yikes – I live in a blacklisted country

I don’t think I’ve ever come across this before, but I responded to an email sent to me from a public library in the US and was surprised to receive the following delivery failure message…

SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
host csplspam.xxxxxxxx.lib.ia.us [xxx.xxx.160.30]:
557 Your IP address is from a blacklisted country. Disconnecting.

…I know spam’s a serious problem, but isn’t blocking all email from a whole European country kind of excessive?
:-S

100,000 ideas!

I totally failed to spot that the Library 2.0 Idea Generator has now created over 100,000 ideas!
I’ve no idea what the 100,000th idea actually was, but I hope it was “Build an Idea Generator and sell it to Google for $1,000,000”.
Around about 1% of the ideas were of high enough quality that the viewer added it to the whiteboard. I gave up counting how many of them reference Michael Gorman, but here’s a few that caught my eye…
investigate Michael Gorman and use him to replace all of your librarians
closely scrutinize Michael Gorman and then paint him purple
create Stephen Abram just to annoy Michael Gorman
write a song about Michael Gorman just to confuse Michael Gorman
enhance Michael Gorman for the Millennials
repurpose Michael Gorman and then replace him with a robot
replace Michael Gorman using Firefox
add the Netflix model just to annoy Michael Gorman
…poor Mr Gorman — what did he ever do to you?
I must admit, most of my favourite ideas involve the Library 2.0 World movers and shakers…
vigorously shake Lorcan Dempsey and upload the result to YouTube
invert Lorcan Dempsey and then paint him purple
closely scrutinize Leslie Burger and then visualise her as a tag cloud
digitize Meredith Farkas and observe her from a suitable distance (see here for the result)
write a song about Walt Crawford and publicise it on your plasma screen
fall in love with Stephen Abram and embed him into a portal
impress Michael Stephens and upload the result to YouTube
podcast about your podcasts and then blame Michael Stephens when it doesn’t work
unlock the latent forces within Jenny Levine and then run through your library screaming ”it’s all too much!”
If you’ve got a favourite idea from the whiteboard, or if you’ve actually been inspired by one of the ideas, please let me know!

“Tape Findings”

Those who know me well will know that I’m a fan of good “bad” music — from the awesome “The Shaggs” and the Portsmouth Sinfonia, through to the frankly surreal Swedish Elvis impersonator Eilert Pilarm.  By the way, if you’ve never heard Eilert in action, here’s a taster of what you’ve been missing: Jailhouse Rock (MP3)
Anyway, for the life in me I can’t remember how I came across this gem, but Tape Findings is a site containing recordings from cassette tapes bought in thrift stores and garage sales. From band demos to recorded letters, it’s a treasure trove of the wonderful and the bizarre.
I’m still working my way through the archive, but here’s a few to get you started:

Library 2.0, Schmibrary 2.0

The level of noise about “that label” seems to be getting louder of late, so I propose we simply change the name to…

…which of course means we’ll get a cool new name for it all next year!
(The above is roughly 85.3% tongue-in-cheek, but if the new name takes off then bagsie I get 25% of the t-shirt sales revenue)