Knowledge Handler

Information Sources & Information Sifting Techniques

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Location: Independence, Ohio, United States

I am a retired librarian, most recently serving at Indiana Wesleyan University's Cleveland Education Center.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Twitter Is Becoming the New Facebook for Teens

Zack Miners cites a Pew study which indicates "Teens [Are] Growing Cool on Facebook but Warming to Twitter ."   Ned Potter notes that library bloggers seem to have abandoned blogging for Twitter.   Perhaps I should hang up my blog after 500 posts? Let me know. . . .

-DD

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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Google Drive Allows Mobile Character Recognition

Lucas Mearian reports that updates to Google Drive allow smartphone users to convert photos of documents into text . The conversion is actually done in Google Drive, eliminating the burden on the phone's processor. This functionality will allow text search of documents and receipts that have been decoded by optical character recognition.

-DD

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

The Ethics of Casual Endorsement

Paul McNamara cites lawyer Robert Ambrogi, who questions the ethics of casual endorsements on the reputation management site LinkedIn.

-DD

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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Changes In Educational Technology Since 1970

Maris Stansbury reflects on old educational technology in a short presentation. Colored chalk has been replaced with far more expensive methods of highlighting or isolating information.

-DD

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Monday, May 27, 2013

Chinese Search Engines

Baidu.com is the largest Chineese search engine. Michael Kan reports that Qihoo 360 is aggressively adding features to compete with the market leader. The interface for the Qihoo 360 search function looks remarkably like Google's basic search.

-DD

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Sunday, May 26, 2013

Data Scientist

Julia King notes the recent demand for data scientists . She explains what the job entails, and why so people have the skill to accomplish the responsibility.

-DD

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Saturday, May 25, 2013

Google+ Interface Change Dictates Behavior Change

J R Raphael notes that interface changes often change a product's behavior. In this case, he reflects on an interface change in Google+ that eliminated an auto-refresh behavior which he liked.   Contacts at Google said that the elimination of auto-refresh was deliberate, as the switch to a multiple column format would have text squirming around the screen with every refresh.

-DD

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Friday, May 24, 2013

Google Maps Updated

A Google employee shows the highlights of updates to Google Maps in the linked video.

-DD

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Cloud Services Can Be Ephemeral

Scott Bradner muses on the sometimes ephemeral nature of cloud services offered by Google and Microsoft.

-DD

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Anticipating the Future

Thornton A. May argues that it is vital to anticipate the future .

-DD

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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Google Services for Developers

Google announced new services for developers in this linked video.

-DD

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Monday, May 20, 2013

Access to Federal Data

Scott Bradner comments on the Federal requirement for open access

developed by the Obama administration. -DD

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Sunday, May 19, 2013

Impediments to Technology Deployment

Lucas Mearian shares why automotive technology is four years out of date.

-DD

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Ethernet's 40th Anniversary

Bob Metcalf talks about celebrating the 40th anniverary of ethernet . Metcalf invented ethernet when working at Xerox PARC.

-DD

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Google Search Options

Nick Barber demonstrates several advanced Google search techniques.

-DD

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Friday, May 17, 2013

YouTube Subscription Service

John Ribeiro notes that Google Plans a Video Subscription Service on YouTube.

-DD

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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Storytelling Apps and Web Sites

David Kapuler shares "50 Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling." Most of these tools target elementary students.

-DD

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Free Cloud Storage Providers

Ian Paul shares how you can "Supersize Your Free Cloud Storage to 100GB or More."   The suggested services and techniques may be of interest to consumers, but in my experience "free" services are ephemoral and not a reliable base for critical applications.

-DD

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Dangers of Too Much Documentation

Darlene Storm muses on how too much time documenting life may mean losing valuable memories. She derives her thoughts in large part from Damon Brown's book Our Virtual Shadow.

-DD

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Google Keep

Ian Paul recounts his experience with a new notetaking soluntion, Google Keep. If you have a Google account, you may experiment with the product yourself at https://drive.google.com/keep/u/0/.

-DD

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Monday, May 13, 2013

Malware Placed On Department of Labor Site

Jeremy Kirk reports that the U.S. Department of Labor Website [Was] Infected with Malware. The Chinese malware attacks computers visiting the site, and infects visitors even if they do not click a link on the site.

-DD

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Sunday, May 12, 2013

What Customers Think About the Academic Library

Lorraine Haricombe and Cathy De Rosa presented on "Parents, Alumni and Libraries: What our customers really believe about the library."

 

 

-DD

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Face Recognition

Face recognition software is possibly being tested at national parks, including the statue of liberty.

-DD

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Saturday, May 11, 2013

SkyLIB: A Site for Sharing Material Objects

SkyLIB is a site that promotes the lending of material objects such as books, videos, furniture and so forth. The site is currently in beta.

Johanna Ambrosio shares more information about this startup, including a short video clip on its founder's vision.

-DD

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Spying Using the Internet of Things

Kevin Fogarty reports on the security problems that make up the "Dark Side of the Internet of Things ." With cameras and other devices being connected to the Internet, black hat cyberspys have access to supposedly private areas and devices.

-DD

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Friday, May 10, 2013

Online Services

Peter Wayner shared Twelve APIs Every Programmer Should Know About. Online resources discussed include maps, directories, and catalogs.

-DD

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School of the Air

Susan Matt and Luke Fernandez examine how before MOOCs there were "Colleges of the Air" which provided students with course content by radio.

Comments noted that while the radio courses disappeared in the U.S. by the 1950's, in Australia the broadcasting of education by radio has a long and continuing history, as Elaine Lopes described in her research proposal literature review.

-DD

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Thursday, May 09, 2013

Teaching Trumps Technology

Library Girl (Jennifer LaGarde) shares Important Questions to Ask Faculty. Knowing what the teacher wants to accomplish is more valuable than having the latest technology.

-DD

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Four Pillars of Data Visualization

In a video Noah Illinsky shares about four pillars data visualization. Illinsky says visualization is important because pattern matching is built into the human brain, so images speed retrieval. His four pillars for all communication are:

  1. Purpose
  2. Content
  3. Structure, and
  4. Formatting.

 

-DD

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Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Course Evaluation By Students

Brian Croxall suggests that course evaluations consisting of student letters to the upcoming crop of students might be less biased than an evaluation addressed directly to the professor.

-DD

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Phishing Tactics

Ellen Messmer describes "Phishing Tactics and How Attackers Get Away With It."   This report is full of statistics about the volume and nationality of phishing attacks.

-DD

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Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Big Data Will Save Your Life

Lucas Mearian reports that soon big data will save your life.

-DD

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Bias In Google Search Results

Google search ranking starves those who are not clients according to Jeremy Kirk.

-DD

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Monday, May 06, 2013

LightLibrary

LightLibrary.com is a service selling e-books at a discounted rate to individuals who already own the paper copy.   Amazon AutoRip is a parallel idea, which makes available MP3 versions of all music purchased from Amazon.

 

-DD

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Software Management and Documentation

Mary K. Pratt shares how even open source software requires documentation and management. The software may appear to be free, but licensing restrictions may restrict deployment. And a roster of available software can be useful.

-DD

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Collaboration Tools

In 2010 NetWorkWorld ran a list of "Fifteen Free Enterprise Collaboration Tools."   This has now been followed up with  Three Tips to Get a Payoff From Collaboration Tools, penned by three CIOs who briefly record their experiences with such products.  

-DD

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Sunday, May 05, 2013

OCLS Library Spotlight

The OCLS Library Spotlight Program provides a template which allows library locations to be listed on online maps. It is also supposed to provide functionality for creation of a Web app with hours as well as the location information.

-DD

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Data Sharing

Neil Savage provides examples of how government agencies and various non-profits may share their data with the world.   The development of a simple application programming interface is key to these sharing efforts, according to Savage.

-DD

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Cloud Storage Tips

Rick Broida shares "21 Tips for Supercharging your Cloud Storage." Many of these tips are for the saavy end-user, who might be synching a Google+ data with DropBox.

-DD

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Saturday, May 04, 2013

Misleading Laws

Misleading Laws is a website that publicizes legislation which has been christened with a title that seems designed to promote passage and NOT to reflect the true impact of the bill.

-DD

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When Not To Use Google

Ann Smarty recently posted her ideas on "What NOT to Use Google Search For."

-DD

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Friday, May 03, 2013

Google Plans To Include Office Document Viewer In Chrome Browser

Gregg Keizer notes that "Google Adds In-Browser Office Doc Viewing to Chrome."   This is a beta feature, reportedly only available to users of Chrome 27 or higher.   This reader serves the same function as the Microsoft Office viewers available for years from the Microsoft website.

-DD

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Apps for Small Business

Jeff Vance of Network World shares his thoughts about technology applications which might power a small business.

-DD

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Thursday, May 02, 2013

Censorship Requests Are Up At Google

Zach Miners & Richi Jennings note that censorship requests made to Google are on the rise. This may indicate that officials are becoming aware that they can request Google not index certain content, thus making the information difficult or impossible to retrieve without knowing the URL where the document is hosted.

-DD

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College and Research Libraries Archive

An archive of all issues of College and Research Libraries is now available from the years 1939 to the present.

-DD

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Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Effectiveness

According to Barbara Bartlein "Workers Average 3 Productive Days Per Week ." Procrastination and communication issues are the biggest time wasters, according to her statistics.

-DD

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Government Board Business In The Digital Age

In her article "School Board Transparency a Challenge in Digital Age" Nora Fleming discusses how government meeting law is causing challenges for handling organizational information.

-DD

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