memo's blogMedia=LibraryThanks to Glenna for providing us this link to "What's Next in Media." According to Glenna, you can easily substitute "media" for "library" and you'll see how closely these issues are related. Last updated: June 9, 2008 - 2:24pm by memo
Google zooms to my libraryOr at least, pretty darn near. We're talking about the super zoom capabilities of Google's "Street View" choice available in Google maps for some cities. Boise, by the way, has been mapped with Street View technology and now you can literally drive around Boise and grab, rotate, and move the map window along the same pathway the car/van that Google employed to snap pictures to get around the city. What's even cooler is that you can embed your particular street view map, with grab, zoom, and moves right into your blog (well, not WordPress ones). Simply find a street-view enabled map in Google Maps, click on the "Link to this page" and you'll get the code to embed it anywhere you please, thusly (this is the north side of the Albertsons Library): If you drag it to your left, you can see me waving (kidding!). Last updated: May 27, 2008 - 10:40pm by memo
SPLAT photosHi everyone, Thought you guys might like to see some SPLAT-themed photos from our May 2nd, 2008 meeting at the Collister branch in Boise. Go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/splatidaho/:
Last updated: May 18, 2008 - 8:22pm by memo
Libraries and DRM: what's the story?Found this post on BoingBoing re DRM (digital rights management), and the movement by this group to pressure libraries to stop using DRM in their collections. But let's back up a bit. What is, actually, this digital rights management? This is Wikipedia's definition:
This is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "...the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world.":
From the Microsoft Windows Media page:
This article
I don't know how this might be possible, for libraries to provide
I don't know if libraries can do much about it, but the Last updated: May 13, 2008 - 9:24pm by memo
That Twitter ThingHere's the post I wrote in my blog about Twitter but thought you might find interesting: Twitter, the microblogging application that allows you to post something about your everyday experience in 140 characters or less, is gaining ground as the newest way to connect and interact with other net denizens. Your tweets (posts) can be as mundane or as elaborate as you want to make them. You can also include links, which are automatically shortened by TinyURL to give you space to fit more text. Spaces and characters count so making the most (or less) of the 140 character limit is an oddly neat way to make your thoughts as succinct (hopefully) as possible. So what makes Twitter so fun? Let's break it down:
You can follow other Twitterers and get a glimpse of other twits (posts) from other individuals, since the people they follow will be listed as well. Also, you can make your profile public or private, allowing you to make your mundane/erudite tweets accessible by only those people you approve. Here's a sample of my Twitter stream: I find Twitter a cross between e-mail and chat, a quick and easy way to communicate that is not so in-your-face like chat, but not so removed from the asynchronous nature of e-mail. Even though you can message specific individuals (you use the "@" symbol with the person's profile name) you can have synchronous conversations if other individuals happen to be online at the same time--i.e., they respond to your tweets fairly quickly. This short but informative video from the folks at Commoncraft explains the whole Twitter thing rather nicely:
Twitter may not be for you, but I'm finding it a lot more engaging and informative than other social services. If you want to experiment in Twitter by all means follow me and I'll return the favor--we can try it out together! Last updated: May 2, 2008 - 10:46pm by memo
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