As I prepare my JCDL 2008 Tutorial (Creating and Enabling Data Mashups), might I make use of Eric Lease Morgan’s XML in libraries: A workshop?

Of note is an upcoming workshop aimed at libraries — CARL-IT North: Mashup the Library: An introduction to mashup technology and the art of remixing library and information resources.

codepad:

codepad.org is an online compiler/interpreter, and a simple collaboration tool. Paste your code below, and codepad will run it and give you a short URL you can use to share it in chat or email.

I’d like to experiment with it to see whether it’s a good place to paste code fragments that I want to share (and run!). I also want to think through how it sandboxes runnable code.

I look forward to the starting up of the Buckland/Larson/Lynch seminar next week.

I’m pleased to see the word “mash-up” used in an article about a Berkeley website: 01.16.2008 - New life for the New Deal:

“I realized I couldn’t do it myself,” Brechin says. “It had to be people all over California working collaboratively,” in an echo of the New Deal itself. He turned to the campus’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the California Studies Center, which teamed up to take over the project’s website. Designed and managed by volunteers, the site had been built around a “mash-up” - a database-driven system that could display research on New Deal sites on a dynamically created map — created by Jay McCauley, a retired Silicon Valley software-engineering director.

Time to check out the mashup in question: Living New Deal Project

I’m excited that Aaron Schwarz has set up (theinfo):

This is a site for large data sets and the people who love them: the scrapers and crawlers who collect them, the academics and geeks who process them, the designers and artists who visualize them. It’s a place where they can exchange tips and tricks, develop and share tools together, and begin to integrate their particular projects.

I’m going to work in materials from Flickr: The Commons when I come back to building the ScholarsBox. Such good news — having photos from the Library of Congress hosted at Flickr makes them much more reusable than when the photos sat at LC alone. Steve

Check out smARThistory.org — the multimedia art history book: Europe:

This web-booksite is being developed by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the static traditional art history textbook. By using the strengths of podcasting, video, and other web 2.o technologies, we think we can better meet the needs of students, faculty, and the interested public. Once this site is better established, we intend to invite the user community to add and edit content.

As I write my book, I find the article ONLamp.com: Why Do People Write Free Documentation? Results of a Survey quite interesting. The book isn’t exactly “free documentation” although I’m putting my book online for free downloading.

Besides reading a book, I find it helpful to hear the author talk about his or her book. Hence I recommend IT Conversations: Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby to those reading Richardson and Ruby’s Restful Web Services.

Details on using easy_install on Python: Python Cheese Shop : Browse is a list of the high level categories in the repository of Python packages. See also Python Cheese Shop : Home: “The Python Cheese Shop is a repository of software for the Python programming language. There are currently 2455 packages here.”

‘omg my mom joined facebook!!’ - New York Times captures some of my own experiences on Facebook and might make a good piece for my Building Next Generation Web Applications course:

So last week I joined Facebook, the social network for students that opened its doors last fall to anyone with an e-mail address. The decision not only doubled its active membership to 24 million (more than 50 percent of whom are not students), but it also made it possible for parents like me to peek at our children in their online lair.

I’m glad to hear that the current Youtube API will evolve on top the Google GData API: YouTube API Blog: The Future

I didn’t know about the Ruby-based API to Sketchup: SketchUp Ruby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I follow EveryBlock with great interest. (See also Knight Foundation grant Holovaty.com — and Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits, which has more preliminary details about EveryBlock.)

It is important to remember that JavaScript code is case sensitive. I couldn’t get an event handler to fire because I wrote alink.onClick and not the correct alink.onclick

Over the summer, I hope to take a closer look at all the wonderful work contained in the collection of Master’s Final Projects: 2007.

I don’t think that there is an official API for Google Reader although Niall Kennedy documened an unofficial Google Reader API a while back.

Shaking up tech publishing (Loud Thinking) is an interesting thread on the economics and incentive structures behind writing a computer book (such as what I’m doing right now!)

My Dreamhost-hosted sites are down again: DreamHost Status » Blog Archive » Spacey filer issues. Time to move? But where to go?

If I want to add SSL access to any of the domains I host on dreamhost.com, I will need a unique IP address, which costs an extra $4/month . Some threads on this topic: Re: Unique ip?

Since I use Wordpress to display code, I’d dearly like to get the bug #3066 (backslash disappears in <pre>) fixed.

I’m glad to see the emergence of APIs in the scholarly/library realm: OpenDOAR - About OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories and the corresponding OpenDOAR - Application Programmers’ Interface (API)

I’d like to learn how to write a FireFox toolbar. Born Geek » Firefox Toolbar Tutorial is a tutorial that might help:

This tutorial explains how to create a toolbar extension for the Firefox web browser (specifically for version 1.5 and later). It provides an overview of how extensions are developed, the tools required to create an extension, and details on how toolbars are created. Please note that this tutorial is lengthy; I recommend spending time with it over the course of a few days (it makes for a good weekend read).

The online Barnes and Noble stor (barnesandnoble.com) uses ISBN-13 in the links to books. (e.g., RESTful Web Services) Amazon.com uses ISBN-10. Something to keep in mind to et LibraryLookup to work for Barnes and Noble.

Because I really dig Python, I perk up with any mention of free (?) Plone hosting, such as Objectis - Objectis Community

I wish I could attend the Educause Western Regional Conference happening the week after next in SF, whose speaker list includes a number of folks I know personally.

It’s great to see more library catalogs with APIs, such as those documented in REST output from Huddersfield’s catalogue.

Congratulations to Roy Tennant on his new position at OCLC:

With OCLC I have an incredible opportunity to be active on a broader stage. OCLC is big enough to put libraries on the Internet map in a way that none of us could achieve alone. Open WorldCat is but one example of many. I will be working as a Senior Program Manager with the RLG Programs unit of OCLC Research and Programs. I will report to Jim Michalko, who in turn reports to Lorcan Dempsey. I have met virtually all of the top management team at OCLC and I’ve been very impressed. They know where things are heading and they’re determined to position libraries in a way that will do us the most good.

It’s a big loss for CDL — but I’m looking forward to seeing Roy’s influence at work on the larger playing field of OCLC.

I unintentionally deleted all my cookies in Firefox Argh. The interface should have prompted me that I was deleting all my cookies and not just the one I had highlighted. and deleting cookies — should be prompted!

The Citizendium editorial council email list is archived on the web — e.g., The Cz-editcouncil April 2007 Archive by thread

Any reason to use Shelfari instead of LibraryThing?

On my reading list: ALA Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries and Users and Uses of Bibliographic Data Meeting - Meetings - (Library of Congress)

On my viewing list: videos from code4lib 2007

Open Content:

The searchable indexes below expose public domain ebooks, open access digital repositories, Wikipedia articles, and miscellaneous human-cataloged Internet resources.

Sites such as Gliffy.com - Create and share diagrams online makes it easier to work with others online.

ACM Transactions on Information Systems has a call for papers for a special issue on “Keeping, Re-finding, and Sharing Personal Information” (due June 15, 2007)

I recently installed the Firebug extension and want to show it to my students.

Google’s Moon Shot brings up the good point that Google and the publishers might settle out of court in a way that effectively monopolizes the whole arena of making putting library books online en masse.