on usability....

Just passing along an interesting post about usability.

Creating digital art via touch

Touch screens aren't the only way of doing this. Shillito is leading a team that has developed software that allows artists to receive physical feedback when designing virtual 3D objects.

The team's approach uses a haptic device called Falcon, which vibrates and moves to allow users to "feel" virtual objects. Originally developed for 3D gaming, Falcon is a cross between a joystick and a mouse. As the user moves the controller in three dimensions, its movements are mirrored by a cursor on the computer screen. When the cursor interacts with objects in its 3D virtual environment, the tiny motors in the device provide resistance and small vibrations to give feedback about various properties of the virtual object being designed, such as its weight, texture and shape. "What we have is the sensation of touch, and because this is so natural to our way of interacting in the real world, it means you can tap into the tacit knowledge we have of 3D objects," Shillito says.

Very interesting article about art and technology.

Tips to eek out web performance

http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/

yslow from yahoo is a great site, as is some of the firebug stuff.

RDA webinar & tools

“RDA is being developed as a new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world.”

A webinar/presentation about RDA, which the cataloging world has been abuzz about is located here
http://tinyurl.com/yexxlyn

Also, a couple of demos out (just demos, not product):
A small demo example for what "open development" could do:
http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/content.htm

Very no-frills browsing by rule number, rule title, core elements, and keyword (all words from all rules).
If you want to jump in directly to, say, rule 1.6.3, just say
http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/db/wtr/page.php?urG=PAR&urS=1.6.3

3D modeling using a webcam

Pretty cool....
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/11/humble-webcam-t.php

w3c cheat sheet

http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/11/w3c_cheatsheet_for_developers.html

"This cheatsheet aims at providing in a very compact and mobile-friendly format a compilation of useful knowledge extracted from W3C specifications — at this time, CSS, HTML, SVG and XPath —, completed by summaries of guidelines developed at W3C, in particular the WCAG2 accessibility guidelines, the Mobile Web Best Practices, and a number of internationalization tips.

Its main feature is a lookup search box, where one can start typing a keyword and get a list of matching
properties/elements/attributes/functions in the above-mentioned specifications, and further details on those when selecting the one of interest."

Virtual identity / authority file

Well, this would seem to be a match made in heaven for the goals of the semantic web -- because regardless of the schema and mapping, I think there is going to have be some kind of established form/identity.... and considering my cataloger tendencies (lol), well, I can't help but love this project....

---------------
The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) has moved to beta phase and is available for all to
search at: http://viaf.org/The VIAF can be used as a reference for identifying and resolving conflicts and disambiguation of personal names. You know, Robin Fay the realtor is not me; neither is Robin Fay McNair who teaches Fear of Flying classes.

Some more info about the project from a cataloger's perspective (condensed by me):
Suggested forms of citations should include:
1) The name or code of the institution responsible for the information
2) The date of the search
3) The information found, including the heading, identifying attributes, and variants (such as maiden name, pseudonyms, etc.)

and here is how that should appear in catalogerese:
670 $a [Name of institution in VIAF], [date of search] $b (hdg.: ([name as found in the VIAF authority record or participating library data base; variants: (if any)])

would equal:
670 $ BNF in VIAF, Nov. 12, 2009 $b (hdg.: Gaulle‏ , Charles de, 1890-1970)‏
> 670 $a Nat. Lib. Israel (Cyrillic), in VIAF, viewed Nov. 12, 2009 $b (hdg.: СЕРВАНТЕС СААВЕДРА, МИГЕЛЬ ДЕ,‏
1547-1616‏)

What's up with wolfram alpha?

Interesting little post about wolfram alpha and plans for the future:

But Alpha may yet confound the sceptics. Last month, Wolfram released an application programming interface, or API, that allows anybody to build software or websites that use Alpha's abilities. "Alpha is a technology platform that allows one to inject computable knowledge into any application or computer system," says Wolfram.

and it's partnering with bing... more here.

Google Key Word Significance -- new webmaster tool

Well, this is interesting... some thoughts on a new tool in the google webmaster's toolbox.... Just goes to show that mining content doesn't always tell you relevance. Sometimes controlled vocabularies (subject headings) and taxonomies (categories) are a GOOD thing... Sigh...

Here is what Google says the keyword significance list is for:
Below are the most common keywords Google found when crawling your site. These should reflect the subject matter of your site.
Google is basically looking at your website, sorting its content by the number of times each word was used, and revealing to you what keywords you use the most. It’s similar to a tag cloud, but instead of being all crazy looking like a cloud it just nicely organized.

...but then....

Using this site as an example I found that the sixth most used word was “Post”. This website isn’t about a post or posts. Doing some quick on site research revealed, I often referenced other posts on the site with terms like next post, previous post, or popular post. Eliminating the unnecessary uses of the word will improve the way Google sees my site. Keyword density for more important words will now also rise up more. Now I just need to delete all those articles I wrote about on how to paint a white fence post.

So, you should just use words in your posts that you want to reflect on the relevance of your website to a particular subject in google, am I reading that right? So, if I want this site to rank high for "semantic web" I should just type the term semantic web a million times and that would do it? Sounds like another opportunity for spam hits in google...

Blue beanie day -- support the semantic web

Arches @ noon. Nov. 30.
The 3rd annual Blue Beanie Day will be celebrated on Monday, November 30th, 2009
see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136079874938

On Monday, November 30, 2009 thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.

Join the fun!

The 2009 event page is here:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136079874938

It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Beg, borrow, or buy a Blue Beanie and snap a photo of your mug wearing the blue. (Or get creative with Photoshop). Then on November 30, switch your profile picture in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, (and any other social network) and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day event page.

For more information:
see http://www.zeldman.com/2009/10/25/toque-o-the-morning/
and http://vvn.net/wp/2009/11/10/3rd-annual-blue-beanie-day/

Upload your Blue Beanie photos to the Flickr group:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/bluebeanieday2009/

Follow Blue Beanie Day 2009 Festivities on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/BlueBeanieDay or search #bbd09

Watch a BBD09 video on YouTube (tell your fiends):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4G2hgioLFk

Want to help with planning the 3rd Annual Blue Beanie Day? Organize a group photo in your city? You might qualify to win a free copy of Zeldman and Marcotte's (brand new) Designing With Web Standards 3rd edition.

Contact Douglas Vos

Join us -- new Drupal and Expression Engine Groups

Hola! I'm chairing the ATHDrupal group and for now, I am just "helping" the EEATH group (I hope a Chair rises organically in the group).
ATHDrupal is a new regional Drupal group (forming out of the ashes of UGA Drupal Group). We would like to invite anyone interested in Drupal to join us. We hope to have some f2f meetings -- perhaps, semesterly (and also, to connect up with DrupalAtlanta at some point).

Drupal is an opensource content management system.
You can join the Drupal group @
http://groups.google.com/group/athdrupal

Additionally a new regional group has formed for the CMS, Expression Engine
http://groups.google.com/group/eeath

If you have questions, just drop me a line. thanks, robin
georgiawebgurl@gmail.com

Mendeley, a global IR?

Some of you probably know about this project....
------------
"Mendeley offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the ‘cloud’, making it easier to share those documents with their peers but there’s an important ’social’ element too (if that’s the right word)."
...............
"[UK] London-based Mendeley, which calls itself “the Last.fm of research”, has announced that it’s reached something of a milestone today – claiming 100,000 users and 8 million research papers uploaded to the site in less than a year since its launch. Furthermore, the online database is doubling in size every 10 weeks, says the company."

http://tinyurl.com/y9oehxb
-----------
sounds kind of like a giant IR + Facebook....

You think you have a culture of innovation? Are you sure?

As the Chair of the Emerging Technologies Group for the Libraries, I sometimes struggle with what the group members (including me) should be doing -- are we a "thinking" body or a "doing" body? Do we just do research and make recommendations? Or do we try to implement/move forward our recommendations, and to what degree? How do we facilitate innovation? How do we facilitate new technology? Do we even have the power to do those things?

I think many libraries/organizations/institutions are struggling (esp. in these economic times with less staff, less resources, less everything....) with keeping up with the technology, let alone actually making progress. This is actually the second Emerging Technologies group of which I've been a member. Both seemed to struggle in terms of what they were supposed to be doing. In reflecting a little, I think the main problem is that many of us are lacking the basic foundation to implement new technologies: a culture of innovation. We may think our institution/library/business/organization is innovative -- oh, we did a website redesign, oh, we added some new bit of technology, but is that really innovation?

Traditionally, our foundations for moving technologies forward are often fragmented -- falling to a staff person here, a staff person there, a committee here, a committee there, a department over here, a department over there. It's not about how many IT staff or programmers or web editors or graphic designers or social media evangelists work in any one place ...

Definition of a Culture of Innovation (from A Dozen Ingredients for a Culture of Innovation, by Jeffrey Baumgartner)

A culture of innovation is very simply a workplace environment that constantly encourages people to think creatively and facilitates implementing creative ideas so that they may become innovations. It is important to note that our definition includes the terms “creativity” and “innovation”. That is because innovative solutions are the result of implemented creative ideas.

So what are the key ingredients?
1. Top Management Buy-In
2. Trust
3. Priority of Innovation (Often Confused with Time)
4. Freedom to Take Action
5. Freedom to Make Mistakes
6. Rewarding Rather than Stifling Creative Thinking
7. Collaboration Tools
8. Places and Opportunities to Talk
9. Places and Opportunities to Work in Isolation
10. Access to Information
11. Transparency
12. Humour

Unfortunately, our society, our culture (U.S.) does not value the arts (see all of the articles about funding being cut to arts programs in public schools; articles about impoverished artists, etc.). We do not value creativity....and if we do not value creativity, how in the world can be innovative? Is it no wonder we are losing our status everyday as being innovators in technology?

Social media in libraries survey

My Group (Emerging Technologies Group) is taking the survey today.
--------------
Please forward this survey to library colleagues, state library association listservs, or others who may be interested.

Thank you for taking time to respond to this survey on American libraries using Social Media tools for PR/Marketing. It should only take 10-15 minutes to complete. It is a follow up to a survey of the same type conducted March 2009.

The survey will end on Wednesday November 25, 2009, 5:00pm EST.

If you have any questions, please contact me at crogers@statelibrary.sc.gov.

SURVEY LINK:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=o9433u_2bftvRWRR7veARsoA_3d_3d

IF ABOVE LINK DOES NOT WORK, PLEASE TRY:
http://tinyurl.com/yjxht3f

Reflections on training

Sigh, I will never agree to do anything on Monday again -- it's just too difficult. Anyhow, I will post the ppt to the cataloging tools presentation shortly.

Considering how much training I've done over the years (some by choice, some not), I know a few things about teaching and training:

1. You can't train the untrainable -- We all meet people who are disengaged and stuck (in a class, in a job, in a.... ) Sometimes as a teacher/mentor/friend/colleague, you can help get them unstuck (it takes a giant spatula, though!) Other times, no hope. A trainee/student has got to meet you part way (see #2).
2. Prize -- What is the reward for learning, the motivating factor? Pride in doing a better job? Ability to be more autonomous? Greater self confidence? More responsibility? A good grade? A certificate? A promotion? Intellectual curiosity? Something to list on the resume and thus a better job? Donuts? If there is no reward for learning, you will have a much harder time teaching.
   
3. Learning styles -- both yours and those that you are teaching. Laugh if you want (and I have a colleague who laughs at this notion, btw), but if you have a predominantly visual learner (I'm visual and kinetic) and you talk to them all of the time, guess what? They are literally NOT hearing you. If you are teaching a group, try to have some text and visuals, do talk or use multimedia, and finally, give them an exercise or 2 to do if possible. Quick tip to identity the 3 basic learning types:
• Visual learners will often say -- show me or I need to see that. They want handouts, procedures, and visuals. They will often communicate in visuals -- notes, emails, drawings.
  
• Auditory learners will often say -- let's talk about this. They want to talk through the problem.
• Kinetic learners will often say -- I need to do this. Show me how and then let me do this. They want to work through the problem. For many, this is a physical working out. Try one piece of the puzzle, doesn't fit, try the next. Apprenticeships and shadowing are often helpful.
• Most of us are not just one learning type, but a mix. However, the predominant learning type is one key to successful training.
4. Teaching/training is hard. Regardless of field, anyone who is a manager/supervisor IS a trainer/teacher and should have some basic understandings of the foundations of teaching. As a whole, unfortunately, our society seems to think that anyone can teach with little to no training (except for perhaps, those who are actually going into a dedicated teaching profession). Teach WELL? There's a different story entirely.
5. Teaching/training is a 2 way street. Not only do they need to MEET you part of the way (see #1), but you must meet them part of the way, too. Good teachers listen to (and solicit) feedback from their students.

Anyhow, a few quick thoughts as I get ready to talk about training.

Lawsuit against Facebook

I wonder how many more lawsuits are out there pending against facebook? And to answer my question, this is actually a followup to earlier legal action.

This one accuses Facebook of "conspir[ing] with Blockbuster to violate a federal law protecting customer video-rental and sale records."

According to the article the previous law suit (which resulted in a settlement on Facebook's part), "some 44 companies agreed under the Beacon program to supply Facebook with information about the online transactions of Facebook users, so the data could be broadcast to “friends” on a user’s Facebook page. Users were not asked if they wanted to opt in to the program and, according to the suit, could only opt out by visiting each of the individual partner sites to prevent their data from going to Facebook."

Yet another reason not to link accounts like amazon, YOUR BANK, or another account with personal info that you might NOT want to let the world know about, with Facebook.

Facebook is a company - just like google, microsoft, etc.

Read the wired article here
or my writings about facebook and about privacy.

Google docs add templates

Didn't know that there were more templates beyond what is listed in google docs (and didn't notice that 'search templates' link in google docs?) Well, now you do. You can also get 'em here.... and here is how to create your own (well, sort of).

For Zynga game users (you know, farmville, mafiawars, vampirewars, etc....)

Interesting article about the fallout over Zynga (Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc., which all have huge communities on facebook) and its scam ads. Hmm, yet another reason to pay attention to what you click on and ALWAYS read the TOS. ;-)

"Zynga insists they are serious about cleaning up the industry. And today Pincus has announced that the company will remove all offer advertising from their games.

This isn’t a meaningless action. Offers account for 1/3 or so of Zynga’s rumored $250 million in revenue.

All offers will be removed by the end of today, says Pincus, “until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves.”

The blog post also discloses that Zynga is an investor in DoubleDing, an offer provider that competes with OfferPal and SuperRewards. DoubleDing was serving the mobile offers that popped back onto Zynga on Friday."

Read the Tech Crunch article here and the earlier article hahere.

Be careful out there folks.

twitter vs. google wave -- at conferences

I'm sure you have noticed people twittering during conferences that you have attended. This is an interesting article comparing google wave to twitter, in terms of how can be used to record and participate in a conference.

For those of you who use Hulu to watch TV

Oh yeah, Hulu Desktop is now out for Fedora and Ubuntu, and others. Also, for those of you who blog/create content online, you can now embed TV shows, etc. from Hulu into your sites.
Check out Hulu Labs for all of the info.

5 Years of Firefox (and the web)

Very interesting (and short) review of the last 5 years for Firefox and web in general....

“All of our servers melted instantly,” Vukićević says. “We spent an hour trying to get the downloads back up.”

(on the day Firefox launched)


....and looking to the future:
"“We always ask, ‘What is it that people on the open web can’t do right now? What’s pushing them towards things like Adobe AIR and Silverlight, or other technologies that are single-vendor silos?”

When a developer loses the ability to view a web page’s source code (something you can’t easily do in Flash) they can’t see how web applications and complex interactions function. And, he says, that stymies further experimentation.

“The web is going to be an awesome place to innovate in five years, because we’re going to chase down every awesome development in the proprietary world and make sure it happens on the open web as well. If we fail, then we’ll end up in a place that’s less recognizable than the web today, a web filled with a bunch of internet-delivered Flash executables.”

Read the Wired article here

NYT project / Mapping name subject headings (semantic web)

I am so excited about this NYT project -- just the kind of thing needed to start moving the semantic web forward ... By the way, DBPedia is an attempt to take Wikipedia data and semanticize it... I am kind of in love with linked in data at the moment.

Article at
http://tinyurl.com/yhdayvr

"Over the last several months we have manually mapped more than 5,000 person name subject headings onto Freebase and DBPedia. And today we are pleased to announce the launch of http://data.nytimes.com and the release of these 5,000 person name subject headings as Linked Open Data. "

... we plan to expand http://data.nytimes.com to include each of the nearly 30,000 subject headings we use to power Times Topics pages, a collection that includes locations, organizations and descriptors in addition to person names.

When we first announced this initiative, we asked for participation from the global semantic technology community. We have heard from a diverse community of experts, and their advice, guidance and feedback have proved invaluable. To further encourage community participation, we have created The New York Times Linked Open Data group and urge all interested folks to sign up.

Institutional Repository News

... the group will offer repository-related services, including personnel to scan physical media to digital formats, to check on rights for publishing materials, assist in content submission and offer the opportunity to store research materials in the MetaArchive Cooperative, a collaborative repository effort between Emory University, Georgia Tech and 13 other research institutions. The Cooperative is a member-driven organization that has been funded by the Library of Congress and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

http://www.whistle.gatech.edu/archives/09/nov/2/archive.shtml

Cloud computing -- where is our stuff?

so, where does all of that stuff you upload go? Interesting...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/04/cloud.computing.hunt/index.html

Cloud Computing jumps 320%

I can see both some advantages (pooled resources, not on your server, lower costs, etc.) and disadvantages (trusting your online resources to who? hidden costs, etc.) to cloud computing, but it does continue to rise, 320% in the previous year according to this article at Chanel Insider.

Presentation secrets from steve jobs

In short a good presentation should have:
1. A headline
2. A villain
3. A simple slide
4. A demo
5. A holy smokes moment...

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2009/sb2009106_706829.htm

Using RSS to find new sites (Google news)

So, Google announced that:

Google uses numerous sources to find new webpages, from links we find on the web to submitted URLs. We aim to discover new pages quickly so that users can find new content in Google search results soon after they go live. We recently launched a feature that uses RSS and Atom feeds for the discovery of new webpages.

Oh you people with crappy design, content and metadata, in theory, if you can generate a RSS, Google can find you. LOL

Read about it here...

Library funding & Technology survey

The ALA and the Center for Library & Information Innovation (UMD) have extended the deadline for the 2009-2010 Public Library Funding & Technology Access survey (www.plinternetsurvey.org ( http://www.plinternetsurvey.org/ )) one week. The online survey will remain open until Friday, November 13. At least 60% of libraries in each state must respond in order to provide state-level analysis in all 50 states (http://tinyurl.com/y8hbdjf), in addition to the most current national data available on public library Internet connectivity, use, funding and services.

Since 1994, these surveys have been used by the American Library Association and others to inform and educate stakeholders - policymakers, funders, elected officials, supporters, and the media - at the local, state and national levels about the issues and needs your library faces in providing public computer and Internet access services and resources. Most recently data has been used to support the need for libraries, as community anchor institutions, to have access to robust high speed Internet connectivity as part of the recent broadband stimulus component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the Stimulus Bill.

Your participation in the survey is extremely important, and directly impacts the ability of ALA and others to advocate on behalf of public libraries and the tremendous contribution public libraries make to their communities through their public access Internet services and resources. Data from the study also is used in national media stories: http://www.ala.org/ala/research/initiatives/plftas/2008_2009/media.cfm.

To participate, go to http://www.plinternetsurvey.org ( http://www.plinternetsurvey.org/ ). You will need an ID number, which you may look up on the website.

Thank you for your willingness to participate! Additional information regarding the survey and previous survey results is available at http://www.liicenter.org/plinternet. The full Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study, funded by the ALA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, can be found online at www.ala.org/plinternetfunding. Questions regarding the survey should be directed to support@plinternetsurvey.org or 301.405.9445.

Question of the day: Move facebook profile photo to album

So, this should be super easy if ALL of the photo albums in Facebook work the same way but they do not (What?!?! ... )

In the Profile Photos album, there is no way to move a photo to a different album.... but there is a workaround of sorts.

• Click on profile photo to go to the Profile Photos album.
• Find the photo you want to move and click on it.
• Click on the link under the photo "Edit this photo"
• Then click on Move to (and choose your album)
• Save.
  
• To do the next photo in your profile album, click on the top menu link Profile, Click on your profile pix, and repeat. (I couldn't find an easier way to do this step...)
  

blog topics

I so hope trying to post everyday is not going to be a big pain in the .... ;-)

If you have any questions you'd like me to answer, please throw 'em out.