November 24: Virtual reality

Hi Everybody!

On Tuesday I will be talking about virtual reality with a special focus on its uses in education.

Check out the article that got me interested in this topic:

"Baltimore debuts Virtual Lab: high School facility blends 3-D virtualization with traditional research skills"

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6699106.html

OR

Check out a more detailed article which actually describes a virtual reality project in action with students:

http://thejournal.com/Articles/1995/12/01/The-Virtual-Reality-Roving-Vehicle-Project.aspx?sc_lang=en&Page=1

See you on Tuesday!

Katy

If you would like to check out the clips I shared today, they are included below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B4F2V0_yYg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBekKF4PPQQ
http://www2.wecantakeyouthere.com/DTF/dtfrontier/35028/

Also, the link to the Duke DiVE Cave is here:
http://vis.duke.edu/dive

Smartphones - November 17th Convo Starter

I will doing the ever popular topic of smartphones on November 17th for my conversation starter. To get an idea of what I will be talking about check out these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdwyuNDnO4s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhtYveO-POM

See you Tuesday.

-Sam

November 19: Folksonomies

Next Thursday, I'll be talking in my Conversation Starter about folksonomies, social tagging systems.

For an introduction to the concept, here are a couple of links:
Folksonomy on Wikipedia
Folksonomy, from the person who coined the term

Here are a few examples of sites using folksonomies with which you might be familiar:
del.icio.us
Flickr
Technorati

Software that Fixes Itself

Sorry this is late everyone.

I'm doing my blog on software that fixes itself, i.e. digital ants that find bugs in your system and fix them without you having to take it into the shop.

Read up at:

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23821/

and

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33509921/

Thanks,

Tessa

Excel practice files are uploaded.

The exercise files are up on the server. Enjoy to practice Excel.

Sanghee

11/5 Conversation Starter

Hi everyone!

I'll be talking about nook, Barnes & Noble's new e-book reader. Here is Barnes & Noble's site for it if you want to check it out before class:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/

~Amanda

Starter for 11/2

Hey all!

Sorry for the late notice. I will be talking about Checksums in class tomorrow. You can check out the wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checksum.

Megan

Oct. 27 starter

Hi everyone,

I'll be talking about Wowd, which bills itself as a "real-time" and "social" search engine. It opened a beta version of its service to the public last week.

Here is an article on it:

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23756/

And here is the site:

http://www.wowd.com/

Check it out!

Task 03 is due to next Thursday (Oct 29)

As we discussed in class last week, the task 03 (MS Word assignment) is due to next Thursday. It was originally next Tuesday, but you have extra 2 days now.

Have fun for formatting the e-books.

Sanghee

Berkeley Device

Well you all are in for a treat on Thursday, if I may say so myself. We will be discussing the acclaimed Berkeley Device (at least that's what the media calls it), an instrument that can theoretically store information for A BILLION YEARS! That's right, I said that.

Even better, it should be compatible with any technology developed in the future. Goodbye hardware upgrades.

So stay tuned for this Thursday!

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/06/03/billion-year-ultra-dense-memory-chip/

October 27 Starter

Hey all, I'll be talking a bit about online backup services, like Mozy and Carbonite. You can check out the wikipedia article on the subject here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_backup_service

Grades are available to view now

I re-uploaded the files of gradesheets on the server. Let me know if you have still a problem to access it.

Sanghee

Gradesheets are updated

Hi all,

Your grades of Tasks 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 and 2.1 are ready to view. Please check your personal folders of the gradesheets.

Sanghee

Starter 10/20

Hey class! I'll be talking a little bit about google wave (which I just learned about and it seems kind of awesome). I don't have a website for you yet, but uh...google it and you'll get the gist.

Starter for 10/15

I'll be talking about Zotero, a Firefox add-on that manages online citations and references. If you're interested in looking into before class, the website can be found here: .

Tomorrow (10/13): Guest Lecture: RefWork

There is a class schedule change for tomorrow. We were supposed to have a MS Word section tomorrow, but it was changed to a guest lecture about RefWork.

So, please prepare for having a guest lecture tomorrow. We will have another guest lecture this Thursday about LaTex and BibTex.

Both applications are citation management tools. They will help you to organize and develop your citations when you write academic papers, in particular, your master papers.

MS Word: Reading

We have two readings for the MS Word session. (It was originally scheduled for tomorrow, but changed for guest lecture. So, we will have the MS word session next Tuesday)

Please skip the first reading, ATN's Introduction to Word. It doesn't not exist anymore. The link is broken. ATN is the UNC help center for helping students to learn and solve problems related to technical issues. I guess ATN doesn't provide the introduction anymore.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Task 2.1: Due to this Friday.

Hi all,

As we discussed yesterday, the new deadline for task 2.1 is this Friday. It is a just one paragraph summary of the topic and scope of your website.

Please see the task description on the class Website.

Subtask 2.1 is to create an initial hard-coded homepage, a page we will use in class to practice other skills

- use the Notepad editor on any Windows computer and type in the text about the topic and scope of your pathfinder (1 paragrah).
- save the file as index.html so that it will display as the first page in an eventual homepage directory.
- place this page in your public_html space by October 9 (Friday), 11:59am and tell me to look at it via an email which gives me the URL to use.

Let me know if you have questions.

Starter for 10/8

Hey folks,
For Thursday, I'll be talking about applications for RSS feeds. RSS feeds send recently updated content from websites to a reader or aggregator in a standardized format. These are useful for frequently updates sites like blogs, news sites, and what I use it for most - webcomics.

I use Google reader: www.google.com/reader
but there are lots of other applications that do the same thing. Some are now desktop based, so that you don't even have to be online to view the content, like the app from http://www.newsgator.com/

See you Thursday.

Deadline for Task 02 is postponed to Oct 22.

Hi all

As we discussed in the class last week, the deadline for the Task 02 was postponed to Oct 22. It is a hard deadline to make your work done by that time completely.

All of the Websites (Pathfinders) that you create will be linked in the class website and you will be able to explore different kinds of pathfinders from your classmates.

Let me know if you have questions.

Sanghee

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!

Lecture notes are password-protected.

From today, you need to provide id and password to access lecture notes. Your oynen id and password won't work for the access. Use information here.

ID: inls461
PW: infotools

Let me know if you have a problem to access it.

Starter Topic, Sept. 8th

Please read the first two paragraphs of this Wikipedia article about Amazon's MTurk for my starter on Sept. 8th. We'll be discussing how MTurk can be used for research and some of its inherent benefits and drawbacks. Bonus points if you can find out where the name comes from.

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

Use Firefox for the Lecture Download on the Website

There was an error to download files in the explorer browser. So, please use Firefox for file downloading on the Website, now. I will figure out the error and let you know later.

I guess the problem is because of the tags that I embedded in the HTML document of the page. Is there anyone who knows what the problem is?

File Transfer Program for Mac Users

For those who have not used file transfer program before, use Fetch program. It has the same function as Secure Shell Client in PC. It is available at the UNC shareware page.

Do you have any other FTP program that you prefer? Please share it with the rest of the class in this blog.

If you have a file transfer program already installed in your mac computer and prefer to use it for the assignment, it is fine. You don't need to download a new one. The thing that I want to see in your task 1.2, is 2) whether you can download a software and 2) whether you can do a screenshot. So, make a screenshot of the software you have, attach it to the Word, and send it to me.

Let me know if you have more questions!

Conversation Starters

Several of you already sent me the preferred date for the presentation!

I will update the Web page of Starters whenever I put new names on dates available. So, please check it before you send me the email about your presentation date.

If you don't have much idea about the topic of the presentation, you don't need to worry about it now. I will share several Web sources and examples of the topic during the class.

I'm looking forward to your presentation!

Welcome, everyone!

Welcome, everyone!

This is a class blog for the INLS 461-002 class in fall 2009. I will send an invitation email to join the blog to your email addresses on my class list in a couple of days. All of the announcement or additional sources of information related to the class will be posted on this blog. Also, feel free to use this space for additional discussions, questions, answers or anything else.

You will have to respond to the invitation. If you wish to use another email address to join the blog, send me a note with the preferred email address and I will invite you using that new address.

You will also need to tell me the pen name you will be using on the blog (if you chose to use one).

I'm look forward to working with you through this semester!

Sanghee