Looks like someone goofed at Blogstreet this morning. The displayed site belongs to one of Blogstreet’s developers, so it could be a genuine mistake, but I like to think it’s a little retribution for not putting Open Stacks in their database.
Update: That didn’t last long, as you may have figured. But my absence continues…
{Jestful CIPA commentary}
As evidence of the inefficacy of filtering, Simon says (sorry) that he couldn’t access Library Stuff at work due to the filters on his computers. He was unable to identify the offensive elements, but I’ll be damned if I don’t at least try.
Of course, Steven is a dirty, dirty man and the phrase “get the stuff every day” is just fraught with innuendo unacceptable for children (whether it’s visible to filters or not). Other questionable phrases? You bet.
“C’mon and join the party” - 1-999-LIBERRY. Our ‘professionals’ are online and waiting for you.
“will not be reading Harry Potter” - No kid should ever see those words together!
“attending the Dixie Chicks concert” - That’s un-American!
“tool” and “nuts” - No comment
From the OPML list:
“Big Pink” - Whoa, nelly!
“Good’ Sharewood” - Yikes!
“Fuzzystuff” - Hmmm….
“Open Stacks” - How dare he!
“Agnostic” - Well, that’s the last straw. To the blacklist with you, Steven M. Cohen!
{/Jestful CIPA commentary}
So on the suggestion of Search Engine Watch, I downloaded the HotBot Quick-Search Deskbar. Look out people, I think we have a winner.
First, this little workhorse opens through the right-click menu in your taskbar, so it doesn’t shrink your window size like plugin browsers. Pop a term into the search box and it searches one of the four main search engines (FAST, Google, Teoma, Inktomi) and makes it easy to switch between them. But that’s just the beginning. It has a (seriously) huge menu of reference applications that it can also drop your search term into.
Imagine that you’re new to XML (perish the thought). So you run a basic search with the engines, but you want a little more focus. With your term still in the search box, you peruse the menu hierarchy and see Webopedia. Selecting it drops your term right in to Webopedia and brings up the definition.
Plus there’s a handy shortcut syntax for each resource. Wanna see what Amazon has on XML? Type ‘amaz XML’ into the box. Bam! There are some issues with the shortcuts - if you wanted to search the term RSS, you will be taken to Feedster as rss is the shortcut. Nonetheless, this is astonishingly cool.
I can’t get over how much there is and how painless it is to use. Track stocks, track packages, hex conversions, currency conversions. It just goes on and on. Try the phone number speller. It takes your # and generates some amusing possibilities.
This is some serious good stuff and all from one application. Extremely impressive.
Saw an interesting new RA tool posted on Metafilter today:
Whichbook lets you choose from up to four appeal factor extremes (unpredictable vs. expected, for instance) and set your preference on a sliding scale. It then returns suggestions based on your parameters. You can also set character, plot and setting preferences through similarly nifty interfaces.
Acting in Steven’s place while he enjoys his evening out, I was over at INFOZO today and noticed two links to weblogs I hadn’t seen before:
The Library Monk - Things of interest to Dan Greene, other librarians and information professionals, and perhaps monks…
Anyone who uses Albrecht Dürer artwork in their site design gets my automatic seal of approval.
Not as new, but still new to me (and therefore dmoz.org):
either/or (dot) org - Matt Grayson, grad student of information science at the university of tennessee. this site is driven by the things that interest me - usually that would includes things like web design, information design, information architecture, web standards, and technology in general. but every now and then i’ll pipe up on the news, culture or life in general.
So there’s this article today linked from LISNews about Passaic’s (NJ) consideration of turning over library operations to LSSI. Now I’ve commented on privatization before, but this time it’s the relationship between the city and the library that raises my ire. To wit:
“It’s being rushed through without much attention and thought. We’ve only had the last three weeks to look at it,” said library Director Kathleen Mollica, referring to a proposal from LSSI. “Apparently, the city has been looking into this since February.”
Schaer said that he has indeed been talking to representatives from LSSI for the past several months.
“Before we suggested this to the library trustees, we wanted to make sure that this was the right thing,” he said.
Excuse me? What qualifications do you have to make that decision, Mr. Schaer (who serves as the City Council President)? Heaven forbid the library be involved in the needs assessment.
It gets worse:
To encourage the nine-member board to vote affirmatively, Schaer and the council offered to add an extra $50,000 to next year’s library budget.
Well, whoopty-doo! That’s almost enough to pay someone with the qualifications to make such a decision. Almost.
Add to this equation a mayor who is heavily in support of privatization, yet does not possess a library card:
“We need better things, better equipment. And I think that’s the way to go,” he said.
Note the vagueness. He appears less qualified to speak to the issue than the guy surfing porn in the computer lab. At least the board president is honest:
“I have no judgment at this moment as to whether this is a great idea or a lousy idea,” he said. “More understanding of what the proposal is needs to be clarified.”
Well, I wouldn’t go looking to the City Council for answers.
I’m sure I’m not alone in fearing for the citizens of Passaic and mourning the imminent demise of their public institution.
Bookslut posted a link to Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites. Most of the selections will be pretty familiar (read lame) to a web-savvy (and pop culture loving) information professional, but there are some noteworthy selections, including the Bookslut herself. My main issue with the list is its apparent NY-obsessiveness (is there a word for that? - Bigapplophilia?):
Gawker as the best News and Info Blog?!?!?
These sites are all well and good, but there seems to be a suspicious level of bias (and mainstreamness) that repels me from taking their suggestions seriously.
I expected to see more coming down the pipelines from the conference, but so far I’ve only seen Jessamyn’s report. So instead, I’ll take a cue from the Blog Driver’s Waltz and provide you an assessment of my Buzzosity:
(Sorry, I had to remove the score box. The script was interfering with page loading. My last score was 470.)
The buzzwords I employ the most frequently are “blog” and “content.” Apparently, “convenient” is also a buzzword, although how exactly I couldn’t be sure.
The most buzzworthy of all? Microsoft, of course, employing frequent use of the terms “business” “management” “solutions” and stringing them together with aplomb.
Sorry for the disappearing act, but I was having IP address conflicts on my broadband connection for the past 40+ hours.
I wanted to provide a somewhat more authoritative opinion than my own regarding screen readers and the order of content on websites. Fortunately, Phil Bradley came through with a link to this Pandia article offering 14 tips and techniques for making your site accessible. It not only speaks to the “content on top” principle, but some other really good ideas that I hadn’t considered.
As an update to an earlier post, I report with displeasure that due to the predictable budget cuts, the MLK, Jr. Middle School blogging experiment is no more. Best wishes to the project’s originator, Pat Delaney at his new cross-town gig. One library’s trash will undoubtedly prove to be another’s treasure.
