Ian's Other Journal

keeping it simple

2011-06-21T07:43:00.001-07:00

My blog probably looks a little simple, a little sparse. There's a reason for this.

I'm fond of pretty things, but not of unnecessary decoration. Minimalism and accents work best for me in webpages. Back in library school (University of sheffield department of information studies represent!) I wrote a fairly critical paper comparing the Google homepage with the Yahoo homepage and pointing out why the Yahoo page didn't work in my opinion. Chief among the reasons for me was that they were trying to do too much.

A good blog, for me, is all about the text, and all about transmitting the text in as effective a way as possible. The key to this for me is simplicity: a decent font, text that contrasts well, decoration as an accent rather than a feature.

So, my block is black text on a white background. My other blog is black text on a pale grey-green background. I use a font I can read easily.

If you've read this far, imagine this blog post had all been in brush script in neon pink on a blue background. Once your yes have recovered, I think you'll understand why I keep my blog simple.

so, does that make this the 24th thing? The 25th?

2011-06-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

wow, long time no blog.

This is the blog I originally set up for 23 Things back in 2006 when I was working for PLCMC. Opening it again, on a different continent, is more than a little weird.

So, what am I expecting to get out of doing 23 Things again? Increased familiarity with new media, the ability to be a change leader with web 2.0 stuff, maybe just a chance to see how different it is this time. Hell, the last time I did this, Twitter didn't even exist. (or maybe I just mean I wasn't using it yet).

So, yeah, I have pulled the bones of this old blog from the ground (better to use this than my writing blog or my podcast page, I suppose), and hopefully will be clothing it in flesh 2.0. And if that sounds disgusting, I'm very sorry.

2007-06-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

testing, 1 2 3

preparing for class

2007-06-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

I have a blogging class this evening. I'm going to be teaching the class about what blogs are, who has them, the kind of blogs and blog services that exist, and how to get a blog for themselves. I hope it goes well.

this is the title of a blog post

2006-11-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

This is the text that goes underneath the title. This is where the body of my blog post will go. Everything I type in here will appear as part of my blog when I post this.

This is fun, isn't it?

MP FREE!

2006-10-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

Yay! Yesterday I got the snazzy little mp3 player/radio/recorder. Oddly, it's the "recorder" part that's most exciting. I might use this nifty little doohickey to do some kind of podcast-type thing. If I can figure out how.

Audiobook adventures - or: why I won't be listening to Frankenstein on the way to work.

2006-09-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

Recently Aja got me an Mp3 player for the car. It's a cer stereo that also takes Mp3 Cds, an incredibly cool thing, considering how much music we have.

So when I got to the poiunt of downloading an audiobook from NetLibrary, I naively assumed I'd be able to play it in the car. The car stereo plays Mp3 and WMA files, and the Netlibary downloads are WMAs.

Unfortunately, DRM stood in my way. Before the audio file will play, it ha to check with Netlibrary to make sure you have permission to use the file. As the car stereo doesn't have an Internet connection, it can't check with Netlibrary to get the relevant permissions. So the major use I would have for an audiobook (driving to and from work) can't be fulfilled this way.

It's a shame. I love audiobooks. When I lived in gastonia I drove for an hour and a half each day, and listened to some great fiction while driving. Now, my drive is ten to fifteen minutes, but it would still be fun to be able to listen to something while I drove.

The sad thing is that it would be comparatively simple (if illegal) to make a playable Mp3 CD of any audiobook the library has. I'm not going to do it, because I have more respect for library property than that and I don't want to break the law, but this is another case of legal methods being more fiddly and annoying than illegal methods.

I have friend who loves listening to music on his computer. He is online most of the time, and likes having a soundtrack. I don't think he owns a CD player other than the one in his car and the one in his Mac. He had recently bought an album (I think it was the Velvet Revolver debut one) and tried putting it in his computer. Instead of playing the CD, it crashed his computer. Seriously crashed it. The reason was, it was loaded with copy-protection software designed to work on a PC, and instead of working on his Mac it crashed the whole thing. It also didn't work in his car.

Eventually, to listen to the album he had laid down hard currency for, he had to download it illegally.

That's an example of companies turning consumers off. I really hope NetLibrary doesn't turn out to be the same thing.

Second life, first time.

2006-09-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

I got Internet access at home about two and a half weeks ago.

I know that's incredibly behind the times, but we've only just moved into our new house, and we didn't feel like paying to get cable installed in the last place if we would be moving after a couple of months.

Thus, I've only just been able to get on Second Life. As of right now, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've found the library and several other place, adjusted my appearance so I don't look as silly, and had a lot of fun discovering that I am immortal no matter what height I drop from.

It's all a bit like living in the Neal Stephenson novel Snow Crash.

Oh, my name on there is Lamuella Raabe, in case anyone cares.

I second that dailymotion.

2006-09-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

youtube is all well and good, but there are other, equally fun video sites out there. Dailymotion is much more user-centred than youtube, focusing on people's own videos rather than clips from TV shows or music videos. The clips they have tend to be funny, well-produced, and easily accessible. I'm a big believer in self-publishing, zero-budget filmmaking, and removing the boundaries between artist and audience. For that reason, any site like this that puts the creator at the forefront is something I appreciate.

I'm feeling a bit wicky

2006-09-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

One of the final requirements on learning 2.0 is to pick a site from the web 2.0 awards and write a blog post about it. I decided to write about Wikispaces.

I found Wikispaces by accident when looking for a place to put up a collaborative fiction wiki. I wanted to create a world with some friends and tell stories in it. Wikispaces was easy and fun to use and encouraged collaboration.

When I was setting up my core competencies wiki, it was my first choice partly because I already had an account but mostly because it was so easy to use. I firmly believe that anybody who can write a blog post can create a wiki with this easy to use system.

Web 2.0 tools have to strike a balance between ease of use and power. If it's easy to use but doesn't do much, people won't use it. If it does everything but requires a PhD to work, people won't use it. Wikispaces is one of my favourite web 2.0 tools simply because it combines both worlds so well. It's incredibly easy to use, and allows great complexity in function and appearance.

Any tool that you can use to tell stories and get work done from the same interface is a winner in my book. That's why pens are so popular.

one of the best teen sites I have found this year

2006-09-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the guy at Walking Paper for the link.

If you want to see an example of a teen library website done right, look no further than My Own Cafe. This is a community website based at the Southeastern Massachusetts Library. It provides message boards for kids to chat on in a safe environment, links to programs and activities going on in the area, and easy ways to find books, articles, and reading recommendations.

It's wonderfully put together, teen-centred, and a hell of a lot more fun than the average library teen website. I think the Library Loft is a pretty good site, but it pales in comparison to this.

THe sad thing is that if the fools behind DOPA have their way, this site will be inaccessible from schools and libraries.

Librarian 1.5

2006-09-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

As this learning exercise continues, I am slowly gaining confidence both in my abilities using these programs, and in the purpose of what I am doing. For a while I thought that while a lot of this stuff was fun, it had minimal practical value.

I've started to change my mind.

Blogs are a great way of keeping teams in touch. I just started one for my Systemwide Strategic Priorities team, and I think it will be a great way of exchanging ideas and information.

Wikis have the potential to be wonderful storehouses of information. A best practices wiki on programming would be a fantastic place to share not just ideas for programs but tips about how to improve existing programs.

A tool like Writely is invaluable as a way of working on consensus documents. If the drafts of your document are dynamic, changes can happen as quickly as conversation. This is a good way of stopping documents stalling in committee.

And that's just the backstage stuff.

Once we start to recognize that we are living in the information age, we can make all the library's resources part of a wider conversation. A socially networked catalog, where users can record opinions on a book as easily as they can request it, would make patrons feel like this is their library. A teen library website like myowncafe is more than just a list of links to library resources; it's a place for kids to hang out and talk about whatever they want in a safe and fun environment. Library 2.0 means that being part of the library doesn't mean sterile and monolithic. The website should be part of the library in the way that the staff and the patrons are part of the library, as active, enthusiastic participants.

Everybody needs some time all aone...

2006-09-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Last night, I read this comic:

http://www.udargo.com/burton/MTV/

And then for the first time in 14 years, I had to break out the November Rain video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPYkn82nz18

I rocked out large style.

Wikiwonderful

2006-09-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

I've always been a big fan of wikis. I've written blog posts about them before. I think they are quick and easy ways to disseminate and review information.

I've even created a Wiki before now: the Core Competencies wiki, which I am incredibly behind on updating and would love people to help me with.

I guess you might say I'm a wiki kind of guy. If that was the kind of thing you might say.

wikinconveniences

2006-09-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

So I was all set to play around on Wikipedia. I'd set up an accounht and everything, thought I was really getting the hand of this...

...when it tells me I'm blocked. Apparently someone from the library's IP address thought it tremendous fun to vandalize the Terri Schiavo wikipedia entry with unprintable smut. As all the staff computers have the same IP address, this means that none of the computers in the back room at this branch can edit Wikipedia entries.

This is one of the downsides to Wikipedia's "editable by everyone" policy. If you can edit a page without a username, then all you give is an IP address. This means that instead of your account being punished, everyone at that IP address is punished. As Wikipedia don't have a way of telling who at a particular IP address did the vandalism, everyone suffers for the actions of a few.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

Things I disagree with.

2006-09-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

I found this on Tame The Web. Usually I agree with most of what Michael says or quotes, but this particular soundbite did nothing but annoy me.

"If you have staff who have butts in seats and they are just sitting...show me a retail operation that would let people sit."

for one thing: I am rarely if ever "just sitting". I'm usually doing other work at the desk because I have to work about four hours of my eight hour day at the desk.

For a second: I can name you half a dozen retail operations where at least some of the people are sitting. They tend to be the more upscale places where transactions are more than just passing items through a checkout. Not that passing items through a checkout is an activity to be scoffed, and it's an activity I have done for a living, but it's in general less in-depth than working at a reference desk.

For another: why in the world are we comparing ourselves to a retail operation? Why would we want to be compared to a retail operation? I've worked retail, I've managed a retail store, and the motivators are entirely different to the motivators that exist in a library. In retail your main motivation is to sell. Sell stuff, make a profit. To do so, you want to treat customers well and get them what they need, but that's secondary to the bottom line, which is to make money for the business. Actually, as a retail clerk, your motivation is not to be yelled at by staff or customers, and (in the case of the bookstore I worked at) to sell as many discount cards as possible. In a library, the motivation is to help. To get each person that comes through the door the information they need in the way they want it. We don't charge for this (except for particular items and particular circumstances), we don't consider it a failure if someone walks out without a book, as long as they walk out with the information they want. We are not a retail establishment, and I really don't see why we should behave like one.

If you find a retail operation where the staff will find books for you, search for information on the Internet and beyond, help you with your computer problems, help you with your research, tell stories to your kids, and do all this for free, then firstly, congratulations, and secondly, I guarantee they will be sitting.

tags: rant, customer service, libraries

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

2006-09-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

I am and always have been a die hard comic book geek. I know how many sidekicks Batman has had under the name Robin (four in continuity, another one outside of continuity). I know what Judge Death's father did for a living (he was a dentist). I know Wolverine's real name (James Howlett). Heck, I even know what "retcon" means. Anyway, it was becoming harder and harder to keep track of places to find good comic book news. What I needed, I decided, was a search engine that would look through the major comic book news sites like Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, and so forth, all at the same time.

So I built one. It's called Secret Identities. Thanks to Rollyo for the assist.

tame your enthusiasm

2006-09-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

so I've been looking round a few professional blogs lately.

I have to say that the best one I've found so far is still Tame The Web. Michael Stephens manages to combine humor and intelligence effortlessly.

As far as somewhat less professional ones, Ive always been a big fan of the livejournal library communities, such as Libraries. There are also other, ruder livejournal library communities, but in the interests of keeping this safe for work, and keeping my work and personal life separate, I'll not link to that one. Suffice to say that it's for librarians who use a certain oedipal swearword a lot.

tracing the lines in my blog

2006-09-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

As Rob said in High Fidelity, it's not what you are like, but what you do like that matters. So here are the blogs I read:

Ian's Bloglines Account

I highly recommend Achewood to anyone who doesn't mind deeply odd stories about animals.

2006-09-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

cats have taken over our living space. Here are some new pictures from the house

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59697220@N00/238467449/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59697220@N00/238467448/

Oooh, look! A bandwagon!

2006-09-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

This is my library code:

LibraryCode1.0[RPEx+D8h{>Gen+R++lsfmhjneN++B+?$TP+Cs+IT+CatMa-Ddc+GrmcvfRMm741.5]

Confused? Me too, until I read this link

The Seven Habits of Slightly Anonymous People.

2006-08-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else noticed that the participants in learning 2.0 are in the main staying anonymous?

Most of us are putting in our location and stuff, and usually first name, but not much more information than that.

It's slightly curious but very interesting. It's like everyone senses that in a blog you can be someone else.

quite writely

2006-08-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with Writely, an online word processor. Just thought I'd share a story I'm writing

Feeding my addiction

2006-08-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

I love Bloglines.

I love Bloglines because it's incredibly simple to add feeds, find new things to read, look around for fascinating features, and get it all sent to one page.

I also love Bloglines because it's just as easy to stop getting these feeds.

When I first started up using Bloglines back in April, my attitude was that of a kid in a sweetshop. I got BBC News, and The Guardian, and the feed from http://www.achewood.com and The Panda's Thumb, and Scienceblogs and....

...and it was way too much to read in one sitting. I quickly found myself skipping half the posts, then three quarters of the posts.

So I pared it down. I was merciless. I got rid of everything.

Except Achewood. and The Panda's Thumb. And Learning 2.0. And Tametheweb.

I'm an addict, you see. I'm addicted to information. Bloglines was like mainlining, and I ODed.

Oh well. Everything in moderation. And that includes moderation.

Moving away from convergence

2006-08-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

At the moment, on the computer I have at my house, I can do a huge variety of things. I can play games, watch TV, watch DVDs, talk to people by voice, video or text, listen to music, create music, do my shopping, read a book, really anything I can think of, on this one unit.

The thing is, though, I don't really want to.

I want to watch TV on the TV I have in my front room. It's better positioned than my computer, closer to the kitchen for grabbing drinks and snacks, and has a lovely couch in front of it. Also, the screen might be lower resolution, but it's bigger.

I want to listen to music on my stereo, or on headphones. The computer's speakers aren't big enough for excellent sound reproduction, and the computer isn't portable enough for me to listen to music while walking.

I prefer being able to walk around with my phone. I'm unfortunately someone who has the habit of wandering around as I talk, and headphones connected to a computer wouldn't let me do this.

So although I can use one device for a whole bunch of needs, I'd like the option of something else.

For a long time, people have talked about "convergence technology": communications and entertainment technology uniting to provide devices that can do everything. The computer was through of as the motherlode of convergence technologies, because computers are designed to be so multipurpose. The problem was (and still is) that a device that can do everything probably isn't great at doing any one thing. A computer makes a passable book, stereo, TV and phone, but is nowhere near as good at doing these things as a book, stereo, TV and phone are.

That said, there are things that computers can do that we want our books, stereos, TVs and phones to do. Which is where we come to what I think is the replacement for convergence tech: Modular tech.

Modular tech is devices that talk to each other. Modular tech is downloading music on your computer and putting it on your mp3 player, or playing it through the amplifier and speakers on your stereo. Modular tech is listening to radio stations from other countries as easily as you listen to local stations, on the same equipment you use to listen to local stations.

Convergence technology is putting all your entertainment and communications needs on your computer.

Modular technology is putting your computer into the devices you use to communicate and have fun.

I'm really simple, and Syndicated.

2006-08-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

this blog is now available via RSS feed!

http://theangelremiel.blogspot.com/atom.xml

put that into your newsreader and read my breathtaking inanity wherever you want!

a pause for thought

2006-08-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

All this stuff we're doing here is incredible fun, no doubt.

But... (and there's always a but)

How much of it do you think we're going to take back into our jobs?

I mean, underneath it all, that is a large part of the point, isn't it? Web 2.0 tools are fun and cool to use, but if we weren't going to use these things in our jobs in some way, would we be doing all this?

So with that in mind: what do people think they are going to take from this back into their day to day jobs?

Personally, I don't think I'm going to take everything, but there are several things I think I will be taking back with me. I think I'll be starting a LibraryThing for my book club, to keep track of what we've read and our thoughts on it. I've already started a community blog for the book club. I hope the Core Competencies wiki I've been working on will continue to grow.

The problem is that I can only definitely say I'll use the things that take little buy-in. Thus I can say that I'm aware of flickr as a resource, but I can't say that I can start up a reference blog, or jump straight into IM messaging, because I'm not the person who makes the calls in those areas, and to do so without authorization would take more buy-in and more - if you'll excuse my French - balls than I have available.

What does everyone else think?

Why I DO have a Meez

2006-08-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

Meez lets me do this:

Why I don't have a Yahoo Avatar.

2006-08-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've just spent 20 minutes playing with the Yahoo Avatar thingy, and I'm not impressed.

I'd have been happy with something that sort of looked like me (blue eyes, tied back blonde hair, beard, short sleeved shirt), but nothing did. I wasn't blown away by the artwork, and it just didn't feel like something created with me as the demographic.

Oh well, I'll keep trying things out.

They finally came out with the Ian trading card.

2006-08-22T15:19:00.000-07:00

This will be a valuable addition to my deck.

Mashing it up!

2006-08-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Check out http://www.frappr.com. It's a mash-up between Google Maps and social networking services like MySpace. You can form friends groups, and map where all your friends are. For someone like me who lives somewhere other than his home country, it's good to be abler to keep track of people all across the world.

Google Maps seems to be the product of choice for map mashups. I play a browser-based game called http://www.cybernations.net and it uses Google Maps to track its players and see who controls what bit of the world.

I wonder why this took off instead of Microsoft?

The paths to enlightenment are long and strange.

2006-08-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

A gem from the reference desk last Friday:

"Hi, do your computers have Godzilla Firefox?"

Chapter 9: in which I am reminded of why I became a librarian.

2006-08-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

About half an hour ago, I was sorting the comic books over in our graphic novels section. I try to put them in order every week or so, because they become disorganized. This isn't helped by the fact that certain comics change title and numbering in weird ways (for the record, it goes Batman Adventures 1-18, then Batman Strikes 1-present. It also goes Captain America 1-32, then Captain America 1-present. If in doubt, look at the copyright information on page 3).

Anyway, I was sorting comics, and kids were coming over, looking through the graphic novels on the shelves and the comic books I was putting in order. I suddenly realized that there were too many people looking through the comics for me to actually sort them. For a nano-second I was irritated, because I couldn't finish doing my job. Then I just thought:

There are eight kids here, poring over comic books, finding stuff they love reading. Each of them has a stack of books under their arms and is looking to get a stack more. Each of them is enthusiastic about getting what they want to read, unafraid of asking questions, and polite enough not to get in each others way. This is a really really good thing.

Some days, I love my job.

I thought I was out, but they pulled me back in.

2006-08-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

I promised myself I wouldn't rant about work on this blog. I'm weak, though, and I have to write an open letter here.

To all magazine and periodicals publishers, from a periodicals librarian.

Hi, I'm sorry to take time away from your busy schedule of sending us magazines three weeks after they hit the shelves, but I have a bone to pick with you.

You see, it's about your ads. Not the ones inside your magazine (although if you took away all the ads from Vanity Fair the resulting publication would be thinner than a copy of Famous Scottish Tennis Players), not even the inserts you stuff into the pages that fall out all over the floor behind the Information desk.

No, my problem is with the ads you stick on your covers.

Around once a week, I get a magazine where a sheet of card is over the cover. This sheet of card will usually be advertising a publication associated with your magazine, which I don't want to subscribe to, or reminding me to renew my subscription, which I already have. The content of these ads isn't the problem. The problem is how they are stuck to the cover. Around half of them are either attached with the magazine's own staples (good) or stuck to the spine with an icky substance I like to call I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Snot (nasty, but easily removable). The other half are glued to the spine itself, often taking the place of the actual paper text on the spine. These can't be easily removed without damaging the magazine itself. I'm left with the choice of putting out a magazine with an ad for "Good Housekeeping 2: Electric Boogaloo" where the cover should be, or putting out a magazine with a visible cover but a spine made of torn paper.

Please stop. We pay a lot for these subscriptions, and we expect our magazines to be in store condition, not garage sale condition. We don't want the magazines to arrive pre-ruined. Ruining magazines is our patrons' job.

So, to reiterate the central point of this again, in bright red burning letters:

(thanks to cooltext.com for the image)

A moving experience

2006-08-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

I've been moving house recently (finished the last big part of it today, in fact) and I've noticed something throughout the housebuying process:

I found my realtors online.
They sent me houses to look at via email.
The vast majority of my contact with the mortgage broker was through email.
We emailed back and forth to haggle over the price and establish a closing date.
The new appliances we got for the house (refrigerator and PC) we found online.
We picked out paint colors for the rooms from the Glidden and Behr websites.
We booked our movers online.

Almost everything we needed to do to successfully move was carried out with communications technology that most people hadn't heard of fifteen years ago. It was through the use of this technology that we were able to get signed documents from the UK (my home country) in 20 minutes rather than two weeks.

I don't think I appreciated it before, but the Internet really has changed every aspect of my life.

I wonder what further changes web 2.0 will bring?

Not library related, but...

2006-08-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

You learn something insane every day. My thing for today is Littlewood's Law. Littlewood's Law states that the average person can expect to have a miracle happen to them around once a month.

If you postulate that each person has an event happen to them around once per second while they are awake, then that means that in an average month, slightly over a million things happen to you. Thus a one-in-a-million chance can be reasonably expected to happen around once every month.

Fantastic, isn't it?

Lifelong Learning.

2006-08-07T10:12:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as a lifelong learner. I have spent the majority of my life in one form of education or another. I'm a voracious reader, and one reason for this is a desire to know more. Of late, I've been taking an interest in evolutionary biology, and so I've been reading as much Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett as I can get my hands on. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Learners has been useful for me in identifying the learning traits in myself and what aspects of my personality make it harder for me to learn.

The easiest habit for me is to play. I've always believed that learning happens best through play. I learn best what I have fun learning.

The hardest part for me is developing a learning toolbox. I'm supremely disorganized, and it takes a lot of effort for me to keep myself disciplined. In learning, I tend to use what is to hand, rather than seeking out new resources, and this can be a hindrance.

I'm also a little skeptical of the power of affirmations. If I can't speak spanish yet, saying that I can doesn't help me. What helps me is learning how. I'd prefer to say that I will be able to do something, rather than that I can do it.

As such, I haven't created a list of affirmations. I prefer to have a list of goals.

I will use social networking technology in my job to improve how I do things.
I will complete the core competencies wiki
I will serve on, and enjoy serving on, the Emerging Technologies Committee.
I will get my mp3 player :)

Why DOPA scares the life out of me

2006-08-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know what DOPA is, it's the Deleting Online Predators Act, and it's a very bad and very scary piece of law.

In short, DOPA would prohibit schools and libraries who receive federal funding from accessing "commercial social networking sites" and "chatrooms". This would supposedly stop online predators in some vague not quite defined manner.

"Commercial Social Networking sites" are defined as: "Sec.2(c)(J) a commercially operated Internet website [sic] that- (i) allows users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users; and (ii) offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, email, or instant messenger."

In other words this would ban libraries from using anything that lets you create a profile and talk to people. A short and incomplete list of things banned by this bill:

All blogs.
All photo sites like flickr
All message boards
All wikis (they all have talk pages and profiles)
All messaging software
Homework help sites such as Brarydog (they have profiles and ask-a-librarian features)

This is scary. This is legislation of the Internet by people with no understanding of the Internet. The worst part for me is that it doesn't even do what it sets out to do: namely protect kids from predators.

This has already passed the House overwhelmingly. Let's hope to heaven it falls in the Senate.

Rather than adding badly formulated, barely enforcable legislation, why not just stress what really should be done about children's use of the Internet to protect them from unsavory people online? Educate kids that not everyone you see online is your friend. Let them know not to put personal information out there. Talk to them about safe surfing and what to watch out for with new online friends. Above all, PARENT these kids and INFORM yourself. The computer in your child's room is not just a box of flashing lights and whirring parts, like a hi-tch TV. It's a window to the outside world. Parents need to understand how it works. If they don't they will either be over-scared of it and their kids just won't listen, or complacent, and their kids won't be protected. Parents need to understand the technology their kids are using. If your daughter has a Myspace account, you need to get one too, in order to see what she is putting up there and who she is talking to. If your son has a blog, you need to read it. Be as concerned about who they talk to online as you are about who they meet in the park. This is YOUR responsibility, not that of the school or the library.

Don't turn information into a banned commodity. Don't use legislation as a substitute for parenting.

this is a test

2006-07-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

or maybe a t-set

Obviously, this was necessary

2006-04-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

This wouldn't be my blog if it didn't have a picture of Freddie.