Mr. Deity
A little bit sacrilegious, and extremely funny… Finally Mr. Deity provides an answer that makes sense of evil in this world:
Is This what Museums & Libraries will Look Like 20 Years from Now?
The British Museum and the BBC have teamed up to create a website that presents the world’s history via objects (in digital form of course) contained in the British Museum. The site is called: A History of the World. BBC Raido will be broadcasting shows that discuss items on the website and point people to the site in case they would like to explore further. There will also be a CBBC 13 part series that will looks at relics that are part of the collection.
I’ve always thought that a big part of the future of both libraries and museums will be in digitizing the unique portions of their collections and then make those digital object available to the world. What the BBC and the British museum have done, is create an excellent interface for people to browse their collection online, which make it much more accessible than it could ever be in a brick and mortar building.
I should probably get more involved in the digitization projects going on at the University of Victoria Libraries where I work!
Reinventing the Sacred across Cultures & Religions – Stuart Kuaffman
A great interview by Stuart Kauffman where he talks about reinventing the sacred as a shared space across cultures and religious traditions so the sacred can bring us together rather than be a point of division.
Stuart has also written a book called, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion
Enjoy!
How to get a Higher Google Ranking for my Website?
What follows is an email I sent to a friend hopefully helping him to better understand how Google’s Page Rank system works, and how he can get his website on the first page of Google search resluts:
I’m glad that the Google stats for your site are looking up. There is one thing that I tried to explain to you on the phone before Christmas that I don’t think I explained very well. Let me try explaining Google Page Rank again:
Q1. What determines which websites are put on the 1st page of Google search results?
- The relevancy of the title and text on your web page to the search query.
- The number and quality of other people’s websites linking to your website. You can think of other websites linking to your site as a vote… The more votes your site has, the higher your websites ranking will be.
- The best way to influence your page rank is to make sure you have good key words in the title of your page, the URL, and in the text on your page. The other thing is to encourage quality websites to link to your site… These are the key things in your control (more info from Google).
Q2. What else can you do to monitor your website and find ways to improve it?
- Update you website with current relevant content.
- Get a Gmail account so that you can access other Google resources to help your website. http://gmail.com
- You can use Google Webmaster Tools to see how your site is viewed by Google, so you can modify it to make it more “Googlefriendly”.
- Use Google Analytics to see how much traffic is coming to your site, where the traffic is coming from geographically, and what other sites are forwarding users to your site.
I hope this helps!
Shopping in Stores, but Purchasing Online… and Saving Lots of Money
Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve gone to stores in order to purchase specific items, but was been shocked at how high the in store prices were. Both times I quickly pulled out my iPhone and checked the price of the item I needed to purchase at Amazon.ca, and then purchased it online while still in the store.
On my first shopping trip I was looking for toner for my Lexmark 250DN. At Staples, the toner I needed cost $150! Can you believe that! I only paid $250 for the printer, and now they want to charge me $150 for the toner. A quick check at Amazon.ca showed the exact same toner costing $105. I ended up saving $45 dollars. If I had just purchased it directly from Amazon in the first place, I would have saved another $5 or more in gas for the trip to the store.
The second “in store, online purchase” incident took place last night. Our son had asked us to purchase Assassin’s Creed 2 for the xBox 360 for him. At EB Games in our local shopping mall, they were asking $70 for the game. My iPhone informed me that Amazon.ca was selling the game for $57. The kicker was that they didn’t even have the game in stock, so I simply purchased it from Amazon.ca as we walked away from the store. I later learned that if you purchased the game from the EB Games online store you would only have to pay $60 (plus shipping… no shipping charges with the Amazon purchase).
New iPhone programs are making this type of comparison shopping easier and easier. RedLaser for example lets you scan bar codes and look up pricing (american pricing only for the time being). SnapTell is another program that allows you to take pictures of products and get Amazon.com pricing for them, along with product reviews. The product review can be very helpful, especially if you are not very familiar with the product you are trying to purchase.
There is real value in being able to go to a store and consult with someone about the purchase you are going to make. There is also real value in being able to take something home right a way, if you need it in a hurry. If I’m not in a hurry, and I feel that the price difference is too great, I for one am not afraid to walk away from a store and make my purchase online.
Easy, Fun, Online Animation for your next presentation: GoAnimate.com
If you’d like to create some fun graphics or animations for your next presentation, or would simply like a distraction as you ease back into work after the Holidays, why not give GoAnimate a try. From their website:
GoAnimate.com is an entertainment website that enables the simple creation of unique computer animated stories, satires and sentiments that can be shared with the entire online community.
Historically, the creation of animation required specific skills, limiting those who can express their creativity. We designed the Go!Animate application to allow users to create animations without drawing talent or a technical understanding of advanced software such as Flash. The site provides users with a library of interesting characters, backgrounds, props, sound effects and music for use in creating their own unique animations. Creators can customize their animations with a number of tools and features that allow them to create truly unique works of expression.
Enjoy!
A wallet to love: sometimes smaller is better…
I saw a great article on lifehacker.com about a combination money clip, and credit card holder. I wish I’d seen this last week so I could get one for my birthday!
It cost $20 on Amazon.com, and can hold a fairly good wad of cash (up to 30 bills), plus up to 10 credit cards (5 on the credit card side and up to 5 on the cash side). Here are some bullet points from their Amazon.com ad:
- Polished Stainless Steel
- Double-sided
- Securely holds up to 5 cards on the credit card side
- Can hold up to 5 additional cards on the money clip side
- Ultra-thin and light weight
- Personalize your Smart Money Clip with engraving
Great iPhone App: RunKeeper
I’ve been using RunKeeper for 7 months now and love it! RunKeeper is an iPhone application that maps your runs for you via the GPS device built into all iPhone 3G and 3GS’s. You can look at your iPhone during your run to see what your pace is and how you are doing time wise (see the image to the right for an example of what you would see during a run). The paid version of the application reports your distance and pace through your head phones.
After you’ve finished your run, you can see the route you took on Google Maps on your iPhone, or go to your computer and log on to RunKeeper.com and see a more detailed map of the route you ran. The map on the website is excellent, complete with a graph showing your speed during your run, as well as the altitude you were at. For me this clearly shows how I slow down when going down hills, and how I speed up at the end of the run as I push to the finish line. Click here for a view of a run I did a few months ago.
There are both free and paid versions of RunKeeper. The free version has most of the features of the paid version, but $10 is not a high price for this excellent application if you end up using it a lot. Have run running!
Netbooks: To Buy or Not To Buy?
At the last conference I attended, at least 20% of the people with laptops were using NetBooks this year. The reason why I took notice, is because at the same conference the previous year there was not a single NetBook in sight. So what is a NetBook? How do Netbooks coompare to Laptop comptuers?
NetBooks typically have a small screen than a laptop: typically 10″ diagonally rather than 13″ or 15″. - Netbooks also usually have slightly smaller keyboards, although the Dell Netbook I have been using has a keyboard almost the same size as my MacBook Air keyboard.
- Netbooks typically have slower processors and less memory than laptops (Photo Shop and video editing won’t work well on them).
- On the plus side, Netbooks usualy weigh less than laptops, and in some cases (as is with my Dell NetBook) have a longer battery life than most Laptops.
- Netbooks also cost a lot less than light weight laptops, but are close in price to lower end bulky laptops. My Dell Mini 10 cost $329 CDN.
Admittedly the CALI conference attracts a pretty geeky crowd of law school technical staff, law librarians and law professors, even so, going from 0% to 20% in one year is impressive.
So what do I think? I agree with Michael Dell’s assessment that for most people a NetBook makes an excellent companion to a desktop computer. If you need to travel, or take a laptop to a meeting, a Netbook will do an excellent job. After a couple days of use, I started to get claustrophobic in the very small screen space that the NetBook provides (in my case 1024 x 600 as opposed to 1200 x 800 on my laptop, and 1920 x 1200 on my desktop computer).
My recommendation for students, staff and faculty would be to get a full size desktop computer for your home or office, and then use a NetBook for classes, travelling and meetings. If you use Google Documents, or DropBox for synchronizing files, you’ll have everything you need to work on no matter which machine you are using.
Drop Box: File Sharing across the Internet or across the Room Made Easy
Drop Box synchronizes files between computers across the room or across the internet. The service is free if you have 2GB of data or less. For $10 a month you get 50GB of data storage. I’ve used DropBox for several months now, and have to say that it works great. It makes it much easier for me to quickly share documents between my Laptop (mac), my Work Computer (windows), and my Home Computer (mac).
Not only does it facilitate file sharing, but it also serves as an excellent backup system. While more expensive than Mozy’s $5 a month backup service, you do get a lot of extra functionality that Mozy does not give you. DropBox works great on Mac, Windows and Linux computers, which means that it can be used on virtually any computer you own or can currently buy, including one of those cute little Net Books.
Another feature that some might find useful, is the ability to share sub folders with other people for collaboration purposes. As files are modified, previous version are kept so that if necessary you can revert back to a previous version of the document. Files that are accidentally deleted can also be recovered, unless you manually purge deleted files.
I highly recommend DropBox for people who use multiple computers and need to share files between them. Good luck!
Rich’s Google Reader Highlights
- Siri’s IPhone App Puts A Personal Assistant In Your Pocket
- TVGorge Lets You Stream 120+ Popular TV Shows, With No Geo-Restriction
- How to Clip, Sort, and Cite the Entire Web with Zotero [Research]
- Using Google Apps to make the most of group work
- Which Media Center Is Right for You: Boxee, XBMC, and Windows Media Center Compared [Lifehacker Showdown]
