Courses That Should be in Library School

Working in a library you get to know all sorts of folks who either went or are going to library school.

The Annoyed Librarian posted these classes she wished were in her library school curriculum.

Her list (full descriptions on her blog):

LIS 501: Library Politics
LIS 502: Appearance and Deception
LIS 503: Doing the Work
LIS 504: Library Organization

Then the power of learning 2.0 was invoked with commentary and building on her original post to lead to many very very funny and some quite truthful course names and descriptions, such as:

LIS 1000 How Not To Deal with Perverts@ Your Library
and
LIS 583b Bandwagoning, among many others.

Read the list and enjoy a good laugh. Add one if you can!

My Private Germ Warfare

The small thing related to the picture above is still kicking my teeth and other assorted things in.  I will get back to my feet and whipping out new brilliant and insightful things soon.

Consider this post is an apology to you dear reader for not putting anything up the past week (besides  my bold prediction of football glory!)

Please be kind and paitent.

Thanks a bunch.

Sports Break — NY Football Giants in the Big Game

Pardon me for a small interlude, but there are few things in the world that feel so wonderful to a die hard sports as myself as a sudden/unlikely/unexpected/completely shocking run to a championship.   The team I have followed since the late 70’s is back in the big game.  The Giants are in the Super Bowl!!!! after winning three straight road playoff games.

They remind me of the Patriots before they became the New England “Axis of all Evil not consumed by the Boston Red Sox” Patriots.

Unproven young quarterback.  Check.
Good young smart defense. Check.
Don’t turn the ball over.  Check.
No nonsense old school coach.  Check.
Coach would go for a 4 th and 10  with nine minutes remaining on the road. Check.
Facing the greatest offense of the past decade. Check.
Serious and I do mean SERIOUS underdog. Check.
Perhaps it is time the the Patriots of ‘07 meet the Patriots of ‘01.  To refresh your memory, the beat the “unbeatable” St. Louis Rams 20-17.

Sounds almost right.

How about 27-24 New York Giants.   That works.

We now return you to your regular timely and incisive information about technology and training.

Fine, no MacBook Air…How about the XO?

Yesterday I got to check out the coolest computer around. No, no, not the MacBookAir (though, if one arrived for me in the mail, I would not complain.)

I saw and used an XO (the 100 dollar laptop.) And was very very impressed.

Briefly, the “$100″ laptop is designed to go to emerging third world countries and help children use technology to improve their lives at a relatively low start-up cost. Now the laptop did not quite reach its goal of $100. In fact it missed it by about 88 bucks. Not too shabby. And it was truly designed for where it would be used. You could get one for$200 for about two weeks last year, only if you bought one to be donated to a developing country. You can donate to them here.

Some cool features:

* Completely sealed keyboard that be spilled on or soiled and it still works just as well.

* Rugged, durable, and yet still incredibly functional. And the screen flips around to work as an E-book Reader and game controller. All with a built in microphone and camera.

* Screen can be seen even in direct sunlight. And uses even less power than the full screen brightness to do so.

* Forms mesh network with other XO laptops for instant communication and sharing between computers.

* Complete access to source code for all programs and different types of code writing software, designed for school aged children.

My only thing is that it should also be made available to children here in the good old USA in places of abject poverty and zero resources. That said, I hope they do the buy one donate one thing again this year. I think I might get me one of these for myself.

Holy Tissue Paper Thin Comptuer Batman…

Less than 1″ thick? Backlit 13″ LED screen and backlit keyboard? Pinch and Zoom technology. Wirelessly connect with other Macs and PC’s??!?

did I mention it is less than 1 INCH thick?

Macbook Air Promo Video.

I bow down to Steve Jobs. I can’t afford it (Only 3k for the durable solid state drive) and I am a PC guy by trade, but I can look lovingly at it.

…and I have a birthday coming up…

Jaw Dropping Cool…

This really really really smart guy, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, has an interest in the Wii remote as an alternative input device for computers. To see an ingenious application, check out this video.

He has many more ideas on his Wii Project Page on his site. Thank to The Shifted Librarian for showing this Wii addict this…..

Announcing the CIL2008 Wiki

A wiki for the 2008 Computers in Libraries conference (where I will be presenting) is now up at http://cil2008.pbwiki.com/

In Memoraium: Netscape Navigator 1994-2008

Netscape Navigator, born 1994 will pass for all intents and purposes from this mortal coil February 2008.

Survived by: two children- Mozilla and Firefox; a nephew, the Open Source Software movement; a distant cousin Internet Explorer; and many friends and admirers who now use the internet in their daily lives.

MicroBiography: Navigator was the first browser that many folks (yours truly included) started using in the mid 90’s when the world wide web was an infant to access and browse the Internet. The friendly N logo was in the corner with its orbiting sun letting you know that it was bringing a whole new world to high speed 80386 computer. It got supplanted by the Internet Explorer browser in the late 1990’s with Microsoft bundling IE with its operating system. Netscape was purchased by AOL in 1999 and folded into the ever expanding AOL family and morphed into recently into a social networking platform.

Netscape started as a paid product, but was freed in 1998. The folks who ran Netscape also help start the Mozilla project, which developed the fab Firefox browser and other open source goodies. Which is what they recommend the few Navigator users left migrate to as a browser.

I have fond memories of Navigator helping to guide my introduction to the web and writing HTML. Thanks Navigator. RIP.

Further exploration:

The official AOL/Netscape obituary; A Longtime Around Netscape Peer Support Page; A Netscape History; A perspective on the end of Navigator; and finally a browser timeline.