Cats looking at cats looking at cats looking at cats… Take a picture of your cat looking at a monitor which bears the image of the LAST picture in the sequence of the Infinite Cat Project. Look for Torin on the site sometime soon 
Michael Stephens’s Tame the Web article, 10 Things A Library Can Do to Boost their Techie Stuff (without breaking the bank), is a must-read for every techie or management librarian. Want ideas on how to get up to date quickly & cheaply? Here ya go. And it’s all about redundant access to the same information. Send news about your library out via a blog (an RSS-ified one at that)–not just through flyers in the library and a newsletter. Conduct reference interviews not only at the desk and on the phone, but through instant messaging too! Thanks to Michael for a great article.
A fun ransom note generator (also from J-Walk…check out his blog if you haven’t yet…very funny).
The Top 100 Library Books list is most interesting. Based on OCLC holdings, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-run Companies by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. is #1 at 3,971. I was pleased to see that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes was #7. Lots of Reference books in this list…only natural, I guess.
link via J-Walk blog
I can’t even remember where I heard about this, but it’s a great site. AuditMyPC.com will (for free) do a firewall test, a spyware removal test, and a pop-up blocker test on your PC. I was all-set on firewall & spyware, but was interested to find that my PC failed 2 of the 9 pop-up blocker tests, even though I have AdsGone 2004, updated yesterday. Hum. Audit yourself and let me know what you find 
An official Google Blog has existed since yesterday at 11:40 AM. There is already an unofficial Google Weblog run by Aaron Swarz. I’m going to keep feeds from both–the more Google the merrier!
Google has conducted a massive re-tooling of Blogger. Search Engine Watch has a great article on the upgrades, so I won’t re-hash all of that here. The most interesting upgrade feature to me, as we use Blogger for our library’s blog, is the ability to post via e-mail. I’m going to have to play around with that a little and see how it works…
Online, printable, colorable images of national flags are available at the Flags of the World website. Black and white outline images are available in 3 different sizes, and look pretty nice!
Thanks to the J-Walk blog for the link.
Another resource that Mr. Price pointed out at the BayNet meeting….
Vivísimo is a clustering search engine. What does that mean, you might ask? The search engine automatically clusters search results into categories that are selected from the words and phrases in the search results themselves. The interface is intuitive and the clusters are almost always right-on-target (an exception being that “dog” is the top cluster for a search on “cat”).
Sample search for “The Grateful Dead” brings back the following top clusters & # of results: Photos (33), Art (19), Lyrics (13), CD (17), Radio (5), Rock (15), Community (7), Live Grateful Dead (6), Grateful Dead Merchandise (11), Long strange trip (5). Pretty cool, huh?
Vivísimo also has a toolbar and a minibar.
Now if only Google, Vivísimo, and GuruNet could get together for one uber-engine, I’d be out of a job…
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while, and I have Gary Price to thank for pointing it out at the BayNet annual meeting last week.
GuruNet is an intelligent reference query engine online. From their self-description:
How GuruNet differs from a search engine
When you look up a topic in a search engine, it gives you only a long list of unfiltered links pointing to web pages. Some are junk. Some are inappropriate. GuruNet brings you an answer in a quick, concise, authoritative, readable snapshot — and not a list of hundreds or thousands of links. With our award – winning technology, you save time twice: first by getting an instant definition or explanation, and second, by seeing the trusted source of the information.
A search for “cheese” brings back dictionary entries, a pronunciation sound file, encyclopedia entries, nutritional values, a sign language version of the word, a lexicon, and translations into other languages.
A search for “San Rafael, CA” brings back a dictionary entry (basically a place description), a pronunciation
sound file, encyclopedia entry, weather, & maps.
They also have a kids edition & a toolbar (with a paid subscription). After extensive use of the tool itself and reading some reviews, I would rate GuruNet as an essential reference tool, quicker for those factual queries we get at the reference desk, and a credible source to guide students to when they are doing research. The results they’ll get here are a lot more relevant than the ones they’d get on Google, for everything from “Eminem” to “the Civil War.”
Bookmark this site, librarians…that’s an order!
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