Top 100 Learning Tools!
The Chronicle of Higher Education posted an article (subscription required) last week about a survey conducted by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, an independent e-learning group based in the UK. What I appreciate about the survey is that it focuses on web-based tools that users need to access content, and the leading choice by those surveyed is….. (drum roll please)….. Firefox!
TwitterMosaic!
I was alerted that my twitter avatar/icon (along with many, many others) has been included in the newest TwitterMosaic! What’s so cool is that it’s a re-creation of the original Casablanca movie poster, which is one of my favorite old movies! Before kids, my wife and I liked nothing better than curling up with some popcorn and watching some of the best movies Hollywood has ever produced. See the mosaic here. I’m the fourth one down on the very left!
New Levels of Spam
At work we have recently been discussing the problem of spam sent through our web forms (formmail.pl). Apparently somewhere people are paid to sit and fill out web forms in order to submit unwanted advertisements. Now let’s take it a step further. Below is something that was submitted as a question via the internal eBay messaging system regarding an item I’m auctioning:
dear friend:
We are www.superll.com. we are distributer,we have many wellknown
products such as dell,ibm,sony,panasonic,philip,samsung,nokia,nikon,olympus,canon,
fujifilm and so on.
there are many sorts of digital products in stock for sale.
they are original and in good condition,also one year international warranty with
the manufacters.
We do business such as drop ship and wholesale.
if you are interested in our product please have a look on our website
and contact us by following means.thanks.
Web address : www.superll.com
Email : superll8@hotmail.com
Msn : superll8@hotmail.com
thanks.
After a quick Google search, it appears that others have received this as well. What’s funnier is that the spammer’s eBay account purchased two (very cheap) items in June in order to gain a small amount of legitimacy. Oh well, they probably wouldn’t be doing it unless the occasional person fell for the scam.
Unfortunately spam appears to account for 80 - 90 percent of all email traffic, depending on the source. Due to this, many are predicting an eventual transfer of messaging to a combination of IM and social networks. However, I’m sure spammers will only come up with a more sophisticated solution. It’s the web’s version of the Cold War.
Hello, again & more Hon. Ted “Tubes” Stevens Antics
Hello blog, long time no see, I promise to visit more regularly! In the mean time the honorable senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens is at it again, on a smaller scale this time. Senator Stevens, who is the vice-chair for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation 
spoke up in a recent hearing about cellular communication, number portability and emerging new technologies (switching between cellular and wifi, etc.) All he wants is to have his current number follow him where ever he goes and is told politely that such things aren’t currently possible with existing technology. One would think that the vice-chair for such a relevant committee would be aware of such issues. Obviously none of the attendees have heard of Grand Central, a recent Google acquisition that provides you with one phone number which you associate with all of your current phones (home, cell, work) so that you can be tracked down no matter where you are (I’ve tested it and it works great, plus it’s free). Yet I digress, for more on Senator Stevens including audio, see this post at The Consumerist. Go here to read the remarks and watch the video (thanks government)!
Palm’s New Device
Will Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, Inc. steal the show at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference that is underway right now in Carlsbad, CA? Palm is set to launch a “new category” of mobile devices tomorrow (11:30am PT/2:30pm ET). There’s been a lot of speculation as to what the device could be. Perhaps an iPhone competitor? Possibly a sidekick killer? Potentially a new converged device running Linux?
Many have written Palm off due to dropping the ball with the Palm OS over the past few years and not moving quickly enough to an updated platform. In the mean time Blackberry and Windows Mobile now dominate the smart phone market, however Treos are holding their own somewhat. Personally, I still use my trusty Palm TX, now two years old, as it has built-in wifi and meets most of my needs. I’m still a smart phone hold out for the as it really frustrates me that device manufacturers (Palm, RIM, etc.) do not include wifi connectivity alongside the cellular radio. This is due in part to the service providers (Verizon, Cingular/ ATT Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint/Nextel, and Alltel) strong arming the hardware makes so that they can gouge the customer for the additional data service and not allow the consumer to use the device at home or work over a wifi network. One stand out however is HTC, a Chinese company that makes a wide variety of devices, offers several models including the 8125 sold by Cingular that include wifi connectivity. So for the mean time, I’ll continue to use my outdated Palm TX as I have both wifi access at home and work which I can use to check email, etc. as needed.
Interlibrary Loan, Visualized…
A few months ago a subscriber to ILL-L posted a message about using a paper map in his office to help both library colleagues and customers better understand ILL service by marking the institutions where they borrow from and loan to. I thought this was a great idea and asked the staff in the UR ILL office if they could try something similar, which they did. However, when Google rolled out the new My Maps service as part of Google Maps, I instantly thought about transitioning our paper map to an online version, something we could easily share with the entire UR community to help interlibrary loan service to be better understood, both from a borrowing point of view as well as lending, since both are ILL’s core mission.
Yesterday I met with our ILL staff and showed them the initial map I created. We then reviewed what content to include and how to add it. We decided to include all borrowed and loaned items since January of 2007. Most of the data is now entered, but there’s some that’s still outstanding, but I’m very impressed with the results. Here’s a link to the map (we’re also working on an embedded version that we’ll host locally):
UR Interlibrary Loan - Borrowing and Lending
Let us know what you think!
You got SpiderCard in my Printing Credits…
Yes, just as popular as those delicious peanut butter cups, printing credits are heavily consumed by most UR students! Thanks to staff in UR’s networking group, they will soon be able to purchase printing credits online using funds from their SpiderCard, which has been a long requested feature. It will be a very easy process as a student will only need to login to their account on BannerWeb, where they will see the option to add printing credits. In case their SpiderCard balance is too low, they have the option to add funds to their Spidercard account from a credit/debit card, or electronic check before making the purchase.
Up until now students have only been able to purchase printing credits at Boatwright Library’s Main Service Desk, which over the past few years has grown to be one of the busiest services (in conjunction with laptop circulation) the library offers. Last fall semester alone, we collected over $13,000, just from printing! For the foreseeable future we’ll continue to allow students to make cash purchases, but will probably cap it at a low amount for those emergency printing situations. This is an exciting new service, both for library staff and our students!
BibMe.com!
Surprise, another web 2.0 tool for students! Seriously, this actually looks very useful and handy. BibMe.com allows users to create bibliographies by searching internal databases of books, magazines, journals, websites, newspapers, etc. Initially I find the search feature to be limited and they are pulling their articles from FindArticles.com, which is certainly not going to meet the information needs of today’s college students and other researchers. However, I fully appreciate that it’s free and that it offers manual entry of bibliographic data allowing you to complete a bibliography. It’s also very simple to use and straitforward.
In comparison, NoodleBib is another tool geared toward students and offers much more in-depth tools and features and uses a wizard to help build each citation. Unfortunately I can see a student who’s expecting something fast and easy to get easily bogged down and frustrated. At my university, NoobleBib has been well received by our students which is a great thing and is hopefully improving their ability to identify sound resources for their work, but I can see the simplicity of BibMe and other freely available competitors to be an enticement for switching.
Updates!
Wow, so much has happened both personally and professionally over the past few weeks! I’ll be covering them in soon in new blog posts. In the mean time, the Pew Internet and American Life Project told me that I’m an omnivore :lol: , which I guess is a good thing… Anyway, you can see my results here, and be sure to take the survey yourself!
Two Old Friends @ CIL2007
It was fun to catch up with Keith Weimer, who just moved to UVa. Ronald was more than happy to pose for us as he didn’t really have anything else going on!
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Professional and personal ideas, thoughts, and comments from your favorite tech-brarian. Actually, that's probably not a valid term, but hey, I'm not sweating the small stuff!
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