Plan Your Bike Rides With MapMyRide.com

It was a long time coming, but finally spring has sprung here in Troy. Leaves are on the trees, baseball is being played in local parks, and people are back outside riding their bikes.

If you are interested in planning new bike rides this year, you may want to check out MapMyRide.com. By plotting points on a Google Map, this site will calculate the mileage of your bike ride. You can save routes, and search for rides other users have created. For example, here is the route with round-trip mileage from Metro Beach in Harrison Township to the Grosse Pointe War Memorial in Grosse Pointe Farms:


The site also has many other features. A training log keeps statistics of your rides, including time, distance, speed, and calories burned. Discussion forums allow you to connect with other cyclists. It also integrates with popular social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and features apps for the iPhone.

If you are a cyclist, it is definitely worth a look. If you don't ride, you still may want to check out these sites that are built on the same website platform for walking, running, or hiking.

Celebrate Small Business Week with Electronic Resources from TPL

May 18 marked the beginning of National Small Business Week. If you currently have a small business, or are considering starting one, here are several electronic resources available from the Troy Public Library that may be of use to you.

• Small Business Resource Center
  Easily searchable by business topic or type of business, this database from Gale provides a wealth of information to entrepreneurs. It includes several how-to articles that describe how to buy, sell, and finance your business. You can find articles from a large selection of business journals. It also includes many examples of sample business plans.


• Gale Virtual Reference Library
  Through Gale's Virtual Reference Library, TPL has access to all 14 volumes of Business Plans Handbook. Each volume in this series features actual business plans from small businesses throughout North America.


• Legal Forms
  This database compiles legal forms for a variety of topics, including many for operating a small business. It also includes an attorney directory and a dictionary of legal definitions.

All of these resources are available to patrons in the Library. The can also be accessed at home if you have a valid Troy Library card by going to our website and clicking on the "Information On-demand" icon.

Troy Library Now on Facebook

Thanks to Technology Librarian Lauren Henderson, the Library now has a Facebook page. Drop by for a visit and become a fan. Since we are just starting, there is not much there, yet, so let us know what you would like to see. Write it on our wall.

Here at The Tech Desk, we have been working hard beefing up the Library's Internet presence. As I mentioned in a post about a technology unconference I attended, you can now follow us on Twitter (@tpltechnology). Soon you'll be able to find us on Flickr, too.

And we are getting ready to roll out our brand new website -- complete with gadgets and gizmos and all other cool stuff. Stay tuned.

Great Michigan Read 2009-2010 Announced

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen was selected for the second Great Michigan Read. The announcement was made by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm who proclaimed May 19 as “The Great Michigan Read Day.” The announcement was made at the Cascade Meijer store and broadcast over the Internet. Meijer and the National Endowment for the Humanities are leading sponsors of the The Great Michigan Read.

With a statewide focus on a single book, the Michigan Humanities Council’s Great Michigan Read encourages Michiganians to learn more about their state, their history, and their society. The Council’s free supporting programming will focus on three themes: immigration stories, cultural understanding, and contemporary history.

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner is a memoir chronicling author Bich Minh Nguyen’s migration from Vietnam in 1975 and her coming of age in Grand Rapids in the 1980s. Along the way, she struggles to construct her own cultural identity from a menagerie of uniquely American influences.

The book was selected by a group of nearly 50 librarians, teachers, students, professors, authors and others from all over the state. More than 75 Michigan-related titles were considered for the program. Representatives from communities across the state were invited to participate in the selection process.

[via Grand Rapids Public Library blog]

Internet Explore 8 : Features and Review

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) was released on March 19 to little fanfare, but the update to the most popular browser in the world has a lot of great new features that markedly improve its speed and functionality.

Here are some of my favorite new features in IE8.

Colorful Tabs

This great new feature gives the typically boring and static tabs found in Internet Explorer 7 new life. The tab colors represent linked websites that are opened within each other. For example, if you were to visit our homepage and right click on one of the links and open it in a new tab, the tabs would be the same color. You can see examples of the colorful tabs in the above screenshot (click on the picture for a larger view).

Improved "New Tab" Page:

IE8 has tried to improve its new tab page to provide users with a more intuitive and usable interface. Some of the features included on the "New Tab" page are:

- The ability to reopen closed tabs
- The option to open an "InPrivate" mode window (discussed later in the post)
- The option to use an accelerator (discussed later in the post)

Check out a screenshot of the improved "New Tab" below:

InPrivate Mode:

Microsoft has gone a long ways to try and improve IE8's privacy options and InPrivate mode is one of its biggest improvements. By clicking on Tools, then InPrivate Browsing (or hitting Ctrl+Shift+P) you will be entered into the private browsing mode. While InPrivate, you can go to any website without it being saved in your history or in any way on your computer. This is great for logging into bank accounts and doing other online transactions.

Accelerators:

Adding accelerators to IE8 is a mixed bag of annoyance and functionality. Basically, accelerators try to speed up your Internet surfing by providing you with tools to blog, look up maps, and search Wikipedia among other things. The annoyance factor comes into play when you are highlighting text, and the user is presented with a big blue arrow to give them quick access to the accelerators. This arrow may not bug some, but I found that it covered up a lot of text that I was often reading or deciding whether or not to copy. It quickly reminded me of the quick access toolbar in Office 2007. But if you use the accelerators, this tool could prove useful.

General Feel and Speed:

This is the best improvement to IE8, in that the browser feels snappier, and generally much quicker. While I still don't think that its up to par with Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or even Opera; the speeds and feel are drastically better then the sluggish IE7.

Final Conclusion:

IE8 is a great upgrade if you're still using IE7 or the especially terrible IE6. While I still prefer Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome for my browsing, IE8 has certainly raised my eyebrows and surprised me a bit. Maybe with IE9, Microsoft will take over as the king in speed and functionality in the browser wars.

Where Can I Get It?

Visit this page, click on the orange "Download Now" button, and follow the instructions.

Google Calendar Gets "Tasks" Integration

One of the most used tools in Google is the Tasks feature that was previously only enabled in Gmail and iGoogle. (See this post which talked about some of the great features of this service.)

Good news: Google has just begun branching out its Tasks feature to some of its other services, beginning with Google Calendar. The integration between Tasks and Google Calendar is simple and straight-forward. If you add a task in Gmail, it goes over to Google Calendar. And if you associate a due date with the task, then the task will not only show up in your Tasks list, but also in your Google Calendar!

To see a screenshot of how this integration works, look below.

As you can see, the tasks are now shown in the calendar as well as the list. As the tasks are completed, check marks and strike-throughs are used.

This clean integration among Google products shows the potential that Google Tasks has in the future and why it continues to be my to-do manager of choice.

If you would like to use Google Tasks, follow the instructions outlined here. If you're interested in the mobile version of Google Tasks check out this post.

Browse Magazines With Google Book Search

Curious about what Popular Science was covering in the 1940s? Are you doing popular music research and are having trouble tracking down issues of Billboard from the 1960s? A great place to look for this information is Google Book Search.

In December 2008, Google Book Search started to include full-scans of magazines. You can search for stories across all magazines, or can browse through selected issues. Some magazines include nearly the entire print run. For example, Billboard has issues from 1942-2008. Some like Men's Health, only include several years worth of issues.

You can access magazines in Google Book Search by going here and clicking on an issue listed under the magazine heading. To search within magazines, click Advanced Book Search, and change the content option to Magazines.

For magazines available in Google Book Search, check out this list from the blog Seeing the Picture.

Kindle 2: To Buy or Not to Buy -- That Is The Question.

Earlier this year, Amazon released the Kindle 2 and according to the website TechCrunch, 300,000 have already been sold. If you are thinking about purchasing a Kindle 2 but haven't quite made up your mind, you may want to read the article, 10 Reasons to Buy a Kindle 2 ... and 10 Reasons Not To. This article contains some useful and practical information that may help you decide.

For additional information about the Kindle 2, check out Honeymoon Over for Kindle 2? , EBook Readers Compared; Selection Grows , Kindle 2 Reviewed , and More Kindle 2 Reviews