Technology with Altitude
Posted On Oct 6 2007I’m in Denver for the the cleverly named 2007 LITA Forum. This is the first in a while that I have not been giving a talk at, which is nice. I can enjoy Denver, enjoy my colleagues, and begin my new role as “committee recruiter”…one of the first duties that comes along with being Vice President of the division. So, yes, I am taking time out to talk up LITA a bit. It is one of the best conferences for IT networking that I know of (that’s small ‘n’, lest you think I refer to the days of LAN and …
Google Toilet
Posted On Mar 20 2007After all this serious talk about the future of automation systems, I thought I would lighten the load with a little humor. This was another take-away from my trip to Google that I did not mention in my more formal report. It’s a picture from the restroom stall at Google. Now, I work at a state institution where we consider a toilet paper holder still attached to the wall quite a luxury. But this blows away (ahem) all the talk of free food, ping-pong, and jeans at work. Like most Google user interfaces, the options are simple and intuitive, even …
All Mashed Up
Posted On Sep 12 2006I was flattered when Talis, a library systems and services company based in the U.K., asked me to be a judge in its very first “Mashing Up the Library” competition. Put simply, a mashup uses web services and data from two or more sources to create a new service. John Blyberg took home the first prize with Go-Go–Google Gadget; Second Life Library from Alliance Library System took home second place. Rather than repeat it here, I will simply point to Teresa Koltzenburg’s excellent coverage of the winners on the ALA Techsource blog. The flattery I felt in being asked was …