Oh No Not Again

Fifteen years ago, I didn't really want to build another life and another persona with SecondLife. Why would I take time away from creating my primary life to build an alternate Lisa and an alternate house, public library for her? It with that same weary mindset that I read about the metaverse and the likelihood of it launching out of (violent) gaming. The only appealing part of it, from my read of this Washington Post article would be that it's a unified platform - a single space. No separate logins, vocabularies, currencies.

Cleaning

You know what I use even less often than Blogger? Browser bookmarks. Only I today I do want to set some to easily rediscover two birdwatching things that I couldn't remember by source. Who runs the bird count project I've been doing: Audubon? Cornell? Somewhere else? (Project Feederwatch is sponsored in part by Cornell, but that's not in the url.) And then there's the online class that did NOT help me ID sparrows in the field when we did the Christmas Bird Count in King and Queen Co. yesterday....

I added those two to my active bookmarks, then investigated my old bookmarks, a personal archive of projects, interests, and goals. There's much I no longer need - some of which Chrome may be foisting on me? I can't imagine I set up a News subfolder with a Tidewater paper as well as USA Today, the RTD and NYT. Even if Chrome pulled them out of Firefox for me, most weren't things I'd choose. As a loyal Chrome user these days, I start to type "ric" and richmond.com autocompletes > hit enter >  read RTD. There were copious folders and subfolders for my job search. Nearly 13 years and 2 promotions in, I believe I'm where I'm staying!  Some bookmarks -- metadata, national archives -- seem to be left from grad school. Some are from work and likely from Firefox. Now I just search anew for IRS forms or Morningstar; I wouldn't skim bookmarks. Other bookmarks were blogs I enjoyed, almost all dead now. 

And a few are mysteries: what is Instapaper and did I really set up an account? Exporting bookmarks TO IE? Seriously, self? 75 Ways to Draw More??

YouTube

"The Beast with a Billion Eyes," by Lev Grossman (Time, January 30, 2012, pp.39-43)

Grossman includes all the numbers, but here's the gist: "More video is uploaded to YouTube every month than has been broadcasted by the three big TV networks in the past 60 years."* However, the average viewer stays there only about 15 minutes, versus an average of 3 hours of watching television. With TV, we know what's on -- roughly -- and where to look for it. While YouTube has "channels," most people don't use them like TV channels (though they are working to change that). Grossman explains the challenges of searching such a massive universe, even alluding to the problems of using natural language to tag/catalog things: sometimes people mark their videos with a description, but often they "call it 'LOLOLOLOL this thing is amazeballs!!!!!!!'"

One of the ways YouTube staff hope to improve channels is by introducing TV-network like channels with known stars and brands (Jay-Z, Amy Poehler, Disney). Yet current viewer habits put the amateur (semi-pro?) on top: the former hedge-fund manager Salman Khan and his math problems; teen character Fred and his 2.4 million followers - which Grossman compares to The Cartoon Network's mere 53,000. Some observations from public library land: maybe younger people watch Cartoon Network on YouTube, but don't subscribe to anything. Maybe it's more sophisticated high schoolers and 20-somethings actually subscribe to stuff. 


Grossman concludes that whatever changes YouTube makes, it's likely that the massive site will remain quirky: "What Nyan Cat [hyperlink added] tells us is that when you put amateurs in charge of broadcast media, odd things happen, and that's what YouTube does."

 their link for more: http://www.time.com/time/youtube



*Note: Google-owned Blogger know that Google-owned YouTube is spelled correctly, but has given me the squiggly lines under "Grossman."
P.S. I am about to get lost in the land of meta nyan. . . . Must. Put. Down. Keyboard.

Reading

I met author Candace Fleming at a Virginia Library Association conference a few yers back. I hadn't read her books, yet (my lib classifies them as JUV). She was receiving a prize and gave a wonderfully funny history-nerd speech. I bought two books, and when she signed them I told her "you're a kids' book-writing Sarah Vowell!" And I meant it.

At my old branch I helped people of all ages, all day, so knowing good JUV authors is helpful; sadly the county doesn't get many of Fleming's books, and most are at the big libraries. Now I work at a big library, and when I spotted Amelia Lost on the children's librarian's desk and went "ooh," she let me have it first. It took awhile to pick it up: "I know how it ends," I whined to myself. "It'll be sad."

Well, it is sad, but, wow what a good read! I love how Fleming builds excitement by weaving in one-page (usually) descriptions of the day the plane lost contact and all the people who thought they picked up distress signals from Earhart. Fleming even takes time to explain radio technology and culture of the time so that makes sense. The book is illustrated with period documents, ephemera, and photos. A great, suspenseful tragic read that I'll recommend to kids in grades 4 to 8. (Or, really, older. Even a high schooler who can hack an adult bio would enjoy this; it doesn't present little kiddish.)

P.S. I don't often blog about books anymore, but I want to turn in this book before the weekend. I like to make notes before returning so I'll know if there's swearing or sex or whatever before suggesting a book to a kid. But I couldn't make notes today because Shelfari is down, and has been since about 3:00. Shelfari -- now a subsidiary of Amazon (more rightly named than we knew? A giant monopoly in the making?) -- to add insult to injury, is suggesting I amuse myself by downloading something for my Kindle while I wait! Some damn nerve.

Technology

By random drawing, our library system will give away a Kindle this summer. Maybe one quarter of my branch's patron's say "what's that?" when I tell them. Meanwhile, according to this LA Times item, early adapters face prejudice -- perhaps linked to the inability to identify the object and its purpose.

Is that Why the Interwebs Are Slow at My House?

I never considered checking for ants; a good tip from Mr. Gaiman.

On Technology at the White House

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of the White House's outdated tech.

For more, go to WIRED.

Click here for an important announcement.

Blogging

At Wired: blogging tips from the man who, 10 years ago, coined "weblog." He remains loyal to the notion that a blog is a list of links, something "we" use del.icio.us for instead, these days.