"In a year awash with scandal and a steady stream of layoffs as the economy continued to stagger, we could take comfort in the certainty that fellows like Oracle Chief Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy would amuse us with their comments. We scribbled down what they, and various others, had to say and offer this quote retrospective." [InfoWorld: Top News]

Joy of joys! Astraware has released Bookworm for the Palm platform! It costs $14.95, works on color or grayscale devices, and even works with my Clie's audio. I'm downloading mine right now. [via infoSync]

Of course, if you don't have a Palm, you can still play this amazingly addictive game online.

Todd Courtois sends along news of KABLOG, his new blogging tool for mobile phones and PDAs.

"KABLOG is a tool for mobile phones and PDAs that allows you to post new blog entries to Movable Type. (It may also work with other blog services supporting an XMLRPC interface similar to Movable Type's, but this has not been tested.) KABLOG currently runs on the J2ME (MIDP 1.0) platform. Devices supporting this include:

• PalmOS devices running PalmOS v3.5 or higher with a network connection. For example, the Handspring Treo, or Palm Vx.
• Sprint PCS phones that can download J2ME MIDP games and other applications.
• NexTel Motorola iDen phones that can download J2ME MIDP games and applications.
• RIM Blackberry devices that can run J2ME MIDP applications.
• Symbian OS devices that can run J2ME MIDP applications. (Note that some Symbian OS devices may only run the PersonalJava applications.)"

The software is shareware, but it only costs $10. Unfortunately, my Sony Clie N710C doesn't have any type of a network connection so I can't try it out. I'm definitely intrigued, though. The only other PDA blogging software I know about is PocketBlog, which is for Pocket PCs (and is free). Are there others out there?

It's great to watch this software niche grow, because I'm a firm believer in the interactive, always-on, wireless future, and I think people will be blogging, taking pictures, video-conferencing, and more with their handheld devices in the (relatively) near future. I'd be doing it now if I had enough money for the right equipment. Consider this another reason for your public library to implement a wireless network for the public.

Bizarre moment: I was just sitting in Pamela's office updating her on some of our projects when the National Peanut Tour truck drove by her window.

Oh wait - yes, it is Friday the 13th.

Security Lapses on Campuses Permit Theft From JSTOR Database

"Someone exploiting a security weakness on college computer networks this fall tried to illegally download the entire collection of scholarly journals kept in the JSTOR database.

JSTOR, a nonprofit organization that creates digital copies of scholarly journals and sells access licenses to institutions, was able to put a stop to the attempted thievery after about 50,000 journal articles were downloaded. Kevin M. Guthrie, president of JSTOR, said this is less than 5 percent of the organization's electronic library and that JSTOR did not take a significant financial loss.

The culprits infiltrated the database by finding college proxy servers that were unintentionally left open for use by the public, Mr. Guthrie said. Proxy servers are programs used in computer networks to ensure that only authorized users have access to restricted materials such as online journals and databases. But the JSTOR incident shows that colleges that don't configure their proxy servers correctly can accidentally leave avenues for others to use the servers to gain access to the materials....

JSTOR staff members detected the activity and took steps to prevent the downloads, but the culprits worked to find ways around the roadblocks, he said.

Mr. Guthrie said the attack stopped after JSTOR sought outside help, which he declined to describe. He also declined to identify the institutions and the countries that were involved." [The Chronicle, via Digital-Copyright Digest]

This is pretty cool - Accessify.com has created an Accessible Form Builder. It's pretty basic, but it helps start you in the right direction. If you're not familiar with the tags that make your library's forms more accessible to screen readers, then you should definitely use this tool as a starting point.