An octothorpe is the "#" symbol, which you might call "pound sign," "number sign," or "square." Evidently, in the 1960s, some Bell Lab engineers wanted to give the symbol a special name and started using octothorpe. As you probably already guessed, the name didn't really stick.
Thanks to Adrian Lurssen and Mark Nemeth for expanding my horizons. - K
Legal Services of Northern California announced today that the approved final evaluation report for The Findability Project is now available. (More information about The Findability Project is available from Technola at LSNC Launches "Findability Project" and LSNTAP Roundtable on Findability and the Google Search Paradigm.) - K
On Thursday, July 2nd at 11 am PT / 2 pm ET LSNTAP will host a Roundtable with Brian Lawlor, Regional Counsel for Legal Services of Northern California, who will discuss "Findability and the Google Search Paradigm: Integrating Search as a Organizational Solution." This discussion is based on LSNC’s Findability Project, an effort to integrate (and document) enterprise search in a large nonprofit legal services organization. Registration details are availble here and Brian's presentation is available here. -M
When my husband has the perfect idea for a gift, he gets excited and can barely keep it secret. If the gift's for me, he pesters me until I guess what it is. Usually, the guessing lasts for a while, but this year, I figured out what I was getting for my March birthday by the middle of January: a Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading device.
He had a long list of reasons why a Kindle was perfect for me--less to print, less to tote around, fewer trips to the bookstore, and more room in our house for things besides books and book storage. I, on the other hand, was not nearly as certain. I had hoped for a tricycle, a new cell phone with a data plan, or a high-end firewall. An expensive e-reader wasn't on my list. I like how books smell, and I like to turn pages and take notes in the margins. And I don't like reading from computer screens. After mulling it over, I told my husband that I didn't think that I'd like the Kindle, but he convinced me to give it a try.
And he was right. I love my Kindle. I read more, especially more documents that I would have had to print before. Now, I e-mail those documents to my Kindle. (I may have saved an entire forest from destruction in the four months that I've had my Kindle.) I take more notes, too, because I can highlight and annotate text on the Kindle and transfer it directly to my computer--no re-writing or re-typing. The best part: with Kindlefeeder, I can send articles from my favorite blogs directly to my Kindle.
Turns out, I'm not the only person in the poverty law community who has a Kindle. Carol Garner at LawAccess New Mexico has a Kindle, too. She's hunted down some great resources for Kindle owners: Kindle Boards, The Kindle Warehouse, and MobileRead Forums. And John Mayer, the Executive Director of CALI, is expecting his Kindle DX any day. More broadly, the National Center for State Courts has suggested that e-readers could be great for judges, who need to read a lot and interact with their documents.
CommonCraft, a company that creates Paperworks videos and that Technola has highlighted before, has again rushed to the rescue of both techies and their users. This time they explain how computers work.
Common Craft--the many people that I've tried to explain hard drives, RAM, and processors to send you their heartfelt gratitude. - K
In an effort to help the environment and support the unemployed, Dell and Goodwill have partnered to form the Reconnect program. Now, in ten states, you can drop off your old electronics for recycling at Goodwill stores, which will see that your electronics are recycled or reused appropriately and use any profits to support their work. - K
For those of you following the $100 laptop saga: "Tossing aside its iconic green-and-white laptop with its distinctive antennas, One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is pursuing a smaller 2.0 version, scheduled for release in 2010, in which dual touch screens will replace the keypad. The new version will have lower power consumption and a $75 price--a figure that OLPC claims is achievable despite the fact that the current model, the XO, sells for nearly double the sum mentioned in its "$100 laptop" moniker." See the full article here. -M
Looking to toss that first generation Palm Pilot?
Free and green. Those are the goals of a pilot program launched today by the U.S. Postal Service that allows customers to recycle small electronics and inkjet cartridges by mailing them free of charge.
-M
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