E-books - to embrace or not?

Author Steven Johnson outlines a future with more books, more distractions through the agency of ebooks, the Amazon Kindle (and it's offshoot application on the iPhone) being the major excuse, but I'm experiencing it for myself using my Palm Treo. There is something quite handy about being able to carry around a large number of books and being able to chop and change between them as I go. It occupies all those empty moments while waiting for other things to happen, like bus trips and waiting rooms where dragging out one's knitting is not necessarily a convenient thing to do.

Mind you, it strikes me that this reduces reading in public from its traditional subversive status to something that no one knows you are doing (you could be texting your lover for an assignation after all, and who else needs to know that?) and elevates knitting or crocheting in public to a quite rebellious action!

Ebooks make reading all those PDFs so much more easy than trying to read them on a monitor with the associated eye-strain and 'cricked neck' that is usually resolved by printing the whole thing on single sided sheets of paper. There by increasing the whole waste paper/ink load in rubbish collection - not to mention the increase in paper that is then stored in filing cabinets until it is forgotten and reprinted because one cannot remember where the original printout is.

I can see that the ebook readers on offer have a distinct advantage over my Treo; the screens are bigger for a start and have the physical presence of a "real book".
But I have software on my Treo that means I can add notes directly to the text, draw cartoons as needed, or otherwise highlight the text of what I'm reading as well as play solitaire, create an email and send it to someone based on a passing thought, or web surf to confirm an idea, all while still being involved in the text that I'm reading. I expect that the iPhone (given it's huge user base and stylish interface) to be even more effective than the equipment I use.

My challenge is to find ways of encouraging the use of e-readers (be they ereader or phone) so as to reduce the amount of paper is printed out, and then connecting the electronic text with electronic comment by the reader so that they can find it later and link it with other things.
This means that somehow I have to encourage the people I deal with to find the time to learn new software/equipment that at first glance is not necessary to the way they find information or record their contemplations on it. And that won't happen until there is that moment when the amount of material available electronically is more attractive (both cost wise and comfort wise) than the inconvenience of printing things out and using paper.

That and the cost of the equipment reduces and is available everywhere. Until then, reading in public I think will maintain it's slightly subversive edge (only now it might also be a bit 'techy')

Migration to the internet "cloud" is nigh

says Katie Cincotta

LAST century we said goodbye to personal generators such as the water wheel, and most of the developed world plugged into the new electric grid, giving us high voltage on the wire with long-distance transmission. Now computers are set to make the big switch, transferring computer power and storage from our humble hard drives to the "cloud" - where everything happens on the internet.

There is a part of me that still wonders if, as the move to the 'cloud' gathers pace, there will be people who store everything about themselves online. And, at some point in the future will people be required to sort through the accounts of those who have died and are taking up useful server space be deleted* ... and then what will happen to all the interesting detritus that washed into the future from the past? Now we get letters from great grandma, stashed inside the wardrobe that is to be sold because she has finally died, implicating her in a wild fling with some famous rock star which leads to all sorts of explanations as to actual family descent ... *G*
Not to mention that by maintaining things on paper does leave one the option of ultimate destruction of evidence, but should those embarrassing thoughts be bit-mapped to some server in some other jurisdiction ... who knows who would read that material?

All sorts of questions as to how things are organised, accessed, documented, unalterable (which is possible with paper, but not so much so with electronica), recoverable in the future. All the sorts of questions that records managers and librarians have tackled over the years and were starting to get some sort of handle on, now need to be reexamined in light of what is now understood to be 'good professional practice'. How will that change? Be altered to accommodate the finality of a drive being formatted to remove from existence incriminating evidence of wrong doing? I'm fairly sure that there are folk somewhere starting to think about this, but even so ...

Questions. That's all I have at the moment. No answers. Not even vague ideas as to how it can all be managed.
Except that, should the apocalypse happen there will be probably no electricity to spare for such 'fripperies' as leaving it all online, which at least would save us the energy of wondering how to manage it all.

*Anne Mccaffrey's "Silent Drums" again.

Cloud computing

- take an umbrella

It happened about twelve months ago. I was listening to a marketeer from a software company describe their idea to make a software application available online. I said "so you become an application service provider".
She looked at me with great distain like I was still wearing my favourite Spandau Ballet T shirt from the eighties (tragic, I apologise). Her non-verbals screamed "Get With It!". Her verbal communication was more civil. "No this is more cloud computing, you know software as a service".

I may be old-fashioned but I think that the thinking that has 'cloud-computing' as a good idea also infects the idea that 'everything can be found on the web'. Both statements have some real dangers that need to be examined much closer.
The first part of that examination is probably that, apart from the major cities in Australia, the speed and connectivity that permits 'cloud-living' is just neither available nor reliable yet.

Yet, there is a great attraction to the idea of being able to access one's information no matter where one is in the world because it is on-line. It actually reminds me of an Anne McCaffrey story about "Silent Drums" ... who gets to take the information down when the individual dies and is the only one who had the access codes?

Yet another thought to add to the mix about 'cloud-computering"!

A 1960s tape recorder the size of a household fridge could be the key to unlocking valuable information from NASA's Apollo missions to the moon.

Seriously cool bananas. It was neat to realise that tapes had been found in Perth, but to think that a tape-recorder that might be able to read them exist in the same country is pretty amazing. Perhaps we will find a way to leave home before it gets too late?

Health - ninemsn.com.au

New research has found that, contrary to popular belief, bottling up your feelings after a traumatic event is better for you than 'letting it all out'.

Interesting that only now it has been validated by 'men in white coats' is the desire not to talk about bad things happening is seen as okay ... how the wheel turns! WW1 veterans returned and either could not or were not encouraged to talk about what had happened. Their sons in WW2 were more vocal in constructing the myth of their valour (all the movies helped, no doubt). Their grandsons in Korea and Vietnam finally started speaking out when they needed to though years down the track ... and now, their great-grandchildren are trying to work out why.

I don't think that it is actually the talk/not-talk dichotomy that is the problem. It's just that after a trauma, some people need to talk it out immediately, others need to think about it first, while others will stew before exploding. It's spotting those differences and working out and making it acceptable to ask for help to deal with those memories, especially for those who might explode later, that is needful.

It is never as clear cut as sometimes news reports would seem to paint it. Being traumatised is a messy business, it would therefore follow that healing from it would also be a messy business too.

New hope for diabetes sufferers

ABC News

Sophie Scott - Jun 7, 2008
The findings of an international study, led by Australian researchers, could improve the health of millions of patients with type two diabetes.

But were all options on how to reduce blood glucose levels canvassed, or was it only the use of drugs considered?
And what were the new reduced levels for blood sugar that are going to be recommended?

I find myself constantly baffled by the recommendations emanating from the medical profession on this topic, it makes it very hard to work out (without completely wigging out about the whole thing) what to do to improve one's situation.

Australia set to give the go-ahead for Creative Commons licensing

Michael Cross - February 14 2008

When you're dealing with a flooding emergency in the middle of the worst drought for many years, the last thing you need is barriers to the sharing of geographical and meteorological information.

Redundancy

by Barbara Quint
Editor, Searcher Magazine

The Searcher's Voice PodcastAs information professionals, we have two primary — not to say, primal — goals the pursuit of which qualifies us as a profession. One is access, guaranteeing that our clients, which some might define as encompassing the human race (a definition Second Lifers might consider unduly limiting), attain all the truth they can use. But an even more basic goal is the guaranteeing that all information in existence stays in existence, the command to archive.

Information With A Twist

5/15/2008 - Library Journal

Vendors keep the party going with Web 2.0
By Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, & Jill E. Grogg

Social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies led the social whirl of the information industry. Publishers and librarians tried to keep their products and services relevant by mixing authoritative content with user involvement, but that wasn't enough. Enhancing interfaces, adding new forms of content, and making strategic acquisitions—all are necessary to ensure that the information industry party continues.

The question is, to what extent can a one person library keep up to date and then leverage this stuff into providing a better library service for their clients? This is something I'm still wondering about, and part of the answer is, I think, providing a spotting service for new things and providing links and education for my clients.
*Warning - contemplation in progress*

Judges abandon wigs

for 'Star Trek' look -

May 14, 2008
"Star Trek" outfits ... The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Phillips, left, and Betty Jackson, right, present the new civil gown which forms part of a reform to simplify judicial court working dress in England and Wales.

"Star Trek" outfits ... The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Phillips, left, and Betty Jackson, right, present the new civil gown which forms part of a reform to simplify judicial court working dress in England and Wales.
Photo: AP
Advertisement

British judges abandoned a 300-year-old tradition of wearing horsehair wigs to a chorus of mockery from fashion critics and traditionalists, who say the new robes have turned them into Star Trek look-a-likes.

Is a cup of tea really the answer to everything-- even anthrax?

Is a cup of tea really the answer to everything -- even anthrax?

A cup of black tea could be the next line of defence in the threat of bio-terrorism according to new international research.
A new study by an international team of researchers from Cardiff University and University of Maryland has revealed how the humble cup of tea could well be an antidote to Bacillus anthracis –more commonly know as anthrax.

Boomerang returns, even in space - ABC News

21 March 2008
In an unprecedented experiment, a Japanese astronaut has thrown a boomerang in space and confirmed it flies back, much like on Earth.
Astronaut Takao Doi "threw a boomerang and saw it come back" during his free time on March 18 at the International Space Station (ISS), a spokeswoman at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

This is seriously neat! Not only is it a conformation that a boomarang works on a gyroscopic principle, but at that it holds under very different circumstances to those that hold were most people will try to use one. and the whole idea that an experiment to see if it would work is just the neatest thing with regards to basic science.

At one in the morning because I can't sleep, I think that is a great idea!

Is User-Generated Content Out?
I think this is one of those perenial questions that appear when a powerful group thinks it is under 'attack' by a 'less qualified' group.
Trouble is, some of the user-generated content I have been reading this last few years makes a heck of a lot more sense than some of the stuff coming from the previously respected gatekeepers of knowledge.