The Get Human database now has 500 (!) phone numbers, including and dialing instructions, for reaching a real person rather than a recorded voice when you need customer assistance.
Thanks to Sabrina at beSpacific for her Get Human update (and for all her postings!).
Kevin Kelly is almost beyond classification, and librarians do love classifying the world, if only to make a little, albeit temporary (or virtual), sense out of all the chaos. It is also possible that neither Otlet (Paul) nor Roget (Peter) nor West (John), classification geniuses all, would be able to sum up Kelly (Kevin)with fewer than 100 subject headings. I look at his Cool Tools site often and his Street Use is wonderful, but as the 5 year-old says, “wait – there’s more!” His True Films site morphs into his annual True Films e-book, for you documentary-film fiends out there in cyberspace.
Uniform – Digital – Library: These used to be considered very dry geeky librarian words but now they are not (though I could be kidding myself here :-).
The UDL has both a Vision and a Mission. What more could you want (other than, perhaps, a shorter commute and more time to cook, maybe)?
Library Link of the Day today (check their Archives if it is no longer “today,” i.e. 11/28/07) alerted us about this story about the Uniform Digital Library.
The Oregon Federal Public Defender has this report, Developments in Federal Search and Seizure Law, and much more at their web site (including an Oct 2007 Blakely/Apprendi and State v. Ice update).
Many more Oregon legal news stories where this came from: Go to Justia’s Blawg Search, type Oregon in the search box, click on Sort by Date.
Others of you who yesterday heard the Terry Gross interview with Mark Shapiro from the Center for Investigative Reporting and author of Exposed: the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power may also be wondering about this.
The whole interview was interesting (or possibly terrifying for parents), but what may have surprised many was when Shapiro pointed out that the EU is now a bigger consumer market than the US and as a consequence has more political (social and business) clout than the US in China and elsewhere in the world. And, that people who live under EU laws (and here and here) have greater consumer protections than we do in the US. Toys are safer and food is safer. It was only partly in jest that Shapiro recommended that parents buy “plastic” toys abroad rather than in the US (one among many reasons is that phthalates have been banned in the EU countries but not in the US and China makes phthalate-free plastics for the EU).
See also the AP story in today’s Oregonian (11/27/07) EU Pushes China on product safety) by Audra Ang.
The Oregonian (11/26/07) has a story by Brian Bergstein (AP), “Software copyright watchdog takes bite out of small business” that puts a human face on the Business Software Alliance strategy:
Excerpt: ‘An Associated Press analysis reveals that targeting small businesses is lucrative for the Business Software Alliance, the main copyright watchdog for such companies as Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Symantec.
Of the $13 million that the BSA reaped in software violation settlements with North American companies last year, almost 90 percent came from small businesses, the AP found.
I happen to be reading Everything is Miscellaneous in spare moments (which is a not-inappropriate way to read such a book). Today I came upon this at Nicole Engard’s What I learned today: … an interview of Cory Doctorow (boing boing) by David Weinberger (Everything is Miscellaneous)
The absolute funniest thing about it is that they are such librarians – guy librarians, though, for sure (not to mention bibiliophilian digerati ). For example, what’s missing from this exchange?
“David: ‘In my book, I actually use the example of “Capri, ” where it’s the Island Capri, the Ford Capri, and there’s a motel Capri that shows up for some reason. The remarkable thing is they do it, as you say, completely by looking at the tags and not by doing any analysis of the picture itself, and it’s remarkably accurate. Which is, I think, actually a very good answer or rebuttal to the criticism that tags are chaos, and as you get more and more of them, it will get more and more chaotic. It turns out that when you have a lot of them, the statistical analysis becomes really pretty precise….’”
Most women will immediately notice the omission: Capri pants 🙂
But it is nonetheless an interesting interview – at least to us librarian types, even us Capri-less (though Capri-savvy) ones.
Computers and TVs, and other electronic thingies can be toxic at the end of their lives so think carefully before you dispose of them.
The Oregonian’s inPortland insert, 11/22/07, had a nice article by Joe Fitzgibbon in their Green Life column about Bear eCycling – and amazing recycling people they are.
So now we have Free Geek AND Bear eCycling. And don’t forget to contact Metro if you need information about other recyclables.
(Link found at the Multnomah Bar Association home page.)
LLRX has a book review by Julia Wotipka, of Mark Frauenfelder’s “Rule the Web.”
Excerpt from Wotipka’s book review:
“I consider myself a deep web research pro. I’ve been using the Internet for over 15 years. Back in the day when V.E.R.O.N.I.C.A. (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-Wide Index to Computer Archives) – was a computer search engine for Gopher, the prelude to today’s Web. Fast-forward to this year’s Nerd Chic best-selling book Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet – Better, Faster, Easier by Mark Frauenfelder, is not to be missed. Recently one reviewer described it as “The Joy of Cooking, only it’s about the Web instead of meatloaf.”
Oregon Legal Research Blog