Phil Bradley's weblog

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11

Software, voice recognition, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 %u2013 Nuance. I was at a meeting some time ago and somebody mention the use of dictating software. I'd originally tried Dragon NaturallySpeaking solutions a few years ago I think it was  version 3 and I have to say that it was very tedious. I had to spend about an hour repeating words that were displaced me on the screen, and even then the dictation wasn't exactly accurate. However time has moved on, and I thought I would give it another go. I decided to choose the home edition which I got from Amazon and it was reasonably priced.

The software came complete with a headset and a brief book of instructions, and when I say brief I mean no more than the side of an a full sheet of paper. Installation was really quick and easy and I had to repeat a speech from John F Kennedy for about 5 min while the software got used to my voice. That was all the training I had to give it and to and to say I am impressed is something of an understatement! I have had to do very little further training and the corrections that I have had to make have been minimal. The software sometimes gets confused between the word "to" and the figure 2. I wrote the document today which was about 3000 words long and hardly had to make any changes at all.

It does take a little bit of getting used to, particularly because you need to remember to adding words such as comma and fullstop. It's also a little unusual to just think in a stream of consciousness and having appearing on the screen in front of you. The speed with which this works is quite phenomenal, since I don't have to pause for it, it just catches up with me. As long as I can think of what it is I want to say I can just say it, and don't need to keep pausing. The only times I pause is to look at the screen in amazement as my words appear one after another.

Moreover, although I haven't yet tried this out myself I can also use the software to open and close documents to search the Web and to start and close different programs. To give you an indication as to how well the software works, I have written this entirely by using the dictation software and the only alterations that I have made have been when I have coughed! I don't think we can blame the software when it can't understand what I want to say in that particular instance.

If you're thinking about trying out dictation software, or you tried it before and wondered if it's any use now I can thoroughly recommend at least this particular package. It's fast effective accurate and it just does exactly what is it is supposed to do.

Google Instant is making us (or Google?) money!? - State of Search

State of Search has produced a really interesting article based on some research by a company called Marin software. Apparently the number of times advertisers showed up in Google group by 9% and clicks on the adverts grew by 5%. Interestingly Google has not reacted to this. They have claimed in the past that Instant wouldn't affect pay per click but it now does look as though it helps Google to get more profit. This is of course not a bad thing because that's what Google is in business for; to make profit but is interesting to see that the emphasis that they have pushed forward is making life easier for the searcher when in actual fact there is, as always with Google, an underlying 'how can we make more money' aspect to everything that they do.

The iPad Dracula

I saw a tweet from @libwithattitude about the iPad Dracula, and it looked interesting, so took a peep at the website. Go take a quick peek and run back. It's astonishing, so my £2.99 was very quickly spent. I have to say that it's absolutely tremendous, and I'm really enjoying it. My one gripe is that it's abridged, which is annoying. However, once you get over that, the way in which the iPad has been used to emphasis the text is fantastic. I'm reading about Harker's coach trip, and I hear the sounds of the horses hooves and the wheels going over cobbles. I see that he has a letter, and I can flick the envelope onto the screen, open it, and read the handwritten letter. There's a description of Renfield and his flies, and you hear them, and see their shadows buzzing over the page:

It's absolutely fascinating. Some people won't like it, as it includes sound, music, images and so on, which may be regarded as detracting from the reading process, but others will thoroughly enjoy the added richness these bring to the tale. I can really see how this process could be used to great effect when working with students.

It's marvellous - if you have an iPad, buy this app! It's wonderful.

Phil and Jo versus the Facebook Monkeys

Prepare yourself, faithful reader, for a chilling tale. A tale of derring do! (Though I'm not entirely sure what my 'derring' is, or what it do.) A tale of blood curdling terror, of monsterous surprise, of man and woman fighting against the odds, backs to the wall, against the onslaught of ... Yeah, ok, you've got me bang to rights, I'm hacked off about Facebook. Again.

You'll know that Facebook has now given us groups, rather than just lists. Groups are funky little things that we can create, and we can do interesting things with them, like have chats, and share documents and stuff. Really neat and nifty. OK, we can do all of that via blogs, wikis, Google groups, mailing lists and whatever, but that's not the point. The point is that we can now do it safe in the comfort zone of Facebook, which is there to look after us, to provide us with sensible options, good code, a secure environment. Or not, as the case may be.

So, I created my 'Librarians' group. It wasn't easy - there's a menu option on the left, and it's being rolled out now. I suppose I could have checked to see if there were any manuals, FAQs and stuff, but hey - it's there, and by golly, I'm going to use it. It asked me to invite members. I have no clue as to the Facebook names my friends use, so I was forced to typing in letter A, to see what Facebook suggested. I then added in people, and went to B and so on. Through the entire alphabet. I then created my group of about 30 librarians. Facebook then told me something had gone wrong. No sh!t Sherlock, it's Facebook - that's par for the course. However, my group was created! Hurrah! It's alive master! It's alive!

Except it wasn't, not really. It added in 9 of my librarian friends, not the 30 I was expecting. It also added in another of my friends, who is not a librarian, and who probably has no wish to be associated with them. Bill - I'm very, very sorry. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but the Facebook monkeys who write the code do not appear to have given me an option to remove you. I can ADD people, but I can't take them off. You're going to have to do that. What fun.

So, I have my group, and off I go, doing other Facebooky type things. (Why yes, that did include playing Bejewelled for a couple of minutes). Then 'ping!', someone was in a chat with me. Not a person to person chat, but a 'Librarian group' chat. It was my friend Jo, who I had added to the group. She'd been told about it by Facebook. Cool. She could see who else I had added. What's more - and this is the wonderful brilliant thing - she could add some herself. Anyone she felt like. Seriously. Me? Oh, I'm just the administrator, nothing to do with me, oh no. So we've now got this group, where anyone in the group apparently is able to add anyone else. I can't delete them.

I thought 'Well, at least I can delete the group.' So I looked for the option, and it wasn't there. If I click on the option to leave the group this is what I get:

"Are you sure you want to give up your administrator privileges and leave this group? The administrator position will be offered to other people who are currently in the group. This will also prevent members from re-adding you."

I'm sorry? I looked (textually) at Jo, and she looked at me. I thought she summed it up in her usual clear, concise and eloquent manner. 'WTF?'. I couldn't have put it better myself. This is a madder situation that when Jack McMad won the Maddest Man of Madville competition last summer.

Jo and I then explored the documents option. I wrote a document. Jo edited it. Unfortunately she edited in a bunch of code. She didn't want to, didn't expect to and didn't mean to, but she did. Still, easy to go back in and edit it out, eh? Oh no. Facebook code monkeys don't like you doing that. She couldn't, having tried 3 times. It took me two goes, and I wrote the damn document in the first place!

We looked at each other, Jo and I. We nodded, wordlessly, and quietly put the group down, walked around it once or twice, then tiptoed quietly away. Maybe we got it all wrong. Maybe it's a Rolls Royce of code, and a work of genius. But I couldn't work it out by looking at it, and neither could Jo. So maybe it's just pants, and the Facebook code monkeys are perched in their cubicles cackling happily, as their work is done for another week. Mad.

Edit to add: OK, not quite as bad, but still tortuous and convoluted. I've played around with some more vict^H^H^H^H friends, and in the main group window I can unsubscribe people, photographs or postings, though it's not obvious where you can actually do that. They've split the commands into different places. Also if someone else adds a person to the group there's a message to say that they're added, and I subscribe them, but they're already subscribed. And it looks as though I can only unsubscribe them by subscribing them in the first place. Nuts!

People Search for the Social Web

Qwerly. Not bad. Type in a Twitter user name and see links to their accounts in other places, such as Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Livejournal, Blogger, Delicious, Friendfeed and Google profiles. I tried it with my name and it was 100% accurate.

CILIP AGM 2011 thoughts

It seems to me that if I'm free with my criticism I should be as equally free to suggest improvements. I've been giving this some thought, and in no particular order this is a bunch of things that I'd like to see.

An end to bunker mentality. I would like to see the AGM take place in a nice airy room, hopefully with natural lighting. It needs to be up rather than down I think, if for no other reason that psychological. Easy to say of course, but there must be places that will fit that bill.

Free wi-fi. This is an absolute must, if we're to be good communicators, tweets, live blogging and so on are important. Also, the option of including tweets in the proceedings is important.

Livestreaming. A colleague was researching this for another meeting and she had a quote for 100 live streams for a 2 hour period for approximately £200. This was outside the London area, it's true, but it should be possible. In fact, I'd say it's a necessity. Sure, it still limits the number of people who can actively sit and participate, but 100 more people is a lot better than nothing.

Record it. Video it, put it on the web.

I've talked about 'it', and I'd like to see a different format. I remember a Members Day we had a while ago at which I did an Internet Q&A session, which was enjoyable. I like the idea of something like a marketplace or freshers fair. I'd like to see stalls from different groups displaying what they do. I'd like to have the opportunity of buying CILIP merchandise and books. Or even the ability to sit and play with an iPad or Android phone or similar if I am not familiar with them.

Other thoughts would be to beef up the talking section. I'd love to listen to a broad range of people that I otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity to hear. Could we invite sympathetic and interested/ing journalists, academics, or even (Lord help us) celebrities? I doubt Stephen Fry would turn up, but if we don't ask, we don't get. Besides - why *shouldn't* we aim high? Authors, journalists and so on should be in a crush to come and talk to us - I'd love to hear from Martha Lane Fox for example.

There needs to be an AGM, of course there does. And other than get people to wear silly hats and throw streamers, it's something to grit our teeth and get through. Rather than have it at the end of the day, try and have it in the middle. If it's held so that it overlaps a lunchtime, people may livestream in and watch while eating their sandwiches at their desks. I'd like to involve groups, and if people have comments, would it not be possible to feed those into the AGM via the groups?

I'd like to see more information about and from the people getting Honorary awards. Slideshows or video of what they have been up to. Have the opportunity to chat to them as well, that would be good. Simply reading out some stuff, yanking them off the stage and off again is wasting a good opportunity, so let's have them really involved. Loved the CILIP medal idea, as I've said - we should do that again, but I'd also like to see some way we can have awards for 'Honorary Librarians'. Sure, it's a bit hokey, but think of the publicity we could get if we made Anthony Head (Giles from Buffy) or the aforementioned Mr Fry Honorary Librarians.

I know some of these things have been done before, with or without success, but unless we innovate, we're going to get no-where. If you've got any other ideas (and I'll bet you have), share them in the comments, please.

Untabbed search engine

This is a quick little resource if you don't want to keep opening tabs or windows to view results. Simply run your Google search on Untabbed and when you get the results, click on them and Untabbed will load the result in the window for you. Rather a cramped screen, but enough to get you the idea I think.

Internet Librarian International 2010

I only managed to get to ILI2010 for Day Two, as I was at CILIP the day before for the AGM. It was quite useful that I did attend on the Friday though, cos that was the day that I had my session and it would have been a bit embarrassing if I'd missed it. I was talking about how I find stuff, and the stuff that I'd found recently. The presentation is available at Slideshare, but if you can't wait, it's below.

What Phil has found

View more presentations from Phil Bradley.

People seemed to enjoy it, which was nice. I settled down to listen to Karen Blakeman's presentation next, which was great. I really enjoy listening to Karen present; we have the same areas of interest, and although we seldom check with each other, our presentations always seem to compliment each other.

| Get your Presentation Pack

I also enjoyed presentations by Karen Wallace (Sheffield Libraries) on their use of social media, and Nancy Dowd (New Jersey State Library) on mobile marketing, which was an entirely new area to me. The day finished with a great presentation by Thomas Brevik (Royal Norwegian Naval Academy) and Ake Nygren (Stockholm Public Libraries) wrapping up and summarising.

I love ILI. It's a great conference - just the right size, full of interesting presentations, great people and it just feels friendly, inclusive and welcoming.

CILIP AGM Report (and minor rant)

As I had the time available to me, and I'm reasonably local, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the CILIP AGM on October 14th. This is the first AGM that I've attended, so I had no idea what to expect, and arrived with a very open mind. Total attendance was in the mid 80s. Err - that's people numbers, not age. (Actually, thinking about it...) I recognised very few, which isn't a surprise, but when I attend events these days (such as ILI2010 which I'll write about in another post) I kind of expect that I will know people, just that I haven't met them face to face before. Didn't have that feeling with the AGM. It felt unfriendly and cliquey; my impression, someone else will tell you that it was great to meet up with old friends etc, and that's fine - both opinions are equally valid. The actual meeting was split into two sections; the interesting people led section and the AGM, and it was held in a SOAS basement. I can't easily tweet from basements. Some people can, but my phone provider didn't like it. (Is this the rant Phil? No.. but it's part of it, stick with the report.)

Annie kicked the afternoon off with a brief introduction, including a remembrance for Bob, which was nice. Biddy then did a 35 minute presentation. The following is my jotted notes, which are brief, so don't rely on them as an accurate reflection of what she said.
We were gathering to celebrate the achievement of our peers, and 'Recognition' was a central theme of her address. Biddy mentioned that there was an ambiguity over the term 'professionalism', and it's not always clear what we mean when we use the term. We don't always have time to stand back and look at who we are and what we do, so she spent some time with the Nolan principles of public life, such as selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. She also spoke to the subject of CILIP governance at work, with tests of public obligation.
She then asked how CILIP measured up to those tests, and looked at training, awards, professional networking, and she made the point that we're natural communicators.
Biddy also looked at how we're working with Defining our professional future, what we're advocating, how we determine our future, asking if we're prepared to fight for our colleagues.
She looked at the information needs of our changing society, referring to the 2010 Manifesto, a pledge to mention libraries at every opportunity, engage with MPs and champions, networking using Web 2.0 and 3.0, and looking at the future of CILIP.

I really enjoyed her presentation - this is the first opportunity I have had to hear her speak, and she made several points that I'll return to shortly. (In the rant? Yes, in the rant.) Mr Keith Wilson took us through some Charterships, Fellowships and Honorary Awards for the deserving. There was a reading of every name of each CILIP member who had died since the last AGM, and for me this was one of the most important and moving parts of the day, also very upsetting, for my personal obvious reason. We also had a really moving presentation of the CILIP Medal to Edward Dudley, which I also enjoyed since I know him slightly via his column and role in the Poly of North London School of Librarianship (when I was there).

We then, with a dragging inevitability got onto the AGM itself. I'm not entirely sure that some people's understanding of an AGM is the same as mine. I suspect that issues such as the conflicting use of terms such as Trustees/Councillors could be dealt with elsewhere - quite frankly I don't give a toss. Unlike one or two people, I'm perfectly happy that Biddy was doing her best to keep it to time, and actually, addressing this remark to the person who brought it up, the membership DO want it over before midnight. The irony of someone complaining while others were slipping out, leaving the meeting close to unquorate was not lost on me. I thought the Hon. Treasurer did a perfect job in keeping the report simple and straightforward, and I'm not interested in the technical stuff, cos it's technical. Given that one person thought 12-8=8 I think she was right to take the line she did. (Is this the rant Phil? Is it? Is it? No, but we're getting dangerously close to it) For me, this part of the day was CILIP at its worst. Dull beyond belief, rampant pedantry (I like pedantry as much as the next person, but there's a time and a place) and an emphasis on entire irrelevancies which I suspect were often used to give people a platform to stand up and remind us all of their existance.

OK, the rant. If you agree that's cool. If you don't, that's cool as well (and don't vote for me in the CILIP VP election, I'll survive). CILIP should be about being inclusive, and as Biddy pointed out, we're natural communicators. Except that the day was a perfect example of exclusion and a lack of communication. If you couldn't get the afternoon off, if you're elderly, infirm or housebound, the message is that you're not wanted. If you're unable to come to London, you're not wanted. For an organisation that's losing 700 members a year this is as close to criminal neglect as it's possible to get.

The reason that I had to write all of this stuff down is partly because I couldn't tweet. It was great that CILIP had a hashtag and really great that Biddy and Annie were emphasising it, but it's not much use in a friggin' basement! In future can we have a meeting in a room that's going to have a good signal for everyone please? Can we also have it organised so that we've got public wifi available for everyone. This is not for OUR benefit, it's for the benefit of everyone who is unable to attend.

Why was the AGM not livestreamed? The reason I was given (which may or may not be correct) was that it was too expensive. No, it's NOT too expensive, I don't care how much it costs, because it's for the membership - y'know, the people that CILIP is all about, the people who keep CILIP running. The message which is being sent out is not 'it's too expensive' it's 'YOU are not worth it'. That is indefensible and disgraceful. This is the reason that CILIP is dying on its feet. As far as I'm concerned, we need to pay what it takes to livestream, but ok, maybe it wasn't possible for some other reason. So what you do then is you video it. You get a video camera (and I KNOW people at CILIP have them because I saw them used for a talk that I gave there recently) and you video the proceedings and you put them up on YouTube the next day.

I looked at the website this morning. There's a section 'CILIP AGM highlights', which links to 2011 membership subs approved, with non-working links to CILIP honours members with awards, and Bob McKee remembered. Following the link takes you to a page with the bare minimum of data, links to the Agenda, Minutes and so on - which have to be downloaded and opened, they're not available directly on the site. Where is the text of Biddy's speech? Where's the listing of people who got awards, with their citations? (As an aside - here's a hint - if you don't know the person being cited, a spoken listing of their achievements is dull. Really, really dull. Put up a presentation at least - pictures of what they've been doing, a video of what they're up to, and run it in the background if needs be.)

Biddy said - rightly in my opinion - that we're natural communicators. It's a shame that CILIP isn't. It's a shame that the CILIP organisers seem to think it's acceptable to limit involvement to people who turn up. She also said - rightly in my opinion - that CILIP needs to embrace Web 2.0 and 3.0. Can someone therefore explain to me why - on the one time in the year when we really REALLY should do, the only way of getting the message out was by tweeting from a basement with a dodgy connection? Can someone further explain to me why a video recording wasn't made of appropriate parts of the proceedings and put onto the website?

IF (and it's a big 'if', made bigger by this posting I shouldn't wonder), IF this isn't sorted out by the time I have to do it as President (assuming I get the job, and it's another big IF) - if the majority of the membership are unable to participate at any level other than directly attending then there's going to be another person who isn't going to be able to attend. And that'll be me.

We MUST put the membership first. In order to value ourselves, in order to be ethical with a concern for inclusion, in order to be professional, and for members to have freedom of speech, and if CILIP wants to provide leadership it has to start with itself and its members. It fails to do this. Over and over again. This is simply unacceptable. How do we measure up to the 9 principles? It's great to give awards, even better if they're put in context and made available in a way that everyone can share in them. It's great if we can network, but that means so, so much more than chatting to someone in a coffee queue. Are we good communicators? Individually yes - as an organisation it sucked. Are we professionally generous? Only if you're in the room. Are we extending our scope regionally or internationally? We're scarcely able to extend our scope outside of a basement in London.

Unacceptable. End of rant.

[Edited to add a link to Biddy's address]

MUNDU Search

Web search, Sound search, Music search, Lyrics search, Video search. Mundu combines results from their own search engines with metasearch results from the major search engines to give you very best of what the web has to offer. On Mundu, you can search for:

Pages and Documents

Sounds from the web

Lyrics, i.e. song texts

Music videos matching lyrics

Miscellaneous videos

It's nice, clear and neat. I tended to search for video, music and lyrics and it found the ones that I input (both well known and unusual) without any problems. I wouldn't use it for a straightforward web based search, but to get a combination response for music and lyrics, with the backup of content from the web, this was very nice indeed.