Accept no substitutes

Month: February 2006 (Page 2 of 4)

NC Press Talk – V1.0 Outline

Tomorrow’s talk outline without links (Sorry).

Beyond Blogs and Pods

GIS, Databases, Social Networks, Attention and the Obvious

The Obvious
Attention Economy
Deliver to phones and handhelds and cars
Deliver in new formats
Coming of Vblogs
Trust, Reputation and Feedback issues
More and more niche-media (Long Tail)

Databases

Phil Meyer was and is right — database journalism is still the future
Hyperlocalism by database aggregation
Helping readers access and visualize
Helping readers create, maintain and correct data
Distributing the data in a way that readers can create knowledge
Information sharing

Using Maps for local uniqueness
Google maps API for Gas Prices
Durham Police Area Crimes
Gov’t Facilities and Services (Orange)
Tax Maps and more (Wake)
NC OneMap Project
National Map . Gov

Social Networks
How does news get into a social network
How does news get out of a social network
What are the press relations to social networks
What are our ethical responsibilities to social networks

Losing my tech edge

Jerry has a SchedulerI’ve always been a better observer of emerging tech than a consumer of it. This was brought home to me today when my collegue, Jerry Saye talked lovingly about his Roomba. Not his first Roomba but his second. The old one wasn’t up to what the new one can do and lacked in certain features like scheduling a cleaning whilst you are away.
Another collegue, Jeffery Pomerantz, bought his wife a Roomba for Valentine’s this year.Valentine's Roomba
We support a wonderful artist in part by having her clean our house. We also get to have her highly decorated car which is a piece of sculptural work parked in our drive while she cleans. It’s like rented a piece of art every two weeks — plus ending up with a clean house.
I did take Sally to Chicago and to NextFest where we saw the latest Roomba. One like Jerry’s new vac. We also saw Hubo and the Philip K Dick Android. We didn’t buy them either.

Thornton Stapes – Tomorrow on Digital Archives

Carolyn F. Hank remind us of Thorny’s coming talk. This is not the Red Hat Fedora Linux but Fedora the digital library and archives project begun at UVa and Cornell.

What: Public Presentation: Building a Digital Library Architecture with Fedora,
presented by the University of Virginia’s Thornton Staples.

When: Thursday, February 23, 2006. 3:30-4:30.
Where: Carolina (Student) Union, Room 3411

The Digital Curation/Institutional Repository Committee (DC/IRC) at UNC-Chapel Hill is pleased to announce a public presentation by Thornton Staples, Director of Digital Library Research and Development at the
University of Virginia Library. The presentation, Building a Digital Library Architecture with Fedora, will take place Thursday, February 23, 2006, from 3:30 to 4:30 in the Carolina (Student) Union, Room 3411. A brief reception will follow the presentation. Community members interested in the creation, storage, access, dissemination and preservation of digital institutional assets are urged to attend.

In addition to his current position, Thornton Staples is also the Project Director for the Fedora Project. Previous positions held include: Chief, Office of Information Technology at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Project Director at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia; and Special Projects Coordinator, Academic Computing at the University of Virginia. Mr. Staples has a degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

And Thorny is a wonderful sculptor too.

Lorcan Dempsey Today

KILGOUR LECTURE TO FEATURE LORCAN DEMPSEY
Who: Lorcan Dempsey, vice president and chief strategist of Research for OCLC Online Computer Library Center
What: “Libraries, Logistics and the Long Tail” the 2006 OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture in Information and Library Science.
When: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 3:30 p.m.
Where: Alumni Hall of the Carolina Club. A reception will follow.
The Carolina Club is located on the corner of Stadium and Ridge Roads in Chapel Hill, N.C
More: http://sils.unc.edu/news/releases/2006/01_kilgourlecture.htm

On the phone with BBC

Skype to BBC didn’t happen. I’m queued to talk after some iTV folks. One Holmes of VideoBomb. The other, Leslie does Full Disclosure.net. It was def a British-style interview, in which the speakers had their spiel prepared and the hosts tried to take them off on their weak points. Pointing out the absurd selections chosen by VideoBomb voters and being sure that we all knew that CSpan has low ratings so that will surely doom FullDisclosure. The interviewees handled it pretty well.
I was next up and handicapped by the fact that I don’t know what blooks will perculate up to me as final judge — and in an untimely lapse of memory, when will the winners of the Blooker be announced. I know the Lulus told me but errrrrr.
Still I think I did an okay job. I was able to defend vanity press books using Whitman as an example. “But surely all of these aren’t Whitman.” No, but if one is the contest will have been worthwhile. Besides several of these blooks are from Large Publishing Houses and have been reviewed in the NY Times. Then a question about a silly author’s name, like Hamburger which I can’t find on the list, but I counter with “The World According to Mimi Smartypants” by Mimi Smartypants. The host agrees that this is a truly wonderful name. I get to mention several of the entries — none of which I have read since I’ve placed myself in blook embargo until the finalists arrive. But here goes what I recall — “Julie and Julia” “The Search” by John Battelle, “Ambient Findability” “The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl” by Belle de Jour (this gives way to a conversation about fiction and non-fiction. M. de Jour has entered in non-fiction but is this the next “Million Little Pieces”? I say that the hosts are closer to knowing that than I am.) and “Biodiesel Power” by Lyle Estill.
Save forgetting the announcement date, I got most all of what could be gotten out in I hope an interesting way. Yes I mentioned Swift, deFoe, Dickins and other serial or pseudo-diary writers as forebearers of Blook authors.

Up All Night runs once a week. The last show being on the 14th so I expect this show to run tonight late on the 21st (in the UK).

Stuck CD in PowerBook

I have Johnny Cash forever! Or so it seems. I went to digitize American Recordings III and the CD stuck in my PowerBook G4. Using the various eject procedures results in a tiny edge of the CD peeking at me for a fraction of
a second then disappearing. On the upside, I can listen to “I won’t back down” anytime I want too.

Is there an easy way for me to get the damn thing to eject — or should I head out to the “genius bar”?

Things I’ve tried:

    drag cd to wastebasket
    pressing eject botton
    holding function and pressing eject button
    rebooting
    rebooting with trackpad button held down

I believe that the cd is experiencing some kind of resistance and so backs itself back into the player.

AHA! UPDATE: I took a key and gently but firmly nudged the slot a little larger or upward. (aka the caveman method of computer repair). The disk ejected just as if things were normal.

Jones at NC Press Association – Friday

I’ll be one of several folks giving talks to the North Carolina Press Association on Friday. I’ve drawn a “Beyond Blogs and Pods” topic and have only 20 minutes to cover that. Others will be talking on RSS (David Jarmul of Duke), Podcasting (Ken Rogerson of Duke), Blogs (Chris Roush of UNC). Here’s what I’m thinking (but I’d be delighted to hear from you):

“Interacting with Readers in New Ways.”

The Obvious

    Attention competition
    Deliver to phones and handhelds and cars
    Deliver in new formats
    Coming of Vblogs
    Trust issues
    More and more niche-media

Using Maps for local uniqueness

Social Networks

    How does news get into a social network
    How does news get out of a social network
    What are the press relations to social networks
    What are our ethical responsibilities to social networks

Databases

    Phil Meyer was and is right — database journalism is still the future and the present
    Hyperlocalism by database aggregation
    Helping readers access data and visualize it
    Helping readers create, maintain and correct data
    Distributing the data in a way that readers can create knowledge
    Information sharing
    (more to come here)

I’m Intimadated Already!

Kiyara the Intimadator from Hillsborough won best of Opposite Sex in the Miniture Poodle Bred at the Westminister Kennel Club Show.

You would think, if you knew the owner was a novelist, that the name would be spelled correctly as Intimidator. But then, when you see he wrote “The Bone Collector.” The plot of which stuns the mind of even the jaded Richard Ebert. “Bone Collector” is from an ongoing series on featuring Lincoln Rhyme, a paraplegic detective who can only move one finger. Deaver also appeared, not as writer but as actor, in “As the World Turns.”

I’m intimadated already!

Wreck at Harris Teeter U Mall

When we went into the HT, we saw moms and daughters selling Girl Scout cookies in the dry on the walkway. We already have six boxes so we went on in. On the way out the whole area was blocked by fire and safety equipment. A car was somehow sideways between pillars and onto the covered walk. Cookie boxes were all over. One mom, Elise Kelley was strapped down and getting oxygen. Around the corner, someone else was getting help. The situation was not a happy one.
Oddly, we heard nothing when inside the store. It all must have come about quickly and tragicly.
Chapel Hill has suffered several terrible accidents involving pedestrians lately. This one will I pray not end as others have.

UPDATE: News and Observer and Herald-Sun have brief stories on this.

UPDATE 2: News and Observer ran a more detailed story today (2/21/06).

Help Test Lyceum

Lyceum is ready for public beta testing. JJB has details on the ibiblog and in this mail message:

One of Ibiblio’s software projects is Lyceum, which is a multi-user, multi-blog derivative of the WordPress blogging engine. We are getting ready to formally announce the project and release the code at the end of this month. Before then, we are hosting a public beta test of the software so we can iron out some bugs and receive feedback. You can see the beta test here:

http://lyceum-jjb.ibiblio.org/lyceum/portal.php

If you would like to try out Lyceum, the front page on that link explains everything. If you want to just poke around a bit and see what it’s all about, go for it. If you are a web/media/blog geek and want to create 5 test blogs, test every feature and every combindation of circumstances, and send us a torrent of bug reports and feedback, even better : )

You can send feedback, questions, and bug reports to:

lyceum-bugs AT lists DOT ibiblio DOT org

If you would like to discuss the project, you can either email me directly, or leave a comment here:

http://www.ibiblio.org/ibiblog/?p=165

Thanks,
John Bachir
software architect, The Lyceum Project

http://lyceum.ibiblio.org/
http://blog.johnjosephbachir.org/

American Romeo

Catching up on my State of Things podcasts. Now listening to an interview with Django Haskins of Old Ceremony, a band whose pop-noir is one of my fav sounds. Django is now playing “American Romeo” live (but recorded now) on the show. Now Django is singing in Mandarian Chinese, a song called “Bao Quin”.

I’ve written about Old Ceremony earlier on this blog explaining how Low Power – FM, sample downloads, MySpace and a local record store helped me discover the band, get to really like ’em and buy their CD as soon as it was available. I need to get out and hear them live.

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