It’s coming up on that time again. I’ve set up a Twitter account for the 2008 Computers in Libraries conference. If you’re going to be at the conference and twittering, contact me and I’ll tell the account to follow you. (You’ll need to friend the account back if you’re protected your updates.) Once the conference has started, or before if you’d like, use your RSS reader to subscribe to the CIL08 & Friends feed to get all the tweets from the conference.
Archive for » February 26th, 2008«
Funniest copyright statement ever
26
Feb 2008
I was saving this for my CC talk at CiL but it’s too funny not to post.
All rights reserved under the International and Pan- American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, replicated, reiterated, duplicated, conduplicated, retyped, transcribed by hand (manuscript or cursive), read aloud and recorded on audio tape, platter, or disk, lipsynched, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including genetic, chemical, mechanical, optical, xerographic, holographic, electronic, stereophonic, ceramic, acrylic, or telepathic (except for that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press who promise to read the book painstakingly all the way through before writing their reviews) without prior written permission from the Publisher.
Category: copyright, funny
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Thinking of using Firefox in your library?
26
Feb 2008
If not, you should be, IMHO. Anyway, here’s two somewhat technical articles related to this topic.
- Hacking Firefox at my library: instructions & stuff
Instructions on how to lock-down and tweak Firefox for public consumption. I don’t necessarily agree with everything suggested but I don’t have any problems big enough to complain about either. - 40 Useful Firefox Add-Ons for Librarians
There are a lot of Firefox add-ons out in the wild. Here’s a list of 40 that are most useful for us librarians. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Category: firefox
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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives
26
Feb 2008
Yes folks, today is the day in which I clean out all those shortcuts on my desktop to things I’ve been meaning to blog about. This time it’s Open Source alternatives to those programs you’re using and drive you nuts. I’m not necessarily endorsing any of the programs on the list but it’s definitely worth taking a look though to see what you might want to give a try.
The following fifty proprietary programs are listed in no particular order within broad categories along with their open source alternatives. In some cases you could probably write your own book on frustrations with the proprietary programs shown here. In other cases, you’ll discover that the open source alternative isn’t quite up to snuff yet. And, in other cases still, you’ll learn that some proprietary programs are real gems, but that the open source advocate can replace those gems with equally shiny objects from the open source repertoire.
The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives | WHDb
Category: opensource
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The shiny guy, he always worries
26
Feb 2008
Star Wars explained by a three year-old.
Category: star wars, video, youtube
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I’m wondering about what’s up with the guys over at Unshelved regarding Creative Commons. I wasn’t going to blog about his until something happened. Here’s the story:
Yesterday there was a post on the Unshelved blog in which Bill talked about giving permission to use Unshelved strips to promote your library. Great idea I thought. This morning I went to re-read that post and something seemed different. I though he’d listed some specific things you needed to do in order to use their comics which sounded a lot like a NC-BY-ND CC license and that they were aware of this so don’t e-mail them about it. But today here’s what I read:
..So here’s our offer. We’ve got over two thousand strips about libraries and the things they go on there. Please use them to promote your library, school, or other reading-friendly cause. If you have questions about usage, or if you need a high-resolution version suitable for printing, just mail us.
Wait, where’s the specifics? Where’s the mention of Creative Commons? I did have a rough night’s sleep last night. Did I dream it? Seems not. Here’s what I found via the Google cache:
…So here’s our offer. We’ve got over two thousand strips about libraries and the things they go on there. If you’d like to use some of them for noncommercial purposes, please do. Just use them intact, without alteration, attribute them to us, and show our URL and the correct copyright. If you have questions about usage, or if you need a high-resolution version, just mail us.
…P.S. To forestall a gazillion emails I will say that I am well aware of Creative Commons, and we are thinking (read: arguing) about it.
So, what’s my point? There are two actually. First, guys, please make the plunge into the world of Creative Commons. My guess is that one of you likes the idea and the other doesn’t. How about blogging about the pros and cons and get some outside opinions from the library world. Heck, many of us are reposting your strips on our blogs anyway. How about making it officially allowable and support the CC movement at the same time.
Second, as I warn my students in my blogging workshops, if you have second thoughts about something you wrote in a blog post, don’t go back and remove it like it never happened. Write a follow-up post and clarify your position. Otherwise someone’s going to notice and point it out since nothing on the Net ever actually gets deleted.
Category: blogging, creativecommons, unshelved
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Open Office 2007 Documents in OpenOffice
26
Feb 2008
I don’t use OpenOffice much but it comes installed on the Cloudbook so I think I’m going to start. (Though I also plan on using Google Docs a lot more too.) Anyway, since most of my current files are in Office 2007 format I was concerned about moving between the two programs. Well, a solution is now available: the Open XML Translator.
Expand OpenOffice.org’s document opening, saving, and conversion powers to Office 2007 documents with the Open XML Translator, a free plug-in intended for Ubuntu systems.
lifehacker also says that "conversion from Microsoft Office-authored files remains hit-and-miss, but it’s a nice step forward for the free and open-source office suite." I’ll have to give it a test when I get my Cloudbook.
(Oh, and I’m officially declaring this my blog post for Thing #7: Blog about anything dealing with technology.)
Category: cloudbook, linux, office2007, ubuntu
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Cloudbook Update
26
Feb 2008
Nope I don’t have mine yet. Here’s the full e-mail update from ZeReason:
Dear customers who have been waiting for the Cloudbook for far too long.
For the sake of clarity, here is what you need to know:
* Two days before the initial date the Cloudbook would be available for shipping, we opened for pre-orders. We were told the Cloudbooks were off the coast of CA and would be here in about 48 hrs.
* On shipping day, we found out that the Cloudbooks had been pulled for "minor tweaks" and it would be about a month until they were done.
* A month later, on Valentine’s Day, we found out that due to the snowstorm in China which bumped up against the Chinese New Year, Everex had gotten only a portion of the systems built. We were given only part of our initial promised allotment. The Cloudbooks that should have gone to fulfil the rest of our preorders were sent on a truck to Walmart.
* We shipped out our portion of the initial allotment, fulfilling orders in chronological order so that people who had waited the longest got theirs first. We shipped the Cloudbooks on the first day they were available, no delay for transport since we are located near Everex headquarters. The rest of the Cloudbooks that sat on a Walmart truck took a little more than a week to get to their destination and are now available for purchase.
* Walmart is doing now what we did on Feb 15th, shipping out their initial batch of Cloudbooks.
To those of you still waiting from the initial batch (the later part of the initial batch), we apologize profusely. We are so deeply sorry that the deadlines have dragged on. The deadline was supposedly this Tuesday, 2-26 and has slipped to Friday, 2-29. We anticipate that it will not come as a surprise to anyone.
Our solution, as a solid, trustworthy little company is to:
1. be as transparent as possible
2. grant you a full refund for pre-orders, if you are even slightly unhappy, and
3. to refocus our company on our own ZaReason laptops that have an ultra low return rate of <1%, with shipping deadlines we can control and honor.If you wish to wait for your Cloudbook as many others have done, we can reassure you that it is a great little machine for the price. For most users’ needs it is sufficient and travels well. If you can wait a few more days, your Cloudbook will ship out from our shop in CA and you’ll be using it soon.
*** Please note: All Cloudbook sales are final. Everex is not giving refunds for returned working CloudBooks. They will repair any faulty systems, but will not give a refund for a working system. If this worries you, we ask that you cancel your order before it is shipped. We cannot accept returns for working CloudBooks. This policy is only for CloudBooks. For any other ZaReason system, we have a generous return policy.
If you wish to cancel your order, feel free to simply email us at orders@zarason.com Your refund will be processed the same day it is received.
Whatever you decide, we wish you the best,
–Cathy Malmrose, CEO ZaReason, Inc.
www.zareason.com
I’ve got to admit that at first the revised return policy made me a but nervous but then I thought for a minute and realized that if it works but I just don’t like it all that much, I probably wouldn’t have returned it anyway. So, I’m sticking it out. I really want this computer for conferences so for another week I wait.
Category: cloudbook
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