The IBM Developerworks site is chock full O’ geeky goodness. Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site is one standout that can be used by librarians to set up a new site. They call it “Tools and techniques for getting relatively complicated Web sites up and running quickly” and they cover a wide range of topics that will get you going.
December 2007
Connecting the Real to the Representational: Historical Demographic Data in the Town of Pullman, 1880-1940
Andrew H. Bullen: The Pullman House History Project is a part of the Pullman State Historic Site’s virtual museum and web site (http://www.pullman-museum.org/) which links together census, city directory, and telephone directory information to describe the people who lived in the town of Pullman, Illinois between 1881 and 1940. This demographic data is linked through a database/XML record system to online maps and Perl programs that allow the data to be represented in various useful combinations. This article describes the structure of the database and XML records, as well as the methods and code used to link the parts together and display the data.
Who jumped on the Internet bandwagon first?
A list of the first 100 dot com domains is making the rounds. On March 15, 1985, Symbolics registered the first dot com domain. It’s interesting to see which IT companies were quick to jump on the bandwagon. Microsoft isn’t on the list, but Apple is there.
Literary Style By The Numbers
Steven Johnson noticed the other day that Amazon has added a whole panel of “text stats” for many of its books.
I spent a few hours last week plugging in the numbers for my books, as well as a few other authors that I assembled in an entirely unscientific fashion: Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, Seth Godin, Christopher Hitchens — and then, just to see how far I’d come, I threw in my intellectual (and, sadly, stylistic) heroes from my early twenties, the post-structuralist legends Michel Foucault and Frederic Jameson. I compiled stats for 3-4 books for each author, except Gladwell who has written two, and then plotted them on a scatter chart, with the y axis representing % complex words and the x axis representing words per sentence. The results were pretty fascinating:
My 4 Year Old Told Me To “Google It”
Can you connect This Story By Mat Siltala to libraries?
He turned to me and said: “Why don’t you just Google it Dad, because you use it to find everything else”. I guess he does hear me (more then I realize) say stuff like “find it on Google”, or “look it up on Google” with everyday interactions with my wife, friends or clients! It was so funny, cute and genuine that I was speechless.
Cowboy Junkies Paradox
Can you connect This Story By Seth Godin to libraries?
Marketers of all stripes face the same challenge. Your current customers want nothing but the old stuff, but the new customers don’t know you exist, so they can’t speak up.
Cat teeth: search trumps experience
Can you connect This Story By Stephen Baker to libraries?
Search is replacing the knowledge we gain from experience: the tactile, slightly risky, scratched fingers variety. We can learn more facts this way, but do they mean as much to us?
Bookmarking Solutions: Quick Access vs. Long Term Storage
The Dumb Little Man Blog Takes A Look at social bookmarking. Few things in this world are as useful as social bookmarking. However, few things are as complicated, frustrating, and tedious as social bookmarking.
Is there a way to balance the needs of quick access and comprehensive indexing? I think the answer is to have two types of bookmarking solutions: easy access and long term storage. Let’s look at a real world system that helps illustrate this point.
9 Better, Cheaper Ways To Search Amazon
A nice post from The Consumerist: The Amazon home page has somewhere around 16 different sales pitches, and more unnecessary graphics than a MySpace page. Here are 9 money-saving ways to shop the site without waiting for another customized ad to render.
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