Wednesday, March 16, 2005 at 2:00PM INFO SCIENCE: Google pays homage to my new favorite OS, OSX, and uses a dock-like bar to manage their different searching tools.
Very cool! Moving the user to a new page when he or she clicks on the dock is a bit disorienting however. My own mental model was that after I clicked on search tool, it would stay big and the following search query would use that engine.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 at 12:05PM INFO SCIENCE: Here's a great new program I just started using. Direct from the horse's mouth:
ExplorerXP is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non - commercial use) file manager for Windows 2000/XP. Unlike the regular Windows Explorer, it displays the total size of each folder and allows you to browse multiple folders from a tabbed interface.
Now all I need is an explorer / desktop / interface for XP that looks and works like my Powerbook does and I'll be golden.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 2:35PM INFO SCIENCE: The New York Times has an article about the dire economics of free online newspapers. It's an interesting read.
I had no idea that the New York Times has more readers online then actual subscribers. Seems they are going to have to figure out how to squeeze more money from online readers without scaring them away; a difficult thing to do.
Sunday, February 20, 2005 at 2:24PM ASSEMBLEME: I'm still here, just working too hard with work and this project. Until I return, enjoy this delight from The Onion.
Monday, January 10, 2005 at 12:09PM ASSEMBLEME: Due to a number of big projects at work and one big personal project I'll be posting lightly over the next couple weeks. I plan on putting some deliverables of my personal project here as they become available, so hopefully I'll have some updates soon.
Monday, January 3, 2005 at 4:50PM DATA: Randy Cohen takes on the age old debate: surfing porn at the library. (I've actually seen this myself at the SPL. Apparently I behaved ethically by Cohen's standards by keeping my "ew, a bum with a boner" disgust to myself and moving to another terminal. Yes it was distracting but no it wasn't a big deal.)
I was disturbed to see a man looking at pornography on a New York Public Library computer. When two children sat down near him, I decided to take action, but he instantly switched to an inoffensive video game. A security guard told me they were keeping an eye on a couple of people acting similarly and would catch them in the act eventually. Should I have alerted someone as soon as I became aware of this man's activities? -Anonymous, New York
A guard monitoring someone's reading? That's not my idea of how a library operates. Libraries should provide for the free exchange of ideas -- not just ideas you or I find palatable, not just ideas suitable for 5-year-olds. And librarians should not be forced to censor patrons' reading, let alone eject them for looking at disturbing images.
Happily, even if you and the overeager guard had reported this incident, nobody would have been rousted. Caroline Oyama, manager of public relations for the New York Public Library, explains that it ''does not ask adult patrons to leave, stop what they are doing or move to another computer if another patron doesn't like the Web site he or she is viewing. Instead, we make every attempt to move the user who is offended to another computer where he or she doesn't have to see what the other person is viewing.'' This is a prudent policy, consistent with the library's ethos and responsive to the sensitivities of patrons of all ages.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004 at 4:05PM INFO VISUALIZATION: Rummaging around del.icio.us I ran across some mind numbingly complicated, overwrought topic maps (the closest noun I can think of to describe them) that try and visualize topics like "The World Government" and "Governing By Networks."
(pdf link)
(pdf link)
Looking at the website, I don't know if these are actually supposed to help an audience understand the given topic, or if it's just an artistic statement (perhaps "hey, look, government is complex!"). If they were created to actually convey useful information, I feel sorry for the audience; I about suffered a stroke just trying to figure out what the hell they were trying to tell me.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004 at 12:08PM INFO VISUALIZATION: The New York Times has a well done interactive feature regarding the tragedy along the shores of South Asia, complete with a simulation of the wave patterns following the quake.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004 at 12:11PM INFO SCIENCE: Yesterday I was reading an article over lunch that was fawning over MSN Search's new entry point in the new MSN Instant Messenger interface. In short, the article seemed to suggest that Microsoft would eventually win the search wars because they are able to put "Search The Web" boxes in all of their different software products. (Google is doomed, doomed!)
But this morning I hear on NPR that Google Print is going to add the works of nearly a half-dozen major libraries to their search results, an amazing feat to say the least.
This really strikes at the difference between the two companies' current strategies for gaining market share. One company seems to rely predominantly on its weight as a monopolist in other fields, while one company really attempts to add value. I'll let you guess which one is which.
Speaking of Google, have you played with Keyhole yet? If not, please do so right away.
UPDATE: The Shifted Librarian points us to a few interesting stats about Google's new project:
"A quick calculation using the figures above suggests an average scan rate of 3200 volumes per day (assuming 365 days/year for 6 years) at the University of Michigan site alone." [Tito Sierra on the WEB4LIB mailing list] "An even quicker calculation shows that they will need to digitize 2.25 books a minute, 24 hours/day, 365 days/year to digitize 7 million volumes in six years." [Roy Tennant on the WEB4LIB mailing list]
