Google Maps Mashup that I want
Here’s an idea for a Google Maps mashup that would have been really freaking useful over the last few days:
Enter an address and either an amount of time you’re willing to drive, or an amount of money.
Map the circle you can travel, driving that time, and mark hotels under that price range. Other variables could be added (amusement park locations, B&Bs, whatever). I’m thinking a sort of “day trip planner.” Anything out there similar to this?
That’s it! daytrippr.com. Hell, it’s still available, people! Web 2.0 ahoy! Go to it!
links for 2006-01-20
Disco Chapel
links for 2006-01-19
Here’s another in the long string of things that I find to disagree with Michael Gorman about. At the Online Information Conference in London, he came up with a few more priceless gems of wisdom (from Information World Review):
Controversy has broken out over the Google digitisation project with Michael Gorman, outspoken head of the American Library Association , slammed it as a waste of money. Speaking at the Online Information Conference in London, Gorman also attacked librarians for being “too interested in technologyâ€.
“…too interested in technology.” Perhaps he hasn’t noticed, but….that’s the way that our patrons are interacting with the information they need these days. I suppose we could go back to card catalogs, but I’m guessing we’ll get some pushback from our users.
His comments have met with opposition from librarians. “The Google project has been enthusiastically embraced and I think that is a mistake. I am not speaking on behalf of the ALA. That has no position on the Google digitisation project. I, on the other hand, do,†said Gorman.
Christ on a cracker…Gorman, the reason you’re invited to speak at things like the Online Information Conference is because you’re the ALA president. It certainly isn’t because you are forward-thinking and innovative.
“So we digitise – I would prefer to say atomise. Very little-used books are reduced to a bunch of paragraphs, searchable by free text searching, the very worst kind of searching.â€
I’m sorry…I can barely parse that last sentence. The very worst kind of searching? Being able to search the full text of a work…the “very worst” kind of searching? *boggle* I’ll give him that full-text searching with no ranking or other evaluatory device behind it might be bad…but that’s certainly not what anyone will be doing. Google certainly isn’t going to digitize thousands of works and then return full-text searches with random results based on the fact that the word “otter” is on page 5. It’s going to make very complicated ranking decisions, weight them, and return results with other factors taken into account. What are those factors? Could be lots of things, including bibliographic metadata or the last thing you clicked on…but it will be a damn sight better than current OPAC results. If you haven’t had a chance yet, Mr. Gorman, I recommend you take a look at the Univ. of California’s BSTF Final Report for a good summary of how our current OPAC/Bib. Services need to be altered.
“Google Book Search is not an effective way of finding books – it is better to go to a library catalogue or Amazon ,†he said
*sigh* Either of those might be decent choices if you know what you are looking for. With a title in hand, a syphilitic monkey could find a book on Amazon. The issue comes when you don’t have a title or author…just a topic or question. How good is your library OPAC at locating books based on topics, when the searcher isn’t knowledgable? I’m betting that Google Book Search will outperform many OPAC searches when doing an unsophisticated search. I wish my OPAC were as easy to use as Amazon.
links for 2006-01-18
Reading: Song of Ice and Fire
So, on the advice of my friend Trav, I picked up the audiobook for the first book in George RR Martin‘s series “A Song of Ice and Fire“. The book, A Game of Thrones, really took me by surprise. As we all know, 90% of everything is crap, and genre fiction can sometimes have a higher percentage than that.
Well, I’ll eat some crow on this one..I’m completely hooked. I finished the audiobook, and I’m now 536 pages into the second book, A Clash of Kings. The series deals with politics in ways that I’ve never seen in a fantasy novel, with complex characters and a seeming disregard for many of the typical genre rules. As well, the Wikipedia article on the series says:
Numerous parallels have been seen between the events and characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and events and people involved in the Wars of the Roses. Two of the principal families in A Song of Ice and Fire, the Starks and the Lannisters, are seen as representing the historical House of York and House of Lancaster, respectively.
I’m going to finish this book easily this week, and hopefully begin on a Storm of Swords. So for anyone that hasn’t discovered them, and has a soft spot in their heart for good fantasy that’s light on magic and heavy on story, character, and plot…pick up Game of Thrones, and see what you think.
Facebook + Library = good
Just a few ideas for the academic libraries out there. If you’re in an academic library, you probably know (I hope!) that Facebook is the site of choice for social interaction on a university campus these days. Just a couple of ideas that I thought of this week, and approached my dean to potentially implement.
1. Facebook just included a new feature they are calling “Pulse”, where they list the top 10 movies, books, tv shows, etc…on your campus. How cool would it be to do a display of the top 10 FaceBooks every week? The interaction of this virtual world being represented in the library would be very cool, and I think it would draw students to become more interested in the library as a whole.
2. The new advertisement option in Facebook could also be used to the libraries advantage. Got a program you want students to know about? Want to boost your gatecount for a speaker? Advertising on Facebook is really cheap, given the number of eyeballs on it. I’m going to see if we can do a handful of random advertisements, and just see how they effect gatecount.