Trains get WI-FI in uk

Great news, in the uk, that WI-FI is being introduced on British rail. This will be quicker than airplanes have introduced it. Thats excellent news, as when I go away on the train, I miss my Bloglines. Full story here.

Back at the library.....and a nice surprise

Well, went back to my voluntary role at the library, as had a month off do my other job. So a bit weird going back. Anyhow, found a letter that I was put forward for a WOW Award, for outstanding service. Now isn't that nice. Well I thought so.

Stepping on the feet of giants

Got sent an interesting post dealing with whether Can new media turn old? Hope Jeff Jarvis from Buzzmachine doesn't get wind of this. This guy might steal his Guardian column from him. Well. Check it.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond review

I had heard previously of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond previously via The Ubiquitous Librarian blog. He was using it and i wondered what it was about. Well, I found a new blog which discussed it. The blog is called the Park Ranger for the Intellectual Commons (bit of a mouthful). The blog entry says:-
'Diamond proposes that those who live in more "primitive" societies seem to be smarter than those who live in first-world, industrialized nations. Why, you ask? That's where it gets interesting.......As a result, industrialized peoples have evolved over the past several thousand years with the most successful individuals being those with the greatest disease tolerance. Meanwhile, people in hunter-gatherer societies have little medical care and higher rates of mortality due to homicide/war and prey animals. To survive they must be alert to the dangers around them and quick to respond. As a result, they have evolved with the most successful individuals being those who are most alert, intelligent, and agile.'

I would love to read this if I didn't have enough to read already. Good blog to.

Social library course

Ok. late again.Information wants to be free has shown there producing a 'Introducing Five Weeks to a Social Library!'. Sounds excellent. Not sure how you get on it. But it starts in Feb.2007. check it.

Geo-Calc 2.0 for Mac OS X released

A friend’s at the small Mac startup, BaldGeeks, has released a major update to Geo-Calc, their comprehensive geometry calculator for Mac OS X.

Totally nothing to do with libraries, but it does have the 2.0.

100th entry about films

Its party time. My 100th entry. Anyhow, i'm a big or J-horror as some call it. Anyhow, I read over on the Ubiquitous Librarian that one missed call is being remade and was filmed for a scene at his library. Who said libraries can't be a frightening place?

Blogger and new versions

Techcrunch has revealed that Blogger has a beta version (read here). Techcrunch point out the following points:-

But for now there are other features already being discussed. The big picture is privacy, tags, drag and drop layout and easier inclusion of non-textual elements.

Blogger.com will now publish individual posts to the Blogspot servers, instead of republishing the entire blog after each post. Besides making the system easier to use, perhaps this will also solve the problem of Blogger blogs republishing their entire feeds and appearing as unread in feed readers.

Privacy settings will be enabled. Blogs can be public, private or read only by invitation. Many people say that private blogs are counter intuitive and that anything you post online should be understood as being for public consumption - but the blogging software providers are betting otherwise. The privacy feature is either not turned on yet, or is not working, and RSS privacy appears to be undetermined yet. It would be interesting to see Blogger support the RSS privacy standard that Bloglines recently proposed. One thing that’s clear so far is that Google appears to intend that only readers with Google Accounts logins will be allowed to accept permission to read private blogs. That’s a cheap move.

Posts can now be tagged; no more workarounds for Blogger posts to appear in tag search engines. This will also change the composition of tag search results, as there are a huge number of Blogger blogs written by less technical users and robot sploggers.

Drag and drop layout. Both building your blog’s template and changing the position of elements later will be possible with a drag and drop interface. That’s the kind of thing that could help Blogger reclaim its position as the preeminent hosted system in terms of usability. The default template options are also more varied.

The drag and drop page gives you the option of adding an element, including 3rd party javascript. Very nice, but still not as easy to use as Typepad’s widget menu.

Feeds. Feeds for all comments and individual feeds for comments on each post. Support for RSS 2.0 in addition to Atom.

Sounds good.

Social networking can really take the p*%£

Read this interesting story on SIVACRACY.NET. In the story two students got drunk whilst at Illinois University and one had to elieve himself in some bushed, when a cop came along. The guy ran, whilst his friend was asked if he knew the other guy. He said no, and his friend then called him. The cop saw the name and got some more information. He then had two names and checked if they knew each other. But how? VIA Facebook. The guy who relieved himself was fined $145 and the other guy who lied $195. Hell, don't you love social networks?

Education 2.0 article

A friend sent me a great article on e-learning 2.0 they had done. There article is here,and the second part is due out soon. Its really kicking up a lot of positive feedback and well worth a read. Here is the second part.

web 2.0 video

Techcrunch have just put up a web 2.0 video. Check it out here.

DOPA article

Just been o my feeds and read an article that what I learned today pointed me to. It deals with the new DOPA act and is on the CBS site, entitled
House Misfires On Internet Safety. It covers the stupidity of the lw, with suh information as:-

If children are going to get into trouble online, chances are it won't be at school. They'll be home, they'll be at a friend's house or they could even be completely away from adult supervision using their mobile phones. Schools and libraries are relatively protected environments where adults are never far away and, for the most part, computers are in public locations that make it difficult for users to hide what they're doing.

If anything, schools and libraries should be encouraging kids to use blogging and social networking services. They have enormous educational potential for such things as writing, interviewing, collaborative research, media literacy, and photography, but even if not used as part of a formal supervised education program, they encourage kids to communicate and reach out to others.

Recommend reading for concerned librarians and parents alike

Viral marketing doesn't work.....tell your friends

I know others have linked to this already, but hell I found it funny.

Great library 2.0 article

Everyone's favourite blog on library 2.0, librarycrunch discusses an article on what library 2.0 is.The article is entitled Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries. Librarycrunch describes it thus:-
He presents a very well-argued thesis that Library 2.0 is primarily a technology-centered theory. While I agree that technology does play a key role in the ability of today's library to move forward and serve more users, I am not convinced that technology can ever be the primary component in this thing we call Library 2.0.

Still worth a read though.

Could DOPA happen in the uk

Having already been against the states Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) act being passed, I was thinking, 'it'll never happen here. How mistaken was I. I was watching the ITV News which was having a rant against youtube, which showed some kids in Crawley putting two girls on a roundabout, whilst 2 lads on a motorbike put there bike wheel on it and 'spin them off it'. They describe it as 'pphenomenally stupid'. Wow. Genius reporting. Watch Tony Blair say how bad this is. BTW, I can't find the link on youtube. What a surprise.

Libvibes

A new library 2.0 podcast has been brought to my attention by two excellent bloggers called libvibes (here and here). Its usually daily, and only last five minutes usually. Surely, if you can look at your bloglines, sure you can listen to this?

Good blog article

Just read this article from a new blog on web 2.0 called Miss Ellen did not know what to do dealing with social networking sites and how to use them. This discusses how parents can use myspace and how to use Digg. Well worth a read.