September 2012

Cites & Insights 12:9 (October 2012) available

Details and links here.

Leaders pushed to sign up poorer, predominantly black neighborhoods of Kansas City, Mo., to qualify for Google’s new Internet service, fearing that otherwise they will lag further behind.

Full article

This week’s episode brings a public health update jointly from the United States Department of Agriculture as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An essay is presented as well as a news miscellany.

Related links:
Bibliofuture: Comment on political post
Wired: Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City’s Digital Divide
The Hill: FCC backpedals from Internet tax
PCMag Digital Network: FCC Poised to Vote on Spectrum Auction Plan
The Register: Health minister warns ISPs–Block suicide websites or face regulation
France24: One million people commit suicide each year–WHO
Los Angeles Times: More older workers making up labor force
AEI’s James Pethokoukis: The awful, awful August jobs report
PCWorld: Broadcaster Al Jazeera knocked offline with DNS attack
The Register: You’ll be on a list 3 hrs after you start downloading from pirates – study
The Verge: Learn to build a Raspberry Pi operating system, courtesy of Cambridge University
NBC News: ‘Fix-a-Flat’ butt injection suspect bonds out of Florida jail

Download here (MP3) or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like my.gpodder.org. Support and subsistence items to further the work of the production team can be purchased and sent here via Amazon. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

In an apparent switch in its pricing policy, Amazon said over the weekend that it would allow users of its new Kindle Fire tablet to pay to turn off ads as it had done with earlier devices.

Full article

When NPR Books invited audience members to nominate and vote for their favorite Young Adult novels, more than 75,000 responded. The extraordinary outpouring speaks of the passion connecting the books section and its followers.

But in that response also lie the seeds of a defect, for lack of a better term, in the poll. The resulting “Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels” included only two books whose protagonists are people of color, which critics called unjust.

Full piece on NPR

Editorial discussing pay at the Grand Forks, ND public library.

Ordering a cup of coffee is now as simple as reaching for your smartphone. Launch an app, tap the screen a couple of times and, as soon as a minute later, your order could be ready, prepared by a “robotic barista” kiosk created by Austin-based Briggo. Story from The Texas Statesman.

The first — and so far only — Briggo kiosk opened late last year in the Flawn Academic Center on the University of Texas campus. Measuring about 130 square feet, the orange-and-white box makes a variety of hot and iced coffee drinks, as well as lemonade for folks who aren’t caffeine fiends.

In addition to the mobile app and online, walk-up orders can also be placed using a touchscreen.

“We’re all about precision, quality and convenience,” said founder Charles Studor, a former Motorola employee who built the first several Briggo prototypes in his garage starting about four years ago. “You essentially have a championship barista at your service 24 hours a day.”

Hiring Librarians http://hiringlibrarians.wordpress.com/ , the blog
about hiring librarians, has a new survey that explores What
Candidates Should Wear, including age old questions like “Should I
wear a suit?” and “Do I need to wear pantyhose in order to be taken
seriously?”. It was co-written by Jill from Librarian Hire Fashion
http://librarianhirefashion.tumblr.com/

Initial results are here:

but more responses are needed, especially from people who hire school
and special librarians, as well as archivists. If you want to help
librarians improve the quality of their applications, you can take the
survey by following the link on this page:
http://hiringlibrarians.wordpress.com/participate/