"Amen! And Amen again. Warren Buffett once said something to the effect that if investing were as simple as looking at the past, the wealthiest people in the world would be librarians. For the patience she has shown, and the depth of her own website, Jenny deserves a look-see! Her site makes me want to learn more about library science and the librarians' views about information management." [Steve Pilgrim's Radio Weblog]

<blush>Aw shucks.</blush> Thanks, Steve!

As Dave noted, though, we're more than happy to help! If you think what I'm doing is good, you should check out your local library and see what they're up to. I'll bet you'll be surprised.

Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt

"Kim Stanley Robinson (Antarctica, The Mars Trilogy) has a new novel, The Years of Rice and Salt. It follows 700 years of alternate history where Islam, China and India vie for world domination after the Black Death takes Europe and Christianity out of the game." [More Like This WebLog]

This sounds interesting, so I hope Audible makes it available. Alternatively, I might even be willing to read this on my Sony Clie.

See what I mean about medical librarians? Check out this service Lori is providing to her Library's users!

"Is anyone out there trying ovid@hand? We are! This has to be one of the first interactive library programs available for handhelds. Although it is in its infancy, the possibilities are exciting! Our library subscribes to about 200 of Ovid's full text magazines. With ovid@hand, our physicians, residents, and medical personnel can subscribe to receive their choice of these tables of contents on their handheld, select abstracts for which they want to read the full text of an article, hot sync, and view the full text of the article in their personal library.

Some trying this new service would like the full text on the handheld, but are pleased with being able to view the abstracts and after a hotsync having the full text right there for their viewing pleasure. I think this is a beautiful beginning for library applications on handhelds!"

"For the first time in history, more employees work with their minds than with their muscles. Their value lies in their mental abilities and their knowledge. Collectively, they are the "mind" of the company -- a mind spread across many individual brains.

Using interviews they conducted with hundreds of knowledge workers, the Fishers have identified six trends that will change forever the way we work. The Distributed Mind provides an intriguing look at how to:

• understand the characteristics of knowledge work teams (and the innovative concept of 'vertical multiskilling')
• organize multiple specialists into a cohesive unit
• share knowledge without creating information overload
• coordinate activities when half the team is spread across the globe (or never in the office)
• understand the critical role of technology in this new work structure
• grasp a whole new organizational form, called 'the learning lattice.' "

[Cafe Radioactive, via Steven's Weblog]

Add yet another title to The Shifted Reading List - The Distributed Mind: Achieving High Performance through the Collective Intelligence of Knowledge Work Teams by Kimball Fisher and Mareen Duncan Fisher.

Today I found myself trying to answer the question "what is a blog" not once, but twice. As with so many things, I'm finding it's easier to just show good examples of blogs - and blog genres - and then build on that foundation. I think John feels the same way, because today he posted a sampling of blogs written by people that "dominate their chosen areas" (the blogs, not necessarily the people!). He was gracious enough to include me in his list - thanks, John! You can let your bun down, too.  :-)

Whenever I have "one of my ideas" and I tell them about it at work, they roll their eyes and pretend to listen to me. Wait until they hear this one. If you thought the AT&T's mLife concept was just BigCo hype, well... you were right. But here's an "m" we can all get behind: mLearning! Their Powerpoint presentation of the same name describes this U.K.-based project's goal of using cell phones and PDAs to teach literacy and numeracy to young adults. They even show some valid examples.

There are some stunning statistics in there, too, all of which are from Europe because they're so far ahead of us in implementation and acceptance of wireless services. For example, in August 2000, when the m-learning bid was first written, 75% of Net Gens ages 15-24 owned cell phones. And that was a year and a half ago! One month earlier in July 2000, "70% of Italians have mobiles including 'every' Italian male aged 17-21." As Elaine would say, "GET OUT!"

I really love this whole project, and I'm definitely going to find out more about it. And you thought my previous post about video and cell phones was ridiculous. Go on, admit it - you did. For shame. (I think I hear Walt groaning.)

[part of Canarie Canadian National E-Learning workshop-Presentations, via Serious Instructional Technology]

"I gotta say this. Having a librarian in our midst is fantastic. I worshipped librarians as a kid. They are so happy to help, and so damned smart!" [Scripting News]

Dave gets to be part of the club, too, although he'll have to follow Adam's lead and also let down his bun. Thanks, Dave!

Sprint to Deploy 3G Imaging

"In an attempt to make its forthcoming next-generation wireless network more attractive, Sprint said Monday that users of that network will be able to snap pictures and automatically transmit them wirelessly." [allNetDevices Wireless News]

When I do my Information Shifting presentation, I always get skeptical looks when I talk about MP4 and the use of video over cellphones or wireless PDAs. While I agree that I don't see myself watching movies on such a device any time soon, that scenario won't be the entry point into the mainstream. Instead, it will be Grandpa, who doesn't have one of those new-fangled computers, watching a video of his grandchild on his cell phone. It will be insurance agents snapping pictures of your car accident and sending them into the home office (which is actually happening already). Or it will be a moving, 3D, GPS-based map giving directions with real images to point out landmarks. It never starts where you think it will.

So today's lesson is don't be so quick to scoff. At my house we have a minivan with one of those screens mounted on the ceiling and a VCP installed. It came with the car, and it's not that special a request anymore. Eight-year old Kailee and six-year old Brent will probably never remember a time when TVs didn't come pre-installed in cars (and you think you already felt old!). They don't think twice about taking their media with them, especially when you're talking about Brent with his Gameboy. So why do you think a cell phone that snaps pictures or shows videos would be any different?

File-swapping Network Locks Out Users

"Morpheus -- a file-swapping service that many have said would be impossible for courts to shut down -- goes dark, apparently because of technical problems." [News.com]

But Kazaa is still up. Hmmmmm... I'll be interested to hear what the problem is. Since Judge Patel never disputed the right of Napster as a technology to exist, I don't know if this will truly hurt Morpheus' chances in the lawsuit or not.

"Macintouch Reader Report: iPod. Seems like people are using their iPods to listen to mail and other things by using text to speech software to convert text to MP3s. Neat." [Archipelago]

I've thought about doing this kind of thing with my Archos Jukebox, but I can't bring myself to do it because I get so much email it would be an inefficient use of my time just to convert it all, which would kind of defeat the point. Someday, when VoiceXML reads my news aggregator to me, then we'll talk, but I'd just like to point out that the iPod is sold as a digital music player. In 1999, the RIAA sued the first digital music player, the Diamond Rio (now owned by SonicBlue), because they thought consumers shouldn't be able to take their music with them in a digital format. If the RIAA had won, there would be no iPod, and you wouldn't be able to listen to MP3s, let alone your email.

In fact, if they get their way, you may not be able to listen to your email anyway unless you can prove you own it and it's not copyrighted. Here's why it's such an important point. When the courts ruled that portable MP3 players were not illegal, I doubt they even considered that folks might someday listen to their email on them. If we lose the case against P2P software (like Napster, Kazaa, etc.), digital music, and digital video, what could we be losing that we don't even know about?

If Morpheus Is Illegal, So Is The Rest Of The Net - EFF

"Unlike users of the former Napster network for exchanging MP3 audio files, users of the Morpheus, Grokster and Kazaa software can exchange any computer file they agree to share. But the EFF lawyers said that the software doesn't work without multimedia-capable computers, without Internet access provided by companies such as AOL Time Warner's America Online, or without software to play the music and video and sometimes copy it to optical disks.

If the makers of the file-sharing software are breaking the law, the EFF lawyers said in one of their two filings Monday, then "co- conspirators" include some of the same multinational corporations whose record companies and motion picture studios are joined in one of the lawsuits against the P2P trio." [Newsbytes]

Wouldn't you also have to sue the PC manufacturers (Dell, Gateway, etc.), PC resellers (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.), and browser/FTP software publishers who create programs that let you download P2P software in the first place? Wow, that's one m-i-g-h-t-y big lawsuit if the judges buy that argument.

I love it when the BigCos own logic comes back to haunt them.

Another Security Hole Found In Macromedia Flash

"Using an undocumented feature in the Flash 5 authoring tool, a Macromedia customer found it was possible to create a "Trojaned" Flash movie that, when viewed using the standalone Flash player, would place a malicious script on the viewer's computer." [NewsBytes]

Steven Johnson on "Emergence"

"Johnson: I was thinking that what the Web needs is a big neo-cortex. There are all these very specialized smart, focused tools being developed, and data that's being mined, and collective intelligence on specific problems. But we're not as good yet at, not just filtering all that stuff, but figuring out what belongs connected to what else. Google is, in a way, the beginning of that. It's letting the Web solve that pattern itself, looking at patterns and links of what should be connected to other things. But we need more of that kind of synthesis going on. I think XML is going to be a great platform for that. Once you have clear, simple markup for describing big chunks of data, it should be easier to do that as well. " [at O'Reilly Network, via Tomalak's Realm]

Fantastic interview with Mr. Emergence himself, Steve Johnson. Matt, if you're reading this... I r-e-a-l-l-y need you to get his book into Audible because it's the only chance I have of reading it these days.

Re-read the bolded sentence in the above excerpt (the emphasis is mine). You know what you get when you have a really big collection of "stuff" that's not catalogued, organized, or indexed properly? A big and bad need for a librarian! Of course, a herd of librarians couldn't index the entire Internet (although Carole Leita and colleagues are doing a decent subset at the Librarians' Index to the Internet), so what we need is software that thinks like and emulates librarians. That's why you shouldn't count us out of development cycles.

"Johnson: Yeah, there needs to be some other thing that comes along that holds all of that information and turns it into some higher level structure that can actually make sense of it all.

But there's enough innovation going along at the base level, and enough interesting people contributing to that, that I feel kind of optimistic that we're going to figure out interesting things to do with the tremendous amount of data that's being produced by all those people."

"Super Librarian!"

"Here I come to save the day...."

If y'all had just talked to us first, this whole Internet thing would be much better organized right now.

More progress in the area of classes I wish they'd taught when I was in library school. This time it's the University of Maryland's Virtual Reference Librarianship 1.0 course, "the first class expressly designed by and for virtual reference librarians and those who aspire to become one."

"The class will focus on the nitty-gritty of what it is actually like to do reference live and online --- when the patron is waiting and you're the one in the hot seat.  You'll learn practical facts and techniques like how long is too long to make a patron wait, how to carry-on an effective conversation in chat while you are desperately looking for an answer, alternative means of sharing information when co-browsing just won't work, useful scripts to have in your arsenal and those you can do without, how to judge when either you or the patron have had enough and it is time to get back to them later, and much more.  You'll find out what we know about the kinds of questions that are best answered live and real time, and those that are not, and you'll learn about the most common mistakes virtual librarians make, and how to avoid them at least some of the time. You'll learn how to deal with some of the problems of virtual reference like patron disconnects, and the occasional abusive or harassing caller.  And everyone will get a chance to try his or her skill at the Holy Grail of virtual reference, handling more than one patron at a time." [via WEB4LIB]

Ironically, it's not an online course, although they expect that little detail to change this Fall. See, librarians do rule.

Free Online Web Accessibility Training "WebAim (Web Accessibility In Mind) is offering free online training on Web accessibility during the month of April." [meryl's notes]

If you haven't had any training in this area, don't miss this one!

Adam Curry is definitely on a roll. First he produced an excellent essay about Blogging: Tune Out and Switch On, and now he's discussing Preaching the Blog Gospel. Skip the recent, inane articles about blogging in the mainstream press and read Adam instead.

And yes, for those of you that don't realize it, this is the Adam Curry who helped shape our adolescences. He's an honorary librarian for his tag line alone: "There are no Secrets, Only information you don't yet have." He's also one of the guys behind SchoolBlogs, so give it up for Adam!

Notes on Visual and Interaction Design

"Notes is a laundry list of design principles with links to some inspirational examples along the way." [ia/]

It was a little hard to read on my PC without upping the text size, but it's a good site that covers visual design, interaction, typography, color theory, Web graphics, production, and resources. Excellent prep work for when you're designing or re-designing a site.

A Medical Text That Heals Itself

"A new electronic medical textbook may be the first peer-reviewed medical text designed not only to provide authoritative information, but also to be an ongoing work-in-progress. Doctors are invited to download Medical Approaches for free and make comments, additions and improvements for the next edition, which they are again invited to download." [Wired News]

You can read it on most Palm Pilots, PocketPCs, and Psions.

I don't think I've said this before, but medical librarians rule! They are so far ahead that they're ruining the curve for the rest of us. So I know they'll all be investigating and maybe even promoting the ebook in this article.

I talked to Kailee tonight, and she loves the idea of having her own blog. Next month, I told her.  :-)  I'm sure she'll point to sites like Joseph Wu's Origami Creations because she's very creative and artistic (except on nights like tonight when she says cursive writing hurts her brain).

Until then, I'll just link to it. [via MeFi]

Russ Lipton educates us regarding What Is Publish and Subscribe? I'm pointing to it because I truly do believe this is a major piece of the news gathering future (it's already the major piece of my present). Russ' essay is an excellent introduction to that future. [via Scripting News]

"Without a publish and subscribe model, the Web suffers from forcing users to make explicit proactive decisions to go to a website of interest. If I want to read the New York Times online, I go there. It doesn't come to me.

This is one reason both discussion groups and mailing lists have been so popular on the Web. Mailing lists (always) and discussion groups (often) provide methods for notifying us that something of interest awaits.

Radio's delivery of weblog subscription feeds to us through the news aggregator is one of those 'simple' features that (will) revolutionize actual behavior on the Web."

Although he doesn't explicitly say it, Russ is describing how Web users will be information shifting their news. Their information will come to them in the format they prefer (Web-based news aggregator, text message notifications, news feeds downloaded onto their PDAs, etc.), instead of waiting-and-hoping-and-praying for them to come to it. Lori gets this, too, when she writes:

"Fairly soon, it will not be enough just to put your web page out there and hope google picks it up. You will have to put your page into an xml newsfeed as Jenny says because that will be how people are picking up their news instead of reading the paper, looking in google, etc. Libraries will need to put their pages in feeds, for people reading news, finding things on the net, and getting news in a handheld format. I wonder if newsfeeds may become the new search engines on the Internet." [The Handheld Librarian]