Question of the day: Corrupt PDFs

Question of the day: Has anyone seen the following error when you try to open a pdf file:
There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired.

My answer (I have lots of experience with bad PDF files... long story .. not my fault, though, I was just an innocent bystander... lol):

a few likely reasons:

If the PDF is on the web:

• The upload process could have hung up, creating an empty or damaged file.
• The upload could have been in ascii format, but the PDF contained images and should have been uploaded as binary.
• The file could have been corrupted during the creation process and uploaded (or emailed or saved to a drive) as corrupted.
• A problem with Adobe
  

If you can get to the server level where the PDF resides (if it is on the web), you might be able to see if the File size = 0 or see if there are other anomalities. If it was emailed to you or given to you on flashdrive or card, just ask for a new copy.

good luck. It is possible to retrieve and restore some corrupted data but it's never easy. If you can get the original file and it's not corrupted, that is the easier answer.

I just accidentally corrupted a 16G SD card (moving between too many cameras too quickly -- which wiped out the exif for about 100 images making them unreadable) and was able to restore the CR2s and JPGs without manually rewriting the exif. I've also restored deleted images off a SD, but neither was exactly what I would call EASY. ;-)

What is on the web and how we use it.

Time well spent | Social Signal

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Anti - wifi paint

Yes, I did write anti wifi paint.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8279549.stm

Humans are amazingly inventive, are we not?

Opensource, community source, open system, closed system (presentation)

Closed systems, open systems

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ALA mentor program

Looking for a Mentor? Want to Be a Mentor?
http://www.students.ala.org/studentmemberblog/?p=344

ALA has launched MentorConnect (
http://connect.ala.org/mentorconnect-help ) in ALA Connect (http://connect.ala.org/ ) so you can find or become a mentor.

MentorConnect ( http://connect.ala.org/node/82872 ) (*MC*) allows
ALA members to create mentoring profiles that highlight their expertise and experience. After they*ve joined MC, ALA members can search for a mentor using a variety of criteria (gender, type of library, ethnicity, etc.) and request mentorship. Once created, the mentorship is tracked within MC, with a space for providing and archiving feedback. The system will prompt mentors and mentorees every few months to ensure they are
staying in touch.

To learn all about this new service, see Mentoring Starter Questions (http://connect.ala.org/node/82872 ) and Mentoring and MentorConnect FAQ ( http://connect.ala.org/mentorconnect-help ).

Trends, social media in libraries (presentation)

Emerging Technologies

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I'm on the road... upcoming presentations and talks

Since my calendar thingie is not working so well, here is what I have on my schedule for upcoming talks/presentations:

Sept. 19, Digital Initiatives w/ Tim Daniels, GPLS Director's Meeting,
Current and emerging trends in library technology -- is my part

Oct. 22 Semantic web. vs. Social Media, Master of Internet Technology Program, Gwinnett Campus: What REALLY is the semantic web and is it at odds with social media and user generated content? Can folksonomies exist alongside dublincore metadata?

Oct. 23 Facebook, privacy, and your digital identity, UGA Web Editors Group (Dweebs) Have you wondered what digital identity you are leaving behind? What about privacy? If you are not actively cultivating your online identity, is someone else creating one for you? Even if you are not a Facebook user, chances are that you know someone who is -- someone who could be sharing information about you.

We'll talk about the uses of Facebook by individuals and organizations, as well as its role in developing identity and how to control what is shared. We'll talk about social media etiquette and what it means in this world where we are all "friends".

Nov. 16 Learning about cataloging: free online tools to help your learn about cataloging from the basics to more advanced, USG Cataloging Committee (ONLINE)
Do you know there are FREE cataloging tools and training on the web? While some are interactive and some are not, there are a variety of tools and resources out there to help you learn about cataloging, metadata, and databases. Explore some of the resources found on the web ... you might even find some time saving resources!

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yeah, I know, I am a busy girl...

Google buys recaptcha -- captcha spam filtering software

Very interesting.

This morning, the Official Google Blog announced that the search giant has acquired reCAPTCHA. The company provides a service that combines two things that Google would be very interested in: it verifies that information provided to a server has been entered by a human and, in the process, helps identify difficult-to-decipher text from book digitization projects. As such, it's a natural fit for Google.

http://tinyurl.com/pt92xe

Google books -- monopoly, profit, privacy, and more (Talk of the nation audiocast)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112856557

Google stands to be the single repository for millions of the world's books. Advocates applaud the organization and the access a digital library can afford. But critics worry about monopoly and profit motives, and what it means for readers' privacy.

Very interesting....

If architects had to work like web designers

A painful truth:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/000455.php

Google Books -- good enough? a metadata view

My presentation [Geoff Nunberg @ Language Log] focussed on GB's metadata — a feature absolutely necessary to doing most serious scholarly work with the corpus. It's well and good to use the corpus [fulltext/body] just for finding information on a topic — entering some key words and barrelling in sideways. (That's what "googling" means, isn't it?) But for scholars looking for a particular edition of Leaves of Grass, say, it doesn't do a lot of good just to enter "I contain multitudes" in the search box and hope for the best.

and....

But whether it gets the BISAC [Book Industry Study Group] categories right or wrong, the question is why Google decided to use those headings in the first place. (Clancy denies that they were asked to do so by the publishers, though this might have to do with their own ambitions to compete with Amazon.) The BISAC scheme is well suited to organizing the shelves of a modern 35,000 foot chain bookstore or a small public library where ordinary consumers or patrons are browsing for books on the shelves. But it's not particularly helpful if you're flying blind in a library with several million titles, including scholarly works, foreign works, and vast quantities of books from earlier periods.

VERY interesting article about the metadata used for Google's book project. Brackets [ ] are my additions.

League of Librarian Trading Cards

League of Librarian Trading Cards -- a little humor for your day
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlsonlibrary/sets/72157622006503335/show/with/3853097266/

technological singularity -- what is it?

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):

http://tinyurl.com/3c26h

How to disconnect twitter from facebook (and how to selectively tweet)

This post will cover 2 things: how to disconnect your facebook status from twitter and how to set up selective tweeting to facebook.

Selective tweeting
In facebook, there is a great application called selective twitter status, which gives you control over which of your tweets go to facebook. Once you add selective twitter to your facebook account and link your twitter and facebook accounts together, all you do is tweet (post) to twitter but add #fb at the end. Selective twitter will then ONLY send those tweets with #fb to facebook.

It works great, but... if you've been using Twitter application in Facebook (or any of the other twitter applications in Facebook that post to your status), you will need to remove those first.

To disconnect the Twitter application in Facebook (this is for the official Twitter application, but should work similarly for other twitter/fb apps)

• In Facebook, Under Settings (top menu) > Application settings
• On the Twitter application link, click the X to remove twitter.
• Do you want to remove ? Click Yes.
• You will get a popup box telling you Twitter has been removed.
• All done!

If you just wanted to disconnect Twitter from Facebook, you are finished. If you want to set up Selective Twitter, you need to install the Selective Twitter app.

Setup selective tweeting to Facebook

• Search in Facebook for Selective Twitter Status
  
• Click on View Application (or the link for Selective Twitter Status)
• Click on Go to Application
• Enter your twitter user name, In the box with the Header, the one and only step
• Click on Save
  
• Click on Allow (so that facebook and twitter can make the connection)
• Click on Allow publishing (so that twitter can post to facebook)
• Go to twitter and tweet (post) away, adding #fb to the end of the posts you want to send to facebook as status updates
  

what is a browser?

interesting, even though I'm not sure the general person needs to know the difference between a browser and a search engine, especially, as companies like google and microsoft offer both. One is just how you get there and the other is what you use to search. I certainly am not going to uncollapse my category of search engines/browsers here ;-)

22 startups funded by facebook

I won't list them all here, but backlight looks cool and lots of fun.

I am already using Networked Blogs, which is a social network and blog listing service. It also allows blogs to be pulled into facebook. I've had some problems with it truncating my posts from contentdivergent and dropping out embedded video, so I may need to look at my settings... or maybe not. It just may work that way...

RunMyErrand allows you to find folks who will... emmm... run your errands. LOL