Blog Posts by Subject: Computers

An e-mail account is good for more than keeping in touch with friends and family! It’s your passport to the internet. Many online services require an e-mail address to join.

In February, I released the first prototype of the Android App, Libretto, a multimodal e-book platform designed to allow readers to compare different versions of a musical as it develops over time, and to listen to the music associated with the text. I hope to release an update soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to take a minute to walk through the code (which is available at GitHub) for those interested in working with the code.

During the course of several conversations I’ve had with the kids in my Teen Advisory Group over the last year, they told me that they use Tumblr more often than they use Twitter or Facebook. More importantly, they told me that Tumblr was one of their favorite ways to get book recommendations. And that’s what set the wheels in motion.

Every year it's the same thing. "Buy my super-duper awesome/hallowed/glorious razzle-dazzle technology coated in gold-flecked app sauce because we're the best and the rest stink!" Nice sales pitch? Eh. Overwhelming? Yep. Confusing for some? Oh yeah. It can leave you feeling like this:

And it only gets more frenzied during the holiday shopping season as everyone from Apple to LG trots out their blank glass slabs and requests, nay DEMANDS we glue our eyeballs to a screen the size of a comic book. Hopefully this guide will take some of the mystery out of your 

Are you shopping for Christmas on a budget? Santa's Bag - Christmas Gift List app will help you to stay organized and on budget for Christmas. This app by Clay Pot Software, LLC is amazing. You can add recipients manually or add them by importing your contacts from you device or Facebook. The budget portion is great because you can set an overall budget for what you want to spend and as you get a gift for each person it will automatically update the amount you have left in your budget to spend on gifts. You can even set a budget for how much you want to spend on each person on the 

Are you looking for an app that does more than just track your steps? The new easy to navigate Moves app by ProtoGeo just might be the app for you. We know we move our bodies everyday, but how many of us actually count that towards our exercise? This app allows you to calculate all the movement you have done for the day. Whether you are walking to the store, walking your dog, riding your bike or going for a run, you can have a complete look at your activity. This app allows you to get rid of using multiple apps to keep track of your separate activities. It also keeps track of the 

So, Apple just came out with their new operating system, iOS7. However, if you downloaded iOS7 and took a look at the calendar app, you might be missing the agenda-style list view. If you're anything like me, that agenda-style list feature was your life! Now the only way to see it is by clicking the search button. Even then, it still isn't doing that much for you since you can't create a new event from that view.

This is where Agenda Calendar 4 by Savvy Apps, LLC comes in. This calendar app provides you with the agenda-style list view and more. You can see a 

So you want to put your pics in a collage, but the daunting task of selecting which pictures fit correctly or which collage format will work, can exhaust anyone.

Have no fear, Photoshake! by MotionOne uses the most simple functions of selecting the photos and the shaking your phone to make it easy for you. You can then shake to see various different collage setups until you find one that you like. This is perfect for family photos, pics from a museum trip or even fashion photos. Other features of the app will allow you to edit, share and even add 

Over a century ago, The New York Public Library was founded with a basic purpose: to provide free access to information, literature, and cultural resources for the enjoyment and enrichment of all New Yorkers.

In the late 19th century, this meant accumulating vast collections spanning all subjects and languages, erecting beautiful buildings to store these books, and hiring brilliant, dedicated librarians to serve them to the public. But what would it look like if we founded The New York Public Library today?

Look around you and you’ll notice that 

Are we teaching New York's teens tools for a life of crime?! Not exactly. Hackasaurus is a website that makes it easy for people to manipulate our favorite webpages while we learn about the ins and outs of HTML. A group of six teens met on a Tuesday afternoon to try out this new program and add their personal touch to the internet.

Using Hackasaurus couldn't be easier. You just download their xray goggles to your bookmark bar and activate them whenever 

Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) presents Computer Classes for Older Adults at the Senior Planet Exploration Center at 127 West 25th Street.

Classes are free of charge and all those 60 and over are welcome to sign up.

Classes run for five weeks and meet every Tuesday and Thursday.

February 26th – March 28th 1:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m.

To sign up for classes, please stop in or call 646-590-0615.

Job Searching in 

In this season of gift giving, the New York Public Library has just added a wonderful new resource — lynda.com — for New Yorkers who need the top of the line in online software training. NYPL's business library, SIBL, has entered into a year long pilot to provide free access to the continuously expanding library of 1,500 online training videos.

As soon as your holiday reveling has wound down, head to SIBL and plunk yourself down at one of the nine dedicated lynda.com workstations or at any of the other 

Washington Square Park, Manhattan, iPad drawing ©2012 Fotis Flevotomos on Vimeo.

On October 25, 2012, we posted "Drawing on the iPad," a brief introduction to digital drawing for people with or without vision loss. The present video is an example of the playback feature of the Brushes app.

But in reality it's a lot more than that. 

The room of the Art and Architecture Collection, NYPL, iPad drawing © 2012 Fotis FlevotomosAs a visiting artist at the NYPL, I felt the need from the very beginning of my stay in New York City to explore the library visually by making drawings of it on my iPad. The library’s landmark building at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street caught my attention immediately. In the room of the Art and Architecture Collection, the reddish light coming from the reflections of the floor, the wood and the books was one of my 

Below are the four image subjects mentioned by Chris Raschka in his Caldecott acceptance speech, with comparative details for each subject as they relate to Google image search and the Picture Collection. These details include the number of images available through Google and the Picture Collection and a detailed description of the results.

When I first started the Leary Processing Internship in June, I had what is probably the most common impression of Timothy Leary. I had obviously heard about him before, but honestly, all I knew about him was that he was famous for his line "turn on, tune in, drop out." To me, he was simply the LSD guru of the 1960s. Not having grown up in his heyday, I only knew what was best and most widely known about him.

Fast forward two months, and here I sit at my desk at the New York Public 

When you check out an ebook from the library, you get to keep it for the full loan period (7, 14 or 21 days) before the file is no longer accessible to you.

Which means you will never get an overdue fee!

But there may be times when you want to return a book early once you finish it, decide you don't like it, or want to make room to check out more books — and that way the next person in line for it will have access that much sooner. Think of it as being a good digital neighbor.

What you need to do to return depends on the device you are using and 

It's now easier to download and request holds on EPUB, PDF, Kindle and e-audio, music and video (a.k.a. OverDrive) while in the library catalog, BiblioCommons. You no longer have to sign in to a separate site with your barcode.

Your electronic holds and checked out items will appear alongside physical books and materials you have out, so you can better prioritize your must-read list!

Here's an overview of the changes.

Here you can see an ebook and a print book appearing together in search results. Choose "Check availability," "Request 

If you've been using computers for a while, you've probably purchased quite a few devices for storing your work. My family's first computer (a Timex Sinclair 1000 purchased for about $40 in 1984 from our neighborhood grocery store) saved files to an ordinary audio cassette by transferring data over the same sort of cord you might use to connect your iPod to your car stereo. Since then I've used floppy disks, zip disks, CD-ROMS, DVD-ROMs, and memory sticks, and with each change I migrated most of my important files to