Categories
Digital Culture Media

Google Wave and Igor

For the BIGWIG Showcase this year, I talked about and put together a presentation on Google Wave, and what I think it will do to library services. One of the things I talked about was the ability for software robots to watch the Wave, and alter it in specific ways. Well, it looks like we’ve got our first bibliographic example of this, with Igor. Stew over at Flags & Lollipops has put together a robot that will watch a given Wave for mentions of citations, and then query and automagically fill in footnotes from PubMed, Connotea, or CiteULike (for now, I’m sure that Zotero and other coverage is easily possible).

I’ve got no idea how he did this, given that Wave isn’t public yet…but the demo shows what’s going to be possible with Wave. Take a look, and get ready….Wave might change everything. You may need to click through and enlarge the player to really see what’s going on.

Igor – a Google Wave robot to manage your references from Stew Fnl on Vimeo.

Igor is a robot for Google Wave written in Java and running on Google App Engine.

It allows users to pull in references from PubMed & personal libraries on Connotea or CiteULike by querying services with keywords that they supply inline with the article you’re writing.

Categories
ALA Personal

LITA Forum 2009 – Signup NOW!

From the LITA listserv, and because I’m doing a preconference that should be a lot of fun:

The early bird registration deadline has been extended for the 2009 LITA National Forum, October 1-4, 2009 in Salt Lake City. Now is your opportunity to realize excellent savings on registration for the forum. Registration rates are $50 lower through August 31– Register Now: http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/litaevents/forum2009/registration.cfm

Keynote Sessions Feature Dynamic Speakers:

http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/litaevents/forum2009/keynote.cfm

On Friday Joan Lippincott of Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) will kick off the Forum with her talk Mobile Technologies, Mobile Users: Will Libraries Mobilize? Lippincott will discuss what roles libraries can and should play in delivering content for mobile devices, developing services for mobile device users and configuring physical spaces to respond to their needs.

Saturday, David Weinberger will present Knowledge in the Age of Abundance. Weinberger will examine how our new connected age is one of abundant and ready access to knowledge and how this is bringing a change in the nature, shape, value and role of knowledge itself.

Liz Lawley of the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology will close the Forum on Sunday with Technical/Tangible/Social. Lawley’s talk will cover the growing importance of “social objects” in technology implementation, and how those objects serve as a focal point for cohesive social interactions.

Preconferences Offer In-Depth Examination of Topics:

http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/litaevents/forum2009/precon.cfm

Choose between two full-day workshops, spanning Thursday afternoon and Friday morning:

Jason Griffey of University of Tennessee, Chattanooga will present The Future of Mobile. The workshop will examine the future of mobile technologies and their impact on libraries, including how service models in libraries change with ubiquitous computing and how content delivery becomes different. Attendees will look at specific tools that are currently available that model the direction that mobile is moving.

Accessibility Update: Section 508 and WCAG in a Library 2.0 World, presented by Nina McHale of the University of Colorado, Denver will provide an introduction to Section 508 and WCAG Web accessibility guidelines and how they relate to online library tools. The workshop will include demonstrations of popular assistive technologies and guidelines for optimizing library resources to comply with Section 508 and WCAG.

Visit the LITA Web site for more information on the Forum including concurrent and poster sessions, travel and lodging, and complete Forum schedule.

http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/litaevents/forum2009/index.cfm

Be sure to Connect with Forum participants on Facebook and the Forum wiki:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php??eid=34666759559#/event.php

http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/2009_LITA_National_Forum

Categories
Personal

Seen on campus today

A new use for a figure 8 descender. For those who haven’t seen one, that’s an aluminum figure 8, used in rappelling. Or, in this case, an umbrella holder.

Categories
podcast Podcasts

Tablets

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
Gaming

Success!

I’ve been trying to find ways to enliven PatRec for awhile now, as I don’t post as much as I used to, and some of my energy/content has drifted off to other shores (Audioboo, TechSource, etc). I think I finally found a solution that I can use: FeedWordpress.

It’s a plugin that pulls RSS, and throws it into my timeline here on the blog. While I’m not going to be feeding in everything (no Twitter or Friendfeed) I do want my audioboo feed, and my Tumblr feed, to repost here. I’ll probably set up a Posterous as well to feed in, and then, no matter what kind of access I have, I can get things posted easily and quickly. We’ll see how this goes.

Categories
podcast

Testing tumble

Testing tumble

Categories
podcast Podcasts

Testing wordpress

View at audioboo.fm

Categories
Personal

Get in the f’ing sack

Best bit on homeopathy and other quackery I’ve seen in a long time, courtesy of BoingBoing and Dara O’Briain. Fabulous, and I’ve got a longer list of who to put in that sack he’s talking about…

Categories
ALA Media Personal

Libraries and Mobile Devices: Public Policy Considerations

This is a panel that I was a part of at ALA 2009 on the future of mobile….phenomenal panelists. I was especially geeked to finally get to meet Eli Neiburger. Anyway, we all had something to say about the future of mobile, and what libraries need to be worried about. Watch it, and let me know if you have any feedback. I’m always interested in what other librarians think about things like this…the future isn’t certain, and it’s always possible that I’m remarkably wrong. 🙂

Here’s part one:

And part two:

Categories
Library Issues

Help the Louisville Free Public Library

Yesterday, the Louisville Free Public Library in Louisville, KY was hit with a terrible storm, and was flooded. The initial damage estimates are around $1 million, but given the pictures that were shared yesterday, I’m guessing that’s a lowball estimate. The pics are horrendous.

Steve Lawson has set up a paypal account specifically for donations going to the Library, in the name of the Library Society of the World. I’d like to ask everyone to head over to his post, and donate something…$5, $10, whatever you can afford. The people of Louisville will appreciate it.