The excitement of the beginning of a new school year was tempered today by the theft of a student's laptop from the reserve room. For those new to the LRC, the reserve room is the small room down the hallway next to the Circulation desk.

We always remind people that thieves target libraries, especially during busy periods like the start of classes or exam prep time. These people aren't dumb, and they look just like you or me.  They know exactly when to strike when given the opportunity.  So, please don't give them the opportunity.  Always keep your valuables with you.  If you leave a laptop, be sure it is locked up securely.  We loan cables and locks from the Circ desk just for this purpose.

We hope everyone heeds this warning and it will never happen again.  We can hope, can't we?

The Chron's Wired Campus talks about a growing number of professors who are experimenting with Facebook, Twitter, and other social-networking tools for their courses, but some students react in horror to an invitation to join a professor's personal network.  Some professors have coined the term "creepy treehouse" to describe tech innovations by faculty that make their students' skin crawl.  Check out the discussion here.  For a definition of the term and concept of "creepy treehouse," see Jared Stein's blog Flexknowlogy.

Interesting article in the Chron's Wired Campus today: TextMeTV, where some students sit on a couch and read text messages being sent in live from viewers, and posted on a box in the corner of the screen. Texters are encouraged to debate topics of the day, other times they offer free iPods or other prizes for answering trivia.

One blogger recently called the show “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” noting there seems to be a lack of substance. Ahem.

But one of its producers argues that it represents a revolutionary new format. “I think some people are just afraid of it — that this new concept is going to do something big, and they don’t want it to,” she says. “I say, Out with the old, in the with the new.”  Judge for yourself.  There is another, similar program called SubText featuring students from the University of Texas at Austin that focuses on dating.

Check out the Casemaker social network to

●connect with other students ●find career opportunities ●use best practice tools

CasemakerX is a free service to provide a network for law students and legal professionals that creates an information portal for self-promotion, education, mentoring and future opportunities in law. It acts like LinkedIn and other business related networks, where you can upload your resume and get connected with like-minded lawyers and law students.

At least that is what Cuil claims.  According to Cuil, it searches more pages on the Web than anyone else— "three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft."

Here's how: "Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private."

Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. Give it a test drive today!

Josh Fischman at the Chron’s Wired newsbrief relays some campus fixes for computer energy hogs.

Computer processors suck in huge amounts of electricity and give off a lot of heat. As Fischman writes, “What is an energy-conscious (and budget-conscious) CIO to do?”

The California State University-Monterey Bay has some ideas. On their education and technology roundtable, Ready2Net, which is both Webcast and broadcast on TV, they tackle computing, energy and the environment.

Casey Green, founder of the Campus Computing project, moderates a panel that includes CIOs from Washington State, San Diego State, Bryant Universities, as well as executives and specialists in high-tech energy conservation from Pacific Gas and Electric and Cisco Systems.

Another place to find useful ideas is The Chronicle’s latest Tech Therapy podcast, “How Green Is Your IT?” Tune in, turn on, and drop your big carbon footprint.—Josh Fischman

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