The information literacy brown bag to be hosted by Skillman Library on October 6 leads off this week's ITS Coffee Break. A look at tech news beyond Lafayette's campus finds science fiction author Cory Doctorw trying out some alternative methods of publishing fiction, lessons for those afraid of cascading style sheets, news about Sony's new Reader product for viewing digital books, and a list of higher education podcast feeds. Finally, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley look at ITS' upcoming workshop schedule, which includes “Acrobat I: Creating PDF Documents” and a host of training sessions for staff and administrators receiving new Lafayette computers.

Getting the Podcast

There are several ways to get the podcast:

• Download the MP3 directly
• Subscribe to the Soapbox podcast rss feed using an aggregator (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
• Subscribe to the Soapbox feed via iTunes

Show Notes

ITS News

• Discussion on information literacy led by information literacy grant recipients Paul Barclay (history) and Jim Dearworth (biology)
  • Location: Gendebien Room, Skillman Library
  • Date: Friday, October 6, 12 noon. Lunch provided.
• Tweaks to the ITS web site

Tech News

• Cory Doctorow: Alternative Publishing
  • Short story "0wnz0red" released as 4-part podcast
    • http://craphound.com/?p=1682
  • Episodic, RSS-based version of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Tow
    • http://www.surfarama.com/index.php?p=242
• A List Apart: 12 Lessons For Those Afraid of CSS and Standards
  • A rundown of the problems — and their solutions — for folks switching to CSS layouts from table-based ones. Talks about what compromises you'll need to make, what layout concepts (like float, clear, width, height) you'll need to get your brain around and the right way to deal with nav links (as unordered lists, not as a bunch of stacked DIV tags).
    • http://www.alistapart.com/articles/12lessonsCSSandstandards
• Engadget: Sony Reader PRS-500 hands-on + Connect Reader screenshots
  • Sony's getting ready to release it's Reader product, which tries to may reading digital texts as easy on the eyes as reading a paper book. Engadget has lots of picks.
    • http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/26/sony-reader-prs-500-hands-on- connect-reader-screenshots/
• Higher Education Podcast Feeds
  • http://directory.edufeeds.com/index.php?c=2

Help

• Workshops
  • Monday, October 2, 2006 – PowerPoint I: Introduction to PowerPoint
  • Thursday, October 5, 2006 – Acrobat I: Creating PDF Documents
  • Rollout training
• Workshop Schedule:
  • http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~its/pages/calendar/

Comments

• Send us comments and suggestioins at itsblog@lafayette.edu.