CIL Day One
CIL2006: The Journey Begins
09:50 The Washington Hilton Ballroom was packed for Chris Sherman's keynote, Search Engine Report. While I didn't catch all of it thanks to traffic on the George Washington Parkway, I was able hear his conclusions:
I've tried to get these exactly the way they appeared on his slide, as I don't want to misquote him.
While Microsoft releasing a new search engine and mapping tool are alright, I don't personally find either innovative as much as I find them derivative of existing products.
Lots of content has always been searchable (anyone remember Archie?), other sources of electronic content (gopher, finger and WAIS, for example) mostly dried up and went away faced with the overwhelming onslaught of the World Wide Web and hypertext protocol. Those that didn't go away usually migrated to to the Web. What we have searchable now is other types of content, such as MP3, MPG, etc.
As far as privacy goes, librarians are probably among the most liberal groups around, and perhaps more easily than others percieve enchroachment of one's rights. I think one of the key phrases in his last statement is "seem to be". I don't think authoritarian rule in China is in any danger of crumbling and unleashing a wave of human rights legislation.
11:18 Mary Ellen Bates' presentation on Thirty Search Tips in 40 Minutes was almost a mini Yahoo lovefest. Many of the tips she presented were from Yahoo. I think that's really more indicative that Yahoo has been working harder to put some interesting services up moreso than anyother entity. Except Google, that is.
Some highlights from her list:
In case you weren't counting, that's 6 Yahoo services.
12:15 Jason Clark and Karen Coombs just wrapped Website Tools and Technology. After overcoming a technical glitch, Jason showed how AJAX technology makes sites like Google Local work. He also showed a site called sproutlines.com that can make a To-do list. I can see a business application for this, but I can't see any purpose in making my to-do list publicly available. I don't need anyone else knowing just how far behind I am on my goofing off.
Karen showed some popular CM and blogging apps. Her recommendations were Drupal and Plone for CM, and Movable Type for blogging. She also showed a site called tiny MCE and openwebdesign.org.
14:45 I attended a panel discussion on lessons learned from implementation of Federated search engines. I hear rumblings that federated searching in the consortium my library belongs to is withering and may never see light. That's too bad. Northwestern University has a successful implementation, as do those from the other three libraries represented on the panel. The key things they shared were to not require login access until they drill into more than what the federated search can deliver.
Federated searching also introduced searchers to sources they may not be familar with. But if the interface looks too complicated, people will never use it, so they may never find these sources. Related to that, most users never use advanced search features. That's either due to lack of interest, or not understanding what to do with all those extra fields. I guess the Google model of a single search field is really strong.
16:05 Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter made their Cool Tools Update for Webmasters. The showed us some pretty fun stuff. I've been interested in PHP scripting for a while now, and they showed screenshots of PHPEditor and PHPExpert Debugger. Way cool.
They also showed a couple of Firefox extensions that I'm not familiar with, Colorful Tabs 1.1 and Tab X 0.9.2. I wasn't aware of these, but I'm going to have to check them out.
Wink is an application that will create a Flash presentation. Powerbullet Presenter crates Flash multimedia presentations. Mailbigfile.com will allow you to send an attachment up to 1 GB in size. That'd choke most e-mail sysytems. NVu is a WYSIWYG HTML editor like FrontPage, but without all the messy Microsoft HTML code. MetaTag Export will help you creatmeta tags for your web pages. If you have multiple staff writing pages, you may want to consider using this app to ensure you are getting consisten code.
17:05 Meet the Grokkers was a report on the implementation of the visual display of database search results by the software provided by Groxis. The software organizes the search results into visual clues, which are discernable by their color, size, shape, and location. Mention was made that this appeals to the Visual learner as described by Howard Gardner in his book, Multiple Intelligences.
This visualization overcomes two deficiencies in traditional ranked search results: it helped students to look past the first page of search results; and provided context and other connections to the subject. During the test, one student described it as, "Really fun."
18:47 Everyone Loves Steve Abram
Well, it's true. Everytime I've seen him today he's been surrounded by a group of people, and they're all having a wonderful time. I showed him the picture I took of him at IFLA last year. He was having fun there, too.
I literally bumped into Nancy Garman at the reception this evening. Fortunately neither of us was seriously injured. I must confess to coveting her "One of the Blog People" button.
But now, it's late, and I must sleep. I know that. Now I just have to convince my mind and body.
09:50 The Washington Hilton Ballroom was packed for Chris Sherman's keynote, Search Engine Report. While I didn't catch all of it thanks to traffic on the George Washington Parkway, I was able hear his conclusions:
- Search is getting exciting and innovative again
- New tools and products are making more types of content searchable
- Threats to privacy and individual liberty are subtly increasing in the US, while ironically they seem to be improving in China.
I've tried to get these exactly the way they appeared on his slide, as I don't want to misquote him.
While Microsoft releasing a new search engine and mapping tool are alright, I don't personally find either innovative as much as I find them derivative of existing products.
Lots of content has always been searchable (anyone remember Archie?), other sources of electronic content (gopher, finger and WAIS, for example) mostly dried up and went away faced with the overwhelming onslaught of the World Wide Web and hypertext protocol. Those that didn't go away usually migrated to to the Web. What we have searchable now is other types of content, such as MP3, MPG, etc.
As far as privacy goes, librarians are probably among the most liberal groups around, and perhaps more easily than others percieve enchroachment of one's rights. I think one of the key phrases in his last statement is "seem to be". I don't think authoritarian rule in China is in any danger of crumbling and unleashing a wave of human rights legislation.
11:18 Mary Ellen Bates' presentation on Thirty Search Tips in 40 Minutes was almost a mini Yahoo lovefest. Many of the tips she presented were from Yahoo. I think that's really more indicative that Yahoo has been working harder to put some interesting services up moreso than anyother entity. Except Google, that is.
Some highlights from her list:
- myweb2.yahoo.com
- mystuff.ask.com
- www.furl.net
- www.esnips.com
- mindset.yahoo.com
- www.exalead.com
- www.grokker.com
- yq.search.yahoo.com
- sitexplorer.search.yahoo.com
- search.yahoo.com/subscriptions
- www.A9.com
- widgets.yahoo.com
In case you weren't counting, that's 6 Yahoo services.
12:15 Jason Clark and Karen Coombs just wrapped Website Tools and Technology. After overcoming a technical glitch, Jason showed how AJAX technology makes sites like Google Local work. He also showed a site called sproutlines.com that can make a To-do list. I can see a business application for this, but I can't see any purpose in making my to-do list publicly available. I don't need anyone else knowing just how far behind I am on my goofing off.
Karen showed some popular CM and blogging apps. Her recommendations were Drupal and Plone for CM, and Movable Type for blogging. She also showed a site called tiny MCE and openwebdesign.org.
14:45 I attended a panel discussion on lessons learned from implementation of Federated search engines. I hear rumblings that federated searching in the consortium my library belongs to is withering and may never see light. That's too bad. Northwestern University has a successful implementation, as do those from the other three libraries represented on the panel. The key things they shared were to not require login access until they drill into more than what the federated search can deliver.
Federated searching also introduced searchers to sources they may not be familar with. But if the interface looks too complicated, people will never use it, so they may never find these sources. Related to that, most users never use advanced search features. That's either due to lack of interest, or not understanding what to do with all those extra fields. I guess the Google model of a single search field is really strong.
16:05 Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter made their Cool Tools Update for Webmasters. The showed us some pretty fun stuff. I've been interested in PHP scripting for a while now, and they showed screenshots of PHPEditor and PHPExpert Debugger. Way cool.
They also showed a couple of Firefox extensions that I'm not familiar with, Colorful Tabs 1.1 and Tab X 0.9.2. I wasn't aware of these, but I'm going to have to check them out.
Wink is an application that will create a Flash presentation. Powerbullet Presenter crates Flash multimedia presentations. Mailbigfile.com will allow you to send an attachment up to 1 GB in size. That'd choke most e-mail sysytems. NVu is a WYSIWYG HTML editor like FrontPage, but without all the messy Microsoft HTML code. MetaTag Export will help you creatmeta tags for your web pages. If you have multiple staff writing pages, you may want to consider using this app to ensure you are getting consisten code.
17:05 Meet the Grokkers was a report on the implementation of the visual display of database search results by the software provided by Groxis. The software organizes the search results into visual clues, which are discernable by their color, size, shape, and location. Mention was made that this appeals to the Visual learner as described by Howard Gardner in his book, Multiple Intelligences.
This visualization overcomes two deficiencies in traditional ranked search results: it helped students to look past the first page of search results; and provided context and other connections to the subject. During the test, one student described it as, "Really fun."
18:47 Everyone Loves Steve Abram
Well, it's true. Everytime I've seen him today he's been surrounded by a group of people, and they're all having a wonderful time. I showed him the picture I took of him at IFLA last year. He was having fun there, too.
I literally bumped into Nancy Garman at the reception this evening. Fortunately neither of us was seriously injured. I must confess to coveting her "One of the Blog People" button.
But now, it's late, and I must sleep. I know that. Now I just have to convince my mind and body.
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