SOPA blackout

Find more: http://sopablackout.org/learnmore/

Web-based services for CDs and DVDs collection

I’m looking for a web-based services like librarything.com but for my CDs and DVDs. Granted, one could add their CDs and DVDs manually into librarything.com, but who got the time to do that? I’m looking for some kind of automatic way to add my music and movie collections. So, I’m  scouring some discussions group and forums and looks like these are the ones that get mentioned more:

For DVDs:

• Take11, although somebody said that he “wasn’t that excited.”
• DVD Profiler
• DVD Corral
• IheartMovies
• OpenDB, which is something you can install and host yourself
• IMDb, where you can create an account and create a list those movie titles you owned

For CDs:

• OrangeCD
• Racks and Tags, which is the online/community/socializing for OrangeCD users

I haven’t tried none of the above, but would like to put them here for bookmarking purposes. Of course, I’d also need to find out whether any of the services above can accommodate my vinyls as well.

Technology Developments for People with Disabilities

Few interesting technology developments that would benefit people with disabilities:

• Mind-controlled Computing for the Disabled: A new Israeli-developed tool enables the disabled to send emails by thought alone, and could revolutionize the world of mind-controlled computing.
• Virtual Mouse, an Invetion to Help the Disabled: Computer engineering student at Khalifa university develops software that allows control of a mouse through the movement of a person’s eyes.
• NHK develops and automatic sign language translation systems for TV (w/ video):  Researchers at the NHK Science & Technology Research laboratories in Japan have developed a new animated sign language translation system. The system takes a string of words, in Japanese obviously, and converts them into the gestures that make up sign language.

I’m quite excited about these developments. These by no means are the only development in progress, I’m quite sure. But these show the kind of possibilities one could develop to help people with disabilities.

Speaking of controlled tool, this news about robot cat ears that are responding to brain waves came out several months ago. The robotic cat ears are cute, sure thing, but think about the possibilities of creating brain wave controlled tools for people who can’t even move any part of their body. That would be awesome.

On a related note, I’m looking forward to be able to send tweets just by the thoughts. Heh. :-D

A lot of things that I would like to post but keep getting distracted with something else. Oh well…

State of Denial

Miss Wormwood: Calvin! Pay attention! We’re studying GEOGRAPHY! Now what state do you live in?

Calvin: Denial.

Miss Wormwood: *sighs* Well, I don’t suppose I can argue with that..

Firefox Display Options

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2011/04/05/funny-pictures-single-page-multiple-tabs/

Interesting article: “A World Wide Web that Talks”

A World Wide Web that Talks
IBM builds a search engine aimed at the estimated fifth of the world’s population that cannot read.
By Tom Simonite

Some 10,000 people worldwide use a version of the Web like no other: it is operated by voice over the telephone. Called the “Spoken Web,” it is the result of an IBM research project attempting to re-create the features and functions of the text-based World Wide Web for people in developing regions with low levels of literacy and technical skills.

[...]

http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=32342

#libday6 for Thursday January 27, 2011

The thing about staying home nursing this cold is: I got plenty of time to read the accumulated unread emails in my inbox. Also read some more online articles.

• Helped a colleague to figure out how to create a permanent/persistent link for a fulltext article on WilsonWeb. Rather surprised that Wilson doesn’t give it by default. Found a work around: use their Export –> (other) Bibliographic Citation option, then copy the given PURL. Their help page indicated that one could just right click the article link and copy the link. But it didn’t work when I tried out; Wilson use a javascript. Too bad.
• Administering ASIS&T mailing list: subscription requests, moderating posts that get stuck for moderation for whatever reason.
• Testing out off-campus access for some e-resources, either through ezproxy or the institutional login/shibboleth.
• A fellow librarian sent wide email queried about BeBook and then asked me about the accessibility aspect of it. Apparently a faculty asked him about using it to access and read our e-resources, especially ebooks. The faculty has had difficulties reading articles and ebook on his PC monitor. Unfortunately, e-ink display like that is not optimized to access our e-resources directly and read the ebooks. Refered him to our RCPD unit (Resource for Persons with Disabilities.)
• Worked a bit on ER&L website. Added the preliminary schedule.
• Helped my friend reviewed his documentation on crediting images used for an exhibition
• Read:
  • Well, actually, watched MobileASL Research Movie (YouTube). Fascinating.
  • Google Analytic’s 127 New Dimensions And Metrics Available In The API. I must admit, we haven’t really dig into utilizing this yet at MPOW because log collection and analysis is not part of the web design process. At least not yet.
  • Microsoft Research Project Hawaii and interesting class projects from various universities (via @MSFTResearch)
  • Another publication Microsoft Research: The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery.

#libday6 for Wednesday January 26, 2011

More cold snafus. Staying home. But still have enough energy to work on some professional development stuff.

• Replied to a a few emails about our library twitter account, some blog post question, and the GIST workflow toolkit for the interlibrary loan.
• Finished the code4lib program individual page for the Thursday (last day of the conference).
• Received approval for MPOW to participate as a group in ALCTS webinar: Organizing the Evaluation of Electronic Resources. w00t!
• Composed first draft for LITA National Forum proposal.
• Use the extra time to read interesting articles tweeted by by my fellow twitterers:
  • Braille jewelry
  • Open Grok 0.10
  • The Web is a Customer Service Medium
  • What people living with disability can teach us
  • Best practices for data archiving
• Read a proposed project (“Fostering and Promoting Accidental Adjacencies”) documentation for the MSU Creative Initiative (I joined the Creativity, Social Knowledge Platforms, and Forms of Scholarly Inquiry cluster.) This is going to be an interesting project.
• Phone conversation with MOPW Digital Project Librarian (AKA @ksattler) on our blog settings and the upcoming mobile web project

#libday6 for Tuesday January 25, 2011

• Man MPOW’s twitter account to see if there’s anything this account need to act upon (questions, tweets worth RT-ed, announcement, etc.)
• Worked on Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) website, adding Michael Porter as our last keynote speaker
• Testing out calibre, the ebook management application. I’d like to see the output of converting PDF into epub or .mobi format. Based on one experiment, forget it. You will need a PDF with good structure. Also, calibre apparently can’t convert Word documents as well. But, it can convert RTF nicely.
• Standing meeting with supervisor.
• Received queries from Technical Services about oversized-books that they’re working on. Withdraw one per GovDocs librarian’s input and keep another per Humanities librarian input.
• Conference call with a vendor on their statistic package application. We covered updates and future releases.
• Started creating individual page for each of code4lib 2011 programs for the Wednesday schedule.
• Read the OCLC report “Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community”. Still chewing on it. But you can read the conclusion (PDF) yourself, if you want to.