Science Library Pad

10 years of Google

TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin had a good segment on 10 years of Google.

You can watch Flash video of it on the site,
they also have podcasts in audio and video flavours.

You can also follow them on Twitter

twitter.com/theagenda

twitter.com/spaikin

Science Friday in Second Life

From

to

thanks to Ira Flatow doing Science Friday on the radio and in Second Life.

http://www.sciencefriday.com/

the SL audio stream maxed out, I'm listening on http://wkms.org/listen/

The topic is [US] Federal Government and Science.

UPDATE: If you missed it, they have an audio podcast as well as video and other features.

The Agenda on Microhoo and the Compute Cloud

The Agenda had their somewhat-usual technology suspects on talking about the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, with a majority of the show devoted to the idea of the "compute cloud" future for computing.  It's quite impressive that they took this fairly technical topic on, and they did a good job of covering it from various angles.

The Debate: The Coming Cloud (switch to the Mark Evans tab for the other discussion) - video is linked from these pages, just click on "Watch video" there

also available as iTunes audio and video - I'm npt seeing it in iTunes yet though

Overall I liked the show, but I would have liked to have seen a cloud computing user, rather than just a panel of pundits.  Show me someone who has moved their enterprise over to Amazon EC2/S3 or other cloud services.  (For example, Internet Archive has been experimenting with this... and I see I'm the top hit for this information: "Science Library Pad: Internet Archive 20th Century Search".  Also SmugMug photos uses Amazon S3 storage.)

I think the future splits into multiple models of computer use.  Gamers, for near-term, need local graphics engines and local storage (holding the multi-gigabyte virtual environments they use).  The intensive computer users like me probably still have their whole elaborate local network and local storage and local computing... well, basically entire personal data centre.  We're probably the only ones left with a lot of non-cloud data and computing.

The digital dividers (old people, poor people, the technically unsavvy) will have very simple devices, something very akin to thin clients - probably in many different form factors - built in to televisions, set-top boxes, things like OLPCs and Eee PCs, "intelligent LCD displays".  The highly mobile will have quite sophisticated but completely mobile devices.  All of the data for both groups lives in the cloud.

This being said, there is a very, very long history predicting the demise of the PC and its replacement with set-tops and thin clients, and it has yet to materialize.  People use a bunch of devices (cell, camera, PDA, laptop) AND their home computers, not instead of their computers.

SIDEBAR: Jesse Hirsh had quite the slag on for the Preventers of Information Services in IT Departments.
First he says home users can't be trusted with personal computers, and then he says work users must be trusted with unlimited use of Internet applications.

It is true that some of the Dr. No aspect of IT is arbitrary, but some of it is either out of their control (layers of regulations imposed from on high), and some of it is related to user support.  IT is about user productivity.  Computer secure, applications running smoothly = happy IT.  If this could be guaranteed through the magic of trusted cloud computing, that would be fine.  But the reality is, users download a bunch of cr*p and access a bunch of cr*p websites, and then IT has to come in and try to clean it up.  That's why IT tries to lockdown.  Lockdown is about being able to guarantee a stable computer, network, and sustainable support experience.

If you want to see what happens in an uncontrolled environment, just let a bunch of consultants into your organisation and let them "manage themselves" and see how well that works...

LimeWire led to data breach: N.L. justice minister

an outside consultant had installed LimeWire, a popular program used to swap music for free, on a laptop computer that was being used to work with data for the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission.

As a result, information — including names, addresses, dates of birth and medical and work histories — related to 153 individuals was exposed

END SIDEBAR

SIDEBAR 2: A minor quibble with terminology used during the show, Amazon's S3 is cloud storage only, their compute cloud service is EC2.  END SIDEBAR

Scientific American - 60 second science

Scientific American has launched an additional site

http://www.60secondscience.com/

In addition to brief news items, there is also a podcast

http://www.60secondscience.com/archive/science-podcast/

via FeedBurner Publisher Buzz

Alvin Toffler interviewed by Allen Gregg

ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock. The Third Wave. Two classics that revolutionized the way we think about our rapidly changing world. They established Alvin Toffler as one of the world's most influential futurists. In his new book, Toffler once again takes us back to the future. It's called Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be Created and How it will Change our Lives.

Web Exclusive Preview: Allan Gregg in Conversation with Alvin Toffler

Allen Gregg in Conversation (on TVO) - August 31, 2007

Note: a lot of the links on the TVO site won't work if you have cookies turned off.

Previously:
October 1, 2006  Alvin Toffler on Big Ideas

technology and scholarly publishing: audio of SXSW panel

Ok, they called it

Web 2.0 and Semantic Web: The Impact on Scientific Publishing (MP3)

but I refuse to use such buzzterms.  Or to call it a podcast when it's just an audio file. Anyway, it's interesting listening.  The panel members are

Moderator: John Wilbanks Exec Dir of Science Commons, Creative Commons

Matthew Cockerill   Publisher,   BioMed Central Ltd
Melissa Hagemann   Program Mgr,   Open Society Institute
Timo Hannay   Dir of Web Pub,   Nature Publishing Group
Amit Kapoor   Managing Dir,   Topaz

from south by southwest festivals 2007
via Peer-to-Peer

open data and more from Peter and Paul

Both Paul Miller and Peter Murray-Rust have interesting ideas about our changing information environment, so what could be better than the former interviewing the latter?

Peter Murray-Rust Talks with Talis about Open Access, Open Data, Science, and the Semantic Web

via Open Access News

British Library blogging, Google Earth, podcasting...

Exhibit blog at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/londoninmaps/

Google Earth layers and podcasts at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/londoninmaps/downloads.html

Videos at http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/londoninmaps/videos.html

via Lorcan Dempsey

UPDATE: In reference to Lorcan's comment, I think this is great to see, particularly I always like to see new uses of mapping.  The BL, as a world leading library, is providing an example for us all in the many ways we could use new technologies.  In particular, "the British Library already has a blog" may serve to quell many concerns that senior library management may have about entering the blogosphere.

more on flying and carbon offsets

CBC Radio One's The Current has a report Christmas Commercialism and Ethical Travel (MP3) as part of The Best of The Current Podcast.  The information starts at 16:20 in.  They interview George Monbiot, author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning.  He basically says you should fly very rarely if at all.  He doesn't like carbon offsets.

Considering that travel is the main thing I look forward to each year, I will continue to fly anyway.

I do think if you're flying purely for a quick beach vacation, or if you're flying for a single business meeting, you might want to re-consider.  But you also need to think about the big picture of your carbon emissions.  Ultimately it's whatever is possible for the whole of your life, not just each aspect considered narrowly.

So after looking at various sites in my previous posting airlines and everything with built-in carbon offset,
I have decided to use Green My Flight to purchase my carbon indulgences.

Itinerary:
OTTAWA - YOW to HALIFAX - YHZ: 955.7 km
   
Total Distance: 1911.4 km
Total Emissions: 259.8 kg
Program Cost: $7.00

more Second Life, plus South Park

Or should I say, Second Life 2.0?

Networman - Great Northern Way Campus & Second Life - October 31, 2006

Netwoman - New Masters of Digital Media Program - November 24, 2006

I just wanted to pass on some information about a new Master's program - one of the many hats I wear is that of a Virtual Research Consultant for the Centre for Digital Media at Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver, British Columbia. On Saturday, November 25th, 2006 the Masters of Digital Media (MDM) program at the Great Northern Way Campus will host an Open House for prospective students from around the globe in the online metaverse Second Life™, where a Virtual Centre for Digital Media building is currently under construction. This event will be held in conjunction with a Real Life Open House taking place simultaneously at Vancouver's Great Northern Way Campus. At both events, potential students will learn about an innovative graduate program in digital media planned to launch in September 2007.

More information can be found online here:

http://www.gnwc.ca/mdm/
http://www.mastersofdigitalmedia.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gnwc

Incidentally, the campus is at Erie (136, 32, 25).  (In Second Life, a location is a placename + X, Y, Z coordinates.)  Here's a SLurl for the location - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Erie/136/32/25/

Le marketing à l'écoute - Novembre 2006: Faire des profits tangibles dans l’univers virtuel, est-ce réel? (podcast)

Michel Leblanc, M.Sc. commerce électronique - Archives pour Second Life

Michel Leblanc - Edgar Bronfman interviewé dans Second Life - December 4, 2006

L’un des plus célèbres Montréalais, Edgar Bronfman Jr., de la célèbre famille du même nom et maintenant P.D.G. de Warner Music, est interviewé dans Second Life par le journaliste de Reuters Adam Reuter.

and for no particular reason, here's some info on the South Park "World of Warcraft" episode...
Ok, ok, um, "in order to better understand the Gaming Generation, I present this insightful examination of using machinima to produce television".

South Park recently aired an episode involving World of Warcraft in which half of the show featured custom machinima footage.
...

Q: How were the custom animations created? How were they used inside of World of Warcraft - were they imported back into the game? What hardware/software did you use?

JJ: When Trey started thinking about how he wanted to start off the current run of episodes, he really wanted to do something big, and new. So, the idea of the "video game show" as we were calling it, resurfaced. We had a production meeting at Trey's house on Friday, Sept. 1st, and went over all the experiments and design work we had done to date. Once again, the idea was brought up of using WoW to shoot the in-game footage, with the added possibility of re-creating the characters in Maya, the 3D animation program we use to produce the show, in order to do close ups with full lipsynch and facial expressions. I mentioned that Blizzard had been very eager to help us when we ran our initial tests, so perhaps they'd be willing to let us use their own character models as well, which would save us a great deal of time and effort. All we would have to do then is re-rig the faces so we could animate them to the degree needed.

Eventually, it was decided that we would push forward in both directions, starting to model our own characters as well as contacting Blizzard and seeing how interested they would be in participating. We met with several people from Blizzard on Thursday, the 7th of Sept. and it became obvious that they were extremely eager to make this happen, and seemed willing to do whatever they could to make sure it did. Luckily, they also use Maya to do their in-game character animation, which meant we would be able to just grab their files and go, in theory. So, we asked them for a couple of their Maya character rigs to test with. Less then 7 hours later, we had male and female models for every race in the game, all fully rigged with every single animation cycle already assigned. It was exactly what we needed to get started.

from Machinima.com

do a radio documentary for the CBC

What are we calling it this week, User-Generated Content?  Peer-produced media?  Anyway, the CBC is giving Canadians the opportunity to be radio stars.

Outfront is where we hand you the microphone. You make a radio documentary, with our help. Then CBC plays it to the whole country -- and you'll even get paid.

They also have a podcast, of course.

Access 2006 podcasts and presentations

http://www.access2006.uottawa.ca/index.php?page_id=10

My presentation isn't up yet - somewhere in moving back and forth between Windows and Mac, the hyperlinks all got lost - have to fix that first.

Alvin Toffler on Big Ideas

Alvin Toffler has big ideas, so it's entirely appropriate that he launches the season at TVO's Big Ideas.

Season Premiere: Alvin Toffler | Mark Kingwell
ON AIR: Saturday, October 07 [2006] - 05:00 AM

BIG IDEAS begins its sixth season with someone who ought to be familiar to many, if not by name, then by the title of the book he and his wife penned about 35 years ago: Future Shock. The co-author, Alvin Toffler, came through Toronto recently promoting the latest book in which the Tofflers again divine the shape of things to come. The book's title is Revolutionary Wealth and is an attempt to show how our traditional economic categories are subject to changes wrought by digital technologies. If you suffer from future shock already, this talk is not likely to assuage it.

His talk is already in the Big Ideas podcast.

http://www.tvo.org/TVOspecial3/WebObjects/TVOMedia.woa?bigideasfeed

Or you can get it through iTunes - Big Ideas podcast September 30, 2006 Alvin Toffler.

Previously:
August 03, 2006  my review of The Long Tail

HBO documentaries on iTunes

HBO Documentary Films has a, what do we call video podcasts, a vodcast?  Anyway, has audio and video free on iTunes.

This includes the entire film Too Hot Not to Handle, about the effects of global warming on the United States, in four parts, plus an interview.  Each part is roughly 100 MB.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

interview with Laurie David

everything Long Tail

The long tail of Long Tail content

The Economist has a good interview with Chris Anderson (MP3, 32 minutes, iTunes link), as part of Economist podcasts.

TypePad has a "skypecast": Listen to our chat with Chris Anderson.

There is also just a brief text TypePad featured interview with him.

His book is coming out in the UK with the subtitle "How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand".  I think that's pretty good, except I'd be inclined to say "Unlocking Unlimited Demand" instead.

http://www.longtailbook.co.uk/

They are also offering two free sample chapters (PDF), the Introduction and The New Tastemakers.

I also continue to track related postings at

http://www.furl.net/members/rakerman/longtailreview or http://del.icio.us/scilibfurl/longtailreview

Previously:
August 3, 2006  my review of The Long Tail

in which I discover podcasting

Ya I know, me all these years without an iPod an all, you'll have to take away my blazer badge from the League of Early Adopters.

Anyway, in perhaps the worst bit of timing ever, I received my iPod nano on Thursday, August 10.
I bought it specifically to listen to audiobooks and podcasts on an upcoming flight, transiting London Heathrow.

As I'm sure you know by now, all electronic devices, including iPods, have been banned from carry-on for all flights transiting London Heathrow, as of Thursday August 10.

They are currently even banning books, which is going to make for a loooooong flight.

Anyway, I have to admit I was amazed when I checked into the available podcast content.
I got 1GB of storage.  "I'll never fill 1GB," I thought.  I filled it in about half an hour of selecting podcasts.  So much high-quality content, available for free.

There is only one minor detail, which is that it's unclear when I will have time to listen to a day worth of podcasts.  On the daily bus ride, its my opportunity to read.  I'm not particularly keen on multitasking that time.  I tried getting podcasts in Bloglines before, but I never managed to listen to them.  As far as I can tell, they're going to need to add a new day to the week, called Podcastday, just for me to have time to listen.

(or see larger image with complete details)

If you don't know Big Ideas, I recommend it highly.  Since I always miss it on TV, this may give me a chance to actually hear some of it.  Robert Adams does amazing book reviews for them.

His review of The Kite Runner (iTunes podcast link), which I saw on TV, sent me to my computer immediately to buy it.

Tech Review's Emerging Technologies Conference 2006

Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference (TR ETC 2006)
September 27-28, 2006
MIT Campus

Video from the 2005 conf and podcasts from the 2005 and 2004 conferences.

geobooking - books to locations and back

This is awesome:

Gutenkarte is a geographic text browser, intended to help readers explore the spatial component of classic works of literature. Gutenkarte downloads public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, and then feeds them to MetaCarta's GeoParser API, which extracts and returns all the geographic locations it can find. Gutenkarte stores these locations in a database, along with citations into the text itself, and offers an interface where the book can be browsed by chapter, by place, or all at once on an interactive map. Ultimately, Gutenkarte will offer the ability to annotate and correct the places in the database, so that the community will be able construct and share rich geographic views of Project Gutenberg's enormous body of literary classics.

I was searching for GutenCarte, which I fortunately found via YALSA.

via Talis Library 2.0 Mashup podcast, Thomas again

ideal mashup... a combination of the library catalogue, Google Maps and Flickr where when you find a book, you can find where the geographic action takes place in that book on Google Maps and you can find pictures of that place in Flickr... I would love to have that integrated in the library catalogue or any interface, or doing the other way around and saying "what kind of books are about this place?" or going to Flickr and saying "oh that's a cool picture, what kind of books are about this place?"

Previously:
January 12, 2006  libraries as warehouses of dead paper: set your books electronically free

more on the peer to peer library

I hope I have the attribution right, I think it's Thomas Brevik, anyway, from the Talis Podcast on mashups

... something I've been thinking a lot about in this kind of context is that especially in small rural communities where the library is small and you have a lot of fairly large personal collections around, what if people could integrate their LibraryThing holdings with the public library holdings, and if somebody wanted to borrow a personal... an item that was in a personal librarym the library could facilitate that by telling the person owning the book that someone was interested in it ... you could deliver it as a library, and the person can borrow it and the library would do all the logistics.  I think that would extend the library in smaller communities where the library has a great service but not a great collection.

Previously:
January 12, 2006  the hidden library, the P2P library, recommendations, and gettin' it on

National Arts Centre podcasts

Join host Christopher Millard (principal bassoon, NAC Orchestra) as he explores the world of orchestral music and its great composers. In this series of 10-15 minute audio programmes you can look forward to hearing insightful commentary about upcoming NAC Orchestra programmes as well as musical excerpts and interviews with NACO musicians and guest artists.

Podcast at http://radio.nac-cna.ca/podcast/NACOcast/NACOcast.xml

For more information, see http://www.nac.ca/en/multimedia/podcasts/

Nature on science blogs

Top five science blogs

Weblogs written by scientists are relatively rare, but some of them are proving popular. Out of 46.7 million blogs indexed by the Technorati blog search engine, five scientists' sites make it into the top 3,500. Declan Butler asks the winners about the reasons for their success. ...

Visit [Nature] newsblog to read and post comments about this story.

We [Nature] also have a list of science blogs by writers, rather than scientists, and an extended list of 50 popular science blogs. Click here for a more extensive note on how our lists were made, and a box of blogshots.

They also talk about top science blogs in this week's podcast.

06 July 2006: Audio (mp3 file)

Face recognition, koala retroviruses, a sneaky sociologist, top science blogs, big cat business, new nukes, the search for Earth-like planets, and silent earthquakes.

The full podcast feed is http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/rss/nature.xml

UPDATE 2006-07-07: Tailrank, which clusters related blog postings together, has two threads (with a lot of overlap) on the science blogs article. ENDUPDATE

Previously:
April 24, 2006  types of science blogs, and a challenge about doing real science through blogs
April 14, 2006  Science magazine on environmental science blogs
February 26, 2006  Physics World on Physics bloggers
January 16, 2006  Seed Magazine and science blogs
December 20, 2005  science blogging, with extra physics flavour
August 27, 2005  more about science blogs

PBS NOW on Net Neutrality and interview with librarian

Is the wild west culture of the Internet about to become a thing of the past? Big business is staking its claim on the information superhighway, lobbying Congress for an exclusive faster lane, which consumers could end up paying for. This week on NOW we look at a major battle brewing in Washington D.C. over the future of the Internet.

We follow the story of Blip.tv, an ambitious video-streaming startup. They're fighting for a corner of the Internet marketplace in the midst of a battle over so-called 'net neutrality' -- the idea that all Internet content and websites are given the same access to audiences and customers.

NOW - Tangled Web

This week NOW speaks to George Christian, one of four librarians subjected to a gag order after the FBI demanded records about library patrons under the Patriot Act.

The librarians spoke out for the first time on Tuesday (May 30) after a U.S. District Judge ordered the gag order lifted and prosecutors dropped an appeal of that order. At a press conference organized by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the librarians expressed their dismay at the government's insistence that they keep quiet.

NOW - Interview: George Christian

Video and audio should show up at
http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/archive.html

They also have a podcast available.

audio of Michael Geist about Canadian Copyright

TVO's Big Ideas has a presentation by Michael Geist about Canadian Copyright current and future.
It will air tomorrow Sunday May 28, 2006 at 1 PM Eastern.

You can download the audio (MP3).

You can also subscribe to the podcast of Big Ideas.

more on library futures from NFAIS and Australia

UBC Google Scholar blog has an interview with Peter Morville about his book Ambient Findability.
(My general comment: interesting book, but the themes were a bit unfocussed.)

At the end I noticed a link to Libraries Embracing Change, which turns out to be blogging of an NFAIS 2006 session by Marydee (who has the amazing ability to construct entire coherent paragraphs while watching a presentation, whereas I can barely cobble together some point-form notes).

It has some very interesting points, the most striking being:

The view of special libraries was presented by Melanie O'Neill, VP R&D Information, GlaxoSmithKline. Her main theme was managing information for the discovery and development of new medicines. GSK has a very mobile workforce and has closed physical libraries to create a virtual library.

GSK negotiated enterprisewide contracts to put information on the desktop. It's no longer OK for a scientist to ask a librarian a question that can be answered at the desktop by resources purchased by the information department. On the GSK library portal, scientists are encouraged to use Google and Google Scholar. I'm rather shocked by that and, in answer to a question from the audience, O'Neill said it was very popular and heavily used.

This is much as I've been indicating previously: it's not just theory that the physical research library can be replaced with licenses to online content and search tools.  I'm not saying this is right, I'm saying it's reality.

I'm chopping up Marydee's post a bit, but here are two other important pieces:

Librarians have done a lousy job of communicating our value proposition, letting search engines grab mindshare, we need to learn how to do what we do better. End the priesthood of librarianship

...

[GSK] librarians are now analyzing information and are situated within project/strategy teams. There's a major push to capture and manage proprietary information (e-lab books, e-archiving, records retention). She wants to blur the distinction between publicly published data and proprietary information, and mine proprietary data in same fashion as searching public sources. Breaking down the silos between libraries and archives is the goal.

Marydee also has another posting from the same track, Information Companies Embracing Change

Kevin Bouley, CEO of NERAC, then gave his own case study of transforming a company that looked like it was doing just fine. That's harder. He hired a consultant to help them be innovative, but the staff was unable to grasp change. "Our minds had calcified. Ideas generated by staff weren't innovative."

He tried again a year later with more success. NERAC evolved from search and content to research solutions, It added opinion to research and took on a more analytical role. It began to focus on the customer not the product.

The NFAIS 2006 program looks like it had a lot of great material, slides are linked inline with each day's listing of presentations.  The Embracing Change ones are from February 28, 2006.  The specific GSK presentation is Managing information for discovery and development of new medicines (PowerPoint).

UPDATE 2006-03-13: I'm told that the bulk of the NFAIS presentations are now up on the sub-pages available under http://www.nfais.org/2006_Tier_Program.htm

Incidentally, NERAC has a blog.

Today I also happened to be scanning the Australian ALIA "blog", and came across a posting Libraries for the future (I can't link to it because there are no permalinks... or comments... so not really a blog).

Charles Leadbeater says that institutions that are 'stuck' are in a chronic condition and which are then very prone to crisis. He suggested that librarians are 'stuck' and could continue to stay in this category if action is not taken. Libraries and librarians need to articulate their role in creating a creative society.

The quote of the day came during question time of the first speaker, Joel Kotkin. When asked if libraries are going to be like the Mail Coach (now defunct) ...He replied that 'Libraries should be in the wisdom business'.

The event was Library of the 21st Century Symposium.

In an interesting twist, there are no PowerPointy presentations available, but there are MP3 audio files and text transcripts, or you can subscribe to the podcast feed at http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about/site/feeds/podcast_slv21.xml

Previously:
January 10, 2005  the fall of the temple of books
December 14, 2005  it is easiest to discover what is everywhere: Ambient Findability

The Onion Reports: Street-Smart Teen Dies In Library

Onion Radio News: Street-Smart Teen Dies In Library