Celia's

"Nazi spoons, murderous cyborgs and the musings of an invertebrate hunter are among the subjects tackled in the books nominated for the latest installment of the Diagram Prize. The prize, which celebrates the oddest book title of the year, received a record number of submissions in 2009, with 90 books suggested...

Voting has opened on the six books at www.thebookseller.com. The winner will be announced on 26th March". The shortlist:

* David Crompton's Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter (Glenstrae Press)
* James A Yannes' Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich (Trafford)
* Daina Taimina's Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes (A K Peters)
* Ronald C Arkin's Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots (CRC Press)
* Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky's The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (SLACK Inc)
* Tara Jansen-Meyer's What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua? (Mirror)

From Peter Scott's Library blog

 

Africa
The shortlisted writers for Africa's Best Book are:

Trespass by Dawn Garisch (South Africa)
The Double Crown by Marié Heese (South Africa)
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
Eyo by Abidemi Sanusi (Nigeria)
Tsamma Season by Rosemund Handler (South Africa)
Refuge by Andrew Brown (South Africa)
Kings of the Water by Mark Behr (South Africa)

The shortlisted writers for Africa's Best First Book are:

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani (Nigeria)
The Shape of Him by Gill Schierhout (South Africa)
The Shadow of a Smile by Kachi Ozumba (Nigeria)
Come Sunday by Isla Morley (South Africa)
Sleepers Wake by Alistair Morgan (South Africa)
Jelly Dog Days by Erica Emdon (South Africa)
Harmattan Rain by Aysha Harunna Attah (Ghana)

 

From Peter Scott's Library blog

One of the things we spend a lot of time thinking about at Google is how we can make the world's information more accessible and useful to people all over the globe. This includes providing rich local geographic data because, after all, a huge number of search queries have a geographic component. Our efforts to start putting Africa on a map kicked off back in 2009 when we announced the launch of Google Maps for Kenya. Not long afterwords, we announced that users across 45 African countries could build and edit maps in Map Maker. Most recently, we launched Google Maps for South Africa.

Our big announcement today is that we are launching Maps domains for 30 countries across Africa. So what's on offer? As well as searching online Maps for towns, highways, or roads, Google Maps users can now find local businesses. This could be a burger place in Lagos, a garage in Kampala, a hairdresser in Accra or an airport shuttle in Dakar. Any business anywhere can add their own business listing for free via the Google Maps Local Business Centre. Businesses can also improve their websites and help customers locate them by installing the Maps API.

In addition, we know that a lot of people need to find map information whilst travelling or driving, which is why we offer Google Maps for Mobile on data enabled handsets.

You know your local area better than we do, which is why Map Maker is on offer. With Map Maker, any user can create or edit map data, ranging from schools to local businesses, national parks to taxi stops. If you know your local area, or you've seen something that's missing, take up the opportunity to get mapping! As we've pointed out before, maps are also invaluable for governments, NGOs, universities and entrepreneurs, who can visualise, plan and market the areas and projects that they work on.

Ever thought about creating your own map for a specific event (like a wedding or treasure hunt) so you can share it with friends? You can do this using the popular, easy to use My Maps feature, which allows users to add their favorite locations and destinations to Google Maps and include their photos, comments and reviews about each place. You can check out new My Maps content for Nigeria, including additions from musicians D'banj and Nneka.

We are thrilled to be improving our maps functionality for Africa, and helping to make Africa's information readily available. We encourage you to add your own content and showcase to the world the parts of Africa that you know best.

Posted by Joe Mucheru, Google Sub Saharan Africa, and Jarda Bengl, Product Manager

From: http://google-africa.blogspot.com/

The Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education is an online peer-reviewed journal, the central aim of which is to promote improved practice by encouraging informed debate into pedagogic and related matters in higher education. Each issue comprises of an editorial, papers from all disciplines and subject areas covering higher education policy and management, and learning and teaching (including technology-enhanced learning); and developments, news and reviews. Individual papers are available as PDF downloads. http://jarhe.research.glam.ac.uk/

From Intute.ac.uk

• Future of the Internet IV
  
  

by Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie

• The Future of the Internet III

  Dec 14, 2008 Lee Rainie

• Future of the Internet

  The Future of the Internet II

  Sep 24, 2006 Lee Rainie

• Future of the Internet

  The Future of the Internet I

  Jan 9, 2005 Lee Rainie

The Elon University/Pew Internet Project site Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast is a multi-section resource containing thousands of pages. It exposes future possibilities while simultaneously providing a peek back at the past. In it, you will find the words of thousands of people from every corner of the world, from today and from yesterday, making thousands of predictive pronouncements about the future of humankind.

• This resource includes special explanatory sections on the future and past development of communications networks (Forward 150/Back 150).
• It includes videos recorded at global conferences that reveal future hopes and challenges as expressed by hundreds of Internet leaders, including Vint Cerf, Douglas Engelbart and Robert Kahn (Visionaries Multimedia).
• It has informative areas targeted to benefit children under 12 (KidZone), and to help teachers of elementary, middle school, high school and college students use the site to educate (Teachers' Tips) .
• It allows you to enjoy thousands of world citizens' discussions of our future – from top experts (Predictions Surveys) to your neighbor down the block or a computer programmer in Nigeria (Voices of the People).
• It allows you to add your vision to the collection by opening up a "Share Your Prediction" form and telling us what you think. Just look for the phrase Share Your Prediction - found in the top-right corner of every page, near the website's logo.
• The site shares a look back at what people were saying in the 1990s during the "awe" stage of the development of the internet (Early '90s Predictions Database).
• And it records a legacy of predictive statements as they are made, continuously building a historic record of lasting value that documents the way we see ourselves as we move into an explosion of changes wrought by the combination of genetics, nanotechnology and robotics as they leverage our future networks.

 

Last week saw the launch of the latest Pew Internet and American Life report.[The Future of the Internet IV] Based on a survey of nearly 900 users it considers questions such as will the Internet enhance writing skills, will there be more control over access to information. Incidentally in answer to the question over 80% felt the Internet had the potential to enhance intelligence.

This is something Intute staff tend to agree with here are some personal selections of ways in which the Internet has improved access to educational content.

YouTube has many channels maintained by organisations which provide free access to interviews and promotional materials. The YouTube politics section has materials from the main political parties. More useful examples of YouTube materials can be browsed on Intute

But YouTube is not the only online moving image service. One we recommend is the ResearchChannel. ResearchChannel was founded in 1996 by a consortium of leading American research and academic institutions. It aims to provide videos and webcasts of academic events, lectures and debates covering all areas of the sciences, humanities and social sciences. Contirbutors include John Hopkins Univeristy, the Library of Congress and University of Washington. For more similar examples see the LSE Library bookmarks (via Delicious)

Another key resource are online lectures and courses. Examples include Online Yale and OpenLearn courses from the Open University. If you are interested in finding out more about these Open Course Ware initiatives a good directory and alerting service is at OER Commons

Finally another good starting point for tracing high quality Internet sites is Open Culture. Check out its lists of cultural sites online, including good video language courses and books.

What is a compromised account, and how would you know?

If you notice that you have apparently been sending out tweets that you were not aware of, or followers start to tell you that you've been sending them Direct Messages that you didn't send, your account has almost certainly been compromised.

A third party application will have got access to the account and is tweeting and sending out DMs on your behalf. Very often such messages are designed to entice someone to follow a link back to the malicious application so that their account becomes compromised as well, or it might link to a sex site or some other site that you'd really rather not be associated with!

How did my account become compromised?

Almost certainly because you followed a link from someone that you trusted yourself. That's why these things are so annoying, and why they can spread across Twitter so quickly - you trust the people you follow, and your followers trust you. In all probability therefore you clicked on a link that you'd been sent. This might have taken you to another page, that looked exactly like the Twitter login page, and you may have shrugged your shoulders and logged in again. However, this was NOT Twitter - it was a page set up by the creator of the malicious application, and it will now have captured your details.

You may then find that you get routed back to Twitter, leaving you wondering what the message was all about, or it might take you to a boring page which you will then leave. By then however, the damage is done.

Help! My account is compromised - what do I do?

The good news is that you can regain control over your account quickly. Make sure that you log into your account - I would go to the address bar in the browser and type it in by hand, (or follow this link to Twitter) and log yourself in. Then go to your Settings page (top right hand corner), and click on Password. Change your password, verify it, and confirm the change. Second, click on Connections. This will take you to a list of third party applications that you have allowed to access your Twitter account. Run your eye down the list, and make sure you recognise them all. If you don't, hold your mouse cursor over the title, and check the site that it will take you to. If you still don't recognise the application, click on 'Revoke Access'. This will tell Twitter to stop allowing the resource to use your information. Don't worry if you've made a mistake - you can always return to the application website in the future and allow access again.

Congratulations - you now control your Twitter account again. But remember - never trust anyone on Twitter, even close friends! If you've been sent a DM with a link in it that you weren't expecting, ask them what it is. If you see a link in a Tweet that you don't expect, or which is out of character, check before clicking on it.

There is also a two minute screen cast to help you.

 

From Phil Bradley's weblog

The Web Behaviour Test aims to find out what sort of web animal you are by surveying your web habits, as well as, testing your Internet searching and multi-tasking skills.

It is split into three main parts:

• A survey of your web habits – how long you spend on various types of Internet activity, such as email, social networks etc.
• Web search tasks – that look at how you formulate a search query, how long you take looking at search results and the sort of sites that you trust.
• Multi-tasking tests -  a series of Flash games that seem to test your short term memory and ability to do more than one thing at a time.

At the end of the test you are assigned a web animal based on your answers – are you slow or fast moving, solitary or sociable, adaptable or specialised – to see if you are a Fox, Hedgehog, Octopus etc.

The test is part of the Virtual Revolution TV series from the BBC that has been looking at how the Internet has shaped politics, economics, society and people – the final episode Homo Interneticus – featured academic contributions from the CIBER centre at UCL who produced the Google Generation report that was based in part, on a user evaluation of Intute.

Having done the test – there are a few questions still in my mind …

Self-selecting sample? The main way of finding out about the test was by watching the Virtual Revolution programme and as Phil Bradley pointed out, there was such a high demand following the broadcast that the server fell over, but isn’t this a sample of people pre-disposed to be interested users of the Internet?

The science bit Some of the categories of Internet activity seemed to overlap, meaning that the survey results could be skewed and the Flash games seemed to be just a very basic way of testing short term memory – the science behind the test isn’t very enlightening and I’d like to know more about their thinking.

Who do you think you are? The majority of the people I know who have taken the test wound up as Foxes – just like me – perhaps it would have been interesting to get people to assign themselves to one of the categories after taking the test, but before revealing their results to see how good they were at assessing their own Internet activity.

… but feel free to make up your own mind by taking the Web Behaviour Test and perhaps letting us know in the comments – what sort of web animal are Intute users?

Intute features more resources aimed at improving your Internet research skills, including the Virtual Training Suite and the Internet Detective.

From Intute.ac.uk

By Manfred Dworschak, Spiegel Online International

The German Digital Library wants to make millions of books, films, images and audio recordings accessible online. More than 30,000 libraries, museums and archives are expected to contribute their digitized cultural artifacts. The idea, in part, is to compete with Google Books. But will it work?

On a good day this reader gets through as many as 1,216 pages per hour. Hissing quietly, devouring book after book. Now and then it says, "Pffft."

This is a state-of-the-art robot at work. It automatically scans every book placed open in front of it. A slender wedge drops down to the fold, sucks in a page from left and right and lifts the goods. It's photographed and with a gentle puff of air -- pffft -- the robot flips the page...[More]

Lifehacker has posted a guide to how to Turn Your Netbook into a Feature-Rich E-Book Reader. Check out this post to find helpful tips and tricks to set yourself up with a portable e-book reader including:

• Rotate The Screen
• Adjust The Screen Brightness
• Use a Special Power Saving Mode
• Setting Up E-Book Software

From iLibrarian blog

The folks at Educause have created another one of their helpful “7 Things” guides, this time discussing 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools. New online presentation services such as Slideshare.net are covered in this article which answers the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. Who’s doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

From iLibrarian blog

Greg Ferenstein at Mashable blogs about How Social Gaming is Improving Education. The article discusses how schools are replacing textbook learning with social video games, and improving learning outcomes.

“Social gaming has a come a long way from the days when a dozen students would squint at a 10-inch screen of Oregon Trail. The 2000s seemed to be the decade of case studies: Bold educators willing to experiment with developing technologies. But now, the involvement of major funders, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, points to an industry that is on the cusp of freeing education from its 2D textbook prison.”

 From iLibrarian blog

DIY Learning has compiled a mega-list of colleges and universities which are offering free courses in Top 50 University Open Courseware Collections. These incredibly useful course offerings are divided into the following categories:

• Academic Behemoths
• Ivy League
• Western Institutions
• Colonial
• Midwestern Institutions
• United Kingdom
• International
• Purely Online
• Less Known, Equally Useful

From iLibrarian blog