How to Get Rid of Things

Getridofthings.com is a do-it-yourself guide dedicated to helping you prevent, eliminate or remove common annoyances from your life. The site offers advice about stuff like pest control, physical health problems, mental health problems, housekeeping, personal hygiene, computer repair, stain removal, and much more. All of this served up with a healthy dose of scathing sarcasm and self-deprecating humor by a couple of poor college students who've "been around the block." On the left of the site you will find a list of drop down menus (just click on one) with articles under each heading.

The articles are a mixed lot - some excellent, some mediocre. Something I would like to see on all of the articles is a list of References/Works Cited and perhaps a list of authoritative links for further research. That said, most of the ones I read were good, basic introductions to common problems with sound advice for dealing with them. For example, the advice in the "Physical Health," Mental Health," and even the "Personal Hygiene" sections always stress that the information they are providing is by no means a substitute for seeing a physician or other medical professional. But you savvy readers already know this, right?

In addition to the articles, the site also has active discussion forums where you can comment on some of the articles, ask for some new advice, or offer some of your own.

Text Us Your Questions

You probably know that you can get help from a reference librarian in-person at the reference desk. And you may be aware that you can call (433-8091) or email (cvref@wcpl.lib.oh.us) us for help, too. You may even know that you can ask us questions via instant message (IM). But did you know that you can ask us questions via text message from your cell phone? Here's how:

• Using your cell phone, choose to send a message to 265-010
• Type: askwclibrary [your question] (without brackets)
• Example: askwclibrary when did ohio become a state?

Standard text messaging rates of your mobile phone plan apply. For more details on all the various ways you can get reference assistance, please see our Ask a Librarian page.

Copyright Answers at Your Fingertips

The American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy has online copyright resources available to help you determine if copyright law protects a work first published in the U.S.

Digital Copyright Slider
http://librarycopyright.net/digitalslider
Just set the arrow at the correct date and read the information displayed in the windows. Mouse over asterisks [*] for clarifying information.

Fair Use Evaluator
http://librarycopyright.net/fairuse
This interactive tool was designed to help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code. It will also provide you with a time-stamped, PDF document for your records, which could prove valuable, should you ever be asked by a copyright holder to provide your fair use evaluation and the data you used to support it.

Important Note: These tools do not provide legal advice. Only a court of law can definitively rule on whether a use is fair or unfair.

Search Engine Updates

Yahoo! today launched a brand new homepage. The redesign features new, more flexible features that allow users lots of options for customization, including the ability to pull from a wide range of third-party services (like Facebook and Twitter).

Yahoo! and Microsoft?

Speaking of Yahoo!, there's been a lot of new buzz recently about an ad and search deal with Microsoft. We've heard this before, but Bing's recent success in gaining search market share may give Yahoo! additional incentive for a partnership.

Google

Google Images this month added a feature that allows you to filter by usage rights. This feature (found on the Advanced Image Search page) allows you to restrict your Image Search results to images that have been tagged with licenses like Creative Commons, making it easier to discover images from across the web that you can share, use and even modify. Below is a screenshot.


Get the details on using the new feature here.

Three New Twitter Tools To Try

Twitter Counter - twittercounter.com

Twitter Counter is a relatively new Twitter app that allows Social Networkers and Bloggers to communicate with each other and keep track of their Twitter Followers. Users can embed a TwitterCounter widget on their blogs or websites simply by copying an HTML code. Clicking the widget will send a viewer to Twitter Counter’s page of your Twitter page with a statistical review of last week visits. It provides a quick real time review of Twitter followers. Here is Twitter Counter's stats page for washcentlibrary.

Tweet Scan - tweetscan.com

Tweet Scan searches Twitter, identi.ca and other Laconica-based sites with more being added all the time. You can search for public messages and user profiles with results available via email, RSS, and JSON. Also, Tweet Scan just recently launched Historical Twitter Search, which gives registered users the ability to search for tweets as far back as November 2007 in their 222 million message database.

BingTweets - bingtweets.com

BingTweets combines Twitter trends with Bing search results, enabling you to see deeper, real-time information about the hottest topics on Twitter. You can also search for anything in the BingTweets search box (at the top right of every page) and see Bing search results alongside the most recent related tweets.

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.