 Thursday, August 01, 2002
ReviewAlert - Email Alerts for Amazon Reviews
"ReviewAlert is a free service that allows you to be notified when new reviews are posted on Amazon.com for dvds, music cds, books on any topic etc. Now you no longer have to go to Amazon.com to see if there is a new review, we'll let you know as soon as the new review is posted. You'll save time and keep up to date with the word on the street.
Using ReviewAlert is simple. Just specify any item sold by Amazon.com by copying and pasting the Amazon.com item url or its unique ASIN and enter your email address. We'll do the rest for you. It's really that easy. ReviewAlert will only use your email to notify you of the items you have opted to receive notifications on. You may opt out at any time. Find out more." [via LISNews.com]
Hollywood Vigilantes vs. Copyright Pirates
"What's all the fuss? Berman's bill gives copyright owners a legal right to hack into and disable peer-to-peer networks suspected of illegally trading copyrighted works. It's an aggressive new tactic in a battle that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America initially waged primarily against those behind the software and services that they allege are contributing to copyright infringement....
Critics of the new tactic are calling it vigilante justice, and it certainly looks a lot like that. Frankly, the provisions under which a copyright owner gets to hack someone else's computer are pretty loosey goosey.
All copyright holders need to do before launching an attack is alert the Justice Dept. about the kind of software they're using. They don't have to tell Justice how long they plan to conduct a hacking campaign or even which site it will target. They don't even need to inform the person whose computer they are hacking what is going on -- even after the fact.
Meantime, consumers who share a network with the person being attacked could end up having their service impaired. And a legitimate file-sharing service could come under attack without a chance to respond to a copyright holder's claims of infringement.
Forget how nonsensical and rare it is to grant any industry this kind of power. There's actually a more compelling point: Plenty of laws are already on the books to protect copyright holders....
Using the existing system can produce results. Just ask the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Established in 1988 by technology companies, the BSA uses existing laws to go after pirates. Software outfits so far have a lot more skin in the game than the entertainment industry. They lost about $11 billion in sales last year. The RIAA, meantime, can't quantify the dollar impact of online piracy beyond stating that millions of dollars are at stake....
Yet, even as the software piracy rate has increased, the BSA hasn't called for new laws. Unlike some entertainment companies, the BSA isn't asking Congress to mandate the inclusion of technology in all software, PCs, and servers to protect copyrighted works....
As to the reason for a recent uptick in piracy, instead of pointing the finger at the Internet, the BSA explains that the increase is due to the economic downturn, with people in harder-hit countries turning back to pirating software.
Congress should consider a lot of things before considering Berman's bill. Legislators also should look at how other industries handle piracy. Instead of swallowing the entertainment industry's line, Congress needs to do a little thinking on its own." [BusinessWeek, via TeleRead]
And You Thought That Gadgets Were Only For the Kitchen, Part 2....We're Back!
"In a follow-up to the 2001 Presentation 60 Gadgets in 60 Minutes, we have compiled another list of sixty gadgets which appear below and on the subsequent few pages. This new series of gadgets were presented and discussed at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries in Orlando, Florida. The presentation has been condensed below for quick browsing and review. Preceeding the list of gadgets is a quick summary of some sources for finding and purchasing gadgets. Note that three of the items mentioned at the presentation were actually software programs and one is for an electric car. We unintentionally presented sixty-four items. If you subtract the four non-gadget items, there are still 60 Gadgets. In a sense, you get almost 7% more gadgets this time around!!" [LLRX.com]
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Do not, I repeat do NOT, follow the above link unless you have removed all of the credit cards from your wallet and have handed them over to a responsible party for the duration of your visit.
"This is the place where I am going to post the boring and not so boring questions I get asked while I am at the reference desk." [Ask A Librarian]
Tablet PC Makers Embrace a Dying Art: Handwriting
"Like millions of Americans, Mr. Storch has found that the ease, speed and accuracy of writing with a computer keyboard have vastly reduced the occasions on which he might turn to a pen or pencil. As a result, he and many others who spend hours a day using computers say that the penmanship they learned in school is deteriorating beyond recognition.
The trend is not likely to slow, proponents of penmanship say, as computers become even more common and school systems place less importance on teaching handwriting. Interest in teaching penmanship has reached such a low point, in fact, that the National Cursive Handwriting Contest for elementary school students will not be held during the coming year for the first time in its century-old history....
How paradoxical, then, that at a time when handwriting is in such decline, the computer industry is making a new push to embrace it. Led by Microsoft's development of the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system, hardware makers like Acer, ViewSonic and Fujitsu are this year releasing tablet PC's, laptop-like devices that permit users to write directly on the screen with a stylus and then manipulate the handwritten text....
But the new crop of tablet PC's represent much more than machines mimicking pen and paper. Computer makers say that technology is forcing handwriting to evolve in terms of how and when it is used. The tablet PC's may not only reflect those changes but also hasten them.
'I don't think we are physically losing our ability to write with a pen and pencil, but I do see changes,' said Edie Adams, manager of hardware user research for Microsoft. For example, she said, handwriting has become more useful as a thinking aid, for taking brief notes and working out ideas. Tablet PC technology is designed to take advantage of this aspect of handwriting — as 'one to one, or even one to self' communication, Ms. Adams said....
The computer keyboard did not set handwriting on its path of decline. That honor belongs to the typewriter, which became commercially available in 1874.
But the computer keyboard had a far more profound impact, according to Nan DeLuca, a calligrapher and a board member of the Society of Scribes, a New York-based group that preserves and promotes fine penmanship.
Unlike the typewriter, which was primarily adopted by business, the computer proliferated in homes and schools as well as offices. Add all the permutations of keyboard-based digital technologies like hand-held organizers, two-way pagers, cellphones and even automatic teller machines, and the need to write something by hand in cursive or block letters diminishes.
Ms. DeLuca says that she has 'nice handwriting' when she is writing to others but that for most other things, her penmanship 'has gone down the tubes.'
Some computer users say they have not only grown more accustomed to writing with a computer keyboard, but are also increasingly hesitant to write anything by hand because there is no spelling- or grammar-checking software to fall back on." [New York Times: Technology]
Recently, I was lamenting the state of public education with a friend of mine who is a teacher. She said she spends way too much time teaching cursive writing, especially when you consider how much else falls by the wayside in its stead. I hadn't really thought about it until she brought this up but unfortunately, I think she's right.
I'd rather see Kailee's and Brent's teachers providing instruction in information literacy and computer concepts (versus just computer software) than teaching cursive writing. I write very little on paper anymore and when I do, it's a mish mash of sloppy print and cursive letters. In fact, I can't remember the last time I wrote an entire letter or document in all cursive. Will tablet PCs and voice recognition software (someday when it's a feasible alternative) be the final nails in the coffin?
Reading and Writing Cell Phone Rings
"Yankee Group reports in 2002 that 23% of US wireless customers with children have at least one child under the age of 18 using a cellphone. Yankee says that in 1999, only 5% of wireless customers had a child with a cellphone. Yankee also found in 2002 that 10% of children under age 18 purchased their own cellphone, and 19% pay for their own service. Yankee found that parents are taking care of the service bill for 68% of children under age 18 with cellphones. Another 9% share the service bill with their parents." [eMarketer.com]
The email version of this also includes an interesting chart predicting that by 2006, 75% of children under the age of 18 will have a cell phone. Of course, it'll really be a smartphone/PDA combination that also handles wireless games, MP3s (or more likely some other streamed format), and ebooks.
Get your library, business, newspaper, whatever shifting into that wireless access world now.
For those of you attending or thinking of attending Internet Librarian in November in Palm Springs (California), the preliminary program is up, wherein you can catch the summary of my postconference workshop (scroll down to the bottom). [via Library News Daily]
In the past, SLS has offered a discount on registration for staff at our member libraries, and my guess is that InfoToday will let us do it again this year. I'll post details when I hear about them, although I'm sure Dean and Gloria will also note it in the SLS newsletter.
On a side note, I'll also be speaking at the Access 2002 and NetSpeed 2002 conferences, both at the end of October. So between these and IL, I won't be able to make it to PopTech this year. Buzz sends word that he and Robert Scoble are going to start a blog for the conference, but if you're even thinking of attending, you should book now since there are only 500 seats to go around and I know Ernie's ready and counting down the days.
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