Archive for November 2008
The University of Malaya
Monday I gave a modified and longer version of my presentation for ICoLIS to Librarians at the University of Malaya, including demonstrations of several sites like Facebook and FriendFeed. It was a wonderful group who asked some great questions. After there was a small tea reception with some delicious Malay food.
Greetings from Malaysia
Today is my first presentation so I thought I’d better write a post sharing what I’ve done over the last two days (besides prepping) before all the official stuff starts!
I’ve spent a lot of time at this desk, tweaking presentations and checking email accounts, this is a work trip after all. Luckily the view is great.
I went to the Butterfly Park, so many butterflies!
I went to the Orchid Gardens, incredible to see and to smell!
-Climbed all 272 steps to the Batu Caves
Viewed the Petronas Towers from the top of the Menara Tower
And walked around a lot at all the different markets and malls!
What do you think of Google Flu Trends?
I’ll admit it, I’m sucker for Google products – Reader, Gmail, Docs, Blogger, Chrome and I know on some level the dangers of that. I have lots of bookmarks in delicious about it. This morning while I was watching the news I heard mention of something new – Google Flu Trends. According the the site:
We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together. We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.
I’m not certain why this disturbs me, I think I want to know how Google knows where I am when I search. If I go into a computer in my library and do a Goolge search for Flu how do they know I’m in Jefferson City? How? I looked in the FAQ and How Does This Work section and don’t see it. I’m sure someone will leave a comment and let me know. But I’m not sure that will make my unease go away. Think of everything else they *could* track.
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Socialminder = Fail
I’d like to apologize to anyone in my address book/contact list/ Linkedin network who received and invite from me to Socialminder (no I am not giving them any linky love). I got several invites from friends yesterday. Because my friends are awesome and so well connected, it’s not unusual for us to get beta invites to cool new tools. So this morning I clicked on the link and signed up to check it out, not realizing that somewhere in the process I was spamming all of my contacts. What does Socialminder do? how well does it work? I’ll never know, because thanks to this serious social media faux pas on their part I wont be going back and I wont be encouraging friends to try it out either.
YouTube – not just about your 15 seconds of fame anymore
It looks like YouTube will be partnering with MGM to host some full length films (The Magnificent Seven) and old television programs (American Gladiators). I didn’t see anything about the quality of the videos, if you visit YouTube regularly you know the quality of uploaded videos is pretty poor, surely the shows will be better. Maybe if they are willing to play MGM videos at better quality it wont be long before we see the option for other accounts to have better video quality. Like accounts belonging to libraries. 
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The new MaintainIT cookbook is out – The Joy of Computing
MaintainIT cookbooks are a great (free) resource! “Planning for Success, a guide for the overworked librarian” one covers:
- Planning and Decision Making covers the ins and outs of creating a technology plan that ties to your strategic priorities and goals.
- Communication and Partnerships delves in the fundamentals of day-to-day technology communication from a “techie” and “non-techie” perspective. It also includes some important guidelines for working and collaborating with key stakeholders.
- Buying and Deploying Technology goes through some of the core actions and decisions you need to consider when planning deployments, installations, and upgrades.
- Maintaining and Sustaining Technology offers important insight into the daily management of public computers.
- Networking and Security covers some of the basic standards and practices for ensuring your library’s network security.
- Innovation highlights the true value of today’s libraries and the role in serving as the center of new community conversations via a much higher level of user interactivity and experiences. If you are ready for Web 2.0, this is a good place to start.
You can find the new Cookbook here: http://www.maintainitproject.org/cookbooks/planning-for-success
I’m going to Malaysia!
I know I’ve shared this story with many of you in person, so forgive me if you’ve already heard it.
It seems like ages ago that I got invited to attend the International Conference on Libraries, Information and Society, but it was only in June that I got a Facebook message asking me if I would consider attending. Yes that’s right a Facebook message, about 90% of the communication, planning and details for this visit, were done though Facebook. It seems like I’ve been planning and preparing for it for ages. I know some of you wondered where I’ve been over the last month or so. But the time has finally come. I’ll leave next week! I’ll be presenting at the conference and giving a post conference workshop, but there will be time for sightseeing too!
Summer Storm over Kuala Lumpur, originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs.
