Mark Roesner sent me a great link to AT&T's Thumb Fun page, citing the thumb workout and Thumb Haiku as just two examples of the fun to be found here. It's difficult to say which haiku is my favorite, but here are a couple of samples:

"Are thumbs fingers?
They can point and push buttons.
Is that not enough?

The thumb is a hero.
Savior of gladiators.
A hitchhiker's friend."

If you need help adapting to texting, check out the Text Dictionary to find out just how far behind the curve you are! I'd say my fingers are just itching to try this service, but I guess now I'll have to start saying my thumbs are itching.

Devlin Titcher Bringing Librarian to TNT

" 'Independence Day' and 'Godzilla' producer Dean Devlin is making a move to television producing The Librarian a possible telefilm franchise for TNT.

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' ends with the Ark of the Covenant being put in a massive storage facility in an anonymous box surrounded by countless other identical boxes. 'The Librarian' asks the question What if each of those crates contained a different priceless antiquity with a legendary background.

However the project has no connection to the Spielberg blockbuster. Instead it focuses on a young man who discovers that the basement of the New York Public Library is loaded with mythical objects like the Ark or the Golden Fleece. His job is to protect the sacred artifacts from the forces of evil." [LISNews.com]

The funny thing is that you could make a good TV series out of regular libraries, their staffs, and patrons. Librarians always have great stories to tell.

"The Roving Librarian is a pilot project that brings library services into the areas of students' everyday life. Using a wireless laptop, Reference Librarians take HOLLIS, the Harvard Libraries portal, Research Guides, and Finding Aids – many of the primary undergraduate research tools -- out of the library and into non-academic spaces where students spend time. The Reference Librarian is available to answer questions, assist in research, help locate material, and encourage the students to keep the library and librarians at the forefront of their research...." [via Sci-Tech] Library Question, via Library Stuff]

Shifting indeed, as Steven says! I'll be interested to track their progress.

Google to Fix Blog Noise Problem

"Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab.

CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement on Monday, at a conference for librarians and researchers. 'Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs,"' reported Reuters.

It isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index. After a sticky start, Usenet veterans welcomed the new interface. Google recently acquired Blogger, and sources suggest this is the most likely option....

However, through dense and incestuous linking, results from blogs can drown out other sources.

'The main problem with blogs is that, as far as Google is concerned, they masquerade as useful information when all they contain is idle chatter,' wrote Roddy. 'And through some fluke of their evil software, they seem to get indexed really fast, so when a major political or social event happens, Google is noised to the brim with blogs and you have to start at result number 40 or so before you get past the blogs.' We'd noticed." [The Register]

Interesting ideas, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. But how seriously can you take the article when they can't even get Gary's name right?  :-  Should there be an algorithm in Google to rank it lower because there are factual errors in it? What if we applied the same guidelines suggested above to The Register's articles? Of course, just linking to this story means it will rise in Google's pagerank.

Forget America 24/7 - now you can get Blogosphere 24/7 thanks to Feedster Images!

"That's right -- its a visual summary of every picture that is a part of today's (or any day's) blogdom.  Think of it as 'today through the looking glass'.

And, lest you even ask, it also supports these things:

• Navigation -- the traditional blog calendar is there for 'visual time traveling'
• Permalinks -- want to email all of Monday's pictures to a friend?  Just navigate to Monday and copy the link
• RSS -- want a feed of today's images? Here 'ya go!  (NOTE: actually I had to pull the feed until Monday -- I need to do a better job testing it in different readers)." [The FuzzyBlog]

Already worth its weight in gold for the pointer to Kitten Time! All together now: awwwwwwwwww....