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Tag-clouds for the first debates of the Democratic and Republican primaries. (via MetaFilter)

- JH

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens.

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.

Strong evidence in favour of the $100 laptop? I think so!

(via Reddit)

- JH

Britain’s biggest specialist book chain, Waterstone’s, asked its 5,000 staff to name their favourite five books written since 1982, the date Waterstone’s opened its first store. The list features the cream, both male and female, of the modern international literary world of the last quarter of a century - from Umberto Eco and Bill Bryson to Robert Harris and Ian McEwan, from Margaret Atwood and Jung Chang to Zadie Smith and Zoe Heller.

- JH

A fitting list for Friday the 13th - “13 Lucky Tips For Activists“.

What’s #1? “Have a sense of humour.”

- JH

An article about the shift in the role of public library from “library” to “homeless shelter”. (via MetaFilter which, as always, has lots of good discussion around all aspects of this issue.)

- JH

There’s nothing fun about this week’s post but it’ll likely get your blood boiling. A recent MetaFilter post explained how Circuit City was losing too much money so their brilliant idea to improve the bottom line was to fire their top earning employees (3400 of them) and then offer to re-hire them at a lower wage?

As always, some great discussion ensued including a link to a Fast Company story about how Wal-Mart is like the tiger that eats its own tale. By always demanding price cuts from suppliers, they end up eventually putting the suppliers out of business completely.

There was a happy note in the discussion though - the John Lewis store group in the UK who list maximizing employee “happiness” as the company goal, announced that they were sharing 155 million pounds in profit among all 68 000 of their staff from the back room to the board room. That means an average bonus equivalent to nine weeks’ pay for most.

(via MetaFilter)

- JH

LoudIt.org offers free MP3 audio books of classic works that you can download or read long with onscreen. (via MetaFilter)

- JH

I was recently forwarded an e-mail that mentioned how MIT is offering a variety of free University courses that cover almost their entire curriculum.

This e-mail reminded me of a MetaFilter thread I saw a few weeks ago (and I think had even bookmarked into my “Potential FFL’s” folder) that mentions not only the MIT offering but captures a number of other similar resources as well.

The only catch with these is that they don’t count for University credit and therefore, you can’t use them towards your degree requirements. But if you want to explore pretty much any topic you can think of, you can’t beat this price!

- JH (via Stephanie P.)

Scribd is a new site attempting to be the “YouTube of documents.” It currently accepts .doc, .ppt, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .ps, .lit, .cia and .nhl file formats (just seeing if you’re paying attention on those last two!)

Right now, the site seems to be a mix of pirated e-books (there’s that YouTube connection!) and documents of the type your mom might forward to you by e-mail.

But it definitely has potential as an information sharing medium. As one commenter in the TechCrunch story says: “It’ll be interesting to see what kind of content becomes popular. Term papers? Government documents? Porn? All of the above?” If YouTube is the guide, “all of the above” is probably the most likely. (Er, except porn. YouTube doesn’t allow that. Uhm, at least that’s what a friend told me.)

Like YouTube, Scripd allows embedding of any documents. Here’s one called “18 Tricks To Teach Your Body.”

- JH

The son of conservative icon, Phyllis Schlafly, Andrew Schlafly has set-up a conservative alternative to the “liberal-biased” Wikipedia called “Conservapedia“.
(via MetaFilter which includes some of the funnier excerpts from the site.)

There are lots of lists of best opening and closing lines/paragraphs of novels. But how about a list of best opening paragraphs from academic titles?
(via MetaFilter which, as always, has some good discussion, other suggestions and related links)

Here’s a bonus FFL - “Virus“, a fun little Flash game that’s sort of like a multi-coloured version of Go. (also from MetaFilter)

- JH

I said last week that I love getting something in my in-box on Friday morning that I can turn around and use as a Friday Fun Link later that same day. (In fact, feel free to e-mail me if you know a site that is funny, unique or thought-provoking. I can’t guarantee I’ll use it but I’m always on the look out for potential FFL’s.)

My former classmate, Bruce F., comes through with today’s link - a parody of the “March of the Penguins” documentary using the ALA conference in Seattle as a backdrop.

They come to network, for free stuff and possibly, to mate. Hilarious!

Sometimes an idea for the day’s FFL pops right in your in-box on a Friday morning. Here’s something fellow Librarian Activist editor, David Jackson, sent me today.

“I Bless The Rains Down in Africa” is an article from music web site Pitchfork, comparing the presence of information about Africa with information about the Star Wars universe on the Internet. Perhaps not surprisingly, Africa doesn’t fare very well. As author Chris Dahlen points out, “This is partly because sci-fi nerds in the Western world have better net access than most Africans. People also seem more drawn to the relative simplicity of pop culture than to the complexities of real life. Pop culture gives us a world we can understand, and problems we can solve.”

If you don’t read the complete article, I’ll pull one thing that might be of interest. GlobalVoicesOnline.org is a blog aggregator that “gathers online news and opinion from the global blogosphere. With a staff of almost 20 editors and more than 100 contributors, it’s a major resource for world news at a time when fewer and fewer [North] American newspapers collect the stuff on their own. Global Voices collects “bridge bloggers,” or bloggers who can talk about their region to a worldwide audience…A great bridge blogger is hard to find, and the countries that need the most representation have the least access to the internet.”

- JH

DoTheRightThing.com is a new web site that’s similar to Digg in that users submit stories and others vote the stories up or down. But unlike Digg, where the criteria for voting up or down a story are fairly diverse, this site asks for you to vote based on the positive or negative impact the story has on the wider world.

- JH

Beyond the irony of that I’m writing about a game called “Homelessness: It’s No Game”, there are other problems with this Flash project. But before I get to that, here’s some background from the designer:

“I created this game for a graduate-level course on game design I took at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University*. The intent of the game is to raise awareness of the situation faced by the homeless, as well as to aid in my research into the effectiveness of serious videogames.”

Although the concept has lots of potential, the execution (at least in the current version) is lacking. This Flash-based game asks you to simulate life on the streets by taking on the role of a homeless person. You wander a small area of a city picking up bottles and other items to sell, panhandling, dealing with hunger pangs and a heavy bladder, visiting parks, diners and churches while avoiding trouble and trying to earn “esteem” points by your actions. You have a 24-hour window (accelerated obviously) to earn 24 esteem points. If you do, you “win” the game. If not…well, I don’t know what happens if not since I’ve played the game four times and never “lost” once (I think my record was raising my esteem enough was before 10 hours were up out of the 24.)

The author promises future revisions to improve the game in various ways - a larger area to explore, more visual elements, localization options and unique characters. Hopefully this comes to pass as the game has potential to at least give a taste of what it is like to be on the streets - even if only virtually and from behind the safety of a computer screen. And it’s definitely a bit more meaningful than games dedicated to stealing cars, killing enemies or eating magic mushrooms that give you amazing jumping powers.

- JH

Most people reading this are probably familiar with LibraryThing, a web site that allows you to easily enter and catalogue your books, see the libraries of others (including those with a similar collection to yours) and much more. But LibraryThing is not the only site in this area.

Shelfari is the latest addition to the “social-networking via your book collection” world. Web 2.0 news site, TechCrunch covers this new site and a few of its competitors in a recent post which also generated some good discussion among TechCrunch readers.

- JH

US News names their 25 Best Careers for 2007 and Librarian is right up there - although we get a “C” rating for both “job outlook” and “prestige”. (Physician’s assistant on the other hand…)

- JH


I found this via another site.  It uses the number of sites linking to your blog to calculate a value for that blog.  (Don’t worry - a LibrarianActivist.org IPO won’t be forthcoming anytime soon!)

Here’s a big surprise - I love lists! And the end of the year, is the absolute best time for them. A web site called Fimoculous has compiled links to various online lists of best movies, music, books and various other categories for the past few years.

Here’s a direct link to the Books section and the Words, Quotes & Search Terms section.

Happy New Year everyone!

- Jason

LISNews.org names The Top Ten LIS Stories of 2006
(via Stephen’s Lighthouse)