Library Tech Confidential

Much digital ink has been spilled about the lack of unlimited data plans for the iPhone on Rogers & Fido 3G mobile networks in Canada.  I worried that the 1gb iPhone data plan @ $30/mo would prove too restrictive for my needs, but couldn’t justify ponying up for a more capacious plan at the outset. Take a look at my first month’s data usage in the graphs below (the second with a logarithmic scale to more clearly illustrate daily data):

I’ve just barely broken the 10% threshold! For now, at least, it seems that 1gb/mo is plenty given that at half of the time I’m using the iPhone on my home WiFi network. Perhaps as I begin to more fully integrate the device into my various quotidian information seeking routines I’ll start to push its limits… but I’m no longer too concerned.

Library Playground, which I noticed thanks to a trackback commenting on a previous post here, has a really handy RSS feed of Canadian Library Technician jobs derived from a variety of job posting sites from across the country. There’s also a Facebook app version available (if you’re into that kind of thing).

I’ve just added the feed to my NetVibes account so as to keep an eye on the job market for curiosity’s sake.  This could have saved me an awful lot of obsessive bookmark-checking when I was last looking for work, as most of the sites I consulted on a daily basis are included in this mashup.

I’m actually using my iPod Touch to compose this post, but the Wordpress app is the same. Not bad!

As is often the case with text-heavy programs, though, it suffers from the lack horizontal (i.e. landscape mode) keyboard. Why, developers? Why?

No iPhone means no camera, so to test the image function I’ve taken these interface screenshots:

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I was going to be spend my Saturday at the MaRS Centre attending participating in Metronauts’ Transit Camp un-conference, but unfortunately I didn’t feel well this morning. What’s an un-conference, you ask? Here’s how they describe it:

…participants create the content of the sessions throughout the day. The event structure is open and fueled by participation. Propose a session on a topic you’re passionate about and engage your fellow participants in conversation. Participation can also mean active listening, and recording of sessions, but there are no observers. Participants are asked to sign the Metronauts Pledge as a commitment to help create a positive environment for everyone.

While much of the pledge basically boils down to ‘play nice with others’, the following bit is truly fascinating:

3. You agree that all materials (text, photography, videos, etc.) and design artifacts posted to this website for which you own the rights shall be covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license.

I’ve warmed up to the idea of assigning ‘open’ licenses to certain kinds of IP after the fact - photos posted to Flickr, say - but had never encountered the idea of promising to do so beforehand. This makes perfect sense for a semi-public gathering of like-minded activist/enthusiasts, especially given that this conference is meant to generate useful ideas for Metrolinx, a public body charged with coordinating public transit across the GTA. It also strikes me as vastly preferable to increasingly common, massive, dense, super-legalese, sketchy click-through EULAs from various online services that insist users assign unlimited, irrevocable, worldwide commercial rights to all content uploaded to the service.

Update: If you’re curious, notes and other information from today’s event are available via Metronauts’ wiki. Spacing’s coverage is also worth checking out.

Reviewing John Broughton’s Wikipedia: The Missing Manual in The New York Review of Books, Nicholson Baker hilariously describes that mightiest of social media reference work free-for-alls as follows:

It’s like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks. [read more]

[via Library Juice]

Poking around the Royal Ontario Museum’s website in preparation for a visit to Darwin: The Evolution Revolution, I discovered the freely downloadable Director’s Choice Audio Tour. If you’re into that sort of thing, loading this onto your iPod or other MP3 player before a visit to the ROM will save you the $5.00 audio tour rental fee (check out their podcasts, too).

A few days ago I posted about my increasing expectation that any and all content streams will be available by RSS. I was treated to further proof of my over-reliance on feeds this morning when Netvibes, my aggregator of choice, was down during breakfast.

Lately I’ve been checking Netvibes in lieu of a morning paper (though I do hit several local and non-local newspaper feeds that way) and, today, it felt exactly as though my morning paper had gone mysteriously missing. I was utterly lost.

It’s just not possible to skim the web-based version of a newspaper as you would in print; with a good feed reader and well-implemented feeds, however, it’s possible to approximate the balance between the capacity to see everything briefly at the level of headlines and ledes without overwhelming the user, while maintaining the ability to easily drill down to the content of whole articles you’re interested in.

Another lesson here is that dependence on web-based applications is risky, and that maintaining a failover option (an alternate web-based service or, gasp, a desktop-based application) is crucial for critical tasks.

You know, mission-critical tasks… like having something to read while you do the ‘ol bagel-and-coffee morning ‘nutrition’ routine.

My feed addiction has gotten to the point where I’m deeply disappointed when any given stream of content available on a database-driven website isn’t being pushed out via RSS or Atom in every conceivable circumstance… or, increasingly, when it’s only pushed out in one particular way (i.e. all posts) and cannot be customized by category.

Heck, even if your site is nothing but static HTML pages, you can hand code a bare-bones RSS feed with minimal additional effort and add significant value for your target audience. But if you’re using any modern CMS it ought to be a breeze.

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… or has it jumped the shark?

Fiddling around on Canadian Tire’s website, I discovered that they’ve built Facebook, Digg, and del.icio.us buttons into each and every product page. Just in time for giftmas, I suppose. Observe:

Presumably this feature was added because their web team is as enthusiastic as I am about social bookmarking, not because retail consumers were angrily clamouring for them. I can see the argument for adding this to the library OPAC, as well: it’s not likely to take the web by storm, but every little bit of exposure helps.

As an aside, it’s interesting to note that each site seems to select a different mix of bookmarking sites. A few examples: Toronto Star (Digg, Facebook, del.icio.us), New York Times (del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Newsvine), Globe and Mail (del.iciou.us, Magnolia, Digg, Newsvine, plus Technorati).

Today I discovered this excellent YouTube video via TechCrunch, which is a must-see for information professionals in search of an engaging way to open a discussion about emerging technologies and information management with a non-specialist, non-enthusiast, or whomever else for that matter.

I’d love to embed the video here, but for some reason the YouTube code breaks this blog’s template.

Oh my. TPLfinder, my Google map of Toronto Public Library branches, found its way onto nerd-web uber-blog BoingBoing today, via a roundup of other Toronto-oriented maps on BlogTO. I can’t wait to play around with all of them.

The BoingBoing post wasn’t just a quick mention, but a screen capture! Hopefully I won’t be choking on an absurd bandwidth bill before sunset…

LibraryThing has released UnSuggester, “the worst recommendation system ever devisedâ„¢.”