Each year, Technology Review publishes its list of 10 emerging technologies that its editors believe will be particularly important over the next few years. This is work ready to emerge from the lab, in a broad range of areas: energy, computer hardware and software, biological imaging, and more. Two of the technologies–cellulolytic enzymes and atomic magnetometers–are efforts by leading scientists to solve critical problems, while five–surprise modeling, connectomics, probabilistic CMOS, reality mining, and offline Web applications–represent whole new ways of looking at problems. And three–graphene transistors, nanoradio, and wireless power–are amazing feats of engineering that have created something entirely new.
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Archive for February, 2008
Library of Congress Rocks Flickr
Published by February 25th, 2008
in Library of Congress and Flickr.
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Museum 2.0 writes. “About a month ago, the Library of Congress put two sets of photographs (about 3000 images total) up on Flickr. Flickr is a photo-sharing site (learn more here). They didn’t put them up the way you or I put up photos of the family hoe-down; they worked with Flickr for about six months as part of Flickr Commons, a hopefully growing initiative to connect public image collections with this hugely popular photo-sharing and tagging site. Plenty have blogged about the initiative, but what I’m most interested in are the results, and what it means for the way we share collections with visitors both online and onsite.”
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The Transparent Library: Insights from the Front Line
Published by February 25th, 2008
in libraries and users.
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This column is directed to front-line librarians and staff, who deliver customer service and have damn good ideas for what can be done to improve things. It’s often a hurdle to get library administrators and managers to listen to your concerns and views. But there are ways. And we believe this advice holds true for everyone on the desk, from reference librarians to support staff.
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OCLC Awarded Mellon Grant to Conduct Museum Data Exchange Study
Published by February 25th, 2008
in museums and OCLC.
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The $145,000 grant will be used to further develop standards for museum data exchange. OCLC will use the grant to fund projects involving OCLC Programs and Research and seven RLG Programs art museum partners to build an information architecture and model behaviors that museums can use to routinely exchange data. This initiative will result in the creation of a low-barrier/no-cost batch export capability out of the collections management system used by the participating museums (GallerySystems TMS), as well as a test of data exchange processes using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
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Opinion Piece: Face Value
Published by February 25th, 2008
in social networking and Facebook.
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Barbara Fister writes, “My corner of the Internet has been abuzz over a muckraking article that recently appeared in The Guardian on the subject of Facebook. Tom Hodgkinson, the highly principled slacker behind The Idler and author of How to Be Free, makes some familiar complaints: online friends are a pale imitation of face-to-face relationships, Facebook encourages high-schoolish obsession with popularity, it prompts its members to reveal too much about themselves, and it uses that information for commercial gain. But the article goes further. Facebook is not just an American-owned company with global ambitions. According to Hodgkinson, it’s highly influenced by a “neocon activist” board member and funded by a venture capital firm that has ties to the CIA. Their ultimate aim: “an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodities on sale to giant global brands.” Ironically, The Guardian helpfully provides a “share” link so you can send the article to all of your Facebook friends.
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Web Socialites Succumb to ‘Facebook Fatigue’
Published by February 25th, 2008
in demographics, social networking and Facebook.
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From politicians to film stars, anyone who was anyone had a Facebook profile. But the social networking phenomenon may have peaked now that the number of British users of the site has fallen for the first time. Analysts are speaking of “Facebook fatigue” after figures showed a 5 per cent decline from 8.9 million unique visitors to the website in December to 8.5 million last month. The fall could be a seasonal dip - Facebook’s audience is still 712 per cent higher than it was a year ago and 9 per cent higher than three months ago.
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Japan Social-Networking King Mixi to take on China
Published by February 25th, 2008
in China, social networking and Japan.
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Japan’s most popular social-networking site, Mixi, on Wednesday said it plans to establish a subsidiary in Shanghai to tap China’s fast-growing Internet market. “China’s Internet population is increasing at a significant pace, and its online-advertisement market is also gathering steam,” Mixi spokeswoman Hirono Kobayashi said. Internet users in China reached 172 million in 2007, and the figure is expected to reach 200 million by 2010, making it the world’s biggest Internet market by user numbers, she said.
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Virtual Reference Service From GPO and Depository Libraries—GIO: Ask a Librarian
Published by February 25th, 2008
in reference.
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A formal agreement between the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO; www.gpo.gov) and a network of 20 depository libraries has relaunched and expanded the scope of a virtual reference service called Government Information Online: Ask a Librarian (GIO; http://govtinfo.org). Be careful about using the dot-org. Typing “govtinfo.gov” will switch you to the USA.gov site. That may not be too much of a mistake in time. One of the primary strategies of the GIO service is to promote its existence through links from other leading dot-gov sites, such as USA.gov and Thomas. The engineering of such linkages falls mainly to GPO. The depository library participants, led by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and managed by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC; www.cic.net), will handle providing the free chat- and email-based virtual reference service.
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Podcasts Aren’t Just for Young Nerds
Published by February 25th, 2008
in podcasts and demographics.
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They don’t all listen to the same programs, they don’t all use iPods, and they don’t all come from the same background. They are podcast users, and they defy clear-cut connections between usage and factors such as gender, age and income level.
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Business Intelligence Business Requirements and the BI Portfolio
Published by February 25th, 2008
in corporations and business intelligence.
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More and more companies are learning the hard way that business intelligence (BI) business requirements are a different breed of cat. After paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees for generic BI requirements, or after spending months and months generating traditional report requirements and functional specifications, major companies in many different industries have discovered that these approaches suffer from three primary deficiencies: 1) They don’t provide the basis for a compelling business case that business leaders buy into – one that clearly articulates how business intelligence will be used within specific business processes to improve business performance.
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Google to Store Patients’ Health Records in Test of New Service
Published by February 25th, 2008
in Google.
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Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader. The pilot project to be announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google’s new service, which won’t be open to the general public.
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Syracuse University Study: Librarians Help Test Scores
Published by February 25th, 2008
in education and librarians/information professionals.
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A key to helping kids in class and especially on state tests lies right in most school buildings if used right, according to a Syracuse University researcher. Dr. Ruth Small spent two years looking at the role New York State School libraries play in student achievement. Libraries as much about technology as they are books these days. Fourth graders at McKinley Brighton are working together with Bellvue fourth graders on a project about India. They share research via computer. Teacher Beth Peppone says “The kids go on the wiki and see each others notes, make comments, use the other school’s notes if they want to it’s just amazing.”
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President Bush’s future presidential library and public policy institute will be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, officials announced recently, launching a project that could require hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations. The location of the project has not exactly been a state secret — representatives of Bush’s library foundation have been negotiating with the university for months — but the announcement means Bush’s friends and associates will soon begin raising money to bring the project to fruition.
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Gaming and the School Curriculum
Published by February 25th, 2008
in education and gaming.
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Brian Mayer writes: “Games engage students with authentic leisure experiences while reinforcing a variety of social, literary, and curricular skills. When an educational concept is introduced and reinforced during a game, it is internalized as part of an enjoyable experience and further utilized as one aspect of a strategy to attain success.” To prove his point, Mayer matches up specific New York State learning standards with selected games.
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Capturing Learning Moments Digitally
Published by February 25th, 2008
in education and digital.
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Wherever there has been a black board, a white board, or a flip chart, there have been messages left in desperation warning those next in a classroom not to touch what was written or drawn or diagrammed on the particular surface provided. For those coming into the room to teach, it can be both annoying and frustrating. How can alternative surfaces be found? Who would know if I erased it? This is impolite and not at all collegial! Whatever the actual words expressed, the feelings are legitimate particularly when faced with your own group of students with whom you have to work for the next 50 minutes or so and for whom your best diagrams or notes must be provided. Therefore, the idea of capturing learning moments is not new. Teachers have always been aware that if something must be written or graphically represented in order that students understand, then it is of the utmost importance that it remain intact so that every thought, every idea or connecting point can be captured and that an effective continuation of the work already done can take place. Teachers have also always realized how wonderful it would be if that one moment of brilliance or that one experience with students during which everyone was engaged and students reached a new level of understanding could be captured and demonstrated again in the future for other, perhaps struggling students.x
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Art Games: Digital Artists are Using Game Technologies to Create Bold New Works
Published by February 25th, 2008
in art, digital and gaming.
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Digital art takes many forms: installations; Internet art; virtual-reality projects that use devices such as headsets and data gloves to immerse participants in a virtual world; software coded by the artist; or even “locative media” art that uses mobile devices (such as cell phones) to turn public spaces like buildings or parks into a canvas. Digital photographs, films, and videos have been common in the arts since the 1990s; even paintings and sculptures are now sometimes produced with the aid of digital tools. But projects that use digital technologies as a medium in themselves–and that, like their medium, are interactive, collaborative, customizable, and variable–still occupy the margins of art institutions and find their audience mostly at new-media art festivals or on the Internet.
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Council on Library Resources Issues Report on Digital Preservation
Published by February 25th, 2008
in digital and preservation.
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A new study from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation suggests that in an age of mass digitization it is time to reassess best practices and put forth a practicable preservation strategy. Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization: A White Paper, by Oya Rieger, interim assistant university librarian for digital library and information technologies at the Cornell University Library, examines four “large-scale digitization initiatives (LSDIs)” (Google Book Search, Microsoft Live Search Books, Open Content Alliance, and the Million Book Project) to identify issues that will influence the long term availability and usability of the digital books these projects create.
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History Monograph Program Gutenberg-e Goes Open Access
Published by February 25th, 2008
in open access.
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Historian and Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton is on an open access (OA) roll. In addition to the groundbreaking news out of Harvard last week, another project in which Darnton was a catalyst, the Columbia University Press Gutenberg-e Project, is going OA. According to a release from the American History Association, the dissertations published under the Gutenberg-e program are now freely available through the Columbia University libraries an open-access and via the ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB). The news, however, isn’t all good. In a sobering reminder amid all the recent open access euphoria, AHA’s Robert Townsend, writing on the AHA web site conceded that the project is not yet financially sustainable.
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Aftershocks: Blogosphere Reacts to Harvard OA Mandate
Published by February 25th, 2008
in open access.
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Librarians and faculty members at other institutions are reacting positively to Harvard University’s historic faculty motion last week to mandate open access (OA). A scan of the blogosphere suggests that Harvard’s vote is poised to serve as an effective motivator for other institutions to push forward their own open access/institutional repository policies. This is, after all, Harvard. “When Harvard does something, all the others follow,” blogged one scientist at Blog Around the Clock. “Perhaps this is the tipping point for Open Access as a whole?”
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IBM Launches Environmental Educational World
Published by February 25th, 2008
in education and virtual worlds.
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IBM recently launched PowerUp, a free, 3D virtual world today aimed at educating teenagers about alternative energy sources and environmental conservation. A part of IBM’s TryScience initiative and launching at Engineer’s Week 2008 on February 16, the world tries to merge the appeal of fantasy virtual worlds with the educational goal of building wind- and watermills to save the world.
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User Web Skills Improving, But Only Slightly; ‘Google Gullibility’ Remains a Problem
Published by February 25th, 2008
in users.
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According to the latest AlertBox research, users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability problems still cause failures. Almost all users: are better at physical operations, such as mouse movements and scrolling; are more confident at clicking, and less afraid that they’ll break something; and know the basics of using search and use it more often than in the past.
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The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published recently by Google. The search engine giant trained its Web crawling software on billions of Web addresses over the past year looking for malicious pages that tried to attack their visitors. They found more than 3 million of them, meaning that about one in 1,000 Web pages are malicious, according to Neils Provos, a senior staff software engineer with Google. These Web-based attacks, called “drive-by downloads” by security experts, have become much more common in recent years as firewalls and better security practices by Microsoft have made it harder for worms and viruses to directly attack computers.
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comScore Releases January 2008 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
Published by February 25th, 2008
in search, Google and Yahoo.
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comScore, Inc. a leader in measuring the digital world, recently released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the search marketplace. January 2008 saw Americans conduct more than 10 billion core searches, representing a significant jump in activity versus December.In January, Google Sites marginally extended its share of core searches to 58.5 percent. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.2 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.8 percent), AOL LLC (4.9 percent), and Ask Network (4.5 percent).
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Association of American Publishers Releases ‘Handbook on Book Paper and the Environment’
Published by February 25th, 2008
in books and environment.
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The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has unveiled a new Handbook on Book Paper and the Environment. The AAP hopes the practical guide will assist publishers in navigating the confusing and often arcane issues relating to the development of environmental sustainability practices within the book publishing industry.
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Borders Stores Become More Digital
Published by February 25th, 2008
in books and digital.
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When you walk through the doors of Borders’ new concept store, the place feels familiar. But follow the table of books snaking off to the right, and you’ll come face-to-face with Borders’ newest retail strategy: a digital center where you can download music or books, burn CDs, research family histories, print pictures, and order leather-bound books crammed with family photos—with help from clerks who know how to do those sorts of things and won’t embarrass you if you don’t.
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Presenter, Inc. Launch Pilot Run to Provide Journal Abstracts Over Mobile Phone in China
Published by February 25th, 2008
in China, mobile/cell phones and journals.
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Presenter, Inc. a pioneer in Internet and mobile computing technologies for business communication, recently launched a pilot run of journal abstracts over mobile phone. Run in two cities in China, the pilot covers about 150 doctors who will receive journal abstracts in text and images through MMS messaging.
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Indiana University Library Publishes First Faculty E-Journal
Published by February 25th, 2008
in libraries and journals.
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In what librarians are calling “a turning point in scholarly publishing” the Indiana University (IU) library this week published the university’s first “faculty-generated” open access electronic journal, the Museum Anthropology Review. The journal, edited by Jason Baird Jackson, associate professor in IU’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, was chartered last February as part of a pilot project within the library’s larger scholarly communication initiative, IUScholarWorks, designed to offer faculty “a low-cost solution to the administrative and publishing functions.”
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2007 was another boom year for the Internet in the United Kingdom. Almost 37 million people went online in an average month—that’s over 60% of the population. This year looks like more of the same, and by 2012 eMarketer estimates that the Internet will reach roughly 70% of all UK residents.
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The World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company
Published by February 18th, 2008
in Uncategorized, innovation and corporations.
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We canvassed the experts, analyzed the products, and crunched the numbers. From visionary upstarts to storied stalwarts, here are companies that dazzle with new ideas — and prove beyond a doubt how business is a force for change. We call them the Fast 50.
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Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great, talks about how great brands do one thousand little things well. With a look ahead to 2008, we thought we’d bestow some awards on a few practitioners of innovation, nearly all of whom understand the value of simple thoughts and insights.
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25 Awesome Beta Research Tools from Libraries Around the World
Published by February 18th, 2008
in libraries and research.
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If you’re tired of using the same old search box on your local library website for research projects, it might be time to broaden your horizons. Try out one of these in-the-works betas sponsored by world-class libraries around the world. From academic libraries like that at MIT or renowned research centers like the Library of Congress, the following beta research tools feature innovative tricks to connect you with the most relevant, valid results on the Internet and in their card catalogs. Melvil Dewey would be proud.
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Second Life runs on an iPhone (Sorta…)
Published by February 18th, 2008
in Second Life and iPhone.
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You wouldn’t think such a computing-intensive game would run on such a small device. Well, it does, barely, on the iPhone. The truth is that this particular version is just being streamed from Second Life’s servers, through Safari. Here is an excerpt from Tech Digest’s article:“In a layman’s nutshell, all the processing is being done NOT on the iPhone, on a central server. All that’s being streamed to the iPhone is the visuals - essentially, a video feed of the Second Life environment. Then, when you tap the on-screen buttons to move, or type in a message, that’s sent back up to the server for processing.”
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Learning Science in a Virtual World
Published by February 18th, 2008
in education, Second Life and virtual worlds.
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Imagine a science class without text books. It sounds tough to do, but it is happening at one school in our area. It’s part of an innovative pilot program that allows students to experience lessons like never before. Education reporter Art McFarland has the story. It is an experience that is out of this world, but inside any computer.“You can do things you can’t do in real life, like fly,” student Ernesto Machado said. “You can actually go into the volcano.” It is called “Second Life” for a reason. It allows computer users to live outside of themselves, even inside an erupting volcano. At Brooklyn’s High School for Global Citizenship, Second Life is part of a science class.
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Jessica Hupp writes: “With the vast array of web development knowledge available on the internet, there’s certainly no shortage of cheat sheets to be found. However, finding a way to wrangle them all into one place isn’t quite as easy. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of some of the best cheat sheet collections out there. That’s right: This is your newest cheat sheet for cheat sheeting.”…</