If you haven’t yet seen the two cookbooks put out by MaintainIT, you should take a look. In addition to these resources, they have started a series of free, monthly, 30-minute webinars on topics pulled from the cookbooks.
The first was today, April 16th — Notes from a Laptop Circulation Program. It is archived, so you [...]
CAPTCHAs are a test that is supposed to identify you as a real person as opposed to a computer program. Here’s an example from Google’s Blogger:
Until lately, this seemed to be working. However, some of these CAPTCHAs have been cracked — those from Windows Live Hotmail and Gmail. Websense Security Labs also states that there [...]
Microsoft is allowing developers to download the first beta of Internet Explorer version 8. They are asking the rest of us to wait until at least the second beta. However, some of the changes they’ve made should be helpful:
URLs in the Address Bar will now have the owning domain name highlighted. For [...]
If you’ve ever used the Ctrl-Alt-Del command, you’ve probably seen the Windows Task Manager and most likely the tab for open applications. If you click on the second tab, Processes, you’ll see a number of programs that are currently available and may be working. Ever wonder what these were and if you should/could end some [...]
I heard a very interesting podcast interviewing Luis von Ahn, one of the inventors of the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). These are the images of distorted letters you have to type. They let the service know that you are a real person and not a [...]
In February, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Digital Futures Manager for the San Jose Public Library, wrote a report on filtering for the city commissioners. She has since posted the report, which compares three filtering packages — CyberPatrol, FilterGate, and WebSense.
The report includes information on how filtering is done, a description of the methodology, the findings (both [...]
The New York Times had a great article on ways to back up your data across the Internet. It’s a great way to ensure that your data is not on-site should you have a disaster in your town. In addition, after you set it up, the backups normally take care of themselves — [...]
Autonet Mobile is currently working with Avis to start rolling out their wireless service. Basically, you plug their router into the AC power adapter and it uses existing 3-G and EVDO networks. Because it is not tied to a specific network, it can readily jump to the cell tower with the best signal. According to [...]
Excellent article on the things to consider while traveling with your laptop:
If you don’t have time to read it, here are the high points:
Keep it with you at all times
Use a cable lock if you have to leave it out – lock it to something permanent, not a table leg [...]
Jenny Levine at The Shifted Librarian has highlighted a new service from ProQuest — ProQuest Widgets — the ability to easily create a search box on your web site that will search all or some of the ProQuest databases. You could have a search box for just the business databases or just popular literature or [...]
