Tinfoil + Raccoon

What are Your TechNOTs?

Jenna Freedman picked up on my post in which I confess that I ain't all that when it comes to tech applications, and comes clean about her techNOTsaviness.  Her confessions include:

I'm dreading this whole DTV conversion, cuz I have an oldish tv at home, and no cable.

I didn't have sound on my computer at home for years because I'd misplugged the speaker cables. And I used to be a theater electrician, so I know something about plugging.

I won't call this a meme or call anyone out, in particular, but what about you? Are you perceived as a techie or a "computer person" by your friends, but have areas of tech brown-out or ennui?  C'mon! Share your ignorance and techrankiness with the rest of us.  Who are we to mock? I just made my first chart, ever, in Excel only yesterday. In fact, it may have been my first ever use of Excel for a real project.   

Digital cameras leave you cold? Do you still literally DIAL your phone?  Still holding out for a revival of Betamax? Do you feel faint when a patron whips out an SD card and asks how he can put his picture on Match.com?  Do you think about a career change when you read proposed tech competencies for librarians? I know I have librarian friends whose only computer access is at work, by choice.

I'm not looking to hear from those with active loathing of all things tech, or from any evangelizing whiz kids (unless you are an evangelizing whiz kid with a secret shame you need get off your chest).  Most of us fall somewhere between Lud and Geek.  This confessional assignment is for you.    

Historic Steamboat Photos

Anita Doering, Manager of Archives at La Crosse Public, just sent a link to the now-live collection of steamboat pictures that marks the launch of the UW La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photographs collection. It's part of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center. Anita says that the project was launched with about 500 photos, but that there are a few more to go. Pretty nifty. More about the project.

The UW-La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photograph collection consists of over 40,000 black and white photographic images of steamboats on the inland waterways of the United States, primarily the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. The photos depict steamboats in every phase of their life span — from construction to destruction — and every aspect of their daily operations from the 1850s to the present.

Confessions of a Technofaux

Michael Stephens wonders if my fondness for Kindle (despite its uselessness for libraries) could be characterized as “technolust.” I chewed on this for awhile and came to the conclusion that I need to come out of the closet as kind of a technodud. I think I may be a bit ahead of the curve, measured against all of LibraryLand, and a bit more ahead compared to library users but am definitely on the uphill side of the curve compared to my fellow bloggers.

Basically, my interest in the Kindle, and my occasional forays into ebook reviewing have had very little to do with technology and everything to do with my steamy relationship with the written word. I'm still very hopeful for an excellent ereading experience in my lifetime. I love to read and I love to write. I came to blogging not because it was a new tech app, but because it gave me an easy way to start writing again. I don’t love gadgets. I don’t exactly hate gadgets. The most charitable thing I can say is that I am gadget-neutral and tech tepid. I present you with the evidence:

I have a ridiculous cell phone. It’s a Pocket PC that has baby versions of Windows and Office. Mr. Raccoon, goddess bless him, is frequently giving me new software apps in an ongoing attempt to make my phone more than a deluxe Solitaire machine. Basically, I use the phone to visit Twitter, Gmail and weather.gov, to take kinda crappy pictures when I don’t have a real camera, and to play Scrabble, Bubble Breaker or Solitaire when I’m stuck some place and forgot to bring a book. I don’t sync it to anything. When I do remember to carry it, the ringer is always off in public.

Despite being an early booster for gaming in libraries, I’m not a gamer. A lot of games make me carsick. Seriously! The Raccoons, Jr. have tried to get me interested in the DS, but I just don’t enjoy gaming. This is not tech-specific, though. I don’t like playing cards and I’ve never been much of a board game player (well, except Scrabble). I did kind of like those old school text-based games I remember from my 386. “You are in a brick dungeon. There are two exits. One exits west. The other exits south.”

I never did learn how to program my VCR. Seriously!

The biggest TV in my house is 19”. And there’s nothing flat about it.

I’ve never taken to online voice chat, especially when there are more than two chatters, and I don’t go out of my way to listen to podcasts.

I haven’t had a boom box or stereo for a few years. Just today I realized that my DVD player, which is hooked up to some most excellent speakers, plays CDs. So, now I have a stereo. Juniorette guffawed when I shared my discovery. “You didn’t know that?!”

I don’t have an iPod or mp3 player. I think my phone-on-steroids can serve as an mp3, but have never cared enough to put music on it.   

If you can present me with a tool that is truly useful to me or to my patrons, I'll have a go at it. I'm not tech-averse, and I can be sporting and adventurous when presented with something beyond my immediate grasp. I've gapped my own spark plugs, and have even looked under the hood of a PC to install memory. So, what tech tools do I use and value? Twitter, Meebo, Gmail suite, Bloglines, Typepad. If someone gave me a Kindle or a Sony Reader, I'd be most grateful. What I love about all these apps is that they are all about readin’and writin’. Now that’s hot, Mr. Stephens!

Amazon says Okay to Loaning Empty Kindles

Big thanks to Norman Oder at Library Journal for passing along what LJ learned from Amazon about libraries loaning the Kindle to patrons.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told LJ that a loan of a Kindle without content is OK but sharing a device loaded with content "with a wide group of people would not be in line with the terms of use."

Did you hear that, folks? If you have a Kindle, you can share it with patrons AS LONG AS THERE'S NOTHING ON IT.  Does anyone have a Black's Law Dictionary handy to look up the precise meaning of "wide group of people?"   If we buy a print book from Amazon, can we only loan it if we tear out all the pages and just check out the gutted cover?  I'm gonna pass on any further commentary about ToS, as I bet y'all have something to say about it. I will, however, probably do one last review before I pass the  Kindle on to another staff member.  After I've scrubbed it of all content, of course.