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ACRL ALA presentation

Wave upon Wave

In a little more than a week, on March 2nd, I’ll be doing an online webinar for ACRL entitled Wave upon Wave: Navigating the New Communication. The goal is to explore and explain Google Wave, and look at use cases for libraries. Wave lost a lot of luster immediately after the launch, but I still think there’s a ton of promise and potential there. Here’s the learning outcomes that we’ll be trying to get to:

Participants in this webcast will come away with an understanding of the basic functionality of Google Wave. As well, they should be able to envision multiple communicative uses for Wave within their library, including both internal and external communications.

We’ll probably also talk a bit about Buzz, and the ways in which the various Google properties relate to one another. I hope to see you there!

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Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Sooo very Eliza




Sooo very Eliza

Originally uploaded by griffey

This picture really captures who Eliza is these days. She’s wearing a super hero tshirt that says something about girl power, but she also has a heart necklace and, if you look carefully, you can see that she fell asleep reading her most prized possession of the moment, a Cinderella book.

This is Eliza, just about 26 months old.

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Books Legal Issues Media

Shut up and get out of the way

Google, on the Book Settlement, from arstechnica:

“Approval of the settlement will open the virtual doors to the greatest library in history, without costing authors a dime they now receive or are likely to receive if the settlement is not approved,” Google’s filing reads. “Nor does anyone seriously dispute, though few objectors admit, that to deny the settlement will keep those library doors locked while inviting costly, fragmented litigation that could clog dockets around the country for years.”

Or, in other words: Shut up, and get out of the way.

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Brand_New_World Uncategorized

The cousins




feb 2010 at nana’s house 005

Originally uploaded by nanagriffey

It’s unbelievable to see how these two are growing. And how different they are. It’s also wonderful that they will be able to grow up and experience the world together! It seems so far that Eliza will be the bossy one and Parker will do what she says. I don’t know how that’s going to work out later. We’ll see.

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Apple Gadgets Media

Is this new on the iPhone?

I’ve been testing a new Google Reader app over the last few days called Reeder, and noticed a UI piece that I hadn’t seen before on the iPhone. Check these pics:

Reeder Reeder

On the first one, check the small dot in the upper right. If you swipe it, it folds to the left and shows the text on the second pic. Swipe back, and it goes back to the standard connectivity/time message. This is the first time I’ve ever seen an app take over the title bar…some make it go away, but this is the first I’ve seen with this behavior.

Are there any others that do something similar? It says something about the tyranny of the Apple UI guidelines that this shocked me so much.

Categories
Books MPOW

Collection distribution by publication date

At my place of work, we’re just beginning a massive weeding project as a part of the larger new library building project. We are hoping to weed the entire collection for, effectively, the first time in the history of the library. Needless to say, it’s kind of going to own our lives for the next 18 months.

As a part of this, my awesome co-worker Andrea created this chart showing the distribution of publication dates for our collection. The massive amount of 1800’s is from our Early English Books Online collection, but the rest of it shows a pretty great distribution of “when did the library have funding” over the decades.

collection by pub date

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Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Fairy Princess




IMG_9350

Originally uploaded by griffey

Jason and I swore we’d not raise one of those “girly girls,” not let Eliza fall in love with the Disney princesses, wear too much pink, be interested in fingernail polish and makeup. You know, all that stuff.

Yeah, right. We have absolutely no control over any of this, do we? We know better now.

Despite our attempts at putting Eliza in witty, black rock n’ roll tshirts, she still finds a way to dress like a fairy princess. As she said to me once, “Mommy, I’m a beautiful princess. Like Cinderella.” So much for the best laid plans.

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Media

2009 State of the Union Word Cloud – retrospectively

Since I realized that I had missed doing the 2009 State of the Union Word Cloud, here it is. Big difference from this year? “Economy”…barely mentioned this year, swapped for the more down-to-earth “Jobs”.

Wordle - State of the Union 2009

word cloud by wordle

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Media Personal

2010 State of the Union Tag Cloud

In the vein of my previous years, here’s a Tag Cloud of the 2010 State of the Union address delivered tonight by President Obama. It’s particularly interesting to compare to the 2007 and 2008 State of the Union addresses (I skipped 2009, for some reason…should probably do it retrospectively I went back and did the 2009, for comparison).

Wordle - State of the Union 2010
cloud created by wordle

Categories
Personal

Google Voice Mobile Browser edition

I didn’t actually expect my “Death of the App” trend to move this quickly, but seems like Google is determined to prove me right. 🙂 Google says “we don’t need an app” to Apple, and provides nearly exactly the same functionality via HTML5.