"I'm all for labels that make our cataloging more accurate, informative and save time. This proposed bill sounds good to me:

Senator Ron Wyden recently introduced the Digital Consumer Right-to-Know Act (DCRKA), a bill that would require entertainment companies to label products with copy-protections that limit consumer use. Support the DCRKA if you think the content industry should be ordered to clearly label media that restricts your rights!

You can send a prepared letter to your senators from the Electronic Freedom Foundation site." [Catalogablog]

In response to yesterday's post about WiFi in libraries, Waldo Jaquith asks for sample policies to help him and his fellow board trustees decide if this is a service they want to pursue. There are a few resources that might help over at The Wireless Librarian, but if you have a policy to share, please contact him.

I'm a big proponent for providing public access to wireless networks in public libraries, so I hope Waldo et. al. fully investigate the possibility.

State of Denial

"Today one of my professors told us about an article in the Sacramento Bee called State of Denial. When I went to go read this article I found I had to pay $1.95. Tell me, how many copies of the paper could I get for that price? At least two, maybe four, or even eight! Now tell me, what sort of value is that to me? None. I won't pay $1.95 for one article. Because the Sacramento Bee is charging so much they are effectively locking away the past in their vaults." [Grant M. Henninger]

Another reason not to lock away your content behind a cost figure that is perceived to be too high by the user but too low for a credit card-based transaction (at least until micropayments are a reality).

And, of course, a friendly reminder that you can usually get this type of article for free from your local library!

Microsoft, HP Designing Communication-centered PC

"The two companies are expected to demonstrate today a new prototype computer, code-named Athens, that will integrate communications functions into a PC more tightly so that office workers can be more productive. The machine, which is being shown off by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at the company's Windows Hardware (Winhec) conference in New Orleans today, is expected to debut sometime in 2004.

The Athens PC has a 23-inch flat-screen monitor so that office workers can view more than one document or Web page at a time while they're working. It comes with a phone handset and a video camera so that a user can make video phone calls.

It has blinking color indicator lights on top that tell whether you have high-priority e-mails or voice mails. You can look at a list of voice mails to see who they are from or delete them without listening to them.

The machine will play music for you while you're working, but it will automatically mute the music if you receive an important phone call. When you get a call, it generates an image of the caller on the screen and shows their personal information from the computer's address book." [SiliconValley.com]

Finally - a work-oriented PC that would make me more efficient (assuming it doesn't keep crashing). It's about time we started seeing something new in this area.

Gloria found an article about blogging in the Chicago Sun-Times. It uses some bizarre categories to classify them, but it does note that these days, "getting a Weblog up and running is about as challenging as buying a Coke from a vending machine."

How to Make Your Way through the Blog

"But it's tricky business because no one has the foggiest notion of what a Weblog actually is. What I should really do is say, 'A Weblog is just a Web page containing a long scroll of time and date-stamped entries, written and posted by the blog's owner....'

For that simple explanation, though, blogging is a powerful and flexible concept. A field guide to the North American Blog would identify the following major subclasses:

Linkage Blogs: The most classic-style blog, its individual blog entries are links to other sites on the ’net, embroidered with brief descriptions. If the person operating the blog has interests similar to yours it's a lot like having a TiVO for the Web. Someone else is sifting through the mounds and mounds of junk, and reporting back on just the links that might interest you.

Info Blogs: Is the office print server available, or offline? Schools, companies and local businesses use blogs as a way to keep folks informed.

Boswell Blogs: Like Boswell's London Journal or Pepys Diary, this is a street-level account of an individual life. It's the most interesting and exciting type of blog by far.

Barbie Blogs: Like the Boswell Blog, except the blog entries are of interest only to the writer, the writer's immediate circle of friends."

Now we just need icons for display on our Barbie blogs....

Blogging @ Your Library

"So why are blogs important to libraries? In one word—communication. You can reach your patrons or staff in a whole new way. Information can be posted instantly. You can highlight an event in your community, review a book, or announce new materials. A blog gives people a reason to continually return to your site.

Parts of your Web site can be blogs. Pages that change regularly can be quickly updated if they’re a blog and you don’t need to know HTML. Each department can update its own page. You can also communicate easily with your staff. Everyone from the director to part-time staff can post policy changes, news, or vacation schedules." [Points of Reference]

A short article about why libraries should utilize blogs, courtesy of the SLS Points of Reference newsletter. The article is written by Kate Zdenek, a decidedly non-techie librarian at our very own La Grange Park PL. If you need to help explain the concept to your director or other higher-up, Kate's article is short and sweet, and she points to three of their four blogs as examples.

A reminder to SLS libraries that we provide free Movable Type blogs for all of our members!

rss weather

"Marcus heard my plea for some xml translation to rss for the weather server I found yeaterday. And voila! this script will grab the city of your liking's data and create an rss file for you that automagically upstreams. Great for news aggregators, now I get all the latest weather info embedded with my other news feeds. Sweet!" [Adam Curry's Weblog]

Except that the script is a Stuffit file for Macs, right? I'll have to mess with Stuffit, but does anyone know of an equivalent for Windows?? I'd love to throw more of my real life into my aggregator.

Audio Blogs: Online Diarists Sound Off

"In the 18th century, people recorded the mundane details of life in diaries. Today, bloggers -- or Web loggers -- share their most intimate thoughts and opinions with the entire world on the Internet. The online journals, known as "blogs," are increasingly popular. And while they've been dominated by text and photos, they're now also going in a new direction, using audio as well.

NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on "audio blogs" -- online audio diaries that can make anyone's life a serial drama. New technology allows them to be updated via a simple phone call....

Moorehead predicts that once the novelty of audio blogging subsides, it will become just another tool in a blogger's repertoire.

Since audio blogs are relatively new, they don't yet cover the range of their written equivalents. But some people are already using audio in creative ways. A site called The Quiet American provides audio travelogues submitted by people around in a feature called 'one-minute vacations.' " [NPR, via weblogged News]

I agree with Will that this article is already behind the curve by not even noting moblogging. Maybe this will hit the BigPub press by the end of the year when combination cell phone cameras are more prevalent. As usual, Japanese youth are ahead of the U.S.

I was starting to lean towards the Sony P800 until I saw that the Nokia 6800 may be released in the U.S. soon. Now I'm back on the fence. :-