Jenny Levine: Internet

"Glenn recaps his Google analysis (which was very well done). What I would like to see is a Google product that combined external search (what they currently do), search of the corporate LAN, and desktop search. Put one keyword in and get multiple folders of results -- Web pages and images (they can leave out groups and especially that sub-par open directory project -- I would substitute K-Logs and Wiki-Wiki)." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Another "me, too" post on my part. As I continue investigating portal solutions for SLS, it's become painfully clear that no one product is going to do everything I want and/or need it to do. So now I'm approaching this as a puzzle for which I have to find the right pieces, figure out how they go together, and make them into a coherent whole. All for a price a Library System can afford, without exorbitant consulting fees because dammit Jim, we're not programmers. If the Google product described above was available, I would have given it serious consideration as one piece of the puzzle. And while I don't feel the need to include Wikis at this point, I desperately want to figure out how to add K-logging to the equation.

Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google

"Google is now in the position to take their search engine to another level that can make them soar even higher than their competitors. A lot of speculation has arisen in regards to what lies ahead in Google's future. A few of the speculations are how and when Google will display personalized results."

"The basis of this paper is to examine a few of the methods that Google might employ in their system of providing personalized results. The reason why these methods are examined in great detail is because last year Google acquired a company, Outride,Inc., who researched heavily into personalizing data."

Some fascinating ideas, including the idea of personalized recommendations displayed while a user is surfing. How about the ability to choose between recommendations from everyone or authoritative recommendations from librarians? Or how about librarian recommendations integrated into our online catalogs?

Web Surfers Snubbing Search Engines. "With advances in technology, particularly browsers, people are favoring direct navigation and bookmarks over search engines and Web links, a new study shows." [News.com]

This seems contrary to Dan Gillmor's theory that domain names are less important now that we have Google. I'd point to his original article, but the San Jose Mercury News hosed his archives, so I can't. Sigh.

Googlewhacking — The Inside Story "Googlewhacking has really taken off, with Gary showing up on everything from the BBC to NPR." [at JOHO]

There's even a site for Automatic Scoring now.

"Dave Polaschek: Why avoiding tables is important." [Scripting News]

Dave Winer has started an interesting discussion about using tables vs. CSS for layout in Web pages. Lots of people are responding, which is only making me feel that much worse about procrastinating in regards to this issue. Here are some of the links coming out of the discussion:

Quova upgrade pins down AOL users. "The Redwood City, Calif.-based company is releasing GeoPoint 4.0, software that identifies the geographic location of Web site visitors down to the country, state and city level. The technology maps IP (Internet protocol) addresses--which are used to route signals over the Web to an individual's computer--with new depth, according to the company. 'Clearly, in terms of digital content distribution, the technology becomes very important to assigning and getting the right kinds of information to the proper and authenticated users. For example, music distribution,' Mike McGuire, research director at GartnerG2." [at News.com]

Interesting. I don't think they'll ever fully get the mapping down, but I wonder if this type of technology can be integrated into library vendors' software for automatic authentication to our databases and online catalogs.

Why This Link Patent Case Is Weak "It may be a long time before British Telecom knows whether it lucked out or lost big in the legal sweepstakes. But even if it wins its court battle, experts said the British telephone company has already lost the war." [via Scripting News]

This article pretty sums up my chat session with Bruce this morning about how crazy BT is to even bring this up, letting along go to court with it. These guys are de-shifting into the ice age.

"Here's an aha! (A mind bomb(?), at least for me!) Dane Carlson has figured out a way to find (with Google) sites that offer RSS feeds. As I understand it these are the sites that Radio users can add to their news aggregator. I'll be experimenting with this." [Steve Pilgrim's Radio Weblog]

See what I mean about Google? And BTW, if you're a Radio newbie like me, Steve's blog is must-see reading because he's asking all of the questions I haven't had time to ask. More importantly, he's getting answers.

Battling Bush's digital divide. "Three prominent civil rights organizations will hold an emergency meeting to combat a proposal to eliminate two programs they say are "crucial" to reducing the digital divide." [News.com]

This is just so wrong I don't even know where to start.

Seven Tricks that Web Users Don't Know "Web developers have all sorts of browsing tricks that they have gained from years of experience, to the point where they can't even imagine not knowing them -- right-clicking to open a new browser window, for instance, or using the arrow keys to navigate a list. To Web veterans, these things are so familiar that they seem obvious. The fact that many people don't know these tricks -- and can get completely stuck as a result -- comes as a shock. This article describes seven Web site features that typical non-technical users aren't familiar with, based on data collected from the author's own usability studies." [via Dane Carlson's Weblog]

Although this article is from last June, it's not a surprise to librarians. We see this first-hand, and we're the ones that are still teaching folks how to use a mouse, whether it's in a public, school, or special library. This is what I was getting at yesterday.

"New Yahoo ads and promotions point to the increasing marginalization of this once central portal. It is starting to look like Excite. The obvious evolutionary step in the Web portal saga was to take the experience to the desktop. Connect up Web Services and grow from there, slowly absorbing more and more of the users time. A virtual AOL (without the connectivity). However, that didn't happen so they are slowly fading into the background." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

And then on the opposite side of the spectrum from Google we have Yahoo. I agree with John that Yahoo has peaked and is on its way down. They could have innovated like Google and stayed out front, but instead they just bought up other companies and services in the hopes of integrating it all into one big honking catch-all. Well, it didn't work, but then I'm not sure where they expected to end up because I never got a sense of a specific plan and direction in which they wanted to go.

Even with the "My Yahoo" service that I use at home, it could have been so much more if Yahoo had concentrated on providing a specific service focused on user control (like NewsIsFree), rather than a way to push its own partnerships and services. Yahoo could have been the center of the blogging universe, too, but they are no longer innovating. Like so many of the bigcos, they're watching behind them and reacting instead of looking forward and creating.

The Secret Lives of Numbers "The authors conducted an exhaustive empirical study, with the aid of custom software, public search engines and powerful statistical techniques, in order to determine the relative popularity of every integer between 0 and one million. The resulting information exhibits an extraordinary variety of patterns which reflect and refract our culture, our minds, and our bodies. For example, certain numbers, such as 212, 486, 911, 1040, 1492, 1776, 68040, or 90210, occur more frequently than their neighbors because they are used to denominate the phone numbers, tax forms, computer chips, famous dates, or television programs that figure prominently in our culture." [via MeFi]

The consensus seems to be that the search engine is Google. I think Google is single-handedly responsible for an Internet renaissance of its own. Its inspiring people to use search engines, manipulate data, and do research in entirely new ways. The name itself has become a verb, and it's responsible for new Internet-based sports (Googlewhacking and Google Instant Messaging anyone?). Offhand, I can't think of another site that has been used in such wildly different ways from its intended purpose to become an integral part of the collective Internet consciousness. And it will only continue. At least, I hope it will.

Note: The site listed above is a Java applet recommended for Windows and IE users with higher-end machines with lots of RAM and a broadband connection.

Fellow Flash trainees, take a gander at Macromedia's Flash Inspiration site. Ooooh. Aaaah. Ohhhh.

The Intro to Flash training I was at last week was excellent. Trista was a great instructor, and she did what I consider to be the most important thing a trainer can do: she used humor to keep us awake! I'm totally bummed that I won't be able to attend the second session. I understand its potential a lot better now.

At SLS, Kate and I have what we call "revolutions" every so often. When we took Crystal Reports training a few years ago, we had a lot of "A-ha!" moments, and afterwards we wrote a manifesto about the coming revolution. (It passed us by, but that wasn't our fault.) This same thing happened after our SQL and PL/SQL training, and for me it happened again after I saw a presentation by Alison Atkins Denton about GIS. I felt this way again on Friday, but unfortunately I won't have any time to play with Flash until at least March, and that's if I'm lucky.

Don't worry, though. I won't be turning the SLS sites into a big honking Flash swf, but I will have some fun with it, especially on the SLS intranet.

How To Think About Technology "We have two choices. We can watch technologies come down the stream and pluck out the ones we think valuable. The questions I pose here can help in making those kinds of decisions, and this is necessary and important work. Or we can, as a profession, decide that it is better to be further upstream, engaged with the people who are thinking up new technological goodies and be a part of that process to influence their design and development. I'd rather be upstream. Our presence in the development process would undoubtedly help to produce things that are more helpful not only to us but in general." [at Library Journal, via NewBreed Librarian]

I would rather be upstream, too, which is one reason I started this blog. I want to prove to vendors, especially those outside of libraryland, that they should be working with us, not ignoring us. I read an interesting interview with Jane Margolis about Computer Science's Gender Gap in which she says we need women in CS for the perspectives and testing we bring to development. She illustrates this point using examples of flawed products that were developed by all-male teams.

I'd make a parallel argument for the need to integrate librarians and libraries into the IT world. There's the obvious taxonomy and organization issues, but another good example of the alternate perspective we could provide comes from a web design mailing list I'm on. It's comprised mostly of techie web designers. It's a great list, but they all seem to think that everyone should run their 19-21" monitors at a resolution of 1024 x 768, surf with browsers that are not maximized, using the latest and greatest browsers, and on a high-speed Internet connection. They just don't understand how the rest of the world really views and uses the Web. I think they would be very surprised to see how patrons use the Web in libraries. They desperately need an alternate perspective.

One last thought about the LJ article: it says one question to ask yourself is "does it feel right?" It's a good question, but sometimes you don't know the answer. Not knowing or not being sure feels wrong, but sometimes you have to get yourself past that uncertainty and take a chance. Failure is better than not even trying.

Netsurfer Digest, in an e-mail to subscribers. : " 'Well, at long last, the time has come. We're officially switching to a paid subscription business model. Don't despair - some bits will still be free, but you'll have to pay for others. We've had over seven years of ad-supported, free-to-the-reader publication, but for all the obvious reasons this is no longer possible. If you think it is, keep reading.' The new paid model will cost USD$20 per year. They will continue to offer a few things free. More details here. [The End of Free]

Good luck, NSD. I hope you can make it work.

Addendum 2/12/02: Hey, libraries - you can apply for a NSD account and still offer free access for your patrons within your library! Three cheers for NSD! Hip, hip, hooray!

InfoWorld's 10 technologies that made the biggest impact on the enterprise in 2001 [via Scripting News]

Out of the top 10 technologies, we're explicitly working on four of them at SLS - portals, network-attached storage, databases, and handhelds. Hopefully this coming year will bring me knowledge of Web services, and XML (RSS in particular), and maybe a grant to start going wireless. 4 out of 10 is pretty good for a Library System!

I have theories about web services, but I don't know if they're right. After all, they are based purely on brief statements I've read in other people's blogs. I guess I should really look into this in more detail, and I suppose the Web Services site is about a good a place to start as any. Oh-oh... they have an RSS feed. Maybe the address of your RSS feed will end up on your business card, eh?

Does anyone have pointers to a WS 101 article or site?

The Next Generation Customer Communication Platform "In the not-too-distant future, we will begin seeing unified customer support platforms that allow companies and their customers to communicate seamlessly via the Web, telephone, and wireless devices. In this article, we will learn how two evolutionary trends are creating a new generation of unified customer communication platforms. The lines between a phone customer and a Web customer are going to blur." [at VoiceXML Planet, via WebDeveloper.com]

This illustrates my theory that in the future, libraries will have a version of the "Wal-Mart greeter" handling incoming communications, whether via email, Instant Messaging (IM), SMS, or telephone. And for a long time, that intermediary will be a human being. Most libraries have moved to automated answering systems for incoming phone calls, but that doesn't work well in the world of electronic communications (except maybe for an email autoresponder acknowledging we got your message and will respond).

We have to shift in order to communicate with our patrons in their world, not ours. We can no longer sit behind a desk waiting for a phone call.

U.S. Web usage hits 54 percent Report: For first time, more than half of population on Net "Internet use continued to grow rapidly last year, with new government data showing that the number of Americans using the Web in 2001 passed 50 percent of the population for the first time.... Despite concerns that interest in Internet usage might cool as many dot-com businesses vanished, the government report put new users at two million per month in 2001. E-mail continues to be the nation’s favorite online activity, and 45 percent of the population now uses it regularly, up from 35 percent in 2000." [at MSNBC.com]

This isn't a surprise, is it? The Internet is becoming an integral part of people's lives, and it's crossing socio-economic boundaries to do it. But here's the most interesting part of this article. Are you sitting down? Well, I guess if you're reading this you are. Be amazed:

"The report found 174 million Americans, or 66 percent of the population, were using computers as of September, with those numbers substantially higher among children and teenagers. The data show that 48 million Americans between age five and age 17, 90 percent of that population, use computers."

And you wondered why they're called the Net Generation.

What will they think of next? Is there anything that can't be Googled? Go on, I dare you. Send me a Google Instant Message. [in BurningBird]

The Paradox of the Best Network So much to applaud about this essay, its arguments, and the solutions proposed. It's a wonderful expression of the Internet - and hence information - as a public good that benefits everyone. Just like libraries. [kuro5hin.org]

"We must not allow the short-sighted self-interest of the incumbent telecommunications industry to thwart the connectedness that will enlarge us as social creatures. Our destiny as a species has always been to be connected. The new network — open, fast and out of control — will change what is most important about us lonely humans: the way we join together with others to become more than we are alone."

"These steps to keep the infrastructure open will be in vain if vested interests use other means (legal and technological) to expand restrictions to content and reduce free flow of ideas in the public domain. The laws governing copyright should be brought back to their original purpose to ensure the free flow of information that is critical to the functioning of a free, open society."

Can I get an amen!

The Educational Potential of Googlewhacking! [in Schoolblogs]

What a great idea! Those of you teaching Internet classes to the public should give this idea serious consideration.

SF Chronicle: Search Me. Put simply, the search and directory firms have put their futures in question by flouting time-tested business practices that require an absolutely clear separation between editorial content and advertising. Most search and directory firms are now paying mere lip service to those rules. [Tomalak's Realm]

Even with the disclaimer at the bottom it's still applicable.

Jump back... I'm on a roll! I like Sean Nolan's Link Feedback idea, so I've implemented it on the home page. As folks visit my site, you should start seeing the last 10 referring links appear on the right-hand side. Now I'll be the self-organizing shifted librarian!

Tangential relation alert: I've seen Stephen Johnson's book Emergence discussed in multiple places now, so I've added it to my list of "Books I Wish I Was Reading Right Now." Assuming, of course, I had time to read books.

The Price of Free E-Mail Rises - third interesting articles from today's PC World
"Will you pay to hang on to your Web e-mail address? Hotmail, Yahoo, and others apparently aim to find out."

Yahoo has already been heading down this road, but now Hotmail joins them. Be prepared for patron questions if they can't access their Hotmail account at your workstations. The articles notes that "Microsoft appears to be the most aggressive marketer of premium services. If you're a Hotmail user who hasn't checked your Hotmail e-mail in the past month, you've likely lost your account." It's a good overview of the industry (if you can call it that yet) if you're directing patrons to Web-based email services.