The Creative Librarian is a hub for matters important to librarians/information scientists of today. There is a definite lean towards electronic issues, however it isn't restricted to only those. Hopefully this site will also be useful for informing non-librarians on these issues as so many of them affect us all.
Boing Boing: Email gets fourth amendment protection again In a tremendous victory for privacy rights, the US 6th circuit court has restored the power of 4th amendment protection to emails stored on a remote host like an ISP or Webmail, striking down sections of the Stored Communications Act which have been routinely used to grab [...]
Why wireless carriers should be forced into neutrality Tim Wu, a copyfightin’ net-neutrality-advocatin’ law prof at Columbia, has posted a draft of a new, stunning paper on net neutrality as it might apply to mobile carriers. In “Wireless Network Neutrality,” Wu demonstrates the way that the wireless carriers have adopted the same bad practices that [...]
UserFriendly Strip Comments I needed this.
Wired News: The Eternal Value of Privacy … they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It’s not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. …For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, [...]
LISNews.org | Why You Should Care About Network Neutrality WWdN: In Exile: why network neutrality matters, and is worth fighting for Boing Boing: Network neutrality – why it matters, and how do we fix it? Neutrality of the Net | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs
Massachusetts set to switch off Microsoft [Massachusetts] said on Wednesday that all electronic documents “created and saved†by state employees would have to be based on open formats, with the switch to start at the beginning of 2007. Documents created using Microsoft’s Office software are produced in formats that are controlled by the Microsoft, making [...]
Pop-up vulnerability found in major browsers | CNET News.com According to Secunia, the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer for Mac, Safari, iCab, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox and Camino are all vulnerable. Opera 7 and 8 are affected, but not 8.01, according to Opera. Basically, all you have to do is not enter information in [...]
VoiceOver and Safari: Screen reading on the Mac | 456 Berea Street The new Mac operating system has a screenreader built in. As Roger says, buying a Mac Mini is less than half of a Jaws license (good for cash-strapped libraries).
Boing Boing: DVD licensing cartel sued under anti-trust The cartel that controls patents on DVD technologies is being sued by Chinese DVD makers, who are ebing forced to pay $20 per player, much higher than US manufacturers pay. The DVD makers have a good anti-trust case that could seriously bust this cartel. I’d be happier [...]
The closed nature of the system has been a concern for some librarians in regards to the new Google Scholar. In The magic that makes Google tick – ZDNet UK Insight, some of the processes that Google goes through when indexing and searching webpages are explained.