Missed this one while I was gone: Nokia launches first phone-based VPN

"The Communicator 9210i has a number of additions that were not on previous models, including support for JavaScript and cascading style sheets, Macromedia Flash 5, and the VPN client....

'Even though phones such as the 9210i are on a circuit-switched network, when data leaves a phone it is open to attack as it travels across the Internet," said Grace. 'This is a problem with something like the 9210i where more and more people are using it to access corporate applications such as SAP or Lotus Notes....'

One customer, said Grace, has already ordered 1,000 of the new Communicators for a medical application. 'They wanted to make sure all information traveling between the doctors and the servers is encrypted.'

The VPN client should address such shortcomings, and it makes the 9210i one of the first handheld devices to enable end-to-end encrypted links." [ZDNet News]

Of course, this is running on Symbian so we can't test it here in the U.S., but it's still very cool. Nokia again leaves the U.S. market in the dust. Encryption would be very important if librarians wanted to let users search their online catalogs or view their patron records via cell phone. I'll bet Lori could really use this stuff, too.

"The FBI is consulting Mormon Church computer experts who oversee the institution's vast genealogy data bank to help rebuild the bureau's outdated information system....

"At senior levels, we must lead the bureau back to where (information management) is accepted as second nature," Chiaradio said....

Chiaradio says the FBI has begun addressing its problems in managing and analyzing the mass of information it gathers in investigations." [USA Today Tech]

I sure hope they're involving some folks from the field where "information management is accepted as second nature" - librarians.

Sheree is selling her grandmother's grand piano, so folks have been coming over to look at it. It's a Steger & Sons that hasn't been played in at least 20 years and is probably at least 60 years old. It's not in the best shape, but it has the vaulted top, which I hear they don't make any more. For the first time last night, someone pulled the bench out from underneath it and looked inside.

We were stunned to find all kinds of sheet music from the first half of the 20th century - Mozart, popular songs, a primer on beginner piano songs, and my favorite - a 1954 Ice Capades program, as well as a 1944 U.S. Deptartment of Agriculture "Victory Gardener's Handbook oon Insects and Diseases."

You can imagine how much fun we librarians are having with this! I'll try to scan in a couple of pages over the weekend so that all may join in the fun.