Entries in "Internet Tools" ( for this category only)

Street View by Google

Google is traveling around with a 360-degree camera to add a street view to its maps. Cleveland made its debut has the first Ohio city to be visually documented by Google.

See the Plain Dealer article for some more highlights.

Go to http://maps.google.com/ and enter a Cleveland address. Hit "street" view and if the streets are highlighted in blue you can get the view as if you are driving by. Just click on the street and enjoy. Arrows direct your travel and your view.

I went with the "full screen" view and the images are very good quality and can be zoomed. Not quite good enough to read a license plate, but they show quite a bit of detail.

Google in All Languages

According to CIO Insight, Google is building their own machine translation algorithms. Google has always offered some form of translation services through third party service, but now the ones for Arabic, Chinese and Russian are in-house creations.

Rexa - Computer Science Literature

Rexa is a digital library and search engine covering the computer science research literature and the people who create it. Rexa aims to facilitate research progress and collaboration by providing efficient browsing, search, associations and analysis among papers, people, organizations, venues and research communities.

• Keyword search on over 7 million papers (mostly in computer science)
• Cross-linked pages for papers, authors, topics and NSF grants
• Browsing by citations, authors, topics, co-authors, cited authors, citing authors; (find who cites you most by clicking "Citing authors" on your home page)
• Web-2.0-style "tagging" to bookmark papers
• Automatically-gathered contact info and photos of author's faces
• Analysis of research topics, their impact, and how they relate

Check out the FAQ for more information.

Descriptions pulled from About Rexa and Rexa FAQ.

Rexa blog also provides more information and highlights additional resources.

IEEE Spectrum - The Firefox Kid

In November of 2006, IEEE Spectrum interviewed Blake Ross, founder of Firefox. The article explores the early years of Ross (if a 20 year old has early years) and looks at his next project: Parakey - a "web operating system that can do everything an OS can do".

Larry Page to Scientists

CNet News.com shares a image of Larry Page, co-founder of Google, speaking to the scientists at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). CNET reported that Page told the scientists to "market them (scientific studies) better and make them readily accessible to the world".

What if Academic Libraries Ceased to Exist?

Lynn Scott Cochrane, Director of Libraries at Denison University, shares several scenarios that demonstrate why "not everything is available free on the web." This is a great read for anyone that thinks the Internet holds all the answers, or if you do not know (or cannot explain) how libraries and the Internet complement each other.

[VIA: EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 1 (January/February 2007): 6–7]

Google Snippets Still Illegal in Belgium

The Library Journal has reported that a Belgian court upheld the earlier ruling that Google "snippets" of Belgian newspapers in Google News violated Belgian copyright laws.

[VIA: Library Journal Academic Newswire, February 15, 2007]

Google and NASA Partnership

Google has signed an agreement with NASA. The Space Agreement Act will put "the most useful of NASA's information on the internet". Detailed 3D images of the Moon and Mars will soon be just a click away for web users.

Read the full article for more on Google Moon and Google Mars.

[VIA: BBC NEWS | Technology | Nasa and Google form cosmic union]

Continue reading "Google and NASA Partnership"

Google Answers Being Shut down

Google has announced the Google Answers will no longer be accepting questions. By the end of the year, new answers will no longer be accepted as well. It appears with the goal of focusing on searching and innovation, this 4+ year old research project has stopped creating new ideas.

Search Mash

Search Mash lets you search the internet in new ways. It is constantly evolving as they come up with ideas and figure out what works and what doesn't. Checkout the features page from time to time to see what has changed, and also to tell them which features are useful to you. They ask that you bear with them when the site is unavailable as they are limiting its use. Also, see the Terms of Service and Privacy statements.

[VIA: Journal of Search-Engines, LISNews, October 4, 2006]

Continue reading "Search Mash"

No Google Snippets in Belgium

Google has lost a court case in Belgium to include "snippets" of newspaper articles in Google News. In the U.S., publishers have been asking Google to index more content in order to push subscriptions and pay-per-view purchases. I guess Google needs to walk a real interesting tight rope.

[VIA: Library Journal - Academic Newswire, September 28, 2006]

Continue reading "No Google Snippets in Belgium"

Craigslist Not For Sale

CNN.com reports that Craigslist is not for sale, even though another social networking website MySpace was just valued at over $15 million.

The founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, is a Case alumnus.

Movable Type Owner Acquires Rojo Networks

September 9, 2006 - Six Apart the company that developed and supports Movable Type, which is Case's blogging platform, has announced they have acquired Rojo Networks. Rojo runs a web-based RSS feed reader. Maybe Case will end up with a recommended feed reader as a companion to the blog system?

See the full Six Apart - Press.

Google Accessible Search

Accessible Search is an early Google Labs product designed to identify and prioritize search results that are more easily usable by blind and visually impaired users. Regular Google search helps you find a set of documents that is most relevant to your tasks. Accessible Search goes one step further by helping you find the most accessible pages in that result set.

(VIA: CNET News.com, July 19, 2006)

Google & ACS Trademark Case

According to CNET News.com, the Google Scholar trademark case ends with the American Chemical Society.

ACS, which was founded in 1876 and claims to be the world's largest scientific society, sued Google in 2004. The suit claimed that the free "Google Scholar" journal-search service unfairly competes with ACS' "SciFinder Scholar," which appears to be more comprehensive but charges a fee.

Google Desktop Gadget Contest

Do you have what it takes to create a great Google Desktop Gadget? Have you been waiting for some motivation to prove it? Well, good news -- the Google Desktop Gadget Contest is here to spur you into brilliant action.

The contest runs until August 14, 2006 and, while supplies last, each developer who submits an approved gadget will receive a limited edition Google Desktop Developer T-shirt and have their gadget shown to millions of Google Desktop users around the world. A panel of judges will also award three prizes based on popularity, visual appeal, use of new features and creativity. We'll award $5,000 to the first place winner, $2,000 for second place, and $1,000 for third place.

E-Mail, IM & Blog Risks - From the Employer Perspective

On July 11, 2006, the American Management Association (AMA) and the ePolicy Institute have released the results of their 2006 Workplace E-Mail, Instant Messaging & Blog Survey.

Here are a few highlights to raise your interest:

• 24% of organizations have had employee e-mail subpoenaed
• 15% of companies have gone to court to battle lawsuits triggered by employee e-mail
• 26% of employers have terminated employees for e-mail misuse
• Nearly 2% have fired workers for offensive blog content

The AMA summary provides many more details, including highlighting some blogging concerns such as copyright, harassment, or security breaches.

Mapping Wireless Networks

MIT's iSPOTS project aims at describing changes in living and working at MIT by mapping the dynamics of the wireless network in real-time. Check out the various graphic representations of wireless usage at MIT. They are hoping this project would lead to analysis tools that other organizations and cities could use.

25 Worst Tech Products

PCWorld.com (May 26, 2006) released its list of 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time. I will not give you the entire list, you can read the article for that, but number one is American Online.

Number 13 was the IBM PCjr, which I had as a kid. As a kid it was great, and I am now having flashbacks of the hours of playing Zork.

(VIA: Stephen's Lighthouse, May 29, 2006)

2007 Multi-conference in Computer Science, Engineering, & Information Technology

The 2007 Multi-conference in computer science, engineering, and information technology will be held in Orlando, FL, USA during July 9-12 2007. The multi-conference is a major professional gathering in the world and it consists of the following 4 important events:

• International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition
• International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems and Web Technologies
• International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking and Communication Systems
• International Conference on Software Engineering Theory and Practice

(VIA: Beyond the Job, June 01, 2006)

Top 100 Technology Products

PC World (July 2006 issue of PC World magazine; Online: May 31, 2006) released its annual 100 Best Products of the Year. The top two were the Intel Core Duo and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core. Others highlights in the top ten included Craigslist.org, iPod Nano, Google Earth, and YouTube.com.

(VIA: TVC Alert Research News, June 1, 2006)

Public Commenting on Organizational Blogs or Websites

I have been participating in a virtual workshop designed by the American Library Association (ALA) to instruct in and establish best practices in utilizing Web 2.0 technologies. ALA Library 2.0 included many components from blogging, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. My personal ALA Library 2.0 blog also includes various details and links.

One part of the virtual workshop included an interview I conducted with some of the Kelvin Smith Library Freedman Center staff.

My group just completed our final project. We explored the best practices in allowing public comments on formal organizational blogs or websites.

Here is an alternative link to the presention.

UPDATE: The ALA blogs mentioned above have since been taken down. Any entries that I was involved in were moved to this blog and the links fixed.

Inventor of Firefox to Speak in Cleveland

Blake Ross, the inventor of Firefox, will be speaking at the Cleveland City Club on June 14th. See the City Club website for more information.

The City Club posts podcasts of their speaker's addresses shortly after their presentation.

How Today's Web Has Changed Technical Writing

The IEEE Professional Communication Society Newsletter (IEEE PCS, Volume 50, Number 5, May 2006) has two articles that address web development and how technical writers must adapt to "web 2.0" technologies and users.

Web Development…How Do You Define Web Development?
by Elizabeth Weise Moeller

The problem is that “web development” is such a broad term, unlike so long ago when the web was first getting started. In the end, I decided to talk about the past, the present, the future, and, in the process, highlight some trends you can watch to help keep visitors returning to your website.

What is Web 2.0 and How Will Technical Writers be Impacted?
by Amy Diehl

Web 2.0 is a movement away from understanding content as housed in websites, but instead views content as “granular.” In this way, the content can be syndicated and distributed in decentralized ways and without relying on the user visiting a site or page in order to find the information or content. With the advent of Web 2.0, or the web as platform, not place, technical writers and designers will need to rethink many of their strategies regarding how their writing works in relation to “place”.

TechXtra (Formerly EEVL Xtra)

In October of 2005, I shared information on EEVL Xtra. It appears the new name is TechXtra.

From the press release:

TechXtra suite of free services simplifies access to technology information

TechXtra is a suite of ten freely available services which simplify access to a multitude of different types of technology information from a host of different sources.

TechXtra facilitates immediate access to the freely available full-text content of hundreds of thousands of eprints, technical reports, theses, articles, news items, job announcements and more. In cases where the full-text is not freely available, TechXtra provides links to vendors for pay-per-view options. TechXtra searches a combination of digital repositories, journal databases, technical reports servers, web information, news sources and more, all with a focus on technology information.

Anyone looking for information in technology will find TechXtra useful, especially researchers, academics, students and practitioners.

The suite of services includes:
Database Cross-Search - This searches over 4 million items from 25 different databases. Use this to find articles, key websites, theses and dissertations, books, industry news, new job announcements, technical reports, eprints, learning & teaching resources and the latest research in engineering, mathematics and computing. Sources include: Australian Research Repositories Online to the World, arXive (eprint archive in computer science, maths and related subjects), CiteSeer (research articles in computer science), Directory of Open Access Journals, ePrints UK (selected open archives in the UK), Copac (union catalogue from the Consortium of University Research Libraries), National Engineering Education Delivery System (digital library of learning resources), NASA Technical Reports (12 different NASA technical report series)... plus 18 other databases. More will be added in the near future.

The Very Latest Job Announcements - OneStep Jobs brings together the very latest job announcements from more than 35 top sources, and presents them in an easily accessible and searchable format in one place. The content is updated many times each day. Sources include: Jobs.ac.uk, ICErecruit, The Engineer, Redgoldfish, Jobsite, Engineeringjobs.co.uk, 4engineers.co.uk, Matchtech, TipTopJobs and more.

The Very Latest Industry News - OneStep Industry News brings together news feeds from over 80 top sources, and presents them in an easily accessible and searchable format. The content is updated many times each day. Sources include: The Engineer Online, Engineeringtalk, New Scientist, scenta, Moreover, Yenra, Control Engineering News, Design News, EurekAlert, Slashdot, PC Magazine, BBC Tech News and more.

Free Trade Magazine Subscriptions & Technical Document Downloads - Hundreds of trade publications and their advertisers want to give qualifying individuals their publications. It's worth it to them to give you the magazine free because you need the information and products described, and their advertisers need a vehicle to deliver their message which justifies the cost of giving you subscriptions for free. In addition, this service now includes free Webcasts, live Webinars, informative eBooks, interactive CD-ROMs, and numerous whitepapers.

On-Line Bookstore - TechXtra users save up to 35% on any title from this bookstore from Pearson Education - books on everything from Computer Graphics & Design, to Programming, Software, Careers and Personal Development titles. Postage is free within the UK and Europe.

Offshore Engineering Information Service - This service gives information about publications and meetings dealing with: oil and gas exploration and production; offshore health, safety and environmental protection; resources of the seabed and renewable energy; and marine technology.

Discovery Guides - Free indepth reports on topical engineering, mathematical and technology issues.

Information about Validated Engineering Design Data - This subset of ESDU contains over 1,300 abstracts of data item design guides. Access to the full text is via subscription only.

Recent Advances in Manufacturing - A database of bibliographic information for manufacturing and related areas, covering items in over 500 niche and mainstream journals and magazines, plus details of books, videos and conference proceedings.

Selected links to top sources of technology information - Internet tutorials, newsletters and gateways.

TechXtra harvests data from external sources using standard protocols such as Z39.50 and OAI-PMH.

TechXtra is an initiative of the ICBL and the Library, at Heriot-Watt University. The ICBL is also the base of the PerX Project, which has produced a Pilot to help scope future developments in cross-searching. Feedback on the Pilot would be much appreciated. A 60 second survey is available, and those providing feedback will be entered into a draw to win £100 of Amazon vouchers.

For more information about TechXtra, contact:
Roddy MacLeod
Senior Subject Librarian
Heriot-Watt University Library
Edinburgh
0131 451 3576
r.a.macleod@hw.ac.uk

(VIA: STLQ, May 9, 2006, TechXtra - A New Resource for Searching in Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing)

Skype - Free Calls to Landlines in US & Canada

Skype Introduces Free Calls to Traditional Landlines and Mobile Phones in the US and Canada
San Jose, CA, May 15, 2006

Skype, the global Internet communications company, today announced that all US and Canadian-based Skype customers can now make free SkypeOut™ calls to traditional landline and mobile phones in the US and Canada. Previously, Skype users in both countries were required to pay for Skype calls from their PCs to traditional telephones. Free SkypeOut calls to the US or Canada will be available to US and Canadian-based Skype users until the end of the year.

See the rest of the press announcement for more information.

FreePatentsOnline.com

FreePatentsOnline.com provides fast, free access to all U.S. patents and patent applications, partial European data, free PDF downloading, free account features, and more. In addition, a user can can establish a free account that allows for saving searches, creating portfolios of documents, saving comments on documents, and getting notified when new patents of interest are published.

FreePatentsOnline.com is a great alternative to the single page Tiff downloads at the USPTO web site.

Michigan Requires Online Instruction for High School Students

On April 20, 2006, The Chronicle of Higher Education - The Wired Campus Blog highlighted a new initiative for Michigan high school students. The recently signed bill will require high school students to take at least one online class before graduating to better prepare students for college and the work environment.

If you read the attached comments, people do have many questions and concerns, such as availability of techology and training of educators. I do think this is good step in the right direction, especially for preparing college prep students. I do have concerns it increases the digital divide for disadvantaged families if funding for technology or supplemental instruction is not made available.

Blogs: Fad or Trend?

Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing shares data on the State of the Blogosphere. The highlights for me were that a new weblog is created every second of every day, and that 55% of bloggers still post after 3 months. See the full article for more statistics and a graph.

(Via: Free Range Librarian & Stephen's Lighthouse)

Who Needs 1000's of Results?

A recent survey confirms that users will give up on search engine results by the 3rd page. 41% of users will switch search terms or search engines if acceptable results do not appear on the FIRST page.

Top 10 Sources

Top 10 Sources is a directory of sites developed to highlight the most relevant content on the Web as distributed by RSS feeds. The editors of Top 10 Sources search blogs, podcasts, wikis, news sites, and every kind of syndicated sources online for the best material. The lists are updated frequently and organized my subject categories. Several categories exist in science and technology, such as science news, controversial science, and thinkers of the web.

(Via: Librarian In Black, April 9, 2006)

OhioLINK Joins Google's Summer of Code

From the OhioLINK announcement:

Are you a coder? Then check out Google's Summer of Code, a program designed to inspire young developers and provide students in computer science and related fields the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer, and to support existing open source projects and organizations. OhioLINK is pleased to participate in the Summer of Code program again this year as a mentoring organization.

If your application for the Summer of Code is accepted, you will receive a $4500 award ($500 to get started and $4000 once the project is completed). In addition, the mentoring organization will receive $500 for each student developer that completes a project.

OhioLINK has a page on the Digital Resource Commons development site which describes our participation and projects; take a look, augment or add your own (feel free to read the project documentation through the Wiki link above and suggest other ideas), and apply to participate beginning May 1st. Questions about the program? Take a look at Google's participant FAQ.

Google Search Tips

Here are various Google tips to assist in your research:

RANKING
To put more emphasis on one of the words in your search results, repeat the word in the search.

NUMBER RANGE
Two periods between two numbers is like typing all the numbers into the search box. This would be very helpful when searching for entries in a range of years.

DEFINITIONS
Google will provide a definition by using the search "define:word". For example, "define: nanotechnology" will result in various definitions. Of course, the results must be analyzed by the user to determine accuracy.

CALCULATOR & CONVERTER
The Google search box is a calculator--try typing 2+2. Even better, it's a converter--try 10kg in lbs. It does monetary conversions, too (with a disclaimer).

SYNONYMS
A tilde (~) in front of a word in your search tells Google that you also want to search for synonyms. For example, "tire" brings up 104 million entries, but "~tire" increases the results to 414 million. The results now include words such as "tyre" (the British spelling). Becareful and update your search as needed, because "rubber" was also included which might have nothing to do with your information need.

(Collected from Melissa Belvadi via Wanderings of a Student Librarian, March 23, 2006)

FreeMind - Free Mind Mapping Software

SourceForge.net highlighted FreeMind as its February 2006 Project of the Month. FreeMind is mind-mapping software, or a tree editor. With it, you can create foldable trees of plain text notes, enriched with colors, icons, cloud-shapes, and other graphics. Folding and breadth-width search make it valuable as a knowledge base tool.

[About SourceForge.net]

SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects and over 1,000,000 registered users with a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications, and code. SourceForge.net has the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide. SourceForge.net provides a wide variety of services to projects we host, and to the Open Source community. See more here...

Government Investigation of Internet Search Engines - Poll Results

A recent poll on Government Investigation of Internet Search Engines by the University of Connecticut has some interesting results. The numbers that stood out the most included that 60% oppose companies permanently storing the search behaviors of their users, and 80% reported searching for web sites they would not want others to know about. See the press release for more information.

(Originally shared on SearchEngineWatch, Feb. 23, 2006.)

Is Open Source Increasing?

Steve Hardin in The Open Source Movement Gains Ground (Bulletin, February/March 2006, American Society for Information Science and Technology) highlighted the opening plenary session of the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology conducted by Matthew J. Szulik, chair, CEO and president of Red Hat.

People who work for Red Hat are doing so because they have the opportunity to see their work improve society. They’ve challenged the notion of “product.” They view software as a service.

(Originally shared on ResourceShelf, March 1, 2006)

Web 2.0 Mashup Matrix

If you are looking to develop some new web applications or are looking to take advantage of some current mashups, you have to check out the Web 2.0 Mashup Matrix or the Web 2.0 Mashup Center (database) on Programmable Web.

(Originally shared on Snarkmarket, March 24, 2006)

Podcasts - Current State Of

On Designtechnica Talk Backs (March 23, 2006), Colin Dixon and Michael Greeson looked at the current status of podcasting.

First, they established a standard definition of podcasting:

• file-based (download not streaming),
• subscription-based and "pushed" to user,
• & consumed on portable devices.

They further discussed the results of a survey that demonstrated that 80% of podcast downloads were never transferred to a portable device. Was the definition established with too tight of parameters or is podcasting not as hot as everyone wants us to believe?

Personally, I find myself downloading and listening to more and more podcasts, but I have yet to use a portable device. I find it more convenient to use my laptop for listening to podcasts, and I listen to music on my portable device while walking, running, or driving.

EPIC 2015 - Future of Media

EPIC 2014 has been circulating on the web for some time now. This flash movie really forces someone to think about media and communication well into the future.

Notice there is the old 2014 version that was actually pretty close on some of its early predictions and a newer, improved 2015 version.

Photos Representing the History of Computing

CNET News.com has shared various photos documenting some important events in the computing timeline. One of the most curious items might be the first Google server that consisted of several hard drives enclosed by Legos. Talk about keeping things simple.

The images are from a larger collection of computer history exhibits contained within Gates Hall at Stanford.

HigherEdBlogCon

From April 3-28, 2006, make sure you participate in the HigherEd BlogCon. This brand-new, all-online event aims to bring together in a single Web space many of the leading players who are transforming academe with their use of the new tools of the Social Web. Higher Ed BlogCon 2006 will focus on the use of blogs, wikis, RSS, audio and video podcasts, and other digital tools in a range of areas in academe.

The program tracks appear to have something for everyone interested in using today's newest tools in education:

• Teaching - April 3-7, 2006
• Library & info resources - April 10-14, 2006
• Admissions, alumni relations, and communications & marketing - April 17-21, 2006
• Websites & web development - April 24-28, 2006.

The Internet Society

The Internet Society is just one of several professional societies with the goal of addressing future issues of the Internet. The web site provides a variety of resources. One key area might be the All About the Internet section that contains information on Internet law, history of the Internet, information about the infracture, Internet standards, and Internet statistics. A user can also explore information about the Internet Code of Conduct.

[All About the Internet Society]

The Internet SOCiety (ISOC) is a professional membership society with more than 100 organization and over 20,000 individual members in over 180 countries. It provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, and is the organization home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).

(Originally shared on The Scout Report, February 3, 2006 - Volume 12, Number 5)

English Wikipedia Publishes Millionth Article

On March 1, 2006, the English version of Wikipedia published its one millionth article. Now, over 3.3 million articles exists in more than 125 languages of Wikipedia. Wikipedia was originally created with a goal to create 100,000 articles, but shattered that goal on January 23, 2003!

RIAA Avoids College Students Again

The Chronicle of Higher Education on the Wired Campus Blog (February 28, 2006) reported that the recording industry filed another group of 750 lawsuits, but still avoided campus-network users.