Of Beer and Chocolate

"The future of web services, geo-location data and 3G: Up My Street Pub Crawl. Smart mobbing, British Style. Talking of which, Tom's discussion on his definition of Social Software features Howard Rheingold himself, along with Lance Rose and Anne Galloway.

Meanwhile, thirteen ways of looking at chocolate" [Ben Hammersley.com]

King County Library System to Launch E-book Collection

"King County Library System, one of the largest library systems in the U.S., has partnered with OverDrive to develop an eBook collection that will allow patrons to checkout and download titles to their personal PCs, Tablet PCs and PDA handheld devices-24 hours a day, seven days a week. The King County Library System (KCLS) includes 42 libraries that serve more than one million residents outside the City of Seattle....

Patrons will be able to checkout and download titles to their personal PCs and PDA devices for offline, "anytime" reading. At the end of the checkout period, the eBook title will automatically be checked back in and become immediately available for lending. If a particular eBook is not available, a library cardholder can place a hold on the title and be added to a waiting list. The patron will receive an automatic e-mail with a direct link to the title when it becomes available." [ManagingInformation.com, via Utah and National Public Library News]

I'm still waiting to hear reports for how these types of projects are going. I guess the services are still too new, but you'd think there would be some survey information out there somewhere. Or does it exist and I just haven't seen it?

RSS and eGovernment

"Brian Sweeting runs the Spanish Fork City web portal. He announced today that RSS feeds are available for city news and upcoming events. This is a great application of XML to eGovernment. I don't know of another government using RSS in this way, but its surprising that they all aren't since its so easy to do. Brian used an RSS generator from Stargeek. If you want the whole calendar, I recommend PHPiCalendar since it does the calendar and the RSS feed all in one." [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

My home library is helping build a community web site that will include blogging and (hopefully) RSS, so I definitely want to look over what Spanish Fork is doing. Very nicely done!

You Know You're a Grown-up When You Grumble at This

"A new poll by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center reports that most Americans think people need to be 26 to be considered 'grown up.'

College-educated Americans put the age even higher--between 28 and 29.

Tom Smith, director of the center's General Social Survey, said he had never asked the question before but, using other surveys, he thinks that Americans' notion of when adulthood starts is later now than in the past.

Indeed, some social scientists have declared that '30 is the new 20.' " [Chicago Sun-Times]