http://www.andymorton.org Life, Libraries, Tech... Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:08:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This week we announced the public preview of our new website. We also posted a link to the current site alerting visitors to visit the new site and give it a test drive. This project has been a collaboration between staff from the library, the UR communications office and web ... http://www.andymorton.org/2009/06/19/new-ur-libraries-beta-website/ A few months ago comedian Louis C.K. appeared on the Late Show with Conan O'Brien and shared his thoughts on the numerous technological wonders we all take for granted. Watch this clip and decide for yourself, does technology make you happier or leave you frustrated? http://www.andymorton.org/2009/05/23/does-technology-make-us-happier/ I realized over the weekend the only time I turn my cell phone (iPhone) off is when there's a problem and it needs to reboot. My last phone was a BlackBerry Curve and I used the auto on/off feature to shut it down over night. Both phones (especially the BlackBerry) ... http://www.andymorton.org/2009/05/18/weekly-poll-do-you-ever-turn-your-phone-off/ During the fall semester I created a Flickr account for our library to host photos of the library as well as pictures taken at our various events throughout the year. When I received approval to purchase a Flickr Pro account, we were offered 10 free MiniCards from Moo.com, a Flickr ... http://www.andymorton.org/2009/03/05/moo-minicards-for-your-library/ You can't teach an old dog new tricks or so they say, but I have a recent personal example that challenges this adage. My father, who is 71 has very quickly mastered a fourth generation iPod photo I loaded with music and passed along to him. He's also sending me ... http://www.andymorton.org/2009/03/04/older-learners/ If you haven't seen any of Improv Everywhere's "work" then you're missing out. Their missions (their term, not mine) focus on bringing a bit of randomness and peculiarity to mundane situations. That's where it gets fun. Often people don't quite know how to react, but it always seems to bring ... http://www.andymorton.org/2009/02/11/improv-everywhere-strikes-again/ A few weeks ago on January 24, Apple celebrated 25 years of Macintosh. This prompted me to think about my own computing experience and how that has changed over the years. Although Apple released the Mac in 1984, the Apple II line continued to thrive for quite sometime and the ... http://www.andymorton.org/2009/02/10/happy-anniversary-mac-belated/ Given the current state or our economy, I thought the following was funny AND appropriate: http://www.andymorton.org/2008/11/17/image-of-the-day/ I came across yet another "upload your photo and have fun with it" site the other day, but found this one to be quite good at manipulating the image and making it "fit" with the intended placement. The effects are nice and entertaining. Anyway, it's just another example of how ... http://www.andymorton.org/2008/11/05/webtools-and-possibilties/ Robert Frost's poetry has long spoken to me, especially "Stopping by Woods..." Thanks to a heads-up from friends Eric Palmer and Tom Woodward, I've used Wordle to create a word cloud with appropriate coloring: Click the image for full size and visit Wikipedia's entry on this poem to learn more about ... http://www.andymorton.org/2008/11/02/my-wordle/