This is the just-in-time-for-the-holidays edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee suspended work on SOPA, and there was much relief from the technology community. The Palo Alto Public Library announced plans to lend Chromebooks (laptops with Google’s cloud-based operating system) to patrons. And OCLC announced a rebranding and expansion of its webscale activities with the WorldShare Platform.

Inclusive of all holidays of the season I wish you a safe, restful and happy celebration.

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A Status Update on SOPA from Washington

Prospects: mixed. On the one hand, it’s looking likely that it will pass out of committee. Proposed amendments voted down 2-1 in HJC when the manager’s amendment was marked up. Unless something changes, I expect SOPA to emerge largely unamended, particularly with respect to that relates search engines and use of DNS for enforcement, the most controversial aspects of the bill for the tech community.

On the other hand, there have been significant cybersecurity concerns raised about the bills because of what it would do to DNSSEC, including by DHS officials. The committee might take a classified briefing so that the government’s own geeks from Sandia Labs and DHS and other “Three Letter Agencies” could explain to the legislators) who somehow neglected to bring in any technical experts before the committee to testify) why SOPA won’t work and why it’s a terrible idea to try to DNS for enforcement. If that happens before markup, it could change the bill that heads to the House floor — and House leadership might want to address security concerns before bringing it to a full vote.

- A Status Update on SOPA from Washington, by Alexander Howard on Google+

Remember the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)? It is the proposed bill that would force internet service providers to block DNS name-to-address translation and force revenue-generating systems (advertisement networks and payment intermediaries) to cut off service to a “foreign infringing site”. The bill was on the fast track to go through the final markup process through the Judiciary Committee last week when debate on dozens of proposed amendments ran out the clock on this year’s congressional session. That is where O’Reilly Media technology writer Alexander Howard picks up the story with his summary excerpted above. Alexander’s post is a great synopsis of the history, status, players-to-watch, and people to watch for updates. For a view on why the technology community was alternating between sobbing and anger, see the aptly titled “Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works.”

Silicon Valley Library Lends Google Chromebooks

In a first-of-its-kind pilot project, the Palo Alto, California Library will soon be loaning Google Chromebook computers to library patrons for as long as one week at a time.

The program highlights the Chromebook’s ability to operate as a kind of “disposable computer,” as Google puts it. With the Chromebook, most all data and applications reside on the Web — not the local machine — so it can easily be passed from person-to-person. It’s a very Googly setup, and the search giant hopes it will reinvent the way businesses use computers.

- Silicon Valley Library Lends Google Chromebooks, Wired.com Enterprise blog

Cloud computing meets equipment circulation. I remember a time when libraries used to offer VCR and DVD players to patrons for check-out. Now that service is coming to computers. Since everything on the computer is replicated to Google’s servers, it is easy to wipe the individual patron’s files on the machine when the next person logs in. One just needs a Google account to make it work, and that is — of course — one of the distinguishing factors between lending Chromebooks and lending VCR and DVD players. Will patrons mind the Google account requirement? Should libraries educate patrons on the privacy and information-harvesting/using practices of Google before lending a device?

OCLC Introduces OCLC WorldShare

The OCLC WorldShare Platform facilitates collaboration and app-sharing across the library community, so that libraries can combine library-built applications, partner-built applications and OCLC-built applications. This enables the benefits of each single solution to be shared broadly throughout the library community.

- OCLC introduces OCLC WorldShare

Reaching back a little bit, earlier this month OCLC announced the WorldShare Platform — a roll-up of the existing Webscale Management tools with the ability to insert third-party applications into a single bibliographic view. This is potentially a game-changer in how libraries work with bibliographic data. Similar in concept — although quite different in technical implementation — to next generation library automation systems like Kuali OLE and Ex Libris Alma and Evergreen, WorldShare views back-room bibliographic description, acquisition, and materials-handling workflows as a series of choreographed processes that can be mixed and matched to meet a library’s particular needs. It turns the traditional approach of information processing inside out — the data is in a superior position to the computer program. The WorldShare Platform is sort of like Facebook. Just as Facebook introduced ways for outside developers to “integrate into the core Facebook experience“, WorldShare platform enables external providers to supply applications that can use the data residing in the platform.

Unless I’m not reading the right places, the WorldShare introduction has landed with somewhat of a thud among the library technologist community. Aside from Marshall Breeding’s post on InfoToday, I haven’t seen any discussion of it. And that seems odd.

After a longer than intended hiatus, DLTJ Thursday Threads is back.

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A Pro-Library Protest Song

I’m a Child of the Lib’ry, it made me who I am, /
It taught me about freedom and the fellowship of Man /
A sea of story waits for you behind the lib’ry door, /
Don’t say we can’t afford them any more.

- Chorus from “Child of the Library”, by Piers Cawley, OSCON 2011

OSCON is the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, held this year July 25-29, 2011 in Portland, OR. Normally an event for all things open source software, Piers Cawley stepped outside that box this year by asking attendees if they have ever used a library and if they have used a library in the past month. He then sung a song he wrote earlier this year when he learned about the drastic cuts facing public libraries in the U.K. Piers has released the song under a Creative Commons license and asks that people spread it far and wide.

How Google Makes Improvements to Its Search Algorithm

Here’s a short video we put together that gives you a sense of the work that goes into the changes and improvements we make to Google almost every day. While an improvement to the algorithm may start with a creative idea, it always goes through a process of rigorous scientific testing.

- How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm – YouTube, Google

Curious to know how Google engineers try to find the best search results? This video from Google’s web search team talks about how it uses various “signals” and adapts the algorithm as often as once a day to improve relevance ranking.

New Web-based Tool Teaches the Basics of JavaScript Programming

Three days ago I wrote about Codecademy — a slick, fun way to teach yourself how to program. The app has done an excellent job minimizing the frustration often associated with writing your first lines of code, and it sports a good-looking and intuitive interface. Another plus: the initial signup flow doesn’t show up til you’ve completed your first few lessons, so you’re writing code within a few seconds of landing at Codecademy.com.

I’m not the only one who liked it: cofounder Zach Sims tells us that in the three days since the application launched, it has drawn 200,000 unique users. That’s users who have actually interacted with the app — and not people who hit the webpage and bounced away a second later. Perhaps even more impressive: users have completed a total number of 2.1 million exercises.

- Codecademy Surges To 200,000 Users, 2.1 Million Lessons Completed In 72 Hours, by Jason Kinkaid, TechCrunch

A popular topic on library technology mailing lists is librarians asking for advice on how to get started with programming. This was, in face, a key part of Diane Hillman’s keynote at the Code4Lib conference this year — getting catalogers and programmers closer together.

Enter a new option: Codecademy. A new startup that went public this week, it teaches the basics of JavaScript programming through an interactive, web-based interface. There are just eight lessons at the moment, but there is the promise of more to come. Now if only we had an equivalent way to teach coders about cataloging and the MARC format…

A Google a Day screenshot

When this first came out I thought it was a stunningly good way to demonstrate the kinds of search skills that libraries teach patrons when demonstrating how to use the internet. So I sent a message to the generic service address and started a conversation with a product marketing manager at Google. After some back-and-forth with him and other librarians, it does seem like there is a possibility of a really neat collaboration. To start us off, Google put together the information below on how to embed the question in library websites (see below). On a conference call with other librarians we also talked about possibilities like a categorization of questions (so if you wanted a chemistry question or one that uses Google Street View you would be able to find it quickly) and “guest written” questions based off of real life reference interviews.

What is A Google a Day?

Why is it cool?

Even more exciting, the Google a Day widget can be embedded right on a library’s home page. With minimal effort and no programming experience required, each day the widget will automatically update so users have instant access to exciting and educational content on the landing page.

Why is it cool for libraries?

More importantly, every day we highlight awesome and useful search tricks to help find information quicker and easier. Give patrons instant ability to build the increasingly important skills of search engine utilization and internet research by embedding a Google a Day widget or linking to our page at www.agoogleaday.com

How do I get started?

<iframe width="300" height="250" src="http://agoogleaday.com/embed.html" frameborder="0"></iframe>

It might have been the week of the annual American Library Association meeting with all the news and announcements and programming that came from it — as well as getting into the dog days of summer — but interesting news at the intersection of technology and libraries did not take a pause. Google made a big splash this week with tantalizing tidbits about its new social media project; it is at a look-but-don’t-touch stage, but the look is enticing. Then there were two articles about really big data — what is produced in the high energy physics supercolider at CERN and what we produce as a society. And to go along with that data we produce as a society is another warning that much of it isn’t safe from the prying eyes of the USA PATRIOT Act. Finally, we revisit the Georgia State University copyright case with a comment on the potential chilling impacts on free speech.

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Google Unveils its Social Media Project

Among the most basic of human needs is the need to connect with others. With a smile, a laugh, a whisper or a cheer, we connect with others every single day.

Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools.

In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.

We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project.

- Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web, Official Google Blog

The new Google+ service is temporarily out of capacity at the limited trial launch.

Google+ is in very limited public roll-out at the moment. Some are speculating that this is a marketing strategy to build buzz around the project like they did with limited invites to GMail and Google Voice. I wonder, based on the “We’ve temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon” message on the signup page, whether they are having difficulties scaling up the service. In any case, they are taking measured and deliberate steps in rolling this out. If you want to learn more, there are about seven minutes of videos on the Google+ Project Overview page. Beyond that is an excellent 6,300-word article by Steven Levy on Wired.com; Steven has had inside access to the development of the project for months and there are a lot of insights in the article that I’m not seeing published elsewhere.

The Size of Big Data

Experiments at CERN are generating an entire petabyte of data every second as particles fired around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at velocities approaching the speed of light are smashed together. However, Francois Briard, control infrastructure section leader, beam department, explained that CERN doesn’t capture and save all of this data, instead using filters to save only the results of the collisions that are of interest to scientist at the facility….

This still means CERN is storing 25PB of data every year – the same as 1,000 years’ worth of DVD quality video – which can then be analysed and interrogated by scientists looking for clues to the structure and make-up of the universe.

- CERN experiments generating one petabyte of data every second, by Dan Worth, IT News from V3.co.uk

In 2011 alone, 1.8 zettabytes (or 1.8 trillion gigabytes) of data will be created, the equivalent to every U.S. citizen writing 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years. And over the next decade, the number of servers managing the world’s data stores will grow by ten times. Interestingly, the amount of data people create by writing email messages, taking photos, and downloading music and movies is minuscule compared to the amount of data being created about them, the EMC-sponsored study found.

The IDC study predicts that overall data will grow by 50 times by 2020, driven in large part by more embedded systems such as sensors in clothing, medical devices and structures like buildings and bridges.

- World’s data will grow by 50X in next decade, IDC study predicts, by Lucas Mearian, ComputerWorld

These two reality checks came by way of ACM TechNews. Just in case you think you were dealing with some big hunks of data, just know that data in the library world is pretty miniscule. Now there are some that are having to deal with this sort of “big data” — particularly with regards to the new rules from the National Science Foundation.

Microsoft admits Patriot Act can access EU-based cloud data

At the Office 365 launch, Gordon Frazer, managing director of Microsoft UK, gave the first admission that cloud data — regardless of where it is in the world — is not protected against the USA PATRIOT Act… After a year of researching the Patriot Act’s breadth and ability to access data held within protected EU boundaries, Microsoft finally and openly admitted it…

Frazer explained that, as Microsoft is a U.S.-headquartered company, it has to comply with local laws (the United States, as well as any other location where one of its subsidiary companies is based).

- Microsoft admits Patriot Act can access EU-based cloud data, by Zack Whittaker, ZDNet

This was a bit unexpected. If you are a U.S.-based entity and thought your data was safe from revealing through a U.S. National Security Letter because you were using a hosting service outside of the U.S., you may want to check with your lawyers again.

Closing the book on academic freedom

The scope of the proposed injunction in the [Georgia State University] litigation goes far beyond existing case law, as it limits all speech, by all actors, in any way associated with GSU. As such, it is not a limit on a particular instance of suspected infringement, but a limit on all potential speech going forward. Prior injunctions have been limited in scope and have stopped the publication of existing works; the proposed injunction chills all future expression coming out of GSU, and leaves no space for the comment, criticism, and dialogue that lies at the center of constitutionally protected speech. In order to open up a new business model, the plaintiffs ask the court to shake the foundations of the balance between incentive and expression; and the price of doing so is simply too high.

- Closing the book on academic freedom, by Bobby Glushko on Paul Courant’s blog

Bobby Glushko, J.D., is the Associate Librarian in the Copyright Office of the University of Michigan Library. Following up the frightening scenario in a DLTJ Thursday Thread earlier this month, Mr. Glushko looks at the potential impact on First Amendment free speech if the litigation in the Georgia State University case goes in favor of the plaintiffs. It is a whole new level of frightening.

This week’s DLTJ Thursday Threads is about data centers — those dark rooms with all of the blinking lights of computers doing our bidding. Data centers hit the mainstream news this week with the outage at one of Amazon’s cloud computing clusters. And since computers and their associated peripherals consume a lot of energy, researchers are proposing to run data centers on renewable energy. And finally Facebook and Google release separate videos that give glimpses into how large data centers are run.

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Amazon EC2 Outage Hobbles Websites

Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud, which offers computation as a service to thousands of businesses, and its Relational Database Service, began experiencing errors shortly before 2 a.m. PDT on Thursday at Amazon’s US-EAST data center in Virginia and the service interruption has been ongoing for more than nine hours now.

The technical problems have slowed or disabled access to the websites of customers utilizing AWS US-East resources, including Engine Yard, Foursquare, Hootsuite, Heroku, Quora, and Reddit, to name a few.

- Amazon EC2 Outage Hobbles Websites, by Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek

Failures of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud service — think of it as renting virtual computer servers somewhere out there on the internet — last week caused major internet sites to shut down. As of this writing, the root cause analysis hasn’t been published, but signs are pointing to a cascade of events starting with a minor failure that snowballed into system overload as the rented servers tried to restart themselves in other areas of Amazon’s cloud capacity. The questions being raised though are leading to a darkening of the puffy white cloud computing promise. Ultimately, though, use of computing in the cloud seems to be a trade-off where you can save money by not owning your own computing infrastructure with the downside that you don’t have as much control when something goes wrong.

Far-flung Data Centers Could Use Otherwise Unharvestable Renewable Energy For Computation

Researchers at Cambridge University want to put data centers in places so remote they aren’t on any power grid. Their models indicate that moving data-hungry computation to places such as scorching deserts, windswept peaks, and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean — all rich in sunlight and wind energy — could allow this otherwise unharvestable energy to do useful work.- Really Remote Data, by Christopher Mims, MIT Technology Review

The second thread comes by way of MIT Technology Review and points to a paper by Sherif Akoush, Ripduman Sohan, Andrew Rice, Andrew W. Moore and Andy Hopper — all of Cambridge University called Free Lunch: Exploiting Renewable Energy For Computing, to be presented at the USENIX-sponsored the 13th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems next month. The “Free Lunch” part comes from using renewable energy sources at these various locations to power data centers where compute jobs are shuffled around the locations depending on the available energy — and consequently computing capacity — at each center. A neat idea, and one that is probably valuable for compute-intensive jobs like video conversion and data mining.

What Goes Into Running Large Data Centers

Inspired by the model of open source software, we want to share the innovations in our data center for the entire industry to use and improve upon. Today we’re also announcing the formation of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide initiative to share specifications and best practices for creating the most energy efficient and economical data centers.>

- Building Efficient Data Centers with the Open Compute Project, Facebook

This video tour of a Google data center highlights the security and data protections that are in place at our data centers.

- Security and Data Protection in a Google Data Center, YouTube

For two entirely different purposes, Facebook and Google released videos recently that give glimpses into what each does to run a data center. The four-and-a-half-minute Facebook video introduces us to their Open Compute Project: a set of plans for server hardware and for physical buidings to creating the most efficient computer clusters possible. In the seven-minute Google video, we see part of what Google does to keep data safe that is stored in the cloud (including a pair of hard drive crushing machines!).

Another week, another set of threads of library and library-related topics. (Who ever said this profession was boring? Well, I once did, but that is a thread for another day.) Information literacy hit the mainstream this week with noted usability analyst Jakob Nielson noting that internet users need to learn better search skills and Google giving us a tool (in the form of a daily puzzle) that might do just that. Next is an announcement from OCLC about a re-energizing and re-forming of the research library partner program. Lastly, a computer scientist at Miami University creates a mobile app that will be a godsend for library shelvers everywhere (perhaps after you relabel your spines).

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On the Need, and Perhaps a Tool, to Teach Search

Although some analysts questioned the finding of search dominance, it’s a user behavior that gets stronger every year. Today, many users are so reliant on search that it’s undermining their problem-solving abilities. Ironically, the better search gets, the more dangerous it gets as people increasingly assume that whatever the search engine coughs up must be the answer. …

In the long term, we should try to improve the world rather than design to suit its shortcomings. One example of how we might do this is to teach better Internet research skills in schools.

- Incompetent Research Skills Curb Users’ Problem Solving, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

A Google a Day is a new daily puzzle that can be solved using your creativity and clever search skills on Google. Questions will be posted every day on agoogleaday.com and printed on weekdays above the New York Times crossword puzzle. We’ll reveal each puzzle’s answer the next day in the Times and on agoogleaday.com, along with the search tips and features used to find it.

Just like traditional crossword puzzles, the difficulty of the questions increases over the course of the week, so by Thursday or Friday, even the most seasoned searcher may be stumped.

- A trivia game where using Google is allowed, Official Google Blog, via A Google a Day

Interesting that these two items showed up within days of each other. How can we improve the skills of internet users? By making it a game, of course. This sort of thing strikes me as a good way for libraries to promote information literacy skills. Syndicated to the New York Times? How about syndicating it to library websites! (I’ve sent feedback to Google to see if this sort of thing is possible.)

An early word about the OCLC Research Library Partnership

OCLC Research Library Partners will be part of a leading-edge, peer-based, transnational collaborative. Institutions will participate in a challenging and rewarding set of activities designed to improve the information-driven environment in which your students and scholars work. Partners’ efforts will be backed by the full capacities of OCLC Research, and Partners will collectively influence and direct a substantial portion of the OCLC Research effort. Institutions will have an opportunity to share expertise with some of the most innovative and forward-thinking library managers and leaders in the world.

- An early word about the OCLC Research Library Partnership, hangingtogether.org blog

I only worked briefly at an RLG library and in that short time never really got introduced to what it meant to be a member of RLG. Now that RLG has been OCLC Research for about five years, OCLC is now looking to re-engergize and expand communication between research libraries. The expanded effort is set to launch on July 1st.

Shelvar, the Augmented Reality Shelf-reading App

Putting misshelved books back in their proper places is not a library worker’s favorite task. It takes time and it’s not exactly scintillating. Now a computer-science professor has come up with a way to make the process faster and less burdensome: an augmented-reality shelf-reading app that can scan an entire shelf’s worth of books at a time and alert workers which ones are out of place.

- Shelving Made Easy (or Easier), Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education

This one warms my heart because it comes from my alma mater, Miami University‘s Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering. It is an app for mobile device that scans two-dimensional barcodes on the spines of books and shows, in real time, which ones are out of place. This 4-minute video demonstrates how it works. In comments on the YouTube video, Dr. Brinkman says: “Sorry, the application is still under development, and is not available for other people to try yet. If everything goes well we will be soliciting for beta-test partners some time around Christmas.”

It has been a long week, so for many of you this edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads will actually be read on Friday. The spirit was willing, the topics were certainly out there in the past seven days, but the necessary distractions were numerous. Please enjoy this edition whenever you read it. As always, there is lots more on my FriendFeed aggregation page.

Google Refine 2.0, a power tool for data wranglers

Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data sets, including cleaning up inconsistencies, transforming them from one format into another, and extending them with new data from external web services or other databases. Version 2.0 introduces a new extensions architecture, a reconciliation framework for linking records to other databases (like Freebase), and a ton of new transformation commands and expressions.

Google’s Open Source blog has this announcement of a major new release of their “Refine” software package. It is software that runs on your Windows, Mac, or UNIX machine and you access it with your web browser. If your first inclination for cleaning up data sets is to drag out Excel or write a script using regular expressions, check out the three demonstration videos and see if Refine might get you to your end result faster.

Why Do eBooks Cost So Much? (A Publisher’s Perspective)

So far in our experience at Thomas Nelson, the elimination of manufacturing and distribution costs are being offset by retail price reductions and the three additional costs I have outlined. The good news is that we are making about the same margins, regardless of whether we sell the book in physical form or digital. As a result, I don’t expect eBook retail prices to come down any more. If they do, then publishers will have to figure out how to make it work. But for right now, I think the pricing is fair, based on the associated costs.

This post comes from the chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. In it he describes the shifting costs of physical versus digital production from a publisher’s perspective. His practical upshot? “I don’t expect eBook retail prices to come down any more.”

Principles for Open Bibliographic Data

For some time now the OKFN Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data has been working on Principles on Open Bibliographic Data. While first attempts were mainly directed towards libraries and other public institutions we decided to broaden the principle’s scope by amalgamating it with Peter Murray-Rust’s draft publisher guidelines. The results can be seen below. We ask anyone to review these principles, discuss the text and suggest improvements.

Here are the highlights of the five principles mentioned in the post: when publishing data make an explicit and robust license statement; use a recognized waver or license that is appropriate for metadata; if you want your data to be effectively used and added to by others it should be open as defined by the Open Knowledge/Data Definition; we strongly recommend explicitly placing bibliographic data in the public domain via PDDL or CCo; and we urge creators of bibliographic metadata explicitly either dedicate this to the public domain or use an open license.

“Copyright Infringement and Me” — The Sad Tale of Cooks Source

My 2005 Ice Dragon entry, called “A Tale of Two Tarts” was apparently printed without my knowledge or permission in a magazine and I am apparently the victim of copyright infringement.

That is the beginning of the beginning of a tale of significant copyright infringments by a small advertising-supported publication in western New England. The details have been summarized by others. What I find useful, though, are the posts that talk about lessons learned as the internet speeds the spread of memes and how significant remedies for copyright infringment can be difficult to obtain. Since Facebook plays such a central role, the tale of Cooks Source might make a for a useful case study to the Facebook generation.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2010/11/05/cooks-source-what-should-judith-griggs-have-done/ on June 9th, 2011.

This week is a mostly Google edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. Below is a high-level overview of Google’s Book Search algorithm, how Google is helping web servers improve the speed at which content loads, and how Google’s internet traffic is growing as a percentage of all internet traffic. But first, there is an uprising on the RDA test records in the WorldCat database.

If you find these interesting and useful, you might want to add the Thursday Threads RSS Feed to your feed reader or subscribe to e-mail delivery using the form to the right. If you would like a more raw and immediate version of these types of stories, watch my FriendFeed stream (or subscribe to its feed in your feed reader). Comments and tips, as always, are welcome.

Memorandum Against RDA Test

We have found ourselves in an unenviable position of opposing the work that supposedly has been authorized by agencies representing our interests. I might compare it to a military coup d’état. I mean here the RDA “test” and its implications on the cataloging world at large. After extensive discussions on the PCC, OCLC cataloging e-mail lists with opinions from the British Library, Australia and North America, we can safely conclude that there is a broad consensus against principles of RDA and the way RDA “test” has been imposed on the cataloging world.

The original post on the OCLC-CAT list by Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz of the New York Public Library is behind a must-subscribe-and-authenticate form, but it has been copied out copied to an open website by Becky Yoose (thanks, Becky!). The subsequent discussion resulted in a Petition against the RDA Test by Jacqueline Byrd at Indiana University. The link to the position has been posted to the open AUTOCAT list, and there has been subsequent discussion there. (Hat tip to Kirsten Davis.)

Inside the Google Books Algorithm

Rich Results is the latest in a series of smaller front-end tweaks that have been matched by backend improvements. Now, the book search algorithm takes into account more than 100 “signals,” individual data categories that Google statistically integrates to rank your results. When you search for a book, Google Books doesn’t just look at word frequency or how closely your query matches the title of a book. They now take into account web search frequency, recent book sales, the number of libraries that hold the title, and how often an older book has been reprinted.

Alexis Madrigal article in TheAtlantic.com draws a comparison between the techniques and algorithms used for web search with those used for book materials. The need for relevant search results is the same, but books don’t have the same inter-page linking hints that drive the PageRank algorithm for web search. The use of anonymized circulation data in creating clustered bibliographic descriptions was mentioned at the ALA Midwinter ALCTS Forum on Mashups of Bibliographic Data, and apparently it is also used in the relevance ranking of Google Books search results. (Hat tip to Ron Murray.)

Google Releases mod_pagespeed

mod_pagespeed is an open-source Apache module that automatically optimizes web pages and resources on them. It does this by rewriting the resources using filters that implement web performance best practices. Webmasters and web developers can use mod_pagespeed to improve the performance of their web pages when serving content with the Apache HTTP Server. mod_pagespeed includes several filter that optimize JavaScript, HTML and CSS stylesheets. It also includes filters for optimizing JPEG and PNG images. The filters are based on a set of best practices known to enhance web page performance. Webmasters who set up mod_pagespeed in addition to configuring proper caching and compression on their Apache distribution should expect to see an improvement in the loading time of the pages on their websites.

Google has promoted best practices for improving the rate at which web pages load for a number of years. This week they introduced mod_pagespeed: an Apache web server module that brings these practices to bear by rewriting HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets on-the-fly. Since Google now includes the speed at which pages are rendered in a browser as a factor in ranking search results, this would seem to be a good module to explore for anyone running an Apache web server with public content. (Hat tip to Ed Summers.)

Google as a percentage of all internet traffic

Google Sets Internet Traffic Record

Google now represents an average 6.4% of all Internet traffic around the world. This number grows even larger (to as much as 8-12%) if I include estimates of traffic offloaded by the increasingly common Google Global Cache (GGC) deployments and error in our data due to the extremely high degree of Google edge peering with consumer networks. Keep in mind that these numbers represent increased market share — Google is growing considerably faster than overall Internet volumes which are already increasing 40-45% each year.

Craig Labovitz of Arbor Networks notes that if Google were an internet service provider, it would now be “the second largest carrier on the planet.” Wow! That is a lot of data sloshing around on its own internal network!

I’m starting something new on DLTJ: Thursday Threads — summaries and pointers of stories, services, and other stuff that I found interesting in the previous seven days. This is culled from entries that I post to my FriendFeed lifestream through various channels (Google Reader shared items, citations shared in Zotero, Twitter posts, etc.), but since I know not everyone is using those services, it might be useful to post the best-of-the-selected here once a week. Why Thursday? Somewhere long ago I read that Thursday at 11am is the best time to put a post on a blog because Thursday lunch through Friday are the most active time for readers. I have no idea whether that is true or not, but lacking any evidence to the contrary, Thursday morning will do fine. (Obviously I’m a little late on this first one, but I’ll try to do better next time. Or not — maybe this will be a one-off weekly thing.)

MagCloud — On-demand printing of magazines

MagCloud, the revolutionary new self-publishing web service from HP, is changing the way ideas, stories, and images find their way into peoples’ hands in a printed magazine format. Whether you are a novice or experienced publisher, MagCloud offers you a way to create commercial quality magazines, printed on demand with no upfront costs or minimum print runs. MagCloud is creating new ways to bring consumers and publishers together in a web-based marketplace where choice, flexibility and print on demand are the cornerstones of the community.

Could be useful for short-run, professional printing. I learned about this via a conference call with the editorial board of the NISO International Standards Quarterly.

Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation (TED Talk)

TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter …

TED curator Chris Anderson takes the stage to talk about what he has seen as the impact of putting TED talks on the net specifically as well as the general case for the impact of services like YouTube on worldwide culture. This is definitely gets one thinking about the power of the visual medium. Closer to home, it also should get one thinking about assisting library patrons in creating and curating this content, no?

Plain English

Every field has its own jargon that’s meaningless to everyone else. Sometimes you want to translate a given -ese into lay terms while preserving the original text. Plain English is designed to facilitate this. The premise is straightforward: The original text is highlighted in yellow. When you click on a phrase, it toggles to the re-written simpler version, in gray. Buttons at the top allow you to toggle the whole thing at once. The words are stored in a simple JSON file.

From the laboratory of Slate Magazine comes this technique for toggling between one set of words and its translated form. I first found this on the NPR Planet Money blog in a post titled The Fed, Translated Into English. They used it to “translate” Fed-speak (e.g. the very dense statements released by the U.S. Federal Reserve) into more common language.

Google New

The one place to find everything new from Google.

Found via Jason Griffey’s post on his American Libraries Perpetual Beta blog. I noted there my frustration that Google New didn’t have an RSS feed to make this list of new things more machine-actionable. I still think that this missing feed functionality is strange, and if I get a chance at some point I’ll try to feed the page through Yahoo! Pipes to make one.

Rising Into the Public Domain: The Copyright Review Management System (CRMS) at the University of Michigan

Interview with John Wilkin, Associate University Librarian for Library Information Technology and Executive Director, HathiTrust and Principal Investigator for CRMS

Interesting insight into how the University of Michigan is tackling the 1923-1963 orphan works problem. (Found via James Grimmelmann)

$1000 bounty offered for JPEG2000 support in Firefox

We’ve waited long enough. Apparently Firefox needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the early 2000′s. I have a financial interest in seeing this implemented, so I’m going to step up.

I’m going to offer a $1000 bounty for native JPEG2000 support in Firefox, on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Comment #155 on this feature request has someone putting up real money to have a developer integrate JPEG2000 into the Firefox browser. The ensuing discussion gives a glimpse into how hard and how easy it could be.

White House Issues IPv6 Directive

Network World reports: Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has issued a directive requiring all U.S. government agencies to upgrade their public-facing Web sites and services by Sept. 30, 2012 to support IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol. Kundra’s memo mandates that agencies use native IPv6 instead of transition mechanisms that translate between IPv6 and the current standard, which is known as IPv4.

You may not have heard this, but we’re running out of IP addresses. An IP address is the thing computers use to find each other on the net (and not to be confused with domain name system (DNS) addresses — the human friendly things that we put on our business cards and advertisements). In the current version of the Internet Protocol (IPv4), we only have about 4 billion addresses and we’ve used up 95% of them. There has been a big press this year to move to the next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6) that will give us 340 billion billion billion billion addresses (or roughly 50 billion billion billion addresses for each person alive in 2012 when the 4 billion addresses of the existing Internet Protocol run out). The entry of the federal government into the push for IPv6 is expected to accelerate adoption of the new standard.

Late, late in the day last Friday, the principle parties in the Google Book Search case submitted a revised settlement agreement agreement to the court. This post takes a look at the changes to the settlement from a library perspective. To keep this manageable, I’m not including discussion of library-oriented elements that haven’t changed; to read more about that I recommend the ALA/ACRL/ARL paper and/or previous posts on DLTJ. I’m also not including discussion on some aspects of the legal impact of the settlement (the appropriateness of setting policy via class action, the antitrust considerations of Google’s sole license to unclaimed works, etc.); for that I encourage browsing the writings of James Grimmelmann (any posting of his prefaced with “GBS” in the title). I will link off to some of the library-oriented discussion pieces of Grimmelmann and others in this post. If you really want the in-depth view of the settlement and the surrounding discussion, visit The Public Index, a website devoted to chronicling and commenting on aspects of the settlement.

How We Got Here

The Amended Settlement

• Notice begins: Monday, December 14, 2009.
• Opt-out/objection/amicus deadline: Thursday, January 28, 2010 (45 days later).
• DOJ files its response: Thursday, February 4, 2010 (7 days later).
• Plaintiffs move for final approval: Thursday, February 11, 2010 (7 days later).
• Final fairness hearing: Thursday, February 18, 2010 (7 days later).

Described below are the changes that are likely of interest or have some effect on libraries or the library world in general (plus some really odd stuff at the end). In the case where section numbers are listed, they refer to the numbered sections of the amended settlement. Capitalized words/phrases have defined meanings in the settlement agreement or associated documents; if you are really curious, you can look them up there.

It is also important to note what hasn’t changed. The terms of institutional subscriptions in the amended settlement agreement are essentially identical¹ to the terms specified in the original agreement. ² Nor is there a change to the number of terminals granted to a higher education institution. (The number of terminals to public libraries is now more flexible; see below.)

Definition of Book

Also, in §2.2 (“Authorization of Google, Fully Participating Libraries and Cooperating Libraries”) we see the explicit exclusion of microform-format materials from inclusion in what can be scanned from libraries. Previously, microform materials were explicitly included. I wonder if the change might be because the act of microforming a book creates copyright rights for that microformed derivative. The area of rights is already so complicated, the lawyers might have been looking to trim down their troubles.

Definition of Periodical

Definition of “Institutional Consortium” Changed

Number of Public Access Terminals

Privacy

Changes to “Additional Revenue Models”

Disposition of Unclaimed Funds

In the case of the former, after six years and in every year afterwards up to 25% of the unclaimed funds from unclaimed books can be used by the Registry to attempt to locate Rightsholders (§6.3.a.i). After 10 years, the remaining funds from unclaimed books will be given to not-for-profit “entities that advance literacy, freedom of expression, and/or education” in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

Inclusion of Creative Commons Licenses

Tightening Up Timings

Quickies

• Rightsholders can now specify minimum and maximum pricing for the title-by-title consumer purchase option. (§4.2.c.i)
• The Pricing Algorithm is now unilaterally set by Google; it used to be based on common agreement between Google and the Registry. (§4.2.c.ii.2) There is still a way for the Registry to check up on the results of the algorithm. (§4.2.c.ii.3)
• Rightsholders can now renegotiate the 70%/30% revenue split specified in the settlement agreement. (§4.5.iii)
• The secret Right-to-Terminate Agreement (Article 16 of the old agreement) is omitted entirely in the amended agreement.

Small and Odd Stuff

Footnotes

1. with the exception of adding the word “amended” in front of “settlement agreement” and other such editorial modifications.
2. It should be noted, though, in the amended agreement between Google and the University of Michigan there are guidelines for handling disputes in the pricing of institutional subscriptions.
3. Noted by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land in his summary of the conference call.