Accept no substitutes

Month: May 2007 (Page 2 of 3)

Intellagirl on Twitter vs Jaiku

Sarah Robbins (and some friends) on Twitter vs Jaiku and others and the future of IM.

Note: Social Presence (SPS) systems aren’t about “Lunch” “Shower” “Cab” that dull narcissistic catalog of an unreflected and unsurprised life but about “giving the URL of a great website, a snippet of a news story, or a link to a new blog post. The conversations aren’t one sided either. Lots of folks start their messages with an “@soandso” to direct their messages in reply to another message. Jaiku has comments on entries so sub-conversations can start as well.” Right on Intellagirl.

I love Locopops

Today is a Locopops day! It’s warm — about 80 F. I’ve been up and cooking exotic eggs — made exotic by what’s left in the fridge. I’m making coffee my way — after being on the road for about a week. I’ve been to the gym — where otherwise harmless weights were waiting for me to disturb them and they in turn disturb my muscles. I finished the NYTimes Xword. Mexican Chocolate, although not a regular, is still on the Locopops menu.

Later this evening, The Old Ceremony is playing outdoors at Southern Village.

I have been pretty feckful this week. Today I feel free to be feckless.

Digital Preservation, Asheville and the long road home

Much less blogging when I’m also speaking. Blogging is sort of like speaking to a mid-size group in a dark room. You can’t quite see them out there, but you can occasionally get everyone talking a little — and you interacting too.

We had a good meeting in which a bunch of folks ended up piping up and I got to learn a lot about the digital preservation challenges in this area. Like many places, who owns what and who manages what is a problem that is so locally specific and often tied to personalities more that organizations or content. That aside, there is much to be done in this history rich area and there are great folks that want to help get the job done.

Asheville is now more Boulder than Boulder. ID and I went to “green drinks.” Folks meeting at a local art gallery and bar that work on various eco-friendly projects. Whist there we met a couple from Boulder who had been in town about 18 months. He was going to do a show at the bar later on maybe. Things were vague. An art show? No music sorta. What does he play? Drums but now a jazz or rock set. You know drums. And some electronic. He’s really figuring it all out sorta. Then a tall slender woman approached us. She was wearing a lot of Egyptian jewelry. She has a sorta Egyptian name although she looked more northern European. She leads spiritual quests to Egypt. All the holy places of the pharaohs. Nevermind that the pharaohs shifted the religion as it suited them politically, I thought seeing Amenhotep listed beside Ramses in her flyer. What the heck is all about energy points she was explaining. The trip is a little expensive she apologized, over $4K. But for only $1600 more you can be initiated at a power spot and the Knowledge will be yours if you are ready. I tried to find out what you would be initiated into, but somehow even when asked directly she wandered in her talk. Where? To the Secret. She knows people in that film and in that book. They are sincere and know the Power. I am looking at ID for help. We escape and go to an upstairs place that ID calls “a punkrock veggie eats place.” It is! Full of folks who are too young to miss the Ramones but would die to be them. And pretty good veggie food too. The place is nicely crowded without being overly so. Rosetta’s Kitchen. ID is on a good tear about sustainability for the planet. To that end, we decide to walk to coffee up at a French Bistro beside what used to be the oldest store in Asheville. Back at the hotel the GI Joe Summer Convention is setting up. Plastic men are being put on display by folks who go to the gym more than I do.

Up now and heading down the mountain. Thinking of rural mountain cultural heritage and digital preservation in midst of the Asheville I just visited.

Blooker Prize gives rise to Colby-mania

Peter Freedman who has been handing the media side of the Blooker Prize writes us, the judges, to say that the Prize and more importantly the overall winner, Colby Buzzell and his blook, My War: Killing Time in Iraq, have been getting a lot of attention. Peter sends this:

The coverage is still coming but the following are the highlights so far:

– The Blooker announcement was the lead story on Google News at least a couple of times on Monday

– There have been maybe 300 or more (?) pieces of coverage in the traditional media and several hundred blog-posts (maybe 700 or 800 so far… and counting), including one in every conceivable language and script

– It was covered by all the major news agencies: Associated Press, Reuters, AFP/Agence France Presse, Bloomberg and, in the UK, the Press Association. Plus a few that I’d never previously heard of.

– The BBC alone have now covered this year’s Blooker over 15 times on different media, including interviews with Colby on both their flagship current affairs show (“Today” on Radio 4) and their global TV channel

– It has been covered by The Times? not just by The (London) Times and Sunday Times (the latter did a big piece after the shortlist) and The New York Times but also the LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Seattle Times, New Orleans Times (etc), Ely Times (NV), Howell Times (UT), Centre Daily Times, Pioneer Times-Journal, Albany Times-Union, Florence and North-West Alabama Times, Brisbane Times, Contra Costa Times, Taipei Times and North Korea Times — and probably others that we’ve missed.

– The Guardian in the U.K. gave it the whole of page three + an opinion piece on May 15, having already covered it three times on its website, plus a big piece by Nick in his column for their Sunday paper, The Observer.

– Other U.S. papers, magazines and websites to have covered it include The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle (twice), Houston Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Las Vegas Sun, Miami Herald, Denver Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Forbes, Business Week, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Jose Mercury, abcnews.com, cbsnews.com, MSNBC.com

– Most or all of leading papers in Canada and Australia have covered it, as have:

– The International Herald Tribune

– People’s Daily and China Daily News in China

– There has also been lots coverage in all the major European countries (Germany, France, Spain, Italy), not just through Reuters
but in their leading newspapers (particularly in Italy for some reason where all the biggest newspapers reported both on the
short-list and winner announcements.)

– Media in Iran and much of the Arab world, mainly fed by Agence France Presse

– Colby has been or is going to give TV interviews to CNN, BBC News 24, CBS News TV for the History Channel? Channel 7 News on the West Coast, City TV in Toronto

– Umpteen other TV channels, large and small, at least reported the announcement, including CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News

– The Lulu Blooker Prize site has risen just under two million places in the world website rankings.

DRIADE Conf, Blooker PR, NPR and Internet Radio danger

Spending the day at the “Digital data preservation, sharing, and discovery: Challenges for Small Science Communities in the Digital Era” aka DRIADE conference in Durham. The minutes will be posted later — I’m promised so I’m not liveblogging the conference.

I did take a break to do a little radio on the Blooker Prize for WCHL our local AM voice. Peter Freedman writes to say that the Blooker and our winner, Colby Buzzell, were covered by the BBC alone over 15 times on different media.

In the meantime, Xeni and others alert us that NPR has, finally, decided to make a fuss about the latest challenge to Internet Radio. They do a good explanation of the history of the current problem, of solutions that are underway, and of calling you to take action.

Blooker Prizes Announced

We picked the Blooker Prize winners earlier and they were just announced. The winners are: In Comics, Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fies. In Fiction, Doorbells of Florence by Andrew Losowsky. In Non-fiction, My War by Colby Buzzell. The BBC reports the Prize here with quotes from Nick Cohen, Arianna Huffington and myself.

Nick Cohen writes about his Blooker judging experience here at Guardian Unlimited. And he gets a bit snotty. Nick, Bridget Jones is a steal from Tales of the City mixed with Jane Austen fercrissake. Not to say that BreakUpBabe is either. And you passed completely on PostSecret and Doorbells.

Other Brits babble on about being bloggers and Blookers in response to Zoe Margolis’ Guardian piece here.

Colby Buzzell is quoted in the New York Times about his blogging, his blook and his winning the Blooker here.

Over 150 articles on the Blooker and Buzzell’s winning of it found on Google today.

At the OCLC Mothership

I’m just back from two days in Dublin, Ohio in an intense learning experience about some of the many things that happen at OCLC.

I started my time there by giving a talk and answering questions (see article below or as one person summarized the summary “Részvételen alapuló digitális könyvtár – Paul Jones (az ibiblio.org igazgatója) beszédének összefoglalása, hasznos linkek és források”).

Taylor Surface, Director for Digital Content Management, and I spend some time talking about ContentDM. Mostly Taylor explaining to me all that ContentDM can and will do. Amongst the interesting capabilities is ContentDM’s use of JPG2000 — ContentDM is particularly good for image stores and is used for that at UNC for the Billy Barnes Collection.

I’m not sure how a place called Dublin settled mostly by Germans ended up with a driving range and Scottish pub, but Jay Jordan, Chip Nilges and I had a great lunch and talk in the fine May weather there.

Jasmine de Gaia and Bob Schulz and I talked about Worldcat and the inclusion of social networking and social software ideas and experiences in and around Worldcat.org Note: Worldcat includes over 1 billion items in over 10,000 libraries worldwide.


Search for an item in libraries near you:
WorldCat.org >>

Mindy Pozenel told me about the pilot tests underway with Worldcat Local.

That evening we (Jay, Eric Childress who served as my keeper and host, Tom Hickey, Michael Teets and Bill Carney) talked, ate and had good wine at an espresso-less Italian restaurant. Eric made up for the expressolessness by taking me to a Starbuck’s the next morning (thanks Eric).

The OCLC Research folks are very deep into various interesting information problems. I was doing quite a bit of running to catch up with them.

Brian Lavoie, Ralph LeVan and Jeff Young talked to me about their work in search technologies, repositories and datamining (some of what I would call analytics) including catching me up on their use of the SRU Search and Retrieve via URL protocol. Ralph and I talked about the differences and different successes of DSpace and Fedora.

Ed O’Neill and Diane Vizine-Goetz talked to me about faceted terminologies and about FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)
. Along the way I learned of OCLC Research’s fixation on Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. There is obviously something there that I haven’t quite gotten yet, but the name does make me smile.

Over lunch a larger group of us chatted about many things including the rise of Zombies in literature. Something that would be shown to be later by Diane as and after she showed me FictionFinder: a FRBR-based prototype for fiction in WorldCat.

Thom Hickey has been working on Worldcat Identities including this one for a fairly unfamous author.

Bill Carney has a particularly interesting project in trying to identify orphan works and their possible owners and to make some guesses as to the status and various cataloged works.

[add more later]

Coffee coffee coffee

Hotel coffee isn’t coffee. Especially not the stuff left in my room. Downstairs eatery is not coffee either. Last night, we ate at a great and inventive “Italian” Restaurant here in Dublin. Wonderful conversation. Good wine. Very good food. But to my shock, no espresso! According to the wait (not an Italian BTW), “No one every orders the stuff.” I got coffee. No one apparently orders that either. At least no one who likes coffee. Outside in a warm Ohio night, I spy a Starbucks. It’s closed.

My host Eric is a trooper tho. He has promised to take me to good coffee in a few minutes!

Yes I am a whiner.

Ken sends me to the GrindCam; DJ Pez the prize winning barista is setting up chairs in the cool morning. The ugly Grind Trailer is gone. Folks are sitting outside enjoying the Carolina spring. With very good coffee.

Travels of Jones

After our graduation ceremonies tomorrow, I’ll be off to Dublin (Ohio) to visit the Worldcat.org mothership, OCLC for a couple of days.
On my return, I’ll be at the DRIADE Workshop May 2007 “Digital data preservation, sharing, and discovery: Challenges for Small Science Communities in the Digital Era” sponsored by NESCent and the UNC Metadata Research Center on Wednesday.
Then I drive up to the mountains to Asheville for “Living in a City of Bits: digital preservation of our cultural heritage” to be held on Friday.
If you are near any of these places and want to have a cup of coffee, let me know. What to see suggestions always welcomed. I will definitely be visiting this cornfield!

ClaimId, Kahle, Gutenberg in the News

Brewster Kahle of Archive.org and Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg were just on NPR Talk of the Nation talking “about how they intend to go about putting every book published online.”

Fred Stutzman, Terrell Russell and ClaimID are featured in a Reuter’s story “PluggedIn: Does your online image need a makeover?” by Paul Thomasch that is all over the net.news:

In case a home page or blog is too daunting, Fred Stutzman and Terrell Russell, two Ph.D. students at the University of North Carolina, have started a company named ClaimID that will consolidate and package search results for you.

“We haven’t invented any technology,” said Russell. “This stuff is already available. You can do this already if you care to read about it and learn and spend lots of hours.”

He adds, “You can fix you own car if you want to, too.”

ClaimID began with a small circle of friends in January 2006 before opening up to the public six months later. The free site now has about 17,000 members.

Russell said they started the site — which essentially allows you to consolidate your online identity in one place — when they realized that as Ph.D. candidates and teachers, their own students would be Googling them.

LolSimon’s new Xeni-given title “Internet knowitall and Blowhard”

From Xeni‘s post “Pedantic overanalysis of LOLcats not pedantic enough, says blowhard”

Following up on yesterday’s BB post about David McRaney’s sociological analysis of LOLcats, image macros, and invisible cheezborgahs, Internet knowitall Simon Spero says:

McRaney’s recent article [McRaney 2007],whilst interesting from the syntactics perspective, fails to cite the relevant literature, and as a result does not satisfactorily align his work to the central research questions within the field.

The methodology applied in [Spero 2007] uses a Description Logic approach to the begin the process of unifying the emergent ontology of lolcats with the rules of cuteness heuristically determined in Frost’s definitive and ongoing survey [Frost 2005].

Our study revealed several strengths and weaknesses inherent in a pure Description Logic approach. Although it was trivial to dervive a solution to the lolcat/cheezeburger hypothesis (lolcat can has multiple cheezeburger), other classifications are not expressible without the use of more powerful formalisms.

For example, due to monotonicity constraints, it is not possible to encode the knowledge that, whilst by by default things that look like Hitler are not cute, a kitten that looked like hitler, wrapped in a burrito, with its paw up, might be a CuteThing. Also, without the use of higher order reasoning capabilities, it is non-trivial to describe the set of things accompanied by smaller versions of themselves.

[McRaney 2007] David McRaney, L337 Katz0rz, 1 J. Am Soc. Macrologists available at [Link] (2007)

[Spero 2007] Simon Spero, Loltology – I saw ur mom on teh sermantic webz, 1 LJ. Am. Lolbrarian. Assoc (2007) available at [Link].

[Frost 2007] Meg Frost, The Rules of Cuteness, J Cuteology (2005-2007, ongoing) available at [Link]

UNC Symposium on Academic Productivity – June 7

What: UNC Symposium on Academic Productivity
When: June 7, 2007, 1-4PM,
Where: Manning Hall 208

Add yourself to the Wiki to attend

Hosts: Fred Stutzman and the School of Information and Library Science, the SILS Doctoral Students Association, and the SILS Research and Doctoral Committee.

About: The purpose of this symposium is to bring together students and faculty to share tips and strategies for academic productivity. What is academic productivity? It refers to the strategies, hacks or tools you use to get your academic work done. Perhaps you’ve got a good strategy for keeping abreast of new literature, or maybe you’ve got a strategy for backing up your files that you’d like to share. Simple or complex, come out and share what works for you.

Format: This is a three hour event, drop-ins are welcome. Each hour there will be four 10-minute presentations, followed by 20 minutes of discussion/hands on. If you’d like to present, you must be willing to document your hack and share it electronically so others can use it. The talks will generally be “walk throughs” of your strategies. A wide range of subjects are encouraged, and presentations should be casual.

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