Business & management:
• Ernst and Young LLP have produced a report on the privacy and security risks involved in telecommuting.
• Every year the construction and demolition industries dispose of tonnes of waste, much of it recyclable. “Deconstruction” takes buildings apart piece by piece to allow for better reuse or recycling.
• There are differences between Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 – giving people Web 2.0 tools and hoping that there will be good adoption inside an organisation probably won’t work – the value of the tools needs to be sold. Getting the right social tools for Enterprise 2.0 is important and there are 4 components that will dictate how well they work in an organisation.
Education
• In November, there will be a 5-day free online conference: “Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations 2008”. For information about how to attend and take part, check the conference wiki and blog.
• The argument about digital textbooks goes on – now a report by a student group in the US, says that the digital editions of textbooks don’t have the features that students want.
Environment & sustainability:
• The US, Australia and Iceland have formed the International Partnership for Geothermal Technology, to “aggressively foster and promote cutting edge geothermal technologies to promote energy security and address global climate change”.
• London’s mayor has launched its Climate Change Adaptation Strategy proposing the greening of the city to help deal with increased risk of floods, droughts and heat waves.
• This year’s Global Corruption Report is the first to assess how corruption affects the water sector worldwide.
• NIWA has developed a new web tool called Coastal Explorer to provide information about NZ’s shoreline and beaches, such as geology, topography, tides, sediment, etc.
• The Dept of Internal Affairs launched the discussion document “Building sustainable communities: designing a place-based approach to sustainable urban development in New Zealand”.
Health & wellbeing:
• Recent research by the Internet Watch Foundation has shown that paedophiles using the Internet to view images, are rarely, “just looking”.
• The World Health Organisation’s report: “Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health” has raised the issue that inequities in health are killing people and resulting in lower life expectancies.
• Massey University researchers have discovered that not only do children who live on farms have fewer incidences of asthma, allergies and eczema, but that pre-natal exposure also helps raise the protection.
•A trial using a virtual reality treadmill to help people walk again after illnesses such as stroke, “tricks” the brain into walking with better balance and more distance, improving recovery.
Law & Government:
• A US article “Improving technology utilization in electronic government around the world, 2008” shows that countries vary greatly in e-government and there has been a strong rise in the number of governments offering services fully available online. However, only 14% offer the ability to personalize government websites, and only 3% offer PDA access.
• “Should planners start playing computer games? Arguments from Simcity and
Second Life” is a free article from the journal “Planning theory and practice”. (This is a journal available via the Digital Library, but embargoed by the publisher for 1 year. Publishers often make occasional articles freely available on their websites as “tempters”.)
• Ongoing research into the Gender Equality Duty in the UK, has shown that in terms of gender and planning many people - usually women - are being left at a disadvantage because the layout of their local community takes no account of the different ways in which women use public space compared with men.
People, culture & diversity:
• While libraries in the US are thriving in the digital age, many libraries face cut backs in budget, reduced hours or closure.
• The International journal of heritage studies is a journal for scholars and practitioners from many disciplines with a common involvement in the heritage. Although the journal is available to council staff on the Libraries Digital Library databases in full text, it is embargoed by the publisher for 1 year. For that reason, LOGIS has purchased a print subscription to the journal that will be starting this year. If you are interested in being on the distribution list for the journal, please let the LOGIS Librarian know.
• The UK Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published a viewpoint report on museums: “Can museums be a potent force in social and urban regeneration?”
• Computer scientists at the University of Washington are working on a way to make it possible for the deaf to use sign language via cell phones.
• UNESCO has announced that Melbourne is the 12th member of the Creative Cities Network, founded in 2004.
Science, technology & transport:
• Israel is backing an ambitious programme to change the way vehicles are powered, and will be a “guinea-pig” country to test the system’s ability to make the country completely independent of oil to run vehicles.
• The California Senate has approved an urban sprawl bill that ties billions of dollars of state and federal transportation funding to compliance with efforts to reduce sprawl, and by extension, commutes.
• The president of the British Cartographic Society is concerned that maps provided online such as those from Google and Multimap are leaving out the rich geography and history of Britain.
• A German power station is the first coal-fired plant in the world ready to capture and store its own CO2 emissions.
• Google has launched a beta version of an open source web browser called Chrome, to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox.
• Land Transport New Zealand’s “Pedestrian planning and design guide” outlines a process for deciding on the type of provision that should be made for pedestrians and provides design advice and standards. • Stephen Downes has written his take on 10 future trends on or a
Thursday, 4 September 2008
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