Monday, 16 September, 2002

the perils of Radio blogging with IE 6 and a multi-button mouse I found this AnchorDesk article, "What Apple could learn from MS about mice" to be very interesting. I take issue with the premise that all is well with Microsoft mice and all is backward with Apple's. At work I use a Windows 2000 machine with the 5 button optical mouse. I both love and hate this mouse. I love its scroll wheel, left button, plus the two extra buttons which I can use to quickly go backward and forward when browsing the web - note, only on IE, not Netscape or Opera. On more than one occasion I have wished to sling this naughty mouse onto the upper limbs of the maple tree just outside my window - but my windows don't open. It is so easy to hit the back button, and sometimes this can have the most annoying consequences. Most notably when I have written 99% of a long rant for this blog. If I accidentally hit the back button, eveything but the title & categories will get lost! There are several different levels to this problem. 1, the mouse makes it very easy to accidentally hit the IE back button. 2, IE seems to read a normal right click and pressing backspace as hitting the back button - something which can happen quite easily if you're fixing up a typo at the beginning on your posting. 3, I've never had this problem in LiveJournal, so there must be something in Radio's software which exaccerbates this problem. The only sure solutions would be to switch browsers or draft everything in a word processor before hand - both are inconvenient in their own ways. Of course, if I maintained this blog from home where I use Mac OS 10.2 and the standard Mac optical mouse, I wouldn't have any of these problems. Not only am I a Mac user in a Windows world, but I'm a left hander in a right hander's world. In Windows, I have switched my mouse buttons around because it usually works better for me. It freaks out tech support people who are working on my computer. It also causes me to be confused when I am using Windows computers with the normal right-handed configuration. On the Mac mouse, you don't have to worry whether you're pressing the left or right mouse button because the whole mouse is a button. I think this works out to be much better ergonomically than needing to do repetitive minute finger movements to hit the correct button on the 5 button mouse. There's also no way that a Mac user will ever confuse the normal click with the very deliberate control-click for the contextual menu. I admit that I really miss the scroll wheel. I can solve this problem by turning on the Mac's voice recognition - but it only works if I talk in an American accent and shut the music off. 4:56:31 PM    comment []

but what if the internet & the library are not totally separate / mutually exclusive? Student Use of the Internet. "75 percent of college students say they use the Internet more than they use the library to look for information; just 9 percent said they used the library more." New York Times [TVC Alert] I know that I've been posting a lot from TVC today, but there was no way that I could miss this. I would like to know how this survey defined "internet" and "library." If a student searches databases provided by the library from his dorm room, is he using the library or the internet? What if a different student starts her web searching from the library's web site? Do we take an expansive view of the (exploded) library or a narrow view - where using the library is limited to entering the physical space and using books or microfiche? 4:10:54 PM    comment []

Daypop Daypop Not Working. Daypop features a message on the home page today, indicating that the engine is out of disk space. [TVC Alert] This is so annoying - just when I was going to write about how helpful Daypop was for finding blogs. 3:48:03 PM    comment []

Popout Prism New Search Visualization Technique. A new search visualization technique helps searchers find relevant information faster. [TVC Alert] I was very curious to test this out. I wondered how much it would cost to use after the 90 day trial and whether it could possibly be useful. I find highlight feature on the Google toolbar to be very helpful for skimming through search results. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test this out. This software needs the Java Runtime Environment 1.3. I'm currently using JRE 1.4. Maybe there's a way of sorting this out without mucking up my other JRE programs (Innovative Interfaces Millennium, Opera, Botbox), but I'm discouraged at this point... :-( 3:46:24 PM    comment []

something that will get much worse before it gets better Bundled Journals No Deal for Libraries. Restrictions make journals bundling deals unpopular with academic libraries. [TVC Alert] 3:32:56 PM    comment []

information overload & publicizing books Bribes, threats and naked readings. In a world where more and more new books get less and less attention, authors will do anything to promote their work. [Salon Headlines] Compounding the problem are all the competing media -- the Internet, movies, radio, television and other modern diversions. It has become more difficult for publicity departments, let alone authors, to make an impact. "The biggest change in publicity now is that to reach the same number of readers you need more publicity," says Paul Bogaards, senior vice president and executive director of publicity at Knopf. "Before, a few central thrusts could help launch a book. Now the question is, how much the publicist needs to do to break through the noise of our culture." ... Yardley says that the relationship between publicity and marketing departments, and reviewers and book editors -- with whom critics like Yardley have regular contact -- is a useful business relationship that acts as a sort of test, or "a sieve, a filter, to the process" of selecting which books to cover. With self-publishing, the only test the book has to pass is whether its author's check clears. "It's a real problem because more books are coming at us," Yardley says. "They haven't passed any test. And the question is, 'Do you have enough time to filter through all these?' The answer is no ... As to receiving all these books, it stopped being Christmas every day a long, long time ago. It's a pain in the ass." ... "I'd be a little bit surprised if work of real merit is getting lost out there," says Yardley. "I've always said there is no such thing as a really meritorious book that can't get published." For my part, I think it is highly optimistic to think that no meritorious books are falling through the cracks. The current system is strained by information overload and is also being undermined by increasing disintermediation as authors try to bypass the overloaded publishers. Nobody denies the need for filtering, but are there better ways? 3:19:05 PM    comment []

1st Amendment Online From my colleagues at the University of Minnesota Law School: We are pleased to announce the launch of a new website devoted to the First Amendment — 1st Amendment Online at <http://1stam.umn.edu>.  The site is hosted by the University of Minnesota Law School and is edited by Adam Samaha, a former law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens who teaches First Amendment Law and Federal Courts at Minnesota. The site is intended to facilitate First Amendment research and awareness of recent legal developments.  Law faculty, law students, and practicing attorneys are among the anticipated audience.  Many of the posted documents are excellent classroom teaching tools, as well. Contents currently include: *       Cases:  information on First Amendment cases now pending before the Supreme Court — the most recent decade of the Court’s First Amendment decisions, in their official form — summaries and full text of recent and notable decisions in the federal Courts of Appeals — and full-text versions of classic Supreme Court decisions, straight from the U.S. Reports. *       Primary Sources/Visual Aids for Key Cases:  PDF files of leaflets, letters, photographs, and other primary sources that gave rise to classic Supreme Court decisions about the First Amendment — documents include Schenck’s leaflet, pictures of Pawtucket’s Christmas display, and photos of O’Brien burning his draft card. *       Historical Materials:  select historical documents and information relevant to the First Amendment in HTML, PDF, and WordPerfect formats — from Blackstone, to Revolutionary Era State Constitutional provisions, to drafts of the federal Bill of Rights, to the Smith Act of 1940 (as well as its current version in the U.S. Code). *       Public Opinion on Civil Liberties:  some polling on civil liberties and First Amendment guarantees, both recent and dated. *       In the News: links to on-line press coverage of current First Amendment issues, courtesy of the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center. Feedback on the design or content of the website is welcome.  The site is a perpetual work-in-progress, and the editors look forward to building its content in a direction that best serves audience needs. Contact:  Adam Samaha, Visiting Scholar, University of Minnesota Law School, samah002@tc.umn.edu, 612-624-7527 Technical and design questions may be directed to:  Gene Danilenko, danil003@umn.edu, or Dezhan Li, Associate and Managing Editor, lidezhan@yahoo.com In my view, Primary Sources is the most interesting section of the site. It comes complete with a warning that the material may be offensive and that viewing the documents may be a violation of copyright law. The Public Opinion section was a reminder of how delicately the United States is balancing on the tightrope between democracy and theocracy. Most other Western countries don't share the United State's rigid separation between church & state, but in my heretical opinion, they don't need it. 2:51:47 PM    comment []