So before, we all used to visit the library and borrow a book. Contrary to popular belief, I have actually done this in the past (or was it all just a crazy dream?). The library service had bought the book with the intention of lending it to us. It worked well.

Now, we have e-books and readers too. We download our books from a retailer like Amazon (or free source, in the case of books in the public domain) and store them on our Kindles, Sonys and whatever so we can read them.

What about libraries lending out e-books? Does that happen in the UK? Could it even work as a process, or does an e-book just get ‘licensed’  for single-person usage? What I’m getting at is… is it even legal for a library to buy an e-book and lend it to somebody?

I just read something on the web, where an American librarian was complaining about how a scheme to do this had been implemented in the States. Amazon seems to be the provider of an e-book lending service which works in conjunction with the reader’s library. The librarian was saying she disagreed with the fact that the user details which the library service used to be responsible for and guard are now shared with a commercial company (as well as details of their reading habits) as the process now uses the retailer instead of the public service.

OK, I’ll admin I haven’t used a library (or even read a book, come to that)  for years. I need re-educating. Do you use the local library? Do they lend e-books?

It’s time, I decided. Remember that new Fakenham website I was telling you about? The new one that’s a central point of info for all things Fakenham. I’ve switched the switch. Pulled the lever that makes it available. Dropped a coin in the virtual meter. You can have a look now!

Let me know what you think. I’m after suggestions for the content and I’m hoping you’ll let  me know if you find any incorrect information or if things go all pear-shaped while you’re surfing it.

There are a few bits that don’t work yet, such as the news items from the Town Council and Kick Start Fakenham websites (they’re not launched yet). There are some sparsely-populated sections too, like the Local Link Directory (do you run a non-commercial Fakenham area website? Get your site linked now!). On the whole though, it’s just about there – albeit a work in progress. Automatic links to Facebook and Twitter, the works!

Have a ‘butcher’s hook’ and tell me how you get on

I attended a Kick Start Fakenham meeting last night – the first one I’ve been to for ages. The meetings are much more formal than they used to be, with a definite agenda and structure to them. Although the informal nature of earlier meetings was friendly and comfortable, I think it has improved with this change – they covered a lot of issues in an hour and a half!

There’s a fair bit going on at Kick Start. Carnival plans, fundraising ideas, festivals, commemorative areas being planned for the community and a lot more besides. They’re actively representing themselves on other town agencies too – the Area Partnership, Town Council and Chamber of Trade will all have Kick Start representatives from now on. It’s all coming together nicely.

Hopefully, I’ll be helping them to get a website up and running soon – they’ll then be branching out from their Facebook page so that information about what they’re doing for the town is more widely available. That’s why I was there last night.

Online information: That’s another area which will hopefully become more ‘joined up’ in Fakenham in the near future too. Watch this space!

If you’re a Facebook user, you may have noticed that new posts on my blog haven’t been making their expected appearance on my FB wall. It’s because a WordPress plugin called Wordbook had died. It just decided to stop working for no apparent reason.

I’ve now installed a different plugin which should do the same job, plus a little more. Wordbooker is its name and I’ll have a play with that one now. If you’re reading this on FB, it actually works!!!

This blog was first started at the beginning of October 2009, coming up to a year ago. I thought it would provide me with a way to promote the town with a more personal touch, as well as being a vehicle for my interest in WordPress. You may remember that it evolved from the site at FakenhamWeb.co.uk which has now been ‘retired’ after running since 1999.

I looked at my webstats today and was genuinely surprised at the figures I saw (I haven’t been keeping track of the stats as it isn’t a business site). I didn’t realise it was quite as popular as the numbers suggest…

It started off with 258 visitors in its first month and that has been increasing steadily. During August 2010, it had 772 unique visitors, resulting in an amazing average of 80 visits a day!

The stats throw up some weird and wonderful search phrases being used to find the site. I wonder who it was who used Google to search for “how do i meet men from swanton morley barracks” and surely the person looking for “free wine samples” was getting a bit desperate!

However, despite the blog’s apparent popularity, the story is still the same as I found on the old website… NOBODY WANTS TO CONTRIBUTE! Apart from one post where people got involved and discussed the town at great length, the comments are very few and far between.  Are you shy?

The Advertising Standards Agency have upheld complaints about the BT ad that says it’s, “rolling out up to 20 meg speeds” to give “consistently faster broadband“. The ASA stated that “it had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim and concluded that the advert was likely to mislead“.

The problem I had with that advert – the one where Adam and Jane are talking over the phone about viewing houses and the estate agent’s connection is slower than Jane’s –  is slightly more obvious…

The estate agent showing Adam the houses online is using his laptop inside a property being viewed. Surely it wouldn’t be using the property owner’s broadband connection, would it? So it’s not comparing like-for-like, is it?

Schoolboy error!

..

I kind of suspected this all along. Disadvantaged kids don’t reap the benefits of using free laptops and net connections because they’re poorly supervised, so waste their time playing silly games and typing ‘LOL’ to each other…

Giving poor kids computers, internet makes them stupider • The Register 

I read The Register every day. Their sense of humour means they can use silly and incongruous language when reporting IT stories which could otherwise sound pompous. A current favourite of mine on their site is, “HP embiggens ProLiant x64 server line“.  Such a great word, ‘embiggens’. It should be a real one.

BBC News – Google admits wi-fi data collection blunder.

The Google Street View cars have been snooping into open WiFi connections as they drove round taking photos. Google said during a review that it found it had “been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks”.

What I think they mean is that after a German Data Protection Agency requested a data audit and found them out, they decided to come clean, but to say they didn’t mean to do it.

As if.

All the Fakenham Blog posts are now Tweeted automagically as well as being placed onto Facebook. There’s no escaping!

If you’re looking for me on Twitter, I’m ‘FakenhamBlog’. If you’re not looking for me, there’s hope for you yet!

This is a really handy bit of software. I found Dropbox when I was looking for an easy way to share files with my work colleagues at House Advertiser. I needed a solution which was easy to use, as like most companies, our directors have varying levels of PC expertise. Dropbox fits the bill admirably.

The idea is that you get some storage space on an internet server (it’s run by Amazon) where you can store your files and some software to install which creates a special folder on your computer. Any files dropped into this folder get automatically uploaded to your internet storage space. It’s a really simple backup solution for important files – however, it’s even more useful than this when you use more than one computer….

Installing the software on a second internet-connected machine allows you to have the SAME Dropbox on them both. Files dropped into one box magically appear in the other. I find it’s a great way to have my work files available on my home computer – especially as I made my ‘My Documents’ folder be my Dropbox. Now, whenever I create and save, or edit a document at work, I know that the same file is also saved to my home PC (and also backed up on the internet).

There are other ways Dropbox can work – by having individual accounts on each computer and sharing designated folders within  one of the Dropboxes for example (that’s what we do for House Advertiser). Its quite versatile. The best thing is that you can use the system free, paying for extra storage space only when you need it.

At H-A, we all mainly use PCs, but the system works with Linux and Mac too so I may install it on my Linux box at work when I have some time to play.

Niftiest bit of software I’ve found in ages!