Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Thursday Threads: Learn to Code in 2012, Issues with Apple’s iBooks Author, SOPA/PIPA Are Dead

Peter Murray — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:16:40 +0000

The internet has survived the great SOPA blackout, and we’re still talking about the fallout. Apple made a major announcement of plans to support textbooks on iPads, but there are concerns about the implementation. But the first story this week is about a free service geared towards teaching people how to program with weekly lessons throughout 2012.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. New this year is that Pinboard has replaced FriendFeed as my primary aggregation service. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my Pinboard bookmarks (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Items posted to are also sent out as tweets; you can follow me on Twitter. Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Code Year: Learn to Code in 2012

Sign up for Code Year to start receiving a new interactive programming lesson every Monday. You’ll be building apps and websites before you know it!
- Code Year

Code Year is a project of internet startup Codecademy, a service that teaches people how to code (JavaScript only, at the moment). There have been three classes posted already, and the website says they are still accepting registrations at the homepage. Code Year is free, and it sends an e-mail at the beginning of each week with a link to that week’s course. More questions? See the frequently asked questions.

What I think is really cool about this is that a group of librarians has self-organized themselves to support each other through the year. There is a community area on ALA Connect and a list of resources on the catcode wiki that includes examples tailored to cataloging challenges. (“catcode” is a unique story onto itself. It is a wiki created to “help support dialogue between catalogers and coders.”)

Apple Introduces iBooks Author

Graphic from Talking Points Memo

Educators so far seem excited about the potential promise of a learning “revolution” enabled by Apple’s new iBooks Author app. However, not everyone is feeling that same level of enthusiasm: e-book publishing experts have concerns about the formatting that iBooks Author can output, which isn’t fully ePub 2 or ePub 3 compliant. Furthermore, Apple has added a clause to iBooks Author’s end user license agreement that prohibits selling e-books created with iBooks Author anywhere but the iBookstore.
- Enthusiasm for iBooks Author marred by licensing, format issues, by Chris Foresman, Ars Technica

Last week saw the big introduction of iBooks Textbooks for iPad and iBooks Author ebook creation utility. The combination were billed as a promising new way to have students interact with course materials and to have teachers build their own content. There were some not-so-nice surprises in the implementation, though. First, the ebook format is close to that of ePub standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum, but strays in enough important ways that the iBooks Textbooks themselves won’t be usable on non-Apple devices. Second, included the End-User License Agreement for the iBooks Author software are terms that says content created with iBooks Author can be given away freely but can only be sold through Apple’s iBookstore. Apple also reserves the right to determine if your work is sold at iBookstore with no recourse for rejected works. The article above has more details, and the press coverage of iBooks Textbooks and iBooks Author has been generally negative so far.

SOPA and Protect-IP Are Dead

Leaders in Congress on Friday effectively killed two pieces of anti-online piracy legislation following the increasingly vocal protests of tens of thousands of websites and millions of Internet users.
That’s right, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate are, for all practical purposes, dead in the water.
Sure, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) used the word “postponed” in their announcements, saying that Congress would only take a breather, but would certainly not give up for good on its goal of passing some sort of legislation designed to combat overseas “rogue” websites hosting pirated American content.
But whenever Congress decides to re-engage the online piracy fight — and it could be a while, given just how acrimonious the debate over the bills became in the last week — it’s almost certain that SOPA and PIPA won’t be revived in any recognizable form.
- How The Web Killed SOPA and PIPA, by Carl Franzen, Talking Points Memo Idea Lab

Who would have thought — grass roots organizations convince major internet presences to “black out” or otherwise inform users of ill-considered provisions (at best) in legislation, and in turn those users bury both houses of Congress with so much anti-SOPA and -PIPA feedback that they effectively kill the bills. Is this the closest we’ve come to direct democracy since ancient Athens? Perhaps! The article quoted above goes into great detail about the formational elements of SOPA and PIPA and the forces that gathered to stop them.

The response to Wikipedia being blacked out in particular was interesting. The Washington Post, The Guardian and National Public Radio announced that they would answer questions posted to Twitter with the hashtag #altwiki. Closer to the library community Credo Reference announced that free access for a day.

My ALA Midwinter 2012 Schedule

Peter Murray — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:08:26 +0000

The snow is falling here in central Ohio, so I’m eager to leave here and head to warm Dallas for ALA Midwinter 2012. I’m looking forward to catching up with colleagues; making new acquaintances; learning the latest thinking on RDA, linked data, and standards activity; and talking about free/open source software in libraries. On the latter point, I encourage you to come see me give an introduction to the newly announced FOSS4LIB site, answer questions, and take feedback on Saturday morning (10:30 to 11:30) or Sunday morning (10:30 to 11:30). (Or, if you are not coming to Midwinter, sign up for one of the free webinar sessions later in January and February.)

ALA is using a new iteration of its scheduler this year, and it keeps getting better and better. This one even allows you to embed your selected schedule as an on an arbitrary page. So here is my schedule:

You can follow me on Twitter where I’ll be tweeting about #alamw12. A Twitter mention or direct message is also the best way to get ahold of me while in Dallas.

Safe travels if you are headed to Midwinter, and I hope to run into you there.

Thursday Threads: SOPA, PROTECT-IP, Research Works Act, and Broad E-Textbook Pilot

Peter Murray — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:20:56 +0000

One could say it is an all intellectual property edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. How could one miss the outpouring of opposition to SOPA/PROTECT-IP? If that was an overwhelming story you might have missed the introduction of the Research Works Act that could end the open access mandates now at the National Institutes of Health and coming elsewhere. And because we need some good news, Internet2 announced a new electronic textbook pilot that could be really interesting.

Support for Web Bill Wanes as Protests Spread

When the powerful world of old media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street — the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America and, of course, the motion picture lobby, with its new chairman, former Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and an insider’s insider.
Yet on Wednesday this formidable old guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.
- Support for Web Bill Wanes as Protests Spread, By Jonathan Weisman, New York Times

The population of the internet became very familiar with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT-IP Act (a.k.a. PIPA) today with major internet services like Wikipedia blocking access to its articles and Google placing a black rectangle over its logo. Advocacy sites like americancensorship.org and blacklist.eff.org and www.google.com/landing/takeaction sprang up to prompt U.S. citizens to call their Senators and non-U.S. citizens to petition the U.S. State Department to set in motion opposition to bills that once seemed inevitable. And all sorts of people took to Twitter to protest the fact that they couldn’t use Wikipedia to answer their homework.

It wasn’t all a one-way street, though. Former Senator Chris Dodd (and now MPAA chairperson) denounced the protests as “an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on [the sites] for information and [who] use their services.” House Judiciary Committee Chairperson Lamar Smith announced that his committee will resume consideration of SOPA in February. And PROTECT-IP Act sponsor Senator Leahy released a point-by-point rebuttal to some of the claims made by opponents.

At the end of the day, the protest clearly had an effect on the legislation as co-sponsors dropped their support of PROTECT-IP and others made statements opposing the bill. As this is being written on the evening of the 18th, the ProPublica lists 41 Senators supporting and 19 Senators opposing or “leaning no” (OpenCongress’ whip count lists it as 34 to 35 versus last night’s OpenCongress count of 39 to 16), so it is unclear whether there the 60 votes required to end debate and move for passage of PROTECT-IP in the Senate as promised by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

I’ve stated my objections to SOPA and my objections to PROTECT-IP, and reiterated them today by putting up an anti-SOPA/PROTECT-IP splash page on DLTJ. I also still think there is more to learn a few levels deeper than the anti-SOPA/PROTECT-IP advocacy. ProPublica has a project called Who in Congress Supports SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT-IP? that offers a variety of ways to categorize supporters and opponents of the legislation including an accounting of campaign donations by industry. On my own Stop-SOPA/PROTECT-IP page, I ask readers to look into Laurence Lessig’s #Rootstrikers movement. A big part of the disconnect and dysfunctional nature of public office holders is the role that campaign contributions play — or, at best, have the appearance of influence — in the public policy decision making. So while SOPA/PROTECT-IP opponents may have won the battle, there is much to do to win the war of undue influence that created SOPA and PIPA in the first place.

More Legislative Shenanigans: Research Works Act

In case SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, hasn’t given you enough heartburn, here’s another development on the legislative horizon to be concerned about–H.R. 3699, the Research Works Act. The Association of American Publishers has provided a summary of what they hope the bill will accomplish, which is a frightening read for those of us committed to the principles of Open Access. It appears that H.R. 3699 would seriously threaten public access to federally funded research and deal a critical blow to the Open Access movement, which has been buoyed by exactly the kind of activity H.R. 3699 seeks to curtail in the AAP’s view, namely public access mandates and the development of repositories for publicly funded research.
- More Legislative Shenanigans: Research Works Act (H.R. 3699), by Meredith Kahn, University of Michigan’s MPublishing blog

Yes, that’s right — more intellectual property legislation in front of the U.S. Congress. This time it is a bill that would protect the business interests of academic publishers by preventing the U.S. government from mandating open access to federally funded research. An article in The Guardian (U.K.) paper says academic publishers have become the enemies of science. The twist here is that one of the sponsors of the Research Works Act is none other that Representative Darrell Issa, one of the leading opponents to SOPA in the House Judiciary Committee. As you might guess, campaign donations are involved and so there is a call from #Rootstrikers to help fight “SOPA v2″.

Internet2, McGraw-Hill, Courseload, and Five Universities Implement eText Pilot in Spring 2012

Participating universities in the pilot get McGraw-Hill eTexts, the Courseload reader and annotation platform integrated with their Learning Management System, and can be part of a joint research study of eText use and perceptions. Through the Courseload software, students can print, use social annotation with classmates and instructors, and access their eTexts on any HTML5-capable tablet, smartphone, or computer. Students will receive their eTexts at no cost as the institutions are subsidizing the study, and students who prefer a full hardcopy book may optionally order a print-on-demand version of the eText for a $28 fee. Faculty interest at the pilot institutions has been very strong.
- Internet2, McGraw-Hill, Courseload, and Five Universities Implement eText Pilot in Spring 2012, Internet2 Press Release

This is good news for students and etextbooks. It sounds like a good experiment and I’m eager to see the outcomes of the pilot. And something that might make next week’s DLTJ Thursday Threads? The rumor that Apple is expected to delve into textbooks in an announcement today.

The Best of the “SOPA Blackout”

Peter Murray — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:35:02 +0000

Commentary, intentional and unintentional humor, and media from January 18, 2012.

Stop SOPA and Protect-IP

Peter Murray — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:02:03 +0000

This blog will be present first-time users with a warning page on January 18, 2012 — the day that many internet sites are using to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — and January 23rd, 2012 — the day before the U.S. Senate may vote on the PROTECT-IP act. DLTJ is proud to join many other sites in this demonstration of solidarity for an open, transparent internet.

Thought you heard that SOPA was dead? Or was modified to be acceptable? Or that PIPA is on the ropes? As of January 17th, these statements aren’t true:

Representative Lamar Smith, House Judiciary Chair and sponsor of SOPA, issued a statement that said committee discussion of SOPA will continue in February.
Although proponents have said they will remove the DNS redirection provisions, there are still dangerous and unprecedented parts of the bills.
There are still more Senators in favor of PIPA (39) than not (16).

This legislation is bad for the health of the internet, bad for companies — those that exist now and those that would otherwise come — that make their living on the internet, and bad for the standing of the United States in the global community supporting freedom of speech and due process principles.

Looking for something to do to make your opinions known? Try one more more of these:

Use the Contact Congress form on the OpenCongress site to send an e-mail to your Senators or use the OpenCongress Find Your Senators and Representatives to look up their phone numbers. The Wikipedia SOPA Initiative page has some good phrasing of things to say based on your concerns. If outside the United States, use the Petition the U.S. State Department form on americancensorship.org.
Look into the #Rootstrikers movement. A big part of the disconnect and dysfunctional nature of public office holders is the role that campaign contributions play — or, at best, have the appearance of influence — in the public policy decision making. This certainly seems to be true for the current SOPA debate.
Watch the Learn to Be a Better Activist webcast on January 18th (or the recording after that day). It is a full day of talks from people who know something about making voices heard in Congress.
Add a banner to the bottom of your Twitter profile picture to spread the word of your opinions.
Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s list of about a dozen other things you could do.

Helping Libraries Consider Open Source Software

Peter Murray — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:31:15 +0000

One of the key activities that brought me to LYRASIS many months ago is going to see the light of day in about 10 days at ALA Midwinter — a set of tools to help libraries determine if open source software is right for them and what open source software works the best. Here is the announcement snippet from today’s LYRASIS newsletter:

FREE Open Source Sessions at ALA Midwinter: Take Control of Your Library’s Software

Is your library thinking about jumping into open source software, but not sure if you have the tools in place to succeed, or where to start?

To find out how open source software can save your library time and money, make plans to join Peter Murray at a free session about the LYRASIS Open Source Decision Support suite during ALA Midwinter.

With the financial support of the Mellon Foundation, LYRASIS Technology Services (LTS) offers a suite of tools designed to help you assess your needs and select the right open source tool for your institution. Available to LYRASIS members and non-members, the Open Source Decision Support suite provides self-guided readiness assessments to help you determine if open source software is right for your library, as well as a registry of software packages to assist you in finding information about open source software service providers, events and usage by peers. With these free tools, librarians and technologists can determine the best approach to leveraging open source software.

To learn more, reserve your space for one of these two FREE sessions during ALA Midwinter, open to all:

January 21 from 10:30 am to 11:30 am CST, City Center Marriott Somerset Room
January 22 from 10:30 am to 11:30 am CST, City Center Marriott Bordeaux Room

Not attending ALA Midwinter? Join us for one of these 1-hour webinar sessions.

January 25 from 10 am to 11 am EST
January 31 from 2 pm to 3 pm EST
February 10 from 3 pm to 4 pm EST

Space is limited, email Peter Murray to sign up for one of these FREE sessions today.

If you’ve been following DLTJ you’ve probably seen evidence of what we’re preparing in a call for consultants to write me self-guided decision support tools and a post seeking feedback on a software registry design. That work is going to be released just prior to Midwinter and I’ll be leading people through how to use it during these one-hour in-person and online sessions. These tools will be available to all, so if you are interested please let me know.

Setting Aside Time for Writing

Peter Murray — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:59:59 +0000

It is time for New Year’s Resolutions, and the new habit I aim to pick up is setting aside some serious, concentrated chunks of time for writing each day. In taking a high-level review of goals and tasks at the end of the year, I found that I was tending to put off writing actions and had a significant number of them that had piled up. So I’ve decided to set aside the first 60 to 90 minutes of the work day focusing exclusively on writing. I know my mind is freshest at that early morning time, so I think it would be possible to knock out some good work then. Here are my thoughts on the process thus far.

Late last year I also encountered the Pomodoro technique of breaking up tasks into 30 minute chunks: 25 minutes of concentrated activity followed by a 5 minute break of something unrelated to the original activity. This makes a lot of sense to me, and I’ve started using the Pomodoro timer Mac application to help keep me on task. I like it because it includes a constant ‘tick-tock’ audio cue that reminds me to stay on task plus it has spoken warnings at various intervals to help you keep track of time. I don’t use any of the interruption tracking or reporting features of the software at this point, although it can be helpful to look back at the day’s activities as I make reports of time allocation for grant reporting purposes. So, for those of you instinctively good at math, my morning writing time would consist of two or three Pomodoro sessions.

My morning routine as encoded in OmniFocus actions

In the middle of last year I formalized a morning routine based on a post by Sven Fechner with daily repeating OmniFocus folders of tasks, and this really helped me get a handle on the start-of-workday activities. Sven says:

You should review a few things in the morning, but no your email. This is the one thing you won’t find in my Daily Review. I check emails twice a day at 10am and 4pm (if I stick with my principles) and my Daily Review typically happens before I check my emails in the morning. The risk of including ‘Check email inbox’ into the Daily Review, or even worse check it before, is that you can easily be rat-holed by only one email in your inbox and before you realise you have reached the afternoon and lost control a fair bit.

My use of daily task folders actually extends past the morning routine because I have an entry each day that is set to start at 4:30pm and be due at 5:00pm to enter the day’s time allocations in a time tracker. Those start and end times make the task stay out of the way for most of the day and pop up to remind me to end the day with it. (By the way, the “Walkabout” context refers to the name of my laptop, so those are tasks that I can do on my laptop without needing to connect to the internet.)

(I’ll also admit to being unable to break the habit of checking e-mail first thing in the morning for anything important. Perhaps it is just the position I’m in, but others expectations of me means I can’t let some important e-mail go unanswered until mid-morning or later. I have gotten pretty good, though, with being able to turn off new e-mail updates/prompts/alarms and only checking for new messages a few times a day.)

Where I’m stuck at the moment is when I should add the writing block to my morning routine. I definitely need to put it after the “Check calendar” task — there might be entries in the calendar that would supersede the writing block — but I don’t know how far I should let myself get into through the collection stage of the Getting Things Done day. I’ve experimented with right after the Check calendar task, but the inbox tray full of miscellaneous stuff is a distraction — especially after living with the habit of emptying that tray as one of the first activities of the work day for about six months. But putting it as far down as the “Process OmniFocus Inbox” can burn up a lot of time and energy completing the 2-minute actions that I encounter in those collection steps. It is going to take some more experimentation to find the right balance of clearing-the-morning-clutter and concentrated-writing-time before I get this right. Any advice on what has worked for you would be most welcome.

Thursday Threads: Legal Implications of SOPA/PROTECT-IP, Learning from Best Buy, Open Source in Medicine

Peter Murray — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:17:39 +0000

Welcome to the new year! Threads this week include a brief analysis of the legal problems in store if SOPA and PROTECT-IP become law, what an analysis of the problems with Best Buy might teach libraries, and why open source licensing of clinical tools is important.

A Look at the Legal Aspects of SOPA and PROTECT-IP

Two bills now pending in Congress—the PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (Protect IP) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House—represent the latest legislative attempts to address a serious global problem: large-scale online copyright and trademark infringement. Although the bills differ in certain respects, they share an underlying approach and an enforcement philosophy that pose grave constitutional problems and that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Internet’s addressing system, for the principle of interconnectivity that has helped drive the Internet’s extraordinary growth, and for free expression.
- Don’t Break the Internet, by Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post, Stanford Law Review

In case you missed the dramatic events in the last days of 2011, SOPA and PROTECT-IP Act, just before Congress recessed for the year lawmakers concerned with the provisions of SOPA offered and debated enough amendments to the draft legislation that they effectively stalled passage through the House Judiciary Committee. At the end of the last committee meeting, the sponsors of SOPA acknowledged that there were significant issues and seemed to agree that they needed a confidential briefing from the Department of Homeland Security on the possible effects on DNSSEC — a highly technical but very important consideration. (Why it needs to be confidential when DNSSEC is an open specification stretches my imagination, but there you go…)

This paper by Lemley, Levine and Post describes the legal implications of enforcing the key provisions of SOPA and PROTECT-IP as drafted. The authors say “the bills represent an unprecedented, legally sanctioned assault on the Internet’s critical technical infrastructure” and describe how it is a bad prescient and why it won’t work in the end. In more positive news, there is an effort underway to draft legislation that would accomplish much of what SOPA and PROTECT-IP say they want to do without many of the downsides.

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually

Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can’t say when exactly, but my guess is that it’s only a matter of time, maybe a few more years.
- Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually, by Larry Downes, Forbes

The authors tell a story about how as a Best Buy customer he was approached by a salesperson wanting to sell him an on-demand video package of some sort, and that reminded me just a little bit from my academic experience of trying to push bibliographic instruction on students rather than solving the problem they had at hand. The article goes on to describe how online retailers like Amazon are more in tune with customer needs and demands. I couldn’t help but wonder if our library processes and procedures and polices are more like Best Buy or more like Amazon. From what I hear at my consortial perspective we are trending towards Amazon, but are we going to get there fast enough?

By the way, I can highly recommend a recent 51 minute audio interview with Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad and now Chief Technology Officer of Best Buy (after Best Buy purchased and integrated the Geek Squad electronics service chain early last decade. It is a fascinating view of how customer service must trump all other concerns, and how efficiently executing customer service is the true path to survival. There are some lessons in there for libraries as well.

Open Source Licensing Defuses Copyright Law’s Threat to Medicine

Enforcing copyright law could potentially interfere with patient care, stifle innovation and discourage research, but using open source licensing instead can prevent the problem, according to a physician – who practices both at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center – and a legal scholar at the UC Hastings College of Law.
- Open Source Licensing Defuses Copyright Law’s Threat to Medicine, News service of the University of California, San Francisco

Here’s something to think about. What if new medical advances where suppressed because the diagnostic instruments used were protected by copyright. The doctor in the above article goes on to say that clinical tools tend to resemble one another “not because their creators are unoriginal, but because the tools are based on the same research and the same science.” That is a legal grey area where clinics decide to err on the side of caution and not use something that could be protected by copyright. It sort of reminds me about the unsettled law surrounding orphan works — just enough grey to stifle innovation.

Another “by the way”: I can also recommend a 16 minute recording of Karen Sandler speaking at the recent O’Reilly Media Open Source conference on the need to publish the source code of embedded medical devices under an open source license so the programs could be independently inspected. It, too, comes by way of the IT Conversations podcast. Two podcast mentions in one DLTJ Thursday Threads? What can I say…I listened to a lot of podcasts over the December break.

Thursday Threads: Looking Backwards and Looking Forwards

Peter Murray — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:42:09 +0000

As the last DLTJ Thursday Threads of the year, the stories in this post look back to what we saw in 2011 and look forward to what we may see in 2012. Looking backwards is a list of five things we learned about publishing from O’Reilly Media and Google’s 3-minute Zeitgeist video. Looking forward are a list of predictions from Fast Company and from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts in the UK. At this high point when 2011 is slowing and we start down the hill of 2012, I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.

Feel free to send this to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you find these threads interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Five things we learned about publishing in 2011

Amazon is, indeed, a disruptive publishing competitor
Publishers aren’t necessary to publishing
Readers sure do like ebooks
HTML5 is an important publishing technology
DRM is full of unintended consequences
- Five things we learned about publishing in 2011, by Jenn Webb, O’Reilly Radar

I think we can add a sixth thing: The relationship between libraries and publishers is no longer a passive one. Although libraries and publishers were always intertwined, this year we saw more stories where they came head-to-head (HarperCollins/OverDrive and Authors Guild versus HathiTrust) and side-by-side (Douglas County’s Ebook Lending). I expect we will see this trend continue in 2012.

Google’s Year in Review

- Zeitgeist 2011: Year In Review, Google

Within the frame of Google’s newly launched Google+ project, this three minute video provides a perspective on the top news stories of the year.

10 Bold Tech Predictions For 2012

Social business will take off in 2012, but companies will struggle to adopt.
A significant failure in a popular cloud service will set the cloud movement back.
Mobile IT will grow slowly in the enterprise.
Organizations will increase IT infrastructure investments.
An iPad tablet alternative will emerge out of the fragmented Android market.
Android vs. iOS 2012.
eBooks will dominate.
Information overload will get much worse.
Consolidation in the social business/enterprise collaboration market.
A significant new player will emerge in the social networking space.
- 10 Bold Tech Predictions For 2012, by David Lavenda, Fast Company

A couple things for libraries to watch in this list. I don’t know if eBooks will dominate, but they will certainly become more prevalent. The first quarter 2012 sales for ebooks will be interesting because many people are expecting a bump in sales that corresponds with e-reader gifts. (Helped, no doubt, by the introduction of the new Kindle models late in the year.) Look for libraries to publish statistics of lending as well, although one wonders how much “head room” is left in the lendable collections after the last surge of e-reader sales. Given that budgets in libraries — and the cities/states/universities over them — tend to lag the business world, I’m not sure that IT spending in libraries will increase although there is some infrastructure that really needs to be updated. And personally I think libraries should punt on the whole Android versus iOS debate and design for a mobile, HTML5-based world.

12 predictions for 2012

Innovation for frugality: This year innovators will become thriftier
Raspberry Pi and the rise of the cheap computer: We’ll see a return to home programming
Massively connected: The Internet of Things will come of age
Healthy appetite for tech: Our approach to health will become more like a running club
The rise of the new reporter: Data journalism will defy the decline of the printed press
Your mobile wallet: Technology enabling our phones to act as mobile wallets will finally break through
Seeing the impact in impact investing: The impact investment industry will step up a gear
The death and life of great public servants: A growing movement of leaders will challenge the separation of public and private sectors
3D printing: The next Industrial Revolution will continue to pick up steam
Educated gamers: Next Christmas the games will be much more serious
The year of the crowdfunder: 2012 will prove an important year for the evolution of business funding
Outside the Box: Next year we’ll see a seismic shift in how we understand, view and make television
- 12 predictions for 2012, National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (UK)

This list comes from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts in the U.K., so I think some of the predictions are specific to that country (the mobile wallet prediction, in particular), but I believe most of these are pretty general for the U.S. as well.

What Happens When History Fights Back — A Review of “11/22/63: A Novel” by Stephen King

Peter Murray — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:05:10 +0000

11/22/63

Stephen King; Scribner 2011

WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

Pluck a string and it vibrates. As it vibrates there are points along the string where it is absolutely still. Pluck a companion string and sometimes those points line up. If you pull that string tighter there are more points of stillness and a greater chance that points will line up. If you pull it too tight, it snaps.

In Stephen King’s 11/22/63: A Novel, Jake Epping is a high school English teacher that plucks the strings of time through a wormhole in the back of a friend’s diner. The wormhole leads to a New England town in 1958, and no matter how many times Jake goes through the scene seems to reset itself back to the same point in 1958. A wandering soul in 2011, Jake takes on the challenge of changing one particular event on the date of the book’s namesake — the assassination of President Kennedy. What happens in the five years between 1958 and 1963 is a masterfully woven story of strings plucked — as he kills a father before that father murders his family, as he saves a child from a hunting accident, as falls in love with a high school librarian — and the unexpected highs and lows as the strings of time line up at those points of stillness.

This is not the typical Stephen King horror story; if that is what you are expecting, you will be sorely disappointed. 11/22/63: A Novel is a story that is infused and lubricated by deep research into the places and collective psyche of Dallas, Texas, in general and the specific people surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story and feeling the rush of the ending. This is also a story that I can now put aside for a few years and read again to savor the nuances embedded in the narrative. While King kindly signals the obvious points of absolute stillness, I’m sure there are other points of near stillness that are just waiting to be discovered.

Disclosure: I was given a free product or sample because I’m a Klout influencer. I was under no obligation to receive the sample or talk about this company. I get no additional benefits for talking about the product or company.