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The New York Public Library System Checks Out UniPress Software's FootPrints to Automate IT Support and Facilities Management Operations

The New York Public Library System Checks Out UniPress Software's FootPrints to Automate IT Support and Facilities Management Operations.

January 31, 2005 08:30 AM US Eastern Timezone

The New York Public Library System Checks Out UniPress Software's FootPrints to Automate IT Support and Facilities Management Operations
Web-Based FootPrints Helps the New York Public Library System Deliver World-Class IT Support to 3,000 Employees

EDISON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 31, 2005-- UniPress Software, Inc., a leading provider of web-based service desk automation software targeting the mid-market, today announced that the New York Public Library (NYPL) has selected FootPrints(R) to track and manage IT service and support requests for 3,000 employees spread across 85 branches and five research facilities located in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

NYPL is one of the great knowledge centers in the world, and equals the British Library and the Library of Congress with its vast collection. Just as the distinguished institution aims to provide unparalleled service to its patrons and the academic and research communities, it strives to deliver the same level of service to its employees.

As a part of this effort, NYPL is using FootPrints to automate its support operations and quickly resolve IT challenges for employees.

California Shows Its Tails

California Shows Its Tails.

California Shows Its Tails
Published: January 31, 2005

The California Quarter (see image)

Making history Monday, First Lady Maria Shriver and U.S. Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore launched the “California Quarter,” the Golden State’s contribution to the Mint’s 50 State Quarters Program.

The coin, approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, depicts naturalist John Muir examining a California Condor while in the shadow of Yosemite Valley’s Half Dome. The Republican governor personally added the condor to the quarter’s design, citing the formerly endangered bird as an example of California’s “comeback” strength.

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Faith-Based Encyclopedia (Wikipedia)

TCS: Tech Central Station - The Faith-Based Encyclopedia (Wikipedia).

The Faith-Based Encyclopedia (Wikipedia)
By Robert McHenry, Published 11/15/2004

Away back about 1993, '94 -- in retrospect, the last of the halcyon days when a relatively small and rather homogeneous group of people around the globe could reasonably consider themselves as constituting the Internet community and could take a strongly proprietary view of its future development -- back then, I am recalling, a cluster of enthusiasts coalesced in an online discussion group devoted to the creation of an encyclopedia on the Internet, an Interpedia, as they called it. As one of the proponents described it,

"the Interpedia will be a reference source for people who have connectivity to the internet. It will encompass, at the least, articles submitted by individuals, and articles gleaned from non-copyrighted material. It will have mechanisms for submission, browsing, and authentication of articles. It is, currently, a completely volunteer project with no source of funding except for the contributions of the volunteers and their respective institutions. It also has no governing structure except for a group of people who have volunteered to do specific tasks or who have made major contributions to the discussion…. Everyone is encouraged to make a contribution, small or large."

The discussion group generated a great quantity of writing, none of it encyclopedic in nature. There were discussions of the software needed for authoring and databasing and registering and validating and so on; discussions of how to attract contributors and of how teams for larger articles might be organized; of how to ensure that articles were editable but at the same time protected from unauthorized alteration. Every so often there were rhapsodic explanations of why the Interpedia, as a noncommercial and collaborative project, was ipso facto superior to all existing encyclopedias, all of which were published for [shudder] profit and all of which had their origin in [shudder] print.

Thanks to a posting today on LIBREF-L, I found this article.. author is Robert McHenry is Former Editor in Chief, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and author of How to Know (Booklocker.com, 2004).

CNN.com - From musty to megabytes - Jan 25, 2005

CNN.com - From musty to megabytes - Jan 25, 2005.

From musty to megabytes

Archives go digital to survive
Tuesday, January 25, 2005, Posted: 2:13 PM EST (1913 GMT)

MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- It's a stately old building with looming columns, worn marble stairways and arched doorways -- dedicated in 1900 "to the conservation, advancement and dissemination of American Heritage."

But while the Wisconsin Historical Society contains one of the largest American history archives anywhere, fewer people have visited in recent years -- 40 percent fewer than in 1987 -- as more of them, including students at the nearby University of Wisconsin, turn to the Internet as their basic research tool.

So the historical society and many other institutions with large collections are doing something they see as means of survival: They're going digital -- creating and uploading images of many items in their collections for all the World Wide Web to see.

Thanks to Library Link of the Day for the pointer.. good article on the increasing archives found online...

Boston.com / Travel / With luck, you savor Hemingway's trail

Boston.com / Travel / With luck, you savor Hemingway's trail.

With luck, you savor Hemingway's trail
By Michael Rezendes, Globe Staff | January 30, 2005

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
  --ERNEST HEMINGWAY

PARIS -- Eighty years have passed since the young Hemingway settled on the storied left bank of this city and launched a career that would shape the course of American letters for the rest of the 20th century.

Today, the cafes where he honed his craft, writing with a pencil on notebook paper over a café crème or a vin rouge, are no longer teeming with legendary writers such as Ezra Pound, James Joyce, or Gertrude Stein.

Fox Searchlight Pictures : Sideways

Fox Searchlight Pictures : Sideways.

Sideways

With five Oscar(tm) nominations, this small film is a sleeper at the big awards bash, but watch out.. went to see it yesterday, and laughed until my sides hurt.. the Web site has background information, links to reviews from "Rotten Tomatoes," and more.. oh, and a snob-free guide to wine.. parts of the film were shot in and around San Diego.. check out the map of their great wine country trip...

NYTimes.com: Circuits Newsletter: For TiVo, It's Not Over Yet

NYTimes.com: Circuits Newsletter: For TiVo, It's Not Over Yet.

For TiVo, It's Not Over Yet
From the Desk of David Pogue, Thursday, January 27, 2005

I'm furious at all the media vultures who are circling TiVo, maker of the life-changing, time-shifting TV box, and declaring its long-term prospects hopeless. The Times reported last week that co-founder Mike Ramsay declined a deal to bundle TiVo technology into cable boxes from Comcast (for well under a dollar a box) — media analysts implied that that was a fatal move — and stepped down as CEO.

Unfortunately, media reports about a company's struggles can have a way of becoming self-fulfilling.

Here's a list of some of the brilliant features that make a TiVo a TiVo, the features that make it stand head and shoulders over the copycat digital video recorders (DVR's) provided by, for example, cable companies. (And if you're unfamiliar with this entire category of TV equipment, here's a refresher.)

Great list of TiVo features and advantages, from David Pogue.. I got my upgrade today via TiVo for TiVoToGo.. just have to get the home network setup, and I'm good to go and try and it out...

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: Tool for Thought

The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: Tool for Thought.

Essay

Tool for Thought
By STEVEN JOHNSON, Published: January 30, 2005

One often hears from younger writers that they can't imagine how anyone managed to compose an article, much less an entire book, with a typewriter. Kerouac banging away at his Underwood portable? Hemingway perched over his Remington? They might as well be monastic scribes or cave painters.

But if the modern word processor has become a near-universal tool for today's writers, its impact has been less revolutionary than you might think. Word processors let us create sentences without the unwieldy cross-outs and erasures of paper, and despite the occasional catastrophic failure, our hard drives are better suited for storing and retrieving documents than file cabinets. But writers don't normally rely on the computer for the more subtle arts of inspiration and association. We use the computer to process words, but the ideas that animate those words originate somewhere else, away from the screen. The word processor has changed the way we write, but it hasn't yet changed the way we think.

The New York Times > Arts > Television > Quiet Times, but Lots of Laughs, in the Years After 'Tonight'

The New York Times > Arts > Television > Quiet Times, but Lots of Laughs, in the Years After 'Tonight'.

Quiet Times, but Lots of Laughs, in the Years After 'Tonight'
By NICK MADIGAN, Published: January 29, 2005

Photo caption.. Johnny Carson in 1997 on his yacht, the Serengeti, in California..

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 28 - There were only a few places where Johnny Carson let his hair down. The poker table was one of them.

Mr. Carson's notorious off-screen reserve dissipated during the monthly poker games that the film producer Daniel Melnick held for years at his house in the Hollywood Hills. The regulars included a panoply of well-known names, like Steve Martin, Neil Simon, Chevy Chase, Carl Reiner and Barry Diller.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > North County -- Oceanside's library board backs display of banner for Iraq war dead

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > North County -- Oceanside's library board backs display of banner for Iraq war dead.

Oceanside's library board backs display of banner for Iraq war dead
By Lola Sherman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER, January 26, 2005

OCEANSIDE – A banner commemorating American war dead in Iraq can be placed in the public library whenever and wherever the library director wants.

That was the consensus of the Oceanside Library Board of Trustees on Monday. Library Director Deborah Polich said she will see if the banner, more than 100 feet long, can be segmented to fit better at the Civic Center Library.

Sounds like a good decision.. public memorials and art are often the subject of serious opposition, strong opinions, and difficult debates.. but.. freedom of expression is a strong principle of libraries, as they seek to bring their communities information, culture, and artistic visions...

Content and Workflow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies

Content and Workflow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies.

Content and Workflow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies

Holly Yu; California State University, USA Our Price: $76.46 US List Price: $84.95

Description: ... Content and Workflow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies provides practical and applicable web content management solutions through case studies. It contains successful database-to-web applications as employed in a variety of academic libraries. The applications vary in scope and cover a range of practical how-to-do-it examples from database-driven web development, locally created web content management systems, systems for distributing content management responsibilities, dynamic content delivery, to open source tools, such as MySQL and PHP to manage the content. Issues and challenges associated with the development process are discussed. Authors will also discuss detours, sand traps, and missteps necessary to a real learning process.

New book from Holly, looks good, as she announced it today on WEB4LIB.. focus is clearly academic libraries, but may have applications in a wide group of libraries.. I had the pleasure of working with her a bit while on the ALA Web Advisory Committee (WAC)...

Six Log: Support for nofollow

Six Log: Support for nofollow.

Support for nofollow
01.18.2005

We’re a blogging company, and as such, we tend to be keenly aware of problems that webloggers encounter. One of the recurring issues that our users face — on TypePad, Movable Type, and LiveJournal — is a need to distinguish between content that they have published themselves and content that is generated by a site’s readers and commenters.

** The NOFOLLOW Roundup -- Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. article by Tara from ResearchBuzz led me to this post at Movable Type, which led me to the above post by Six Apart, which notes that Typepad users will get to use this no follow tag automatically.. it's probably already on my blog now.. spam comments, be gone.. well, if only it were that easy.. I manually deleted one today, which isn't bad.. I still am waiting for their Typepad Key for blog comments by users that are verifiable and real...

Johnny Carson - Three Close Encounters

Johnny Carson - Three Close Encounters

Some brief encounters with Johnny Carson, jotted down.. each has a longer version of the stories, but I thought it would be good to get them down.. the image is a screenshot from the Web site now (larger version on click)..

1) TV on the Floor, High School Years...
During my high school years, circa 1960-64, back in Charlotte, North Carolina, Garinger High School, I lived with my mother, a waitress at a steak house.. my nights were my own for homework, hanging out, whatever else I wanted to do (a great gift of freedom).. Mother worked the nights and dinner shift, so she'd be home about 11pm or so most nights; this was pre-videotape machines, so I'd be in the floor, with a pillow under my head, watching Johnny Carson on the "Tonight Show," when she'd come home.. I'd fill her in on what had gone on in the early minutes, the monologue, and the guest list that night.. we'd watch together, talk about our days and the night at work, and I'd count her tips for her.. Johnny always made us laugh together, the shows were the same but always different, and it was a great way to end the day together.. the show would end, I'd turn it off, kiss her cheek, and head to bed.. all was right with the world...

2) NBC Tour, Post-Production California Road Trip...
It was in 1981, I believe, when we finished filming "Swamp Thing" in Charleston, South Carolina, that I began a journey that would lead me to Johnny Carson again.. quite a large number of props had been obtained for the Art Department and set dressing from MGM Studios (huge source for everything from stuffed owls to 1940s cups); it was determined that the company could save money (and money was a huge issue) if instead of shipping them back, someone drove them back to California from South Carolina.. having no next movie lined up, I volunteered --this was my "screenwriting" as filmmaker period, and a chance to see "Hollywood" was a magical-sounding elixir.. I drove across country with the props in a rental truck, returned them, had enough money for a bus back home & change.. but, the adventure was the thing.. one of the things I did that trip was visit NBC Studios in Burbank, CA, and take the studio tour.. waiting in line to go in, I had a visitor tourist like me snap a photo of me standing next to this huge cardboard cutout of Johnny.. lifesize.. I still have the old photo somewhere, and will post it one day.. it was a great shot though.. it made it seem for all intents and purposes (and I tended to show it to people and say, "Look, here's me and Carson...") that I was standing with him, him smiling that easy smile, with my arm around him.. we were pals, my days in the Movie Business were just around the bend.. I got a nice coffee mug on the tour, says "Today Show" on it, and drink coffee from it today.. I also saw the star on the floor that marked Johnny's spot to stand and deliver.. his monologues.. it was great standing where he did, all those years.. that's where the laughter started...

3) The Big Chill, Carson Production Group...
The last encounter for me was about a year after, when we were making "The Big Chill" in Beaufort, South Carolina.. Johnny Carson had a film production company called Carson Production Group, and this was, I believe, their first film.. we got to meet Marcia Nasatir from the company on the shoot and sets, and she even read one of my early draft screenplays, "The Shield".. it was amazing, gave me "notes" on my work, and inspired me --something I remember to this day; she didn't dismiss my earnest efforts, but encouraged, and gave me feedback in a creative way.. I believe Johnny was behind the picture 100%, and proud I've heard about it and the awards it racked up.. I have no way of knowing for sure.. he didn't know it, but I worked for Johnny Carson once.. and it was grand.. thanks for the memories, Johnny, and as you said on the last show...

"If I could magically, somehow, that tape you just saw, make it run backwards. I would like to do the whole thing over again. It's been a hell of a lot of fun. As an entertainer, it has been the great experience of my life, and I cannot imagine finding something in television after I leave tonight that would give me as much joy and pleasure, and such a sense of exhilaration, as this show has given me."

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > State of the Art: Videotape to DVD, Made Easy

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > State of the Art: Videotape to DVD, Made Easy.

STATE OF THE ART
Videotape to DVD, Made Easy
By DAVID POGUE, Published: January 27, 2005

WHOEVER said "technology marches on" must have been kidding. Technology doesn't march; it sprints, dashes and zooms.

That relentless pace renders our storage media obsolete with appalling speed: 5¼-inch floppies, Zip disks or whatever. And with the debut of each new storage format, millions of important files, photos, music and video have to be rescued from the last one.

At the moment, the most urgent conversion concerns videotape, whose signal begins to deteriorate in as little as 15 years. Rescuing tapes by copying them to fresh ones isn't an option, because you lose half the picture quality with each generation. You could play them into a computer for editing and DVD burning, but that's a months-long project. You could pay a company to transfer them to DVD, if you can stomach the cost and the possibility that something might happen to your precious tapes in the mail.

David offers us insights into some combo machines to handle VHS to DVD transfers.. very good and helpful...

AOL Pulls Plug on Newsgroup Service

AOL Pulls Plug on Newsgroup Service.

AOL Pulls Plug on Newsgroup Service
By Brian McWilliams, BetaNews January 25, 2005

Opinion: When AOL turns off its newsgroup servers, it will sever subscribers from the thousands of discussion groups that make up Usenet.

The world's largest ISP is cutting off direct access to one of the oldest, coolest—and strangest—parts of the Internet. America Online has quietly announced that it will discontinue providing member access to Usenet newsgroups next month. In recent days, AOL subscribers who access keyword "Newsgroups" are greeted with a pop-up message informing them of the change: "Please Note: The AOL Newsgroup service will be discontinued in early 2005."

Why should we be surprised? I worked there, once and past days, and they didn't get the 'Net then, and still don't.. as an ISP, they have customers who want the 'Net and this part will go missing.. most avid USENET users will find a way to get to it.. but, we are not surprised, nor amused.. Google's Groups are there still, as they will be.. Google gets the 'Net...