Category Archives: Briefly Noted

"How to Write a Zotero Translator" Now in Print — Another great resource from Adam: his comprehensive guide to building a Zotero translator is now available in print from LuLu. As Adam points out, I was the one who asked for this, so I guess I finally have to get off my backside and learn how to write a translator.

Writing Great Documentation — Jacob Kaplan-Moss of Django has some tips for writing software documentation, including thoughts on what to write, style, and the importance of editors.

Aggregate Your Friends’ Links with Twitter Tim.es — Via @james3neal another great link: The Twitter Tim.es scours your Twitter stream for links posted by your friends, grabs the content of those links, and assembles that content daily in a newspaper-style layout for your reading convenience. Stories are ordered according to how many of your friends have tweeted the link in question, and an RSS feed is provided if you’d rather get the content in your reader. It’s a nice way to keep up with what’s hot on Twitter without constantly watching the stream. For instance, yesterday I hardly checked Twitter at all, yet with Twitter Tim.es I know that six of the people I follow tweeted a link to Mark Sample’s recent post, Digital Humanities Sessions at the 2009 MLA. Now, I already subscribe to Mark’s blog, so I eventually I would have read the post anyway. But not knowing how helpful my friends found it, and not being a lit guy myself, I may not have paid the post much attention. And, of course, if I didn’t subscribe to Mark’s blog, I wouldn’t have caught the link at all.

Enterprise 2.0 — I hadn’t heard it before, but apparently the term “Enterprise 2.0” is familiar enough in certain circles to serve as the title for a conference series that began this month in San Francisco. Defined by the conference organizers as a “term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools …” making accessible “the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.” So, basically, Web 2.0 for business. Despite being somewhat obvious, however, I think it may be a useful catchall for certain developments Dan, Mills, and I have been following over the past few years on Digital Campus, including the increasing adoption by universities of Gmail and other cloud-based email solutions and the addition of student bloggers to admissions office payrolls.

Adam Crymble on How to Archive a Conference — Noting that conferences and workshops are ephemeral events, especially those that don’t produce a white paper or edited volume, our friend Adam Crymble offers some suggestions for the kinds of things that can be saved of a conference and ideas for how to present those products after the conference has ended. We have tried to do some of this for THATCamp, but Adam outlines a more deliberate and considered approach that we should explore in 2010.

Cloud Computing in Plain English — In September, I pointed to a definition of cloud computing developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which, though thorough, was also thoroughly unreadable. Now Common Craft—the company made famous for its simple, pencil and paper video explanations of commonplace internet technologies such as RSS—has released a short video explaining Cloud Computing in Plain English. Now this could help your elevator pitch.

Revised Google Books Settlement Filed — Google, the Authors Guild, and the Publishers Association have filed a revised settlement with the court hearing the Google Books case. From my quick first reading the main changes include: placing the orphan works registry in the hands of an independent trustee which will oversee funds generated from their sale; allowing third party companies to license and resell the entire database; providing more room for companies other than Google to negotiate deals of their own with copyright holders; and an agreement to purge books published outside of the U.S., Canada, the U.K. or Australia (i.e. in the EU) from the database. It’s hard to say, but it seems like these concessions should satisfy many of critics.

Book Lending at Twitter Speed: Thoughts from Josh Greenberg — Based in part on ideas raised during his appearance on the latest episode of Digital Campus, Josh Greenberg (@epistemographer) speculates on the future of book lending under the doctrine of first sale in a digital economy where access to copyright material can be lent, returned, and logged at Twitter speed. Assuming a  “hyper-efficient distribution system,” if a given book only ever has ten simultaneous readers worldwide, could a print run of ten be enough to serve the whole world? Something to chew on over the weekend.

Jono Bacon on Roadmaps for Successful Collaborations — Ubuntu Community Lead, Jono Bacon, knows something about building communities of collaboration. In this post, he provides some specific guidance (and wiki templates) for using structured “roadmaps” to help manage collaborative projects.

The Story Behind NYPL’s New Logo — The New York Times City Room blog sheds some light on how cultural heritage institutions are thinking about branding in the digital age with a nice little piece on The New York Public Library’s choice of a new logo.

Google Programming Language: "Go" — Not sure if this is new or I just missed it somehow, but Google has released an open source systems programming language called “Go.” Noting that languages like Java and C++ are years (decades, even) old, the Go team aims to make the new language friendlier to today’s problems and styles of coding. Hat tip @n8agrin.

Mrs. Washington Meets Omeka — CHNM and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens are proud to announce the launch of a new website chronicling the life of Martha Washington. The site includes a rich archive of primary sources, a biographical exhibit, and three teaching modules. In addition to being a tremendous resource in its own right, the site is a powerful example of Omeka’s capabilities.

MediaWiki How To — Lifehacker provides a step-by-step guide to customizing MediaWiki, the open source wiki platform that powers Wikipedia. The guide is written by Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani, who recently used MediaWiki to publish a “book-in-progress,” The Complete Guide to Google Wave. Useful reading for anyone thinking about self-publishing his or her next book online.

The Open Source Professor — Mark Sample has posted slides and audio for his provocative recent talk, “The Open Source Professor.” Sample’s talk is part of MITH’s excellent Digital Dialogues series.

Amazon Editors’ Picks for 2009 — Amazon.com has released its editors’ picks for the 100 best books of 2009. The “nearly unanimous choice” for the best book of the year is Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, which I haven’t read yet. But I can vouch for #7, Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire, the sequel to his The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, both of which are excellent. In general, if you haven’t read a Swedish murder mystery before, you don’t know what you’re missing.

E-Books More Popular than Games Among iPhone App Developers — Twenty percent of new applications in Apple’s iTunes App Store are books, according to a survey summarized at ReadWriteWeb. That compares to thirteen percent for games. I guess app developers disagree with Steve Jobs’ 2008 assessment that reading is dead or his more recent contention that the iPod Touch is a gaming platform.

More from ArchivesNext on NARA’s Digitization Partnerships — ArchivesNext has some excellent commentary—indeed, original reporting—on the National Archives and Records Administration’s digital partnership agreements, such as the ones it has entered into with Footnote.com. Written partially in response to some poorly thought out comments here at Found History, ArchivesNext provides (as usual) a well considered, well balanced discussion of the issues at play.

Top Ten Disruptive Technologies — Although it’s 18 months old, Gartner’s Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012 stands another look. Most of the entries are familiar and sound about right, but I’ll have to read up on a few, including “fabric computing” and “contextual computing.”

Net Neutrality: Pro and Con — Two Op-Eds in The Wall Street Journal present two sides in the debate over the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) proposed net neutrality guidelines and some very different ideas about the meanings of words like “neutral,” “fair,” and “open.” Supportive of the FCC’s proposals are Mitchell Baker and John Lilly of Mozilla. Opposed are U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Jim Demint (R-South Carolina). Worth reading both sides.

DOD <3 Open Source — The United States Department of Defense has put open source software on an equal footing with proprietary software, reports ReadWriteWeb. That’s a big deal, but DOD isn’t first U.S. government agency to make this move. IMLS and NEH, for example, started favoring open source software in their grant making guidelines a couple years ago, which puts the digital humanities and cultural heritage biz way ahead of the game.

The End of Student .edu Email — Citing a study by Educause, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog reports that as many as 25% of institutions of higher education are considering eliminating support for student email addresses.

Prep School Library Drops Books in Favor of Kindles — Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts (not far from where I grew up) is in the process of deaccessioning the books in its library in favor of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. According to USA Today (hat tip @BryanAlexander), instead of checking out books, from now on Cushing’s students will check out Kindles, pre-loaded with the books they require. Interesting, but I can’t help thinking it’d make more sense to give each kid a Sony Reader or Barnes & Noble Nook and have them download the books they need themselves. Many—if not most—of the book high schoolers need are in the public domain and available on the Sony and B&N devices as free EPUBs from Google Books.

Ubuntu 9.10 — The latest release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution (Version 9.10 “Karmic Koala”) is now available for download. Among the new goodies: 2 GB of free online file storage for syncing through Ubuntu One. I know what I’m doing this weekend.

Verizon Droid, Android 2.0, and Why Early Adopters May Get Burned — Anyone who has read this blog or listened to the Digital Campus podcast knows that I’m an Android fan and optimist. I know I should be cheering the release of the Motorola Droid for Verizon, which—with the help of Android 2.0—looks like it’ll give the iPhone a run for its money. Unfortunately, it looks like the original Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, of which I am a proud (if not always 100% satisfied) owner, may not be able to run the 2.0 version of Android. I understand the importance of improving the Android experience to attract converts, but early adopters should see those improvements as well as the newcomers. Burning your loyal user base doesn’t seem good business. Then again, maybe the Android folks know that many of us will just suck up the extra couple hundred bucks to break our contracts to get our hands on the slick new hardware.

Big Copyright’s History of Anti-Innovation — Ars Technica has an interesting account of the movie studios, music companies, and other large content owners’ historical antipathy to new content delivery mechanisms. Some of the new technologies on the list: the player piano, the television, the .mp3 player, and the digital video recorder.

What the $%@! is Net Neutrality? — Confused about the “net neutrality” issue. The Public Knowledge website has a good intro video. Via @james3neal.

White House Switches to Drupal — The Obama administration has made the switch to Drupal, the open source content management system, for WhiteHouse.gov. Hat tip Rick Shenkman.