Best of Web,  Social Web
Business Weeek’s online (Sept. 30) special tech report focuses on the Best of the Web, Scaling the Social Web, the 25 most influential people on the Web, and more.

Online players from media giant Viacom to auctioneer eBay are adding networking features for their users.  Fierce competition is leading to the integration of social networking tools into many established Web sites.  But it’s not just a matter of getting attention, it’s keeping them coming back that counts.

The water cooler Web
Also from Business Week recently: they notice that companies are adopting social software technology to create internal networks.  It’s an efficient way to find in-house expertise, discover new recruits, and share information within their own walls. 

Business Week gives the example of the Film Foundation in Los Angeles using Lotus Connections, an IBM product, to help manage an educational film program. “Workers can archive research documents, share calendars, chat, and blog.  A team of 60 researchers, writers, teachers, and filmmakers is putting together a curriculum, distributed free to schools across the country, that teaches students how to understand the visual language of films.”

I think large non-profits in the library world, such as associations and library systems, could take useful advantage (and a number are) of social networking to build communities around special interests and accomplish a variety of goals.  Are you involved in one of those? 

Photo by attack11.  Creative Commons license.  

YouTube launches Channels for non-profits
Now non-profit organizations can setup their own free channels allowing them to upload public service announcements, footage of their work, calls to action, and to use Google Checkout to collect donations.

Education: do we really need schools or do we need to better understand what education should really be?
Author John Taylor Gatto is a former New York State and New York City Teacher of the Year and the author, most recently, of The Underground History of American Education.   He asks, how do we educate our children to be active, critical thinkers and not dumb passive consumers serving someone else interests?

How to get much more out of MS Internet Explorer
I love Firefox but still run into some websites that I want to use that don’t work well with it.  Many folks (including developerers) still use IE as their main browser so it’s good to have some tips about how to maximize it.

 Banned Books Week starts tomorrow.  The American Library Association annually invites people to celebrate their freedom to read by calling attention to the many great books that have been banned at some time in the past — or currently. 

“This annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.”

For instance, for 2006, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s award-winning “And Tango Makes Three,” about two male penguins parenting an egg from a mixed-sex penguin couple, tops the list of most challenged books in 2006 by parents and administrators, due to the issues of homosexuality.  Several books by Toni Morrison made the “top ten” also, while frequently listed “Catcher in the Rye” and “Of Mice and Men” were not on the 2006 list.

See the top 10 list below and ALA’s many links for more information.  Pick a banned book and enjoy your freedom to read during Banned Books Week and all others, as well.

 The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2006″:

• “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;
• “Alice” series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;
• “Athletic Shorts,” by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language;
• “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group;
• “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
• “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence;
• “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things,” by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
• “Gossip Girls,” series by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language;
• “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group; and
• “Scary Stories” series, by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity.

eBook readers
eBook readers have sought to bridge the gap between paper and digital publications.  Newer devices offer a suite of functions to enhance the experience, including enough memory to store multiple resources.

Quincey Hobbs writing in The Tucson Citizen points to three devices that show promise for the format:

• Sony’s Reader is compact and has a number of navigational and document functions.  It is priced at around $300.
• The Iliad from iRex, selling for nearly $700, “is by far one of the strongest eBook readers on the market.” It has the navigational features of Sony’s reader, and also has a wi-fi connection with its ability to play music and store pictures.  The Iliad also allows you to write on the screen with its stylus and save your notes.  It is slightly heavier than the Sony Reader, “but there is value in the weight.”
• The iRiver eBook Reader is not on the market yet but Hobbs thinks it will be a winner.  It has two display panels and opens like an actual book.  Adding to the attractiveness of the device is that two AAA batteries can power it for six months.

Podango purchases GigaVox Audio Lite
Podcast network and hosting service Podango is enhancig its service with the purchase of podcast publishing software from GigaVox Media. 

TechCrunch says the content-management system, called GigaVox Audio Lite, “allows podcasters to automagically manage the different parts that make up an audio or video podcast, including ads, intros, promotions, and other program material.”

Podango hosts 1,300 podcasters across 250 different stations.  They will soon launch Girls Gone Geek, which CEO Lee Gibbons describes as a “cross between the View and Motorcycle Maintenance.” 

Podango-hosted shows are downloaded two million times per month, up from a 20,000 downloads six months ago.  The are aiming for 10 million downloads per month by next spring.

The Google Book Search homepage has undergone a redesign that offers more ways to browse their collections.

Sample resources are displayed like books on shelves divided into the different categories of “interesting,” “classics,” “highly cited,” and “random subject.”   Refresh the page and different selections appear. 

The left-hand menu offers more categories to choose from.  Of course, you can look for a specific book or other categores using the search bar at the top.

Hovering over a book brings up more information, and clicking on the title takes you to a detailed view with instant previews of some pages, if available. 

The “classics” section only contains works which are in copyright-free public domain, so you can view every page – including a plain-text variant of pages – as well as download a full PDF.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, according to an Associated Press story.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, “now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

The case at issue was brought by Portland (Ore.) attorney Brandon Mayfield after he was mistakenly linked by the FBI - who misread a fingerprint - to the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004. 

Mayfield claimed that secret searches of his house and office under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act violated the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure.  Before his arrest, the FBI put Mayfield under 24-hour surveillance, listened to his phone calls and surreptitiously searched his home and law office.

Judge Aiken agreed with Mayfield, repeatedly criticizing the government. 

“For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law with unparalleled success.  A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised,” the judge wrote.

By asking her to dismiss Mayfield’s lawsuit, the judge said, the U.S. attorney general’s office was “asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning.  This court declines to do so.”

The ruling probably won’t have any immediate affect on enforcement under the Patriot Act, according to legal experts who predicted the government would quickly appeal, but an ACLU spokeman said it was an important step.

In recent weeks we posted several times about another ruling against the USA Patriot Act which was hastily passed by Congress days after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Photo by Thomas Ormston.  Creative Commons license.

Offexploring is a free, Facebook compatible, social travel site where you can keep a journal/blog, add unlimited photos, show an interactive map tracking your adventure, and get the whole journal printed as a book when you are through (for a small charge to cover printing costs).

The travel blog can be easily updated using Offexploring’g trip editing tools.  No need to be a web developer.  There is a personal message board where the traveler and friends can exchange greetings.

You can browse others’ travel journals and photo sets easily.  Members seem to be going to interesting places — I enjoyed the blogs and photos that folks are sharing even though I don’t know them. [via Webuser]

20 online reference sources beyond Wikipedia
The list includes some sources that may only be available to (lucky) college students, but there are other ones, both general and for specific disciplines.  [via LISNews]

100 Web resources for lifelong learners
Lifelong learning means that individuals can have access to and are willing to participate in ongoing education.

The Online Education Database (OEDB) has selected the “best resources for adult learners in ten categories to develop a self-directed toolbox that can lead you, the lifelong learner, to other resources that you may need to meet personal goals.”

Includes adult education guides, audio and video resources, blogs about learning, career sites, distance learning and more.  [via iLibrarian]

Millions more for books / librarians in school libraries  
Last week Premier Dalton McGuinty (Ontario, Canada) announced ”the most significant” investment in school libraries in a generation with a promise to spend $120 million on more books and librarians in elementary schools.

Calling it a quantum leap forward in literacy for children, he said, “We’ll be providing 1.7 million more books on an annual basis.  For every elementary school, that means 430 more books every year.”  [via LISNews]
 

Amazon’s digital music service, Amazonmp3, is now in public beta.   

Most MP3 songs sell for 89 or 99 cents and can be purchased through “one-click” shopping or Amazon Downloader software.  You can also purchase albums, and of course, Amazon makes recommendations for you based on your history at the site.

All songs are compatible with both iTunes and Windows Media Player.  [via Mashable]

Wordpress 2.3 out on Monday
WordPress is bringing out release 2.3 on September 24 - this one including tagging and tag cloud features. 

Mashable says the new tagging support will require modifications to the theme and maybe also support from blog publishing tools like Live Writer.  Plugin and core update notification, faster JavaScript, and SEO-friendly URL redirection are also included in the release.

Vulnerability in PDF files
Hacker Petko Petkov says there’s a vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat/Reader that lets malware into your Windows box with no prompts of any sort. All you need to do is open a PDF file or open a URL that has a PDF file embedded.
 
The vulnerability has not been confirmed by any third parties or Adobe as of yet.

20 icon & graphics generators
Need a favicon, email icon, or other icon.  Here’s a group of generators to help you out.