The New York Times reports that Google has unveiled a new search trick, allowing users on Google to search within a specific site and generate results without visiting that site. Google sells ads against this additional captive traffic, sometimes for […]
The Association of College & Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) have created a short video designed to familiarize researchers with some of the issues around author rights. A slide […]
It’s the weekend, so let’s have some fun. Games are educational, and probably always have been. For instance, chess teaches a lot. Now, one of the nation’s largest retailers is mixing experimental games into apparel marketing. According to Boing-Bong.net, Target […]
Two weeks ago, Elsevier and MIT announced a deal allowing MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) project free use of a limited amount of images and text from Elsevier journals, all under a Creative Commons license. The limits are up to 3 figures […]
The New Scientist recently reported that a group of physicists and the American Physical Society (APS) are having a disagreement over inclusion of derivative materials on Wikipedia and other, more specialized wikis. Peter Suber has a good analysis of the […]
A fascinating study from Oikos: The Journal of Ecology finds that research output and number of citations (aggregate and per-paper) are inversely correlated with per-capita beer consumption. That is, where beer consumption rises, research productivity falls, as measured by papers […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US (the CDC) has always been a network. It’s role is important and impressive. But can disease surveillance be accomplished in new ways? An interesting site is http://www.whoissick.org, where people stricken […]
According to TechCrunch, Charlie Rose, the unflappable interviewer, apparently chose a face-plant over risking damage to his newly purchased MacBook Air. Walking down a street in New York City and tripping, he ended up looking like this, and his computer […]
CrossRef recently announced a plugin for WordPress, the popular blogging platform (and the one this blog uses), showing yet again that citations are not vestiges from a bygone print age but are part and parcel of the permanent Web. CrossRef […]
It’s from August 2007, but a paper in the online peer-reviewed journal First Monday caught my attention just now. It’s about the phenomenon the authors term “Infomania,” but which can also be called Attention Deficit Trait (ADT). ADT was first […]
Noteworthy from the perspective of “the world ain’t as flat as you thought”: The tension between Tibet and China has led to the censorship of YouTube in China.
Scientific presentations have long been semi-private displays of new data and speculative findings. The nondescript conference room, the slide or PowerPoint presentation, and the somnolent audience — all trademarks of the live meeting event, and all part of why these […]
This may not be entirely germane, but I like seeing history and scholarship moving into the mass market, especially when it’s well-executed. This might be one such case, given the source material. HBO and the US Postal Service are teaming […]
“Wisdom of the crowds” vs. “expertise” is a common contrast these days, with the social web being scrutinized for failings and weaknesses by people who think there’s still a chance of turning back the clock. This week was an interesting […]
A recent study from the UK notes the decline in newspaper readership among all age brackets, but especially younger readers (people younger than 35 years old). Like many studies striving to sound an alarm, the language is a bit charged, […]