Video from Drupalcamp in Stockholm Sweden May 29-30 2009

I attended the Drupalcamp in Stockholm, Sweden, last weekend and most funny was the Drupal puppy. Watch this Video ’cause it’s awesome:

Update: You’ll also find it at the Nodeone blog.

Launch prototype of Crunchpad lightweight web tablet

The launch prototype of the lightweight web tablet Crunchpad is now possible to get a view of at TechCrunch. The CrunchPad project started in July 2008 and was created by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, Louis Monier and Singapore based design studio FusionGarage.

Zoli Erdos at Cloudave says:

“…I want my CrunchPad slim, lightweight, with just a flash drive, good enough screen and memory to quickly pull up a browser and nothing else: everything else is in the Cloud”.

I agree, but I wonder if it’s suitable for reading offline ebooks also?

Microblogs like Twitter in organizations and enterprises

I’m working with conferences and web in a Swedish organization for information specialists: SFIS.nu and it’s an emerging debate about using social media and especially microblogs for sending out information. Last autumn at SFIS autumn conference 2008 I used Jaiku for sending out information and news about new speakers and so on. An evaluation afterwards showed that at least one person registered for the conference when getting the information in Jaiku.

The other day I read a blog post by Fredrik Wass at Bisonblog about personalization of Twitter-profiles from organization and enterprises.

His example is from Bay to Breakers in San Francisco using Twitter. Amy Johnson with the usernamne INGB2Bbreakers added him in Twitter and he also started to follow Amy. According to Fredrik the follwing twittering from Amy showed that it worked out very well to combine the organization with the person and he felt it more genuine to have contact with a real person (even if it’s hard to check the real existence of Amy). He summarizes (my simple translation;-):

“This shows how PR at Twitter should work. I as customer or just interested is twittering about the enterprise/organization. They find me and react to my message, without pushing a product. When I show my interest they have a real person answering my questions”.

I recieved a Twitter follow message from Headweb the other day.

I like Headweb. They are doing great non-DRM things and they care even for linux users. But first I thought this is just another unpersonalized Twitter-sending-out-some-stereotype-press-releases -prepared-by-a-PR-firm. But checking the Profile I got a name behind Headweb: Peter Alvarsson. No photo? Ok, it’s up to Peter, but I’m now a follower of Headweb Twitter-profile and I know I will buy something from Headweb in the future.

Ubuntu 9.04 booting in 17.5 seconds, according to MattCutts

According to Matt Cutts at Google Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope is booting in 17.5 seconds (from pressing power to Firefox excluding 5 seconds for BIOS display on a Thinkpad) with SSD hard-drive Intel X25-E Extreme. Look at his live documentation at YouTube:

And if you let Windows 7 compete with Jaunty Jackalope Ubuntu 9.04 (this video is not from Matt Cutts!):

Today Daniel Forsman at Jönköping University Library is talking at the conference Computers in Libraries 2009 (abr. CIL 2009) in Arlington, Virginia, U.S.

I just been looking up some documentation of the conference and found the Twitterstream at hashtag #CIL2009.

An interview at Vimeo with Lee Rainie from Pew Internet with interviewer Jaap van De Geer:

If more interesting documentation from CIL 2009 just make a note of it in the commentary section.

Tim Bernes-Lee about semantic web, raw data and linked data

I hope you haven’t missed Tim Berners-Lee prophetical talk at Ted.com about the semantic web, raw data and linked data. The title of his speech is: “The next Web of open, linked data“:

I couldn’t neglect to show a slide from his talk in my own talk with Lars Våge about the semantic web (swe. semantiska webben) and web 3.0 which subject is the next hype lecture topic in the library and information specialist branch.

The meaning of social network sites for libraries

I haven’t studied the literature about social network sites much and libraries but I stumbled on this article: Academic Libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and Student Outreach: A Survey of Student Opinion by Ruth Sara Connell in portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2009), pp. 25–36.

The Valparaiso University Library, outside Chicago, surveyed 366 first-year students during January-February 2008: “…to discover their feelings about librarians using Facebook and MySpace as outreach tools”. Here’s a conclusion extracted from the article abstract:”Most indicated that they would be accepting of library contact through those Web sites, but a sizable minority reacted negatively to the concept. Because of the potential to infringe on students’ sense of personal privacy, it is recommended that librarians proceed with caution when implementing online social network profiles”.

The students were asked if they had a profile on Facebook (338 out of 366) and MySpace (151 of 366). 190 had Facebook but not MySpace and 145 had both. They were asked if they would add the library or librarian as a friend. The majority of respondents (211 or 57.7 percent) said that they would not be proactive about it, but if the library friended them, they would accept the friend invitation.

The were also asked: “how would you feel if the library tried to send you announcements and communicate with you via Facebook and/or MySpace?” More students (156 of 366) answered that they would be more receptive to information received in this way than any other response. The second most commonly given answer (134 or 36.6 percent) was that “I would not pay attention but not mind this communication.”

Other comments from the survey, negative and positive:

“I think this is a really good idea because students check Facebook and MySpace before Groupwise campus e-mail system…”

“It’s probably not worth your time unless the library does new and exciting things”.

“Facebook is to stay in touch with friends or teachers from the past. E-mail is for
announcements. Stick with that!!!”

Beside of the Valparaiso survey the article is a nice review of some of the literature within the subject. Here is some extracts:

“Students are far less concerned with privacy than many librarians assume they are”. Source: Daniel Mack et al., “Reaching Students with Facebook: Data and Best Practices,” Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship 8, 2 (Summer 2007),

“A big difference exists between being where our patrons are and being
useful to our patrons where they are. A profile should be designed to offer something
to patrons, so they will keep coming back to it.” Source: Meredith Farkas, Social Software in Libraries (Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc., 2007).

When reading this interesting article I thought of the very small survey we made the Umeå University Library in spring 2007, before the Facebook-fever outreach, asking library visting students randomly about their thoughts of the library website building their own web 2.0 services like recommendation tools, forums, private profiles etc. (like the pioneering web 2.0 library at the public library of Umeå).

Nearly every respondent, it was a VERY small survey though, didn’t see any meaning for the library to build their own web 2.0 applications, though some kind of personalization was appriciated like save my search history, my journals and databases.

OCLC and their future in Sweden

Actually, I’m quite new to what OCLC can offer libraries in Sweden. Though I think the step from LIBRIS Sweden to OCLC the world (or should I say U.S.?) has it’s possibilities. I’ve always thought every possibility for the Swedish libraries to cooperate outside the Swedish frontiers is good and should also be a goal in itself. But of course we can’t sell our souls.

Daniel Forsman, one of the most progressive librarians working with the Digital Library concept in Sweden, has written about the OCLC question at Betabib swedish librarian blog. I just discovered Jeffrey Beall, Metadata librarian and Assistant Professor, Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, when I searched articles about Dublin Core when preparing a lecture for BIV. His great article was: “Dublin core: an obituary“. I also found articles about the weaknesses with fulltext searching. Great, I still fight against Googlealgoguys and propagate for metadata and thesauri and his articles gives me some petrol.

I also found an article about OCLC he wrote last year and meantioned it for Daniel. Then also found Rick Mason’s blog post where he opposes Jeffrey. I haven’t dived into this discussion yet but I will because since 1 December 2008 I’m working for the web team at the Digital Library department at Umeå University Library and this important issuses for swedish digital libraries.

I will just translate some of Daniels thoughts from his blogpost at his swedish blog Betabib:

“I’m an eager proponent of sharing our data in as many places as possible and OCLC is a player in the market we can’t ignore. If it’s primarily about giving our users better access to a big amount of bibliographic records it seems WorldCat is better than for example LIBRIS. If you count records. But sure if you give, you should get some repay and when it comes to repaying I think OCLC have things to work on. For example I think it’s obviously that we should have access to the OCLC API for WolrdCat if our items are registered there”.

Here you can find information about: “National Library of Sweden and OCLC networking event“. The discussion is only in it’s infancy, at least in Sweden ;-)

Update: Check out the 10 minute video:”WorldCat Local: All of Your Library’s Content in One Search Box“.

Canonical link element solves duplicate content problem

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have all together launched a tag for solving problems with duplicate content. Instead of an ugly link something like this http://www.example.com/page.html?sid=asdf31415ihijkjuk454 you can use this in your code, in the HEAD part, to point out the canonical link:

<link rel=”canonical” value=”http://example.com/page.html”/>

Read about duplicate links at Google Webmaster Central blog, Yahoo Search blog, Live Search Webmaster Center blog. You also have a help instruction about canonical pages at Google help.

The value of click-stream data derived from toolbars

Reading Greg Lindens blog is always pleasent if you want to dive deeper in the knowledge of search engines. In his last post he refers to an article by Jan O. Pedersen et al at Yahoo! called “Making sense of search result pages” [PDF] (published in a academic digital archive, not a peer-reviewed journal).

“Search engine query logs only reflect a small slice of user behavior – actions taken on the search results page. A more complete picture would include the entire click stream; search result page clicks as well as offsite follow-on actions”.

Yes, I’ve always been critical to the importance of query log data and click-stream data is of course a good expansion to quantitative studies on search beahvior. But, I think the heavy dependency on this kind of quantitative data is just an expression of the laziness of search engines to not use more qualitative research methods. For example naturlistic inquiry. Yes, it’s not possible to get data from as many users as in query log analysis, but I think the mix is important. Actually, I’m not quite sure how much qualitative reasearch search engines do today but among usability engineers it’s a matter of course.

But Pedersen also comment eye tracking:

“Ultimately a direct measurement of what the user perceives on a search results page would be most useful. A closely proxy of this ideal is measuring eye movement and fixations across the page followed by user interviews. Aggregate measures reveal which page elements get the greatest attention, while tracking individual sessions is very revealing about scanning behavior”.

User interviews! Good qualitative research, but not always easy. But remember what Jared Spool said about eye tracking in: “Eyetracking: worth the expense?“.

More of mixing quantitative data with qualitative in web search behavior research. This scientific field is overwhelmed by query log analysis papers.

Employer attitudes to social media

I often hear from library collegaues working at company libraries or some governmental libraries that: “we’re not allowed to use this or that web appplication because…” Yes, because what?

Just read a great column in a recent Econtent magazine issue with title: “Trust Your Employees (Or Fire Them)”, written by David Meerman Scott. Great readings! He says:

“I estimate that more than 25% of companies block employee access to YouTube, Facebook, and other social networking sites”.

What I heard from people I met they can’t use for example Skype, Gmail, Facebook, not even allowed to install anything else than what the data technician are allowed to install of all that property software, so goodbye Google Earth, Skype etc. etc. So, what are the reasons. David lists four reasons. Often people don’t know the reason and if they know they always say it’s because of security issues. Reason 2 in David’s article. But actually I think it’s often because employer’s think it’s a drain to productivity (reason 1), though blame it on security issues and that way puts the responsibility to argue with employees at the IT department. Exactly as David points out:

“I think the big issue here is really one of trust, and the things listed by company representatives as dangers are just excuses”.

Gosh, I must give my employer at Umeå university a big hug! I don’t know since how long I have been allowed to install software, allowed to use any social media site I prefer. Because of this possibility I very early for example was able to evaluate Facebook (and then block all what I think stupid applications), switch to tremendous Gmail (with splendid IMAP) that saved so much time for my e-mail managing no other e-mail client or service ever did, Skyping fast, easy, cheap with headset, I’ve discovered the golden power of microblogging for information sharing.

That’s why I’m able to have talks and workshops for these retricting companies telling them about the power of social media and other usable web applications. They look at me like they were farmers still using horses, trying to understand tractors which their landlord block them to try.

To worried employer’s David says:

“My recommendation to organizations is simple: Develop guidelines about what employees can and cannot do at work”.

To irritated employees David says:

“If you’re an employee who works for a company that blocks access, I suggest you become an agent of change. Give your bosses a copy of this column”.

Forthcoming book about Google Scholar and its competitors

Just read the autumn catalogue from Chandos Publishing and did find a forthcoming book (June 2009) with title:”Google Scholar and its competitors” written by professor Ingrid Hsieh-Yee.  From the description of the book I cut:

“…the book assesses studies of Google Scholar and the library community’s reactions to this tool. It also explores the implications of Google Scholar and its competitors for information seekers and libraries”.

Will be intresting to read the book because of my earlier evaluations of Google Scholar at One Entry to Research.

New collection of poems by swedish poet Bruno K. Öijer

Well, this blog post is far beyond what I usually write about here, but when my favourite swedish poet Bruno K. Öijer today is publishing a new collection of poems I must tell my readers about it.  The book is called “Black as silver”. You can read his translated poem “I thought someone came” [PDF].

Here’s a translation of today’s review of “Black as silver” in Dagens Nyheter.

Wikipedia created by teenage male computer nerds

Martin Cohen, philosophy lecturer and editor of The Philosopher, writes in Times Higher Education 28 Aug 2008 about Wikipedia and calls it encyclopedia Idiotica and says it’s created mostly by teenage male computer nerds.

“Journalists doing research turn to Wikipedia. Students write essays based on its entries. Professors grab lecture notes from it”.

Yes, beside of students I also see to many journalists using Wikipeda as a source. It’s sometimes okay if it’s not that kind of “trivial” subjects like hockey. In this swedish news article from NWT.se they refer to the Butterfly style. Okay for me. But here in Dalarnas Tidningar they refer to an author entry in Wikipedia and here in Helagotland.se they refer to a wikipedia entry on Creosote.

Martin Cohen has similar statements as Wikipedia critics like Andrew Keen and Tara Brabazon:

“Wikipedia’s version of reality has already become a monopoly. And all the prejudices and ignorance of its creators are imposed too”.

And he also finds doubtful information in Wikipedia entries:

“…on Wikipedia we must learn that Mao’s political philosophy is essentially the use of violence to suppress dissent, that Socrates was “Plato’s teacher” who left behind “not very many” writings, and that Hitler greatly admired Russian Communism, saying: “The whole of National Socialism is based on it.”

And the most terrible in Wikipedia is the way of referring to sources:

“Because, on Wikipedia, knowledge is tracked instantly via Google searches, online newspapers and other internet encyclopaedias, not so much by consulting primary sources as ‘tertiary sources’ – other internet sites”.

So, what do I think about Wikipedia. It’s a great tool for finding information, not knowledge, fast and get on further in your research.

It’s not a great tool to use as it was a primary source and a source to refer to, especially by journalists.

Many, many Wikipedia entries has terrible references. Often it’s not primary sources and often it’s biased sources.

Journalists, students, professors should use Wikipedia, but not as a single source and not as something you can refer to as a source, doesn’t matter if it’s a news article, paper, thesis or dissertation you’re writing on.

Leksikon.org discussed in Denmark

Jack Andersen, lecturer at Danmarks biblioteksskole, discussed in his blog in April this year the Danish free webencyclopedia Leksikon.org, on the grounds of an article published in Weekendavisen March 19-27 this year [PDF].

According to the article and Danish Wikipedia the encyclopedia is left-minded and was established by left wing parties Enhedslisten and Venstresocialisterne. They call their encyclopedia for The encyclopedia for the 21th century and explain their motives sincerely on their website: Can we trust the Internet?.

“It’s always the winners that write the history. That’s why encyclopedias nearly always are published by well-established publishers. Now where doing an exception! The encyclopedia for the 21th century is an alternative Danish encyclopedia which a bigger circuit of authors been updating since 1998″.

Jack is critizing the WA article because it seems they are assuming that encyclopedias are neutral. This is what leksikon.org says about being neutral.

“The encyclopedia is not neutral, because the neutral is not existing. Instead we try to present varoius bids and interpretations of the ideas explained. The reader doesn’t get an explanation but several. In that way it’s not dogmatic and for that reason our motto is; be in doubt of everything”.

Jack says in his blog again:

“It’s important to put the search engines, the encyclopedias and databases and their cultural context in the public eye”.

Also read the Jack Andersen column in Berlingske Tidene 26 August 2007 with title: Can we trust the Internet? Or use Google Translate for an english translation.

Leksikon.org has taken inspiration from the Norwegian encyclopedia Pax Leksikon.