Teacher Perspective

Touch Screen added to e-Reader shown with speed-reader Dave Farrow

2008-10-07T10:54:00.003-04:00

Sony has added a touch screen to its e-Reader (and a built-in LED reading light) as reported in the Wired Blog (also in eSchool News). Sony seems to be addressing an educational market (college and textbook publishers). The barrier is the price of $399 without the wireless service that is available for the same price with a Kindle, but they do offer 12-months of no interest and an $8, 3-year service plan including accidental damage from handling. Sony says the wireless service is coming, but one wonders if the price of the e-Reader will also rise.

The new e-Reader is available on November 14, 2008. It also has other features for students: "You can easily make annotations in your digital book with the virtual keyboard or highlight text you want to remember by selecting it with a stylus pen or with the touch of your finger." The battery allows the turning "7,500 continuous pages (or up to two weeks of reading) on a single charge." The memory will hold 320 average-sized digital books and can still be supplemented by both a Memory Stick Duo or an SD card.

What interests me is that Datavision on 39th Street in New York is displaying speed-reader Dave Farrow in its window for 30 days (see photo) where he is reading the e-Reader. The touch screen allows one to slide his finger in any direction to turn the page just like a traditional book. I wonder if a speed-reader can tolerate the speed with which e-ink changes the pages. It is worth a trip to 39th street to see. There is an implication here that merely adding a touch screen speeds up the process. We'll see.

I spoke with Dave through the glass and he demonstrated how fast the pages turned. It did seem a lot faster than I had thought it would be. I was very impressed with Sony's backlighting technology. It was awesome. Any one who is reading in limited lighting will appreciate it.

The stated point of Dave Farrow's reading is that the faster he reads, the more books will be donated to some schools. The unstated point is to demonstrate that speed-readers use e-books. The first 100 schools who register their e-book library with Sony will get 5 new Sony Readers. The deal seems to imply that the school's e-book library will be made available to Sony. I cannot find any more info on this right now. I will check more later.

Daniel Janzen, Biologist

2008-08-31T16:46:00.001-04:00

I have met very interesting people through Esther Dyson (on Wikipedia). The most recent such person is Dan Janzen as Esther encountered him at Science Foo Camp (on Wikipedia), hosted by O'Reilly and Google. Esther "captured" Dan in a most amazing photo.

Dan Janzen is a person you may want to know more about. Pick and choose from these lists:

Wikipedia
Faculty page at University of Pennsylvania.
Curriculum Vitae
Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), Janzen & Hallowachs & Caterpillars homepage, a web site at the University of Pennsylvania.
Database for caterpillars homepage.
The Rainmaker Foundation
Freebase

Various Bios
Discover Life in America on Dr. Janzen

Awards

The Crawfoord Award 1984 in ecology from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Bio Prof Janzen garners 'Japanese Nobel Prize' for conservation work (9/22/97) in The Daily Pennsylvanian, article by Margie Fishman.
[Note: Many other honors and awards are listed in the Wikipedia article.]

Videos

Daniel Janzen - Third World Conservation: It's ALL Gardening - Long Now - 81 min - Feb 27, 2006 Posted on Google Video by the Long Now Foundation. Stewart Brand on Daniel Janzen, April 4, 2004.
2000 Interview with Daniel Janzen, University of Pennsylvania, 27 minutes, 39 seconds. Interesting talk on his life and influences on it as well as how he has influenced the field.
Dan Janzen in the Costa Rican rainforest, 3 minutes, 21 seconds.
Reading the Forest - Dr. Dan Janzen, 5 minutes, 20 seconds. Well edited, informative video that shows the book, 100 Butterflies and Moths in the last shots. See links on the book in the book section below.
A Google Tech Talk on February 26, 2008: International Bar Code of Life: Creating a searchable database of every species on earth, 1 hour, 6 minutes, 10 seconds. Google host Jonathan Rosenberg speaks with Drs. Paul Hebert and Dan Janzen. This Tech Talk was followed up with a trip to Costa Rico by Googlers (See entries under blogs below). While the video is long, it is rated high and 3,744 viewings were at least started.

Blog entries about Dr. Janzen
A group of Googlers (employees of Google) are studying how structured data can be used in a web search. In pursuit of this question, they spent some time with Dr. Janzen.

Adam Sadovsky writes in his blog, Tmunot, about his travels with Dr. Janzen to the ACG in Costa Rica (includes photos).
Alon Halevy writes about the trip in his blog entry, Bar Coding in Costa Rica. Alon also has 45 photos from this trip.
In conjunction with this trip, there is a quick tour of the dormitory at the ACG (48 seconds) uploaded April 1, 2008. Googlers who went on the trip might want to see if they are in the video, "Controlled burn in the ACG" (1 minute, 44 seconds); the rest of us will be more interested in the description explaining why they were burning the field.

Articles about Dr. Janzen or his work

Democratizing Taxonomy, in Conservation Magazine, April-June 2006 (Vol. 7, No. 2), by Marguerite Holloway.
"Dr. Daniel H. Janzen, Honorary Fellow, ATB, 2002", March 15, 2006, Biotropica (p 482-482) by Nalini Nadkarnl. Biotropica is the journal of tropical biology and conservation.
"From bugs to boas, Dan Janzen bags the rich coast's life" in the Smithsonian, December 1, 1986, by Don Lessem.

Books

Longitude is a specialty book store to remember when you want information on a location. They feature Dr. Janzen's book, Costa Rican Natural History. The page also lists in a sidebar other links to the same story. Same book on site of the University of Chicago Press.
100 Butterflies and Moths by Jeffrey Miller, Dan Janzen, and Winifred Hallwachs, 2007, 272 pages. TextbooksRUs. Powell Books Synopsis and Reviews. Amazon. Harvard University Press. Review in Journal of Insect Conservation, Vol. 12, No. 5, October 2008, by John Tennent, The Natural History Museum, London. Alibris. New York Times Review. Review in Science News on Highbeam.

Essay or Lecture

EarthSky: Daniel Janzen describes the human world (a excerpt from the essay, Gardenification of Wildland Nature and the Human Footprint, which link includes citations of this essay). This EarthSky excerpt is a part of a series: Fifty Scientists describe the human world.
"Rain Forest: Use It or Lose It", an Illahee Lecture by Dan Janzen on April 3, 2000.

Books Dr. Janzen contributed to
Biodiversity and Human Health found preview editions of Google Books. This page has links to Amazon and other sources of the book and reviews.

Articles or books that mention Dr. Janzen

Diversity among parasitic wasps is even greater than suspected e! Science News - August 29, 2008 12:14 on the topic Biology & Nature; includes a link to an audio slide show. Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Green Phoenix, 2003, by William Allen on Google books. Allen feels that the ACG will die when Janzen dies.
Taxonomy: All living things, online. Nature 418, 362-363 (25 July 2002) | doi:10.1038/418362a. Janzen is quoted and in a picture.
Field Guide to the Wildlife of Costa Rica, 2002, University of Texas Press. Link is to Google books with other links to book sellers and reviews.
The Age of Ecology, the transcripts of programs broadcast between 1986 and 1990 (on Google books). Includes links to Amazon, and other book sellers.

eMail conversation with Dan Janzen
Search results on MarkMail.org for Dan Janzen.

Keeping up with Technology News in Education

2008-08-30T10:11:00.002-04:00

Twenty-five years ago, keeping up with technology news meant subscribing to the weekly InfoWorld. I have followed this magazine for that time period. I preferred it to more education oriented magazines.

I have added another magazine to my list to watch. It is electronically delivered and is called eSchool News out of Bethesda, Maryland. I really like the opening page where they have news stories categorized in a way that I can quickly check the news that I am really interested in.

I will add to this entry over the next few days.

Hanging pictures in my new apartment

2008-08-27T17:08:00.010-04:00

As mentioned in a previous post, I moved in April. It is now the end of August and there are still pictures to hang. In general, I used nails or screws that were already in the wall to hang things, even when the location was not exactly what I would prefer. Except for the kitchen, the bathroom, and my office, the apartment has picture molding in the five other rooms. I was required to use clips to hang pictures on picture molding when I lived in the University of Houston dormitories some years ago. Remarkably, I still have two of those clips from college today. I have visited countless hardware stores in my area looking for similar picture hanging clips. There are generally two types of clips that the stores have had and neither work on my molding.

The Internet to the rescue! Since I spent a lot of time looking and reviewing, I have decided to make an entry here for my own reference. Perhaps others will also benefit. The picture molding is also referred to as picture rails, which is sometimes called Ogee or OG molding. What I have called clips are called picture hooks, picture molding hooks, picture rail hooks, and S-hooks. The rails and hooks were the preferred solution to decorating plaster and lath walls in the 1880's through the 1920's and into the 1930's. Yes, the house I now live in was probably built in the latter part of that time period.

In the realm of "how to" sites, the following are arranged from best to good:

Picture Hang Solutions in North Carolina give the best instructions for picture rail hooks that I have found (scroll down to the bottom of the page for the instructions). The picture hanging hardware business is a spin off of their fine art gallery business. They recommend using stainless steel twisted cable instead of monofilament (fishing line), which stretches over time.
Picture hanging instructions using picture rails shown in photos by The Swan Company featuring the backsides of frames so you can see how to attach cord or wire using various hardware. They also have an extensive photo gallery of ideas showing how their customers hung pictures.
Martha Stewart on arranging pictures including the use of picture rails. She also shows an interesting way to hang multiple small pictures using a picture rail.
Specialty Techniques for Historic Homes is a good place to "ask the expert," so I include it as a place to ask when all else fails. Here are a few existing Q&A's on picture rails: Picture rail molding with cornices, Using ribbons to hang pictures, Picture rail in 1920s homes, and Picture rail for curv ed walls.
In Ask MetaFilter, the question was "How do I use picture rails?" This was the first such site I found and had good links. Here I found picture hooks exactly like the ones I have. For more discussion, here is an Ask MetaFilter search on picture rails.
Historic Style has a period photo of pictures hung from picture rails and gives some historic information.

Here are the sites with noteworthy picture rail hooks (in random order):

Wide Brass Picture Rail Hooks - 2 for $1.00. One and 5/8-inch long x 11/16-inch wide x 1/32-inch thick, which is the size I have. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for specifications and very detailed instructions for hanging pictures. [from Picture Hang Solutions in Hillsborough, NC]
1/2 inch Simple Rail Hooks - 10 for $2.50. See also their selection. My picture hooks from college are 11/16 inch wide. [from Rejuvenation in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington]
Moore Push Pin has zinc molding hooks with two holes in them so one might use a nail to reinforce the strength of the hook (scroll down about three-fourths of the way to see the item). I don't like that they are made of zinc, but the holes are intriguing. They come 3 on a card for $1.97 and are suitable for weight up to 15 pounds. I am keeping this item as it referenced the weight that can be supported (with nail holes!). [from Office1000.com in Oil City, PA]
Secure brass-plated picture hooks - 2 for $1.50. These also have the holes for nails. They are one and 3/4 inch long by 1/2 inch wide x 1/32-inch thick. They also come in a nickel-plated version of the same size. The secure picture hooks are recommended in areas where there are earthquakes. [from Picture Hang Solutions in Hillsborough, NC]
Molding hook by Hillman Fastner Corp. - 10 for $22.90; only sold in sets of 10. I include this link because many of the hardware stores I visited had other hooks by Hillman, but not this one. This hook has one nail hole in it. By the way, Hector's Hardware Store [Williamsville, NY] has the same item that must be purchased in sets of 10 for $19.90. Neither Do-It-Best [Fort Wayne, Indiana] nor Hector's give any additional information about the size of the hook.
Victorian Picture Molding Hook - 1 for $6.72. It is 1.5-inch high x 1.75-inch wide, solid brass. I include this one because it is beautiful and vintage. [from Paxton Antique Cabinet & Lamp Hardware, LTD in Maryland]
Antique Picture Molding Hook - 1 for $2.99; solid brass. One and 3/8-inch high x 1-3/8 inch wide by 1-3/8-inch deep. [from Antique Hardware & Home in South Dakota]
Jane Austin Collection - they seem to be selling the cord that hangs the pictures on the picture molding hook. While other sources recommend hanging pictures using at least two hooks, this page shows a way to hang a picture using only one hook. I include it for its history. [from The Swan Company in Orland, CA]
Picture Molding Hook in choice of 8 finishes - 1 for $.80; 1.75-inch tall x .5-inch wide x .04-inch thick. [from Golden's Antique Supply in Woodstock, GA]
House of Antique Hardware's (Portland, Oregon) selection of picture molding hooks - prices range from $.59 to $2.99 each. House of Antique Hardware also has the hooks that look like mine (brass is the same size as mine) in plain styles in steel with 8 finishes ($.79 to $1.29; 1.75 inch tall by 1.5 inch wide by .04 inch thick) and in solid brass in 8 finishes ($1.99 to $2.09; 1.75 inch tall by 11/16 wide by .05 inch thick). They also offer a selection of picture hanging cord.
Various Victorian molding hooks - prices range from $1.50 to $8.95 with cord in 4 colors ($1.30) and Victorian tassels ($19.00). [from Crown City Hardware in Pasadena, CA]

I was planning to use monofilament to hang my pictures, but will switch to wire or cord. The violinist I bought in Paris weighs between 12 and 13 pounds, so I could probably use a cream or gold colored cord as the picture lends itself to antiquity. It will go in my living room with one wall inspired by Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (Google Books, Wikipedia, Amazon). In my searching for picture hooks, I discovered that someone else did a wall inspired by this book (OK, the site that led me here was the Adirondack Boys blog). I will add a photo of the violinist picture hanging in my livingroom as soon as I get it completed.

Looking for a satisfying eBook reader

2008-05-30T05:54:00.065-04:00

Amazon's Kindle was a product that caught my interest so I began investigating to see what other options there are and which is the best value. I currently use my Treo phone to carry ebooks with me. The screen is small, but I have read many books this way. I really like how it will scroll the page reminding me of the speed reading machines I used in the early 60s. It seems that the current crop of e ink readers will not have this feature due to the technology of the e ink which must refresh the page rather than to continuously scroll it. At present, e ink technology requires a pause of a second or more with a black flush of the page to load the next page. In the case of a person who reads fast, that pause will seem an interruption in the flow of thoughts.

This blog entry will compare the Kindle with both a Sony Reader PRS-505 and the iRex iLiad second edition--all of which use the e ink technology. Day-to-day use of any product will make a person wish he or she had been more careful in looking at the details before purchase, so details are important in this review. Over the course of June 14 - 17, the original blog entry review about the Kindle and the Sony was reorganized to include the iLiad. A comparison of just the Kindle and the Sony has been done by many others: Gizmodo with photos and hands-on experience (about Nov. 2007), C|Net by a Sony Reader owner without having touched a Kindle (Nov. 19, 2007), Wired with some misinformation that is corrected in the comments (Nov. 19, 2007), Popular Mechanics provides a comparison of the stats of 4 ebook readers including the iLiad (Nov. 19, 2007); Edward Baig's comparison in USA Today leans in favor of the Kindle (one week after the Kindle's introduction, 2007); and Travis Hudson of PC World (June 13, 2008) looks at marketing primarily the Kindle, but says the Sony sales are also up. He says the Kindle sales are "no more than 50,000" so far since its release. However, A Kindle Homepage says that sales by early July have been 300,000.

The first good article on Amazon's Kindle that I found is at MacWorld (November 26, 2007). One commenter informs that Amazon does convert PDFs to be read on Kindle (link is to an Amazon Kindle page), but some more complex documents may not format correctly to the Kindle page. The Newsweek's cover article came out the same week (Stven Levy, November 26, 2007). It is worth it to read Steve Gibson's review. Kindle reviews on Amazon are at 3,218 (1,682 with 5 stars and 660 with 4; 2,342 with 4 or 5 stars) [compared with Sony silver's 84 (53 with 4- or 5-star) reviews and Sony blue's 55 (41 with 4- or 5-star) reviews)! In looking around at the state of the art of ebook readers, I discovered iRex's iLiad. See also a review by ZDNet and the i-to-i blog, which has my buddy Scoblizer listed on its blog roll. Amazon, which markets the iLiad through third parties, has reviews of both the Book Edition (4 reviews) and the Second Edition (3 reviews). There is some indication that there were more reviews at one time.

Jeff Hastings of the School Library Journal reviews the Kindle and iLiad in the February 2008 issue and has a video comparison. He also reviewed the Sony Reader PRS-500 in January. Be sure to check Paul Krugman's article on new technologies including e-books, which also mentions my friend Esther Dyson.

PRICING AND WEIGHT (and maybe a little more!)
The Kindle is currently $359, which is 10% less than it originally sold for when it sold out all available units in 5.5 hours. There was a period (before April 21, 2008) when people had to wait 6 weeks to get a Kindle prompting Jeff Bezos to make an apology. The Kindle weighs an ounce more (10.3 ounces) than the Sony (about 9 ounces), while the iLiad weighs almost a pound (15.3 ounces).

The Sony Reader is $220 to $330 across 23 stores. However, if you purchase the Sony from SonyStyle for $299.99, you can have two lines of laser engraving to personalize your silver, dark blue, or red James Patterson special edition ebook. SonyStyle is also running a special where you get 100 free ebook classics (a $199 value is claimed) if you purchase before Sept. 30, 2008 where you must download the books by the end of October. The PRS-505 is an upgrade of the PRS-500 [505 has faster refresh and better resolution, improved navigation, jog button replaced by 4-way arrows with a center enter button, the listing of books is easier to search, 2 parallel slots for SD (still 2 GB) and Memory Stick Duo (raised from 4GB to 8GB) for a total of 10GB storage (larger means slower), supports USB 2.0, can be charged from any PC (even without software), and the 505 acts as a mass storage device that you can transfer data to without using the eBook Library software (SonyStyle page, Tricks & Tips, scroll to 2nd from the bottom)]. The Sony weighs about nine ounces.

The Dutch iRex iLiad second edition is $699 (USA) and can also be purchased on Amazon for the same price (Amazon owns Mobipocket, a format that iLiad uses). Note that you cannot convert from EUROs to USA dollars as the people in Europe also have to pay VAT, which is included in the EUROs price (see Update). The increased cost is actually somewhat understandable as the iLiad also uses "Wacom Penabled technology" in a B&W environment (the 8 x 6 Intuos3 color tablet costs $329 and weighs more than the iLiad; not to imply that the iLiad is anything close to an Intuos3--more on this later). However, the price is twice that of the Kindle! Reviewers favorably compare the iLiad to a tablet PC, but other reviewers also say that at just under a pound, it is heavy for a reader. You have to consider that the iRex second edition is multifunction equipment combining an eBook with a Wacom tablet that can be used for drawing, marking the pages of a book, and taking notes in a lecture that can later be converted from handwriting to text. It also is a mass storage device that can access the iRex Delivery Service (iDS) on the Internet independent of a computer. There is also a Book Edition (introduced May 7, 2008) of the iLiad that is $100 less loaded with 50 Free classic books and does not have WiFi or the nifty protective cover, a.k.a. shoulder bag ($16.95), otherwise it is the same as the 2nd edition. Both editions weigh 15.3 ounces, give 15 hours of reading on a single charge, and are expandable to 8GB memory using MMC and CF cards. You can load both iRexes with anything that you can print from your computer as well as PDF / HTML / TXT / JPG / BMP/ PNG formats.

USER GUIDES AND RESOURCES
Kindle User's Guide, pdf, version 1.1. Although the User's Guide states that one can link to topics from the Table of Contents, it does not work within a browser or when you save the User's Guide to your computer. Maybe it works on the Kindle itself. There are only the page thumb nails within the file and no listing of links. Support page; The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle by Stephen Windwalker available in Kindle format for $2.39, which is a work in progress and it is constantly growing. Windwalker also has How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Free Wireless Email & Over 100 Pages of Other Cool Tips (The Complete User's Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle) (Kindle Edition, $2.79; pamphlet, $4.99). As with any book for Kindle, the first chapter is free. There is a companion web site for the book, A Kindle Home Page, which bills itself as a vast public domain compendium of useful Kindle links. Other resources: Wikipedia, MobileRead Wiki, RapidRepair for the Kindle, the eBOOK DAILY with an emphasis on Kindle (formerly the Kindle Report). Mike Elgan keeps a Kindle page updated with latest news and finds. See also, his opinion article on Amazon Kindle does e-mail and more. Kindle forums: MobileRead, Amazon (see also) (both Amazon forums have1023 discussions).

Sony Reader User's Man ual for the PRS-505 (the link is the support page); Sony ebook Library software is used in managing files. By the way, the Sony manual is easy to use since they made links from the Table of Contents to the pages in the listing. Resources: Wikipedia (article is rich with info and links to conversions of data and third party tools) and MobileRead Wiki (also very rich source with links to information on the forum). Sony Reader forums: MobileRead,

iRex iLiad User's Guide in pdf format (Flickr photo from Jan. 17, 2007). See also support (scroll to bottom of page where there are links to the iLiad Companion Software Manual, the Mobiocket Viewer Manual as well as Quick Reference and How to make content for your iLiad). Please note from this point forward that the iLiad's User Guide has information pertaining to reading PDF files while the Mobipocket Viewer Manual covers the addition of the Mobipocket reader that came later (April 2007); hence, it is sometimes confusing unless one sorts out which part of the iLiad is being referenced. It is a good thing that the iLiad's tool bar is context sensitive and thereby less confusing. In each of the manuals. there are links to topics within the Table of Contents and each manual has bookmarks implemented so links within the manual are visible on the left side of the pdf page. Resources: Wikipedia and MobileRead Wiki. iLiad forums: iRex Technologies, MobileRead,

[Note: Amazon has an ebook Readers' Forum that includes these 3 ebook readers and more.]

ACCESSING THE INTERNET
I haven't bought a Kindle since it is pricey, but I had not realized it included a wireless network (EVDO) for cell phones using Sprint called Whispernet. This means that anywhere you can get a Sprint cellphone signal, you can go on the Internet with it. You can download a new book from the Internet on an air plane after takeoff. Free Internet access is to the Amazon Kindle Store (130,000 ebooks including 98 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers and a wide selection of US and International newspapers, which are free the first two weeks) and Wikipedia. You can download first chapters of books to see if you really want to read them. You can subscribe to 300 top blogs (with no comments) updated throughout the day through the Amazon Store where the cost is to offset the access fees or you can use the Basic Browser, but you will be charged for access. The Basic Browser supports cookies, JavaScript, and SSL, but not "plug-ins like Flash or Shockwave or Java applets" (Mike Elgan, ComputerWorld and Mac World, November 21, 2007). When there is a link to the Internet (underlined text with a page icon next to it) in the text of a book, use the scroll wheel to move the cursor besides the line, select the link from the pop-up menu, and if there is a fee to access the page, accept the charges (Accessing Basic Web). It would be really nice if there were a set price for unlimited access, but I have seen no mention of this. You can email MS Word documents and photos to your Kindle. Kindle also backs up every book you purchase to "Your Media Library" on the Internet so that you can download it again without repurchasing it. No other ebook reader gives this much access to the Internet.

The Sony Reader PRS-505 can be attached to your computer and used as a mass storage device so you can copy saved Internet content from your computer or save directly from the Internet to the Reader, but it cannot access the Internet itself. You install software called ebook Library on your computer from a CD-ROM. The ebook Library software is where you backup and store all your ebooks. If you add memory cards, then each time you disconnect from the USB, the Sony Reader reorganizes your ebooks, which can cause lengthy waits (worst case: one reviewer reported as long as 2 hours for a listing of 1,500 books).

The iRex iLiad has its own global iRex Delivery Service (iDS) for their Mobile Office Service or for newspapers (French and Chinese and also others that are not mentioned as evidenced by this photo with BBC News) updated throughout the day anytime the iLiad is connected to the Internet via Ethernet using the travel hub or by the built-in Wi-Fi® 802.11B/G wireless networking. The connection using WiFi is as simple as pushing a button. After downloading from iDS, the iLiad disconnects to save power. Note again that the iLiad connects to iDS, not to the whole Internet. The iRex network solution is not as sexy or as comprehensive as the Kindle, but it should work in most places. This is a push system where iRex partners can push subscribed content to the user. Any user him/herself or anyone else the user authorizes can also push information to the iLiad through iDS from any Internet connection.

It is surprising that after a couple of years there are not more newspapers and magazines signed up with iDS, although there is some evidence that other newspapers not listed on the iRex web site are available. The explanation may be that eNews is available to the iLiad through Mobipocket content saved to a flash drive, MMC or CF. iRex envisions libraries partnering with them to push content to iLiad users through their iDS, but there is no indication that any libraries are using it yet. However, users have reported that the new RSS software works really well, although RSS content has to be loaded from your computer using the Mobipocket software with the iLiad connected via USB (See comments, Henk van Ess or search on RSS). Also, you can save a Simple English Wikimedia in under 100 MB to an USB flash drive (or other applicable media) to use on the iLiad.

For those with a more technological background, one commenter says you can add an 18GB-CF card and use a Linux swap file and applications from that card. Then you can "listen to Internet radio, use a spreadsheet app, control iTunes remotely, database all your stuff, have a big music collection, use Linux multi-thread technology to switch between applications like books, notes, web pages, and audio controls." The iLiad has "13 button functions that can be altered to do many different things." Each button can have two functions, one activated by a short click and the other by a long click (See comment by Anonymous or search on Linux). The iLiad is the most open of the readers. It is the only one that allows the user to run exe files with the result that programmers are writing programs to extend its usability.

Just as with the Sony Reader, the iLiad can be used as a mass storage device holding content that you have accessed through your computer while connected via USB port on the hub (not the USB port on the iLiad itself, which is only for a flash drive). You could also just save the information to a flash drive and inset it into the USB port on the iLiad. Since adding Mobipocket books in

THE SCREENS
All three reviewed ebook readers use e ink. Here is a list of Ebooks using e ink. The technology behind e ink is called electrophoretic technology. Computerworld has a June 6, 2008 article on "The Future of e-paper."

The Sony Reader 505's screen has 8 levels of gray with 170 pixels per inch (Sony's 500 screen is 4 levels of gray) while Kindle's screen has 4 levels of gray with 167 pixels per inch (these ppi figures are essentially the same; the Sony figure is probably rounded off). Otherwise the two screens (Kindle and Sony) have the same dimensions (4.9" x 3.6" with a 6-inch diagonal, 600 x 800 pixels) (CNet, 11/19/07). Too bad the Kindle opted for 4 levels losing the extra clarity that the Sony is reported to have. The difference is disputable as other reviewers say the Kindle fonts are clearer and in another place it is said that increased shades of gray makes a difference primarily in the pictures. Sony says the Reader has a near 180° view angle. Since Kindle and iLiad share the e ink technology, I assume this would be true for the Kindle and iLiad also.

The iRex iLiad eBook reader uses 16 levels of gray on its 8.1" diagonal screen with 768 x 1024 pixels at 160 dpi. Because it is a larger screen, the dpi is a slightly lower number. The ultimate plan is to make the iLiad have a color screen (from a PowerPoint presentation listed by the moderator on on TeleRead, slide 25 and others). I am sure that all the ebooks will want color.

[Aside: FLEPia by Fujitsu (FLexible Electronic Paper; generic term is e paper; and the technology is cholesteric LCD) has a color screen now with limited sales (lots of 10 for $13,303) in 2007 and promise to begin general sales in 2008 with the price lowered by the increased production. Photos of various manufacturers' products that use cholesteric LCD are provided on Flickr.]

[Aside 2: The Astak Pro Mentor 9.7 (see also the MobileRead Wiki; joint project with Netronix EB-900) due out in October 2008 has a 1200 x 825 pixel screen at 170 dpi, 4 gray scales, a touch screen, but no mention of drawing capacity. The introduction of the 9.7 is being delayed as Astak explores a flexible screen as a way to reduce crackage to the "glass substrate." It also plays stereo MP3, has 2 USB 2.0 ports - one with charge function, SD card slot up to 4GB, runs on Windows CE 5.0, projected price is under $350. (although another source says $589 dropped to $450 in 3 to 6 months and selling at Costco and Walmart, both of whom want full-solution ebook stores.) Their 5-inch model is to be introduced to the market on July 28 at under $200 or for $299.]

JUST WHAT FILES CAN THEY READ
What files can a Kindle read? Kindle (.azw); Text (.txt); unprotected MobiPocket (.mobi and .prc), Audible (.aa) and MP3. Users comment that they are miffed that the Kindle will not read a protected mobi file causing them to have to purchase a book they already own in protected mobi a second time to access it on the Kindle. There has also been some dissatisfaction that while a Kindle will read a MS Word file as a doc, and it will read a txt file, it will not read a rtf (rich text format).

Amazon will also convert some files types to azw (a flavor of mobi which Amazon owns) including MS Word (.d0c), structured HTML (.htm, .html), JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and ZIP (Kindle User's Manual, pp. 77-78). They also have an experimental process where they convert a PDF to azw where some of the results may be unexpected. They deliver the result to your Kindle using Whispernet for 10 cents a document, which represents an access fee for the Internet. However, Joe Wikert reports that Amazon changed its mind about charging the dime. They will also deliver to your email address for no charge a link from which you can download the converted-to-azw document. Kindle users comment that they will not send private documents to Amazon for conversion. They complain that the documents are archived on Amazon's servers when they would like to opt out of that service.

[Note: The mobi format is based on the Open eBook Publication format specified by the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) with some proprietary extensions. Amazon augmented those mobi extensions to create their azw file type. It would be so nice if Amazon would help end the format wars by going with the standard. This business of creating proprietary formats to lock users into purchasing content from a specific company is part of what is keeping people from going with ebooks in the first place. The concept is certainly part of both Amazon's and Sony's business model.]

What files can a Sony Reader read? pdf, rtf (rich text format), doc (Word files will be converted to rtf), BBeB, MP3 (with specific specifications), AAC file (mp4, m4a, mov, or qt) with stated specifications, bmp, gif, jpg, png (Sony Reader User's Manual, pp. 25-26). The process of importing the files is through the provided ebook Library software. One Sony Reader owner reports that since it is difficult to read pdf format using the Adobe, she converts pdf to rtf using the Adobe Acrobat function.

What files can a iLiad read? Using Mobipocket viewer, it can read mobi books (.prc) and eNews (.htm and .html), [which may explain the photo of the BBC news on the iLiad as well as why more newspapers are not using iDS since they can be accessed through Mobipocket]. In addition, they can read PDF / TXT / JPG / BMP/ PNG. There are also graphic files that are more suited to the iLiad environment such as FAA Flight charts in a specialized version of iLiad called an eFLY book with 21 participating dealers in the USA and an eFLY forum (presently 88 users with over 470 posts). [Other Flybook implementations are on a tablet PC starting at $2449 (probably in color).]

ADJUSTING PRINT SIZE
Fixed formatted documents such as PDF were designed for printing, not for the ebook reader environment. Each of the readers handles this problem differently. Each reader also has a more free flowing format for reading. The two different types of files usually demand different controls for adjusting print size.

Kindle's documents are free flowing by default. To change the size of the letters on the Kindle, you press a button (text key at the bottom right of the keyboard) that pops up a menu with 6 sizes of letters pictured from which you select the size you want using a scroll wheel that moves a little light up and down along the right side of the list. There is no mention of being able to change the page orientation.

To view PDF "fixed formatted" documents on the Kindle, one needs to convert to "free flowing" documents, such as azw, doc or mobi. Conversion is either a do-it-yourself task or you can let Amazon run their experimental process of converting PDF to their proprietary azw file. The do-it-yourselfer can use the free MobiPocket Reader to convert a PDF to a mobi, which the Kindle can read. A PDF document can also be converted to a MS Word doc. To deal with the small font size, one can increase the font size after the conversion, and certainly before sending the document to the reader.

The Sony Reader allows you to change through three sizes of letters (S, M, and L indicated at the bottom of the page) using the size button, which is conveniently located to the top and left of the buttons that turn the pages (bottom left of the reader). The button is marked with a magnifying glass with a plus on it. It is really nice that Sony does not require a user to go through a menu system to change the letter sizes. The first two presses increase the size of the letters each time with an icon showing the size at the bottom of the screen. The third press returns you to the default size. Kendrick Adams, in reviewing the Sony Reader, further explains that the first time you request a size change, there is a pause while the Reader reformats the pages at the size requested. He says that by opening the file on your computer and increasing the font size and reloading the file into the Reader, you can further increase the size of a font on the reader.

When viewing a PDF document, the size button alternates between "Fit width" and "Fit visible" (Sony Reader User's Manual, pp. 39, 56). To view the largest print in a PDF, change from vertical to horizontal orientation by pressing and holding the size button, then select "Fit visible." Sony Reader users say (in reviews and forums) they get around the problems of small print in a PDF file by converting it to either MS Word (saved in rtf) or to the Sony proprietary lrf format (Google "pdf to lrf").

The iLiad gives access to its features by a context sensitive tool bar of icons at the bottom left of the screen which are accessed using the stylus (Wacom Slip Pen). Be aware that there are different icons for a Mobipocket file (.prc) and a PDF file.

First, the PDF file will be reviewed. Tapping the landscape view icon rotates the screen counterclockwise to the landscape view and inverses the shades of gray on the icon to show it is active. Tapping the icon with inversed shades will return the screen to the portrait view and the icon to its original shading.

The other viewing controls for PDF files are Continuous mode, Fit to screen, Zoom, Previous zoom, and Pan. Continuous mode is recommended when reading horizontal view so that the pages are presented end to end in a continuous vertical reading order. This has the effect of the usual fit-to-width command for a PDF, i.e., the horizontal window has continuous feed of the width of the file. Fit to screen is another familiar mode for PDF and is the default when a PDF document is opened on the iLiad. It is useful to use when leaving a zoomed view. To activate a zoomed view, click the zoom icon and use the stylus to indicate the area to be zoomed (even a line or circle works which the iLiad converts to rectangular coordinates). Previous zoom allows a person to switch back and forth between the last two zoom screens. To pan, click the icon with the stylus and draw a line in the direction of the desired pan.

Of course, there are back, forward, and search icons. In the search mode, a small keyboard appears at the bottom of the screen allowing tapping with the stylus to enter search phrases. Multiple search strings can be used even in multiple files (multiple files are available from the content lister). A single file is searched from within the document. Repeated taps on the search icon continue to the next item found for the search. While in the content lister, the files can also be sorted by name, extension, size, date, or information tags (title or description).

However there is not book mark function in a PDF document. Programmers have created bookmarking additions to the program. If you want to add programs, you must start by reading all of this page. After that step, you can add the bookmarks program. Included in the listing are MP3 playing software, browsers, games, calculators, file management, organizer software and more.

The iRex and Mobipocket agreed to have the iLiad read Mobipocket files around April 2007 (Announcement in iRex forum). With this addition came an additional manual, and additional tool bar icons that appear in a Mobipocket file including: 1. Table of Contents, 2. Begin Reading, 3. Look Up (to look a word up in one or more dictionaries click on icon, then click on word in reading), 4. Dictionary search (a keyboard appears at the bottom of the page for you to type the word to look up, words appear as keys are entered, click on the word, and definitions appear), 5. Increase font and 6. Decrease font. Clicking on the Increase font will make the font larger and increase the number of pages. Clicking on Decrease font will make the font smaller and decrease the number of pages. Thus, it appears that there are 3 font sizes: the default, one size larger and one size smaller.

HIGHLIGHTING AND ADDING NOTES
On the Kindle, you can highlight and add notes using the Annotation menu at the top right of every page. Highlighting involves marking a beginning point, pressing "Add Highlight ..", scrolling to the end, and pressing the select wheel (Kindle User's Guide, p.44). The highlighted area is enclosed in a box.

The notes you make (annotations) can be viewed in the order they appear in the book in a listing that includes your bookmarks. They are also stored in an area called My Clippings (also backed up on the Amazon servers) and can be downloaded to your computer later. Even when you delete (remove) the book that a clipping came from, the clipping file will not be affected. A note icon appears to the right side of any page with a note. It seems that the note icon means there is at least one note on the page; however in adding the note, one indicates the line the note is attached to, which appears to be an aid for the Kindle to order the notes in My Clippings file. It would be better if the note could appear on the page, but you can easily view the note without changing the page as one must do with end notes in a book. There was no mention of how to view actual end notes of a book, but I imagine that the use of bookmarks will prove helpful in navigating. Bookmarking a page is as simple as selecting the dog-eared icon at the top of the page or using a menu to select "Add bookmark." You can see all your bookmarks by selecting "Go to bookmark..." from the menu. The Kindle automatically saves your place.

There is no mention in the Sony Reader User's Manual of the possibility of highlighting or making notations within the text on the Sony Reader. There is also no mention of being able to copy quotations from the text, as a student would do in the preparation of college papers. However, you can bookmark pages using the Mark button. Holding the Mark button down causes a list of all bookmarks to appear. While there does not appear to be a way to export the bookmarks, they are saved when you move the book from the Reader to the Library. The Sony Reader automatically saves your place.

Often I underline both a word and the same word a few paragraphs later with a light pencil line connecting them. I am not sure how to duplicate that on the Kindle, but I could do it on the iLiad with its Wacom technology. One can vary the shade of gray and the width of a line, by using menu options as this system is not pressure sensitive, and erase the lines. Is is possible to draw on the text or create drawings on a blank page. The notes taken on the ebook pages are saved in a file separate from the ebook file. However, using your computer, you can use the iRex-provided, free iLiad Companion software, (XP version) that will merge the two files in a pdf document. With a pdf document, you can easily select quotations to copy into a college paper without having to type information from the book. Your notes and mark-ups will continue to be visible when you view the book on the iLiad.

In addition, you can use the iLiad for drawing with any jpg, bmp, or png file serving as a template that can be used under numerous drawings or notes such as crossword puzzles. Ars Technica has provided photos of sample mark ups on the iLiad showing sketching on a grid template, making notes over a photograph, writing notes over a musical score, and writing over the Sudoku template. The iLiad templates also include lined paper. Any of these drawings or writings are saved as a new file of the same type using the original name followed by the date and time. The new file is easily transferred to your computer for printing and viewing. In addition, the free companion software will merge a series of images into a pdf document making it easy to combine several pages of notes into a single file. Handwritten notes on a blank or template page such as the lines template can be converted to digital text using handwriting recognition software such as the MyScript Notes 2.1 that iRex sells for an additional $70 making it possible to take notes in a college class and have them translated into text. The probability is that other character recognition software could also be used.

[Note: As far as taking notes in college classes, the LiveScribe Pulse digital pen ($149 for 1G memory capacity for 35 hours of audio at the highest quality setting; $199 for 2G; both pens come with a 100-page notebook of the special paper) looks like a better choice. This cigar-sized pen uses special paper, but LiveScribe plans to add the capability to print your own paper in August. The pen is about a half-inch in diameter. However, the standout feature is its audio recording. Later when you are reviewing your notes, "you can tap a place in your notes, and the pen will play back what it was hearing when that was written." This is what is calling me to investigate the pen farther. Sometimes I miss a word, but with this pen, I won't! Check the LiveScribe web site and Gizmodo review. Since my feeling is that there is no satisfying ebook at the present for me to purchase, this digital pen is a good alternative for note taking. ]

AUDIO BOOKS
I was very excited to find that the Kindle also plays audio books. I was hoping that an audio book would show the text or that at least one could view the text from a purchased book while playing the text from a purchased audio book. A phone call to Kindle's tech support (866-321-8851) let me know that neither was now possible. My best bet is to continue using text-to-speech software on my computer, which also has the added advantage of highlighting the word or word and sentence being read. One advantage of using my Treo as a book reader is that the text can also be viewed on my computer where it can be read by the text-to-speech software. The Kindle does not allow an ebook to be moved to a computer. However, others are asking for ebooks that can be read to the user with some sort of text-to-speech enhancement.

On the Sony Reader PRS 505 you can listen to a file of the book being read while reading the book, but there are no convenient controls for starting, pausing, fast back or forward, or stopping. There is a control for the volume (Sony Reader User's Manual, pp. 53-54).

For now, I will wait on purchasing a new ebook reader and continue to use the one in my Treo. However, I have to admit that I appreciate the thinking that went into the Kindle. Maybe in the next year I will get one. It will be interesting to watch the developments in the ebook world.

Moving -- in the middle of a school year? Oh no!

2008-04-27T00:10:00.005-04:00

Teachers always plan any household moves in the summer, right? Yes, but my landlord sold the house I was living in. I knew it could happen since December. I had heard that my landlord's contract with the real estate agent was about to come to an end and that having found condos so expensive they were having second thoughts about selling the house. However, on the last day of the contract, the realtor called and her client had finally gotten a mortgage. So on March 1, I found out that we should move by April 1st. The closing for the house was the last day of March. If I couldn't move, the rent would go up by $300 a month, but I should try to be moved by May then.

I had been looking for a new apartment since December. I was even thinking of buying a multi-family house myself and I did speak to my landlady about buying their house. I looked at dozens of apartments near where I work and even further away. I used Craig's list as well as the local newspapers and an agency in my city that listed all the available apartments. I had my own real estate person who did a great job of finding really nice places. I was afraid that I was buying at the wrong time and was rushing to make a decision too quickly.

On the Thursday before Easter, I decided to look again at Craig's list within my price range. There was one apartment that did not have its price listed. I called and found that the price was negotiable. I looked at the apartment. It was really nice and I was able to negotiate a price in my range. A week previously, I had contacted a moving company and had an appointment on Friday to get a quote for a move even though at the time I had no place to move to. The appointment was rescheduled by the mover for Saturday. They moved me on Monday after Easter. On Easter Sunday, I packed 63 boxes of books, rented a van, moved them, unpacked them to the floor of my new dining room, and returned the 63 empty boxes to my old apartment to repack. As a teacher, I have a lot of books!

Moving day did not end in the manner that I had imagined (to say the least). The movers took apart my bookcases, moved them, and did not put them back together. They broke things and hid it. They had to pack most of my belongings and hence, I did not know where anything was. I was horrified to find that they emptied my file drawers into boxes (picture them throwing the ordered contents of the file drawers into a box). The boxes were marked with their location (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, etc.) and sometimes there were even cryptic notes as to the contents, but that was not enough. Things in my new apartment took up twice the space that they will eventually take since the files and chests of drawers were empty and the contents were in boxes. I thought that at the end of the day, the bookcases would be standing empty and when the movers left, I would put all the books on the shelves and the apartment would look nice.

It has been over a month since I moved. I just got the second bookcase unit back together on Saturday. The first unit was finished last week. I made a trip to Ikea to buy parts. I bought these units 12 or 13 years ago. At that time Ikea had a much larger selection of wall units and I had bought the top of the line. Today, Ikea sells only two varieties which includes the Billy, which was the most inexpensive line they carry (true 13 years ago also). Ikea no longer makes the hardware for my unit. In spite of the Geek Gestalt blog at c|net news.com saying that Ikea's secret is to minimize the number of parts in their furnishings by designing with same basic hardware in as many products as possible, Ikea has discontinued the hardware I need. I do have all the directions for putting the units together (somewhere in one of those boxes), which directions will include the parts and their numbers. Ikea says there is some chance that if I have the part numbers I can get the parts I am looking for.

I have been living a surreal life where I cannot find what I know I own. I was not able to find my underwear for over a week so I was washing out my single pair of underpants each night. People said I should buy more underwear, but I was sure I had more than enough. When I found it, there were more than 50 pairs. I went through them and threw out the pairs that were frayed. (OK, any that were badly frayed were thrown out years before, but it was time to include these slightly frayed ones into the trash!) In our twenties, we think we have to collect possessions. I am a pack rat and never throw anything usable out. Now I have to change my ways and reduce my possessions.

My goal every day has been to unpack 10 boxes of the over 200 I have sitting on the floor. One has to have a place to unpack into. The woman who previously lived in my kitchen left a fine patina of oil spattered on the doors of all the cupboards. The interior shelves are coated with flour, oil, and other mess that I have to clean before I can unpack my kitchen things. I am told that what she left was much worse and that my new landlord cleaned 90 to 95% of the mess in addition to putting in a new kitchen floor, sink and counter. So it is necessary to open boxes that cannot yet be unpacked and stick post-it notes on the outside listing the contents. I try to keep looking for 10 boxes I can actually unpack.

As I work, it is also necessary to eliminate the empty boxes. Craig's List to the rescue! I have offered my boxes for sale at really inexpensive prices and people have come here to pick up the boxes that are now being recycled! This has worked very well!

Each day there is improvement and the place is getting more organized.

OLPC XO Computer Arrived Today!

2007-12-19T23:36:00.000-05:00

It's here! My very own XO computer! I keep discovering wonderful things about it.

It has an SD slot and a built in camera. They ship it with the battery already charged. I need to find my microphones so I can make music. It's awesome!

It is little as in "child-sized." Here you can see the cute little keys. I have thin fingers so it is not a problem.

The biggest problem I had was how to shut it down. Mouse over the XO and a menu pops up with shutdown as one of the options.

More to come (I left it at home so I would focus better on work I must do now).

Don't think that the actions of one person do not make a difference

2007-12-10T21:29:00.000-05:00

I use a Firefox add-on called WOT for Web of Trust. They rate web sites on four criteria: trustworthyness, vendor reliability, privacy, and child safety. Green means the web site is good to go; yellow means caution; and red means stop, danger here. Most of the time, the sites I visit are green. Yesterday, I was surprised to encounter two sites that had lower ratings.

Tegrity was marked as an unsafe web site by Web of Trust (WOT) (yellow for trustworthy, red for vendor reliability and respecting of privacy, with no rating for child-safety).
The WOT rating for Echo360 is trustworthy, but also has a red rating for vendor reliability and respecting of privacy.

These ratings are disturbing, but I like their products. I went to the WOT web site to ask them about the ratings.

I wrote to WOT about the Tegrity and Echo360 ratings and received the following reply from Sami, a representative at WOT:

"It seems that tegrity.com has a poor rating, because one of our information sources believes their products have been spam-advertised in the past. However, we have no other evidence of this, so it's plausible that this is a false positive. I have removed the false positive from our database and the site's rating should improve shortly.

"It looks like apreso.com has been reported of spamming last spring by a couple of our sources. The company is now called Echo360, Inc. and some of links direct to the echo360.tv domain instead. Again, this might be caused by a one-time mailing instead of a larger campaign.

"As you can see, email marketing is a very touchy subject for many Internet users these days, and sending out unsolicited messages is an excellent way to quickly hurt one's reputation. That's probably because the spam problem is getting worse each year. Even though companies like Google do a great job filtering out most of the junk, over 90% of all email traffic this year has been spam:
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9831556-16.html

"If you have any further questions, please let us know."

So, one person's action (mine) resulted in the change of rating for both companies. Tegrity's ratings were all changed to green. Since Echo360 had been reported by a couple of sources, their ratings on reliability and privacy were changed from red to yellow.

I plan to write WOT again because it seems to me that they are linking vendor reliability and privacy policy to spamming. Vendor reliability should have more to do with their delivery of their products and the quality of their products. I think that since spamming is so critical, there should be a separate rating that would reflect advertising methods.

While I was at it, I also mentioned that many of the links in the ALA (American Library Association)'s newsletter indicate a yellow rating for the first three categories with no rating for child safety. Here is Sami's reply:

All the links in the newsletter you sent us point to a server called link.ixs1.net . The domains ixs1.net and ixs2.net are owned by a company called eWayDirect, which sells email marketing and tracking services to many companies. Unfortunately, they also do business with spammers. You can read some of the abuse reports here:

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=group%3Anews.admin.net-abuse.*+ewaydirect

I like WOT's service. I like how responsive they are. I want to help them improve their service.

What did the professor say?

2007-12-09T17:51:00.000-05:00

The New York Times had a most intriguing article today, What did the professor say? Check your iPod, by Anne Eisenberg. A number of universities (University of Central Florida; Santa Clara University, CA; Purdue University; El Centro College, Dallas; Kansas State University) are using or planning to use software for recording a professor's lectures and making it available to students on their iPods.

The software for recording that "captures the words of classroom lectures and syncs them with the digital images used during the talk--usually PowerPoint slides and animations" is offered by at least two companies: Tegrity and Echo360. Each web site lists colleges/universities that are their clients (Tegrity claims over 400 educational institutions world wide; Echo360's customer list).

In the New York Times article, they spoke with people at Purdue who were using Echo360. Their web site lists MIT, Princeton, Brandeis, St. John's University, and Stanford among their customers.

On the Tegrity web site, Blackboard is listed as one of their partners with this comment:

Blackboard is allied with Technology Partner Tegrity to enhance the online education experience for institutions, administrators, instructors, and students. Tegrity products complement and enhance the Blackboard suite of products, and Tegrity-generated class recordings and e-learning content is seamlessly integrated into Blackboard courses.

In a news article, the following is said:

Blackboard provides the e-Learning platform used by colleges and universities across the country and abroad. For more than a decade, Tegrity's technology has enabled educational institutions to automatically record every class on campus and deliver them online for students to access. Together Blackboard and Tegrity will enable greater access to educational resources and content providing significant convenience and flexibility to the members of academic institutions around the world.

How Tegrity's Blackboard Building Block Works - Podcasts Automatically Created from Class

Tegrity Podcast setup starts at the beginning of the semester as the Tegrity Campus Blackboard Building Block adds a podcast subscription button in every Blackboard course and sends a personalized email to students with a one-click link for subscribing to their podcasts using iTunes.

During class, instructors press one button to start and stop recording and the software automatically creates visual podcasts broken down by chapter, that are automatically uploaded after class to the right place on the Tegrity Server. The Tegrity Campus Blackboard Building Block component uses information already available in the Blackboard Learning System to automatically catalogue the recordings by course. While listening to their podcasts, students can easily navigate to specific parts (chapters) of their class and get right to the information they need.

Blackboard administrators and other stakeholders in the institution can use the Tegrity Campus governance component to track usage, observing how students effortlessly take advantage of more instruction hours without burdening institution staff.

More to come . . .

Confirmation that my photo is to be published

2007-12-09T00:17:00.000-05:00

I received notification three hours ago that my photo taken inside the American Museum of Natural History has been selected for publication in the Schmap's Guide to New York City. I wrote about the possibility of my photo being selected previously. As mentioned previously, the selected photos rotate through a mini slide show above the description of the AMNH. You have to look quickly, but my photo is in the show and they do give me credit.

Google (maps) goes green!

2007-12-05T13:34:00.000-05:00

Esther Dyson shows a screen shot of the new Google map screen (may not yet be available where you are) for New York City with a "Take Public Transit" option. Esther is reaching this screen from within the Google headquarters. Commenters indicate that they are not able to access the same screen as Esther shows.

Her screen shows a route from La Guardia Airport to the Meetup Headquarters where she has office space. She credits Tom Sly of Google for the new green and indicates that real-time transit information is coming soon to a computer near you.

Richard Wolf, NYPL librarian @ Health & Information Center

2007-12-02T09:20:00.000-05:00

On November 26, 2007, I took a class called Health Information on the Internet at the Mid-Manhattan Library. The class is regularly scheduled.

More to come . . .

Jack Kerouac Explored in In-Depth

2007-12-01T12:59:00.000-05:00

Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road on view at The New York Public Library from November 9, 2007 - February 24, 2008; March 1 - 16, 2008. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of the publication of his novel, On the Road.

The poster is from another event, Remembering Jack, held at Columbia University, November 3, 2006. I took photos of the panel discussion and participated in the reading of Howl at the West End.

Jennifer John, Librarian

2007-11-30T19:07:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about Jennifer John today. I spoke of her in a previous entry.

So I went to whitepages.com and typed in her father's name. Three entries came up. The first one looked like a possibility even though the address was not that of the family's previous home. Within minutes, I was reconnecting with Mr. John!

It took a few more days for Jennifer and me to connect by phone. That wonderful business that did research for people also shifted to providing an organizing and cataloging service of a business' documents. The main clients were oil and gas and engineering firms. When the recession hit, then the business slowed. Jennifer has done a variety of things since then including working in the Austin Public Library. She presently does training of library personnel through Central Texas Library Systems. Jennifer is now Jennifer Patterson. She also participates in their blog.

My photo may appear in Schmap's Guide to New York City

2007-11-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

I got an email saying one of my photos has been selected to appear in Schmap's Guide to New York City! The edition that might have my photo will appear in early December. They will notify me if my photo is published.

If you look at their site, you will see a map on the left with pointers to places. When you mouse over a pointer, information shows up on the far right describing the location. My photo is of the American Museum of Natural History. The photo would show up above the description. The photos in that location are dynamic and are rotated with other photos.

Discover History: Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T15:43:00.000-05:00

There is one last web site that should be included in a review of the history of Thanksgiving. This is a post by Jeremy Bangs, Ph.D., Leiden University and a fellow of the Pilgrim Society. It is called, Thanksgiving on the net: Roast bull with cranberry sauce. It considers whether setting people straight about Thanksgiving myths is as much a part of Thanksgiving as "turkey, cranberry, and pumpkin pie."

Since I have been a vegetarian since about 1994, my turkey might be soy turkey and the pumpkin pie is without egg. Sometimes we have gone to a Turkish restaurant, Beyoglu's, on Thanksgiving where they did have a traditional turkey and cranberry meal for meat eaters and I could have a middle eastern vegetarian meal. My meal several years ago is pictured above. I don't have a photo for this year because Beyoglu's was closed for Thanksgiving this year.

So instead, we ended up at P. J. Clark's in Lincoln Center. The lighting was not so good for photos and I was so hungry that I ate the food forgetting to take the photo first. P. J. Clark's has really good food! The photo is the bar inside P. J. Clark's.

More about the origins of Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

After some looking around at what the Internet offers on Thanksgiving and its origins, I have a more complete sense of the historical issues and also of what various people wish to emphasize. It is always important to consider a writer's/historian's personal bias as you read. As usual, there is the issue of how much religion is in the holiday.

Religion is one issue for Dennis Rupert in his explanation of The True Thanksgiving Story. He does give his references (by footnote, bibliography, and links). It appears that the Pilgrim's feast was in an American native tradition of thanksgiving festivals held at various times of the year, making Thanksgiving truly American and certainly allowing for alternate times, such as the Canadian Thanksgiving. Rupert's tracing of early Christian Thanksgivings begins in Texas on May 23, 1541 with the European Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado.

Walter McCabe (1942-2005), a person who had learning disabilities despite intelligence in the superior range, made quite a few web pages on Thanksgiving, as well as other holidays. Walter does not list any sources and writes in non-standard English telling about "Tisquantum," whom the English called Squanto. In his story, Squanto, from the Wampanoag confederation, was captured by Captain George Weymouth and taken to England to live with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the merchant ship owners, who taught him some English. Apparently, Squanto was being taught the language so he could and did return to Americas to assist as interpreter to those exploring the coast of America.

In 1614, Squanto returned to America with Captain John Smith on a mapping expedition. Smith left the project to his replacement Captain Thomas Hunt who captured 27 natives, sailed with them to Spain where he sold them as slaves. Squanto was lucky enough to be purchased by Friars who nursed him back to health and taught him about Jesus. It is not clear if they also taught him any Spanish. He lived with the Friars until 1618 when he took a ship to Newfoundland, where he was recognized by Captain Thomas Dermer, who wrote a letter to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Gorges organized an expedition with Dermer taking Squanto as interpreter to re-establish trade with the native Americans. In 1918, Squanto was returned to Patuxet, his home, where he found the entire population was wiped out by a European disease. Squanto lived with a neighboring tribe until the pilgrims settled in the same location as Patuxet. Squanto also negotiated the release of Dermer who had been captured at Cape Cod by Nausets.

The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) has an interview with Eric Metaxas, who wrote Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving while working as the editorial director and head writer for Rabbit Ears (specialized in children's picture books with an audio read by celebrities; bought by Listening Library, the children's division of Random House Audio). Metaxas emphasizes in the interview that his work is based on research using the original documents from the 1620s and 1630s. He confirms "that around 1612, a trader, a Captain Hunter, came to the coast of Massachusetts and was trading with the Indians." Captain Hunter sailed to Malaga, Spain where the Spanish monks bought Squanto from a slave market. Metaxas says that in 1615 Squanto went from Spain to England in hopes of getting a ship back to America. He worked for a family named Slaney as a stable boy for about five [sic] years until 1618. A ship is eventually provided and Squanto signs on as interpreter. Metaxas says the time from his capture until his return to Patuxet around 1620 was about ten years [sic], so even researchers have some trouble with time periods. Metaxas tells of the devestation Squanto must have felt in finding out that all of his people have been wiped out by disease. Metaxas also tells of Squanto going to live with a neighboring tribe until the Europeans settled in the same location as his former home, where he joined them.

Education World has a number of resources listed for teaching Thanksgiving in schools. Education World is a free resource for educators funded by corporate sponsors and advertisers.
Chuck Larsen, himself a descendant of native Americans, writes a foot-noted introduction with bibliography to Teaching about Thanksgiving where Larsen writes, "Squanto, the Indian hero of the Thanksgiving story, had a very real love for a British explorer named John Weymouth, who had become a second father to him several years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth. Clearly, Squanto saw these Pilgrims as Weymouth's people." He also states that the Wampanoag natives were not friendly, due to Hunter's capturing their youth, and were invited to the Thanksgiving as a step in the process of "negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims."

Education World also lists web sites that refute many of Larsen's statements. One such web site is that of Caleb Johnson of Mayflower History.com, who is himself a Mayflower descendant, and is a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants through his nine Mayflower ancestors. He has spent more than ten years researching the Mayflower and has published numerous books for sale at his web site. His web page refuting Larsen is indeed most factual, not only listing the names of sources, but also giving sizable, direct quotes. Johnson refutes the Captain John Weymouth story by indicating that his name was really Captain George Weymouth, which agrees with the name on Walter McCabe's web page. Johnson also includes Sir Ferdinando Gorges in Squanto's life, but only the second incident after Dermer's letter. He also gives a page of full-text, downloadable sources in pdf. Johnson's story of Tisquantum starts with his capture by Hunter and continues until his death. The same page also describes several other native personalities who were important at the time.

Back to Rupert's web site, we learn that Thanksgiving was not celebrated in Plymouth every year after that first feast held sometime between September 21 and November 11, 1621. Plymouth brought the celebration back in July 1624 after a drought led to prayer and reconciling with others, followed by days of a light, gentle rainfall. December 18, 1777 was the first time Thanksgiving was celebrated by all thirteen colonies to commemorate the "patriotic victory over the British at Saratoga."

"President George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving for November 26, 1789 to honor the formation of the United States government. His proclamation called for a day of prayer and giving thanks to God. It was to be celebrated by all religious denominations, but discord among the colonies prevented it from being practiced by all the states" (Rupert).

Perhaps Thanksgiving should really be the celebration of the United States processes of lawmaking. Thanksgiving remained a function of Presidential Proclamation until it became a law that took effect in 1942. Rupert states,

"Only Presidents Washington, Adams, and Madison declared national days of thanks in their terms. Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams considered the practice to infringe upon the separation of church and state. During the War of 1812, President Madison proclaimed three days of fasting and prayer in response to Congressional requests (August 20, 1812, September 9, 1813, and January 12, 1815). He was the last president to call for a national thanksgiving until Abraham Lincoln in 1863."

Lincoln's proclamation was the result of 40 years of efforts by Sarah Josepha Hale, a woman's magazine editor living in Boston. Her efforts led to State Governors proclaiming a Thanksgiving Day beginning with New York in 1830. The Territory of Minnesota made their first proclamation to celebrate Thanksgiving on December 26, 1850. By 1852, 27 states proclaimed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Then Hale's letter to Lincoln resulted in his proclamation, which was also the last Thursday of November.

In 1939, President Roosevelt was persuaded by the National Retail Dry Goods Association to proclaim the next to last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day in a year when there were 5 Thursdays and in order to "create a longer Christmas shopping season." Twenty-three states celebrated the "Republican" Thanksgiving on November 23, with 23 other states celebrating the "Democratic" Thanksgiving on November 30. "Texas and Colorado declared both Thursdays to be holidays." The confusion that ensued over the next two years led to Congress' legislation declaring Thanksgiving to be on the fourth Thursday of the month. This is a great story to tell in November 2007 when November has five Thursdays.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T08:26:00.000-05:00

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." These are the dying words of Ispwo Mukika Crowfoot, a Blackfoot Indian who was twenty years old in 1803, the same year that Lewis and Clark launched their famous expedition. It is reported in a Thanksgiving article telling about Squanto, who helped the Pilgrams in planting food before the winter. The article also says:

"What you didn't know is that long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, this same Squanto had been captured by two English sea captains, George Weymouth and John Hunt, and abused as a slave for fourteen years. Squanto had been free less than five years when Capt. John Bradford's Pilgrims arrived on the good ship Mayflower."

Unfortunately, history is full of things we do not know. This only points to the necessity to learn history. The American natives were and are amazing people.

PodCamp Boston: Famous Dinosaur delivers some laughter

2007-11-14T23:36:00.000-05:00

PodCamp Boston 2 was October 26-28, 2007. A person named Ewan Spence, Vice President (Stuff) at The Podcast Network, had a Sunday presentation from 1 pm to 2 pm called The Circle of Podcasting. I watched his video explaining that he had some idea about testing what would happen if he showed a PowerPoint presentation during his talk that had nothing to do with what he was talking about.

Late Saturday night before the presentation, he and his friends were discussing what content should be shown. They came up with the idea of LOLsaurs, which means that they combed Flickr for photos of dinosaurs with CC licensing. Then they added funny captions to the photos using Flickr toys. I guess those made it into the PowerPoint presentation for Ewan's talk, which was October 28. On October 27, they also created a quick, free WordPress blog as a showplace the LOLsaurs. They got all excited because by Sunday noon, their LOLsaur blog was number one on Digg. However, the tide turned against them and they got a lot of negative comments after that. Chris Brogan kept the perspective on the project with his entry, "Why LOLsaur really is cool!" If you do a search on Digg for LOLsaur, you get Chris's blog entry.

There is a very famous dinosaur nicknamed Dave by Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History. Dave was Mark's introduction to dinosaurs with feathers in China. [Norell nicknamed the specimen "Dave," a reference to the communication difficulties with the Chinese while Norell was jet-lagged as being analogous to "an old Cheech and Chong routine--one where Cheech Marin attempts very unsuccessfully to communicate with his friend Tommy Chong about the whereabouts of a character named Dave" (from Unearthing the Dragon, p.173).] You can read more about it under Dave's photo. Incredibly, I was able to see Dave with other New Yorkers and I took his photo. Mark's book is also most interesting, not only for the information about the dinosaurs, but also because Mark told about the mash-up between the cultures of the United States and China. I am showing Dave's photo here first before the altered photo of Dave as an LOLsaur.

Dave is very special to me. I don't mind the LOLsaurs (some are quite funny or cute), but Dave and what he represents is much more important. Dave made it into the LOLsaurs blog on November 9th so he missed being part of number 1 on Digg. However, since interest in LOLsaurs has died down, only one other LOLsaur has been posted since Dave, making him the second entry on the home page. That is not a bad place to be.

He was created as an LOLsaur by Wendell Oskay, one of Ewan's friends. Wendell has a blog called, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories: Making the world a better place one mad scientist at a time. Dave also made it to this Mad Scientist blog on November 9th. Wendell's blog is rather interesting and promises to present a new project every Wednesday. In any case, I can't complain as there is always a link back to Dave on my Flickr site (a requirement of my CC license). It is great for Dave to get any and all publicity. He deserves it!

So that is how Dave got his start as a comedian. However, his real contribution is to Mark Norell's understanding of feathers on dinosaurs and through Mark the rest of the Western world gained that understanding.

Questions

2007-11-05T23:49:00.000-05:00

It is the questions we ask that determine the quality of our lives.

More to come . . .

About Social Networking

2007-11-04T09:01:00.000-05:00

My first adventures in social networking were with Flickr. When I joined Flickr in August 2004, they had a chat room feature, Flickr Live. It was really wonderful and I met many people there. Flickr was still small then. Sometime later, someone broke into the code of the chat room and it was immediately taken down and never seen since. Note: As you can see from my links, I also save photos at Smug Mug, where generally I put whole sets of photos rather than better photos as is my present goal on Flickr.

In those early Flickr days, I looked at the photos of all the Flickr staff. So I noticed immediately when Esther Dyson joined Flickr and became one of her contacts. I have always watched Esther because her father is also a physicist. She sort of out did me though - with her stories of thinking Einstein was Santa Claus. My dad talked about Einstein, but I have no reason to believe he ever met Einstein. My dad was educated at Rice Institute (today, Rice University). He drove us through the campus every Sunday after church to show us all the buildings, especially the one where they split atoms.

I joined MySpace a couple of years ago because I discovered I could keep up with my nieces and nephews there (2 nephews are in Iraq with a second cousin leaving for Iraq soon). Almost all of my young relatives post photos which I download and share with my Mom. Sometimes I post their photos on Flickr so more of the family can see them. The photos are restricted to my family.

In July, I started Graduate School in Library and Information Science at Queens College (the campus is seen in the photo to the right with Manhattan in the background taken on a rainy day). In one of my classes we were urged to network. This led to my eventual joining of Facebook. I also joined several listservs.

Google mail is perfect for listservs. I can set a filter to have all the email from each listserv go into its own folder that I can then check when I have time. The emails do not get mixed up with my regular mail. I have learned through the years of trying lists using both individual emails and digest versions that there are advantages and disadvantages to each form. Individual emails are easier to reply to. Digests don't flood your email or get mixed up in the listing with your other email. Digests are also VERY long and it is hard to find something you read later. But with Google mail, I do not get the individual emails in with my regular email, so I no longer have to use a digest version. I can also mark the individual emails that I want to refer back to using Google's yellow star.

As for Facebook, I joined it one day and then ran off to other things. It sat there for a while until someone I knew from Flickr asked for me to make him a friend. I then looked for library groups and groups for other subjects I am interested in. Facebook saves users time by listing related groups on every group page.

I used their feature for importing my gmail addresses. A number of my friends were already on Facebook. So slowly, my set of Facebook friends has grown. David Pogue is even my friend. At the time he made me his friend, I was his 11th friend. I think he may have just joined Facebook on that Sunday right after I imported my gmail address book the day before. I may have been responsible for his joining.

However, it turns out that there is more librarian and student librarian action on MySpace. I added Queens College to my list of schools on MySpace. I joined MySpace's QC LISSA group (Queens College Library and Information Science Student Association) and asked the QC LISSA members to be my friends. QC LISSA has forty-some-odd members on MySpace and only about 10 on Facebook. I think I prefer the communication formats on Facebook, though.

An October 25th New York Times article says that Facebook claims 50 million active members with 200,000 new ones added each day. The article continues to say that MySpace has more than twice as many members but is growing more slowly. Facebook's growth spurt started in May when it invited developers to create tools for the site and to share in its revenues. I found the following quotation in the article especially interesting (although note that MySpace is not mentioned).

“Once a social operating system takes over a country, it’s like it becomes the native language of that country,” said Lee Lorenzen, a venture capitalist who has invested in companies making Facebook applications. Mr. Lorenzen noted that Google’s Orkut dominates Brazil, Friendster dominates the Philippines and Facebook is becoming the dominant forum in the United States, Canada and Western Europe.

Now that I have gotten into some of this librarian networking, I do remember that the librarian at the middle school where I spent 11 years working was always getting emails from other librarians. I helped her set up a free email account so she could subscribe to the various lists.

Some Library Resources

2007-11-02T18:50:00.000-04:00

There are so many people cataloging and collecting information. Here are some links to a few recommended by my sister's friend who is a librarian.

"Multimedia Librarian is aimed at librarians and information professionals who work with multimedia formats. It is a forum for collecting resources relevant to the library and information science profession as it pertains to audio-visual materials. These include, but are not limited to, digital media (Web-delivered formats, DVDs, CDs, etc.) and instructional technologies comprised of more than solely print content. Multimedia Librarian aims to recognize audio-visual resources as invaluable to the profession of librarianship and the propagation of information literacy." [Description taken from the site.]

"DoIS (Documents in Information Science) is a service for finding and downloading the latest research results in Information Science. DoIS is a database of articles and conference proceedings published in electronic format in the area of Library and Information Science. DoIS is a volunteer effort to create a free bibliographic resource of scientific texts specialized in Information Science." [Description taken from the site.]

Google Librarian Central: Your Official Source for Google News, Tips, and Updates. While it is run by an associate marketing director, she attended the ALA conference and is collecting information for librarians.

On the eve of Halloween, a brief story about reincarnation

2007-10-31T11:00:00.000-04:00

My father always told me that as he left the hospital after I was born, the newspaper headlines were that Franklin Roosevelt had died. He said his greatest fear was that I might be the reincarnation of Roosevelt.

So I spent much of my young life thinking that I was born on the day that Roosevelt died. I did even consider that Roosevelt might have died in the night while I was born the next morning.

At any rate, it is probably remarkable that my father, not just a scientist, but a physicist, spoke to me this way about reincarnation. It gave me a basis for considering reincarnation seriously, which I did at various times in my life, which is a topic for another day.

At some point, perhaps as a teen or in my early 20's, I decided to look up the death of Franklin Roosevelt. You can imagine my surprise to find that he did not die the day before or on my birthday. He died the day after I was born! Apparently, my father was in the hospital so long that the time merged into one day.

The Bible in our culture

2007-10-28T23:11:00.000-04:00

In school I learned that when the American pioneers left the east coast in their covered wagons, they took two books with them: The Bible and a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare.

I grew up in Houston, Texas, in the Bible Belt of America. As a child, I did not really know what this Bible was, or Shakespeare either for that matter. Today, I have multiple copies of both the Bible and Shakespeare. No, the copies are not identical. It is amazing how many different versions there are of the Bible. Even Shakespeare is getting his due with the historical work looking into his true identity.

Seeking the meanings of a spiritual text is certainly a lifelong task. I spent eleven years studying with a teacher who translated the text from the Greek and Hebrew. I learned that the Greek Bible we study was written using the Greek of Alexander the Great. My teacher taught that Alexander's Greek is one of the most precise languages ever. I have studied with many other teachers since only to realize that whom one selects as a teacher is a very important decision. I have learned much from each of my teachers.

As a child, I questioned why there were so many different types of religions and subtypes within each religion. I have studied with teachers from many subtypes of Christianity as well as with several Rabbis, and looked into Eastern beliefs. My best answer to my childhood question is that we humans have to have a teacher. The universal being (you would be surprised at how many names there are for this) has to send us someone to teach us, which is done in every generation and there can be multiple teachers in a generation. If one goes back to the teachings of the initial teacher of any movement that becomes a religion or subreligion, one will find an amazing consistency in the teachings.

Each teacher uses different examples to illustrate his or her teaching. The students at the time the teacher is alive can be kept safe from misunderstandings because they can check with their teacher. However, after the teacher has passed on, as they must do, then over time the teachings get distorted by our human tendency to place more importance on the physical than on what we cannot see (spiritual). The rituals that were meant to help us understand a spiritual teaching get overemphasized. Before long, people are fighting over the rituals.

Look yourself to see what it is that people in different religions disagree over. However, if we would all ask what the original teachings were with less emphasis on what the illustrations were, we might find that there is much we could agree on and perhaps not get involved in so many conflicts. Most of all, we need to define what we want in a spiritual teacher. They say the teacher shows up when you are ready.

I always return to the story of the blind men and the elephant. You know, one said an elephant is like a rope, one said the elephant is like a tree trunk, another said it is like a wall, yet another said it is like a hose. The poor elephant is misunderstood by them all.

The path of a new way of thinking making it into people's general knowledge

2007-10-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

This will be about Einstein.

More to come . . .

An example of how a child uses a library for problem solving

2007-10-25T15:27:00.000-04:00

My parents often spoke of Franklin Roosevelt as the worst thing that happened to this country. As a child, I wondered who he was and what was so bad about him. Sometime about the fifth grade (1955), I looked for a biography on Roosevelt so I could answer my questions. My school library had a whole series of biographies that had orange bindings. Sure enough there was one on Franklin. The book did tell me about who Franklin was and about his life. It did not really tell me, nor was I probably ready to comprehend, what my parents thought was so bad about him.

The point here is that libraries provide a child with a place to find some answers to his or her questions. Many times a child's questions are not ones that have been fully articulated. Bruno Bettelheim has certainly shown this in his work with fairy tales in the book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.

Bettelheim relates in the book how different children use the same fairy tale to resolve problems at different ages. In the case of Hansel and Gretel, one might think that the story is most useful for children dealing with fears about their parents diserting them, but Bettelheim tells how a young girl used the story to work out her own autonomy separate from her brother. Battelheim relates how Gretel had to take action to save her brother, who was in a cage, from being cooked and eaten by the witch. The girl did not really know what was bothering her, but apparently, she had been dependent on her own brother and it was time for her to assert herself. The Hansel and Gretel story gave her a model of Gretel acting independently so the girl was able to use this model in her own life.

Reading Bettelheim gave me a new insight into children and helps me to listen to them differently. The difference is being open to what a child may not be able to articulate, but what is a question for him or her. It is important to step back from our own thinking to allow the child to explore in a seemingly disordered way that may lead to his or her hitting on just the issue that is not at the level of awareness that would allow articulation.

Review of an Adesso CyberPad for Note Taking

2007-10-22T06:57:00.000-04:00

After starting graduate school in the summer, I was captivated by the idea that I could take notes that OCR software would turn into a text file. I began a study of various pens and tablets for note taking. Most of the pens require special paper, so I rejected that idea. A few of the pens I looked into seemed to be vaporware.

Finally, I was in J&R Computers where I saw an Adesso CyberPad. I spoke at length with the J&R representative. He had no experience with the CyberPad and he did not know anyone who had tried it. He assured me that they sell the pads and that people did not seem to be returning them. I was hesitant to try it after my study of note-taking systems on the Internet, but because of their return policy, I purchased it.

Specifically, reviews of the CyberPad said that it really did give good results, meaning a jpg file of the handwriting. Most reviewers of this product (late August and early September) did not seem to have tried and certainly did not comment on converting the handwriting to text. One reviewer specifically said he had not tried converting the handwriting to text. He did try the email program to email the notes and said it worked very well.

One nice feature of the CyberPad is that I could use a regular notebook clipped onto the pad to take my notes in regular ink. The mechanism for recording the digital image was picked up from the relative position of the pen on the pad and a quarter-inch to 3/8ths inch of paper stacked on top of the CyberPad clipboard did not matter. In fact, the unit comes with an inexpensive letter-sized legal pad (see in photo; clicking photo reveals a larger image). The pen itself looked cheap with some sort of plastic gripper glued onto the barrel of the pen, but it worked and was not too thick or heavy to hold. It seemed to be balanced fairly well for writing comfortably. The ball point pen made nice, smooth lines on the paper.

Also, it is important for my uses (note taking in college classes) that the CyberPad does not have to be connected to the computer while you are taking notes. It comes with rechargeable batteries and its own battery charger (see third photo). It also has an SD slot to add extra capacity for storing pages to the 32 MB that the pad comes with. It has ample storage space with 26 directories (one for each letter of the alphabet) that can hold 99 files, one file for each page of text that you write adding up to a capacity of 2,574 pages.

I found that the CyberPad did indeed make good jpg files of my handwritten notes. It would be easy to send a copy of such notes to classmates when they missed class. On the other hand, I could easily just scan my regular pencil and pen notes.

The OCR software is where I found deficiency. My package included MyInk software for the conversion. The software did not have a clear manual and the directions for use were obscure. You can see the various manuals from the photo (click on the photo for a larger image that you can read) for six different software titles: MyInk, riteMail, EverNote 1.0, Free Notes, Office Ink, PowerPresenter RE, and Pensoft Pro. [Note: I have revisited reviews of this product in December and found that less software is bundled with the product. J&R is now bundling Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 with the product.]

Other reviewers say that the conversion to text is made by riteMail. riteMail is the program that one uses to view the pages of notes on the computer. I saw nothing about it having OCR capacity, and I tried all the options that were available. But please notice in other reviews that they just say that this is very powerful software that recognizes four languages without giving any specifics as to how it works. Also, notice that the same pictures are in most every review of CyperPad. I think that if word was out that this software worked in translating handwriting to text, it would be big news! Apparently, riteMail is a product of EverNote as they have other "rite technology." [However, riteMail is not listed one their web site in December.]

The review that I am the most surprised about is at About.com. I believe that Catherine Roseberry actually used a CyperPad to write and look at the files on her computer, but I do not believe that it translated the jpg files to text. She gives no detail about the translation from handwriting to text. That is the key question in any review and experience with converting handwriting to text. All the reviews just fade away from specifics and barely mention that they got text files from the jpg. If it worked, it would be exceptional given the present state of handwriting recognition. Why would I get hooked into thinking it could be done? Because I use the Palm operating system with my Kyocera phone and daily it converts my handwriting into text.

There was an implication in some of the reviews that I read in late August and early September that this product would work very well with Vista's ink program. The program supplied in the package, MyInk, did some weird things on my computer. After spending more time than I would have liked, I never got one character translated to text. I did see a screen that supposedly worked at the letter-by-letter level. Since removing the software from my computer, I have been getting a message that one of the programs related to my mouse is not loading. I am politely asked if I want to send Microsoft a report about the problem. Restarting the computer fixes it and ignoring the error seems to work as well. [Note: there is no mention of MyInk software in reviews of this product in December.]

Adesso includes EverNote software, which is really a database for managing information. Here one can store and retrieve the jpg images that are created for each page. The addition of key words allows you to find the jpg image with the data. EverNote can store files other than jpg files. I remember hearing about EverNote years ago when it first came out. I was surprised to encounter it again, especially in version 1.0. One would think that it would have made some advances in the couple of years it has been around. In fact, the EverNote web site has version 2.2 which does say it has the capacity to translate handwriting into text. How is it that Adesso can produce an over-priced item and not include the latest versions of the software?

Honestly, I only looked at the Adesso reviews, not the EverNote reviews. I do not understand why a company would not bundle the best software possible with their product. I must admit, that after reading the EverNote reviews, I probably should have upgraded the software and I would have been happy with the Adesso product. With the pressure of working within a short time to try out the product before the opportunity to return it passed, I packed it up and returned it rather than risking spending a lot of money on something that did not work. You can tell by looking at the photo of the documentation, that the manuals were not the original manuals of the various software products. When the customer sees the cheap way they put the pen together plus the cheap production of the manuals, it does not lead to confidence that the product will work. They should take a lesson from Steve Jobs on the importance of design, construction, and packaging of a product. One can download the manual from EverNote and find that it is of better quality. In hindsight, I wish I had checked reviews of EverNote. I did not think that EverNote or riteMail was the software for converting the handwriting to text. I understand now that EverNote 2.2 might be a really good product.

The bottom line: I returned the CyberPad. [Note: This entry was reviewed and edited in December.]

Review of Rocketfish Mouse

2007-10-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

More to come . . .

Review of Kensington Wireless Mouse

2007-10-20T11:54:00.000-04:00

If this mouse had been a laser mouse, I would have kept it. I compared it with a laser Rocketfish wireless mouse, which is the mouse I now use.

That said, I loved the Kensington wireless mouse for its design and the planning that went into it.

The mouse is designed to work both with and without a wire.

The wire is hidden away inside the mouse and is there so you can continue working during an airplane's take-off and landing.

The mouse's top cover comes off to expose the battery compartment and the wire.

As with other wireless mice, the USB receiver is tucked away inside the mouse, in this case in its bottom.

The mouse automatically turns off when you insert the USB receiver into its slot.

The mouse was easy to hold, the shape is appealing, and the choice of colors (orange/silver or black/black) is greater than with other manufacturers. There are three other colors of similar looking mice by Kensington, but they are different. A silver mouse does not have the wired option; a red mouse has the wired option, but the wire does not store in the mouse; and a green mouse uses an Express card slot for connection instead of USB.

My only other concern with this mouse is that its flatness would tire my hand over time.

Daniel Rubey, Ph.D., MLS - Hofstra University

2007-10-19T09:01:00.000-04:00

Dr. Daniel Rubey is the Dean of Library and Information Services at Hofstra University with his office in the Axinn Library [Note: Dr. Rubey played an important role in the redesigning and renovations of the Axinn Library.] He spoke to Carol Simon's class at Queens College on July 9, 2007 on the topic, Some questions currently facing academic libraries and librarians.

He grouped the questions according to the departments in the library. As he was speaking to future librarians, he told us about the personnel in each department. Acquisitions and Collection Development has one librarian plus some staff in technical services. Technical Services, including cataloging and serials, has three librarians plus 7 or 8 staff. Reference Services includes thirteen librarians, who are subject specialists with a second MA in the subject. They do collection development, teach, and talk to people in the related departments. Systems is headed by a Dean with two assistants. Preservation is headed by an Assistant Dean with two curators and two other staff.

Acquisitions and Collections
This department has the most grants. They also deal with copyright and e-reserve issues. Hofstra uses a methodology software for student remote access to e-reserves. A major question that is facing this area is books vs. e-books. Hofstra circulates 60,000 books a year. What about textbooks (the library makes available expensive texts for in library usage and are considering a rental program)? The e-library has multiple users, but people can access only ten pages at a time. Other questions follow similarly as journals vs. e-journals. Hofstra has 250 print titles. We have 7,000 journals online (fully 1,500,000 when the law school journals are included). Do we own or access materials? How does the answer to such questions affect our budget? What about scholarly communications? What does the world of open access offer to libraries and how much do we partake? In science and business collections, do we need to increase grey literature (not published, but referred to and difficult to locate)? What about joining a consortium for collection development and buying? Consortiums bring up issues of autonomy and limiting Hofstra's choices to reach group consensus with area libraries. (An example of an electronic buying consortium is WALDO; Connect NY is a consortium for inter-library loans.) How do we use faculty liaison groups in resolving the answers to these questions?

Technical Services: Cataloging and Serials
Do we use original cataloging or do we copy cataloging? Should we outsource the cataloging? What is the purpose of the OPAC? What do we catalog? Do we include electronic sources or list them separately? Contained within this question is the issue of who can use electronic sources: only students and faculty or can others also access these for a fee? What sort of access should be provided beyond the catalog? What cataloging standards do we need to include: AACR2, Dublin Core (hypertext markup language and additional audio and video data), and/or other metadata? Do we need to catalog the departmental libraries? What about grey literature? What about Google? Do we participate in Google's digitization project? While it can make some money for the university, there are other issues that need to be resolved.

Reference Services
Do we need a reference desk or virtual reference desks? What instruction and teaching should we be responsible for? Do we need to provide a basic level of information literacy for our students and community? How has Google and Google Scholar changed reference work? Should we define levels of instruction such as basic, upper-level, and graduate? Should we be delivering distance learning? What outcomes do we want to foster and how do we assess our achievement? What faculty liaison activities should we support and encourage? What is our role in faculty research? Should we provide tutorials, guides and FAQs?

Systems
What computer architecture is best for our library? ILS systems? web pages? portals? Internet? Internet2?

What technology platform and components do we need? What computer equipment do we need? Do we provide electronic classrooms? What about sharing information? Should we have wireless access? What educational technology and/or software should we be providing? What is the best architecture for learning?

Preservation
Are we looking to preserve or replace paper? What role can JSTOR play in preservation of leading journals? Do we need compact shelving for housing paper? Hofstra has 35,000 books in off-site storage. We have 850,000 titles on microfiche. Should we turn to commercial off-site storage? Do we preserve film or turn to DVDs? Do we know (with confidence) the life expectancy (archival period) of a DVD? What are the processes and forms we should use in preserving digital information? What about faculty products that may need preservation? Other categories of content that we may need to preserve include institutional information, individual institutional repositories, shared institutional depositories, and special collections. Who are we preserving these for?

Dublin Core: How it happened and how to see it

2007-10-16T10:26:00.000-04:00

I first heard of Dublin Core [officially Dublin Core Meta Data Initiative] in Carol Simon's class last summer. One of my classmates gave a short PowerPoint presentation on it. I left with more questions than I started with. OK, I know it is a classification system, but why another one? You have to go to a source outside of their "About the initiative" web page to find that the invitational workshop initiated by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) was in 1995. OCLC itself was started in 1967 by some very progressively thinking librarians. Fred Kilgour's (president of OCLC from 1967 to 1980) thinking was shaped during his years in WWII as Wikipedia reports:

Kilgour served during World War II as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was Executive Secretary and Acting Chairman of the U.S. government’s Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC), which developed a system for obtaining publications from enemy and enemy-occupied areas. This organization of 150 persons in outposts around the world microfilmed newspapers and other printed information items and sent them back to Washington, DC.

Kilgore was a graduate of Harvard whose first job in 1935 was as assistant to the Director of the Harvard University Library. As an aside, he met his wife at the Harvard library where she was also a librarian. It was at Harvard that he first began collecting microfilm of foreign newspapers for students at Harvard, which led to his being sought for the work he did in the military. After his military service (1942-1945), he continued working for the State Department (1946-1948) as deputy director in the Office of Intelligence Collection and Dissemination (OCLC, news release).

In 1948, Fred became a Librarian for the Yale Medical Library. He made empirical studies of various categories of people using sets of books at the library to judge what needed to be purchased to serve the educational needs of Yale medical students.

In 1967, Fred was hired by the Ohio College Association in its first project of amassing a union catalog of 54 Ohio Universities. After four years of development, the "world's first computerized library network, the Ohio College Library Center, on the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus" (OCLC, News release) was born in 1971. He was instrumental in refocusing the organization to its current global thinking and form as the Online Computer Library Center during his tenure as its president from 1967 to 1980. The original Ohio Computer Library Center was expanded and is now the WorldCat (on Wikipedia). The Wikipedia entry for Fred gives more information about his experimenting with digital cataloging long before 1967:

"While at the Harvard University Library, he began experimenting in automating library procedures, primarily the use of punched cards for a circulation system. He also studied [graduate school] under George Sarton, a pioneer in the new discipline of the history of science, and began publishing scholarly papers. He also launched a project to build a collection of microfilmed foreign newspapers to help scholars have access to newspapers from abroad. This activity quickly came to the attention of government officials in Washington, D.C.
"In 1961, he was one of the leaders in the development of a prototype computerized library catalog system for the medical libraries at Columbia, Harvard and Yale Universities that was funded by the National Science Foundation. In 1965, Kilgour was named associate librarian for research and development at Yale University. He continued to conduct experiments in library automation and to promote their potential benefits in the professional literature."

It is an honor to be seeking a profession with people of the caliber of Fred Kilgour! Knowing more about OCLC, which initiated Dublin Core, I am now even more curious about DC. By the early 70's I had my first Master's degree (M.Ed.). I was always curious about computers and took all the math courses that were required for a computer degree in case I decided to leave education. I knew people working on computers who let me use them to keep track of a mailing list of the members of an organization that I worked with. In that way, I got my experience using punch cards. In the early 80s I moved to New York.

By 1995, when the first workshop on the standard that became Dublin Core was held, I was making web sites for several businesses. I knew that these businesses needed more than a web site. I checked their competition and advised them that they needed to differentiate what they were offering from what turned out to be hundreds of other similar businesses. I studied search engines and how to set up key terms to push my clients' web sites higher in the search order. In another situation as a volunteer, I reviewed and added to an index for a book. I knew then that someday I wanted to study indexing to find out how a professional indexer would work. I remembered a comment of Kurt Vonnegut's in Cat's Cradle about how indexers think differently from all other people. But since I had never studied library science, I was missing much of the knowledge of how to organize data.

What was missing for me in my colleague's presentation on Dublin Core was that DC was an effort to bring to the Internet and the World Wide Web the librarian's knowledge of how to catalog data so that it can be found by researchers. A new system had to be created because no existing system could do the job and the new system needed to be an integral part of every document/audio, video, and data file on the Internet. How could we as beginning library science students in our first course even begin to understand what bringing librarians' knowledge to the task meant! My first experience using a controlled vocabulary occurred in another Library and Information Science summer school course after the Dublin Core presentation where I learned how to create a subject entry using the Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH).

I remember first encountering the New York yellow pages after my move from Texas. There seemed to be a disconnect from my Texas thinking to what New Yorkers must think as I had to keep trying different terms to find businesses in those yellow pages. Well, reading through and looking up subjects in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) felt similar to my first using those NY yellow pages. The process of learning how to use the LCSH took extensive time and did not at first seem to be the time saver that it actually is. But learning to use LCSH did not happen before my colleague gave her presentation on Dublin Core.

As I read more about Dublin Core, I found the information related to building a database. My husband works in the computer field and in the summers, I traveled with him as he delivered his seminars. I learned the notation required for building a computer system reflecting business rocesses, data flows, and entity relationship diagrams (ERD - see Crow's feet). One-and-only-one association between elements not only avoids ambiguity and redundancy, but also is a characteristic of a DB key. Clearly, Dublin Core's mission "to facilitate the finding, sharing and management of information" (DCMI About the initiative) is accomplished by bringing the proven method of controlled vocabulary to the world of Internet search necessarily expressed as machine readable language. This is an ambitious mission given how many people must cooperate to do it! I must share with you a web page by Cory Doctorow, called, Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. It is delightful as well as insightful to read. Despite the title, Doctorow is very practical and supportive of efforts such as Dublin Core to add metadata to the Internet.

Participating with standards organizations is one way to improve metadata on the Internet. Remember that Dublin Core was started by OCLC, which is a member of W3C, the Internet standards consortium (founded October 1991, predating Dublin Core by 4 years). A programmer can check to be sure his HTML code is W3C compliant. I don't know if the test also looks for Dublin Core. I can test for it later. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO, founded in 1939) has Z39.85 where Dublin Core is alive and well. OCLC is a voting member of NISO. Due to the importance of contributions made by librarians to standards, NISO has a special category of membership for librarians which does not preclude their also being a voting member($$).

If you use the Firefox browser, consider adding the Dublin Core Viewer Plugin. There is also a second add-on for viewing Dublin Core, called Dublin Core NeViewer. While I finally got both viewers installed, neither is working properly. I left a note for help. Making Dublin Core more visible has to help in understanding it. Of course there are developers of many web sites who do not even know of Dublin Core, just as I did not (although my work was at the time DC was being developed and probably it was not yet in the W3C standards, which I paid attention to). But as a library student, it would be nice to be able to track what of DC is out there in that vast world of the Internet. Think of all the possible users; can you imagine some of them adding DC to their sites? When I succeed in getting one of these Firefox plug-ins (add-ons seems to be their new name) to work, I will write an addendum.

Now that the 15 simple elements are established and the qualified elements, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is focusing through open forum on developing a list of terms for describing an item. If you are going to have a standard across a large group of people, then someone has to look at various cases of term usage. Even a cursory glance at the list of terms shows that a lot of thought has been put forth in designing these terms. Developing the metadata terms gives librarians the chance to avoid any weaknesses of other classification systems. It is also interesting to see how the human and the machine readers are both included in their work.

Some additional links that explain how to use Dublin Core
Web Developer Resource Index: Dublin Core
O'Reilly.com xml from the inside out: An introduction to Dublin Core
National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Z39.85 -2007
DMCI Metadata Terms
Dublin Core Metadata Userguide (2005)

Diane Goldstein, Executive Recruiter

2007-10-14T21:17:00.000-04:00

Diane Goldstein was a librarian for 34 years. She got her library degree in 1973. She has worked as a medical librarian. For the past seven and a half years, she has been a recruiter. She was the guest speaker in Carol Simon's class at Queens College on July 18, 2007.

More to come . . .

Deidre Heiz, School Media Librarian

2007-10-13T19:33:00.000-04:00

Deidre Heiz is in her ninth year as a school media librarian at the Meadowbrook School in the East Meadow Union Free School District and was the guest speaker in Carol Simon's class on July 30, 2007. East Meadow Union Free School District is the largest school district in Nassau County with 8,000 students served by 5 elementary schools, 2 middle schools and 2 high schools.

Meadowbrook Elementary School, serving grades K-5, is their smallest elementary school. In grades K, 1, and 2, special education classes are combined with the regular education classes. Special educations classes run 12 to 15 students while the regular education classes are 25 students. The teachers play to the strengths of the special education students. They also emphasize character education and the New York State Standards.

The Meadowbrook School Library has an OPAC online. In addition, their web site features 8 othere tabs (links).

Storyline Online, with online streaming video content featuring Screen Actors Guild members reading children's stories.
Kids' Search, a Ramapo Catskill Internet Guide (Ramapo Catskill Library System), which is also included on the Reference page.
CyberHunts, a link which takes you to Scholastic Instructor, a magazine with lots of ideas for teachers.
World of Reading (Ann Arbor District Library) is a site featuring book reviews written by and for kids from around the world.
KidsReads is a place on the Internet for kids to find information about their favorite books. It features book reviews, author profiles and interviews, trivia games word scrambles and contests. KidsRead is a part of The Book Report Network.
Book Awards is a web site of the Meadowbrook Schoool listing ALSC web pages for Caldecott, Newberry, and Dr. Seuss, awards with New York State's Children Choice Awards called 3 Apples book awards.
The reference center includes Info Please, Kids Search, Factmonster (from Information Please), Library (back to the main library page), and two Extra tabs (these appear to be placeholders for future tabs).
The Authors link does not appear to be working.

On the Meadowbrook School web site, there is a separate tab for Search Engines. Deidre spoke of the importance of teaching the children to question the accuracy of the information on the Internet. She has found tat the children in the 4th and 5th grades do not have as much time to read as the younger children.

In terms of expanding the collection of books, Deidre stressed that one must talk to the children to find out what they read. A librarian absolutely needs this information to know what to buy for the library. One must tailor the books to the school needs. Do the children need bilingual books? What subjects are being taught in the classroom that need to also be supported in the library? The library must supplement what the classroom teachers are teaching. One must constantly read and get student requests. For example, the students love the Junie B. Jones books about a fictional character. It is a very challenging job! It is important for a school to create a Collection Development Policy.

Deidre spoke of teaching the children the 5-finger test for selecting a book to read. She also spoke of using a yellow light. There is a May 2007 issue of the Reading Teacher, which describes a technique of using a yellow light to identify components of reading or the during reading components, in the process of teaching students to monitor their understanding while they read. The article (search on "Traffic light") is available through The Wilson Web's Education full text datbase to students at Queens College.

She spoke of running a book challenge given by the principal of the school. She also has a Mystery Question during National Library Week or other literary weeks. She uses the Big Six Skills for Research. She said that video streaming was tried in the school, but they had to stop it because it slowed down the computers.

Deidre continually stressed the need to take time - to find time - to communicate with students and teachers!

Alice Hudson and Map Librarianship

2007-10-12T09:06:00.000-04:00

Alice Hudson is the Chief Librarian at the newly renovated Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division of the New York Public Library.

More to come . . .

The Desk Set and Agnes Law

2007-10-09T09:06:00.000-04:00

William Marchant, who wrote the 1955 play Desk Set, began by observing Agnes Law at CBS much in the way that Spencer Tracy was watching Katherine Hepburn. It is not so easy to find information on Agnes Law. She was brought to my attention when I listened to the commentary on the film that accompanies the DVD for the movie, Desk Set.

More to come . . .

Mary Ellen Bates

2007-10-08T15:13:00.000-04:00

Deborah Falik introduced me to Mary Ellen Bates. I found Mary Ellen Bates' presence on the Internet demanded that she have her own separate entry in my blog.

More to come . . .

Gina Martorella, Federal Depository Librarian

2007-10-06T18:39:00.000-04:00

Gina Martorella started as a news librarian. She worked on Newsday's "Long Island: Our Story" project as an intern, which is reported in News Library News Online, Vol. 20, No.3/Spring 1998, excerpted here:

Georgina Martorella, who has an MBA and an MLS, is the editorial researcher on the project. Gina came to Newsday's Editorial Library as an intern several years ago, and has worked on special assignments ever since. Her first task was to organize a system for the vast paper files and over 600 books that would eventually accumulate. Gina worked one-on-one with reporters and editors to assemble a first rate collection of sources. Using ACCESS and MSWord software, she developed systems to keep track of contact names, books owned and borrowed, local experts, and profiles of area historic collections. Gina often had to trek to obscure local collections to pore over dusty and fragile documents. Her most valuable assets in this undertaking have been the connections she has made with over 250 history experts, librarians and teachers. Gina's experience with the project has been rewarding. She enjoyed, working closely with writers, becoming deeply involved with and gaining an understanding of the challenging process of writing.

Today she is an energetic government documents librarian at the Federal Depository library at Hofstra University. There are 1,250 to 1,300 depository libraries, one for every congressional district. To participate in a democracy, the people must be knowledgeable so that they can hold the government accountable for their actions. The main users of a depository library are the free press and scholars.

The 50 regional libraries of the Federal Depository Library Program get everything that the federal government publishes so every state has every document published. There is a Federal Depository Library Manual that discusses all the topics of federal depository librarianship (library programs services, collection development, maps, electronic publications, bibliographic control, maintenance, depository promotion, inspections, suggested core collection, maps available for selection, minimum standards, index). Gina usually selects 50% of the available information for her library. Title 44 of the US code, policies and procedures, says that we must adhere to the SuDoc system of classification.

Since the eGovernment Act of 2002 (Library of Congress Thomas entry), about 90% of government publications are distributed via the Internet.

Gina introduced us to PURLs or Permanent (Persistent) URLs, which were invented to solve the problem of web sites migrating to another location. By registering a PURL, then later if you move the site, people can still find it using the PURL because the PURL does not change. When the location of the site the PURL points to changes, then the PURL resolver, a server similar to a name domain server, looks up the current URL that is associated with the persistent one. The PURL is listed in the source code of a web page. PURL is a project of OCLC. [Note: The Library of Congress has a web site for Teaching with Primary Sources that uses PURLs.]

Gina also introduced us to regulations.gov, which I personally never heard of before and I think it is fantastic! It should be taught in every high school!! Americans can comment on policy in progress!

Regulations.gov allows the public to communicate with a broad spectrum of government agencies whose regulations touch countless aspects of their daily lives. More than 35 partner Departments and Agencies participate in the eRulemaking Initiative, one of the most far-reaching Federal E-Government programs.

It is worth repeating some text from the Introduction of the help pages:

Regulations.gov is the U.S. Government website that makes it easier for you to participate in Federal rulemaking - an essential part of the American democratic process.

On this site, you can find, review, and submit comments on Federal documents that are open for comment and published in the Federal Register. You may also search for and view all regulations from all Federal Agencies. As a member of the public, you can submit comments on these regulations and have the Government take your views into account.

Regulations.gov is a major component of the eRulemaking Initiative. The eRulemaking Initiative is one of 25 e-Government initiatives associated with the President’s Management Agenda. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the managing partner for this initiative.

Gina spoke of the searchable database of all organizations that receive government money that is to become available on January 1, 2008 pursuant to P.L. 109-282, Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. The following is quoted from page 3:

(1) WEBSITE.—Not later than January 1, 2008, the Office of Management and Budget shall, in accordance with this section, section 204 of the E-Government Act of 2002 (Public Law 107–347; 44 U.S.C. 3501 note), and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act (41 U.S.C. 403 et seq.), ensure the existence and operation of a single searchable website, accessible by the public at no cost to access, that includes for each Federal award . . .

Gina next spoke of the Toxic Release Inventory where you put in a zip code to get data for your area. The New York State data for 2005 is reported. For the 2006 data, the web site has TRI-ME desktop version software available for download. The software appears to be for companies reporting data. New York is not listed as one of the states that participates. There is a Scorecard review of the TRI.

Federal Deposit Libraries prepare a Monthly Catalog of print publications and have been doing this since 1895. The print version of the Monthly Catalog was discontinued with the December 2004 editon when the online Catalog of US Government Publications (CGP) replaced it (the CGP was started in January 1994). When you use the CGP, you will see the PURL addresses for publications and the SuDoc numbers. If a government publication is not available online, then there is a link to the Federal Depository Librarys that would have the document. The purpose of the Monthly Catalog was to help users find documents near them. Hofstra Library began as a Federal Depository Library in 1964, so Hofstra is listed in the print version of the Monthly Catalog for the years 1964 through 2004.

Some additional information that Gina gave:

Today, some government documents are "born" as digital documents having never been put on paper.
An archive in Texas, called CyberCemetary (North Texas State University), lists documents of agencies that no longer exist.
Integrated Library System (ILS) - see the chart of various ILS over time that have merged; ILSR (R for Record) is a publication about ILS; interesting article on dismantling ILS; Koha, open source ILS from New Zealand.
Listserv for Federal Documents Librarians is called GOVDOC-L.
Useful web sites for a documents librarian.
Presidential Records Act of 1978 (Library of Congress Thomas entry) had its genesis in Watergate. Presidential papers, speeches, records, and emails are to be released 12 years after the Presidency ended. Reagan has had 68,000 pages released with 74 pages on the subject of Iran Contra not released. Executive Order (EO# 13233 of November 2001) claims executive privilege so the records have not been released. A representative of a former President can withhold the records. Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 (Library of Congress Thomas entry) is an effort to overturn EO# 13233. The bill passed the House. According to LOC Thomas, the bill has not passed the Senate.
Gina also spoke of Tom Blanton, National Security Archive, University of Georgetown, Washington, DC., who gave testimony at a hearing on the Presidential Records Act. Blanton has asked for papers from George H. W. Bush's Library on the December 1989 Summit Meeting at Malta. Those records are being reviewed in accordance with EO# 13233 and have not been released. The video of the hearing is available (panel I is the first third with the rest being panel II, when Tom Blanton is one of the speakers).
The Patriot Act, section 215 is also cause for concern, especially for libraries. The FBI can order records without showing "probable cause" and those served with a Section 215 order cannot tell anyone. The Bridgeport library case was published in the New York Times on August 26, 2005. Judge Hall in Bridgeport, CT issued her opinion in ACLU v. Gonzales October 4, 2005, holding that the gag order associated with the National Security Letter received by an anonymous ALA member violated the First Amendment. The government has until September 20th to appeal. You can view the decision (PDF).
There is also concern that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (see the Electronic Frontier Foundation - EFF's FAQ on FISA by their senior counsel) might issue orders similar to the National Security Letter to confiscate records.
Greta Marlatt's role as an expert in defense department information was also mentioned. It was pointed out that in addition to public, university, and federal depository libraries, agencies also have libraries.

Gina certainly dispels all thoughts of a quiet librarian shushing patrons. Gina is energetic, bright, and deeply concerned about our American way of life. She values the Federal Depository Libraries as part of that American way of life. Our responsibility is to be informed and to participate in our government.

[This entry is based on notes taken when Gina was a guest speaker in Carol Simon's class in the summer of 2007 at Queens College's Graduate School of Library and Information Science.]

Deborah Falik, Independent Information Professional

2007-10-05T14:15:00.000-04:00

On July 25, 2007, I met Deborah Falik, an independent information professional. She has most recently been working as a contractor with Ellis Island, National Parks, to archive materials in its collection. [The web page on National Parks libraries does not list the Ellis Island research library.] She was a speaker in Carol Simon's class.

Deborah was a brand new graduate with her MLS from Queens College in the early seventy's. There were no library jobs then. So she became a claims representative at Social Security for 15 years. She learned medical terminology and all about disability claims.

Then she worked for a director of an advertising agency as a solo librarian locating art work. This experience exposed her to a lot of things that people do in libraries.

Deborah spoke of the Information Sourcerer. This was a project of the National Medical Library during the 1990s. It was a part of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) project. "There are four UMLS Knowledge Sources: the Metathesaurus®:, the SPECIALIST^tm Lexicon, a Semantic Network and an Information Sources Map" (Introduction, ¶3). The Information Sourcerer was the query interface for the Information Sources Map (ISM).

The U.S. National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Sourcerer project is developing software which accepts a user query, automatically identifies appropriate information resources, and facilitates connection to those sources for information retrieval. The current Sourcerer prototype utilizes the multimedia/multiplatform/multiprotocol network-based hypertext system known as World Wide Web. It also relies upon the knowledge sources of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The UMLS is the result of a long-term project of NLM. It comprises a large Metathesaurus of biomedical concepts (coupled with a semantic network and syntactical/lexical software tools) and the information Sources Map (ISM), a database of records describing specific biomedical information resources. (Rogers, 1995 in UMLS, Access to Multiple Knowledge-based Information Sources, 1986-1996, ¶12).

Deborah then talked about the American Association of Information Professionals and the Special Libraries Association. An extensive list of Competencies for Information Professionals has been developed (in pdf format, 17 pages).

Mary Ellen Bates (photo) (her blog) created the profession of Independent Information Professionals. She is a pro in online searching. Deborah also spoke of Tom Rink as a solo librarian with the police department.

Deborah explained that doing archiving requires common sense, asking questions, being able to organize, and being prepared for the unexpected. Archiving has its share of drudge work as well as making judgments.

I asked Deborah if she had ever heard of Jennifer John who had been the only research librarian at the Houston Public Library. Jennifer's twin brothers (Peter and John) were the age of one of my younger brothers, so I had known of her through my school years in Houston. I saw her parents regularly when I was sailing at the Houston Yacht Club. They told me she had just started a business as a research librarian. It sounded so interesting that I paid Jennifer a visit.

She had a staff of about 12 or 15 young people all wearing the black T-shirt of her new private reference service. She had trained them in the use of the computer and searching databases. She had a wonderful brochure and information about her business, which I probably still have filed away in some very old papers. She said she got lots of referrals from the Houston Public Library since they had not replaced her and there was no one else to do reference work.

It was the Summer of 1981, when I left Houston to live in New York City. I have lost touch with Jennifer since, but I will always remember her concept of the business. I remember thinking that I wish I had access to all those databases she taught her people to use. I now realize that Jennifer was also a Independent Information Professional.

James Olney, Assistant Director of a suburban library

2007-10-02T13:57:00.000-04:00

On July 23, 2007, James Olney, assistant director of the Northport-East Northport Public Library was the guest speaker in Carol Simon's class. James has a background in economics and business. He recommends taking an internship-trainee position in the library you want to work in. Select people with the same ideals that you have yourself. He has two Masters degrees: Library and Business.

The library is in the town of Huntington with 36,000 residents who use the library heavily. It is composed of two buildings in a supportive community. A building project is a great opportunity. Northport was to have a new addition built for expansion. East-Northport was a whole new construction project. There was a mile and a half between the two buildings. There is an $8.7 million budget.

James has been working at this library for 22 years with experience in every department. He is now in the computer services department. They run their own fiber lines to connect the two buildings. They employ six full-time programmers. They maintain the menuing systems, control the computers and desktop publishers. They publish posters. The library has its own Wi-Fi service. They use no Internet filters, though they can provide filters for children of parents who request it.

There is a cafe in the library that stocks food, ice cream, coffee, latte. When you run the cafe yourself, then you get the profit. The library is open 12 hours from nine to nine. At first they contracted the food service. After three contractors, they decided to run it themselves.

There is an active teen program with outreach through MySpace with great photos and with 169 friends. The library also uses Upcoming to announce musical events.

The library also has its own security service. Previously the security was also contracted out. They are not uniformed, but they have tags. All staff wears employee badges. The purpose of the security is to maintain order, assist in the closing, and escort staff to their parking spots.

The train station is next to one of the library buildings, with a park and playground nearby, which brings up other issues. The town park closes at dusk. There have been incidents with illegal drugs. They had to have the pay phone set to only allow outgoing calls. A police squad car is stationed at the library lot all night. There is also a police officer on a bicycle in the park. There are security cameras in all public areas.

Having the train station so close to the library led to the Read-Ride-Return program.

There are 175 employees at the library. Salaries and benefits make up almost 70% of the library budget. There is always a fund raising component at libraries. One project was a courtyard. It was necessary to reach out to have the community reinvest $150,000 in itself. The community is more than willing to help because the librarians are so committed to the community. The completed courtyard was dedicated last fall (2006). The courtyard has a covered area, so it is used even in the rain. There are tables in the courtyard. In the courtyard, there is also a statue of the Little Prince ($20,000) to honor Northport as the birthplace of the Little Prince (photo of statue).

In planning for things such as the courtyard and the cafe, the library used surveys and focus groups. The cafe's having a fireplace was one item that came out of the focus groups. There was also discussion of a statue of a bear, called the library bear (picture in link).

A report was commissioned to place an economic value on the Northport - East Northport Library found it to be an excellent value in the community returning $3.30 for each $1 of taxes invested. In addition, the study determined that the library brought business into the area. The report reads, "Long Island earnings increased by almost $3.7 million and approximately 91 support jobs were created throughout the Long Island economy." It also reads, "The library has become an access point for state-of-the-art technology and a magnet for community gatherings and activities." The Northport - East Northport Public Library mission statement is also available.

Hildy Dworkin, Solo Librarian

2007-10-01T12:27:00.000-04:00

On July 16, 2007, Carol Simon brought in Hildy Dworkin to speak with the class about solo librarianship. Hildy works as the Library Director at the NYC Human Resources Administration's McMillan Library, which is a government library. I was particularly interested in Hildy's saying that being a librarian was her second career after ten years as a second and third grade teacher. She graduated from Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Science in 2000. She revealed that completing her Masters Degree was a five-year work. Her thesis subject was Public welfare. Her Bachelor's Degree was in Early Childhood/Elementary Education. Originally she was involved in music performance.

After 30 years of operation, the McMillan Library had been closed in 1995. Hildy's first task was to reopen the library with more than 20,000 holdings in August of 1999. There are 16,000 employees in New York City government and only one librarian. As a solo librarian, Hildy has a staff of 1 intern. She joined the Special Libraries association (SLC) and their Solo Division to seek out mentors. She currently is the SLA Solo Division Listserv Manager.

Hildy also was a speaker at SLA 2007 for a round table presented by the Government Information Division on the topic Government Librarians Get Savvy, which is reported as follows: Government Info Pro, SLA's Government Information Division, and Libraryola.

In opening a library, you need top approval for everything you do. You cannot use non-public information. You have to get into your publications. You need an Information Management proposal and automation software.

You have to be constantly educating people on what the library has and how it can be of service. Something should be in every newsletter. Offer library research seminars demonstrating important research tools and techniques that will assist staff in their research. Librarians have to market their services and their profession at the same time to increase people's awareness of your services. Hildy told of using the Administration's communication department to create a distinctive library brand, including a logo for the library's website and bookmarks to insert in checked out books. The bookmarks included the librarian's contact information, a brief description of library services, and hours of operations.

Be open to all opportunities. Even requests for help that are outside the immediate focus of the library will provide networking opportunities that will often have big payoffs later. Assisting with fact checking, editing, and offering the use of the library space will serve to increase appreciation for the library and its services. Solo librarians are constantly challenged to demonstrate their worth and value to their organizations. She developed network connections through face-to-face reference interviews with clients, sponsoring training sessions, attending meetings, and accepting new responsibilities that benefit the organization. Always be on the lookout for how to provide the staff with the information they need to do their jobs.

And, yes, Hildy loves her job!

The Nancy Pearl Doll

2007-09-30T22:27:00.000-04:00

First of all, Nancy Pearl is a real person. Carol Simon showed us the Nancy Pearl shushing doll in class on July 9, 2007. Nancy Pearl looks much better than the doll! Flickr has a Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure group that has over 100 photos of the doll. Many of the photos are well thought out and clever. I finally found a photo with creative commons license so I can show it here. It also has the advantage of showing the two versions of the doll. It was posted by bibliona. The name of the photo is "Window Shopping?"

Archie McPhee (Wikipedia) sells the blue doll for $8.95. Both action figures are available from Accoutrements, but they only sell in large quantities. Amazon is selling the deluxe version for $11.95, where they also feature other librarian items such as t-shirts, socks and other literary action figures. Kids Surplus is out of stock for the doll, which they were selling for $4.99. SeeFred.com sells the original action figure for $8.35. Reportedly over 2,000 dolls have been sold. There is even a YouTube video called "Godzilla meets Nancy Pearl the Librarian," which is about an overdue book.

There is a 6-minute interview of Nancy Pearl on NPR radio, in which she tells how she happened to become the model for the doll. Seattle Times story "Toymaker finds librarian who's a real doll" tells the same story in print. Seattle's Cable Channel 21 has a regular program, Book Lust, featuring Nancy Pearl. You can watch past episodes on the Internet. Abe Books has an interview with Nancy Pearl about her books, Book Lust and More Book Lust.

Well, to my surprise, Nancy Pearl's books are published by Sasquatch Books! While I do believe I have heard of Sasquatch Books before (in conjunction with a regional book about northern California), Dr. Tom Surprenant's sample library is always Sasquatch Library. So now I make a different connection with Sasquatch.

Thomas Galante, Director, Queens Borough Public Library

2007-09-29T21:10:00.000-04:00

On July 23, 2007, Thomas Galante, the Director of the Queens Borough Public Library, presented to my class with Angel Huynh, the Director of Human Resources. His presentation was memorable partly because I knew so little about the work of librarians and partly because of his energetic presentation that also involved multimedia. There is no doubt that Tom enjoys his work and is pleased with the accomplishments at the Queens Borough Public Library.

There are 1800 employees with a budget of $115 to $120 million. The libraries are expanding to 6-day service with 7-day service in 16 libraries. They have a total of 63 libraries. The starting salary is $39,000 where after one year as a senior librarian, one can earn from $42,500 to $43,000. They lose 3 librarians a month out of 400 full-time positions. The also have half-time positions. An assistant manager made from $52,000 to $58,000 while a senior manager makes from the upper $50,000's to $60,000.

He discussed interviewing techniques and showed a short video produced three months earlier for recruiting. Tom, himself, was a student at Queens College only three and a half years ago although his career includes 22 years at the library starting in the finance area. He discussed the need to find people who fit. It is all about serving people. The benefits are good as they are in the NYS employment system so they have health benefits for life. You are vested in the system after 5 years. It is contributory for the first 10 years. You get 2% per year up to 66%. There is no age cut-off.

Language skills are very important. There are 63 libraries with 8 adult learning centers. They deal with people with 100 different languages. The web site is available in six languages. There are 4 research libraries with all the branches. Queens Borough Public Library is one of three library systems in New York City; the other two are Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library, which serves the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

The Queens Borough Library system (as a multi-branch system) began in 1896. There was no civil service. It was 80% City funded and 8% to 10% NY State funded. The rest was private funding. $240,000 was given in 1901 by Andrew Carnegie for 8 libraries.

In the marketing department they have 13 people;
for the foundation, they have 8 people;
Cataloging has 15 to 20 people;
Preparation has 3 people (maybe that is 30);
Finance has CPA's;
There are four librarians doing web services;
The IT area has 45 people;
Programs and services has a lot of staff.

With a $5 million Cancer Society Grant, they began health screenings and books were provided for information on health topics.

They are planning to have "Smart shelves," which is an rfid system for checking the order of the books on the shelves. This eliminates bar codes and one person can take a reader and find and correct books out of order. The prices are dropping that make this system very feasible. This part really captured my imagination.

Tom gave each student in the class a CD with the recruiting video in a folder with lots of other information about the Queens Borough Library system. Here is their mission statement.

Bruce Holmes and Small Aircraft Transportation

2007-06-07T09:06:00.000-04:00

Esther Dyson photographed Bruce Homes in April of 2007. Bruce was a speaker at Esther's Flight School. Since I did not know who he was, I looked him up. Here is what I found:

Bios
- Presenter Bio for Streamcenter (provides on demand webcasts of conference presentations)
- Bio for National Academies (The National Academies perform an unparalleled public service by bringing together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor. These experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public.)
- Bio from Advanced Planning Office, NASA

Other items
- Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) on Wikipedia
- Flight School 2007 (June 20-22, Aspen) includes Bruce Holmes, NASA, retired, on the speakers list. (Note that links include a blog for Flight school participants with its first entry (as of May 3, 2007).
- Scott Nance blog on FDA approval of VLJ which quotes Bruce Holmes and credits AGATE with improvement in small plane technology that has paved the way for the approval (October 30, 2006).
- CBS News story on 60 Minutes program "Flying Cars Ready to Take Off" (April 17, 2005) See also the NASA page on the 60 Minutes program with a link to view the program.
- Flight School 5 report (March 25, 2005) on Bruce Holmes' presentation. Esthr is also quoted.
- Transportation Network Technologies (May 5, 2004) from Dr. Holmes' presentation with really cool graphics (14-page pdf)

Images
- Bruce Holmes images on Google.
- Bruce Holmes images on Esthr's Flickr.

Anatoly Karachinsky, founder/CEO of IBS Group in Russia

2007-05-07T09:23:00.000-04:00

Another one of Esther Dyson's interesting people taken on April 15, 2007.

My curiosity leads me to google Esther's people when I have time. Here's Anatoly:
Executive Bio on IBS
More detailed bio from IBS
Background information from "National Geographics", November 2001, pp. 2-13.
The Man Who Wired Russia from Global Finance, April 2003, by Mark Johnson (this link because it is all on one page)
Esthr's photos of Anatoly and the only photos of him on Flickr at this time.
Here is the link to all Anatoly photos on Flickr.

What is strange is that earlyadopter has a nice photo of Anatoly with tags, but it does not show up even when I click on its own tags.

AmCham Dinner in Russia

2007-04-17T10:06:00.001-04:00

More of Esther Dyson's interesting people! This was "cutting up the rug" at the American Chamber of Commerce Dinner in Russia on April 14, 2007.

Peter Pettibone, Esq.
- official biography on Hogan & Hartson
- Space Law Probe blog entry, 11-22-05. Byline: "Not for lawyers and space tourists only" This is a blog of Jesse Londin (aka
Buzz), who also writes "Law Buzz." She "is a lawyer, writer, online editor and Web forum host. She lives in New York where she sometimes sleeps but her browser windows never close." Anyone interested in space travel should read her blog. The blogroll is also impressive!
- Finance article written by Peter and Sergey Komolov (who runs the Moscow office of Space Adventures). Scroll down to the end for an informative short bio.

Pat Cloherty
- Official bio on Delta Private Equity Partners
- Rainbow Recognition (Press release, 21 Dec. 2005)
- Press release on her appointment as CEO of Delta Capital Management / The U.S.-Russia Investment Fund (15 Dec. 2003). She was already chairwoman of the Fund before this appointment.

London's Eye

2007-04-17T09:56:00.000-04:00

When I was last in London, there was no Eye! Ester Dyson's photos (April 11, 2007) keep me up to date with the world outside New York.

A few links for the Eye:
(+) Starting with this other photo by Esthr
(+) Official Site of the Eye and an Alternate address to same site
(+) Wickipedia on London Eye which gives the most info on how it was built, its history and interesting photos. It includes a panaroma view from the Eye (1MB). There is also some discussion of possible eviction from their present site.
(+) British Airways London Eye from a guidebook perspective
(+) an areal representation from New London Architecture showing the size of the installation
(+) Photo Guide to BA London Eye

My friend from high school was also snapping photos of the Eye. Here it is seen from a boat. Here is a view from on the Eye. Here is from inside the capsule.

Tracking and Data Relay Satellites at Russia's Mission Control

2007-04-17T09:36:00.001-04:00

Another photo by Esther Dyson taken on April 9, 2007 in Russia during the Soyuz space flight of Charles Simonyi. One should really click over to Esther's photo on Flickr where she has posted notes on the photo explaining what each area of the screen is.

Jüri Kaljundi added this comment to Esther's photo: "Basically there used to be 6 TDRS (tracking and data relay) satellites which can provide "no rest period" communication between the spacecraft and customer (or NASA). Out of the 6 only half should be operational online at any time, while 3 are in backup mode. ISS is one of many customers of the system. TDRSS 2 was destroyed in Challenger accident so satellite no 7 was built. Now I believe generation 2 of TDRSS is operational with 3 additional satellites. "

See Esthr's blog posting for more information.

Nice graphic representation of TDRSS

Wikipedia entries for
TDRSS
TDRS

Adam Greenfield

2007-04-08T18:06:00.000-04:00

Esther Dyson posted this photo of Adam Greenfield on March 27, 2007 at the Emerging Technology Conference or E-Tech. So I decided to find out who Adam Greenfield is.

Adam on himself
Adam on Wikipedia
Adam in the introduction to his book, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing (Paperback)
Adam's award-winning website
Adam's personal blog, Speedbird
Adam's involvement in Etech

And one more: Adam on Studies and Observations, which focus on the ideas in his book.

Wanna see a video of his talk given at Keio University (Japan) on July 15, 2006 (about the ideas in the book)? Be prepared for a 4.5 minute intro followed by one hour 20 minutes. You may find yourself listening longer than you think. The site says the video was downloaded 873 times. The panel discussion is not included n the video.

In the video, Adam discusses ubiquitous computing that exists today such as the
- octopus card in Hong Kong,
- BodyMedia Senseware pack (called bodybugg on the web site where the photo matches the photo in Adam's presentation),
- Georgia Tech's Smart floor (1999),
- Sensacell (used in a club in NYC),
- Japan's Shinjuku RFID lamppost that tells you your location and services nearby to you such as public restrooms, transit stops, and
Starbucks special on a French vanilla latte.
- Internet toilet (Matsushita) that measures your weight, fat, blood pressure, heart beat, urine sugar, albumin and blood in urine and sends the report to your doctor (and whom else) using an Internet capable cell phone built into the seat (read 2/3's of the way down in the N.Y. Times report),
- New Songdo with a N. Y. Times article describing it. New Sondo is a complete community built from the ground up with ubiquitous computing devices.
- Mastercard Paypass 2005 which costs the consumer 25% more and which was poorly implemented,
- and more!

Adam's article on Institute for the Future with many of the same ideas as on the video above.

Bruce Schneier at the EFF Pioneer Awards

2007-04-08T06:41:00.000-04:00

Another one of Esther Dyson's people snapped on March 27, 2007.

EFF Pioneer Awards
Press Release

Quote from the Press Release
"Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist acclaimed for his criticism and commentary on everything from network security to national security. His books -- including the highly influential "Secrets and Lies" and "Applied Cryptography" -- his monthly newsletter, and his security blog have reached hundreds of thousands of people with candid and lucid analysis of security issues. Schneier has often testified before Congress on security policy."

"Benkler, Doctorow, and Schneier were nominated by the public and then chosen by a panel of judges. This year's panel includes Kim Alexander (President and founder, California Voter Foundation), Esther Dyson (Internet court jester and blogger, Release 0.9; founding chairman of ICANN; former chairman of EFF), Mitch Kapor (Chair, Open Source Applications Foundation; co-founder and former chairman EFF), Drazen Pantic (Co-director, Location One), Barbara Simons (IBM Research [Retired] and former president ACM), James Tyre, (Co-founder, The Censorware Project; EFF policy fellow) and Jimmy Wales, (Founder, Wikipedia; co-founder, Wikia; chair emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation)."

Cory Doctorow

2007-04-08T06:34:00.000-04:00

Another one of Esther Dyson's people snapped on March 27, 2007.

EFF Pioneer Awards
Press Release

Quote from the Press Release
"Cory Doctorow is an activist, writer, blogger, and public speaker about copyright, digital rights management, and electronic freedom. As a co-editor of the Boing Boing blog, he highlights critical technology issues for more than a million readers a day. Doctorow has lectured around the globe and has been nominated for Hugo and Nebula Awards for his science fiction. Doctorow is currently the Canadian Fulbright Chair at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. He was EFF's European Affairs Coordinator until December of 2005."

"Benkler, Doctorow, and Schneier were nominated by the public and then chosen by a panel of judges. This year's panel includes Kim Alexander (President and founder, California Voter Foundation), Esther Dyson (Internet court jester and blogger, Release 0.9; founding chairman of ICANN; former chairman of EFF), Mitch Kapor (Chair, Open Source Applications Foundation; co-founder and former chairman EFF), Drazen Pantic (Co-director, Location One), Barbara Simons (IBM Research [Retired] and former president ACM), James Tyre, (Co-founder, The Censorware Project; EFF policy fellow) and Jimmy Wales, (Founder, Wikipedia; co-founder, Wikia; chair emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation)."

Coping with changes in Blogger

2007-02-04T16:02:00.000-05:00

Because I wanted to comment on the blog of a person I have met on Flickr, then I got back onto this blog. I have survived the change-over to the new format, even though the Google employee instructions in the Blogger Help Group are not clear. I am now a member of the Blogger Help Group. And with all this, I even made my comment on my friend's blog! Hopefully, I will use this more now.

The solution to getting the change over was to say NO, I do not have a Google Account even though I did and do have a Google Account. Then later I was able to say I had a Google Account and complete the process. It is like Microsoft thinking. You know, how do you end a session on your computer. First you click Start, then you can end.

A bookcase, a curriculum, and LibraryThing

2006-08-26T19:33:00.000-04:00

Last Monday I had to take the swimming pools from summer school to their storage place at the high school where the summer school principal teaches in the Alternative Program [Note: I taught math there in the school year 2004-2005]. He told me that the Alternative Program was getting rid of some things which were marked with a pink tag saying "Discard." I could have anything so marked. I ended up taking a bookcase (14 feet long), a desk, a file cabinet, and a computer workstation.

This photo is of stacking the desks so that the carpet could be shampooed. It is the only photo I could find that shows the finished carrels with the desks separated by the double-sided bookcases.

My summer school work with the autistic children introduced me to the TEACCH program. The classroom is arranged with a row of student desks separated by bookcases along the wall, effectively forming cubicles. Hence, my interest in the 14-foot long bookcase with plans to break it into 4 individual bookcases as seen in the photo above. Of course, the immediate problem was to move the bookcase. Howard agreed to help me. The school district could not move the furniture as the man who does the moving just got out of the hospital, so if I wanted to get my classroom set up before school starts (September 6), then I had to rent a truck and move the stuff myself. Fortunately, Howard discovered that the 4 bookcases each were attached by 8 bolts for a total of 24 bolts). For the move, we split the unit into 2. The truck was loaded and taken to my school by the end of Monday night.

For Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I was scheduled to work on integrating the English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum with science, social studies and math from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. each day. So I had to go early to school, get the custodians to help me move the furniture from the truck into my classroom, and return the truck before 9:00 a.m.! It was done!

It was fun working on the curriculum even though I was not finished by Thursday at 1:00 p.m. I am continuing to work on it and I am very happy to have had the chance to do this planning! I am locating a teacher's edition of our social studies book so I can complete the social studies.

Yesterday, I was reading the September 5, 2006 edition of PC Magazine where on page 50 they tell of LibraryThing. I first did a search on LibraryThing and I liked what I read. There is an interesting interview with the LibraryThing founder, Tim Spalding just a couple of months after he launched the site. I also found Delicious-monster which is doing a similar thing but only for the Mac! Delicious-monster allows one to catalog his/her library using a camera attached to a Mac computer and pointed to the ISBN bar code. Using the bar code, Delicious-monster puts in the rest of the information. I like that, but I would have to rig up the camera and buy a Mac. So today, I used LibraryThing where you can type in the ISBN number and the info will be added through a search. You can see a few books from my library here.

[Posted first August 26, 2006 on MySpace]

Laura's and Brandon's wedding

2006-08-20T02:01:00.000-04:00

Friday, August 18, was Laura's and Brandon Stucki's wedding. I taught my night school class Thursday night (6:30 to 9:30 p.m.), had dinner with one of the other teachers, packed for the trip, and left for the airport for my flight to Houston. I rode with Sallie, Lindsay, and Mark from Houston to San Antonio for the reception. Because we are not Mormon, we could not go to the actual wedding in the temple. However, they had a ring ceremony at the reception. In the photo they are eating cake.

We stayed with Cousin Brett Morris and Mary Ann. It was wonderful to reconnect with Brett and Mary Ann. They have a lovely home and like David and Diane (parents of the bride) now have, Brett and Mary Ann have an empty nest. Brett and Mary Ann have eight grandchildren now!

We had a family brunch with David and Diane Saturday morning. Then our carload followed Brett and Mary Anne to the river walk in downtown San Antonio. After walking, we had lunch at Johnny Rockets.

I am now in Houston, but will be back in New York this evening.

[Posted first on August 20, 2006 on MySpace, which is where I keep up with my nieces and nephews.]

Weekend Events

2006-08-12T23:14:00.000-04:00

I am still painting the cabinet. I have finished the rust removal and most of the cabinet has primer on it. The bottom and the top are now blue. It will be really nice when more of it is blue. Tonight I put on another primer coat and tomorrow it will be blue!

Today, Howard and I went to the first annual Columbia University alumni picnic held on the grounds in front of the Mathematics building. Photos are posted on Flickr.

After the picnic, we looked at compact refrigerators so I could select one for my schoolroom. It turns out that the one I want won't fit upright in my car so it will have to be delivered. So the final selection is not yet determined. I really want one with two doors and enough space in the freezer to hold a container of ice cream. The one I was looking at, an Avanti, is pretty expensive, but it is frost free.

Next, we went to Verizon so Howard could pick out his new phone. His old one needs a new battery so for not too much more than a battery would cost, he could get a whole new phone with a speaker phone feature which he has been missing. Now for less than $70 he has a new LG phone. He says he loves it, yet he still loves me more!

The big event on Friday was a trip to the Hudson River Museum Planetarium. You can see photos from the bus and one of Saturn on Flickr. After the show, which was a tour on "Rusty Rocket" from earth to the sun and then through all the planets to Pluto, the children and I had lunch at the nearby park on the same grounds as the museum.

Friday after school, I washed with bleach two of the 5 pools that the school children use for swimming. Four of these pools are 15 inches high and 6 feet across made of vinyl; the 5th one is the same diameter with lower sides. We got concerned when three children got fevers over three days, but it turns out that the first child never went in the pool. The second child was a classmate of the first while the third child was in a different class. After speaking with pool professionals and checking web sites, it seems unlikely that the pools had anything to do with the latter two children getting a fever from the first child if that is even what happened. In the last week, no other child has been reported as sick. Pool people tell me that fever is not the sickness passed through pools. But to be on the safe side, we quit swimming until the pools could be cleaned.

[Posted first August 12, 2006 on MySpace]

Summer Happenings

2006-07-30T01:33:00.000-04:00

Today, Howard asked me to help him. His storage company had called to say that they were doing some construction so they wanted to move his things from the present storage room. He was to make an appointment and could watch as professional movers moved his stuff to the new room of his choice. The good news is that he was able to get a new room on the same hall as my storage room. The bad news is horrible. Huge quantities of water had passed through everything he had stored. Many photographs were ruined (actually only one was not damaged although the mat for it was).

So what we thought was going to be a one or two hour move, turned out to take about six hours. Even after we left the storage location, I was washing items that we hoped could be salvaged.

After all that, I started the next project: removing rust from a metal cabinet I have at school so I could paint it. I got the rust off the bottom and put the first coat of primer on the bottom, one side and the top. Tomorrow, I hope to put the second coat of primer. I can tell that the school cleaners have already been in my school room to shampoo the carpet. I did not think they would start that until mid-August.

I am teaching summer school in a different school. It is another special education position working with autistic children. Before this summer, I had only worked with autistic children one-on-one. I was wondering what it would be like to work with a group. It has been wonderful. I love the children and the teacher assistants. The school has a wonderful system set up for teaching the children. They seem very happy and have learned a lot.

I am still teaching adults in the GED program in the evenings. My regular class is Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The Monday/Wednesday teacher could not teach in the summer, so they asked me to take his class. I found four nights a week a bit much and have worked it out that someone else takes the Wednesday evening class, so I have one night for myself.

That should catch up people with my summer life. I hope you all are enjoying yourselves.

[Published first July 30, 2006 on MySpace]

Therapeutic Amino Acids

2005-08-08T17:05:00.000-04:00

On the Fourth of July, Ray Panigutti put me onto a book called The Diet Cure, which is not about losing weight. The book opens with a Quick Symptom Questionnaire, which has 8 sections. There are at least two chapters in the book on each section of the questionnaire. The scoring procedure for the questionnaire indicates the areas that one might want to look into. I scored high in seven of those eight areas!

The Diet Cure is primarily the use of specific amino acids taken between meals for specific symptoms. Julia Ross specifies that the aminos are to be taken for a short period (no longer than 3 to 12 months) so each chapter indicates how to know when to stop the amino therapy. She also indicates when certain amino acids should not be taken together. Since my mom is concerned about my taking amino acids, I have been looking up information on them and will be adding it here as I go.

Amino Acids: Research before Marketing by Rebecca Madley.
About the source: This article is published in a magazine called Nutraceuticals World which has 10 regular issues. The company also publishes a company capabilities directory and a tabloid equipment packaging supplement annually. They focus on manufacturers of dietary supplements, functional foods and nutritional beverages. I never heard of this magazine before today!

Summary points

Aminos have been used in sports nutrition (energy and muscle building) as early as 1979. In 1999 the aminos market posted $178 million (an 8.1% increase from 1989) with the 2004 market expected to be $244 million and in 2009, $331 million).
Some 20 amino acids form 50,000 to 100,000 proteins! Out of the 20, nine are considered to be essential.
Japanese companies hold the lion's share of the market and they have studied aminos at great length. China entered the research and production in the last 10 years (the article was apparently written before 2004).
The market has changed from depending on blends of aminos (which were very expensive and offered no scientifically validated advantage over proteins) to targeting specific symptoms with specific amino acids.
The caution: "When consumers maintain a poor diet, the chance for a single amino acid supplement causing harm is greater than when you maintain a healthy diet. People should not take amino acids for a long period of time and should know that amino acids are best absorbed if taken on an empty stomach. If you take excess amounts of one, you will deplete the others. Consumers should use more caution than they do with a vitamin." from Michael Schaefer, CEO, Pacific Nutritional, Vancouver, WA
(By the way: Michael Schaefer's company gave vitamins to Tsunami victims.)
There is some discussion of individual amino acids and how they benefit human body functioning. L-theanine is discussed in more detail (as a "new" amino acid).

Amino Acids (Nutrient and Health/Disease Associations), ©Copyright 1999-2001 Personal Health Lifestyles, Inc., Provo, Utah. Another copy on The Brain Injury Network.
About the source: Personal Health Lifestyles, Inc. sells nutritional products and has an educational program associated with their business.
Summary

"Research from Dr. Steven Whiting of the Institute of Nutritional Science (main offices in Den Hague, Netherlands, with additional offices in the United States and United Kingdom) [Note: this organization is affiliated with Personal Health Lifestyles] points out that an "All or None Law of Protein Utilization" is the rule of thumb. If ALL the amino acids are not present within a close 2 to 3 hour period, protein assimilation will not work! Since most vegetarian sources of proteins are incomplete, they must carefully combine the timing and mix of their food intake to provide for complete coverage of ALL amino Acids."
"Even when all are present, the assimilation of ALL amino acids will be limited to the level of the lowest quantity amino acid. For example, if one amino acid is only present at the 60% level, the assimilation of all amino acids will be limited to that 60% level.
The article then goes on to list 28 amino acids or amino acid combinations with what they are and what research has shown that they help. Eight of those listed have a specific caution note.

Amino Acids on the City of Gainsville, Florida web site. The article is in the Nutrition section of their Lifequest program. Amino acids are listed under "Vitamins, minerals, and supplements."

This article represents thinking that is currently held by many who workout where they want to increase growth harmones and build muscles through the use of amino acids. This is not what The Diet Cure is about. Such thinking is probably what Momma heard and was cautioning me against!

amino acid power.com is a web site by Dr. Dennis Gersten, MD, a psychiatrist who came to using amino acids as a result of his own health crises and after trying many alternatives. The page referenced here is about Gersten and tells his story.

Amino Acid Supplements for Body-building and Exercise is an article by Philip A. Williams, who is not listed in the psychology department. The article appears on the Vanderbilt University web site. The focus of the article is on sports usage of amino acids. The article claims to have done Internet research.

Summertime

2005-08-01T14:02:00.000-04:00

This is the time that teachers re-energise for the coming year and a new group of students. I am reading, reorganizing my papers, and taking care of myself. I have my photos at Flickr and Smugmug.