Prepping for Internet Librarian 2008

I really forgot how much of an inconvenience it is to travel. Finding a flight, hotel, transportation to and from the airport - I HATE IT. Not to mention I'm probably going to have to fight for seating space with some smelly loser on the plane on his way to a weekend party with his old frat buddies. Smelly people should not be able to fly, or charge them more and give the other passengers in his immediate seating area a discount. I wouldn't mind it nearly as much if I knew going into the flight that I was getting a discount and to bring my gas mask.

On the other hand, I am looking forward to attending and speaking at Internet Librarian 2008. I am honored that Information Today has asked a geek like me to speak at such a highly attended conference. The nervousness hasn't kicked in yet, hopefully I can hold my bladder long enough to get through the presentation - just kidding :)

Smelly people, stay home this weekend, please!

See ya in Monterey, CA!

Play, Play Play....and learn along the way!

Working for an team such as I do it is a pleasure because it encourages me to learn and play with new technologies. This mentality is spreading quickly within the organization so much that the leadership team has made it a tactical objective this year to change the way staff members learn about web 2.0 technologies - Its call Learn & Play @CML. There's no need to feel guilty you're learning a new technology while at work anymore, in fact its encourages. See a cool website like Wordle or twitter dive in, join the community. The Internets' are your friend - well most of them :)

Are Library's naive to website attacks?

I've found myself asking this question over the last few days as I spend my days, and most of the nights, fighting an attack that crippled our websites. When I tell people about our libraries websites being attacked, almost without fail, the first response from the person is "Who would want to attack a library?" or "Why would someone attack us?" as if there is some code of ethics for hackers.

Warning, rant follows:
I would like to think our library and library partners are a microcosm of the library industry and if this is true, the answer to my questions seems to be Yes. It's become glaring evident that we can no longer continue to have this mindset that we're not a target, because we are. Often a website may not even know it has been attacked and is inadvertently spreading some dangerous virus or exploit throughout the world. Libraries often have or are attached to larger networks that bad people can use to spread their malicious software. Patron information could be appealing to hackers. We must consider looking at our software security policies and procedures and add website safeguards to protect your interests. Wake up libraries!!! There are bad people out there who want to use your websites and patrons PC's to do bad things.

Proof Community is important

This a rather long video, but I think you'll enjoy it. This was originally posted on http://buytaert.net/ .

The FBI vs the Internet Library

Here is an interesting discussion with Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine. This podcast gives a status update on the open on-line library and Google and Microsoft's role in it. There is also some legal issues that libraries should be aware of.

http://www.twit.tv/144

As an aside, TWIT is a family of Drupal sites. :)

Speed up access to your favorite frameworks via the AJAX Libraries API

Tired of spending hundreds of hours writing AJAX using multiple libraries? Google may have the answer. I'm reserving judgment until I use it myself, but it looks exciting to me - let see if Google can pull another rabbit out of their hat.

Google engineers spend a lot of time working on speeding up their Web applications. Performance is a key factor for our teams, and we recognize how important it is for the entire Web.

When you take a look at the effort that it takes to setup work that should be simple, such as caching shared JavaScript libraries, you quickly realize that the Web could be faster than it currently is.

The AJAX Libraries API is an attempt to make Web applications faster for developers in simple ways:

• Developers won't have to worry about getting caching setup correctly, as we will do that for you
• If another application uses the same library (much more likely), they there is a much better chance that it will be already caching on the users machine
• The network and bandwidth of the users systems will not be taxed.

AJAX Library API


Thanks to Travis for sending me this goodness!

Tweets in Space

For all the Twitter fans out there, here's a super cool thing to follow - @MarsPhoenix the Phoenix lander that just touched down on the north pole of Mars.
On a related note, head to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories Phoenix Mars Lander website to catch a glimpse of the Martian surface when the Phoenix is doing its digging. The lander sure looks a lot like the one that first spotted Megatron in the Transformers Movie ... coincidence? - let's hope so.