Starter for 10/6

Hello Everyone!

I will be discussing the Espresso Book Machine on 10/6. (I apologize to my fellow classmates in 513--I had this idea before we talked about it in class, honest!!)

I'll be discussing the basics of the Espresso Book Machine, what it is, where EBMs are located, etc., and then we can talk about some ethical issues related to its implementation and use.

If you would like to read some background material before Tuesday, click here to find out more about the EBM's recent deal with Google to print public domain books from the Google Book Project.

Other 10/1 Starter

Howdy,

I'm doing my starter topic on the new and upcoming operating systems in the PC world -- Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and Chrome. I plan to talk about added and deleted features, as well as each company's OS business strategy, and talk a little about where the PC OS is going with the advent of netbooks, multi-core systems, and smartphones. Here are some optional wikipedia readings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS

See you then!

Arthur

10/1 Starter

Hi everyone, for my starter I am going to be talking about visual search engines. Higher internet speeds and better graphics support on browsers and computers have allowed visual search engines to become a viable alternative way to search the internet. I think the best (and most fun) way for you to prepare for my starter is to play around in a few visual search engines. You can see what it is like to search in these engines and you can also get a feel for the many different interfaces a visual search engine can uses.

Bing Visual Search Galleries - http://www.bing.com/visualsearch

Search-Cube - http://www.search-cube.com/

oSkope - http://oskope.com/

With the exception of Bing, there are "how to" links to help you figure out how to navigate through results.

Have fun!

HTML Quiz!

Do you want to test yourself about how much you know about html?
Here is a HTML quiz for you. :)

W3Schools' HTML Quiz:

TextMate for Mac Users

TextMate is my favorite text editor, particularly because it is simple to switch language formats if you're interested in using other mark-up/programming languages.

And the nice thing about fancier text editors is the shortcuts: for example, control-shift-bracket key(<>) will automatically create a

tag for you to populate, among other things.

Here's a link for more info:

TextMate-Text Editor for Macs

Text Editor: ConTEXT

ConTEXT is my preferred text editor. You can use it to edit many different types of files. In HTML files and other programming languages, it color codes the tags for you.

Enjoy!

Starter 9/22

I’ll be presenting about the federal government’s new Web site Apps.gov, where federal agencies will able to buy cloud computing applications and services. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled it just this week. Cloud computing is a model in which software is delivered over the Web rather than installed on individual PCs or local servers. The goal is to trim the government’s $75 billion annual IT budget.

As part of the program, Google announced that it is going to dedicate a part of its computing infrastructure to serve the federal government exclusively.

Please read the New York Times article that gives a good overview of the initiative:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/now-even-the-government-has-an-app-store/?ref=technology

Additional reading, if you’d like:
The official announcement from the CIO:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Streaming-at-100-In-the-Cloud/

All about the Google deal:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-apps-and-government.html

And the Apps.Gov site itself:
https://apps.gov/cloud/advantage/main/start_page.do

Starter for September 24th: LibGuides

What is Web 2.0?
The definition of Web 2.0 is somewhat nebulous, but what we'll keep in mind for the purpose of this class starter is that the key feature of Web 2.0 is the emphasis on ease of content creation rather than content consumption (Boulos & Wheeler, 2007) . In layman's terms, the point of Web 2.0 is to make it easy for people to share content on the web.

How does this relate to libraries?
There are many ways libaries utilize web 2.0 tools, but some web 2.0 applications in particular are well suited to creating library webpages. These applications include LibGuides, wiki platforms, and various open source research guide tools such as NSCU’s LibraryTools, Wake Forest University’s Tutorial Toolkit, Ithaca College Library’s SubjectsPlus (an expansion of the ECU Joyner Library’s Pirate Source), and Oregon State University’s Library à la Carte.

LibGuides, though it’s a commercial product (or perhaps because it’s a commercial product..we’ll talk about that), is one of the most popular tools out of the ones listed.

What do I need to do?
Take a look at Springshare’s LibGuides website to get an idea of what the product does. In class, we’ll take a closer look at LibGuides and discuss its pros and cons. Cheers! -- Lisa

Reference:
Boulos, M. N. K., & Wheeler, S. (2007). The emerging web 2.0 social software: An enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 24(1), 2-23. Find @ UNC

Starter Sept. 17: Google Street View and Privacy

The topic of privacy on Google is surrounded by controversy and debate. As Google adds more features, concerns get more heated. Street View is not a new feature in the U.S. , but as Google attempts to capture more streets internationally, the idea is not universally welcomed.

Overview on Street View:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View

Google's statement on Street View and Privacy:
http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70195

There have been objections to street view all around the globe:
U.S.

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/06/01/minnesota-town-bans-google-maps-street-view-north-oaks-wants-privacy/

Switzerland

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219401229

Japan

http://www.examiner.com/x-16352-Japan-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m9d4-Google-Japan-fights-concerns-about-Street-View

England

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-google-europe13-2009sep13,0,3481635.story

Class Starter: Captcha

I will be presenting on Tuesday about Captcha, a program designed to protect websites from bots through the use of "reverse Turing test." Captcha programs are interesting because they relate to many different information science subjects (e.g. artificial intelligence, web security, crowdsourcing, digitizing non-digital media, etc.)

Here's the link to the Captcha wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

And here's a link to an informational site about Captcha:

http://www.captcha.net/

In case you've never logged into a website using a Captcha (I'm pretty sure everyone has...), this webpage offers a chance to try them out. It also has a link to a really cool (and really distracting) game site related to Captcha (www.gwap.com).

See everyone in class on Tuesday!

-Chris

Worksheet I, II and III

We will continue to learn the UNIX commands next Tuesday, and I have an ungraded assignment for you.

On worksheet I and II, I left spaces for you to fill beside the commands, explaining what the commands mean. Read the notes, practice the commands at home, and write down what the commands mean on the worksheets. Since we didn't cover all of the commands in the worksheet, there are things that you don't quite understand. Just play with them and guess what those commands mean. We will discuss more in class.

Here are two readings about the UNIX commands. The first one is the one that you already read. The second one is a new one that I noted on the worksheet. It has a bit of information what we will cover on Tuesday.

UNIX/Linux: Getting Started (http://help.unc.edu/5288)
UNIX/Linux: Intermediate (http://help.unc.edu/5333)

Tasks 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 deadlines are rescheduled.

We will continue to learn UNIX commands next Tuesday. There are three assignments (1.3, 1.4, and 1.5) related to UNIX, so I rescheduled the due dates of the tasks.


Here are new dates for the tasks.

- Sep 22 (Thu): Tasks 1.3 and 1.4
- Sep 24 (Tue): Tasks 1.5

I will update the schedule on the course Website soon.

Interesting browser errors

I guess some of you have a problem to access the grading sheets. It is weird because they were all accessible with the IDs and PWs that you gave to me yesterday, but it is not working today. An interesting thing is that those grade sheets are now accessible through MS Explore.

So, you can try to open the grade sheets with MS Explore. I know that you need to use Firefox for the lecture notes access. I guess there is a kind of conflict between browsers to set up the password-protected accounts.

I sent a request to the IT service at SILS to check the problem and to inform me the solution. I will let you know the result as soon as I receive a reply from the IT service.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!

Sanghee

Personalized Home Pages

For my presentation September 15, we will take a look at personalized home pages. I will compare some of the major players and talk about some of the reasons for using and advantages gained by using a personalized start page. Popular versions of a personal start page or web portal include igoogle, netvibes, pageflakes, my.live.com and others.

If you are unfamiliar with personalized start pages, please read this page of a cnet article for background. (Sorry about the ad!) http://www.cnet.com.au/start-page-smackdown-netvibes-pageflakes-igoogle-and-live-com_p2-339286371.htm

Also if you already use a personalized start page, feel free to comment on your use. igoogle is the favorite, followed by netvibes. Ranking was a bit difficult to measure granted that google and live.com are visited by people who only use them for gmail and hotmail.

In my preliminary investigation, I learned about how librarians hope to use igoogle as a possible reference tool. If curious feel free to visit here: http://www.textalibrarian.com/mobileref/start-pages-as-library-virtual-reference-tools/

I fixed the gradesheet access problem.

Now you can access your gradesheets!

If you didn't send me the ID and password, please email the information to me, so I can set the password-protected account for you.

Otherwise, let me know if you have a problem to access it.

Gradesheets are uploaded.

I uploaded the gradesheets on the course website and linked it to the "grade" page. Please check whether you can use your id and password to access the gradesheets and let me know if you have a problem.

There are a couple of you who haven't send me the id and password yet, and you won't be able to access your gradesheets at this point. Please send me your preferred id and password and I will set things up for you.

TCP/IP? Here are additional readings for you.

Introduction to TCP/IP
http://www.yale.edu/pclt/COMM/TCPIP.HTM

Internet Protocol Suite - the content is a bit techy, but will help you understand the basic concepts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_Suite

Transmission Control Protocol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol

Having problem to connect isis through Fetch Program?

Please check the articles related to Fetch on help.unc.edu.

Here are two suggestions.

Connecting to isis.unc.edu using Fetch in Mac OS 10.
http://help.unc.edu/6152

Why am I unable to use SSH or Fetch to access isis.unc.edu within Mac OS 10?
http://help.unc.edu/6150

SSH in Mac OS X

This article explains how to access Isis through the SSH client native to Mac OS X, for all you Mac users who can't use the Secure Shell Client.

Starter: 9/10

I've decided to do my starter on Evernote, a cloud-based information capture tool. In short, Evernote takes your notes, thoughts, memos, pictures--whatever you want, really--and can sync them across your computer, a web interface, and mobile devices. I've only really started using it this semester, and it's proved so useful. Give it a look, and let me know what you think next Thursday!