1 in 4 Users Can’t Google
No, this is not about a failure rate while using Google. This is about a failure rate to even find Google. Jakob Nielsen has published a startling statistic: If you thought it’s easy to get to Google, think again. In […]
The Web Fills Up = Nature Abhors a Vacuum
Demonstrating that Aristotle’s assertion “Nature abhors a vacuum” applies even to online resources, a recent report from WebSiteOptimization.com illustrates how Web 2.0 has created enough content and interactions to begin to fill the capacity generated by broadband access. Yet, broadband […]
A Twitter Experiment
Life is an approximation of reality. What we know and what is possible are two different things. Experiments help test and bridge the gap. With that spirit, I’m experimenting on this blog with Twitter now. You can find a link […]
Impact Factor Inflation — What Causes It?
Impact factors have been increasing by 2.6% per year, on average. While this is lower than most economies’ inflation rates, it’s indicates a growing economy. But is the growth caused by supply or demand? In a draft paper from the […]
SUSHI — Raw Data Gets Sliced and Served
SUSHI (the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) was launched in 2005, and is now well on its way to becoming a NISO standard. A new article in Learned Publishing by Oliver Pesch from EBSCO outlines the history, purpose, workings, and […]
ShopText Melds Magazines With Digital
Image via Wikipedia Hearst Magazines recently announced it’s rolling out ShopText, a system that uses text messaging to link print products with online. Readers of print can text a keyword to a number, and receive samples, buy products, or access […]
Is Twitter’s Hockey Stick Meaningful?
While it may be a fluke, it may be meaningful that, as Hitwise notes, Twitter has hit the hockey stick in growth, a tipping point of adoption and use that may herald a more mainstream place for the micro-blogging platform.: […]
Web 2.0 — The Vital Echo Chamber
Skeptics keep you honest, and should be celebrated. A skeptic about Web 2.0 is David Crotty, author of the Cold Spring Harbor Protocols blog “Benchmarks.” In a recent post, he pointed me to a review of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes […]
Is the Age of Anti-Plagiarism Software Upon Us?
Last Friday, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story about the emerging anti-plagiarism software marketplace, with CrossRef’s CrossCheck spotlighted. It’s a good story that broadens nicely upon the CrossCheck angle. Defining plagiarism is potentially fraught with difficulty, but it […]
Will Texting and Twitters Kill Email?
There are many signs that email is threatened as the primary mode of communication between individuals. From record levels of spam (96.4% of all email is spam, some claim) to its incompatibility with cell phones, email is threatened with being […]
Zemanta – Augmented Authorship Arrives!
In the book, “The Design of Future Things,” Donald Norman observes that automation is a dangerous goal because pursuing it usually passes the point of diminishing returns. In contrast, augmentation of human effort (e.g., bicycling as augmented walking, writing/drawing/painting/composing as […]
Why There Is No Internet User’s Manual
I don’t know if this is an insight others will find impressive, but when I heard it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Maybe it’s because I wrote software documentation for a short time, and know from both […]
Citations: Incitement or Excitement?
In recent months, a lot of new citation approaches have landed in my email box. Alternatives and tangents seem to have arisen amidst angst about the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and their traditional impact factor. (Note to ironists: displeasure […]
Why I Like the Kindle
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 […]
Web 2.0 Critiqued in “First Monday” Issue
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,” […]