(As seen on Library Revolution)
This test will determine what level of education is required to understand your blog. I wish there were some information on how the reading level is determined, though.
My best friend’s English prof sent the link to this website to his class last week.
On “What is Stephen Harper Reading?“, Canadian author Yann Martel (Life of Pi) details his quest to expand Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “stillness”. Every other Monday, Martel mails the PM a book which he has inscribed, along with a letter detailing what he hopes Harper will notice about or take from the book. The selections (there have 16 so far) include novels by Antione de Saint-Exupery, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, and Rainer Maria Rilke.
After Christmas when I’m not so busy, I think I might take up the challenge and check out some of the ones I haven’t read. Martel’s notes are quite interesting, and the whole thing reminds me somehow of Sophie’s World.
Make sure to catch the article in today’s Legal Post on the Canada Law Book/Lexis debacle.
I wish everyone could just get along and make one giant database of everything that’s available. Obviously, that’ll never happen. Still, a law library tech can dream.
At lunchtime, the elevator news informed me that YouTube has just unveiled a Canadian version, youtube.ca.
In response, the Ingram 2.0 column on the Globe & Mail website asks the question, “Do we really need a YouTube Canada?” Ingram says no, that funny is funny, and therefore the localisation of YouTube is pointless and probably just an advertising play.
According to another article from the Globe, “YouTube believes that by creating country-specific sites, users will have an easier time finding the relevant videos they are looking for. ”
YouTube says they won’t be doing IP redirecting to automatically take Canadian visitors to the .ca domain unless they thought it would make for “a better user experience.” To which Rob Hyndman of Toronto (THE Rob Hyndman?) commented: “ It strikes me as a little troubling that Youtube thinks that depriving me of choice could ever result in ‘a better user experience’.”
Touché!
This morning I read about an online survey that Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is sponsoring, on extending the Skytrain Millennium Line out to UBC (um, awesome). Whilst looking for it online, I stumbled across the news that Google Transit is now available for metro Vancouver.
If you live in Vancouver or the Lower Mainland, you will probably find both of items of interest. Your mission for this morning: go take the online survey at Sam Sullivan’s website (you can vote on how far the Millennium line should be extended, whether the line should be above or below ground, among other issues), and then see if Google Transit is any less enraging than TransLink’s own Trip Planner.
