June 2007
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Month June 2007

“Well, go ahead and materialize the topaz orb first.”

McSweeney’s has a short story titled “IN THE YEAR 2030, THE YOUNG HOTSHOT AT MY OFFICE TRIES TO WALK ME THROUGH ‘CENTAUR,’ APPLE’S NEW MIND-ORB-BASED OPERATING SYSTEM.” The piece is absolutely hysterical, but there’s a lesson to be gleaned from it as well: how to not conduct the next tech training session in your library!

"Well, go ahead and materialize the topaz orb first."

McSweeney’s has a short story titled “IN THE YEAR 2030, THE YOUNG HOTSHOT AT MY OFFICE TRIES TO WALK ME THROUGH ‘CENTAUR,’ APPLE’S NEW MIND-ORB-BASED OPERATING SYSTEM.” The piece is absolutely hysterical, but there’s a lesson to be gleaned from it as well: how to not conduct the next tech training session in your library!

libraries in google maps street view results

Here’s what book and library related stuff people found in the new street view of google maps.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidking/536467669

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidking/536352270/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nancelette/553411108/

Click through and mark your favorite!

google maps street view contest!

Ok, so I might be a bit of a geowanker, but I think the street level views on google maps is great. I wonder how long it will take for all cities to be covered…

I want to see the best library and book related images that can be found on google maps street level but can’t find them all by myself, so…

Here’s the contest:

  • Find a great library or book related image on google maps street level.
  • Take a screen grab and post it to your Flickr account, and post the URL in a comment here.
  • In one week I’ll post a list of the best images here. Which ever image becomes most favorited on Flickr will win a Ranganathan sticker and a $5 gift card to amazon!

Happy hunting!

google releases

Google Gears
For the past few months I’ve been using Google Reader instead of Bloglines. While this has nearly completed Google’s hegemony in my life, I made the switch because with the Greasemonkey script Better Gmail I can integrate Reader right into Gmail. Now there’s another reason I’m glad I made the transition. Google Gears is a new browser add-on from Google, enabling offline use of their online products. So far it only works with Reader but I’m sure that integration with Documents and Gmail isn’t far behind.

What can this do for you? If you’re with your laptop someplace and have a connection but won’t have a connection for much longer (e.g. boarding a plane), you can download the content of your RSS feeds (and soon Documents and Gmail!) by clicking on a little green arrow (upper right corner in this screen grab).

When you’re again connected, you click the arrow to sync what you’ve done with your online account. Nice! One could argue that a tool like this will continue to be less important as wireless connectivity becomes increasingly pervasive. This might be true, but until we’re all connected 100% of the time we want to be, being able to work offline might come in handy.

Google Mashup Editor
Only available to a small number of developers at this point, Google recently released Google Mashup Editor which is like Yahoo! Pipes (mentioned here) but perhaps a bit more text heavy.