house has been winning for a long time. Now it's time maybe for the house not to win for a while. Maybe they have to take some losses.' "
In the context of MP3s, how can it be stealing if you're not making it available in the first place? I don't think anyone is advocating that music should be free. Rather, I think the issue is that music should be available in formats consumers want in ways they want to use it. I understand what Elvis is saying, but even he admits that something is rotten in Denmark.
10:41:08 PM Permanent link here
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I'll have to start saving up my money now, but do I get a discount if I buy more than one? I know several people that would want one of these:
 "Welcome to Keenmac
Home of Ireland's unique Garden Pubs. We are a family run business that has earned an enviable reputation for innovation and adaptability and we pride ourselves in constructing a very special product for some very special people.....
With the arrival of the Smok'n Salmon, Keenmac believe they have produced the ULTIMATE IN GARDEN LEISURE and an absolute LUXURIOUS GARDEN ACCESSORY.
We seek to spark the imagination and creativity of our customers by giving them the choice of naming their own SIGNAGE, LOGOS, WINDOW DISPLAYS, AND INTERIOR THEME and in doing so, turning your desires and visions into reality, by having your very own Pub, in your very own garden." [via Binary By Accident]
10:08:52 PM Permanent link here
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"I've been waiting for this to happen: Former Plastic flack Laura Goldberg at Trylon Communications just became the first public relations professional to pitch me for my weblog, rather than for Salon or Wired....
I wasn't interested in what yet another magazine writer had to say about weblogs, but I called Laura in New York to talk about her approach instead. We had a great chat about PR and weblogs, which she understands better than most people.
Expect to see more Daypop Top 40 items placed there by blog-savvy PR professionals, just as happens in other news media." [Paul Boutin, via EvHead]
I guess blogs truly have arrived. Jason Kottke riffs on this subject, too.
9:45:50 PM Permanent link here
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 "The Cubik is the world's smallest megapixel digital camera. Its 1.3 million pixel CMOS captures images at 1280x1024. Its on-board 16mb RAM stores 50 1280x1024 or 99 640x512 low-res pictures. You can even capture a 90 second movie (no sound, though). Although not as small as the Spyz, the Cubik is small enough to fit unobtrusively into your pocket. And, thanks to an aluminum alloy casing, it can also survive your pocket. The Cubik also works as a webcam.
The standard package is only $169 and includes the Cubik camera, USB connection cable, English software and manual, and a 1 year warranty through Dynamism. We have the Cubik in-stock and available for same-day shipment." [via Evhead]
Yes, it's small digital camera day on TSL. This one, at least, would be relatively easy to carry around, and it would help capture those great "kid" moments I'm always missing because I don't have a camera with me. When will the 3-megapixel version be out?
9:36:18 PM Permanent link here
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I just found out about BoomerangGames, which is the video game equivalent of NetFlix. You can rent any two games at a time for as long as you want for $19.95 per month. No due dates, no late fees, and postage-paid envelopes to use for shipping the games back. I love the convenience NetFlix offers, and I think the same service for video games would be good for the kids.
Does anybody have any experience with them?
9:06:38 PM Permanent link here
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Kate wants to know what it means when you get a fortune cookie that is barren of a fortune. We decided it means you get to create your own fortune, but I'm Googling confirmation of that.
Recycle Your Emptiness by Steve Ramirez
"An empty fortune cookie
is a scary proposition.
Especially if you
'think too much,'
because you'll find that you've
supplicated yourself before the alien
Gods of Fortune,
whispering the sacred mantra
'¿Que Paso?'
but they've looked you over,
smiled infinitely mysteriously
and replied
"Tabula rasa, baby.
Tabula rasa."
The pessimist
grasps the concept of planets misaligned,
a bad moon rising and a dartboard
abandoned in the corner of a dusty office
to wait for the next budget meeting;
they've written the book on
the Law of Conservation of Happiness,
because happiness isn't created or destroyed,
it only changes form
passing among the land-owning elite
with occasional detours downtown.
The optimist,
however,
realizes their fortune
simply reads,
'Šin bed.' "
Random Senseless Beauty
"This time, when I opened my cookie, there was no fortune. No slip of paper that I imagine an elderly wise man on a mountain top writing out onto an ancient scroll. No little slip of print that was likely manufactured by the ton at some massive fortune outlet factory. No fortune at all. My roommate laughed merrily - the joke was on me. At first I laughed, and said - How perfect! How Zen! How many egg rolls are left for breakfast tomorrow?
The more I thought about it, the more I had to think about. What was the message of no message at all?
Do I not need a fortune right now? If I am on the right track, and doing everything right in my life at this point, maybe a fortune would only confuse me, or put me on the wrong path. Maybe I am so stressed out right now that worrying about how to interpret a fortune would only give me more to think about. (Even though no fortune is stressing me more!)
Perhaps the lack of fortune is showing me the lack of thought on my part to the spiritual path I am on. I don¹t spend a lot of time working on my spiritual development. Should I drop everything else to make the time? Is now the right time to direct all of my energy to this?
Is the message of nothing precisely that - Nothing? We all get so caught up in our lives and ourselves that we often don¹t spend any time just daydreaming. Just being. Perhaps I should meditate more often and get to that pure clear place where Nothing exists. It¹s really hard to find the time to turn within. There is so much going on every day that I am delighted when I find ten whole minutes to sit quietly. The message could have been alluding to this - that I need to drop many of my projects and do Nothing sometimes.
It could be that I need to surround myself with Nothing right now. I usually live in a whirlwind of paper, magazines, trinkets, odds and ends. Could the mystic be telling me to clean my bedroom and my area at the office? Is it time for me to let go of all my precious junk? Is tidiness the path to enlightenment?
The message could have been ³Don¹t believe in symbols.² Sometimes I over analyze dreams, signs, everyday occurrences. Should I stop reading so much meaning into everything? Are there no real signs? Are there no outside signs, and true wisdom only comes from within?
There are two clear messages I received from the fortuneless fortune cookie. One - Let a good meal just be a good meal. And two - I think too much."
8:54:16 PM Permanent link here
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Musician to Napster Judge: Let My Music Go
"Joseph Byrd recorded a pair of experimental psychedelic albums for Columbia Records in the late 1960s. Since then, he says he's earned a few thousand dollars in composer's fees but hasn't received a single penny in artist's royalties.
It's not for lack of trying. Byrd says he sent his first letter of complaint to the label in 1976, and over the years he's repeatedly asked for financial statements on album sales and royalties. Letters have been sent, phone calls have been made. But even as his recordings -- "The United States of America" and "The American Metaphysical Circus" -- began to reappear on compact disc, Columbia and its parent company (Sony) continued to ignore Byrd's pleas.
On Feb. 27, the mild-mannered professor -- Byrd teaches music history at the College of the Redwoods in Northern California -- decided to take his case to Marilyn Hall Patel, the federal judge overseeing the labels' lawsuit against Napster for copyright infringement. He wrote Patel a letter detailing how Sony had been giving him the cold shoulder for decades. His situation, he added, was hardly unique.
'I am not alone,' he wrote. 'Literally thousands of musicians like me, who are purportedly represented by record companies and distributors in the current Napster case, are in my situation.'
'The record companies' representation that they are legitimate agents for their artists is false,' he continued. 'The only payments they make are to those who have the means to force them to be accountable; to the rest, a vast majority, they pay nothing. Therefore, allowing them to collect fees in our behalf does not serve the public interest. I personally would prefer to allow my music to be freely shared, to the present situation, in which only the corporations stand to gain. Until this is changed, the record companies and publishers deserve nothing....'
In the face of growing uncertainty about the future of their business model, labels have grown increasingly conservative and combative, says Simson. After years of working with artists to give them greater control and higher returns on their own work, he says, the recording industry is now trying to retrench and is largely succeeding....
The situation could get worse, says Byrd. 'The industry has a history of success, with Congress bailing it out when the courts won't,' he says. Take the Betamax case, 'which they [the entertainment industry] lost, then won with the mind-boggling legislation mandating payment of royalties for sales of blank VCR tapes!'
'I don't think it's cynical to say that the entertainment business is so corrupt that nothing could change how it does business, short of an entire new Bill of Rights for artists,' he says. 'And for that to happen, there would have to be a public angry enough to demand that Congress stand up to Hollywood. When was the last time that happened?' [Salon.com]
6:56:00 PM Permanent link here
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I can't wait to see the new PBS reality show Frontier House. I loved The 1900 House, and this latest one should be triple the fun because it's three families experiencing the American frontier in the 1880s.
From Newsweek: Prairie Home Companions
"It takes less than 40 minutes for the first person to start crying on 'Frontier House.' That’s not so bad, given that “Frontier” is one of those semisadistic PBS shows where mild-mannered history buffs travel back in time to live just like the natives—in this case, like homesteaders in 1883 Montana....
For one thing, the new show features three families, instead of one. That means three times as much history—and three times as much history-induced misery. More important, these are Americans, so you can forget all that British stoicism. Americans whine. Americans cheat. Americans have no compunction about complaining that the frontier is ruining their sex life, among other marital woes. “We’re at divorce level,” Karen Glenn says to the camera in the middle of a fight with her husband, Mark, about who rules the log cabin. “I’m ready to kick him out and just do it by myself.” PBS thought “Frontier House” would be Laura Ingalls Wilder come to life. What it got was 'Little Grouse on the Prairie....'
But it’s hard for the civics lessons to compete with a civil war. As the show moves through its six episodes, the Clunes and the Glenns become the Hatfields and the McCoys. The Clunes—at a disadvantage because they’re a family of six and they’re from Malibu—kvetch about hunger. The Glenns—a family of four from the log-cabin side of Tennessee—think the Clunes are wimps. 'They had beans. They had rice. That’s not starving,' Karen tells NEWSWEEK. 'What I saw in Montana was this spoiled family who was not getting the food they wanted.' The third family, Nate and Kristen Brooks, often get lost in the cross-fire. “We felt like we were in the middle,” says Nate. 'There was obviously some tension, but I’m sure that happened in the 1880s, too....'"
Six months after leaving the 'frontier,' the Clunes and Glenns still can’t stand each other. In an interview, Gordon Clune can’t say anything nice about Karen Glenn. 'There’s something scary there,' he says. 'There’s something very, very sad in her life.' Karen is still smarting about when the Clunes broke away to trade for food with some 21st-century neighbors. 'In the 1880s you couldn’t go across the fence to the modern world to satisfy your needs,' she says. Gordon defends himself: 'We traded for venison and root vegetables that would have existed at the time. That wasn’t so bad. We thought there was no other choice.' Karen begs to differ. 'There’s this one clip where they talk about using peanut butter for mouse bait,' she says. 'There was no peanut butter in 1883.' Perhaps. But on 'Frontier House,' there were plenty of nuts."
The show airs April 29 through May 1, and in Chicago WTTW is showing it from 8-10 p.m. I'm going to tape all of the episodes to watch with the kids!
2:41:17 PM Permanent link here
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"The California Voter Foundation has been publishing election information on the Internet since 1994, and has over the years built a vast online library featuring thousands of pages of archived California election information. In recent years we have begun collecting and archiving position statements published by candidates on their campaign web sites.
CVF's archive is being expanded in 2002 to include "progress statements" provided by California statewide officers describing in their own words what they've done in the past four years to advance their top three priorities from the 1998 election." [via LLRXBuzz]
This is especially important because there is so much legislation being proposed these days that will affect our collective future for years to come (if not forever). I know there are a lot of problems associated with trying to track an elected official's promises (some of it is out of their control, stuff like September 11 happens, etc.), but every state should have one of these.
1:25:43 PM Permanent link here
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 "Casio will ship in July the Exilim EX-S1 Camera, which supposedly is the smallest Digital Camera in the world with measurements of 88 mm x 55 mm x 11.3 mm and a weight of 86 g. The EXILIM has a 1/2.7", 1.31 million pixel CCD and 1280 x 960 dpi standard image size. The optical viewfinder is supplemented by an 1.6" digital display. It supports SD/MMC cards as storage media. The 1.1mm thicker Exilim EX-M1 also features a built-in MP3 player.
Casio Press-Release
I4U just received a tip from Mark that Fuji has a smaller Digital Camera announced. SMAL Camera Technologies announced that FujiFilm Axia will distribute the eyeplate Camera. The device features the measurements of 85.6mm x 54mm x 6mm and a weight of 35g. Seems FujiFim Axia is ahead here.
Small Camera Press Release"
I don't need a small camera that does MP3 unless it does other things, too (like voice recording, PDA functionality, games, etc.). That's why I'm so intrigued by the Sony PEG-NR70V. I'm really looking forward to device convergence.
9:51:59 AM Permanent link here
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Trivia Guy Links Up with Other Superlatives
"Until he taped a segment of NBC’s “Weakest Link,” Spartanburg trivia guy Wilson Casey had never met another world-record holder.
But on March 11, he found himself in the company of a contortionist dubbed “the world’s most bendable woman,” the world’s fittest man and the world’s fastest-talking woman.
And that’s just for starters.
They were joined by the human ZIP code directory, the fastest balloon-animal artist in the world, a 700-pound American who is a champion Sumo wrestler, and the woman who has been seen nude by the most people in the world via the Internet.
Though it seems an odd assortment, 'you could not find a more super class of people,' Casey said....
To his surprise, host Anne Robinson often called for retakes because of her mistakes.
The most difficult moments came when contestants had to repeatedly re-enact their departure from the show, Casey said.
One woman was driven to tears.
'After you get voted off, the last thing you want to do is hang around for a retake and a retake and a retake,' Casey said." [GoUpstate.com News Headlines]
8:17:05 AM Permanent link here
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 New eBook Reader
"A new paperback-sized computer screen that folds like a book will be ideal for Internet users reading online novels, its South Korean inventor said on Tuesday....
The 6.7 inch by 5 inch flat LCD screen folds along a central hinge and is much clearer than existing devices, display maker Samsung SDI said.
It spent $1.54 million developing the screen and plans to start producing it in the second-half of 2002. It expects its sister company Samsung Electronics to build it into an "e-book" computer....
Samsung sees potential sales of flat panels for electronic books at 24,973 units this year." [Yahoo News, via LISNews.com]
This reminds me a lot of the Everybook, before it went out of business. They had an interesting idea to focus on corporate users with essentially a laptop that had two screens. But they folded pretty quickly, and devices keep getting smaller, not bigger. I tried to contact them to use their devices to circulate digital local history collections to schools, senior centers, and residents, but they never got back to me and next thing I knew they were out of business.
This Samsung device will be gone soon enough, too. I'm not sure what they were thinking. It looks like it has lots of knobs on it, which makes it even stranger. I wonder if it at least reads text out loud.
8:02:31 AM Permanent link here
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"This project is called Fiat Lux, and it addresses what is, ironically, the biggest problem on the Internet: the difficulty in reliably finding significant, objective, and relevant information. Basically, Fiat Lux is a not-for-profit cooperative founded by the librarians who manage important—though small and grossly underfunded—Internet finding aids (a Cybrarian Cartel, if you will). Our idea is that there is strength through cooperation, collaboration, and resource-sharing—an idea many of you involved in building library systems and consortia can connect with.
You are probably familiar with the tools, if not the people connected with them: Internet Public Library; Michigan Electronic Library; BUBL, from Great Britain; Toronto Virtual Reference Library; Infomine, from University of California/Riverside; the now-defunct Internet Signpost; and lii.org, the California brainchild of Carole Leita that developed into the state-funded Web portal I now manage.
In the short run, we see ourselves sharing Internet records, collaborating on funding requests, and informally improving our respective platforms through mutual activities. In the long run—which in Internet time is six months to a year—some of us have brainstormed about building one wonderful Internet resource, one well-known place we can direct our users, a site that is trustworthy and high-quality and dedicated to the public good: a Yahoo with values and a brain.
Fiat Lux is a smart idea whose time came, went, and came around again; we can’t let the brass ring go by this time. Years ago, a couple of guys from Stanford did what many librarians said could not be done: They took a reasonably decent stab at organizing the Internet, creating a Web portal, Yahoo, that looked and felt like a searchable catalog of Internet sites—albeit one clogged with pop-up ads, compromised by paid placement, and cluttered with irrelevant features.
Reading Yahoo’s official history, you would think David Filo and Jerry Yang invented the idea of a categorized Web resource. Let’s set the record straight: Librarians initiated several of the first known services, such as the Michigan Electronic Library (still alive today, thank you very much), and the beloved Infoslug service, maintained by Steve Watkins. These and similar resources were the talk of the tiny Internet community long before those two Stanford students “started their guide in a campus trailer” in 1994, as the Yahoo company history reports it.
Why wasn’t it us? What other profession has the values and the information know-how to be the big cheese when it comes to organizing the Internet? In a world of paid placement, relevance-for-sale, and questionable motives, the idea of a public-domain, objective, service-oriented Web portal has for some time been in the back of every thinking librarian’s head.
I don’t think we missed the brass ring because we lacked skill or acumen; I think it was that we just didn’t have the right confluence of time, people, or place. (Or perhaps we just needed better lawyers.)....
We librarians clearly have a clue about organizing the Internet.... What we lacked in glitzy IPOs complete with ice carvings at the company party was a total devotion to our mission: public service. As Ranganathan might have put it, Internet sites are for use....
Meanwhile, the Fiat Lux gang represents a “best of the Internet” collection of over 110,000 records, the participation of 280 skilled librarians and information professionals, a cumulative 44 years of service provision and experience, and support of close to 9 million searches from the learning community annually....
Watch us closely—Fiat Lux plans to light up the world." [American Libraries, thanks to Laura for the link!]
I know I'm quoting too much from this article, but it's too exciting not to! This is one piece of what I've been advocating for librarians to do, so I'll be watching it closely!
12:38:07 AM Permanent link here
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Deanna wrote me to note the strange "six degrees of Wil Wheaton" thing that my first Goolebox on the right seems to show. I can't imagine why Google thinks Wil and I are related, but this is probably as close as I'll ever get to 15 minutes of fame, so I'll take it!
12:28:34 AM Permanent link here
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Domains Reregistered for Distribution of Unrelated Content: A Case Study of "Tina's Free Live Webcam"
"This is an amazing case-study documenting a porn-site that has registered over 4,000 expired domains and pointed them at itself (presumably on the grounds that people following old bookmarks and links to the original site will see the porn and possibly register for the site). The documentation is really amazing: The author's gone back to archive.org snapshots of the old domains to see what they looked like and what their meta-tags said they were about.
PACE-TECHNOLOGIES.COM
Current title: Tina's Free Live Webcam
Old title: Pace Technologies
Google: Pages containing pace-technologies.com (50), linking to pace-technologies.comOld description: providing web design and hosting, e-commerce solution, email accounts, web application development, domain name registration... one of the chinese leading agencies.
Old keywords: website hosting, web advertising, web publishing, complete web design packages, web designing, web design, email To fax, e-commerce, electronic stores, virtual mall, payment, order form, shopping cart, virtual hosting, virtual server, customized programmi ...
Archive: index, as of ~1/1/2000 (871 distinct snapshots among 999 archives since Nov 5, 1996
PACKATTACKONLINE.COM
Current title: Tina's Free Live Cam
Old title: Pack Attack Online- "Your source for the Green Bay Packers"
Google: Pages containing packattackonline.com, linking to packattackonline.com
Old description: Green Bay Packers Pictures, Live news, stats, and more!
Archive: index, as of ~1/1/2000 (7 distinct snapshots among 9 archives since Mar 4, 2000)" [bOing bOing]
Don't let this happen to your library!
12:25:04 AM Permanent link here
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Do Libraries Need Lie Detectors?
"In September 2000, publishing house Alfred A. Knopf handed professional librarians a knotty problem. It published "Arming America," a book in which Emory University professor Michael Bellesiles outlined research supposedly showing that guns were rare in America from the Colonial period to the Civil War. The book was awarded Columbia University's Bancroft Prize in history in April 2001, and immediately appeared in library collections around the country. As it turns out, "Arming America" is a lie...
...Should professional librarians be concerned with the veracity of the books on their non-fiction shelves? Suppose "Arming America" is the book a student chooses for a high school history book report. Does it matter that his intellectual development may be shaped by a deliberate llie?" [Library Stuff]
This is an interesting point, since libraries can hardly be expected to guarantee the authenticity of every fact in every book. But at the same time, we pride ourselves on accurate information.
I used to work with my friend Kay at a public library when she was head of reference and I was the technology coordinator. One day I was showing a patron The Gourman Report books that rank colleges and universities. They were very popular with patrons, and they were just one of many titles I'd give them. When I did, I'd note that there was a lot of controversy surrounding the rankings because no one knew how they were arrived at and many institutions disputed them.
I was shocked to see Kay do the same thing for a different patron, except that she whipped out a photocopy of an article explaining the controversy and scorning use of the rankings. I understood why she was doing it, but to me that implied to the patron a higher level of endorsement for all of the other books in the building. She argued that it was the right thing to do. I don't think we ever settled that one.
It's a tricky subject, and sometimes I think a lie detector would indeed come in handy. But whose lies would it expose?
12:16:04 AM Permanent link here
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 Stick a fork in CBDTPA
"Doc has pointed us to an excellent article by Attorney Catherine Olanich Raymond that breaksdown the CBDTPA bill being floated in Congress by Senator Hollings. Catherine explains in fairly plain language why the bill would be impossible to enforce and the major thrust of the bill is to "protect HDTV." She also points out something I've said before, that the bill presupposes that a suitable form of encoding to prevent piracy exists now.
Is Hollings talking about the Microsoft Patent? Or something else? Clue me in here folks!
[Indulge me a couple minutes, so I can give you the short take-- with the background.] In all my years in the broadcast industry I have never seen the major players (Sony, Panasonic, JVC, Philips and the posse,) in the broadcast/film hardware business ever agree about anything when the words INDUSTRY STANDARDS are used in a sentence. Even today, all of the current HDTV equiptment (like cameras/decks/switchers and other big ticket equiptment,) does not work (well or at all) with other HDTV equiptment from another company. Each and every company has written their idea of the "standard" and very little equiptment from one company to another "talks to" or "interfaces" with the others. The only way it happens is with a hell of a lot of brunt work and a team of engineers who can physically make them talk to one another with a Swiss Army Knife of translators and drivers. So Fritz Hollings "thinks" they will cooperate in something like encoding to a common source? He is highly mistaken or Sony, Panasonic, JVC and a posse of vendors have decided to all act like Snow White. History tells me it ain't gonna happen. These companies would be playing for a lot of marbles.
The other thing is that Hollings and Congress has little understanding on the Convergence Model of content acquisition and delivery systems, as well as seperating the fact from the fiction. I wrote one of the first public papers on it years ago. The problems is there are a considerable amount of the problems that exsist in the formats of the acquisition and editing and final output. (It's also a storage nightmare.) The major problem of the Hollings Bill will be to get interfaces to protect them from piracy.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I keep hearin' Nooo way Jose! It ain't gonna happen!
More on this after I get back from an appointment. Later!" [Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour]
12:01:34 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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