I loved this quote from Dave Young when I first found it, and I love it more now:

Talk to the customer in the language of the customer about what matters to the customer. Bad advertising is about you, your company, your product or your service. Good advertising is about the customer, and how your product or service will change their world.

Read that again, but replace the relevant bits with “user” or “patron” and “your library” or “your databases.”

The point of all this in a post from Jessamyn about understanding what users understand.

Posted March 21, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information. Tags: communication design, customer, dave young, future libraries, john kupersmith, language, lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, targeting, taxonomy, terminology, user expectations, user knowledge. 7 Comments.

I have mixed feelings about the value of advertising — it’s worth pointing out that according to John Battelle, Google never ran an ad anywhere prior to going public — but I still enjoy seeing things like this Wyoming Libraries campaign. Jill Stover quotes Wyoming Libraries’ Tina Lackey with the news that “Wyoming’s libraries are as expansive as the state, and as close as down the street.”

I’m just hoping that A, the horse is real; and B, they auction it off. See, I have these silly ideas about doing a cross-country road trip with it.

Posted March 20, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Questionable...funny. Pointless.. Tags: advertising, buzz, libraries, library, marketing, prairie, promotion, trojan horse, wyoming, wyoming libraries. 2 Comments.

What’s sadder than people in Burundi earning an average of only $90 a year? It might be Bill Gates‘ criticism of MIT’s efforts to bring affordable, networked computers to the poorest countries of the world in hopes of improving education (and communication and healthcare and more).

The challenge is enormous: the technology needs to be durable, require low-power (and be easily rechargeable), as easy to use as an egg timer, have networking in a land without infrastructure, and be cheap, cheap, cheap. Yet somehow, the MIT folks have figured it out, and the project — known to most of us as the $100 laptop project — seems to be on its way to success.

It’s the sort of thing that you’d figure a philanthropic guy like Bill Gates would be on top of. But alas, he seems not to understand. Gizmodo, ArsTechnica, TeleRead, and others are all reporting the world’s richest man went critical over the MIT project.

Posted March 19, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Politics & Controversy, Technology. Tags: bill gates, billg, computer, harsh, harsh words, laptop, microsoft, mit laptop, mobile computing, origami, umpc. One Comment.

Alan Wexelblat in Copyfight poses a question from a reader about the future of entertainment:

what rights do you purchase/license/contract for in creating such a reproduction of a real person? Rights to the “likeness?” Performance rights? Do either of these cover things the actor never physically did or said? Is there an exclusivity clause? There are clearly some issues around the ownership of a character, if that character has appeared before (e.g. Connery’s Bond) but usually the character rights reside with the studio. But if you want the Connery Bond instead of a generic James Bond you also have to incude Connery in the deal, as well as whatever studio or estate has the Bond character rights.

Posted March 18, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Books, Movies, Music, Copyrights & Intellectual Property, Technology. Tags: Alan Wexelblat, animation, character rights, copyfight, copyright, digital actors, digiwood, hollywood, licensing, selling yourself, synthespians. 4 Comments.

I regularly check the English language online edition of Pravda for laughs and sometimes for their take on US domestic affairs. But today’s headline left me scratching my head. What calendar are these people using, anyway?

The headlined story is offered without any context or explanation. As it turns out, author Ian Magnussen really did mean February 5th 2006, not 2007 or later. Had it appeared two months ago it might have been called speculative fiction, though more likely seen as a crazy conspiracy theory. I just find it a bit scary. But still, why publish it now?

Posted March 18, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Politics & Controversy, Questionable...funny. Pointless.. Tags: breaking news, conspiracy theory, contradiction, contradictory, foreign opinion, headline, news, newspaper, odd news, pravda, russia, russian, russian news, scary, speculative fiction, strange headline. 2 Comments.

Ryan sent along a link to Flight of the Concords‘ Business Time last week and I’m still laughing over it. With some exploring at a fansite, What the Folk!, I dug up a trove of other amusements, including She’s So Hot Boom.

For more info, I turned (as usual) to the Wikipedia article. And if I had HBO, I could have caught a repeat of them on One Night Stand this past Wednesday. But alas, no.

Posted March 17, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Books, Movies, Music, Questionable...funny. Pointless.. Tags: bret mckenzie, comedy, flight of the conchords, folk, fotc, free mp3s, funny, jemaine clement, music, New Zealanders. 11 Comments.

SXSW passes have apparently been sold out for weeks now. So what’s Bob Garlitz, the MaisonBisson cultural affairs reporter, to do? Hunt for celebrities around Austin, of course.

Here’s how he describes his first hit:

…I decide hell, yes, it is Owen and give a tiny decisive blink. He blinks back in acknowledgment. I give him a little punch on his shoulder and say Hey, how’re you doing? I’m doing real good, he says slowly…

Posted March 17, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Books, Movies, Music, Questionable...funny. Pointless., Style, Fashion and Food, Travel. Tags: austin, austin tx, bob garlitz, celebrity, celebrity citings, cultural reporting, owen wilson, robert garlitz, south by southwest, sxsw, sxsw2006, texas. 5 Comments.

Modern Drunkard Magazine suggests we chase the snakes out of our minds, for as Yeats reminds us:

The problem with some people is that when they’re not drunk, they’re sober.

Posted March 17, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Questionable...funny. Pointless.. Tags: chasing snakes, drink, drinking, drinking songs, drunk, ireland, irish, irish dance, irish dancing, irish heritage, irish whiskey, jig, saint patrick, saint patrick's day, st. patty's day, W.B. Yeats, yeats. One Comment.

Yahoo’s Tom Coats was of seven star speakers at Carson Workshops‘ Future of Web Apps Summit last month. As usual, Ryan Eby was pretty quick to point out his slides to me, mostly by way of pointing out Jeremy Zawodny’s translation of them.

Posted March 16, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Technology. Tags: application design, Carson Workshops, FoWA, future of web apps, future of web apps summit, lib20, library 2.0, native to web, native to web of data, summit, tom coates, web 2.0, web applications, web design, web platform. 4 Comments.

I like pretty much everything Paula Wirth puts up on Flickr, but this afternoon I could do well with a dive like Scolari’s Office in San Diego. But, that’s probably because it mixes “office” and “cocktails” in the sort of way that has anonymous tipsters slipping photocopies of the alcohol policy from our HR handbook under my office door.

Eh, here’s to happy hour.

Posted March 15, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Photoblog, Style, Fashion and Food. Tags: alcohol policy, california, office cocktails, peter scolari, San Diego, San Diego CA, scolari's office, scolari's office cocktails. Be the first one.

The Washington Post reports two men in uniforms bearing “Homeland Security” insignia walked into a Bethesda library in early February, announced that viewing of internet pornography was forbidden, and began questioning patrons. The men asked one library user to step outside just before a librarian intervened. Then…

the two men [and the librarian] went into the library’s work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.

As it turns out, the men were legitimate homeland security officers, members of the county’s force, though it seems nobody was quite clear about why they were there.

Posted March 14, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy. Tags: abuse of authority, bethesda, bethesda md, civil liberties, homeland security, library, maryland, overstepping, police, porn. 2 Comments.

code4lib was less than a month ago, but already I’ve forgotten some details.

That’s why I’m glad to have notes from Ed Summers (day one, two, and three), Art Rhyno, Tom Hickey, Karen Coombs, and Ryan Eby.

Posted March 14, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information. Tags: code4lib, code4lib 2006, conference blog, conference journal, libraries, library. Be the first one.

Just when you thought I was done talking about how the internet really does touch everything, Lichen posts some details from the most recent University of New Hampshire Res Life student survey and it gets me going again. In order, the top three activities are:

• socializing (15.8 hours/week)
   
• studying, excluding in-class time (12.5 hours/week)
   
• instant messaging, (9.3 hours/week)

Posted March 13, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Technology. Tags: aim, campus computing, computer use, im, instant messenger, online activity, social networking, social software, student life, survey, unh, university of new hampshire, usage survey. 4 Comments.

The FlickrBlog reports this message from Gale:

People have been submitting good humpback whale fluke shots to a group called Humpback whale flukes. I volunteer at Allied Whale which holds the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog and I was able to make a very exciting match with one of the whales that was posted on the group by GeorgeK.

George saw this whale in Newfoundland in the summer of 2005. It matched with HWC#2943 in the North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catolog ….. this whale was seen only once before in March 1984!!! on Silver Bank (the breeding grounds North of the Dominican Republic).

This is what flickr has the power to do.

Posted March 13, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Technology. Tags: allied whale, collaborative database, connections, flickr, flukes, humpback whales, North Atlantic Humpback Whale Catalog, serendipity, social networks, social software, whale flukes, whale watch, whales. 3 Comments.

The Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls: just another example of why New York is cooler than New Hampshire. Photo by Rocco Kasby, performance by the Pink Slips.
Yet again, a tip of the hat to Ryan Eby for the pointer.
Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls , Rock Camp, Rock Camp For Girls, Willie Mae [...]

Posted March 12, 2006 by Casey
Categories: Books, Movies, Music, Photoblog. Tags: music, music instruction, new york, rock, Rock Camp, Rock Camp For Girls, summer camp, Willie Mae Rock Camp, Willie Mae Rock Camp For Girls, youth camp. 9 Comments.