j's scratchpad

I might not have been able to tell you much about Google Book Search last week, but Garrett pointed me to a New Yorker article about the effort to build a database of books.

In his weekly newsletter, Garrett points out this OEDb article listing 25 search engines specializing in Web 2.0. Nifty!

Shimon wrote a personal summary about attending BarCamp because he, like me, had someone ask him why s/he should go.
I agree with most of what Shimon wrote, but I want to add that it’s equally valuable to connect to people you already know. One of the fun aspects of BarCamp for me is learning more [...]

Noam Cohen uses the Middlebury College history department ban on Wikipedia in a New York Times article to frame a discussion about academic coursework contributing either directly or indirectly to Wikipedia’s contents.
Cohen includes a quote by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales that relates to other discussions people have had about college students citing encyclopedias:
“Basically, they are [...]

A friend of mine has decided to dismantle my action figure librarian to see if he can fix her sticky “amazing push-button shushing action” and all I can do is watch in horror and curiosity.
PS–Don’t worry. The action figure is fine. And her push-buttons shushing action is as amazing as ever.

Dave Winer is in the Boston area this weekend. The blog group is having dim sum with him on Sunday (2/25) at 1 pm at Chau Chow City, 83 Essex Street, Chinatown. RSVP

I’ve mentioned library cats in this space before. How about library camels? The, uh, grapevine* pointed me to this post about a library system in Kenya that uses camels for bookmobiles.
*I was happy to credit the person who pointed me to the post, but the person prefers that I just say I learned about it [...]

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how I’ve been blogging for about four years and, oh my gosh, where has the time gone and how many hours days weeks of cumulative time I’ve racked up blogging. I walk into blog group tonight for the first time in a while (See? Keeping the [...]

Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard
**Special Event**
Wednesday, February 21, 2007; 7:00pm
Location: Biolabs Room 1068, 16 Divinity Avenue
 http://map.harvard.edu/level3.cfm?mapnam…
Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and
Computer Science, and Senior Critic in the School of Art at Yale
Title of Talk:
An Academic and Otherwise Life, An N = 1.
Abstract
Edward Tufte will talk about his education and careers in [...]

Tuesday’s Boston Globe is reporting that the Google Desktop was opened to cross-site scripting attacks, allowing  an attacker to place malicious code on a Google Desktop user’s computer.  The attack would have gone undetected by firewalls or antivirus software according to the article.  A Google spokesman said the program gets automatically updated so users don’t [...]