Librarian of Fortune

Proactively addressing the Geezer Issue

I have been reading a discussion on the excellent LIS Career Options LinkedIn group about the importance of proactively addressing issues or barriers when talking with a possible employer or client (or anyone else for that matter). That got me thinking of a recent experience I had, and how to address the issue it raised.

I'm approaching 60 and last week was told by a Gen Y'er that she was amazed at how tech-savvy I am for "someone my age." I could have gotten insulted, but instead I took it as good input from someone who probably blurted what others think. While I don't let what I imagine other people are thinking to rule my life, it's useful to be reminded that people do make generational assumptions.

I now make a point of surfacing my social media profiles, and I don't lead any marketing conversation with a recitation of my decades of experience. My aim is to show that I embrace new technology and that I'm not resting on her laurels and killing time until I can retire. ("Retire???")

Sure, some people may still assume I'm behind the times simply because I'm not 25, but at least I'm not contributing to the perception. Perhaps now is the time to take up hang-gliding...

WSJ discovers that lawyers have discovered Facebook!

In today's Wall St. Journal, there's an article titled "Searching for Details Online, Lawyers Facebook the Jury: Attorneys Seek Cues on Potential Jurors in Networking Sites". For the most part, I don't think this is news. I use social media all the time in my research, to glean reactions to a product, to better  understand an executive in a company, or to see how an organization is viewed.

Already, divorce lawyers have used data from car transponders (used for electronic payment on toll roads) to prove that the defendant was not in the office that night. It is common knowledge that employers will look at candidates' social media sites, as well as their credit reports.

While it may feel creepy that the lawyers eyeing you in the jury pool know where you went and who you partied with last Friday night, they only know that if you posted those incriminating photos on Facebook without first ensuring that the photo was not publicly viewable.

On the other hand, it's hard not to be paranoid after having read the WSJ's excellent series titled "What They Know". These articles look at how much individual information is collected by online marketers' tracking tools. Fortunately, they also include some basic steps you can take to limit the amount of information you "leak" to marketers.

 

OCR for PDF

I just ran across a nice little write up on how to Convert Images to Text with Online OCR Software. In addition to Google Docs' relatively new image-to-doc OCR conversion service, Digital Inspiration reviews Abbyy FineReader, Online OCR.net, Free OCR, OCR Terminal, and OCR Online.

I can't count how many times I've been stymied when trying to edit a PDF...

Augmented reality

I'm in the middle of writing a column for EContent magazine, and got caught up in the idea of augmented reality. The early iterations are smartphone apps like Layar or Google Goggles. This video from the 2009 TED conference shows some amazing prototypes from MIT's Media Lab of new ways of retrieving and displaying digital content onto the real world, presented by Pattie Maes. Think of how Tom Cruise in "Minority Report" and imagine actually being able to manipulate information by moving your fingers in the air.

Augmented Reality App

This is SO cool. Yelp has a new app, Monocle (that you activate by shaking your iPhone 3 times), that overlays info on nearby restaurants on top of the camera view of your surroundings. Point your iPhone down the street and you'll see where to eat. "Augmented reality" has arrived, and not a minute too soon.

[screen shot from Mashable.com]

Letting users think more

Random thought... the ability to meaningfully interact with an information source is becoming a must-have for users. It's not just offering tons of features and lots of power that will keep an IP profitable; it's understanding that you don't know how your users are going to use your service. Let go. Be Zen. Relax. You'll actually gain all kinds of insights by imagining yourself as an anthropologist. Put your clients subjects in an information-rich environment and watch how they creatively use the tools they have.

I was playing around with Google Maps' directions feature and finally realized that I could drag any portion of the route to another spot by just dragging the route. I discovered it because Google Maps always routes me through the nearest town, even though I know it's faster to go another way. In a moment of frustration -- mostly, just acting out what I wished that Google could do -- I moved my mouse over the route and suddenly realized, OMG, it's moving the route!

Now I can use it as a way to plan out a series of errands on a map, by simply dragging the route to each location I need to stop at. I'm sure that most of you do this naturally in your head. I am, um, directionally challenged. I could get lost walking from here to the corner. Having a map with the entire route thought through, mapped out and printed off makes my errand-running a lot smoother.

The iPhone is another great example of giving users lots of opportunities to think for themselves in how they navigate through and use the various applications. Want to turn the display 90 degrees? OK! Expand this area? Sure. The philosophy is to let users interact as much as possible with the resource or tool.

So, I guess I'm thinking about how there is added value in an information provider  offering less structure and allowing more input (i.e., work) by the user. We usually expect to see more templates, more fields to search, and so on, but all of these require users to act and think in a certain way. What if they want to query in a different way? What if they want to show which terms to emphasize by visually highlighting them (see SearchCloud.net)?

I'm not sure if a user panel would ever volunteer "hey, let us do all the noodling around ourselves; we don't really want those navigational tools"; this is one of those features that has immediately obvious value but isn't something users articulate as a need.

Seize the Interstitials!

Thanks to insight from my personal Colorado Brain Trust, Marcy Phelps and Kim Dority, I now have a great way to visually remind myself of what I can do if I have a spare 15 or 30 minutes.

Like many of you, Marcy, Kim and I have laptops, docked with a large screen and ergonomic keyboard. Here's what you can do to have your visual reminder. Using Windows' Control Panel, select Display /  Settings /  Display:  [select whichever one lets you check Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor] / check that Extend my Windows.  Now click the [Identify] button. It's assumed that your primary monitor  [1[ is to the left of your secondary monitor [2]. If that's not the case, you can drag the numbers around on the screen to move 1 to the right of 2. Finally, click the OK button until you're done. If you do this correctly, you should have your regular display on your primary screen, and your desktop on your secondary screen.

Now, here's the cool thing, at least for those of us who have to see something to remember it. You can move one window onto your secondary display and have it sitting quietly in the corner, reminding you of something you can work on when you have a little spare time -- the 15 minutes before a conference call, the half an hour before you go to a meeting, the interminable amount of time you are on hold waiting to talk with a customer "service" agent...

To set this up yourself:
Open the window you want to keep open in the Restore Down setting (between Maximize and Minimize), then drag it to the edge of your primary screen and it will appear to slide off your primary and onto your secondary screen.  If, like me, you have a separate keyboard and monitor, you can simply use your laptop keyboard to work with the screen displayed on the laptop, and then move over to your desktop screen and keyboard and continue with your other work.

For some reason, I find that it's easier to resist multi-tasking if I keep my "other" project on a separate monitor and keyboard. I can work on it soon... I know it's there, but I don't have to actually work on it immediately.]

Word Clouds

Wordle.net provides a cool way to analyze the frequency at which words occurred in a text. See this page for word clouds of all the major speeches from the Democratic and Republican national conventions. I love this application of something that's been around since people could count. Now I can immediately see the main focus of a speech, once you get past the hyperbole and mean jabs.

Here's the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech (word cloud shown).

Font Conference

As a writer.... OK, let's be honest. As a geek, I love fooling around with fonts. Which one truly reflects the content of what I say? What personality am I striving for?

CollegeHumor.com -- known for its lowbrow humor -- recently screened an amusing take at what would happen if typographic fonts had personalities. I'll never switch fonts again without carefully considering what image I'm projecting.

The virtual melds with the real

OMG. this article describes how Disney and Google have rolled out a virtual version of Walt Disney World, in Google Earth. When I think about this too much, my brain bleeds out my ears. Here we have a virtual representation of Earth, and in it we can go on virtual tours of real buildings in the real world.

I'm imagining the day when I could have my business tagged to my little corner of Google Earth (40°07'43.52"N and 105°12'59.66"W to be specific); people can actually "travel" to my home office, where I can give a tour of my business, sell my books, give workshops and consult with clients.