Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

Joyce Neujahr  is speaking on ebook readers potential to be a staple in traditional libraries. She is currently Director of Patron Services at the University of Nebraska and her library has 9 Kindles for check out and has ordered 3 more. Hundreds of libraries are now using kindles as loan devices.  Her library has paid up to $135 for an ebook.   The average cost spent per ebook was $13 over the first 2 years. On an average day all their kindles are checked out with a wait list 2 patrons deep. With two years of use they have not had one break yet.

Pros:

3500 books fit on the average kindle.

saving trees

Accessibility! the new kindle has better accessibility features. (i need to see if authors can still opt out)

IT takes 3 minutes to get a book on kindle versus 5 days to a week for ILL

Most ebook titles cost less the physical books  (about 30% less with some titles being free)

Cons:

We are having a format war. We need a standard open format.

DRM is plaguing  the industry

Not a lot of research books are on Kindle. (this is changing)

Page numbers citing is a pain, page numbers change change with the size.

Questions: how much control do libraries have over the privacy settings on Kindle?

A: None they use the standard Kindle TOS

About Joyce: She has been an elementary school library media specialist, coordinator of the Summer Reading program at her public library, and is regularly asked to participate as a guest instructor of library science classes at the University of Nebraska – Omaha.  She is currently Director of Patron Services at the University of Nebraska – Omaha, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library and an adjunct instructor at Central Community College in the Library & Information Services program.

This was a GREAT talk!

photo by weez42 All Rights Reserved used here under fair use

Hmmm we need a check in at a library on foursquare day!

I will be live blogging the next Session at NWILL It sounds interesting:

E-Book Readers:  Are They the Future of Interlibrary Loan? | Joyce Neujahr

Amazon’s Kindle device lets libraries acquire new titles in just three minutes.  Learn how loaning Kindles can deliver “Instant ILL” and never-before-possible immediate access to bestsellers and new releases. Loaning a new technology offered insights — and raised questions — on areas as diverse as promoting new services, revising borrowing policies, cataloging multi-volume portable books, cost effectiveness, user acceptance, and copyright implications. Both the conceptual view of E-Book reader loans, and practical issues will be discussed.

Joyce Neujahr has been an elementary school library media specialist, coordinator of the Summer Reading program at her public library, and is regularly asked to participate as a guest instructor of library science classes at the University of Nebraska – Omaha.  She is currently Director of Patron Services at the University of Nebraska – Omaha, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library and an adjunct instructor at Central Community College in the Library & Information Services program.  Neujahr received her Master of Library Science degree from the University of Missouri – Columbia.

This is white to play, how do you win?

Gwen and I stopped by Crossroads Mall yesterday looking for some books and we ended up playing a few games of chess on the giant board there. I went 3 wins 0 losses and 1 draw. The most interesting of the games was against another local chess teacher Vincent Marr.  I find that you can learn more from losses and draws then from wins. The above tactic is one I missed from the drawn game. I knew I had missed something at the time… time to work on my own tactics. Taking the time to review your own games is a great way to improve your own chess game. Here is the full game with my comments and a board to step through the game: Rowe v. Marr @ Crossroads Mall 2010.

Here is an article done by Bill Hinsee that is extremely relevant to the current discussion, it reviews a “Nutrition Label” for Privacy: by Patrick Kelly, Joanna Bresee, Lorrie Cranor and Robert Reeder.

Website privacy policies can be complicated and confusing. The lack of a standard in both presentation and terminology makes it difficult for the average consumer to understand a website’s privacy policy, an understanding which is necessary to make an informed choice whether to use a particular website’s services. In A “Nutrition Label” for Privacy, Patrick Kelly, Joanna Bresee, Lorrie Cranor and Robert Reeder present a way to display online privacy policies in a consumer friendly manner in the spirit of the ubiquitous nutrition label.

The authors’ proposed label, the “Privacy Nutrition Label”, uses a grid to display the privacy policy with the rows displaying the types of information collected and the columns showing how the information might be used and to whom the information might be shared. A privacy symbol is displayed in the intersection of each row and column representing the severity of the privacy practice. The label consists of ten rows of information collected with five ways of using the information and two outlets for sharing the information totaling seventy cells, each displaying a privacy symbol. This is a large amount of information to sort through no matter how cleanly organized. Multiply this by every website that you might interact and do business with and it only gets worse. I personally prefer an earlier iteration of the authors’ label, the “Simplified Label”, which displays the privacy policy in a series of Yes/No statements. Although it lacks the detail of the grid and may exaggerate the permissiveness of the policy because of grouping categories together for simplicity, it is easy to understand and quick to read. A possible compromise might be to allow the Yes/No statement to be expanded into a more detailed breakdown if the user feels the policy is too permissive and wants to know more about it.

Privacy Nutrition Label	Simplified Label

The authors’ project is a great start to simplify privacy policies but should be expanded to address two more concerns, the permanency of the information collected and mutability of the privacy policy. The first issue is simply how long the company will store the information collected about you. If I purchase a book from an online seller, how long will the company keep my credit card information? How long will it keep my address and phone number? This can be addressed simply by supplying a column in the “Privacy Nutrition Label” to display the length of time data is kept or a time range in the “Simplified Label” that can be expanded for more detail if desired. The second issue addresses what happens when the company changes its privacy policy. Will the company notify the consumers whose information the company has already collected when it makes a change to the privacy policy? How will the consumers know the policy has changed otherwise? What happens to the information already collected? Will that information now be subject to the new terms? A Big Mac purchased under the “terms” of one nutrition label is not going to be retroactively affected if McDonalds changes the recipe at a later date whereas data residing on Facebook might. The solution to this is a mechanism to show how and when a policy has changed.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has developed TOSBack to address this very issue. TOSBack monitors the privacy policies of various websites and publishes the changes made to those policies. Something like this would be very helpful if incorporated into the privacy label itself to allow the consumer to see a policy change when revisiting a particular website. This of course would not help a consumer who uses a website for a one-time purchase and never returns but it is a start.

A larger problem with the privacy label project in general is with its adoption. A project such as this is only as useful as the size of its implemented base. Moreover, companies must agree on how to implement it. It would defeat the purpose to have different companies presenting their privacy labels differently, such as using different colors or symbols for privacy statuses. Such inconsistencies would only further complicate and confuse the consumer. Maybe this is a case where government regulation would be helpful. A regulatory agency such as the Federal Trade Commission could ensure that the use of such labels were widespread as well as preventing the proliferation of dissimilar privacy labels.

Overall the authors’ project is a noble one and one that I think whose time has come. Consumers deserve to understand the policies surrounding the data collected about them without having to struggle through pages and pages and legalese. The keys to the project’s success are adoption and standardization, without which the project is simply a great idea.

Another great TED talk this time from 12 year old  Adora_Svitak
What adults can learn from kids

PS she even uses my favorite presentation software Prezi

Chess.com has a great feature for teaching chess tactics called a Tactics Trainer.  This is very useful tool for new players and club players.  The following video has my advice for using the tool and ways to improve the tactical trainer. (Note: Chess.com’s free account gives you access to 3 chess problems a day)

Summary of advice:

• Turn off the timer, the timer gives you a huge hint.  In a real game your opponent will not tell you how difficult a tactical win is.
• Limit you time to 3-5 mins per problem: if you can not find the solution do not sweet it.  Move on to the solution. The goal is to learn the patterns and improve calculation over all not to get the right answer every time.  The patterns will sink in subconsciously over time.  To focus on calculating tougher positions get a book like Secrets of Chess Tactics by Mark Dvoretsky and focus on calculation skills.
• Take a min after problems you miss to see why you missed it click the show solution and if need View Analysis & Source link and see why you missed it.

Summary of improvements needed:

• Give me stats! I did 2000 problems tell me which ones I am worse at.  Do I miss x-rays, knight forks, or Queen sacs.  I could learn so much from looking at that history.
• Enable crowd sourcing to add tags to problems like Mate in 1 or Queen Sac so we can sort by type.
• Let me choose a theme and do problems from that theme to get better at that theme

To take chess lessons with me check out my Teaching Chess Page.

This is part two of the MSIM book club, Sarah and I hosted a discussion on Clay Shirk’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. This was a great book for starting conversations. Here are a few highlights:
Q: How do you moderate communities while not discouraging involvement?
A: let the community to respond (ACLU of WA uses this technique)
A: Set rules in advance and filter (this is a lot of work)
A: Allow the community to vote up or down comments

Q: How would you treat an employee that made this video if you managed an electronics store?

I am on the side of promoting them to the PR department, Best Buy fired him then offered him his job back.

Q: How do we find the super-sharers or super-net-workers and get them to contribute to your network?
A: incentives, gold stars to achievements like foursquare’s badges
A: Exclusive access for high performers
A: Learn from game theory, physiology, and sociology

Q: What is the potential of participatory culture when we learn how to maximize peer productions?
A: Defective by Design is a glimpse of where crowd driven activism can go.
A: comments and reader reviews on Yelp is another example of giving online feedback.

I am back at patronizing Cherry Street Cafe again, and happy to be here. Last November I had a bad experience at Cherry street Cafe, after blogging about it the owner contacted me and invited me back.  Over the last few months I have returned for both business meetings and social events and the experiences have been good.  I am happy to add Cherry Street Cafe Back to my recommended list of Seattle Coffee Houses.

This is the first positive experience that I have had with a business that really cared about their image AND was willing to reaching out through social media to make things right.  I applaud Cherry Street Cafe.

The presentation was very practical in nature, Mike is a former Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & rosati attorney and current iPhone game designer spoke today at 4Culture.

Practical Advice from Mike:

• Smaller game developers should consider S-Corp status – S Corps allow for easy transition to C-Corp later and allow you to write off losses on your income taxes.
• LLC is another option but LLC’s are less favored by investors and are tougher to convert to C-Corps
• w/ Contractors & Employees you must assign the works to the corporation or you have legal ambiguity in the rights. (I agree that you need agreements I would favor using a CC license over a blanket assingment )
• Avoid Viral Licenses,  (Note Rowe: I disagree here but I am likely to market the game as OS)1. “the gpl is the most notorious” 2.under the GPL if you add GPL code to an executable the requirements
• MIT or BSD license are great to use because they are attribution only, but you may need to do due diligence.
• MYTH: I can use it, it is fair use it is only a defense to copyright infringement. (I agree here fair use )
• fighting piracy is not productive even if you are legal right, spend your time making new games instead of

The main case on Open Source code is

Q: can you check the validity of OS code?

A: No

My answer: kind of there are projects like Fossology that will help you determine the history of code in projects.

Mike wrote a book The Business of iPhone app Development he is also on Twitter: @hivebrain