Heh, heh - I got Deanna blogging about her garden!

"The movie studios should not expect legislation to pass this year that would force technology companies to add copyright protection to all copying devices, including computers. That was the word from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee....

Unlike Senate Commerce Committee chairman Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), Leahy takes the side of technologists, who do not want the government to interfere with how they build computers or do anything that will discourage use of the copying devices they make.

Although they don’t want to move legislation, Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the panel’s ranking member, asked the industries to report on their progress every two months. Studio executives put the best face on it, saying that although Leahy was not taking their side, they feel that they are making progress." [at Broadcasting and Cable, via jenett.radio]

The Tipping Blog - How Weblogs Can Turn an Idea into an Epidemic

"Of course, every epidemic needs both a host and a virus to spread. If weblogs are the host organism, then the virus is nothing less than the humble hyperlink. In retrospect, links are the perfect vehicle for an ideavirus! Each link represents a new web page, complete with the promise of tantalizing new content to tempt the reader. And most important, a link can replicate from one weblog to the next with shocking speed....

Perhaps the biggest change is the blurring of the distinction between Mavens and Connectors....

The Paul Reveres of the world are much more common online than offline. The reason is simple: offline Connectors have to be outgoing extroverts with lots of friends. But Online Connectors, on the other hand, don't have to be be extroverts at all. In fact - and this happens quite often online - Online Connectors are often quite shy and introverted Mavens." [at Microcontent News, via Redwood City PL's LibLog]

I'm sure this was highlighted while I was on vacation, but I'll grab every opportunity to highlight Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point to librarians. We could learn a lot from it.

The things you miss when you're off enjoying vacation.... Lori and ILA RTSF have started yet another blog, this one devoted to Innovative Illinois Libraries. Right now, she's highlighting various persons in the field, and the current winning contestant is Frances Roehm, who is most deserved indeed. As I was shutting down my PC at work for the day, I saw a most intriguing note from her in my inbox, which I will have to respond to tomorrow. Hopefully more on that soon, as it could be another VIP (Very Important Project) in Illinois!

The previous featured librarian was Laura Barnes, who notes that the "favorite part of her job is 'finding information that my users need before they know they need it.' " I just love that quote and had to include it here.

And if that's not enough for you, Laura was preceded by Rachel Singer Gordon, she of LISJobs.com and LJ's Movers & Shakers. Yes, Illinois librarians rock!

Okay, time to spill the beans. A long time ago, I gave congratulations without being able to name names, but now the truth can be told. Illinois librarians, are you sitting down? Andy's engaged! Yes, Mr. Bullen his fine self is going to officially acquire the title of husband. Please take a moment to congratulate him! You have to admire anyone who pops the question on the Ides of March because it's their anniversary! I hope he's not too angry with me for this....  ;-)

Without taking sides in BurningBird's debate with Dave about gender bias, I actually think it's pretty cool that Dave suggested pairing librarian conferences and developer conferences back in August. "They'd get better software and we'd get more users and kinder feedback." Granted he seems to have removed this statement, but I'm going to give Dave the benefit of the doubt and interpret this statement to mean that librarians would get better software because they'd be able to provide important feedback during the development cycle and developers would get more constructive criticism to help improve their products. And that certainly is true - we need them, and they need us. [via BurningBird via Megnut]

My brother has an interesting theory that civilization itself owes its very existence to women. If women hadn't kept the home fires burning, organized everything, started agriculture, and raised the kids, men wouldn't have been able to go out and hunt for food, let alone do much else. Did I get that right, Bruce?

Barry is the guy from my previous post who is the president of my home library's board of trustees. Barry is blind, but he's done far more in his life than I ever will. He was named Illinois Trustee of the Year last October, he's started his own physical therapy business, and he's an eloquent advocate for accessibility in libraries and beyond. It's always fun talking to him, and now I think I've piqued his interest in Radio. So for any remaining doubters who wondered why we asked for alt tags, CSS-based templates, and the like, it's for folks like Barry. I hope the news aggregator, stories pages, etc. are accessible for screen readers, so I'll let you know what he says if he tries it out. If it works, his blog would be fascinating.

For the record, I didn't officially go to the PLA conference in Phoenix, but I did walk the exhibit floor. Boy, did I walk the exhibit floor. Four hours out of my vacation, but it was worth it. It took so long because I saw some very interesting products and spent time talking to the vendors. As if to confirm Murphy's Law (hey, Dave!), the internet connection to the entire building went down during this time, so I didn't get to see all of the demos that I had wanted to test. And by the end, I was running out of time and didn't make my annual trek over to the Innovative booth to ask about the Palm module. Unfortunately, I also didn't have time to check out the online reference service vendors.

However, here is a sampling of the more interesting products that I saw.

Matt was there from Audible, and they looked to be doing bang-up business. Hooray! I was with the president of my home library's board of trustees, and he just happens to be blind. We have very interesting discussions about technology, accessibility, and the intersection between the two. More on that later but he, too, had another good discussion with Matt. Audible is back to pushing their Otis player (I'm having trouble linking directly to it, but just click on the "Buy a player" option in the left-hand navigation of the site), which seems very promising for both libraries and disabled customers because of its simplicity. Audible is also actively working on providing home access for library-owned Audible titles. Three cheers for them - they "get" it!

Next up were some wireless handheld scanners from ADC that interact with your circulation system. This is the first time I had seen such a beast that did this in real-time. The rep also claims the devices function as PDAs (for mobile reference services), but they'd need bigger screens to be of any real use. Still, the ability to check in, check out, or weed an item from anywhere in the building is a big step forward, especially as libraries move further down the wireless path. I'd love to beta test these things, and supposedly one of ADC's partner companies is working on embedding speech-synthesizing technology into these puppies.

In a previous post, I mentioned making wireless scanners available to patrons for various reasons, and this blend of technology would finally allow actual browsing of the shelves by blind patrons for the first time. Wow! I'll definitely be following this one, although I have a funny feeling Teri is way ahead of me on this one.

I almost passed up the booth for Learn A Test, but I'm very glad I didn't. This company provides online access to 150 civil service, real estate, military, professional licensing, and academic practice tests. That means you can take the practice tests for the GED, ASVAB, postal service, firefighter, law enforcement, ACT, SAT, EMS, and more online at your own pace. The service provides instant scoring, explanations for both right and wrong answers, individual analysis, and more. The best part is that these folks want to work with libraries so they provide a site license for unlimited simultaneous use by patrons! Say it with me folks - wow!

My home library signed up on the spot (as did several others), so I'll let you know more about it after they get their access up and running. For a community of approximately 30,000 residents, this service costs just under $1000. Plus, it's all web-based so there's no special software to download. The Library's board president is going to test it for accessibility, too, although the LAT rep is supposed to get back to us with details about how they meet the WAI Guidelines.

I saw some other neat stuff, but these were the highlights. The Matthews bookmobile had a working web tablet that could go wireless, along with some Pocket PCs for the same purpose, but the internet connection was down so I couldn't test them. Bookmobile technology sure has come a long way!

"A Norwegian company will provide the new search engine for the federal Web portal FirstGov, and American search engine makers expressed dismay that the federal government chose a foreign competitor.

The General Services Administration announced March 7 that it would pay $2 million a year for up to five years to AT&T Business Services, which will use search engine services from Fast Search & Transfer. The Oslo-based company has a U.S. subsidiary with headquarters in Massachusetts." [via WEB4LIB]

I, too, would be interested to hear why they didn't choose Google.

Bill Moen's study, commissioned by the Illinois State Library, now has a web site and a name. The goal is to compare the shared catalogs of the regional Library Systems in terms of cost and access in order to enhance holdings access across the State. I'm not really involved with this, but my hope is that it will somehow have positive outcomes for the Virtual Illinois Catalog (VIC), which we really need to move forward with, like, yesterday.

How had I missed this one before? A message on SIGIA-L highlighted the Hi-CE Palm Pages, where you can download free educational software for the Palm thanks to a parternship between Hi-CE at the University of Michigan and some tech companies. I'll be grabbing PiCoMap, FreeWrite, and Bubble Blasters (for when I can add my own questions & answers for a rainy day at the doctor's office with the kids).

"Natasha Berger blames blogs for wrecking Doris Kearns Goodwin's career." [rc3.org]

I suppose the crisis in the Middle East, world hunger, and the extinction of the dinosaurs will be next....

Another golden nugget from Cam:

"Justin Hall, who was first known to the world for his groundbreaking Web site Justin's Links From the Underground (circa 1995-1996) has posted a great slideshow he presented last week at SXSW about Japanese mobile phone culture." [March 18, 2002]

A quote from Doc from SXSW, as blogged by Cam:

"I have only a 24-hour attention span and I don't scale. I'm astonished at how much I miss." [March 12, 2002]

I'm still treading through past news, but PC World brings me up to speed on the new DigitalConsumer.org group. A laudable mission - where do I send a check?

"DigitalConsumer.org calls for Congress to adopt a Consumer Technology Bill of Rights to "preserve consumers' historic fair-use rights that have been recently diminished by changes in copyright law made at the request of media companies," according to Graham Spencer, another cofounder. Essentially, it protects users' right to record a show or a song and then watch or hear it later, as well as to see or hear the work in a different medium than it was released in.

'We really want to clarify the legal rights of consumers before it is too late,' Spencer says. 'The closed-door discussions right now call for some very draconian copy-protection measures to be forced on consumers.' "

And libraries. Here's your chance to add your voice to the debate:

"The Judiciary Committee has also opened a page on its Web site, where consumers may post their views."

PC World has several interesting articles, but Copy Controls: Fair Use or Foul Play? details a proposal I hadn't seen before.

"The CPTWG solution, which would be enforced by law or by Federal Communications Commission regulation, is a controversial one. Broadcasters would technologically "flag" a digital signal with a rule prohibiting the retransmission of video content over a TCP/IP network. All devices that receive digital broadcasts or play digital files--from TV sets to DVD players to TiVo-style digital video recorders and PCs--would have to recognize and honor the embedded copy protection flag. That means you could save broadcast video to your hard drive, and even copy it to a blank CD-RW disc for later playback. But if you were to try to transfer the video file over the Internet or a home network, the file would be unplayable. Networks that transmit data via IEEE 1394 (FireWire) or other protocols could be used to transfer a video file as long as it retained the technical flag....

'What happens when this technology gets hacked, as it will?' asks Burger, who represents the tech industry's interests at CPTWG. 'Then do we spend millions more dollars coming up with another solution?' His clients include Apple, Microsoft, HP, Compaq, National Semiconductor, and Intel, and they don't like the sound of any of this....

However, the initiative has the not-so-harmonious support of CPTWG's members, including Intel, Warner Bros., Sony, Panasonic, Viacom, IBM, and Microsoft. They are begrudgingly working toward a compromise that addresses both industries' concerns and produces minimal annoyance for the consumer. They're cooperating because the alternative is worse."

It's difficult to watch this from the sidelines; you want to walk up to these folks and shake some sense into them. Maybe Doc is right and we need a march on Washington.

All the News That's Fit to Blog

"What distinguishes bloggers in general is that they fit the new architecture. They link to anything and everything that they consider worth reading. A good story in the New York Times? Just click, and you're there. A good article in some godforsaken journal? Click, and you're there. Bloggers are not devoted to keeping you on their page. Their purpose is to take you to other places. They figure that if they do that well enough, you'll return to the peer group that they host."

Although the story misses big in some areas, I do agree with Ellis' premise that traditional newspapers have not adapted to the peer-to-peer model that is emerging (see previous rants). I've been pretty hard on newspapers for this, but many of us are facing the dilemna presented by this shift, including libraries. How do you as an organization stay in personal communication loops that are peer-to-peer? That's the question I'm trying to help libraries answer.

On a side note, I really like how Fast Company cites its articles on its Web site. For the above article, the header includes the issue numer and exact page in the print version. They recognize the connection between the print and online worlds.

Other featured articles at FC that I don't have time to read right now include:

• Recommended Blogs - includes a link to Nonharmful: Medical Weblog (curious to know if Lori et. al. are familiar with this one, and if so, what they think of it)
• Targeted Serendipity - an interview with Rebecca Blood about blogging's past, present, and future

Slashdot points out two great new gadgets from CeBIT:

• "A company from Israel called VKB has created a vitual keyboard that can be displayed, using a laser, on almost any surface. Connect it to your PDA and use your kitchen table as a keyboard."
• "Olympia has created sound device called Soundbug that uses any hard surface as a speaker. Again, attach this to your PDA and kitchen table and enjoy your mp3's."

I'm really intrigued by the VKB keyboard, although reflecting the image on a car's interior the way they show does cause me some hesitation! I wonder if there is some way to integrate this technology with a PDA and a flat screen monitor in order to create mobile training labs for libraries.

Bill Humphries over at More Like This has a cite to Aaron Scwhartz's Sign Your Page guide for adding RDF in order to "join the Semantic Web." Excellent! Reading for tonight, but I'm not sure this is the cite I saw last week. I'll keep looking just in case.

"Meyer says that companies typically start out blocking what filtering firms call the 'sinful six' categories: pornography, gambling, illegal activities, hate sites, tasteless material and violent content. Then, the businesses begin looking at ways to raise productivity.

That was the approach of John Belich, application support specialist at the St. Petersburg, Florida, public library system. After setting up the usual filters on porn and hate sites, Belich used Websense to block employees from using instant messaging or downloading MP3 files -- two activities that wasted time and sapped hard-drive space. The results were visible. " [Wired News]

Sadly, the St. Petersburg Library is officially declared not shifted. So I can't listen to music while I'm at work or use instant messaging to ask questions at the SPPL? They obviously don't understand how IM could help with internal communications. Sad, sad, sad. Et tu, St. Pete?

" 'The reality is, the employee who wants to goof off will goof off regardless,' he said."

Why do so many managers and executives view computer-literate employees who are smart enough to use the internet as slackers? This mentality was very prominent in libraryland when the internet first hit our radar, but now it's become a necessary and integral part of our working lives. Don't you want your employees to be information-literate, too? I understand the goof-offs, but this is a poor attitude to have towards the people that you want to make your organization succeed.

Hey, hey - Eric is back and he's pointed us to Jeff's Recently Read RSS Channels, which is similar to Jon Udell's mySubscriptions script that I documented. I like how Jeff lets you copy & paste the code, which hadn't occurred to me. Maybe I can switch my docs over to that format if I have time.