Last fall, Google released a new collaboration product, Shared Spaces.  This allows you to create customized collaboration work spaces with anyone.  You can create a place to play games, plan a trip, make lists or search Amazon, with people you know.

A project in Quebec has resulted in this book garden, made of 40,000 actual print books, with mushrooms cultivated within.  The Jardin de la Connaissance examines tranformational processes in nature.

Designed by Thilo Folkerts and Rodney Latourelle.  More detail here and here.

This is news that is completely Friday-worthy.

Capogiro is open at Penn!!  It’s in the new construction at 39th and Walnut.

[Photo from Jaime at FWTS]

They have a daily flavor menu online.  They also have sandwiches.  See photos and a full menu scan at Fries With That Shake.

[Thanks Jess!]

Maybe not completely off-topic this time…

• The iPhone has a free whiteboard app, allowing people in close physical proximity to collaboratively create sketches or drawings using their iPhone or iPod Touch.  You can get it from the App Store, or search for “Whiteboard: Collaborative Drawing” from the App Store on your iPhone. [A brief review from ReadWriteWeb]

• Apparently, Feb 9th will be the debut for the Kindle 2. According to the NYTimes Bits Blog, one of the updates might be smaller side buttons to avoid the accidental page turns, which several of you noticed and found annoying.  Here are some leaked photos from BoyGeniusReport. [From Computerworld]

• John Mark Ockerbloom at Penn has posted his ALA MIdwinter notes and slides where he was on a panel discussing the OCLC WorldCat records policy, and a panel on the open ILS at the DLF.

The Onion’s take on Emerging Technologies includes a remote control chocolate fountain, and a super-tough laptop.

Have a good and safe holiday, everyone.

• For those of you for whom search can’t be fast enough, here’s Keyboardr, a search mashup that provides the results of your search from Google, Wikipedia, blogs and images, As You Type!  [from ReadWriteWeb]

• Change.gov, Obama’s transition website, was offering an open forum for asking questions, and then allowing people to vote to prioritize which ones should be answered first.   Apparently, they got an overwhelming response and closed it down at midnight, last night.  You can still, however, see the list of all the questions, and how people voted for them, here.  The tool they used to accomplish this is Google Moderator, which is designed for just such a function.

• Unofficial survey: Is anyone using Twitter for work?  Do you find it useful for communicating with patrons, or with staff?  Tame the Web has a post about using Twitter for internal communication in the library.  Post your thoughts in the comments!

• ChaCha is a free call or text-a-question service for anyone with a mobile phone.  It’s got an ad for mobile marketing on the same page, so I imagine users would end up with some ads too.     [Thanks Noelle]

• Attention Facebook users:  The Koobface virus has hit Facebook, so avoid anything that requires that you download “a new Flash Player” to watch a video.  Here’s some details, more details, and Facebook’s instructions on how to get rid of it. [From Webware]

• 

  O’Reilly has been tracking Facebook demographics for several months, and has posted some interesting charts about Facebook users and demographic statistics.  For those of you who wonder how the user base is evolving, take a quick look.

• This isn’t really for fun, but I’m going to stop edition-ing these Friday posts. Just so you know it’s a conscious decision.

• Kit O’Toole created a nice post covering some favorite Firefox extensions, in case you’re looking for ways to mix some of your internet business (images, iTunes, Twitter, making small URLs, etc.) together.

• Here’s an interesting report (14 page PDF) from the Pew Internet and American Life Project discussing how people get frustrated when their electronic devices (computer, cell phone, etc.) fail or break down. [Thanks Emily]

• Apparently Netflix and TiVo are teaming up, putting the Netflix Watch Instantly feature on the HD-compatible boxes — brilliant!  It’s aimed at new customers (people who have TiVo through Comcast or DirecTV won’t get the benefit, but if you subscribe to TiVo and have a Netflix account, it looks like you’ll be able to start using it soon.

• For those of you who use Google Reader for your RSS feeds, I’ll remind you about the Trends feature.  It’s a good way to see how well you keep up with your feeds, and it’s nicely packaged in fun charts and graphs.  The Reader blog had a nice write-up about some of the things you can do with it.

• Another really useful tool for use with Google Reader is the ReadItLater Firefox extension.  If you use Firefox, this extension allows you to mark things to read later and it keeps them in a tidy list for easy reference.  It adds a small checkbox next to all your feeds and you can quickly browse the titles and pick out the ones you want to read later.  It’s not just limited to Google Reader though, you can use it on any page you find.  Here’s a write-up and video on how it works. [From ReadWriteWeb]

• O’Reilly Radar has an interesting post about the future of eInk as a paper replacement.  As we continue to think about the uses and benefits of ebook readers in libraries, this plays a role — especially if it “catches on” anytime soon.  For a counterpoint, see this post at Locus, thoughtfully linked by one of O’Reilly’s commenters.

• Technorati, a blog search engine, has released their 2008 state of the blogosphere write-up, with demographics, stats and other details on exactly who all these bloggers are, and what they are doing. [Via InfoToday]

• The iPhone apparently has an application to help you avoid speed traps on the highway.  Here’s a commentary and some features. [via ReadWriteWeb]