Use HelloMovies.com to Find Films Online

HelloMovies is a website that enables users to discover and interact with films. The site is used by movie fans ranging from the casual movie watcher looking for a comedy to watch with friends to the movie fanatic searching for the most obscure Italian giallo horror. HelloMovies is based in Palo Alto, CA and was founded in 2007 by "a group of students who watched too many movies in college."

Use the site to browse for movies be genres, tastes, and other categories. Once found, see where you can get it online. You can also get the information that matters to you including aggregated ratings, trailers, synopses and other facts and opinions from the Movie Genome Project.

HelloMovies also has a social/interactive component. Sign up for a free account, and then you may catalog the films you've watched, track the movies you want to watch, and see what people you care about are watching.

Bing Updates

Microsoft's new search engine — Bing — has delivered a slight improvement in search share in its first month. From Reuters:

Bing, launched on June 3 but available to some users a few days earlier, took 8.23 percent of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81 percent for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21 percent in April, said Internet data firm StatCounter.

Google lost share slightly, dipping to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent before Bing. Yahoo Inc, the perennial No. 2 in the market, rose to 11.04 percent from 10.99 percent.

Also, Bing has recently started including Twitter posts (aka "tweets") in its search results. According to PC World the capability is limited. For now, Microsoft is indexing a "few thousand people, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets," wrote Sean Suchter, general manager of Microsoft's Silicon Valley Search Technology Center, on a company blog.

Cybercrime spreads on Facebook

Facebook is the online place to be. Heck, even the Library has a Facebook page. But where the people go, so do the criminals. From Reuters:

Cybercrime, which costs U.S. companies and individuals billions of dollars a year, is spreading fast on Facebook because such scams target and exploit those naive to the dark side of social networking, security experts say.

While News Corp's MySpace was the most-popular hangout for cyber criminals two years ago, experts say hackers are now entrenched on Facebook, whose membership has soared from 120 million in December to more than 200 million today.

Scammers break into accounts posing as friends of users, sending spam that directs them to websites that steal personal information and spread viruses. Hackers tend to take control of infected PCs for identity theft, spamming and other mischief.

So watch yourself out there. To that end, check out this very helpful article from AllFacebook.com: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

Your Library At Risk! Take Action Now!

Governor Strickland has proposed a last minute change to the State Budget: he proposes to cut funding for Ohio's Libraries by an additional $100 million dollars a year for the next two years.

The proposed cuts would cost Washington-Centerville Library almost $1.3 million over the next two years – a cut of more than 20% in total revenue. We have already absorbed drops in state funding while working hard to avoid reducing services for our patrons. We are fortunate to have a local operating levy to augment state funding but, if the Governor’s proposal is approved, we will have to consider reductions in service, materials and possibly even hours and staffing.

We have only 3-4 days to influence this proposed cut to library funding! Tell everyone you know to contact your legislators now! Call the Governor's office at 614-466-3555. Attend a Red Rally on the front lawn at the Centerville Library on Thursday afternoon at 4 pm.

Check out our new Inside Story blog for more information.

Library Card Gives Access to ConsumerReports.org

ConsumerReports.org is the largest paid subscription-based website in the world with 3.3 million paying subscribers and is one of the most trusted resources for information and advice on consumer products.

And now you can access it for FREE with your WCPL library card. Just go to our Alphabetical Listing of All Databases, click "Home Access" under Consumer Reports, enter your library card information, and you're in! (Tip: You'll also find Consumer Reports listed on our How-to & Testing and Magazines & Newspapers pages.)

ConsumerReports.org provides ratings and reviews, recommendations, and buying advice across several franchises. Each product includes an overview, a ratings report card and reviews and recommendations. Additional information includes brand reliability and user reviews plus news, blogs, forums and video content. The website breaks down topics further allowing you to explore the product reviews, ratings, news and comparisons:

• The Cars section provides prospective car buyers with reviews of new and used vehiclestested at Consumer Reports Auto Test Center, plus information on reliability, safety, GPS navigators, driving green, the most and least expensive cars to own, and more.
  
  
• The Appliances and Home & Garden sections features reviews of stoves, sinks, countertops and other kitchen products; tractors and lawn mowers, power tools, paints and stains, mattresses, home lead test kits, and more.
  
  
• The Electronics section covers HD and plasma televisions, cell phones and phone service providers, digital cameras, computers and Internet, DVD and MP3 players, and more.
  
  
• The Babies and Kids section provides information on child safety, cribs, strollers, car seats, children’s health, and more.
  
  
• The Money section offers information on credit cards, retirement planning, protecting your nest egg in a weak economy, investments, travel, insurance, real estate, taxes, and more.
  
  
• The Food section provides information on beverages, food shopping, dining out, diet, nutrition, and food safety.
  
  
• The Health section covers diet and fitness, prescriptions and drugs, hospitals, insurance, and more.

The information is updated frequently, provides reliable data, unbiased information and more
than 1000 ratings, reviews, product comparisons and video clips.

ConsumerReports.org is just one of more than 50 premium subscription databases provided FREE to Library cardholders. Find the database that best suits your needs here:

www.wclibrary.info/databases/

Microsoft Unveils Bing Travel

Bing, Microsoft's new "decision engine" now does travel. From the press release:

Microsoft Corp. has announced consumer availability of a new search destination for travelers – Bing Travel – which will help consumers make smart travel decisions through a variety of innovative tools and features. Bing Travel is part of Bing, Microsoft’s new Decision Engine and consumer brand announced on May 28, designed to help people overcome search overload and make faster, more informed decisions when searching online. Bing Travel combines many of the airfare and hotel tools from Microsoft’s 2008 acquisition of Farecast with rich news and editorial content from MSN Travel. Bing Travel is available for travelers today at www.bing.com/travel.

According to a recent survey by Bing Travel, 52 percent of potential travelers search three or more sites before booking their airfare. Forty-two percent of travelers spend between one and four weeks weighing their travel options, and 17 percent spend more than one month. Bing Travel aims to dramatically reduce the amount of time consumers spend searching for travel information by presenting comprehensive results in one place, and to help consumers make more informed decisions with tools such as Price Predictor and Rate Indicator.

I tried a few searches for airfares from Dayton to Seattle in July and August. And while Bing did show me a lot of different travel options, for some of the dates I was able to find cheaper fares using Expedia. Doing this additional search, though, was easily done from Bing because right there on the side of the results page is a quick "compare prices" group of links to other sites such as Expedia, CheapTickets, and Priceline. One click and your search is repeated on the site of your choice - no re-filling out search forms. That's pretty handy.

My first search results did not trigger the "Price Predictor" feature (Apparently, Seattle is not a popular destination when flying out of Dayton.) So I retried with flights to Tampa, Las Vegas, and Baltimore. The Price Predictor shows me graphically the lowest fares to these destinations by departure date. Now THAT is a pretty cool search tool.

Rediscover Classics in the Online Library of Liberty

The Online Library of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund, is where electronic versions of classic books about individual liberty are stored for free, easy access. These texts go back some 4,000 years and cover the disciplines of economics, history, law, literature, philosophy, political theory, religion, war and peace. They are in a variety of formats—facsimile PDFs so scholars can view the original text, HTML for ease of searching and attractive layout, and text-based PDF eBooks for personal use. The Library also contains bibliographic information about the books as well as other "metadata" about the authors and editors.

Use the Find Author/Title to search the library catalog for key names and words from titles. Use the Advanced Search to do a full-text search of the books in the library collection. See the User Guide to the Library for more information.

Some of the gems you can find among the more than 1,100 titles in this collection include: The Writings of Thomas Paine, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, The Colloquies of Erasmus, The Politics of Aristotle, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Ethics of Confucius, and The Works of Voltaire.