Posts Tagged ‘Technology’

March 11th, 2010 By Josh Kitlas Posted in Health, Technology

Biking directions added to Google Maps

So cool!! From the Google Blog:

Whenever I meet someone who finds out that I work on the directions team for Google Maps, the first question I’m asked is often “So when’s Google Maps going to add biking directions?” We’re big biking fans too, so we’ve been itching to give you a concrete answer. I don’t want to keep the good news a secret any longer, so the answer is: right now!

Today we’ve added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S. My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public support for biking directions that’s been steadily coming in, but we knew that when we added the feature, we wanted to do it right: we wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Let’s say you want to bike to work, or maybe you want to drive less and spend more time outdoors. Biking directions can help you find a convenient and efficient route that makes use of dedicated bike trails or lanes and avoids hills whenever possible. To find biking directions, select “Bicycling” from the drop-down menu when you do a directions search: + Continue Reading

March 9th, 2010 By Josh Kitlas Posted in Technology

Apple Portables: Calibrating your computer’s battery for best performance

So my laptop battery was on the fritz. My computer was shutting down without warning and then a ‘Service Battery’ line item appeared in my battery drop-down menu. I went to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store and was advised that it was indeed on the fritz and had only been charged approximately 41 times out of an estimated 250 possible charges. They gave me a new battery ($129 retail) for free (sweet). I was in and out of there in about 15 minutes which was also pretty sweet. I also got some knowledge about the proper use/care for a battery which is a little more detailed than I’d like. Here’s how to keep you MacBook Pro battery happy. Oh, they provide a link to a Calendar event that updates automatically and advises you when to charge your notebook.

From the Apple Knowledgebase: + Continue Reading

March 7th, 2010 By Josh Kitlas Posted in Library

THIS BOOK IS OVERDUE How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (NYTimes Book Review)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/books/review/Kennedy-t.html

March 4th, 2010 By Josh Kitlas Posted in Technology

More QR Codes…

All my contact information.

March 4th, 2010 By Josh Kitlas Posted in Technology

Top 20 Semantic Search Tools

From – HLWIKI Canada – A wiki for health librarians

Semantic search tools seek to improve the accuracy of web searching by considering context (or meaning) of terms as they occur in desirable web documents. Instead of Google’s PageRank to predict relevancy, semantic search tools use the science of meaning in language to produce relevant results for users. The goal on semantic search is to deliver information in context rather than have to sort through lists of loosely related keyword results. Some authors regard semantic search tools as a set of techniques to retrieve knowledge from richly structured data sources which enable technologies to articulate domain knowledge at a sophisticated level. Semantic tools on the web are likely to rely on metadata to describe documents and bring them together in information retrieval. This language will help to describe and retrieve documents much like what we encounter in medical databases. Metadata is defined as ‘data about data’ and the major standard in the field is Dublin Core. For more background, see the Semantic Media wiki.

FULL ARTICLE HERE + Continue Reading