TechBits

Know More about Video Connectors

I thought it'd be a good idea to take some time and go over all those different video connectors that are out there. Disclaimer: acronyms and tech jargon will be present in this post. However, this is useful information to have when talking to the help desk and/or you plan on adding an extra monitor. Lets dive in:

VGA

This is probably the most prevalent video connector in the library system. It kinda makes sense because VGA has been around since 1987. It is the only video connector used today that still uses an analog signal. Often described simply as the "blue plug", VGA is still a widely-supported interface; but that is changing. Already now new devices are coming to market that are no longer compatible with VGA, and we now have to rely on other video connections. Don't worry, there's plenty of alternatives...

DVI

Similar in design to VGA, DVI ("the white plug") primarily uses a digital signal, but can (sometimes) be backward-compatible with VGA and analog signals. DVI never really saw too much use around the library system. More likely you'll see it on the monitors than you would on the backs of computers. However, if you plan on adding a second monitor we can more easily offer help if the monitor has DVI.

DMS-59

Often confused with DVI, DMS-59 is exclusively used in dual-monitor situations and requires a special intermediary connector to go from this to either 2 VGA or 2 DVI interfaces. These used to be much more popular in the system than they are now, but we still sometimes come across them.

HDMI

This is probably the next most popular video connector since it's on every TV sold over the last decade. HDMI is more commonly found on laptop computers (for use with projectors) than it is desktops, but soon desktops will begin shipping with HDMI as well. Something to know about HDMI, though, is that not only does HDMI transmit video, it also transmits audio. So if you start using HDMI and all-of-a-sudden your sound doesn't work it's probably because your computer is sending the sound over the HDMI cable instead of to your speakers. This is easily fixed, though.

DisplayPort

Easily confused with a USB or HDMI port, it is neither. So don't try plugging them into this port. DisplayPort has been shipping on Dell computers for the last 6 years. We normally haven't been using it in the system until recently because most monitors at the time did not have DisplayPort connectors on the back of them. Any monitor you buy from us now, though, will have DisplayPort.  Most likely, if you call and ask to install a second monitor, we will focus on trying to use this port. As mentioned earlier, we can easily adapt this connector to interface with a DVI monitor. Just like HDMI, DisplayPort will also transmit audio.

Restarting Firefox Trick

When Firefox starts running kind of sluggish, simply restarting it might help.  What if you have a several tabs open?  I stumbled upon this trick from AskVG that is pretty helpful as long as you don't have private browsing enabled.

1. Press SHIFT+F2 and the developers toolbar will open at the bottom of the window 
2. In the toolbar, type restart
3. Press Enter
4. Firefox will restart with all your tabs open

Excel - Remove duplicates

Imagine you have a list that contains duplicates, and you want to delete the duplicates. No need to do this manually --- let's use Excel's "Remove duplicates" feature!

Click on the image to see it full-size

Duplicate Craigs!

Note: Another option to get rid of the duplicates is to filter for unique values. Filtering temporarily hides duplicate values, where removing duplicate values permanently deletes the duplicate values. See this Microsoft help page for more information about both options.

Office365 HTML Format

I noticed the other day that I couldn’t insert a link in a message while replying to an email in Office365? I found that frustrating; why would someone want to do this to me? This happens when someone sends you a message in the plain text format. If you would like to change this so you can be more like me and add links or make text bold click reply to the message and then select the three dots in the menu bar above the address bar. This will give you more options and one of those options is to switch to HTML. By selecting HTML you are now able to reply to your message and insert a link or make some other changes that you may not have had the ability to do before.

Is this website safe?

Photo credit: CrimsonSoul

With all the nasty things floating around the Internet these days, this is a question that we should ask ourselves whenever we're on the Internet.  This is even more important if we are going to a website and downloading something.  Nowadays nasty stuff can hide in the ads on websites, Word documents (like "Locky" ransomware), and PDF files.

So you need to be very careful about the websites you visit, but how can you know if a website is safe or not?  I had this question asked of me recently and I did some research to answer this question.  I found a web page entitled "How to Tell If A Website Is Dangerous" that goes over this topic very well.  It gives you numerous links to some good sites that can check a site to see if it has been blacklisted, if it has malicious content and what the reputation of the site is (for more about this see Greg's TechBits article).  I also found that Google has a site for this as well and it is called Google Transparency Report.  So with this information you can now make good choices as to the websites that you visit.

Browsing with confidence

image © 2006 Tinou Bao, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

Scams! Phishing! Adware! Malware! There's a lot of garbage out there, and its purveyors are continually becoming more sophisticated in creating illusions, trying to get us to "click on the wrong thing".

How can we tell if what we seem to see is what we're actually looking at? Is there a magic wand to dispel the illusions?

A good dose of skepticism and some healthy critical thinking can guide us, but there are also some cool tools that can help us out here.  One of them is the Web of Trust (WOT) browser extension. The WOT tool uses crowd-sourced user experience feedback to assign an overall rating of trustworthiness to a website. Separately, it can assign a rating of child-friendliness.

I cannot summarize WOT's appearance and functionality better than they do on their own website (https://www.mywot.com/), so I won't try except to say that it's free, it's fast, it works with all major browsers, and it's "always on" whether you're browsing or searching.

Crowd-sourced information isn't terribly precise; sometimes it's even completely wrong. But in many contexts it tends to be a pretty decent estimator. In the case of website trust, WOT provides a very convenient signpost, indicating whether you should plow ahead or stop and think twice about what you're seeing.

Google Carboard what?

Google what? I was recently looking at the LITA Blog and saw a post about Google Cardboard and thought Google what? Is this real? According to the Google Play Apps page, Google Cardboard let's you "Experience virtual reality on your phone..."

Virtual reality? That sounds cool. How do I get it? The Google Cardboard page tells you that you you need to get a viewer (pretty cheap) for your smartphone and get some apps (some are free). 

But what can this do for libraries? Luckily for us, someone at LITA has already thought up some awesome library programming ideas. You can read all about it here.

Embed from Getty Images

 

Books, Books & More Books!

This is the title of a workshop that I've presented a few times around the system. I recently updated it for a workshop with the Verona Public Library staff - thanks for having me out! There are a couple of new resources that I want to share with you.

First is Becky Spratford's blog, RA for All. SCLS, along with several other systems, recently held the first in a three-part webinar series focusing on Readers Advisory (RA). You can find the recording for the first one, RA for All, here. I first heard Becky when she presented as part of a Public Library Association webinar last fall and was impressed by her vast book and RA knowledge - and her enthusiasm for sharing that knowledge. You can find her slides and links here. The recording is only available to PLA members. I'm really looking forward to her upcoming sessions on April 5 (Demystifying Genre) and May 19 (RA: Bridging the Physical & Virtual Divide). I've been following her blog for a couple of months and am learning lots from her content.

Second is Madison Public Library's New Releases list called Sweet Anticipation - isn't that an awesome title? It'll be announced monthly on MADreads and the PDF includes links to LINKcat (when available). It's also good to highlight MADreads. Sweet Anticipation is another reason to follow this excellent blog created by our colleagues at Madison Public Library. 

In case you're looking for more book-related TechBits posts, I wrote about Edelweiss back in January of 2013 and Book Podcasts in June of 2015.

My slides from the presentation can be found here. Please note that the slides will continue to change as I keep adding new resources.

Old viruses never die

The Internet Archive has long been known to librarians as a place to look for websites that have disappeared.  As time has gone on, they've continued to add to the archive from things like old radio programs to ebooks.

Now they've added The Malware Museum where you can go and look at some of the viruses from the 1980's and 90's.  Don't worry, the actual harmful part of the virus has been removed but they left the visual portions of the virus which runs in an emulator in your browser window. 

If looking at old viruses is a little too geeky for you, the Malware Museum is just a part of their larger software collection.   From ET to VisiCalc, they even have the games that came with Windows 3.1.  Like the viruses, these also play in an emulator in your browser window.  (My advice, skip ET and play SkiFree instead.)

Flipster support for patrons & library staff

EBSCO offers support options for Flipster digital magazines, by clicking the Help link on the Flipster website:

• Support documentation
• Phone support
• Email contact form

Since these options are available on the same screens that all users see, they are reachable by library staff and patrons alike—though the contact form does helpfully advise, "The librarian or administrator at your institution can best handle your inquiry."