| Be Honest: You’re Still Eating the Peanut Butter From Your Y2K Stash, Right? |
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And drinking the leftover bottled water. And we will not speak of the shotgun you got as a looter-deterrent. Anyway, both Wired and the NY Times have a look back at the Armageddon that never materialized 10 years ago. And for your listening pleasure … (Still can’t get the lyrics right, even after all this time.) |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (2)December 29, 2009
| Time for a “Janus” Post |
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Looking back: Engadget has a really meaty post titled “Ten years of BlackBerry“. I’m not a BBerry fan — I’m appalled at the software (including the Web browser) that I see on my boss’ Curve — but I can’t wait to finish reading this article. Looking ahead: Google announces an Android press gathering on January 5 in order to introduce their new Nexus One phone. Hmmm … I’ve had my G1 for more than a year now. Can I pull off an upgrade? |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| No Safe Harbor For BitTorrent Search Engine isoHunt |
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Wired reports that Judge Stephen V. Wilson of the U.S. District Court for Central California ruled last week that BitTorrent search engine isoHunt, as well as other torrent sites operated by Gary Fung, violates copyright. (Rick, I’m shocked — shocked! — to find that gambling is going on in here!) Anyway, this is the next step in a story that began with Sweden’s crackdown on The Pirate Bay eight months ago. Judge Wilson has set up a status conference for January 11. We’ll see what happens then. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| EHR Adoption Does Not Always Lead to a Gain in Efficiency |
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A recent Milbank Quarterly study reported that many large-scale electronic health record (EHR) projects do not necessarily lead to increased efficiency. Researchers from the University College of London examined hundreds of previous studies on EHR implementation worldwide and found that: 1) EHRs often increase the efficiency of auditing, billing and other secondary functions while decreasing the efficiency of primary clerical work. 2) EHR systems are unlikely to ever achieve complete interoperability because of the different contexts involved. 3) Paper records sometimes offer greater flexibility for clinical work compared with many available EHR sytems. 4) Small, local EHR systems tend to be more efficient compared with larger systems. The bad news is, the researchers did not offer a solution for the lack of efficiency. The good news is that they did not recommend that health care providers shelve EHRs and go back to paper. |
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Submitted by: Alice McCreary, Reference Librarian
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| City Decides to Buy the Working Bits of Wireless Philadelphia |
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Here’s something I missed 2 weeks ago: the city has agreed to purchase the hardware from the failed Wireless Philadelphia project for $2 million. That’s not a bad price, even considering that EarthLink, the service provider, couldn’t even give it all away. Philly’s not going back into the ISP business, however: “‘Acquiring these assets is a major step forward for the city,’ said Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. ‘With this investment we will have the capability to build a robust public safety and municipal network, enhancing public safety and government operations, at the same time as achieving long-term savings for the taxpayer. This is a win-win for Philadelphia.’” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 28, 2009
| Another Thing That May or May Not Ever See the Light of Day |
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I recently blogged about the not-so-top-secret Google phone that everyone (but me) seems to have seen and touched and worshipped. (Oh, and here’s another article about it from today.) And now heeeeeeeere’s another ghost device: the Apple iSlate, a tablet computer that looks like a super-sized iPhone. Will it be released on January 26, when Apple has promised a “major product announcement“? We’ll see. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Flying’s Becoming More and More Like Riding the El [UPDATED] |
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Thanks to a moronic terrorist wannabe, The TSA has enacted more fun rules and regs for your comfort and protection on international flights: “Passengers flying into the United States from abroad can expect to see additional security measures at international airports such as increased gate screening including pat-downs and bag searches. During flight, passengers will be asked to follow flight crew instructions, such as stowing personal items, turning off electronic equipment and remaining seated during certain portions of the flight.” The NY Times translates that for us: “The airlines said the new T.S.A. measures required an additional round of searches, including body pat-downs at airport gates overseas. International travelers were also told that they could not leave their seats for the last hour of a flight, during which time they also could not use a pillow or blanket. They were also limited to one piece of carry-on baggage, including a purse or briefcase, and that piece had to be stowed in an overhead compartment for the last hour of a flight. Airlines were ordered to turn off in-flight entertainment systems with maps showing a plane’s location, and pilots and flight crews were told not to make comments about cities or landmarks below the flight path.” Gizmodo also reports on how some passengers were required to turn off and stow electronic devices, including iPods. I figure after 20+ years of riding the El — being crammed into an aluminum tube with no space and no rest rooms, receiving a pat-down from my fellow passengers (Hey … where’s my wallet?!) and getting no information about why the car has unexpectedly stopped in the middle of the tunnel — these new airline security regs are like second nature to me. UPDATE, 1:55 pm - Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing wonders if the new regs are the end of in-flight wifi. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Business Loans from Family & Friends: How to Ask, Make It Legal & Make It Work |
 By Asheesh AdvaniBusiness Loans From Family & Friends offers practical tips on how to approach and ask professionally, along with clear guidance on how to protect lenders from risk. It provides complete instructions for drawing up the paperwork to formalize the loan or investment, while the CD-ROM contains handy forms. Library Record • Borrow it • Buy it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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December 23, 2009
| Oh, There’s No Place Like Jenkins For The Holidays [UPDATED] |
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Here’s the Jenkins holiday schedule:
UPDATE, December 28: Sorry, class is canceled for December, but is rescheduled for April 28, 2010.
We wish our best to you and yours. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| An Eye For An Eye Makes Microsoft $290M Poorer |
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Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Microsoft must remove the custom XML code from its Office software suite by January 11, 2010 and pay Canadian firm i4i $290 million for infringing on its patents. You may recall that back in early September Microsoft asked the Fed Circuit to stay an injunction handed down in U.S. District Court in Texas. The Fed Circuit heard the case and sided with i4i. Microsoft says that, aside from the money, it’s no real biggie: “With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products. Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.” Notice that first sentence, in which Microsoft calls the custom XML a “little-used feature.” Reading that, I immediately thought of Neal Stephenson’s book In The Beginning Was The Command Line — still fresh and relevant, even after 10 years — in which he calls MS Office an “omnibus software package” and compares it to Wal-Mart: “As [graphical user interfaces] get more complex, and impose more and more overhead, this tendency becomes more pervasive, and the software packages grow ever more colossal; after a point they begin to merge with each other, as Microsoft Word and Excel and PowerPoint have merged into Microsoft Office: a stupendous software Wal-Mart sitting on the edge of a town filled with tiny shops that are all boarded up … The most serious drawback to the Wal-Mart approach is that most users only want or need a tiny fraction of what is contained in these giant software packages. The remainder is clutter, dead weight.” What’s the app that I use most at work? Notepad. And at home? TextEdit on the Mac. Keep it simple. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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