Free Security Software As Good As Commercial

In the June 2009 issue of Consumer Reports, they compared the best software for protection against viruses, malware, and spam.  Interestingly, in addition to comparing commercial suites, they also looked at freely available software and came up with a “suite” of programs that could protect you as well as most of the commercial products.
The three [...]

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E-Rate Schools Now Require Education

The House and Senate have passed S. 1492, which has 2 titles:

Title I – Broadband Data Improvement Act
Title II – Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act

When I first heard about this bill, I only knew about the first part, which deals with determining broadband speeds across the nation and promoting affordable broadband for everyone. [...]

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Stolen Mac Helps Find Burglars

A Macintosh laptop, as well as other electronics, was stolen from an Apple employee.  The Leopard operating system on the Mac has a function called “Back to My Mac,” which allows the owner of a Mac to find it if it shows up on the Internet and also to control or work on it.
Apparently, the [...]

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Over 1 Billion Colors

Yes, Hewlett-Packard and DreamWorks have collaborated on a monitor that provides over 1 billion colors — the HP DreamColor Display LP2480xz. A result of a 2-year collaboration between the 2 companies, this monitor has a 24″ diagonal, 1920 x 1200 resolution, and sells at only $3,499 — much less than other similar displays.
In a post on [...]

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Web Publishers Have Free Access to Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia Britannica is now providing access to their content free to those who publish on the web.  Called Britannica WebShare, it allows bloggers, webmasters, writers, and editors to use EB at no charge.  When linking to EB, those using those links will be able to go directly to the content.
There is an application form and [...]

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Happy Belated Birthday to Spam

Spam is 30 years old!  I bet you thought it was older!  ;-)  
On May 3, 1978, Gary Thuerk, then a marketer at DEC, sent an email message to all 393 users of the Arpanet – the first spam message.  Note that the number of email addresses didn’t fit into the To line, so most [...]

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Google Settles with Authors and Publishers

The Association of Research Libraries has posted a very detailed summary of the settlement which focuses on the library issues.  Remember that this has not yet been approved by the courts.
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Through Google Book Search, Google had been providing snippets of copyrighted materials for their users.  As a result, they were sued both by the Authors [...]

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Grants for Digitization Available

Do you have materials in your library that are falling apart or are at-risk?  The University of North Texas has received a grant from the Summerlee Foundation to help rescue them.  The grant, Rescuing Texas History through the Digitization of At-Risk Photographs and Maps, will providing funding to digitize these materials and make them available through [...]

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Standard License for E-Resources?

You bet!  NISO now has a document, called the Shared e-Resource Understanding (SERU), created by librarians and vendors, that describes common understandings for the licensing of electronic resources.  The idea is to save both libraries and vendors time and money during the negotiation phase and provide these resources to our patrons more quickly.
The document itself [...]

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Adding Functionality to Your Website

Engagedpatrons.org was created for public libraries to add functionality to their websites that will encourage community interaction.  Each service is meant to be easily added to your website – no programming necessary.  Currently, they are offering:

Library Events — also includes searching, online registration, email alerts for patrons, RSS feeds
Library Blogs — basic blog functionality, but [...]

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