David Gwynn » Web

LibraryThing App

David — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:47:03 +0000

As excited as I was to see that LibraryThing now has an iPhone app, I was very disappointed to find that it doesn’t access your actual library, but instead just looks for bookstores and events based on your current location. Which, granted, is pretty cool–except for the fact that I was inside the pretty major university library where I work when I downloaded it. Guess what was nowhere to be found in the results?

I love LT enough to let this pass, really, but it was kind of a letdown.

Archiving the Web

David — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:23:27 +0000

This is the kind of archival project that few people think about, but that will also become incredibly important over the coming years. I’ll admit that preserving the real URLs behind all those shortening services wasn’t something I’d ever really considered. It also makes me wonder about strategies for preserving database-driven websites (like this one, for example). How does an external entity manage to save both the database and the PHP files that make it function? It’s not like saving static HTML pages, although I guess saving sites as generated in that format might be the only option at this point.

Social Networking

David — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:11:35 +0000

Public Porn

David — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:01:51 +0000

Library computer users viewing porn anger parents:

Kimberly Romie, whose Piedmont Homeschoolers Association members have increasingly complained about the problem, said some parents have stopped taking their children to the library.

“We’re talking about some really hardcore, gross stuff,” said Romie, who had three such experiences at the library and has heard similar accounts from other parents.

“My total issue is that it should not be allowed. Someone cannot stand over them the whole time. A child or a mom is going to end up walking in on this. And once you see it, you’ve seen it.”

Unfortunately, Ms, Romie sort of contradicts herself in the first and second sentences of the last paragraph where she follows “It should not be allowed” with “someone cannot stand over them the whole time”. Unfortunately, standing over them is about the only completely effective means of preventing the problem. Filters don’t work, they never have worked, and they cause far more problems than they solve. I understand her frustration, but other than constant monitoring or getting rid of internet access altogether, how would she propose solving this problem? “Not allowing it” is much easier said than done.

Design

David — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:00:51 +0000

I love Foxtrot.

Librarything

David — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 15:00:19 +0000

This, via here, is making me all warm and squishy tonight and keeping me up later than I might have preferred. On early assessment, I am not surprised to see that we have a relatively obscure collection of books here at Murdering Stream Estates. I am very pleased to see that, at this stage in the import, the three most “popular” titles I own are all “Bloom County” collections. Somehow, that makes me feel a lot better about humanity in general.

There are still lots of tags to enter. And alas, Mark and I between us have over 150 titles without ISBNs, all of which will have to be entered manually rather than imported from our own book database.

Why, yes. Of course we have our own book database. Don’t you?