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Google Saved My Ass!

Well, that title's probably a bit of an exaggeration but it got your attention, no? 

I have an add-on in my Firefox called “Tab Mix Plus” which is great – it allows you almost total control of how your tabs operate with the bonus feature of keeping track of the sites you have in open tabs when your browser closes or crashes.  (I know Firefox has something like this built-in now but I still prefer the Tab Mix Plus version.)

Because of this feature, I've gotten in the habit of keeping anywhere from 10-20 tabs open at any one time rather than using bookmarks or delicious or some other option to keep track of them. 

Unfortunately, I recently had a Firefox crash which didn't allow a session restore for some reason.  I went into the hard drive looking for a back-up file but couldn't find anything.  I tried the online backup program I subscribe to (which has saved my bacon in the past when I've needed to restore files) but it didn't have the proper file either.

I was just starting to accept that I'd lost all my tabs – again, nothing major but things like stories I come across that I mean to read at a later date, potential sites to use as blog fodder, etc.  I was trying to be zen about losing all of these links but the feeling lingered that I'd lost something really good that I'd regret.

Then, for some reason, I thought of one other avenue I could try.  When I set-up my Gmail account, without even thinking, I gave Google permission to keep a record of my searches. I logged in and, for the first time ever, realised that I'd also agreed to allow Google to keep a record of which sites I visit and when (plus helpfully keeping track of which sites I've visited the most.)

We can have the debate about privacy in the digital age another time (I have a feeling I'd lose!) but the reality is that, by giving Google access to this information, I was able to page through my last month's worth of surfing and pick out the sites I'd had open in my browser when it crashed because they were the ones that showed up as having been visited multiple times (due to the fact that they get reloaded every time I open and close Firefox which I occasionally do on purpose as well! )

So, long story short (too late), I was able to rediscover pretty much every site that I'd had bookmarked when the crash happened.  And I realised that most of them were things I'd probably not miss if I hadn't gotten them back.  But yeah, it was nice to have my little brain feel settled anyhow. 

For the tin-foil hat types, Google also has another feature where they not only track your searches AND sites visited but they can helpfully compile them to show your most frequent searches, sites visited and links clicked on in the past week, month, year and all-time.  Yikes!

(Okay, I'll start the debate by saying that I don't mind putting out my personal information because I'm not worried about more serious consequences than having ads targeted to me – something that I actually prefer to be honest.  Am I way off-base here?  Are the Google overlords plotting my demise?  Could the government knock on my door for my frequent clicks to “The Poo Bomb“???)

Posted 05 March 2008 § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Borrowed Time: How Do You Build A Library in the Age of Google

Ross Dawson, a business consultant who tracks different customs, devices, and institutions on what he calls an Extinction Timeline,
predicts that libraries will disappear in 2019. He's probably right as
far as the function of the library as a civic monument, or as a public
repository for books, is concerned. On the other hand, in its mutating
role as urban hangout, meeting place, and arbiter of information, the
public library seems far from spent. This has less to do with the
digital world—or the digital word—than with the age-old need for human
contact.

How do you build a public library in the age of Google? – By Witold Rybczynski – Slate Magazine

(via Cenobyte)

Posted 04 March 2008 § Library § Main Page § PopCulture § Travel § United States ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Ring Those Phones 2008!

You know you've been blogging for a long time when you can do “flashback” posts.

Here's one from last year about the record-setting take ($5 million plus) of the annual TeleMiracle telethon that year.  This year looks like it won't hit that height (they're currently just shy of $3 million so there'd have to be a lot of big last minute bequests to get anywhere close to last year's total with only an hour to go.)  

Still, no matter what, the telethon always makes me feel proud of my province and of humanity in general.  

Posted 02 March 2008 § Main Page § Saskatchewan ‡ Comments (0) °

FTRW 2008 – "The Charms of Wikipedia" (with discussion of the policy of deleting of "non-notable" articles)

Author Nicholson Baker takes a look at Wikipedia and includes a critique of the number of articles being deleted for less-than-solid reasons.  [Edit to add a link to the article which is a pretty important detail to leave out!]

In the fall of 2006, groups of editors went around getting rid of
articles on webcomic artists—some of the most original and articulate
people on the Net. They would tag an article as nonnotable and then
crowd in to vote it down. One openly called it the “web-comic articles
purge of 2006.” … Rob Balder, author of a webcomic called PartiallyClips,
likened the organized deleters to book burners, and he said: “Your
words are polite, yeah, but your actions are obscene. Every word in
every valid article you've destroyed should be converted to profanity
and screamed in your face.”

Posted 02 March 2008 § Censorship § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged:

"What A Wonderful World" – Shadow Puppets

This song is one of my favourites and this version by an Australian shadow puppeteer guesting on the David Letterman show is unbelievable.  The baby's hand brought tears to my eyes.

(via Reddit)

Posted 01 March 2008 § Baby § Main Page § PopCulture § Randomness § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

This is the best invention in the history of the world…

I can hear myself now: “Is it a heart attack of joy or a heart attack of the usual kind?”

Posted 29 February 2008 § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Friday Fun Link – Ranking the World's Best Digital Libraries (Feb 29, 2008)

You know it's a hard core list when the Library of Congress only ranks an “honourable mention”. 

Ranking the World's Best Digital Libraries

Posted 29 February 2008 § FridayFunLink § Library § List § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

FTRW 2008 – Tories Plan To Withhold Funding for "Offensive" Productions

 Tories plan to withhold funding for 'offensive' productions

“Would this committee put money into Juno? It might not want to encourage teen pregnancy. Would the government put money into a film with a dirty title, like Young People Fucking? Would they invest in something like Brokeback Mountain? They might not want to encourage gay cowboys to have sex together in Alberta.”

(via Cenobyte – whose FTRW credentials are strong.  Last year, she let me say “scrotum” AND “nut sack” on her radio show during a discussion about Freedom to Read Week.)

Posted 29 February 2008 § Censorship § Main Page § Politics ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged:

FTRW 2008 – Rotten.com

One of the semi-frequent questions/complaints I get from our branch librarians is how to deal with patrons who are looking at pornography.  But during my training, one branch librarian mentioned that she'd had an incident with a patron looking at something much much worse: rotten.com

(I don't usually do warnings on my blog but I'm doing one here.  Although there's nothing disturbing on the Rotten.com front page that I linked to above, remember that you can't “unsee” anything you see once you start clicking on the links on that page! ) 

Rotten.com bills itself this way:


The soft white underbelly of the net, eviscerated
for all to see: Rotten dot com collects images and information
from many sources to present the viewer with a truly
unpleasant experience.

while Wikipedia sums it up like this:

[Rotten.com] is devoted to morbid curiosities, primarily pictures of gruesome fatalities, deformities, autopsy or forensic photographs, depictions of perverse sex acts, and historical curios that are disturbing or misanthropic in nature.

(There's also a summary on Wikipedia of a few of the site's legal challenges.)

I've got mixed feelings about the site myself.  Does seeing a picture of a decapitated person (to take but one example of what you might see if you click through the links on the site) harm you in some way?  Is it illegal?  Is it immoral?  (And is that simply a cultural construct or a personal bias?  Or is this an absolute value?)

On the other hand, is the site just a way to satisfy natural human curiosity?  Is it better to be able to see this type of material rather than having it hidden?  (The US policy of not allowing photos of caskets returning from Iraq is on the very opposite end of the spectrum.)  Is it any different than the six o'clock news where you can regularly see video of people being killed, dying, being tortured, being assassinated, and god knows what else.  It's explicit but on some level, is it any different than a site like MyFreeImplants.com  (again, as just one example among hundreds that could be cited.) 

Salon.com has an article exploring some of these questions called “The Internet's Public Enema #1: Will Rotten.com ever be kicked offline?“






But Rotten.com
isn't just a database of the disgusting; it's also a venue for making a
point about censorship, at least according to “Soylent,” the
pseudonymous proprietor of Rotten.com, whose highly graphic content has
earned him enemies around the world. The site is currently being
investigated by Scotland Yard and the FBI for cannibalism. The German
Family Ministry has threatened Soylent with legal action if he doesn't
find a way to shield minors from his site. And then there's the endless
cease-and-desist letters that flood in from a long list of major
corporations that object to the site.

“Rotten dot-com
serves as a beacon to demonstrate that censorship of the Internet is
impractical, unethical and wrong,” Soylent writes in his manifesto,
adding that nothing he posts there can't be found elsewhere. “To censor
this site, it is necessary to censor medical texts, history texts,
evidence rooms, courtrooms, art museums, libraries, and other sources
of information vital to functioning of free society.”

Posted 28 February 2008 § Censorship § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged:

FTRW 2008 – Freedom to Read Week Founding Member Passes Away

A bit of sad news today, right in the middle of Freedom to Read Week…

Dear colleagues in the Book and Periodical Council,

We sadly note that Nancy Fleming has died. Nancy was the executive director of the BPC from 1979 to 1999. She helped organize the Freedom of Expression Committee and Freedom to Read Week. Her obit in The Globe and Mail is below.

Franklin Carter

_____________________

Tuesday February 26, 2008
FLEMING, Nancy Barbara (née Chisholm)
Chief Executive of the Book and Periodical Council for over twenty years and laureate of the Canadian Library Association Award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada, died peacefully on 24 February 2008 at Toronto Western Hospital following declining health in recent years. She was 76. Nancy leaves bereaved her three children by the late Allan Fleming, Martha, Peter and Susannah, as well as their partners; grandson McCullough and many friends and colleagues. Cremation will be followed later by a memorial event in Spring (contact peterfleming@sympatico.ca). Donations to Freedom to Read (www.freedomtoread.ca) would be appreciated.

Posted 27 February 2008 § Censorship § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: