Friday Recs: Tech Edition

Since I appreciate Megan's link lists at Bookdwarf so much, I thought that I'd do a little variation today.

• The BIG news is the new Ning site we created for you, dear reader/stumbler/subscriber/friend who is trying to up our hit count. Please, join. Ning is free social networking tool, kind of like mini-facebook/myspace, so we can customize a bit more, create groups, have a forum that doesn't get caught in post comments. Plus, every user has a blog they can use. Most importantly, we can all get to know each other. Netroots for readers, and such.

• Firefox 3 is out - and it is awesome. Ok, it looks awesome and I like the "Most Visited" links folder adn the smart location bar. I prefer Safari at hom on the Macs, but at work on the steam-powered PC (ok, it's actually a decent, somewhat-recent Dell) it's Firefox all the way after my unsuccessful two month trial of Safari for Windows. Sadly, it locked when switching between applications far too often.

• David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous has been out for two months-plus and I haven't mentioned it, yet. It's a quick and fun read on data organization and metadata and how many new possibilities are unlocked by allowing folks like us to organize information in an infinite amount of ways. It's a bit of a celebration of algorithms and consumer-provided data; thus, it lauds web sites like Google and the Evil Empire (amazon) for changing how people are able to access information and goods. It also completely ignores the negative effects on physical communities and spaces - like the beautiful bookshop in which I work. That said, Weinberger never pretends to be writing anything other than a business book. So long as you maintain the skepticism of homogeneity that can be a side effect of massively-adopted convergent modes of information organization, this book will help more independently minded folks and businesses to adopt strategies to maintain competitiveness and undermine the status quo.

• And for something completely different and un-technified: we're beginning bike delivery from our shop.It's a way to serve readers who aren't able to get out of the home for whatever reason, to readuce our carbon imprint and, perhaps most importantly, get some excercise and fresh air during the workday.