OnlineColleges.net has a post listing their Top 10 Commencement Speeches for Tech Lovers, containing descriptions and links to speeches given by, among others,  Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Page (Google), Eric Schmidt (Google), Melissa Mayer (Google), and Ray and Tom Magliozzi (Car Talk on NPR).

thanks to Kelly Sonora for the e-mail tip!

– additional comment:  Kelly Sonora is fictional; the person most directly responsible for the content of the above linked post is Jessica Merritt.  This isn’t a problem, the blog is valid and the information is worthy of our time; just wanted make the credit more accurate….

Today is the second annual celebration of Document Freedom Day!

So why are open document formats important?  What happens when someone sends you a document created with Microsoft Word 2007, and saved with the default file format?  You get a file with a .docx extension, and you have to find some way to convert it or obtain it in another format.

What happens when you encounter a file from a program you used 10 years ago, when the company is out of business, and you don’t know anyone who still uses it?  This can be more challenging.

The purpose of open document formats is to ensure that the information about how the document was saved is available for any person/company to utilize.  Importers for different programs and standalone converters can be created; the files themselves can sometimes be opened using simpler means.

The most forward-thinking and useful set of open document formats are those from the OASIS project.  They are in use in several programs, but the highest profile of these is OpenOffice.org.  The Open Document Format has proven to be very robust, and stores information in a manner that generally makes them much smaller in size than the Microsoft Office pre-2007 formats (I average about 10% on reports that I generate on a regular basis… that means 10% of the file size, not merely a 10% reduction!).

I like to do this demonstration:  make a copy of a .odt (Open Document Text) file, then change the extension to .zip.  Open the zipped file and start looking around.  Any graphics embedded within the file are saved in a separate folder.  You will find the raw text of the file in files.  All in all, this is a very open way to store and retrieve information from files that you may not be able to open otherwise (plus it is a great way to extract the graphic files).

What can you do to improve things?  Get OpenOffice (or try Go-oo, which bundles some great plugins and configuration settings) and try it out.  It is different from Microsoft Office, but once you are familiar with the menu placements, you can do some wonderful things.

What else?  If you are a Microsoft Office user, you can download and install the converters for ODF files.

Anything else?  Yes… think about what your needs may be for 5, 10, 20 years down the road, and strive to use document formats that will fill those needs effectively.  My recommendation lies with open formats rather than closed.

Added later:  Thanks to Rose Guerrieri, Director of the Kent State University Trumbull Campus Library, for her reminder via the Ohiolink list!

LucidChart is a free (with a premium option), web-based flowchart creation tool.  It appears to be quite easy to use, yet very professional.

If you are looking for software to install on your PC, remember that OpenOffice (or Go-Oo) offer Draw, a versitile and powerful drawing program (that doesn’t have a counterpart in Microsoft Office, either) which can be used for flowcharts, as well.

found via LibrarianInBlack

I thought I’d try something new and summarize the software that I use on a regular basis.  I have been thinking about this, as I have recently switched from one software program to another in a couple of areas, and have been thinking about the evolution of the programs I have used over the years.  This may become an annual (or occasional) update, or this may be the only installment.  I also note which items have Portable Apps alternatives, as I use these a great deal.

Here they are:

• Operating Systems : Windows XP is still my primary day-to-day system at home, on my notebook, and at work.  I use Ubuntu linux on a regular basis (I am set up to dual-boot both at home and on my notebook computer), but haven’t yet made the jump.  Yet.  I use Mac OS-X (Leopard) occasionally on my wife’s computer (usually when setting something up for her).
• Web Browsers : Firefox (PortableApps) is my preferred browser (and has been since it was at version 0.6 or so).  I occasionally use Google Chrome, which is definitely faster, but my habitual use of certain add-ons (see below) keeps me from getting comfortable.  I use Internet Explorer 7 when I want to run Windows Update.  My only complaints are occasional memory hog problems with Firefox.
• Firefox Add-Ons : Zotero, Groowe Search Toolbar, Web Developer Toolbar, Operator, Cooliris, Add to Search Bar.  Learn them, use them, love them.
• E-Mail : Thunderbird (PortableApps) is my primary e-mail client, although I feel it needs a good updating (version 3, anyone?).  I use Microsoft Outlook 2003 at work, mainly because we use the calendar features quite a bit.  An add-on that makes Outlook worth using, however, is Xobni (“inbox” spelled backwards).  If you use Outlook, get Xobni – you will not be disappointed.  I am eagerly awaiting a Thunderbird version.
• Office Suites : I recently switched to Go-Oo from OpenOffice 3 (PortableApps).  It wasn’t too hard of a change, as it is an implementation of OpenOffice with some very intelligent add-ons and configuration.  It is very smooth and easy to use, and hasn’t given me any problems yet.  I still use Microsoft Office 2003 at work, but am rapidly switching to Go-Oo for everything but Access.  Even that may change, as MS Access lacks some desired report functionality that exists in the Sun Report Builder.
• Text Editors : I recently switched from SciTE to Notepad++ (PortableApp) when I needed better control over the encoding of the text.  Both are excellent for editing HTML and CSS, as well as editing a variety of text files.
• Web Design : I primarily use a text editor (see above), but when I want something more powerful, I use Amaya, or sometimes Aptana.  If you need a basic WYSIWYG designer, I recommend Komposer (PortableApps).  I use FileZilla (PortableApps) as my FTP client.
• Photo Software : I currently use IrfanView, but suspect that this may change in the near future, as my needs are changing.
• Online Software : I use WordPress for blogging; Gregarius as a blog reader; Gallery for photo storage and viewing; I am trying out OpenGoo for online applications (calendar, tasks, contacts, basic word processing); OpenBiblio for my church’s ILS; Scriblio and Drupal for OPAC replacements (just playing around with them); and TextPattern as a Content Managment System.
• Security : ZoneAlarm firewall; AVG Free anti-virus; Clean-Up!; and HijackThis.
• CD Authoring : I switched from CDBurnerXP to InfraRecorder (PortableApps) earlier this year.  I haven’t tried the newest version of CDBurnerXP, so there may be some switching back in the future.
• Odds and Ends : 7-Zip (PortableApps) for compressing and decompressing all sorts of files; PDF Creator; MarcEdit.

If you are looking for a common thread, there is this:  all of these, except for two of the operating systems, and the software on my work PC, don’t cost anything.  Much of it is Open Source (of which I am an advocate).  You can do a lot with an internet-connected computer, a sub-$100 per year web hosting service, and some trial-and-error experimentation.

I hope this list helps to inform, and perhaps even connects someone else with software that I have grown to enjoy using for everyday tasks.  It has been interesting to see just how much software becomes part of my daily routines, and how much value I get from the above programs.

Microsoft announced today that they are shutting down their book digitization project.

They also announced that the Live Search Books site will be shut down sometimes next week.

This is a disappointment in that I was hoping that the competition factor would push both Microsoft and Google to extend their respective projects further and further, thereby making that which we could access better and better.  Hopefully both Google and the Internet Archive keep up the good work, and that we reach the point where books are as easy to locate and access online as are many other forms of information (such as news, journals, etc.).

from TechCrunch

NetRenderer is a service that will show you how web pages display using Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6, and 7. This is a great, great tool for web page design, especially since pre-7 versions of Internet Explorer are notoriously tricky to design style sheets for.

IE has been much improved of late, and Microsoft recently announced that the forthcoming IE version 8 has passed the Acid2 test! (also: Acid2 on Wikipedia)

found via LISNews

Perceptions 2007: An International Survey of Library Automation contains the results of a survey conducted by Marshall Breeding.  He explored the relationship between libraries and their Integrated Library Systems (ILS).

The results are interesting.  Without going into my own views of the two systems I have worked with, I feel that some libraries just don’t know how they have it – both good and bad.  I would like to see statistics from those who have worked with more than one ILS within the past five years, because I suspect that some of the rankings might change dramatically.

That said, it is very good to see a snapshot of people’s satisfaction levels of their software and the companies that support it.  This may well reflect how well companies (and ILSs) will do in the next 5 years or so.

One surprise, sort of, is the low level of interest in Open Source ILS.  Part of this is due to fact that Open Source ILS is just really beginning to be used in the United States – as more libraries use the systems over time, we will have a better understanding of the satisfaction they have (or won’t have) with them.

The other part goes back to not knowing what we are missing.  For instance, I have worked with database reporting with both Voyager and Millennium, and Voyager is by far the most powerful and useful, as you are able to extract data from the Oracle DB directly into Microsoft Access and manipulate it with any SQL you can create.  Millennium has a built in extracter, and I have discovered that it saves a great deal of time and headaches to simply export large chunks of data into a text file, then import it into Access and work on it there.

(note: Millennium has a pricey add-on that adds an Oracle database to their system to enable this; I don’t have it at my current place of work, and cannot judge how well it handles the type of queries and reporting I am discussing)

found via GuidePosts

A somewhat rambling essay, but one that is important nonetheless:

Joe Wilcox has posted an interesting essay at Microsoft Watch regarding Google’s merger with DoubleClick, the internet advertising company.  I strongly disagree with some of his interpretations (he tries to have it both ways, and by defending Microsoft and chastising Google, he simply muddies the water), but the essay has me thinking about the good and bad of monopolies in libraryland.

First, is the love-hate relationship I have with “monopolies”.  Oftentimes a monopoly reduces choices for the user/consumer, and oftentimes the litmus test for this is whether the company/organization channels its energy towards preventing competition, rather than out-performing competition.  Efforts towards providing a better product/service than one’s competitor are rarely in vain.  Even if a company fails, the level of product/service is usually improved across the board.

Next, the concept of open standards is, for better or worse, tied up with monopolies.  A group with a monopoly is able to set standards much more effectively.  If the standards are set in a fair manner, i.e. not simply to prevent competition against one’s own product/service, then the monopoly can actually be more efficient.  If not, it isn’t truly an open standard, as much as it is a proprietary standard.

Libraries, then… we are swimming in a sea of standards, and companies that create them.  We are living with standards that work only for us, such as MARC, and aren’t of much (if any) benefit outside libraries.  The bibliographic information contained within them is of great benefit and value, but the standard is not very useful.

However, so much of our energies are tied up in this standard (and others, if we think about it), and it is dragging us down.  It is important to understand that the information is what has value; the value in how we store and access it is reflected in the ease of use, and the interest in using that storage/access method.

MARC has lost it’s luster, and we should move forward.  The information, however, is more valuable than ever, and we need to figure out how to maximize this value.  Making it easy for everyone to use, not only libraries, should be our top priority.  When Amazon or Google (or companies/groups like them) really want to access our bibliographic records, and use their structure, this will be when we know we have fixed the worst of our problems.  Is FRBR/RDA the answer?  I suspect not, simply because a new way needs to be much easier to describe and apply.

Google is, and has been for a while, the 800 pound gorilla in the search business.  This came about because their search tools were, and are, simply better than their competitors.  I don’t think this will last forever, but there are many benefits to their dominance.  They are able to set “standards” for web design that encourage compliant web site design and discourage  link farms and spam sites.  They have mastered, to a large extent, the art of interpreting the keyword search.  People now think in keywords when they search (which is why the natural language search engines are languishing in obscurity).

In libraryland, OCLC is our 800 pound gorilla.  When they come out with something new (and the last couple of years have been fantastic, with WorldCat leading the way), libraries pay attention.  If they set a particular course, it makes a great deal of sense to follow that same path.

Is this the best way, though?  Should the 800 pounders lead the way in information discovery?  How might they prevent innovation from happening, or are we doing that to ourselves already?  Is the slow pace of FRBR/RDA a reflection of the size of the beast as it slouches towards Bethlehem to be born, or simply the complexity of the solution?

One thing I have noticed on many blogs and listservs is that we love to talk about what is wrong and right about libraries and technology and search, but it is usually individuals and small groups taking the lead and deciding to blaze a new trail.  Open-ILS and LibraryThing are but two examples of dozens where people saw a need and decided to take charge of fulfilling it.

Why haven’t we come up with a new way to deal with bibliographic information?  Does one person, or a group, need to simply decide to do it?  The library community seems to be spinning its wheels on the issue, so perhaps this is the case.

Who wants to take on the challenge?

As a longtime user of OpenOffice.org, I pay attention to comparisons between that software and Microsoft Office.  The first set of reviews that I have encountered that compares Microsoft’s updated suite with the current version of OpenOffice have just been completed and posted to Linux.com, and I thought it was worth passing along:

1. OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Word
2. OpenOffice.org Impress vs. Microsoft PowerPoint
3. OpenOffice.org Calc vs. Microsoft Excel

My own verdict:  if you have a need for something that is available only in Microsoft Office, then that is what you need.  Otherwise, OpenOffice.org is a great fit, and at a much better price (free!). 

Office Software Shootout is an article/post on Linux.com that compares the latest versions of OpenOffice.org Writer (2.3) and MS Office Word (2007) across several categories.

The result? Each program has strengths and weaknesses, but the reviewer concludes that OpenOffice.org comes out ahead.

My take on the results: I have not used either of the versions reviewed (I use OO.org 2.2.1 at home and via a flash drive Portable Apps package, and MS Office 2003 at work), but prefer OO.org for most tasks. Access still clearly beats out Base, but Base is good enough that I see that changing within a couple of upgrades.

The best part: OO.org is free. Download it, install it, and do whatever you need. Want to put it on all of your public access machines? Go ahead, there’s no charge. Staff machines? Same thing. Give it away to your patrons? Public relations!

The document converters work fine 99.9% of the time (letting you open, edit and save .doc and .xls files) and the learning curve isn’t too bad (especially considering that Microsoft changed many things in Office 2007, giving that program a similar learning curve). If you decide that you don’t like it, then go ahead and purchase another product.

This demonstration of Photosynth, software from Microsoft that creates links among pictures based on elements within the picture, is fascinating to watch.

The most fascinating thing about this demo is you can start to sense the potential for this technology, for both the positive (imagine how this could improve searching through archival photographs) and the negative (facial recognition software for public cameras, anyone?).

It reminded me of this demo for a multi-touch interface.

found on Hanging Together

This isn’t directly related to libraries, and even the indirect aspect only applies to larger libraries, or libraries within larger institutions, but I thought there were some points of interest in this blog post from an anti-Google blog.

Of special interest to me is how Google handles their IT issues (near the end of the post). They have a local IT person (one per floor, it seems) who handles initial troubleshooting, updating and changing equipment, and other tech-related issues. This looks like a very flexible and quick system to get people what they need to keep working effectively. I have lost count how many times something like this would have been beneficial for a workplace.

Some of the gripes (office space, management structure, insurance) could be a reflection of what that particular employee values in their work experience. They could also reflect growing pains on Google’s part, so I leave it to the reader to decide where they would prefer to work, or at least which of these ideas could be applied to your library.

found on Search Engine Land

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 7, and they have paid attention to what works for people when browsing. If you are using IE, I recommend that you upgrade to version 7 now: you will be safer online, websites created to standards will finally be rendered properly, and you will finally see what the big deal is about tabbed browsing.

But wait…

(in addition, the first serious security vulnerability has arisen.  This is a new version, so these things can be expected.)

One: This Day in Music History is a great way of gaining information about particular days and the significant musical events that occurred… except that it only works for the current date, and 15 days before.  So much for checking out your date of birth, unless you time it right.

Two:  Music Video search lets you search and view over 6,000 music videos, which is great, except that you can only do it using Internet Explorer (or download the Active X plugin, which allows your Mozilla-based browser to gain many of the insecurities of our favorite Microsoft security risk), and there doesn’t seem to be any videos from before 1990.

from ResourceShelf

OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite that gives Microsoft Office a run for it’s money (no pun intended), will soon be able to have its features expanded by the use of Extensions.

Extensions are small, add-on programs created by developers to add functionality to a particular program. The best known use of this is in the Firefox browser, of which I am a regular user.

The extensions I use with that program are the Groowe toolbar (think Google toolbar, then add a dozen or more additional sites to search) and the HTML Validator toolbar, which has been extremely valuable in my web design projects. There are hundreds more.

No word as to what types of extensions might become available, but I am sure that it will change the way people approach the program.

from OSDir

I think it is a sign of just how much of an impact open source software and free web applications are having on the tech world:  Microsoft is thinking of turning it’s Works Suite into a free web application.

A few years ago, this wouldn’t have been considered.  A subscription service, yes.  Free, no.

Now there exists a variety of free web apps, including Google Spreadsheets, ThinkFree Office, Writely (acquired by Google last spring), NumSum, and many others, allowing people to bypass installing office suites on their computers, at least for basic word processing and spreadsheet activities.  Microsoft has to worry about becoming irrelevant in the one area it still clearly dominates.

from Monkey Bites.

An interesting add-on for both Internet Explorer and Firefox: The Zoho Writer Quickread Plugin.

Zoho Writer is one of the web-based word processors that have been cropping up lately. The Quickread plugin alllows one to read Microsoft Word documents within your browser — without opening them on your computer. Quickread works via a right-click on the file’s link.

This could be a good add-on for public access computers when you don’t want a full word processing program available on the machine.

from TechCrunch