Ed Bilodeau

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This weblog had moved: http://www.coolweblog.com/bilodeau/

# Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

NYTimes: College Libraries Set Aside Books in a Digital Age. Actually, the 90,000 books are being relocated to other libraries within the university in question. The space they occupied is being transformed into an information commons, which I generally think is a good idea.

While I understand the need to provide PCs for those students who do not have one of their own, I don't think that the information-commons-as-computer-lab model is where the future is. Think portable PC devices (laptops, PDAs) brought in by students, in an environment studded with collaborative technologies (vlarge displays/projectors, printing, videoconferenceing), everything bathed in wireless. Oh, and lots of tech support staff (who will all be dreaming of the good old days of centralized, locked-down, computer labs).