Do you have an elephant as an enemy?

Question:
Do you have an elephant as an enemy? Remember, they've got great memories -or is it memorys?

Source:
"Experts from Africa, Europe, and cities across the United States—a panel consisting of a veritable "who's who" of elephant experts—traveled to Chicago to present irrefutable evidence in support of the city's pending elephant-protection ordinance. On February 23, the experts testified before the Chicago City Council's Committee on Rules and Ethics while local "ele-friends"—donning their bright green T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "This Proud Chicagoan Supports Kindness to Elephants"—packed the gallery. The room was filled with nearly 100 compassionate pro-ordinance, pro-elephant." [1]

What is a BugAThon?

The Gecko BugAThon: "What is the BugAThon? (A call for volunteers)

Without help, the number of bugs submitted in the core areas of Gecko (Mozilla's Web display engine), such as the DOM, CSS, Layout etc. would overwhelm the developers.

Do you care about Web standards? Do you hate working around browser bugs? Don't just stand there--with engineers bleeding by the side of the road, are you going to be the Pharisee or the Good Samaritan?

You can help, and you don't need to be a C++ programmer! Simplifying bug reports to the simplest possible test case doesn't take too long per bug, but when you've got this many bugs, it really adds up. And every hour Gecko engineers spend decomposing bug reports is an hour they can't spend on FIXING bugs. The more bugs that are simplified, the faster Gecko engineers can fix them, and the fewer bugs there'll be!

Writing a testcase is the best and most productive way to vote for a bug. Overworked engineers tend to focus on bug's with testcases. If a bug bothers you, why it does still not have a testcase?"

Does a platypus get perplexed?

Source:
"In 2001, I published a paper about something I called 'Active Browsing':

...In active browsing, the client browser actively modifies content before display. Instead of accepting web pages 'as is', active browsers transparently modify, delete and edit web pages according to specific user needs.

but it wasn't until I saw extensions like Greasemonkey, Aardvark, and Web Developer that I saw how Firefox and Mozilla's technologies supported user mediation in a transparent and useful way.

Platypus is a Firefox extension which lets you modify a Web page from your browser -- 'What You See Is What You Get' -- and then save those changes as a Greasemonkey script so that they'll be repeated the next time you visit the page. Editing pages to suit your needs is dandy -- but making those changes 'permanent' is the real payoff.

Some of the things you can do with Platypus include:

* Remove parts of the page you don't wish to see.
* Move a part of the page to a different location.
* Change the style and format of page elements.
* Modify all the links on the page using a regular expression.
* Insert your own HTML code.

Of course, web pages change all the time, so Platypus doesn't work well on some pages, and your Platypus script might break if a web site changes its format. And some times your changes will break a web page in unexpected ways. But you can always undo your changes by reloading the web page, and if a script breaks, just delete it and create a new one. So play around and enjoy yourself!" [1]

What is the philosophy for what you do and how consistent are your actions?

Question:
What is the philosophy for what you do and how consistent are your actions?

Source it g!:
Moodle Documentation [1]

How do I make things compatible?

Question:
How do I make things compatible?

Source:
LibX Firefox Extension for Libraries [1]

Who are you dealing with?

Question:
Who are you dealing with?

Source:
"Social networks play a large role with this group. Family communication takes place in-person, though friendships within a teen's network spreads out over the Web and other enabled devices. ..." [1]

What can we do to accelerate the adoption, development, and/or innovation towards open source software?

Question:
What can we do to accelerate the adoption, development, and/or innovation towards open source software?

Summary:
*Create: a "Most Bold Adoption of Open Source Software" awards program
*Create: an Open Source Conference for Libraries! Funded by grants from the leading open source advocates or sources/ should eschew and shut out any closed software corporate sponsors for the first five years.
*Create: an Open Source Library Software ThinkTank should be set up/ -again finding funding may be tough. But achieve-able
*Create/Ecourage Graduate schools programs in Information Science to develop Masters programs or minors within those masters to focus on and capitalize on this magnificent emerging trend.
*Create/Offer scholarships for Information Science students creating projects using open source software

Site:
Open Source Library Survey


Open Source Software Advisory Group

Wilfred "Bill" Drew
drewwe@morrisville.edu
SUNY Morrisville

Marie Noonan
marie@cdlc.org
Capital District Library Council

Christopher White
whitec2@sage.edu
The Sage Colleges

Tags: Open_source opensource open, iblee, libraries_2.0, Knowledge literacy, librarians,

Is that so writely?

Official Google Blog: Writely so:
3/09/2006 10:09:00 AM
Posted by Jen Mazzon, Google Writely Team

For the last five months, I've been part of a Silicon Valley startup called Upstartle, which makes Writely, a collaborative word processor that runs in a web browser. Well, as of Monday, I'm happy to say that I, and the rest of the Writely team, are now part of Google.

The other night, I was talking to my husband about how nervous I was to be starting work there. Truth be told, we've all been pretty overwhelmed for the past few weeks. What could our little team possibly do that's innovative enough? And he said, 'Hello? You already did it!' It's true -- everyone told us it was crazy to try and give people a way to access their documents from anywhere -- not to mention share documents instantly, or collaborate online within their browsers. But that's exactly what we did. And since we launched the Writely beta in August 2005, many thousands of people have registered, and all of them came through word of mouth (and blog).

To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture. If you're interested in giving us a try, we hope you'll get on the waitlist so we can let you know when you'll be able to try out"

How do you design for information flow?

Question:
How do you design for information flow?

Summary thoughts:
I don't know.
"Architect Selected to Design Stanford Medical School Learning and Knowledge Center." [wow]

What are 10 questions about information architecture?

Question:
What are 10 questions about information architecture?

Chekit:
"Shel Kimen is an information designer for Razorfish, Inc., New York, a strategic digital communications company. She has been online for a very long time and holds a B.A. in human environment and design with emphasis on architectural theory and planning." [1]

Why should you think about real world architecture?

Question:
Why should you think about real world architecture?

Summary thoughts:
Because questions and implications can be transferred into the electronic world. Real-world architectural blunders are a great source of information as are information architectural blunders.

Site:
"The School of Architecture building at Florida A & M University was completed and occupied in 1984. Designed by Jacksonville architect Peter Rumpel, former graduate design faculty member at the University of Florida School of Architecture, and winner of a Florida AIA design award, the building has been a fiasco. "

Whose buying this?

Question:
Whose buying this?

Source:
"IBM authors have written a number of books that will help you create easy-to-use products and services." [1]

Why not Information Architecture?

Question:
Why not Information Architecture?

Source it:
"This is an argument for the establishment of a field of study to be called information architecture (IA) in defence of an application for a professorate in the field announced by the department of informatics at Øsftold Regional College in October 1993. This paper does not pretend to cover all of the aspects that might be considered traits of the field of information architecture. It might, however, form the basis of an extended work on the subject."
[1]

Are you aware?

Question:
Are you aware?

Checkit:
"Are you aware that the practice of information architecture is riddled with powerful moral dilemmas? Do you realize that decisions about labeling and granularity can save or destroy lives? Have you been designing ethical information architectures?"

Why are you thinking this is a good idea?

Question:
Who are you thinking about?

Check this out?
The name Accoona is derived from the Swahili phrase, Hakuna Matata, which means “don’t worry be happy.” Accoona CEO Stuart Kauder says, “The company name was chosen specifically with the end user in mind. Our goal is to make our users happy by helping them find relevant results to their queries.”

Founded in February 2004, Accoona Corporation, a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (AI) search technology, unveiled the Accoona Search Engine in the United States and China in December 2004. The company is taking the competitive search engine sector to the next level, leveraging its advanced search technologies, experienced executives, and strong relations with China – the second largest online population in the world - and soon to be the world’s largest."

Sit Down and Shut Up!

Sit Down and Shut Up!

Are you, special?

"MARCH 6--In what is surely a first for the federal judiciary, a Texas bankruptcy judge has quoted from the Adam Sandler film canon in a recent opinion."
[1]

What is true?

Question:
What is true?

Check it:
"...Sadder still, one of the few bits of predictability is their willingness to act like jerks under certain circumstances. Saddest of all, one of those circumstances seems to be communicating via keyboard and screen. As a result, anyone adding even modest social components to an application suddenly faces a welter of issues that come with the territory."
[1]

How raise awareness in three easy steps?

Question:
How to raise awareness in three easy steps?

Site:
EFF:: "Fourth Amendment Shipping Tape
Declare your right to privacy with new EFF shipping tape, and remind prying eyes to stay out of your packages, presents, suitcases, and more."