Podcast Watch

Listening to the podcast On the Media, which is out of WNYC, the public radio station of New York City, would probably be a good bet each week, because their topics often merge with topics related to librarianship. However, sometimes they hit librarianship more directly, as they did on their past show: The Past, Present, and Future of Books.

Website of the Day

Andrew Sullivan's blog The Daily Dish is one of my favorite news sources. His readers regularly send in photos taken from windows and these photos are shared on the blog with the heading, The View From Your Window with the location and time listed below the photo. Now The Atlantic (which Andrew Sullivan works for) has collected a portion of these photos into a book. Sullivan provided a link to blurb.com, where you can create your own books. You can also page through books like you would a physical book. It's the first time I've ever been to the website, and it's pretty cool. For a sample, here's a link to the Atlantic book The View From Your Window.

Continuing Evidence

...that the eReader is not a fad: Barnes & Nobles' Nook has sold out. Really, it shows a problem with production and distribution, but eReaders are desirable gifts. The Kindle is only about two years old, and there's already a swell in competition and attention. It's not changing the culture as fast as the iPod, but it's changing things.

Word-of-Mouth

People have been sharing hilarious bits of viral culture with me lately, showing how the Internet helps word-of-mouth campaigns and vice versa. YouTube has played a prominent role, as has Amazon, two titans of 2.0. People will often ask: "Where did you find out about this?" and I say, "People told me about it," just like I told them. Every bit (especially the oozinator and the shake weight) has elicited tearful laughter or stress relief. That doesn't go unshared.








Check out how many reviews this t-shirt has.

Website of the Day

In class today we talked about the advantages of presenting a single box search to users over the multiple boxes of most library search engines. Dartmouth college has adopted the single box search using Summon. I don't entirely understand how to describe it, so I think you should just take a look for yourself.

Article of the Day

I have an iPhone now, in addition to my Kindle. I read my iPhone on the bus, and my Kindle at night. I realized yesterday morning when I had a half hour before my class started that I was reading my iPhone at College Library, rather than just using a computer. So I went an used a computer, mainly because it's novel for me to read the news on such a large screen. Some people have asked if it's hard to read the iPhone when the writing is so small, but I haven't found it to be difficult. I wouldn't want to do it for a long period of time, or read a novel on it, but it's fine for bus rides.

An article ("Library in a Pocket") in the NY Times today discusses smart phones vs. e-readers.

With Amazon’s Kindle, readers can squeeze hundreds of books into a device that is smaller than most hardcovers. For some, that’s not small enough.

Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already in their pockets — bringing a whole new meaning to “phone book.” And they like that they can save the $250 to $350 that they would otherwise spend on yet another gadget.

Read the full article here.

Website of the Day

I'm not totally sold on flickchart.com, but it's definitely addicting when you start. The major drawback is that there aren't enough movies cataloged yet, so if your tastes range into more obscure areas, you'll find yourself getting frustrated.