Boing Boing: Sony anti-customer technology roundup and time-line

Posted on November 14th, 2005 by Liz

If you’ve been following the Sony DRM rootkit debacle (like I have) the news has been so fast and furious that it’s hard to keep up. Here’s a concise timeline and quick summary of what’s happened so far.

The basich gist is: Revelations relating to Sony’s DRM systems, which show jaw-dropping contempt for their customers, for copyright law, for fair trading and for the public interest.

Sound like a juicy read? It is.

Boing Boing: Sony anti-customer technology roundup and time-line

StepMania: What is StepMania?

Posted on November 14th, 2005 by Liz

Hehe… if the kids in your library like Dance Dance Revolution, here’s a way for you to provide that without buying the game… Legally! I’d suggest a dance pad, a laptop, a big wall, and a projector. Let those kids show their stuff.

How fun.

StepMania: What is StepMania?

metadata for the masses

Posted on November 11th, 2005 by Liz

del.icio.us, flickr, and many other online services use visitor created tags to classify information. Oh the alarm! Oh the humanity! It’s not a fixed system!

That’s ok, and he can tell you why:
adaptive path » metadata for the masses

IM web shortcuts instead of desktop installation?

Posted on November 8th, 2005 by Mickey

Here’s a great tip from Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian. For those of you pondering the issue of providing IM on your public computers, here’s a workable compromise! –Mickey

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IM on the Desktop
By Jenny

Just a reminder that if you want to offer instant messaging on your public workstations but you don’t want to install software or your IT department is worried about the security of IM apps, you can always put desktop shortcuts and quick links in the browser to the web-based versions of these IM clients and/or Meebo.

Your patrons will lose some of the great functionality of the full clients, but it’s a start, and it might be a stepping stone to offering more down the road if you’re meeting resistance. In addition, it looks to me like you circumvent some privacy issues, too, because no transcripts of conversations are saved on the hard drive. Granted, information may still be in the browser’s cache, but hopefully you’re already addressing this issue with software that clears it out after each user.

Posted on: Mon, Nov 7 2005 11:09 PM

O’Reilly: What Is Web 2.0

Posted on November 8th, 2005 by Liz

Excellent article on “what is web 2.0″ for those of us who were confused about this new bit of web terminology.

O’Reilly: What Is Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Workgroup – A network of Web 2.0 resources

Posted on November 8th, 2005 by Liz

I know we have some library web developers in our midst (they’re quiet ones, those library web developers) so this one is for you guys. It’s a collection of blogs and resources for web 2.0 development. More on web 2.0 later

Web 2.0 Workgroup – A network of Web 2.0 resources

Flock – new version of Firefox

Posted on November 3rd, 2005 by Brenda

Flock is a new Firefox browser that includes built-in social software features (like RSS, del.icio.us, Flickr, etc). I’m not ready to upgrade yet (let them work out the bugs), but will definitely be watching this one. It’s all about collaborative web browsing — connecting, communicating, and collaborating.

Trillian training materials

Posted on November 2nd, 2005 by Liz

Are you thinking of starting an IM reference service? Do you want to be on more than one IM service at once? The Trillian IM client might be for you, but how the heck do you use it? Here we have a “Trillian Training Guide” for your perusal.

Trillian training materials

Podcasting 101

Posted on November 2nd, 2005 by Brenda

Have you heard about podcasting but you’re not really sure what it means? Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian, has created an informative document (PDF) that provides an overview of what podcasting is and how it is being used.

Read out of copyright books online

Posted on November 2nd, 2005 by Liz

This is probably old news to all of you, but I just love finding resources that have the potential to make my life better. That’s what bartleby.com does, it allows me to look up many out-of-copyright books and read them online. At the very least, i can skim and look up references.

Fascinating, and a service I didn’t realize existed (and much easier to navigate than the Gutenberg Project)

Fiction. Bartleby.com