Google Maps new features and mashups

I Google Maps. Of course, like everything Google, the Maps site is constantly improving and adding new features. On top of that, Google Maps is a phenomenally useful resource for creating mashups.* There is a blog called Google Maps Mania that tracks the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps. Today the blog is reporting on a new feature of Google maps called "Draggable Driving Directions" that allows you to easily make changes in a route that Google maps plans for you (includes a brief video). The Google Maps Mania blog also has a listing of lots of other useful mashups and tools - check it out.

*A mash-up is a Web page or application that combines and integrates the content of two or more sources to create something new. For example, there's a zip code map mashup using Google Maps.

Rogets Thesaurus, the movie

iPhone launch, fake Steve Jobs, Microsoft

I feel like I should be saying something about iPhone on this day of days. But I'm sick of it already and I wish it didn't remind me so much of the Cabbage Patch Doll feeding frenzy. Anyway, the Fake Steve Jobs has been blogging about it all day, you can read his posts if you're interested.
Meanwhile, there's a digital hue and cry about ethics in the blogosphere. Computerword and PC World report that Microsoft asked some well-known bloggers to comment on their new slogan "People-Ready Business" and then used the bloggers' musings in ads. Microsoft paid the bloggers for every user who clicked through to the People Ready Business site.

Global Legal Monitor

The latest edition of the Law Library of Congress's Global Legal Monitor is online in pdf format. (and don't ask me why it's the May issue and this is June 29.) It's worth glancing over the TOC pages 3-4 to see if there is any news that might interest your faculty.
And BTW, I really like Adobe Reader 8.0, as the CNet review said "The completely redesigned interface in this latest version feels more intuitive and offers tools for viewing information more efficiently." I like the turn-the-page arrows at the top instead of the bottom, I like all the keyboard shortcuts, it all seems more flexible (if only it could stop my computer from occasionally choking on pdf's).

Pennsylvania - we're number 50!

According to the Associated Press and philly.com, Pennsylvania's House today unanimously passed a bill (House Bill 976 (text; pdf)) that would make our PA statutes freely available on the internet. The bill has now gone to the Pennsylvania Senate for consideration. If it passes, we will be the 50th state to put our statutes online. Right now we are the only state that doesn't have an official free website with our statutes, according to the article (see this post about the recent AALL report on the topic for more detailed information).
Rep. Lisa Bennington, D Allegheny County, who was the prime sponsor of the bill, is quoted as saying "If ever there was a good first bill, this is it. We need to have greater transparency in government and in our laws." Rep. Bennington, a Pittsburgher who is a freshman in the legislature, was elected in the "Pennsylvania Earthquake" election of May 2006 when many longterm state politicians were defeated; she defeated longtime Rep. Frank Pistella of Morningside with 58% of the vote. A graduate of Chatham College and Duquesne Law School, she practiced family law with the Pittsburgh firm of Pollock Begg Komar Glasser before her election. When she introduced H.B. 976 in April she announced in a press release that "As we continue to examine ways to foster a more open and transparent government, I believe it is important that we ensure the general public has free online access to our state laws."

The Future of Reference, Cataloging, and Scholarship in Research Libraries

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education has a story about a study done by Thomas Mann, the author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research, who describes the differences between scholarly research and quick information seeking. He uses a specific information request to look at how librarians catalog and find information, as well as how quick searching can miss important information. In the conclusion of the study (pdf) he states that "We need to make the best possible use of our principles, our experience, our tested practices, and our technologies, and not yield to the temptations to let either the technologies themselves or transient fashions constrict our vision of what needs to be done to promote scholarship of the highest possible quality".

Mossberg weighs in on the iPhone

As everyone knows, the iPhone goes on sale Friday June 29, but Walt Mossberg got his early and he's been testing it out for a couple of weeks. His review will be in tomorrow morning's Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Walt's verdict: despite some flaws and feature omissions, "the iPhone is a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer." But there is a drawback: the slow AT&T network it runs on. Here's Walt's video about the iPhone(preceded by a brief advertisement.)

Internet Law resource

Another good resource for keeping track of legal cases involving the internet is the Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions. This website, containing extensive analysis of internet caselaw, is maintained by attorney Martin Samson, who also provides a free update service. And, as icing on the cake, his update always includes a film trivia question!

llrx dot com

The June 25 issue of LLRX (that's short for Law Librarian Resource Exchange) is onlineand has some great articles. The article "An Overview of Selected Legal Digital Libraries" doesn't have any new surprises but it does give a good description of the ten online law libraries it reviews. There is an opinion piece entitled "Is a JD necessary for Law Librarians?" (the author disappointingly doesn't really answer the question.) And there are several other useful tips and articles to file away in your resource favorites list.
You probably shouldn't waste your valuable work time looking through the "60 gadgets in 60 minutes" presentation. I mean who could possibly be interested in a George Foreman USB Grill or a TV remote control gun?

as dead as Elvis

Sounds like the ALA is getting the same talks CALI got last week. Inside Higher Ed reports that yesterday there was a speaker who discussed the concepts of "digital natives" (i.e. people who grew up with the internet) and "digital immigrants" (i.e. those for whom digital is a second language). Also, “The librarian as information priest is as dead as Elvis”, and academic librarians who serve digital natives need to think like video game creators (though presumably not like the ones who stage violent shootouts in great English cathedrals).
Joking aside, many suggestions mentioned in the article merit thoughtful consideration, such as:

• students shouldn’t be expected to read long explanations of tools they may use before they start experimenting with them. They should be rewarded for exploring.
• Offer online services not just through e-mail, but through instant messaging and text messaging, which many students prefer.
• Hold LAN parties in libraries. (These are parties where many people bring their computers to play computer games, especially those involving teams, together.)
• Schedule support services on a 24/7/365 basis, not the hours currently in use at many academic libraries, which were “set in 1963.”
• Remember that students are much less sensitive about privacy issues than earlier generations were and are much more likely to share passwords or access to databases.
• Look for ways to involve digital natives in designing library services and even providing them.
  

Columbia U. Libraries get Google grant for video content creation

The Columbia University Libraries have announced that their Digital Knowledge Ventures project has received a grant from Google to make content for Google Video. The agreement is the result of an initiative by Google to add more meaningful educational content to the Google Video site, in particular course content from leading academic institutions.

The corrosive Blackberry

There's a posting on the "Conversation Starter" blog of the Harvard Business School online entitled "The Corrosive Blackberry". In complaining about people not paying attention, it's eerily reminiscent of the discussions about laptops/internet in classrooms that we've been having.
Here's a quote:
"Recently a member of the rock 'n' roll band Arcade Fire complained that it's hard to interact with fans because often they are more focused on preserving the moment via a mobile-phone photo than experiencing it in real time. Face-to-face interaction has... fallen victim to 'virtuality'."
So now we have a member of a rock ‘n’ roll band sounding a lot like... a law professor?

The brain-machine interface

For the second time in less than a week I came across an article detailing how technology companies are trying to harness brainpower. Yes, human brainpower, and no, this is not science fiction. Just thinking moves toy train with new technology from Hitachi and Human-Aided Computing: Microsoft researchers are trying to harness untapped brain power were both published in the MIT Technology Review on Friday. Both are fascinating. Sample sentences from the articles: " But subconscious computing is a nascent field." and "A key advantage to Hitachi's technology is that sensors don't have to physically enter the brain. Earlier technologies developed by U.S. companies like Neural Signals Inc. required implanting a chip under the skull." and "It's really fun to move a model train just by thinking."

U.S.News Rankings Debate

There was a major public rebellion against the U.S. News and World Report Rankings for colleges last week, when a group of colleges called the "Annapolis Group" vowed to stop providing information to the rankings survey.
This morning there is a podcast of an online debate at Inside Higher Education between Brian Kelly, editor of the magazine, and Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy. They debate the pros and cons of the rankings and their usefulness.
It will be interesting to see if this movement grows.
The podcast is in mp3 format and lasts about 30 minutes.

Washington Post and online media

Rob Curley, one of the plenary speakers at CALI, was hired by the Washington Post to help develop their online presence. His vision is for online journalism to be molded by the media rather than sticking print news on a webpage. As he put it, he didn't want the Washington Post online to look like "Barry Manilow rapping".
He helped develop the very interesting onBeing project at the Washington Post.

A day at the public library

Are these the same folks who brought us the IT v. Librarian video?

Minisodes

MySpace has launched a "minisodes network" website, where you can view edited-down versions of old TV shows. Half-hour shows are boiled down to about 5 minutes - kind of like the Reader's Digest, only for TV, and with old stuff. Among the shows you can see: Facts of Life, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels and many others.

Michigan Law Review publishes symposium on televising the Supreme Court

There are currently bills in both the House and the Senate to permit the televising of Supreme Court proceedings. Michigan Law Review has published, online, a symposium of a diverse group of authors discussing the ramifications of these bills. Commentators include Tony Mauro, the Supreme Court reporter for the Legal Times, Christina Whitman, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, and the Hon. Boyce F. Martin, Jr., Sixth Circuit Court judge.

Did You Know 2.0

Here's the version of the video that Scott McLeod showed at CALI.

JSTOR Sandbox

I just used the "Facted Search" feature that I found in the JSTOR Sandbox (a Sandbox is an online place for testing out new ideas, like Google Labs etc.) It was very useful to me in the search I was doing. Faceted searching offers a number of different features to expand and deepen your search results. After completing a search, you can see how the returned articles are distributed among different categories, or “facets.” The faceted search will show how many results appear in each discipline, how many are book reviews or full-length articles, how many articles have images, and other useful facets.
Facets available in the current version of JSTOR's faceted search include:
Discipline
Journal
Article type
Publication date
Language
Times article cited in JSTOR
Number of pages
Articles with Images
By selecting facets, you can narrow your results to fit particular characteristics.