Categories
Library Issues

Computers in Libraries, Monday Keynote

Lee Raine from the Pew Internet & American Life Project
Web 2.0

Asked by the Pew American Life to not advocate for anything…simply collect information.

“I adore librarians”

What is web 2.0? Show’s the “Ask a Ninja” Podcast episode. “That is web 2.0”

6 Hallmarks of Web 2.0 that Matter to Libraries
1. The Internet has become the computer

    Broadband is growing
    Wireless is growing
    The number of people who access the internet from the library has double in the last 4 years
    Broadband makes video a big part of the internet experience.
    62% of Internet users under 30 have watched YouTube videos
    The number one indicator of basic political knowledge: watching Colbert and Daily Show
    Internet use is more social

2. More than half of teenagers have profiles on social sites like MySpace or Facebook: The social comes to the virtual.

    Older teenage girls are the heaviest users of the social sites, far more than boys or younger girls
    51% of young adult internet users have uploaded photos to the internet. This means that visual images are increasingly the currency of communication.
    About 40% of teenagers have posted their own creations online
    33% of college students have a blog…(NB: That’s a full third, people! Pay Attention!)
    26% say they remix content they find online
    19% of young adults havae created an avatar that interacts with others online

3. Even more internet users are accessin the content created by others

    Not a huge single set of users….Long Tail group
    44% of young adult internet users seek information at Wikipedia
    Wikipedia users, statistically, have the higher levels of education over non-Wikipedia users
    Information Seeking is not to find sources, it is to find people…they reach out to their social circle for more info, not to other sites.

4. Many are sharing what they know and what they feel online and that is building conversation and communities

    33% of young adult internet users have rated a person, product, or service online.
    32% of young adults have tagged content online
    25% of younger internet users have commented on videos

5. People are sharing their expertise and resources online

    44% of internet users participate in peer-to-peer exchanges
    10,000 to 30,000 active developers in the Open Source movement

6. Online Americans are customizing their online experience

5 issues libraries must struggle to address

    Navigation: linear to non-linear
    Context: learning to see connections
    Focus: practicing reflection & deep thinking
    Skepticism: learning to evaluate information
    Ethical behavior: understanding the rules of cyberspace
Categories
Personal

New look for Pattern Recognition

I got fed up with trying to keep fixing the theme I had, so I decided to go ahead and move to a new one. It’s very different, but I hope that everyone likes it. This is a variant of Sunburn, heavily modified to my liking by a bunch of spacing adjustments, changing the sidebar to be absolutely positioned and swapping in a bunch of content, and adding my “pulse” to the header/footer.

So: whatcha think?

Categories
Personal

Hurm

Seems that something in my adding Podpress to the blog to try and handle the previous post led to my right sidebar going wonky.

I’ll fix tomorrow. I’m tired now.

Categories
Library Issues Podcasts

CALA 2007 presentation: Web 2.0 > Library 2.0

Here is the Quicktime of my presentation from last night to the Chattanooga Area Library Association on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. While a small crowd, they were very interested in what we’re doing at MPOW to try and move ourselves into a more 2.0 mindset and process.

Thanks to Jessamyn, from whom I borrowed the kitty scared image and the general “Don’t fear the user” concept. I briefly considered just using her slideshow and talking over it, because she puts things together so well.

Warning: this is the full-size QT, so be warned.

And I’ve noticed, the QT can be flaky when you try to play it directly…save it, or try this flash version to view it in browser.
Categories
Library Issues Personal

Computers in Libraries 2007

Next week I’ll be heading out to Crystal City, VA to attend CiL 2007. It’s the first conference in many moons that I don’t have a presentation or other formal commitment to attend. This means, of course, that I have completely overbooked my time in sessions, because there is so damn much good stuff. Plus, I’ll get to catch up with lots of good friends.

But, if you are attending, and you want to catch up with me, take your pick as to calendar format:

iCalXMLHTML

Categories
Legal Issues

Keeping you safe from the terrorists, Part 2

BoingBoing reported today that the US Treasury Department has begun circulating a 250 page list of names of people who MIGHT BE related in some way to terrorism. Not that they are, or have been convicted, or charged with a crime or any of the things that due process might bring. Just a list of thousands of names (1955 names of individuals, by my count, but many more businesses) that, according to BoingBoing:

If your name could conceivably be bent to fit that list, get ready to spend a long, hard time convincing some terrified bureaucrat that you’re not actually Saddam Hussein’s deposed lieutenant, snuck into America to buy a Toyota.

As the Washington Post describes:

Yet anyone who does business with a person or group on the list risks penalties of up to $10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison, a powerful incentive for businesses to comply. The law’s scope is so broad and guidance so limited that some businesses would rather deny a transaction than risk criminal penalties, the report finds.

“The law is ridiculous,” said Tom Hudson, a lawyer in Hanover, Md., who advises car dealers to use the list to avoid penalties. “It prohibits anyone from doing business with anyone who’s on the list. It does not have a minimum dollar amount. . . . The local deli, if it sells a sandwich to someone whose name appears on the list, has violated the law.”

Bruce Schneier, as always, chimes in with some reason:

This is the same problem as the no-fly list, only in a larger context. And it’s no way to combat terrorism. Thankfully, many businesses don’t know to check this list and people whose names are similar to suspected terrorists’ can still lead mostly normal lives. But the trend here is not good.

Thankfully, the Treasury has put the list (dubbed in typical government jargon-talk as the Specially Designated Nationals list) online in multiple formats. So I grabbed it, and started looking. The list of individual names seemed odd to me as I started reading them, so I decided to do what I always do when I want to visualize a text list…off to TagCrowd!

created at TagCrowd.com

This cloud is just the top 100 names of individuals from the SDN list…take the names, do a frequency count, rank the top 100, and size them according to number of times they appear.

So what do we notice here? The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming number of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino names, as compared to, oh….Iraqi. You know, the people with whom we are at war.

Anyone have any guesses as to why there are so many Hispanic names listed? After initially being boggled and outraged at the way the list is being used, now I’m just confused by the contents of it.

Categories
Library Issues

Lupton Library Ads

The last part of my day was spent whipping up a couple of newspaper ads for the Student newspaper here on campus, the Echo. Since I’m pretty happy with them, I thought I’d share:

Lupton Ad 1
Lupton Ad 2

The survey is for faculty and students here on campus, so don’t go running trying to win the iPod, gang. 🙂

Categories
Personal

Google Ranking

Forgive the metablog post, but I was looking at some trackbacks and such, which led me down the road of Technorati, and then back to the mothership: Google.

I’m not sure how, but I made the first page of results for “Pattern Recognition” on Google, at least for now. Given that it’s a phrase that is not only the title of a bestselling book by one of my favorite authors, but is an entire academic field of study, I didn’t expect to be there.

But there I am.

Categories
Digital Culture

Keeping you safe from the terrorists

While flying back from Detroit on Monday, I snapped this picture of the TSA security gate. I would have used a better camera, but of course I had that packed away so I wouldn’t have to put it in a bin. The phone captured the moment, though:

TSA_error.jpg

If you can’t make it out, here’s a closeup:

TSA_error_closeup.jpg

Yep…that’s a windows memory error screen on a TSA monitor. The irony of this knows no bounds.

Categories
Digital Culture

Data visualization

Talk about cool data visualization! I’m delighted by interesting ways to present data, and this one is just great…it’s a video of housing prices from 1890 to present, graphed, and then turned into a rollercoaster. Yes, a rollercoaster.