New post from Cindi Trainor on taking great library photos. It’s the first in a series, so watch for more! Cindi is an amazing photographer and has taken two of the best photos anyone has ever taken of me. If you can hire her to take your photo for something special, do so. She’s amazing.
via @cindi and @ALA_TechSource on Twitter
Read what the brilliant Jakob Nielsen has to say about webpage scrolling and attention. Results? 80% of users’ time is spent looking above the fold (e.g. above where they’d have to do a vertical scroll).
In the process of our library’s website redesign, I’ve become a bit of a fascist about keeping content above the fold. I don’t want people to scroll unless they’ve consciously made a choice to access a large piece of content – e.g. an article, lengthy list of resources, new books list, etc. If the page is at any navigation level but the bottom, then it needs to stay above the fold. Rawr! Come on…just try to pass a page by me that requires scrolling. Then let’s see how far you get 
via @NNgroup on Twitter
For those of you with customers who are curious about health care reform and its impact on them, here are two recommended resources:
I found some excellent indie-designed laptop skins, including a tree of books, a library, and a Google/library joke (pictured here).
I don’t know how others stand on the “personalizing your computer” issue, but I really want to pick something that screams “Sarah.” If you have suggestions that aren’t mean or nasty, please let me know. If you have suggestions that are mean and/or nasty, please keep that to yourself.
SimilarSiteSearch finds similar sites to ones you like. Just give it a URL of a site you already know, and it pulls in suggestions of other similar sites. In my testing it did well with popular topics, but the more obscure I got the weirder the results were. Still, I could see this being really handy for class projects or research on a particular area or subject. One to bookmark in your “specialized search engines” folder for sure…
via @Philbradley on Twitter
“Google’s Android 2.1: How It’ll Change Your Phone,” a PC World article from January.
via @DrWeb2 on Twitter
Yes! Finally, it’s here! Watch the new This Week in Libraries show!
From the same excellent show-masters and library-lovers who brought you The LBI Shanachie Tour (Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer), this new show has a lot of promise. So far, they’ve ad two shows, with more to come. A definite must-subscribe!
via @erikboekesteijn on Twitter
NPR has a nice story about Snopes, every librarian’s dream site of mythbusting information!: Mom-And-Pop Site Busts The Web’s Biggest Myths.
Have you seen the new Google Buzz widget for Android phones? It’s really nice, if you like Buzz…which I don’t. At all. Whatsoever. Total fail, imho. Maybe someday they will fix it, do it right, and re-launch it without the privacy nightmares that they so uncouthly brushed off this time around.
Sling Box to Bring Live Streaming Video From Your Home to Your Android Phone – control and view your television and media from your Android device. Sweet!
via @twittown
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