How quickly they grow up! It seems like only yesterday that GenBank was a two-volume listing of alleles cavorting at our feet. Now, it’s a strapping (300 pickup trucks’ worth) bruiser of genetic information. Congratulations to GenBank on reaching the […]
An experiment in having a book peer-reviewed online has concluded, and the results are detailed in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The book entitled “Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies,” examines the importance of using software design […]
A good article in the Economist outlines some of the important social roles the Internet is playing in China, even though it is tightly controlled (Wikipedia banned, Google filtered, for instance). China will soon boast more Internet users than any […]
The mainstream media may be registering the revolution, but is it too late? A recent New York Times story reveals in all its glory how younger readers parse news through social media. One focus group participant is quoted saying, “If […]
Source: WikipediaFor me, the Amazon Kindle has turned out to be the first useful eBook. I say this having used mine for a few months now. Yes, it has some drawbacks in its current packaging, mainly large navigational paddles that […]
A new book publishing venture called Fractal Press seeks to anthologize blogs and publish the resulting books using print-on-demand technologies. An interview with co-founder Navanit Arakeri can be found on Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 blog. Arakeri will start with personal […]
According to the CrossTech blog at CrossRef, Microsoft has released a beta version of their plug-in for marking up manuscripts with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) DTD. The plug-in is called the Article Authoring Add-in. The goal is to […]
In a superb article by Eric Alterman, the New Yorker has assessed the state of American newspapers, and the rise of the Huffington Post. The (r)evolution is viewed through the lenses of Walter Lippmann‘s debates with John Dewey in the […]
A federal judge’s decision this month (reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education) cleared plagiarism-detection tool Turnitin of charges that it violates student copyrights, even though it stores digital copies of their papers. An appeal will likely be filed. The […]
The March 2008 issue of the online journal First Monday is entitled, “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0.” It’s worth a look. Some pieces are especially provocative, including “Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation,” “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance,” […]