July 5th, 2008
Scribblet - scratch pad for Mac which lives in your menu bar. I’m finding this sooo useful. I can open this little text box with hotkeys and type notes, paste links and other stuff.
Privnote - send self destructing messages. ‘citing! Enter your message into the text box, click on the ‘post it’ button and your message will be made into a link that you can send. Once the link is clicked the message will be destroyed so the recipient will know if it’s been intercepted. All very cloak and dagger, eh?
thinfi - shorten URLs and password protect.
SimplyNoise - apparently you can use white noise to “Aid Sleep, Enhance Privacy (?), Block Distractions, Mask Tinnitus, Configure Audio Equipment, Soothe Migraines and more…” Select the level you feel comfortable with and then, erm … listen to it. Downloadable MP3s will soon be available if you’re that way inclined. I think this is interesting, but frankly anyone familiar with the film Poltergeist is going to be a little suspicious.
picjuice - simple image editor.
Feed Source - “display any RSS feed on your website or blog”, generates code for you to embed feed, slightly customisable but pretty basic looking.
NFReader - Download Squad reviews NFReader, a lightweight feed reader that will fit on a flash drive.
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internet tools |
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July 4th, 2008
This week the National Probation Service launched ‘Judge for Yourself‘ “an innovative on-line programme in which members of the public can decide what they think is the most suitable sentence for virtual offenders”.
“‘Judge for yourself’ allows people to go on-line and experience the work of probation first hand. Based on examples of real cases, people can ask for more information on each offender, get advice from the probation officer involved and select the sentence they think is appropriate. If this is a community sentence, they can choose from the 12 requirements available to create a package for the offenders to rehabilitate as well as punish.”
There are 4 cases - Alan (Common Assault), Dave (Common Assault (Domestic Violence)), Rachel (Shoplifting), and Trevor (Theft of a motor vehicle and dangerous driving).
Here’s Rachel (she is a heroin addict, facial blemishes as standard).
You will get to ask them 5 questions about their background, lifestyle and prospects. You must assess whether they are a high or low risk and then you can help select the sentence (talking heads will give you advice).
I didn’t like the look of Alan, I gave him 12 months.
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web |
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July 4th, 2008
Since Nick Holmes is off sunning himself in Barbados, I thought I would break the news that Binary Law has been nomiated for a Computer Weekly IT Blog Award (IT law and governance category). So go vote!
IMPACT, TechnoLlama, panGloss, Naked Law and IPKat (among others) also made this category.
Posted in
blog |
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July 2nd, 2008
Common Craft have created a video about LinkedIn and how to make the most of your connections. Which reminds me that Abbie Mulvihill of AbsTracked has set up a LinkedIn group for Law Librarians.
Where else are we law librarians lurking? Jim Milles has created a Ning social network for law librarians - Law Libraries and Librarians. At the time of writing there are 239 members.
Marianne Lenox has set up a Friendfeed room called Librariology.
And on blogtalkradio you will find the Law Librarian where “Richard Leiter and Brian Striman explore and and all issues of concern to law libraries, law librarians, legal bibliography and the profession.”
You can’t escape us.
Posted in
librarians, socialnetworking |
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July 1st, 2008
Today I received a crazed bunny in the mail from quilling librarian Jennie Law. How cool is this little fella? And he is TINY, just a little bigger than a malteaser. Why a bunny? My real name is infobunny (parents were hippies). But what to name this bunny? Suggestions please!
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other |
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June 30th, 2008
Shiny! A selection of icon related goodness
nice free icons - Cult-foo links to some really c*te free icons from fasticon.com
Fresh Freebies: Typeface, Pirates and Circular Icons - Smashing Magazine round up of some freebies - and there’s Carebears!
Free Icons for Software and Web Application Interfaces - from User Interface Icons.
Everyday Icons Playground - I love this site, lots of really lovely stuff, unfortunately all the ‘read me’s are in Japanese so I’m not sure what you’re allowed to do with it all.
Tiny Icon Factory - one of my favourites, create your own pixel picture (harder than it looks!)
Ajaxload.info Generator - create and download those loading thingies.
Free Icons - a collection of free icons from iconBase, including a robot type man made of Safari.
*And as kindly recommended by a reader in the comments section: Wikimedia Commons - Icons and FamFamFam
Go Favicon!
Genfavicon - upload your image, select your pixel size and download as a .ico or .jpg.
Favikon - upload an image and Favikon will generate code for you to use to link to your favicon.
favicon.cc - import an image or create from scratch.
Creative Favicons: Tiny Artwork and Creative Favicons: When Small is Beautiful - round up of lots of cool favicons to inspire, from Smashing Magazine.
Favicon editor - import an image or create a favicon freestyle.
Favicon Generator - upload your image and it will be converted in to 100×100 pixels image with a link for you to copy and paste.
FavIcon from Pics - generate a favicon from any image you upload.
ConvertIcon - upload a .png or .ico image (or direct ConvertIcon to an image hosted online) and it will be converted and available for you to download in three sizes.
Web Based Favicon Generators and Favicon Resources - some of the above and more collected by Six Revisions.
Posted in
internet tools, icons, favicons |
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June 30th, 2008
Cocoalicious is a del.icio.us client for Mac OSX. It displays your del.icio.us bookmarks in their own special browser made up of three panes - a sidebar featuring all your tags, a window of related bookmarks and a preview pane. You can switch preview on or off, but it’s a really useful little feature. I’ve got a heap of bookmarks on del.icio.us, but with Cocoalicious I can quickly flick through a whole bunch without opening lots of new windows/tabs.
Searching bookmarks is made easy with three options, you can limit your search to ‘basic’ or ‘extended’ (which includes tags and web addresses) or opt for a full text search.
One of the neat things about Cocoalicious is that you can easily edit the tags and descriptions of your bookmarks by clicking on the ‘i’ button. So if your thinking of overhauling your bookmarks and getting serious with some tagging then this might be an easier option than using the del.icio.us interface. (note to self - I really need to start tagging like a librarian, instead of the off the cuff approach I have taken so far).
When you spot something new that you want to bookmark you can save to del.icio.us as you would normally or if you prefer the Cocoalicious experience you can add a new bookmarklet to your browser. Either way Cocoalicious syncs automatically so you don’t have to worry about where you are saving and editing stuff.
Obviously this isn’t portable (Macs only, folks), but one of the selling points is the Spotlight integration. So you don’t even have to have Cocoalicious open to search your bookmarks.
Posted in
bookmarks, mac, del.icio.us |
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June 29th, 2008
Posterous - very simple Tumblr like blogging. You don’t even have to sign up, just email your posts to Posterous and your blog is generated automatically.
Sumopaint - quite impressive online image editor.
tinypaste - create a tiny link for chunks of text.
4 Quick Ways to Download YouTube Videos off the Net - from MakeUseOf.
Writeboard - collaborate on documents.
Five Best Desktop Media Players - from Lifehacker.
30+ Must-Have Updated Firefox 3 Extensions - from Mashable.
Timetoast - create super simple and rather attractive looking timelines.
PrimoOnline - convert files to PDFs. Upload your file and PrimoOnline will convert it and email it back to you.
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internet tools |
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June 24th, 2008
“Senate House Library, which just lost £1 million of funding in the recent HEFCE review, is now threatened with closure or takeover unless the University of London college heads decide in December 2008 to increase their current funding. It is vital, however, that the library not only stays open, but continues to be geared towards the needs of all UL students. The total amount the individual colleges of UL will have to invest in their own libraries’ basic holdings if this does not happen, is, clearly, going to be more than that required to keep a soon-to-be-newly refurbished SHL going. The problems of lack of space in the British Library caused by heavy student use, furthermore, will be made worse. This is irresponsible. Even if the University of London’s future is uncertain, a way must be found, at least, to keep the library open and available to all on an equal basis. If not, everyone will lose.”
Print and distribute the flier to let others know what’s going on.
Sign the online petition.
Join the Facebook group.
The HEFCE Review of special funding for research libraries: briefing document
via librarytwopointzero.
Posted in
libraries |
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June 22nd, 2008
Befunky - ‘cartoonize’ your pics and videos, simple effects but lots of fun.
10 Plugins to Improve the Wordpress Admin - from WP Candy.
Google Gadgets for Linux - if gadgets are your thing.
Firefox-Mac-PDF - view PDFs in Firefox. Plugin for Firefox 3 and Tiger or higher.
8 Cool Google Reader Features You May Have Missed - from MakeUseOf.
Buttonator - create quick and easy drag and drop buttons.
Freeware PDF Unlocker - create unlocked copies of protected PDFs. Windows only.
5 Ways to Screencast Your Linux Desktop - from Linuxhaxor.net.
UndeleteMyFiles - recover accidently deleted files (Windows).
Posted in
internet tools |
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