LibrarianInBlack

Meta-Medical

OmniMedicalSearch has a medical information metasearch page. Choose to search for websites, news, or images. You can also choose Pro or Basic for your searches--the Pro option leading to more academic medical information, while Basic leads to normal people who don't understand all those fancy medical terms. I did notice in the image search that quite a few thumbnails on the results pages link to the wrong larger image. Other than that, a valuable medical research tool.

link via ResearchBuzz

Movie Title Screens

Find the title screen images from thousands of movies at Shill's Video Movies Title Screens Page. Sorted alphabetically, these are fun to browse through, and could prove to be a giganta-huge time waster for yours truly.

Thanks to Robot Johnny at Metafilter for the link

AnswerBag

AnswerBag--"a universal, user-generated collection of frequently-asked questions." And you'd be surprised....these vary from the most simple factual questions like "What is the largest lake in the world?" to more complicated questions like "How did the use of laugh tracks on television start?"

It's browse-able by subject area, fully searchable, and on the homepage they highlight things like Top Categories & which of their contributors have answered the most questions. My one beef with the site is that some of the question answerers do not cite their sources, they just give the answer. Other than that, though, I think it could prove to be a useful reference tool.

I think I'll remember AnswerBag the next time I get one of those super-odd desk questions like "If my girlfriend is Mormon, do I have to convert to Mormonism to marry her?". There are also a bevy of unanswered questions--what better place for librarians to show off our mad reference skills?

link courtesy of J-Walk Blog

Design Theft

There's an interesting discussion going on at MezzoBlue about design theft. How much of someone else's design do you have to change for it not to be considered theft? A graded example is given--weigh in with your own opinion.

What is RSS Good For?

J.D. Lasica has written a list of 7 things that RSS is good for.

1. Saving time
   
2. Convenience
   
3. Access to a richer pool of material
   
4. Zero in on the info you want
   
5. RSS can serve as an alert service
   
6. RSS levels the playing field
   
7. RSS drives conversation
   

Thanks to Steven Cohen at LibraryStuff for the link

Do weblogs belong in libraries?

A woman named Penny Garrod from the UK has written an article on Ariadne entitled "Weblogs: Do They Belong in Libraries". This article says nothing new. In fact, it doesn't even address the issue it claims to in its title. Steven Cohen at LibraryStuff has written a good reply, but frankly, my own dissatisfaction with articles like this is that they presume to do one thing while they really do another, which is to reveal the biases and lack of education of the author. Not impressed. Anyone want to write a thoughtful and research-filled article about whether or not libraries and weblogs belong together?

Tech Folks Re-Tool the 9/11 Report

The 9/11 Report is huge.

But...Vivisimo has added a new search just for the 9/11 Report at http://vivisimo.com/911. You can search by keyword and get 200 paragraphs matching your query, divided into Vivisimo's wonderful clusters.

And Wired News has a story about how techies have worked with the 9/11 Report to make it more accessible--specifically how bloggers have provided both PDF & HTML versions.

Good stuff.

Accessibility Tool

IBM is plugging its new adaptive accessibility tool, Web Adaptation Technology, which they claim will help make websites more accessible. Senior.net has a report on the tool. Something to keep an eye on...

Thanks to The Web Standards Project for the link

Farscape is back!

The SciFi Channel will be airing a 4-hour Farscape mini-series, premiering on October 17th. Hurrah! This is due in large part to the Save Farscape movement, which the Librarian in Black strongly supports.

Conference Mania

Anyone want to know what I'm doing in November?

California Library Association Annual Conference (San Jose, CA): November 12-15

Presenting a program on What's Hot in Tech on the 13th
Presenting a program on Starting Your Library's Blog on the 14th

Internet Librarian Conference (Monterey, CA): November 13-17

Presenting with a Webmasters Panel on the 15th about designing a library website within a pre-set frame, at which I am an expert, unfortunately

I'm really disappointed that the conference organizers couldn't get their $*&# together enough to have these conferences not conflict. I fully realize that many attendees of the Internet Librarian Conference are not from California, but as the conference is being held here in CA, I'm willing to bet there is a lot of overlap. And my life is going to be raucous hell for that week.

I'm going to miss at least half of the last day at CLA so I can drive from San Jose to Monterey to give my 4:15pm presentation at Internet Librarian. It also means that I'm going to miss the pre-conferences at Internet Librarian (a few of which I was very interested in attending, and I'm going to miss the first half of the first day of Internet Librarian.

Can anyone loan me a portable sensory deprivation chamber for that week? I have a feeling I'm going to need it.

MyDoom Hits Google Hard: Librarians At A Loss

A variant of the MyDoom worm has brought Google to its knees. Searches on Google are returning 503 errors on all queries submitted from certain locations (including my location here in San Rafael, California). The attack has also affected Lycos & Altavista. A CNet story gives more information. Google seems to be back up, but things are slow and certain features (like the link: search) still aren't working.

E-LIS

E-LIS is a new open archive for papers (published or not) in library & information science. There are approximately 1000 articles posted currently, with more being added all the time.

Thanks to LBR for the link

Accessibility of US Government Webpages

A study published on First Monday, entitled "Assessing the accessibility of fifty United States government Web pages: Using Bobby to check on Uncle Sam" and written by Jim Ellison, evaluates the accessibility of 50 different U.S. Government webpages for people with disabilities. The verdict? The federal government is not even close to meeting their goals of accessibility. Simple things like using ALT tags aren't even being done on some sites, even though federal sites are mandated by law to be accessible. A great study and a quick read.

Adrian Lamo sentenced

Adrian Lamo, the "homeless hacker" who hacked into NYT's network and was subsequently investigated by the FBi, was sentenced to six months of home confinement, two years of probation, and ordered to pay around $65,000 in restitution. I'm very interested to see what he does after probation, when he is allowed full access to computers again. Some network security firm should hire this guy immediately--he clearly knows what he's doing.

Alice Scrapbook

The Library of Congress has posted Lewis Carroll's Scrapbook Collection online. The scanned page images here are brain and eye candy for any Alice-in-Wonderland enthusiast (like yours truly). From their announcement:

The Lewis Carroll Scrapbook is an original scrapbook kept by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Oxford. The scrapbook appears to have been kept by Carroll between the years 1855 and 1872, and contains approximately 130 items, including newspaper clippings, illustrations, and photographs.

Thanks to Gary Price at ResourceShelf for the link.

Free iPod with $40,000 tuition

So, Duke is offering its students free iPods that will be pre-loaded with "school-related information, including freshman orientation details, the academic calendar, campus tours and even the school’s fight song." This is a one-year half a million dollar project. This story made me think of what I got "for free" from my college: a rape-whistle. According to a survey done while I was a student there (& which I can't find online, sorry), two out of three undergraduate women at good ol' UIUC are sexually assaulted before they graduate. And what did they do? They gave us a whistle. A magic pixie-dust whistle which you were supposed to wear around your neck, and be able to blow loudly if you were attacked. Nevertheless, the female student rape statistics continue to be steady--whistles or not. So, iPod vs. rape whistle? Seems like the iPod might prove more useful.

Girlie & Proud

A few days ago, I posted about Schwarzenegger's comments about lawmakers as "girlie men." Somebody got smart and made a shirt. Viva the capitalist impulse.

Thanks to Jabba for the link

WiFi Locations on your iPod

A project by Bay Area Wireless (Yay for the Bay!) has a list of all WiFi hotspots, sortable by city and location, which can be downloaded to any iPod. So, now, armed with my laptop & my iPod I can cruise around the bay, from Cupertino to Santa Cruz, and always know where to get some free access. I hope to see other cities follow suit here, and provide similar listings, downloadable to the iPod or other portable device.

Sing a Song of Librarians..

Some musician named Jonathan Rundman's recent album, Public Library, has a song (available for download in its demo version) entitled "Librarian." Hey--that's kinda cool. Thanks man. Anybody got a drill team event or an all staff day coming up? This would be wicked fun to play there. And thanks to librarian.net for the link.

Governor or Idiot?

I am reminded of how shocked I was when my fellow Californians elected this guy as our governor. Schwarzenegger's comments about lawmakers as "girlie men" and ordering his supporters to "terminate" their opponents are clearly inappropriate, no matter what side of the political fence you sit on. The only amusing thing about this is that Schwarzenegger is using a term that others used to mock him on SNL, oh those many years ago.

Typo Poster Generator

TypoGenerator is a random generator for 'TypoPosters'. A TypoPoster is a poster, created from images and letters/text that doesn´t have any sense, just to look good. If you try a few times, you usually end up getting something rather cool and definitely worth saving.

Link via Burp

Beowulf in Pictures

Warner Brothers is developing a Beowulf movie. These are the folks who did Harry Potter & The Matrix, so I'm encouraged by that. But, they're also the folks who have done Kangaroo Jack and Scooby Doo. Let's hope for the best folks.

Ice Photography

Some beautiful ice photography by D. Himes. A chance to pause and marvel at some beautiful images, this fine Monday.

link courtesy of J-Walk Blog

I once was lost...

...but now I'm found. Bobby Fischer has been found. He's been wanted by "the authorities" since 1992 when he played in a Yugoslavia tournament, despite sanctions. He has been detained in Japan on passport violations, and will be deported to the U.S.

Someone smack me...

I now subscribe to over 300 RSS feeds. Need proof? Here' tis.

Review of Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

Hello faithful readers. I just finished reading Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton. I had this one on pre-order from Amazon, and I was quite happy to find it waiting for me on my porch the other day. Mr. Wheaton can write, and he can write really, really well. His stories are honest soul-prodding views into the internal struggle that many people face--how do you deal with life when people from every angle seem to be treating you like dirt? How do you move beyond what you've been pigeon-holed as your whole life? How do you find the courage to stop doing "the safe thing" and move into new territory? I highly recommend this book for anyone who was/is a Trek fan, anyone who's just plain geeky, or anyone looking for a humorous inspirational story about taking charge of your life.

I must admit that when I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation as a young-un (I was in my pre-teen years), I did not particularly like the character of Wesley Crusher. Yeah, he was hella smart, but he was also kind of whiny and lame. I actually had a jones for Jean Luc while all my teeny bopper friends were lusting after Wesley. So, in my book, Wesley, and Wil Wheaton by default (very unfair, yes I know), were tools. Anyway, yes. So, WW left STTNG, STTNG ended a few years later, and that was that. A decade or so passed, and a few years ago I heard that WW has started a website. So I take a look and find that this guy is truly geeky (not just an actor who played a geek on TV), really really funny, honest, and into a lot of the same stuff I'm into. Heck...in the book he mentions Cthulhu and D&D. Rock on, man...rock on. I've been reading his site daily since then, following along with his stories, his humor, and his life. In short, yes, Wesley Crusher sucked. But Wil Wheaton is damn cool.

Read his book. Really. This is a formal recommendation from the Librarian in Black. And you had better do what I say, or I will hunt you down like an Ice Monster in Diablo II (expansion pack) and fire-arrow your ass. You know I will.

The Shape of Song

The Shape of Song
See how various songs display graphically, based on repeated passages. You can pick a song from their ever-growing list, or you can upload your own MIDI. You can view the graphs and play the MIDI file of the song at the same time--following along!

The diagrams in The Shape of Song display musical form as a sequence of translucent arches. Each arch connects two repeated, identical passages of a composition. By using repeated passages as signposts, the diagram illustrates the deep structure of the composition....More complex compositions create more intricate diagrams.

Here is Cake's "The Distance"

Thanks to the ever-useful J-Walk Blog for the link

Favorite New Tools

Steven Cohen, of LibraryStuff, is looking for nominations for our favorite new tools from the last year. Be sure to let him know what your favorites are...I'm going to have to think about this a bit and pick mine...there are so many good ones out there!

Find the dead guy (or at least the note about the dead guy)...

ResearchBuzz directs us to Obituaries 101--a simple little page that links to newspapers that run obituaries, listed by state. And the links (usually) go to their online obituary pages, some with archives. There are definite holes in the listings, but it looks pretty good. One more place to point the genealogists!

How does your library measure up?

Compare Public Libraries, a statistical comparison engine from the National Center for Education Statistics. See how your library measures up to libraries similar to yours in a number of areas.

Thanks to John from Library Link of the Day for originally posting this at LIS News.

Susan Hildreth named California State Librarian

Susan Hildreth is the new State Librarian for California. She's not going to Arizona after all. Hurrah for California!

Musicplasma

Introducing Musicplasma--a visual search engine for music. Enter the name of your favorite band or musician into the little search box, and you get to see some beautifully rendered search results. Colored orbs with the various bands names position themselves close to your chosen artist based on similarity. A nice added feature is that the size of the orb indicates the band's popularity (though I do wonder how they determine that--record sales?)

There's definitely a popular music bias, but I did find some old obscure eighties bands. A lot of the bands listed also feature an Amazon-linked discography over on the right side (but some of these were incomplete).

I suggest taking a look--if only to get some good recommendations based on your current favorites. And if you want to know more, read Chris Sherman's review at SearchEngineWatch. Thanks for pointing out this resource Chris!

The Ultimate Boot CD

The name is not inappropriate--this is the Ultimate Boot CD. Get, on one CD, a whole bunch of DOS utilities. Stuff like hard disk diagnosis, disk wiping, partition tools, and anti-virus tools. Very nice!

Thanks to Gammatron for the link

State & Local Government on the Net

Check out this directory of the websites of state agencies and city and county governments. You can browse the directory by state, and the counties & cities, or you can browse by topic (such as legislature, jobs, & libraries). The sheer quantity of links here is astounding. The next time someone asks me for state government information (which they do more than I would like), I'm going here instead of Google. It got me to my desired result a lot faster.

Librarians Against Bush

Librarians Against Bush, for anyone who's interested.

Bunnies...

...are funny. Bunnies performing 30-second cartoon versions of pop movies are even funnier. Angry Alien presents 30-Second Bunny Theatre:

• The Exorcist
  
• The Shining
  
• Titanic
  
• Alien
  

And Angry Alien has a store too. Enjoy, my children, enjoy!

Experimental Film

They Might Be Giants plus Homestar Runner equals a Happy Librarian in Black. Rock on Strong Sad!

What's Vivisimo Up To?

The Pittsburgh Business Times published an article recently about what Vivisimo is doing right now. Vivisimo is great, and I highly recommend that every librarian in existence today at least take a look at it. Clustering search results is one good solution to the problem of the information overload that people feel right now. Break it out into categories, and they're given one more choice, which helps to narrow their results a great deal.

Thanks to Gary Price's ResourceShelf for the link, which is also mentioned in the article.

West Coast Bloggers

Are you a blogger? Do you live on the West Coast? Wanna show your pride? Check out this West Coast Blogger gear. Very biker-esque. Look for the Librarian in Black to be donning the girlie shirt sometime soon.

Thanks to Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing for the link

Two Articles Published in California Libraries

In the July 2004 issue of California Libraries, a publication of the California Library Association, I have two articles (which I find to be rather odd--I submitted two, but didn't expect them to both appear in the same issue). They don't provide an online version of the issue, and I've had a few requests to provide the articles online for folks, so.....

The first article, an op-ed piece entitled "Are You Sure You're a Librarian" addresses ageism in librarian-land. The second article, "Important Technology Developments for California Librarians," discusses seven areas of technology for librarians to keep an eye on. First library-themed articles I've had published, so pardon me while I blush, smile, and shake my head at the oddity that people give a *$#% about what I have to say.

Faze or Phase?

The BBC has a fun word quiz on their website currently. Apparently, the editors of the OED (which we librarians know and love) have been warning that incorrect word usage is becoming more and more prevalent, especially in e-mails and in chat rooms. This particular quiz tests your homophone knowledge. Fortunately, I got 10 out of 10 (scoring a "GRATE!" on their scale). That justifies those two years in English grad school... ;)

Thanks to Steel White Table for the link

Optical Illusion Supreme

Ohhh, I feel dizzy. $(%*^&*@#$.................

OK, I swear these almond-things aren't moving. Focus on one particular almond-thing, and they stop moving. In the meantime, it's a fun way to remind ourselves that our brains are funny things... And if anyone else notices that their computer screen (even when you've moved onto something totally different) still seems to be moving, let me know. Then I'll know that I'm not having a seizure right now...

Thanks to Mark at Boing Boing for the link

New Google Groups in Beta

A new version of Google Groups is in Beta right now. I think it looks great--a much cleaner interface than Yahoo Groups, which is cluttered with advertising and editor's picks. Well, if I need to start a group anytime soon, I think it will be with Google.

Freedom to Read Amendment Failed

The Freedom to Read Amendment has failed to pass. It failed by one vote, after House Republican Leadership held the vote open twice as long as originally scheduled as they persuaded Republicans to switch their votes. They stopped the vote when it was tied at 210-210, just enough to fail the amendment. I don't know what to say, except this makes me sad, even if the amendment would have been vetoed by the president anyway. Sad, sad, sad.

Microsoft Employee Arrested for Code Theft

So, a guy who is working for Microsoft on their MSN Search project has been arrested on charges of stealing Altavista search source code. He stole the code before he started working for Microsoft. But still--sketchy at best. Microsoft refused to comment. Me thinks (if Altavista chooses to pursue this and there are legitimate similarities between MSN search code & Altavista's sesarch code) there is serious trouble for Microsoft ahead...

Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the link

Happy Pencil

Happy Pencil. Artwork by Cam DeLeon, artist for the band Tool. Music by Brian Williams of Lustmord. Dark imagery, even darker music, and stunning as a whole. I really have to explore this more at home...

Thanks to Dagobert at Metafilter for the link

Copyscape

Want to know who's using your content on the web? Try Copyscape (in Beta and by the Google Alert folks). I entered LibrarianInBlack.net and found mixed results. It listed my own site as the first content-borrower which I thought was strange. But perhaps that makes sense. I am the site most similar to myself. It also listed LIS Feeds, which is correct. It listed NationMaster.com, but I had quoted them in a recent post about themselves, taking their "about us" paragraph from the first page. And it listed a few sites that had quoted that same paragraph. So, it's really just looking for duplicate content on various pages...it goes both ways. So, 1 out of 7 was actually a site that was using (in this case feeding) my content. I guess that's useful, as long as you know what the site is actually giving you.

Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the link

Bug Me Not

I'm not sure how it could have taken me so long to run across this. Bug Me Not allows you to bypass mandatory registrations at sites by keeping a database of generic log-ins. Hundreds of log-ins here--New York Times, Washington Post, and more. This is a great resource for us privacy-minded folks.

Steven-mania

Steven Cohen (of Library Stuff) is the subject of a thoughtful article in Newsday.com's business section entitled "Competing in High Gear." Congrats Steven. Nice to see one of the other young-uns out there getting some exposure.

OK, so that's what's new...

Logged into Bloglines today and saw what the little surprise is...everything's changed! Nice interface guys...much more usable. And, there are some great new features too, including Clip Blog (a one click way to add something you see on another site to your own blog). Oh yes, and someone from Bloglines e-mailed me to tell me what's up with the pig--something to do with a stunt that the founder of Bloglines pulled in one of his start-ups. It apparently involved a pig. Of some sort. Doing something. Hmmm...

Half a Century of Presidential Ads

The American Museum of the Moving Image has a new site: The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004.

Pick an election year, pick a candidate, and view an ad. Ads are also organized by subject. I found it fun to watch ads, knowing now how the economy actually turned out during each president's term, and knowing the political situations post-elections. There's a lot of hypocrisy revealed by these ads, for many presidents. Fun with politics! *sigh*

Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the link

No Daleks in Doctor Who

The BBC could not come to an agreement with the estate of Terry Nation, the man who created the Daleks. As a result, many sci-fi fans (the LiB included) will be disappointed...no Daleks in the new Doctor Who Series. My hopes that this will be a good series just dropped one little teensy bit. Daleks are cool. Doctor Who Series without Daleks, somehow, not as cool.

Google's Updated Privacy Policy

Google has updated its privacy policy. The new policy vs. the old policy. Updated policies are good things--especially when you're a bohemoth like Google.

Books that Inspire the Geek

In MaryLaine Block's ExLibris, she asked for readers to send her stories of our proudest moments as librarians, "those times when you knew for a fact that librarians change lives." I submitted a story which was printed in the June 11th edition. In it, I mention "books that had inspired the geek in me when I was young." I have received a few requests to put this list up online--so, here 'tis (the ones I remember grabbing, anyway).

• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (the whole Ender series, actually)
• Erewhon by Samuel Butler
• Anthem by Ayn Rand
• Sandman series by Neil Gaiman
• Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

For parents with gifted and/or geeky kids, start them off with the Ender series (I've recommended this to several kids now) and move them up to reading Neal Stephenson & Neil Gaiman. Those are my three top author recommendations for gifted/geeky kids everywhere. And I should know...I was one for a very long time. Now I'm a geeky adult with a cool job who makes a decent living doing geeky things. Not bad :)

NationMaster: A Master of Nations--ahem

NationMaster.com--where stats come alive!

...a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, World Resources Institute, UNESCO, UNICEF and OECD...

You can make maps & graphs to compare countries in a variety of data sections, like...the top 5 countries with Jehovah's witnesses populations are (drumroll please): the US, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, & Italy! Ta da! Excellent site, and better yet--totally & completely free.

Pestware Research Center

Pest Patrol, the self-proclaimed "authority in spyware protection," has launched a Pest Patrol Research Center with more information about malware of all sorts than I know what to do with. They have the best definitions I've ever seen of various types of malware. They also have a list of false alarms (things that may seem like malware, but aren't), new pests, most prevalent pests, what to do if you've got one, a whole list of white papers on various malware issues, and a directory of over 21,000 pests. Wow!

Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the link

Darn CD won't play...

I've had this happen to me more times than I'd like to remember, more often with Windows XP actually. But, if you ever pop a CD into your drive & it just won't run, you can disable auto run and it will most likely play.

Thaks to Lady Crumpet for the tip!

Etymologic

Etymologic: the Toughest Word Game on the Web... Check it out--a fun few minutes of distraction. I got 7 out of 10. While, in school terms, that's a C-, I'm actually surprised I did that well!

via Douglas Welch

MSN's New Search Page

MSN's new search page launched today. The design looks darn familiar too.... Can we say, "Google"? Tara Calishain's post on it at ResearchBuzz is very complete, so I won't bother reiterating what she has already, err, iterated. Just go read her article. Her last paragraph sums it all up:

This is Microsoft's first shot across Google's bow, and it's solid though there's nothing revolutionary that I can see. July 4 is a holiday, and Google is famous for unveiling things on holidays. Are we going to see a shot back this weekend?

All I can say is that it's a lot better than the old MSN page was...

Bloglines is 1 year old!

Congratulations to Bloglines! 1 year old already! I've been using it for about 9 months out of that year, and love it! I wonder what my special surprise is? :)