For those who haven’t heard about it, Rachel Singer Gordon has started a new review service for libraries that focuses on Computer books & topics. The Tech Static is a resource for anyone who buys computer or technology books for libraries. I am one of the reviewers, and my first review, for The Productive Programmer is now up! Enjoy!!
Read/Write/Web today has a story on the dangers of Web 2.0 behind the firewall. They are profiling a company called FaceTime that gives IT departments a way to add web application scanning to their network. Most IT departments do some scanning, at least at the firewall, for malicious applications and sites, but few do any kind of searching for web applications (think Facebook apps, Google’s Team Sites, unsupported IM capabilities, etc.). This company is offering a way to do that. RWW’s take on the matter, in the post Your Web 2.0 App is a Security Threat – ReadWriteWeb is:
Of course, when users become their own I.T. department, they’re unknowingly introducing inherent risks into the previously hardened network infrastructure. Just because a web app is easy to operate, that doesn’t make it safe and secure for enterprise use. As users upload and share sensitive files through these unapproved backchannels or have business-related conversations through web-based IM chatrooms, they might not only be putting their company’s data at risk, they could also be breaking various compliance laws as well.
And this is completely true. The problem isn’t really with the apps, though, it’s with IT departments that refuse to allow *safe* networking practices in their networks. User education, coupled with some monitoring of public sites for confidential information, along with sanctions for misuse of Web 2.0 tools (after the users are educated on proper use, of course) can make Web 2.0 apps part of the IT infrastructure and, consequently, much safer than if the users are off in the “wild west” of web applications, doing things themselves.
I’ve been working on a Tech Report for ALA discussing just how to use these Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with others – and one of the issues that I discuss is the fact that these are publicly facing tools with risks for unintentional leaks of data or confidential information. If your IT department is on the ball and willing to work with you, however, those leaks can be stopped and all of your data can be kept safe – even while you are using these tools to their best effect.
Want more about this? You’ll have to buy the Tech Report next year… until then, however, educating your IT department about the benefits of Web 2.0 applications in the organization will really help to make these things available – in a sanctioned way – for you!
Gmail now has a native task manager, if you go to the “labs” area of Gmail and turn it on. Once you click on that little green bottle at the top of your regular Gmail account (this is not something that is available to us as “enterprise Gmail customers” yet – BOO!!), you can see the tasks option on top. Enable it, refresh Gmail and find the Tasks link under the Contacts link on the left side of your screen. Click it and a handy little box pops up that allows for entry of tasks – with indenting – and basic task management capabilities. You can also automatically add an email as a task, with a link to that email included under the task’s title as “related email”. That is pretty cool!!
Check out this slide deck from Razorfish on “What if Amazon & iTunes were to use Facebook Connect” (explanation of FB Connect on slides 1-10, imagination starts on slide 11).
Ok – that’s interesting enough – but what if libraries hooked into FB Connect? What sort of things could we do with the information in people’s profiles to “personalize” their experience on our websites? I imagine a lot of the suggestions for Amazon would be applicable to libraries, but surely we could think of other ways to use that Facebook data, too!
Those of you who follow me on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed are probably already aware of this, but for the rest of you…. I’ve just signed a contract to write a book! I’ll be banging out lots and lots and lots of words on the phenomenon of microblogging (think Twitter and Tumblr) and lifestreaming (think FriendFeed) and how libraries can use such phenomena to reach out to their patrons. This book will be part of a series of books all on various aspects of social media/phenomenon and their uses in libraries. I’ll let the other authors announce their own titles, but from what I know so far, the series is going to seriously kick some ass. Emphasis via profanity totally intentional there, by the way….
Anyway – this gives me a bit of pause as to the future of this blog (at least in the short term). Now that the blog has helped me on my way to lots of writing assignments (don’t forget to check out my Library Tech Report from ALA that will be out about the time this book is due in to the publisher next year…), I’m so busy writing other things that I may not have time to write here. Hopefully I’ll be able to do *some* posting, but I will definitely be keeping up with my Twitter and FriendFeed accounts, so posting will continue to happen – albeit in a shorter format – there.
The rest of the InMagic interview has been posted. Find out all about what I think about social networks, the challenges of library social stuff and more!
The folks over at InMagic contacted me a couple of weeks ago about a new series they are doing on folks who deal with information in some way or another. The first part of the interview (if you all hadn’t noticed by now – I’m a wordy wench and they had to split the interview into two parts to keep from overwhelming everyone…) is up now at http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-inaugural-info-pro-file-robin.html. It’s accompanied by my standard headshot. Cindi Trainor, seriously, I’m going to tackle you at the next conference I see you at and make you work your magic with your camera and make me look pretty in a photo… If you can do that, I’ll owe you more than a couple of refreshing beverages, I’m sure!
Anyway, the interview is up and available if anyone wants to take a look!
Now that I’ve had my itsy-bitsy laptop for about a month, I’m ready to give you all a full review of it. I love it! Ok, that’s enough, right?
No, alrighty then… The specs for my baby (the Acer Aspire One in sapphire blue) are:
I got the 6 cell battery option, which gives me around 6 to 6 1/2 hours of regular use between charging – which is pretty freakin’ nice! That makes it a touch bigger/heavier than it would be normally, but not so much that it bothers me at all. It’s got a standard keyboard layout with the keys at about 90% of the standard size – so my little hands have no problems and even men with larger hands seem to be able to use it easily. The sapphire blue is gorgeous – but shows fingerprints like nothing I’ve ever seen – I’m constantly wiping the cover down… 
It has a quick boot time – under 30 seconds – and is pretty speedy, considering the limited amount of processor in there! The screen is 8.9 inches and it’s fairly small for everyday work (though I end up using it a lot – I only use my desktop setup for writing, and that’s just because I’ve got a dual monitor setup for that one) but absolutely perfect for traveling.
I took the netbook with me to Internet Librarian this year and found that it was just about perfect for carrying around during sessions and such. There were a bunch of folks with these tiny little laptops around, but I still got a bunch of comments about it every time I sat down and fired it up. Helene Blowers has one of the original netbooks – the Asus – and we had to set them down and compare our teeny tiny laptops – you’ll note mine (on the left) is a touch bigger, but not so much as to be really noticeable.
All in all, I love my little tiny laptop and I’m pretty sure that I have found the perfect traveling companion (at least until my phone beefs up and can start to compare with some of the specs I posted above…). For the price ($400.00 at Amazon.com), it just can’t be beat!
The new MaintainIT cookbook is out – with lots of great advice from librarians and library staff from all over the place (including yours truly…). This one, Planning for Success, covers planning & decision making, communication and partnerships, buying and deploying technology, maintaining & sustaining technology, networking & security and innovation. Go download it – right now! Next time you are at a conference, look for their booth – they often have bunches of these all printed up and available.
When you come to the quotes from me, however, please remember that they were given over the phone, so that I couldn’t see the person I was talking to or get any non-vocal cues for just how stupid I was sounding… I really do sound somewhat better than that in real life (or at least I hope so, since people pay me to talk!). They did a great job of transcribing my statements – word for word – all the silliness and crazy sounding-ness is mine.
Well, it looks like LinkedIn is going the way of Facebook and MySpace and adding an application section to its offerings. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of days now and have just a few thoughts…
Wednesday morning – when the announcement was made – I jumped in and started playing. The applications available looked pretty interesting, but of the ones on offering, I took only the Slideshare, My Travel and Huddle Workspaces ones. I immediately hit a snag – none of them worked well (or at all, in the case of Slideshare) in my Firefox 3 browser. I reluctantly gave in and fired up IE7 and gave it another whirl. That seemed to fix the issues I was having, but it made me very unhappy…
And then I ended up posting this without finishing it, so I’ll do that now. I do love scheduling posts, except when I forget that I’ve scheduled them.
Anyway – it’s been a couple of days since the apps were added and I haven’t noticed any really outstanding uses of them – yet. I think the Huddle one – where you can create a workspace on LinkedIn and collaborate with your “connections” will be really interesting to watch. I may post again about this later if I find any really good uses of these – but it seems like I’m not the only one with issues getting them going, so I just don’t have a lot of “real world use” information yet!
