Tech

My opinions on all things tech related

There are 271 posts filed in Tech (this is page 17 of 28).

Big Blog Brother

Cnet talks about high schools and universities using students’ blog contents against them.

Everything old is new again, eh?

I was a Junior in high school during Columbine (1999) and the aftermath thereof. The security crackdown was borderline obscene. One of my friends was nearly suspended for some fairly innocuous comments on his web page.

I’m sure the term ‘blog’ wasn’t in the popular lexicon yet back then, but the only real difference here is scale. I’ve heard current high school students describe their administration’s efforts to sneakily obtain invites to students’ social networking sites, with the sole objective of monitoring what is going on.

During my turn in the cycle, administrative types eventually got bored with the idea when there simply weren’t enough students’ web pages to warrant monitoring. Now that everyone and their goldfish has a blog, the supposed “threat” posed by kids fooling around is going to be massive and harder to ignore.

Now more than ever, students need to be educated about managing their online presence.

Gorman Redux

Over at the Librarian in Black, we have an account of Michael Gorman’s address to the California Library Association.

I don’t quite know how to react to Mr. Gorman anymore. Statements like “any idiot can design a web page” (in questioning why library schools teach tech classes) are just so blatantly incomplete and distressing. ‘Any idiot’ can also paint a painting, write a book, or do any number of other creative tasks. That doesn’t mean the end result is of high standards, or even legible. Shouldn’t that be obvious? Maybe someday these tech skills will be covered in everybody’s undergrad or high school classes, and Library Science degrees can drop the tech a bit. But we’re a long way from that point.

I suppose we should all just give up on technology, go back to the card catalog, and wait for the asteroid to wipe us out. Every time I read something about Gorman, I’m reminded of the professors at work who tell their students they “are not allowed to use any internet resources”. This despite the fact that we offer over two hundred and fifty legitimate, academic online databases. But, a rant for another time.

Unfortunately, Gorman didn’t stay to take any questions. As one of the commenters asked on LiB, I’d love to know how the audience as a whole reacted.

Bowker Books in Print

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a few weeks now, but we somewhat recently had a demo at work from Bowker, focusing on their Books in Print product.

A lot of the features were a bit over my head, as I’m not directly involved with collection development or purchasing. But there was one idea that struck me as particularly cool:

Bowker maintains a list of all the books mentioned in the national media. Oprah’s book club, NPR, and a lengthy list of others. Cover images of the books are even available!

So if your library is a BiP subscriber, it is now possible to answer “What was that book on Oprah last year with the red cover?” at a glance.

Xbox 360 – First Impressions

10/30/05While running some errands at WalMart today, I noticed that they have an Xbox 360 out to play! Amazingly nobody was playing as I passed by, so I stepped up.

To be clear, my impressions of the system are based on a mere twenty minutes of play time on one demo. In addition, these kiosks are the most uncomfortable things ever to play. The widescreen monitor is directly above your head, with the result that playing is like sitting in the front row of a movie theater.

I played through the demo of Call of Duty 2, a World War 2 first person shooter. In this level you’re a British trooper assaulting a German artillery position. There are other demos on the kiosk too, but by the time I finished this one there were people waiting so I stepped aside.

My first thought: “Ooh, pretty!”

And I continued thinking that throughout my playtime. Unfortunately, the gameplay didn’t rise to the same levels. Oh its capable, worth playing, but we’ve seen it all before. There’s been a glut of World War II shooters recently (Call of Duty, the Medal of Honor series, Brothers in Arms, etc.), and the market is pretty saturated. Other than the graphics and slightly rearranged buttons on the controller, which is an improvement, there’s just nothing to write home about in CoD2. Certainly not $400+ worth.

The Xbox 360 will sell well at first no matter what the games are like. I just hope the quality of available titles can step up as much as the graphics have. In the meantime, I’m feeling better about my decision to wait on getting one.

Flickr Printing – Free sample review

10/27/05

I used my free ten prints from Flickr today. It went OK, but not without a couple of hitches.

I selected ten photos to pick up at Target on my way home from work. I cropped them a bit through Flickr’s printing page, since digital photos don’t quite line up with the standard 4″x6″ ratio of prints. Sent the package off, and went on my merry way.

I hit Target about two hours later, and my envelope was waiting for me. First problem: Target wanted to charge me for the prints. This despite the fact that Flickr clearly states the first ten will be free. Thankfully, I had my confirmation printed out and with me, clearly showing $0.00 (plus tax). Be sure you do the same, at least until kinks are worked out.

The print quality is as good as I expected. I purposely selected a couple of my older, lower-res pictures as part of the ten. They’re no better or worse than they should be. Some higher quality examples, like my close-up of a grasshopper, are jaw-droppingly awesome (if I do say so myself). However, in one case the cropping of my print is completely different than I selected online. Not sure what happened there. It isn’t to the point where its unviewable, but it certainly looks unprofessional.

All in all, a positive experience. Not perfect, but pretty decent for the first 24 hours of operation. And the convenience of being able to do all this natively in Flickr’s interface is what ultimately will win me over.

I’m gonna have to start buying picture frames again, aren’t I?

Communication from on high

I think my favorite thing about this new mini-explosion of ‘net-based startups and products is that the creators are so accessible.

I’ve posted about Ning, Synchroedit, and Meetro in particular in the last couple of months, and in every one of those posts I’ve had comments appear from developers and others involved in the projects.

I assume they’re monitoring various blog search engines for mentions of the products. Wonderful! The developers end up with feedback from users who didn’t even know they were providing it, as well as a chance to clear up misconceptions. In the case of Ning, I also received tech support before I asked for it. Now that’s service!

Maybe I was a bit young to notice at the time, but I don’t remember seeing open lines of communication between the last round of tech startups and users. Sure, it takes a bit of extra time to maintain, but frank discussion can only help make your product better.

Ning – an attempt at social application development for dummies

I discovered Ning a while back, signed up for a beta developer’s account, and then promptly forgot about it. Today my account was activated, so I spent a bit of time attempting to create my own application.

Ning’s goal is to enable anybody to create “social applications” a la Flickr, Craigslist, etc. Essentially, web sites that focus on and serve a particular community.

Theoretically, anybody with a developer’s account can get an app up and running quickly here. The key is the ability to ‘clone’ existing apps. You make an exact copy of an app someone else has produced (code is not exactly secret in Ning), and then customize to your heart’s content. Put more simply, you are free to remix anybody else’s Ning-based site into something purely your own.

As Ning’s homepage proclaims, you can make a Craigslist for any city, a Flickr for any event, a Zagat for any interest… etc. I tried my hand at modifying an existing teacher review app (http://ratemyteachers.ning.com/) into a comic book rating system.

By following the readme file helpfully contained my newly cloned app, I was able to customize the interface on a basic level fairly quickly. Impressed, I went to add a sample comic review. I was promptly shown an error, informing me that I must not leave blank a field which I clearly did fill in.

I obviously either touched some code I shouldn’t have, or didn’t touch some that I should. I spent 15 minutes knocking my head against the files making up my app, but to no avail. This leads me to my main criticism of Ning: Just who is it for?

I don’t have the php development experience to work on complex applications like this. It would take me hours just to read all the code, figure out how the files are interrelated, analyze multiple generations of customization, and who knows what else. Even then I might not understand it enough to fix my problem. As a relative novice, Ning is above my head. But if I did have the experience I feel necessary to work in Ning’s environment, wouldn’t I be off building my app somewhere on my own already? Why would I make myself dependent on a third party?

Of course, like just about anything on the ‘net these days Ning is in beta. So I don’t want to be too harsh. I do think the concept has merit, and will watch to see what changes during development. A simple WYSIWIG editor would go a long way towards letting Joe Average build social apps in Ning.

In case you’re interested, here’s what I was able to accomplish in Ning before receiving the mysterious error: http://comicrater.ning.com/

Wanted: Database front end solution

At work we’re in the process of digitizing a local special collection, to be made accessible online.

We plan to get all the relevant data in a MySQL database, and are looking at front end options. We’d like it to handle two things in particular:

1. Allow remote login and editing of records, so the current collection holder can do some maintenance.

2. Allow restricted access to certain items. For example, the public at large can see just some items in the collection. Other items can only be viewed after some users log in.

I realize its vague so far, but I don’t have a lot of other details yet. Anybody know of a solution? Open source is preferable.

I could code #1 on my own, but I’m not quite confident enough in my abilities to make sure that #2 is completely secure.

iPod Video

I’ve had my iPod for less than five months, and am already two generations out of date. I don’t remember things progressing this fast prior to the purchase of mine.

I have to salute Apple’s marketing savvy though. With a switch to intel-based processors coming up, there was a real risk of sales dropping off as people wait for the new line to hit. To take up the slack, Steve Jobs has a pile of iPod upgrades and new products on hand. First, a switch to only iPod photos. Later, the Nano. And now, video. What next?

I do admit to being intrigued by the video offerings. However, rather than the new hardware I’m more attracted to the fact that major TV shows, if only a few, are now legitimately for sale in iTunes. A tiny first step in the right direction.