Internet Happenings, Events and Sources
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| Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant Internet Happenings, Events and Sources |
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Saturday, January 31, 2004 Internet Speaker Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. http://www.InternetSpeaker.net/ Internet Consultant Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. http://InternetConsultant.BlogSpot.com/ I have been asked by many associates, potential clients and friends to create some informational blogs on my Internet speaking and consulting services. I have just created the above URLs that offer additional information on my current activities in Internet keynote speaking, association speaking, and consultation services. posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:26 AM American Mathematical Society: Probability Web http://www.mathcs.carleton.edu/probweb/probweb.html The Probability Web is maintained by a professor in the Mathematics and Computer Science Department at Carleton College and offers links and resources for researchers, teachers, and others interested in probability. Links to an abstract database, book lists, conferences, jobs, journals, newsgroups, teaching resources and other miscellaneous online resources are included. In some cases early chapters of books are posted and some journals are free. Also interesting is the alphabetical listing of People in Probability, which includes links to mathematicians' websites. Another section provides favorite quotes on probability submitted by visitors. [The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:30 AM My Service Bot http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.15.04/work-0403.html My Service Bot from Techsploits column by Annalee Newitz in Metro."[Peter] Plantec's book is a guide for creating what he calls V-people: social bots that businesses can use to replace service workers or game players online. Programmed Ask Jeeves-style to answer questions in a way that sounds natural and to deploy friendly facial expressions at the right moments, V-people are the bank tellers and customer-service reps of the future. According to Plantec and researchers like Cory Kidd at MIT, people warm up to V-people fairly quickly after their initial moment of disbelief that the person talking to them and smiling is just a program. Kidd conducted a series of psychological experiments last year showing that people respond to animated and automated creatures in almost exactly the same way they respond to humans..... Plantec writes in his book that his main concern about the ethics of using V-people in customer service situations is that users tend to credit machines with more honesty and innocence than they do their fellow humans. In trial runs of his V-people, he reports that users 'took what the V-person said as truth or error but never considered that the character was trying to deceive them. ... After all, how could a virtual human have ulterior motives ... how could they have any motives at all?" [Metro 01-15-04] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:26 AM MarketLeap Link Popularity Check http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ MarketLeap Link Popularity Check – This tool allows researchers to gauge the popularity of a website in comparison to a maximum of three websites. Once URLs are entered, MarketLeap Link Popularity Check will generate a report detailing the amount of hyperlinks that are available on different websites according to various search engines. Rankings are assigned to the URLs to indicate the level of traffic which a specific URL generates. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:21 AM Effective Security Practices Guide http://www.educause.edu/security/guide/ This month the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force released the "Effective Security Practices Guide" for the higher education community. "As a primer to establishing a comprehensive IT security program on campus, the guide contains resources on 'where to begin,' including awareness, policies, and risk assessment and detailed descriptions of tools for implementing a security strategy. Topics covered include network and host vulnerability assessment, security architecture design, network and host security implementation, intrusion and virus detection, incident response, and encryption and authentication. The guide also links to more than 30 effective practices and solutions contributed by members of the higher education community." [CIT Infobits January 2004]. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM The Next Big Thing? http://www.economist.co.uk/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2352183 The Next Big Thing? bases its vision of the future on two "unglamorous technologies": "web services" software that resides on a server that other servers can share and "grid computing," which involves sharing and combining the processing power of huge numbers of computer systems into a single, giant virtual microprocessor. [CIT Infobits January 2004 The Economist, January 15, 2004] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:05 AM FTC Warning Puts Onus On Computer Users http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040130/D80CSQ6O2.html The Federal Trade Commission and regulatory agencies in 26 countries have sent out letters to hundreds of thousands of computer users, warning them that spammers are lurking in cyberspace, waiting for the opportunity to hijack their servers and route junk e-mail through them. Spammers often use unsecured computers to disguise the origin of their messages. "Recipients may think the spam comes from your system," said the FTC's e-mail message. "Securing your server will help you protect your system from being misused." Don Blumenthal, coordinator for the FTC's Internet lab, admitted the agency did not attempt to verify that each computer targeted by the warnings was actually vulnerable to hacking, but said the message urged recipients to visit the FTC Web site for more information on properly configuring their software. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:01 AM Hubble Telescope Gets a Reprieve http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1165_1.asp The battle over the future of the Hubble Space Telescope has taken a turn for the better, at least from the perspective of the observatory's supporters. The conflict began on January 16th, when NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe shocked astronomers worldwide by announcing that there will be no more Space Shuttle missions to maintain and upgrade the orbiting telescope. Five days later Senator Barbara Mikulski, whose home state of Maryland hosts both the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute, sent a letter to O'Keefe asking him to reconsider his decision. In the week thereafter, her request was bolstered by a huge outcry from professional astronomers, backyard stargazers, and the public -- including many SKY & TELESCOPE readers who wrote to express their concerns. Apparently bowing to all this pressure, O'Keefe has now agreed to reconsider his decision to abandon Hubble....[S&T's Weekly News Bulletin 01-30-04] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM Friday, January 30, 2004 Countdown Begins for Government Agencies to Develop Web Site Taxonomies http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0119/web-taxonomy-01-20-04.asp http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/24669-1.html All federal agencies are under a mandate (Section 207 of the 2002 E-Government Act) to develop overall taxonomies of their Web sites by the end of 2004. Thus begins a mad dash to develop thousands -- millions -- of word, letter, number and combination classifications of documents, e-mail messages and other information within specific hierarchies. Experts say the trick to organizing all these documents is to build taxonomies around central objectives. Although information technology workers are often given the task to do this job, it's important to bring domain or business experts onboard to work on classifications and vocabulary. Categorizing is the largest task in building a taxonomy -- taking up about a third of the work. To cut development time, agencies can modify taxonomies already developed by others, such as the Taxonomy Warehouse at http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com. Watching this formidable process unfold -- which some experts say many agencies may be underestimating -- will be important to other industries, because while government agencies are the first to mandate taxonomies -- and though many taxonomies are already in widespread use -- commercial enterprises are sure to follow suit. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:26 AM I have seen some excellent mozilla resources lately from MozDev: MozPoint http://mozpoint.mozdev.org/ MozPoint is a presentation library (of CSS and JS) that can be used to make simple but elegant presentations using the browser as a platform for rendering presentation content. PubMed http://pubmed.mozdev.org/ The PubMed Toolbar increases your ability to search for information in the NLM Medline database through the PubMed interface. NeedleSearch http://needlesearch.mozdev.org/ The NeedleSearch toolbar lets you bookmark search engines. NeedleSearch can handle ALL search engines, the information can be posted too. These tools will allow you to do some niched searching in a more efficient and competent manner...... posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:25 AM Taxonomy Warehouse http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/ Taxonomy Warehouse is a free service (free to users and free to vocabulary publishers) provided by Synapse, the Knowledge Link Corporation (on the web at www.synaptica.com) for the benefit of the information and knowledge management community. The Warehouse aims to provide a comprehensive directory of taxonomies, thesauri, classification schemes and other authority files from around the world, plus information about taxonomy references, resources and events. The Release 1.0 site, launched in April 2003, is considered a "Beta" version. It has approximately two hundred vocabularies, but our researchers are busy identifying and listing other vocabularies and hundreds more will be added to the service over the next few months. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:22 AM Maximizing Research Impact Through Self-Archiving http://jekyll.sissa.it/jekyll_comm/articoli/art07_01_eng.htm Researchers and their universities are beginning to realize that the online era has made it possible to enhance the impact of their research dramatically. It's no longer necessary to mail or e-mail reprints of peer-reviewed articles for them to be cited in others' research. Research can now be publicly self-archived in a university's Eprint Archives, making it instantly accessible to all would-be users worldwide, without the need to make or respond to reprint requests. Researchers, of course, have long since posted their papers on their own Web sites. But searchers had difficulty finding them using conventional search engines. Now, thanks to the Open Archives Initiative, the infrastructure for maximizing university research impact is already in place or at least available. Needed now are institutional policies and computational tools designed to create and fill the university Eprint Archives quickly. Stevan Harnad of the University of Quebec at Montreal says universities need to adopt a self-archiving policy that extends their existing "publish or perish" policy to "publish with maximal impact." A potential model for such a policy, along with free software for creating a standardized online university CV, can be found at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html. In addition, Harnad urges university libraries to help with the first wave of self-archiving, doing "proxy" self-archiving for those researchers who aren't already doing it themselves. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:20 AM 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) http://www.maebashi-it.org/IAT04/ The 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'04) will be jointly held with the 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'04). This joint conference is sponsored and organized by IEEE Computer Society, Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), and ACM-SIGART. September 20-24, 2004 Beijing, CHINA posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services http://www.niso.org/standards/standard_detail.cfm?std_id=783 The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services: Standard In Development: Currently at Ballot Z39.88-200x The proposed OpenURL standard is syntax to create web-transportable packages of metadata and/or identifiers about an information object. Such packages are at the core of context-sensitive or open link technology, which has recently become available in scholarly information systems. By standardizing the syntax, we will enable many other innovative user-specific services in this and other information fields. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM Technology-Assisted Education Clearinghouse http://www.utoronto.ca/cat/clearinghouse/index.html Technology-Assisted Education Clearinghouse resource centre for academic technology from the University of Toronto includes links to Organizations, Conferences & Events, Funding, Instructional Design, Journals & Research, UofT Resources, and Web Development Tools. This will be added to my Education and Distance Learning Rersources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM Thursday, January 29, 2004 AwarenessWatch™ Newsletter V2N2 February 2004 http://virtualprivatelibrary.blogspot.com/Awareness Watch V2N2.pdf Awareness Watch™ Newsletter http://www.AwarenessWatch.com/ The February 2004 V2N2 AwarenessWatch™ is available as a 19 page .pdf file from the above URL. The AwarenessWatch Featured Report covers niched blog search engines, blog directories and web based news aggregators available currently on the Internet. The AwarenessWatch Spotters cover some excellent just released research resources as well as new identified Internet sources. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:52 AM The Standard Blog http://www.TheStandard.com/ TheStandard.com covers the news, analysis, trends and events that shape the everchanging Internet Economy day in and day out. They look at the companies that impact the direction of the Internet market. They follow the people who drive change. They cover the trends that today's Internet leaders need to know in order to stay ahead of the curve and now it returns as a weblog!! Truly interesting times and the blogs continue on ...... posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:30 AM One New Thing http://nlrp.blogspot.com/ Weblog of Lynette Reville, a new librarian in Australia, who is on a library-like quest to find One New Thing to learn every day. Her companion website is the New Librarian's Resource Page . Both are resources that you need to visit. I will be adding One New Thing to my eCurrent Awareness 2004 Report. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:22 AM Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons® http://www.yearbookpdf.com/ Here's where you can download and print the Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons® as a .pdf and it is free of charge! The Yearbook is Volume XXI Number IV and is 268 pages. I will be adding this to my Subject Tracer™ Information Blog Internet Experts. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM Robot Automates Science http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/012804/Robot_automates_science_012804.html Scientists would seem to hold one of the last occupations threatened by automation, given the brainpower and education involved. But equipping a laboratory robot with artificial intelligence software makes for a fair approximation of a scientist. Faster gene and drug discovery could result. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM BlogWise http://www.BlogWise.com/ BlogWise ia site bringing you a collection of categorised blogs from around the world. Whatever your taste, interest and culture - there's bound to be a blog out there written by a person just like you. posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:52 AM Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Search Engine for Marketers http://www.SearchEngineForMarketers.com/ Larry Chase has created a directory of marketing sources that does a nice job of showing directory resources for the various niched areas of marketing. He has titled it a Search Engine even though at first glance it seems to be a directory/index of resources. It does a good job as a marketing directory and I will be listing it in my Subject Tracer™ Information Blog DirectoryResources as well as Business Resources 2004 one of my nine 2004 Internet MiniGuides. posted by Marcus Zillman | 2:10 PM US-CERT http://www.us-cert.gov/ US-CERT, a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) and the private sector, has been established to protect our Nation's Internet infrastructure. It will do this through global coordination of defense against and response to cyber incidents and attacks across the United States. US-CERT's objectives are to aggregate available cyber security information and provide it to individuals and organizations in a timely and understandable manner. US-CERT also provides a mechanism that allows citizens, businesses, and other institutions to communicate directly with the United States government regarding cyber security information. US-CERT has created the National Cyber Alert System, which is America's first cohesive national cyber security system for identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing emerging vulnerabilities and threats. The system provides credible and timely information on cyber security issues for both technical and non-technical users. posted by Marcus Zillman | 12:09 PM BuyTelco Broadband Index (BBI) http://www.buytelco.net/bbi.asp When during the week is the demand for broadband services highest? Which states have the highest and lowest demand? How does demand breakdown among demographic groups? The BuyTelco Broadband Index (BBI) answers these questions and more with its monthly roundup of connectivity trends for high-speed Internet including DSL, cable, and satellite across the USA. In the month of December 2003 we find that demand is highest at the beginning of the week, with demand peaking on Tuesday. On a state-by-state basis, we find highest demand for broadband in Utah, and lowest demand in Alaska. posted by Marcus Zillman | 10:01 AM Parsing OWL in RDF/XML Published http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-owl-parsing-20040121/ The Web Ontology Working Group has released "Parsing OWL in RDF/XML" as a Working Group Note. The OWL language is used to publish and share sets of terms called ontologies, supporting advanced Web search, software agents and knowledge management. This document describes a strategy for OWL-RDF parsers. Read about the Semantic Web. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:32 AM Keeping Found Things Found on the Web - A Research Project of the Information School at the University of Washington http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/projKFTF.asp http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/publications.asp The goal of this study is to understand better the ways in which people manage information for subsequent re-access and re-use. The study focuses on the management of information found on the Word Wide Web. Follow-on studies will look at similar problems and practices of personal information management for other information types including email and personal files (electronic and paper-based). The classic problem of information retrieval, simply put, is to help people find the relatively small number of things they are looking for (books, articles, web pages, CDs, etc.) from a very large set of possibilities. This classic problem has been studied in many variations and has been addressed through a rich diversity of information retrieval tools and techniques. A follow-on problem also exists which has received relatively less study: Once found, how are things organized for re-access and re-use later on? What can be done to avoid the need to repeat the entire search process? We refer to this as the problem of Keeping Found Things Found. The current study addresses this problem in the context of World Wide Web use. The study focuses on use of the Web by managers, researchers, librarians and other information specialists. But it is expected that the results of the study will be relevant to most users of the Web. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:27 AM PubSub Concepts http://www.pubsub.com/ PubSub Concepts provides real-time, content based publish and subscribe systems at internet scale. This site is a Beta version of their home page, which will provide a PubSub interface for weblogs and other information sources. PubSub.com reads over 100,000 weblogs in real time, and generates new feeds containing information specific to particular issues. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:22 AM Tuesday, January 27, 2004 The Internet Courses - Weblogs http://www.hi.is/~Eanne/weblogs.html An excellent resource by Dr. L. Anne Clyde of the University of Iceland. The site includes links to the following resources on Weblogs: Information and Articles About Weblogs, Weblog Software and Resources, Directories and Guides to Weblogs, Other Weblog Resources, Examples of LIS Weblogs, Examples of Other Weblogs, Weblogs About Blogging and RSS. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:48 AM MyDoom Mass-Email Worm http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/161 MyDoom Prevention and Cure http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/4520-6600_16-5118738.html ISS X-Force has detected the aggressive propogation of a new Internet worm that spreads via email. Known as MyDoom or Novarg, this worm harvests email addresses from your hard drives and will mail copies of itself to addresses that it finds. It spoofs the "From" address to confuse victims as to the source of the virus. MyDoom spreads as an e-mail attachment that is either in an executable or zip archive format. Impact: Aggressive propagation of mass-email worms have been known to cause localized email outages due to the load placed on email servers. MyDoom has been spreading very aggressively and is a serious threat to certain networks. It is also believed that this worm contains a proxy that may allow the infected computer to relay "spam" email. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:24 AM International Journal of Web Services Research: An official publication of the Information Resources Management Association http://www.idea-group.com/journals/details.asp?id=4138 http://www.idea-group.com/downloads/pdf/jwsr.pdf Web services are network-based application components with services-oriented architecture using standard interface description languages and uniform communication protocols. Due to the importance of the field, standardization organizations such as WS-I, W3C, OASIS and Liberty Alliance are actively developing standards for Web services. The International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR) is the first refereed, international publication featuring only the latest research findings and industry solutions dealing with all aspects of Web services technology. The overall scope of this journal will cover the advancements in the state of the art, standards, and practice of Web services, as well as to identify the emerging research topics and define the future of Services computing, including Web services on Grid computing, Web services on multimedia, Web services on communication, etc. In conclusions, the JWSR provides an open, formal publication for high quality articles developed by theoreticians, educators, developers, researchers and practitioners for professionals to stay abreast of challenges in Web services technology. A complimentary copy of the inaugural issue can be downloaded from the second URL listed above. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM Orkut http://www.orkut.com Orkut is an online trusted community web site designed for friends. The main goal of their service is to make the social life of yourself and your friends more active and stimulating. The community site allows friends to virtually come together, find common interests, share relevant information, and organize social events. The community will, in essence, create a closer and more intimate network of friends. The mission of orkut is thus to increase the overall satisfaction of social life and provide the necessary tools for a more efficient and intimate environment. Orkut is an affiliate of Google™ and could prove to be an interesting project. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM Monday, January 26, 2004 This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (January 26, 2004 V2N4) is dedicated to a number of selected sources for finding people. Click on the below audblog link to hear an audio describing these sources that I have just recently created a Subject Traver™ Information Blog. These resources are available from the following URL: Finding People Resources and Sites on the Internet http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_zillman_archive.html#107486696308594301  audblog audio post
posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:20 PM Microsoft Launches Search Toolbar http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/26/HNmstoolbar_1.html Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Internet division has developed a search toolbar that users can add to their Web browsers via a free download. The MSN Toolbar's main feature is its search form, from which users can perform Web searches. It also provides shortcuts to MSN services, such as the Hotmail e-mail service, the MSN Messenger instant messaging service and the My MSN customizable home page for the MSN Web portal. Google, then Yahoo and now Microsoft...... posted by Marcus Zillman | 2:45 PM Amazon Peddles Politicians http://snipurl.com/432k http://www.amazon.com/gp/misc/flag.html Amazon shoppers now have something new they can spend their money on -- the presidential candidates of their choice. The new feature, which allows visitors to make contributions of up to $200 to their favorite candidate, is an effort "to take the friction out of grassroots contributions to presidential candidates," according to the Amazon Web site. For that reason it is not endorsing any candidates and is charging each campaign its usual processing fees, which will be donated to a nonprofit, non-partisan group. "For us, we think this is an interesting but natural extension of what we do every day. Our goal here was to make it as easy for people to make contributions to presidential campaigns as it is to buy the latest Harry Potter book," says an Amazon spokesman. [Reuters 24 Jan 2004] posted by Marcus Zillman | 12:13 PM Business Journals http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/businesslibrary/journals/journals.htm An excellent resource of business journals is available from the Business Library of the University of Florida. posted by Marcus Zillman | 11:53 AM World Language Portal http://www.nsls.info/community/language/ Find information to help you work with world languages, including vendors, translators, and catalogers. This site is under development and one should revisit as it looks to become an excellent resource. posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:44 AM LibDB http://www.disobey.com/noos/LibDB/ An open-sourced Perl/MySQL library and asset management system based on and inspired by the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, triples from the semantic web, and "the end-user doesn't, and shouldn't, need to know this stuff". In English, this means that you'll be able to smartly and easily catalog your movies, books, magazines, comics, etc. into your own computerized "personal library". LibDB and its data will always be free. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM Sunday, January 25, 2004 Arming Computers with Tools for Self-Defense http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?tip040115b R.C. Sekar and colleagues at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, are working on self-defense tools to help computers protect themselves from common types of cyber attacks. The most common cyber attacks exploit application errors to burrow into a computer’s memory. To deflect these precision strikes, the Stony Brook team developed “smoke screen” that confuses and misdirects the memory attacks, dramatically reducing their effectiveness. The smoke screen has been applied to several common server applications, which the lab uses and has made available for download. According to Sekar, they expect to eventually provide tools to add the so-called “address obfuscation” technique to any application. posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:58 PM NOVA : Infinite Secrets : Archimedes http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/archimedes This website is the companion piece to the PBS NOVA broadcast of "Infinite Secrets," a documentary relating the discovery of the oldest of Archimedes' extant treatises. The treatise was bought at auction, with none knowing that hidden under the 13th Century prayer manuscript was a copy of an Archimedes work. The site details the history of this palimpsest, the efforts undertaken to do imaging and scanning of the badly deteriorated and scraped Archimedes treatise, and the mathematical implications for the find, as the palimpsest indicated that Archimedes was working on the concept of calculating infinity; a precursor, in the minds of the scholars who worked on this project, on the road to the calculus. posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:52 PM Ancient World Mapping Center http://www.unc.edu/awmc The Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill aims to bring cartography and GIS into a position of greater importance in studying the Ancient World. News articles, links to other mapping resources, and an archive of past feature stories are available. Digital maps are provided free of charge in the "Maps for Students Map Room." The maps are of Rome, Greece, Ancient Italy, Egypt, the Northern and Western reaches of the Roman Empire, and the Iberian Peninsula. Clicking on a map displays versions available for downloading, in several formats, including different resolution JPEGs and Adobe PDF. posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:50 PM Places Online http://www.placesonline.org The Association of American Geographers has gathered an array of websites that depict environments, people and life around the world. There is a high standard for inclusion in the site: the sites must be image and content heavy, and must be "primary" sites, as opposed to sites that only direct users to a list of links. Places Online is searchable, and also can be navigated by using an interactive map; the first level is by region/continent and the second level is broken down into countries and cities. Most sites are native to the region that is being explored, thereby giving a local flavor and perspective on the locales, events and experiences displayed. posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:48 PM Computer Creativity Machine Stimulates the Brain http://snipurl.com/41zr An excellent and very self explanatory article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch on Dr. Stephen Thaler's Creativity Machine. Dr. Thaler has been working on this project and concept for many many years and has truly developed an unique resource that will defintely help mankind now and in the future. Congratulations Steve on the perserverance and now the rewards that you so deserve with this technology!! posted by Marcus Zillman | 11:20 AM Swarm Intelligence (SI) http://goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au/~xiaodong/cec04-swarm/index.htm Such systems are made up by a population of simple agents interacting locally with one other and with their environment. Although there is typically no centralised control dictating the behaviour of the agents, local interactions ong the agents often cause a global pattern to emerge. Examples of systems like this can be found in nature, including ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, honey bees, bacteria, and many more. Swarm-like algorithms, such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), have already been applied successfully to solve real-world optimization problems in engineering and telecommunication. SI models have many features in common with Evolutionary Algorithms. posted by Marcus Zillman | 11:09 AM Goofresh http://www.buzztoolbox.com/archives/000009.shtml Google offers a date-based syntax, but you can only access it via the advanced search, which limits your time options, or the daterange: syntax, which uses Julian dates and is a bit difficult to use. Goofresh is a way to search for sites added today, yesterday, within the last seven days, or last 30 days. [BuzzToolbox Blog:API and Other Tools for Google, Amazon, etc.] posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:34 AM Saturday, January 24, 2004 Web Guide to U.S. Supreme Court Research http://www.llrx.com/features/supremectwebguide.htm Trying to navigate the diverse world of websites dedicated to various aspects of legal research can be a bit daunting, even to more adroit users of different online search engines. Fortunately for those seeking to hone their ability to perform online research about the U.S. Supreme Court, this fine online guide to the subject was established in ecember 2003. Authored by Gail A. Partin (an associate law librarian at Penn State's Dickinson School of Law), this well organized web-guide "attempts to overcome the shortcomings of general web searching by providing a selection of annotated links to the most reliable, substantive sites for U.S Supreme Court research." The site begins with a brief introduction, then proceeds to offer a set of organized links and summary descriptions about a host of different sites dealing with topics such as Supreme Court practice, court administration, the history of the Supreme Court, and oral arguments. Beginning law students and those more experienced with the field, will appreciate this online guide to the panoply of compelling sites currently available. [The Scout Report, V10N3 Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM Recognition of Vanderbilt's Hoffman and Novak http://tennessean.com/business/movers/archives/04/01/45707449.shtml?Element_ID=45707449 The Web site ISI Essential Science Indicators says that the Internet research of Vanderbilt management professors Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak received the highest percentage increase last year in academic citations for business and economics. Hoffman and Novak, co-founders of Vanderbilt's e-Lab (the nation's first center for the study of the Internet), are co-directors of the Vanderbilt University's Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. (AP/The Tennessean 19 Jan 2004) [NewsScan Daily 01-20-04] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM Journal of Biological Chemistry http://www.jbc.org/ Almost a century of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) is freely available. Fulltext V1 - V278 (1905 - 2003) searchable and free. The material published in JBC in a calendar year is released for open access on January 1 of the new year. The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) has an Open Access statement available here. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM E-Print Network http://www.osti.gov/eprints/ Created by the United States Department of Energy, this website allows users to explore online papers that have been submitted for distribution and review among peers; for publication in journals; or for presentations at conferences. Through the E-print Network, advanced students and scientists can search e-prints on many websites and databases, browse e-prints by subject, and find many scientific societies. Although the network primarily contains physics-related documents, e-prints dealing with other subjects such as chemistry, material sciences, and nuclear sciences are also included. [From The NSDL Scout Report for the Physical Sciences 01-23-04, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003] posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:05 AM Friday, January 23, 2004 February 2004 Zillman Column - Finding People Resources and Sites on the Internet http://virtualprivatelibrary.blogspot.com/Finding People.pdf http://www.zillmancolumns.com/ http://www.FindingPeople.info/ The February 2004 Zillman Column is now available and is titled Finding People Resources and Sites on the Internet. This column brings together the many resources for finding people using the Internet. The Internet is the source for literally thousands upon thousands of people finding resources and this column gives you a comprehensive listing of where to find these sources and is taken from my latest Subject Tracer™ Information of Blog. This is a "must" reference for anyone looking to find persons for your business, special interest subject area or personal needs/requirements! posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:09 AM IEEE Releases One-Millionth Online Technology Document http://www.ieee.org/products/onlinepubs/news/0104_04.html The IEEE released its one-millionth online technical document to researchers on 22 January 2004. There are now more than one million full-text technology papers, articles and standards in IEEE Xplore, the delivery system for IEEE online publications. The milestone document, "Novel Frame Buffer Pixel Circuits for Liquid-Crystal-on-Silicon Microdisplays," was published in the January 2004 issue of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. The paper was written by IEEE Members Sangrok Lee and James C. Morizio and IEEE Fellow Kristina M. Johnson. The authors are with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Pratt School of Engineering, at Duke University in Durham, NC. The paper may be read for free here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required). "This milestone illustrates IEEE's importance as the primary source for current technical literature." said IEEE publications director Anthony Durniak. "The publications of IEEE's many Societies and Councils cover the breadth of today's technology. With IEEE Xplore, we provide high-tech researchers, scientists, engineers and other users with a single, convenient source for access to the papers and technology standards they need to develop tomorrow's technical innovations. The value of IEEE-published information is demonstrated in the four million downloads requested by users each month." The IEEE online collection of technology articles and papers has grown by more than 25 percent over the last 18 months. This includes more than 80,000 archival backfile documents from 1950-1987 added last year. IEEE publishes 121 journals and magazines and more than 400 conference proceedings titles each year and has 900 active technology standards. All of this information is available to researchers as full-text documents through the IEEE Xplore online delivery system. IEEE Xplore also delivers journals and conference proceedings from the IEE, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, headquartered in the United Kingdom. Access to IEEE online documents is available through institutional subscriptions, by individual online article purchase, or through subscriptions available to IEEE members. posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:05 AM eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) http://www.xbrl.org/ eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) brings the publication, exchange, and analysis of the complex financial information in corporate business reports into the dynamic and interactive realm of the internet. XBRL provides a common platform for critical business reporting processes and improves the reliability and ease of communicating financial data among users internal and external to the reporting enterprise. XBRL is an XML-based, royalty-free, and open standard being developed by XBRL International Inc., which is a not-for-profit consortium of around 200 companies and agencies, delivering benefits to investors, accountants, regulators, executives, business and financial analysts, and information providers. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:55 AM Avoiding a Shocking Experience for the Information Consumer http://www.oclc.org/membership/escan/introduction/default.htm The 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan suggests that, paradoxically, a worthy goal of the library might be "invisibility" -- in the sense that the service is ubiquitous and fully integrated into the infosphere. "After all, technology and services are most welcome in our lives when we do not have to devote much thought to them. We press a switch and light comes or goes. Expecting the information consumer to pay attention to the differences between William Shakespeare the author and William Shakespeare the subject as search terms is akin to expecting Joe Householder to know if the red wire or the black wire should be grounded before he plugs the lamp in -- and expect Joe to go to RedWire.com to figure out what happens if he's wrong. Thankfully, clever people have hidden all this technology inside a box and millions are saved from a shocking experience." posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:14 AM The Library Network http://jolis.worldbankimflib.org/index.html The Library Network - A private library resource serving the World Bank Group and IMF. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:09 AM Science Tracer Bullets Online http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/tracer-bullets/tbs.html The Library of Congress SCIENCE TRACER BULLET SERIES contains research guides that help you locate information on science and technology subjects. With brief introductions to the topics, lists of resources and strategies for finding more, they help you to stay "on target." This Index lists the most recent Tracer Bullets, but they are adding online versions of the older ones as well. Older Tracer Bullets, especially valuable for historical research, can also help you to find current information. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM Complexity Digest http://www.comdig.org/ Keeps you abreast of current research in the science of complexity. Includes brief excerpts and links to journal articles, as well as links to other complexity-related resources. [January 23 Neat New Stuff] posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:55 AM Thursday, January 22, 2004 Luminary Lectures @ Your Library present Gary Price and Chris Sherman http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/lectures/gpcs.html Gary Price and Chris Sherman will present a lecture entitled, "Web Research: What's New in 2004" at the Library of Congress on Thursday, January 29th, from 10:30am-12:00pm in the West Dining Room on the 6th floor of the Library of Congress' James Madison Building, located at First Street and Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. No reservations are necessary. All lectures are free and open to the public. This lecture will be broadcast live via the Internet at http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/lectures/gpcs.html on the morning of the lecture, EST, and will be viewable with Real Player software. Gary Price is a librarian, information research consultant, and writer based in suburban Washington D.C. . Chris Sherman is President of Searchwise, a Boulder Colorado based Web consulting firm, and Editor of SearchDay, a daily newsletter from SearchEngineWatch.com. He is a regular contributor to Information Today, Online, EContent and other information industry journals, and a regular presenter at information industry conferences and workshops. Description of the lecture: In a fast paced session, Sherman and Price will discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of web search and its role for the online researcher. They'll cover some of the changes that have roiled the industry over the past year, the "Googlization" of search, and some of the important trends and issues of concern to information professionals. Throughout the presentation the speakers will offer numerous resources and tips for use after the presentation. The Public Service Collections Directorate of the Library of Congress sponsors this speaker series. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:53 PM Revamping the GPO for the Digital World http://www.gpoaccess.gov/about/speeches/01102004_ala.pdf In a presentation to the American Library Association, Judith Russell, the U.S. Superintendent of Documents, discussed the vast changes that have occurred in the Government Printing Office (GPO) as a result of the digital revolution. The GPO Access site, which provides free downloads of many federal publications online, has grown to draw some 33 million downloads per month – the equivalent of 808 million pages. Simultaneously, the GPO’s sales program has seen revenues fall from more than $80 million to $30 million over the last 10 years. The GPO is now trying to develop a new economic model to recoup some of that lost revenue, although no strategy has yet been agreed on. Adding to the GPO’s challenges is the need to manage legacy collections more efficiently. Toward that end, there is a movement toward shared repositories that would eliminate some redundancies. The GPO has also decided to establish a collection of last resort that will comprise a comprehensive collection of tangible and electronic titles to back up the repositories. Finally, the Association of Research Libraries and the GPO are collaborating to digitize a complete legacy collection of U.S. government documents available in the public domain. (American Library Association Midwinter Meeting 10 Jan 2004) posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:48 PM The Coombsweb - The 10 years online! http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ The Coombsweb - The 10 years online! Congratulations ...a truly excellent resources that I started to link to in 1994 and listed in my first LinkSeries Internet MiniGuides called RefLink. Some of the sites are: COOMBSWEB'S ELECTRONIC JOURNALS & NEWSLETTERS Asian Studies WWW Monitor: E-Journal http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.html Est. 21 Apr 1994. ISSN 1329-9778. Currently there are over 3,570 subscribers to the journal's email edition. Pacific Studies WWW Monitor: E-Journal http://coombs.anu.edu.au/pacific-www-monitor.html Est. 12 Apr 2000. ISSN 1443-8976. Currently there are over 800 subscribers to the journal's email edition. RSPAS Print News: E-Journal http://coombs.anu.edu.au/rspas-print-news.htm Est. 01 Jun 1998. ISSN 1440-9127. Currently there are over 1,510 subscribers to the journal's email edition. COOMBSWEB'S MAIN ONLINE RESEARCH TOOLS: Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-AsianStudies.html Est. 24 Mar 1994. In January 2004 the Asian Studies WWW VL had a Google search engine (www.google.com) rank no.1 out of the 4,030,000 'asian studies' web pages recorded worldwide. The no.1 Google rank has been systematically attained by the AS WWW VL every month in the course of the past 4 years. Pacific Studies WWW Virtual Library http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVL-PacificStudies.html Est. 21 Jun 1995. In January 2004 the Pacific Studies WWW VL had a Google search engine (www.google.com) rank no.1 out of the 4,160,000 'pacific studies' web pages recorded worldwide. The no.1 Google rank has been systematically attained by the PS WWW VL every monthin the course of the past 3 years. Indonesia WWW Virtual Library http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/IndonPages/WWWVL-Indonesia.html Est. 03 Dec 1995. Papua New Guinea WWW Virtual Library http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/Index.htm Est. 01 Jun 1996. Congratulations Dr T. Matthew Ciolek for an outstanding job!!! posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:06 AM ACRL's Effective Practices Clearinghouse http://www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/effectiveprac/effectivepractices.htm ACRL is frequently looked to and contacted for descriptions of effective practices in the academic library profession. The goal of the Effective Practices Clearinghouse is to recognize effective practices in academic libraries in areas such as programs, services, facilities, technology, and initiatives and share them so they are accessible to academic librarians and the entire education community. If your library has an effective practice to share, ACRL encourages you to complete and submit an Effective Practices Form. Your practice will be peer reviewed and considered for this site. The Effective Practices Clearinghouse is a work in progress. posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:01 AM HLAS Online - Handbook of Latin American Studies - Library of Congress http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas/ The Handbook is a bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars. Edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the multidisciplinary Handbook alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities. Each year, more than 130 academics from around the world choose over 5,000 works for inclusion in the Handbook. Continuously published since 1936, the Handbook offers Latin Americanists an essential guide to available resources. More information on the history of the Handbook can be found in a paper written for the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) annual meeting in 1996. With the introduction of HLAS Online, the Handbook becomes available in three formats: the original print volumes, now published by the University of Texas Press; the CD-ROM produced and updated by the Fundación Histórica TAVERA (Madrid, Spain); and this Internet version. Updated frequently, HLAS Online provides rapid, comprehensive access to future, current, and retrospective volumes of the Handbook. posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:00 AM Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Electronic Guide to the Best Mexican Law Websites http://www.llrx.com/features/mexlaw.htm Mexican law expert Prof. Jorge A. Vargas's comprehensive guide will be a tremendous asset to researchers, as it includes documentation and commentary on Mexican law information in English and Spanish, federal statutes and codes, the constitution, international treatises and conventions, the federal government, the state governments, and the legal background and history of Mexico. posted by Marcus Zillman | 2:54 PM Computer Security Incident Handling Guide http://www.csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-61/sp800-61.pdf The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released Special Publication 800-61, Computer Security Incident Handling Guide. NIST was directed to publish the guide by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002. The Computer Security Guide is available as a 148 page .pdf document. posted by Marcus Zillman | 1:35 PM Conducting Research Surveys via Email and the Web http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1480/ While many visitors to commercial websites may find themselves asked to take part in any number of marketing-type surveys, more and more scholars are attempting to use the web to create well-defined surveys to examine academic questions. This intriguing publication from the RAND Organization (conducted by Matthias Schonlau, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr., and Marc N. Elliott) examines the validity of a number of claims, including the popularity of such online surveys due to their low cost and rapid return time. Within the document's 118-pages, the authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using email and the web to conduct research surveys, along with offering several practical suggestions for designing and implementing Internet surveys. The report consists of seven chapters (all of which may be downloaded separately), and three appendices, including an extended literature review. [The Scout Report - January 16, 2004] posted by Marcus Zillman | 1:25 PM Eurekster - The Only Search Engine with Personalized Results http://www.eurekster.com/ Eurekster Inc. is a privately-held US company with offices in San Francisco and New Zealand. Eurekster is the only Internet search engine powered by social networking technologies - delivering results that matter most to users and their networks of friends and contacts. Eurekster continuously "learns" from the behavior of users and their social networks to deliver personalized search results and instant sharing of their popular Web destinations and searches. The service allows users to confidentially and privately share their knowledge and experiences with each other, simply by using Eurekster to search the Web and navigate to sites of their choosing. Eurekster relies on unique, patented Learning Search technology and patent pending processes that link search algorithms to social networks. posted by Marcus Zillman | 12:55 PM Finding People Resources and Sites http://www.FindingPeople.info Finding People is a Subject Tracer™ Information Blog developed and created by the Virtual Private Library™. It is designed to bring together the latest resources and sources on finding people. We always welcome suggestions of additional sites and resources to be added to this comprehensive listing and please submit by clicking here. This site has been developed and maintained by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A.. Additional links and resources by Marcus are available by clicking here. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:18 AM Tuesday, January 20, 2004 Informed Librarian http://www.InformedLibrarian.com/ I am very pleased to announce that we have received official word from The Informed Librarian that they have added our Awareness Watch™ Newsletter to the titles that they cover in each monthly issue of the Informed Librarian. We are very honored and will continue to offer the finest quality content in each of our monthly Awareness Watch Newsletters. Additional information as well as the current issue and archives of previous issues are available by visiting AwarenessWatch™ Newsletter website by clicking here. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:04 PM Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by the various readers. The site is a WikiWiki, meaning that anyone, you included, can edit any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears in every Wikipedia article except for a few protected pages. The project was started on January 15, 2001 and there are 194709 articles in English that are being worked on with many more articles being written in other languages. Every day hundreds of contributors from around the world make thousands of edits and create lots of new articles. All of the site's content is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the copyleft licensing ensures that the content will always remain freely distributable and reproducible. See copyrights for more information. posted by Marcus Zillman | 12:46 PM Legal Research Center http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/library/LRC2/LRCHomePage2.htm Their goal is for you to easily and quickly understand the legal process, search the Internet for legal materials, write a letter, fill out forms, or print a document. Because legal research can be complex and confusing, they have designed these materials with you in mind. Throughout this Web site, you can click on any highlighted and underlined word for a quick link to specific information. The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia and the West Virginia Library Commission are pleased to provide this valuable resource. [Virtual Chase 01-20-04] posted by Marcus Zillman | 10:29 AM Fact Check - Holding Politicians Accountable http://www.FactCheck.org/ A nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. They monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Their goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels. The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation. posted by Marcus Zillman | 10:18 AM SciDev.net http://www.SciDev.net/ The overall aim of the Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) is to enhance the provision of reliable and authoritative information on science- and technology-related issues that impact on the economic and social development of developing countries. Their goal is to ensure that both individuals and organisations in the developing world are better placed to make informed decisions on these issues. They seek to achieve this objective primarily through running a free-access website, but also by building regional networks of individuals and institutions who share their goals, and by organising capacity-building workshops and other events in the developing world. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:53 AM The RNase P Database http://jwbrown.mbio.ncsu.edu/rnasep/home.html The RNase P Database is a compilation of RNase P sequences, sequence alignments, secondary structures, three-dimensional models, and accessory information. The database primarily contains information on the bacterial and archaeal enzymes, focusing on the RNA subunit. Some information is also included on the eucaryal and organellar RNase P RNAs. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:05 AM Monday, January 19, 2004 URLWire Features Internet MiniGuides 2004 http://www.urlwire.com/news/011904.html Eric Ward's long running and excellent URLWire lists some of the latest and current happenings on the Internet. In todays issue/alert we are very proud to announce that he did a feature on my nine 2004 Internet MiniGuides that maybe found at the above URL. posted by Marcus Zillman | 2:30 PM This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (January 19, 2004 V2N3) is dedicated to a number of selected sources for current awareness including staying current and keeping up to date. Click on the below audblog link to hear an audio describing these sources that I have just recently posted to my personal blog and added to my eCurrentAwareness Resources 2004 Report. These resources are available from the following URL: Staying Current and Keeping Up To Date Sources http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_zillman_archive.html#107452096299296193 audblog audio post
posted by Marcus Zillman | 1:38 PM In researching my blog's stats I discovered an excellent anonymous page that linked my site as eCurrent and I am listing all the other sites that were listed. It was an excellent mini source for staying current and up to date: Linx http://www.newslinx.com Buzz http://www.researchbuzz.com Lii http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/internetindex Neat http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html Scout http://scout.wisc.edu/ Blogdex http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/ Shelf http://resourceshelf.freepint.com Site http://www.workingfaster.com/sitelines AmericanLibs http://www.ala.org/alonline/index.html LIS http://www.lisnews.com LJ http://www.libraryjournal.com ElD http://www.eldoradolibrary.org/thisweek.htm Gnu http://www.sls.lib.il.us/reference/new InfoT http://www.infotoday.com SearchDay http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/index.html TVC http://www.virtualchase.com/tvcalert/index.html eCurrent http://www.zillman.blogspot.com Net http://www.librarian.net Shifted http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com Stuff http://www.librarystuff.net Daily http://www.tk421.net/librarylink Web4 http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib These of course are just a few of the many many resources that are available on the Internet to stay current and to keep up to date. If you know of someone or if you are really interested in staying current and up to date you might be interested in visiting my eCurrent Awareness Resources 2004 Report page that offers a 37 page report with hundreds of relevant and competent resources for staying current and keeping up to date. posted by Marcus Zillman | 9:02 AM Paradign Online Writing Assistant http://www.powa.org/ Paradigm is an interactive, menu-driven, online writer's guide and handbook written in HTML and distributed freely over the WWW. It uses hypertext structure to create a web of links and text frames that you can navigate quickly and easily by clicking your desired choice. Paradigm is intended to be useful for all writers, from inexperienced to advanced. To get the most from the website, take time to explore its components. Choose a topic that interests you, read the discussion, do an activity, move to another topic. Sense how the topics relate to your own needs and interests. Some writers, for instance, will want to practice Editing, while others will be more interested in Discovering ideas. posted by Marcus Zillman | 8:16 AM NCBI Handbook http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?call=bv.View..ShowTOC&rid=handbook.TOC&depth=2k This NCBI Handbook (in PDF-format) is intended for power-users of the NCBI databases. It includes relatively stable information about each resource. The text covers Databases, Data flow, Searching the Data, and User Support. Eleven chapters cover NCBI databases: 1. GenBank: The Nucleotide Sequence Database; 2. PubMed: The Bibliographic Database; 3. Macromolecular Structure Databases; 4. The Taxonomy Project; 5. The Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Database (dbSNP) of Nucleotide Sequence Variation; 6. The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO): A Gene Expression and Hybridization Repository; 7. Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM): A Directory of Human Genes and Genetic Disorders; 8. The NCBI BookShelf: Searchable Biomedical Books; 9. PubMed Central (PMC): An Archive for Literature from Life Sciences Journals; 10. The SKY/CGH Database for Spectral Karyotyping and Comparative Genomic Hybridization Data; 11. The Major Histocompatibility Complex Database, dbMHC data-flow, technical details and end-user tips for the varied collection of bioinformatics tools available from NCBI. Three chapters cover data flow to build these databases: 12. Sequin: A Sequence Submission and Editing Tool; 13. The Processing of Biological Sequence Data at NCBI; 14. Genome Assembly and Annotation Process. Eight chapters cover software tools for querying and linking the data: 15. The Entrez Search and Retrieval System; 16. The BLAST Sequence Analysis Tool; 17. LinkOut: Linking to External Resources from Entrez Databases; 18. The Reference Sequence (RefSeq) Project; 19. LocusLink: A Directory of Genes; 20. Using the Map Viewer to Explore Genomes; 21. UniGene: A Unified View of the Transcriptome; 22. The Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COGs) Database: Phylogenetic Classification of Proteins from Complete Genomes. There is a hypertext-version of 215 topics available at http://snipurl.com/3wqk posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM 2RSS.com http://www.2rss.com/ RSS feeds, RSS directory, RSS software, RSS scripts, RSS articles, RSS syndication, XML, RDF, news and more. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM MSR Netscan - Usenet Social Accounting Search Engine by Microsoft Research http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/ The Netscan System provides detailed reports on the activity of Usenet newsgroups, the authors who participate in them, and the conversation threads that emerge from their activity. Using the Netscan tool users can get reports about any newsgroup for any day, week, month, quarter, or year, since September 1999. Netscan data is updated monthly and can be used to: Find newsgroups where others share your unique interests. Monitor the health of newsgroups related to your interests and pursuits. Stay informed on current events and the latest trends. Locate sources for technical assistance and information. Examine troubling issues and hot topics not covered in product documentation. Track the participation of your favorite authors across Usenet newsgroups. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM PR Newswire's RSS (RDF Site Summary) Feed http://www.prnewswire.com/news/aboutrss/rss.shtml PR Newswire now has a RSS feed to it resources and it is located from the front page of their site. posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:50 AM Sunday, January 18, 2004 Intelligence Center http://www.intelligence-center.com/ An excellent resource for the latest economic intelligence online with related search and intelligent agents resources as well as resources for the invisible web. posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:26 PM Cost of Going Digital Up for Debate http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december03/connaway/12connaway.html In a study that compared the perceived costs to libraries of providing print and electronic materials, researchers found that librarians believe that labor, space requirements and material resources would be less costly in an all-digital library than in a paper library. However, those librarians expressed a wide range of views on exactly how much cheaper digital should be. Participants expressed some concern that higher salaries might be needed to attract and retain a more knowledgeable and skilled level of staff needed to effectively manage an all-digital library, thereby balancing out a substantial portion of the potential savings. Respondents also noted concerns related to the costs of managing both the digital and paper library simultaneously, which is the most common current scenario. The authors conclude that these uncertainties warrant the continued study of the resources needed to transition from a paper to a digital library. posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:20 PM Gateway Tools http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/online/gateways/portal The Center for Technology in Government offers guidance to government agencies on creating "electronic information access programs that are effective, manageable, and affordable. [Neat New Stuff, January 16, 2004] posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:10 PM The Top Science Stories of 2003 ScientificAmerican.com http://snipurl.com/3w08 "For some, this year in science may be remembered more for its disasters than its successes. On January 16 the space shuttle Columbia launched to great fanfare, only to fail tragically on re-entry 16 days later. Then came news of the mysterious and lethal disease known as SARS, which sparked worldwide panic. And a midsummer blackout stretching from Ontario to New York served as a vivid reminder of how dependent we are on a fragile power grid. Amid these calamities, however, a number of noteworthy achievements unfolded. China became the third nation to send people into space; paleontologists working in Ethiopia unearthed the oldest known members of our species; researchers applied virtual reality to colonoscopies and autopsies with stunning results. In addition, the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA and the centennial of powered flight served as springboards for reflection on the bigger picture of scientific progress." posted by Marcus Zillman | 3:03 PM Open Source Awards http://www.opensource.org/osa/ The Open Source Awards recognize excellence in the open-source community. There are Merit (Bronze), Special (Silver) and Grand Master (Gold) awards. For full details on the awards and the rules of eligibility, read our charter. For a list of past awardees, see the awards page. posted by Marcus Zillman | 2:38 PM Saturday, January 17, 2004 NSIR - Question Answering System http://tangra.si.umich.edu/clair/NSIR/NSIR.cgi NSIR is a Question Answering System being developed by CLAIR research group at the University of Michigan. posted by Marcus Zillman | 7:14 AM Just When You Thought Information Was Safe http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jan04/ebbinghouse.shtml The U.S. House of Representatives has before it an attempt to create a new type of intellectual property specifically for databases. Among the major concerns for libraries and other information providers to the "Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act" (H.R. 3261) are such questions as: Will performing interlibrary loans, preservation projects, circulating material, and/or creating bibliographies, or providing access to commercial and/or Internet databases violate its terms? Trouble is, there's no guidance as to what libraries, schools, and research and educational institutions can and cannot do with databases. The vagueness of the text and the lack of definition of terms used in the bill could lead to expensive lawsuits to gain judicial interpretations and limits on liability, according to opponents. The Association of Research Libraries says a key concern is "the fact that the legislation would create protection not only for databases, but for the facts contained therein. Such protection would be at odds with the U.S. Supreme Court's assertion in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co. (1991) and in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox (2003) that copyright protection does not extend to facts." posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:20 AM Web Stars: Best of the Web by Josh Taylor http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,113745,00.asp Where should you go for news, research, shopping, and more? We compare Goliaths of the Web to lesser-known upstarts--and discover some surprising results. The Web has been around long enough that even the most adventuresome surfer might end up in a rut, always using the same sites to get work done. So we put up the periscope to scan for the best newcomers and compared them to the Net's stalwarts. In each category, one site emerged as the Best Bet--but that shouldn't dissuade you from exploring the other contenders, all of which offer innovative and useful features you won't find anywhere else. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM Biocompare - Buyer's Guide for Life Scientists http://www.biocompare.com/index.asp Biocompare offers a site that gives a multitude of resources for the bio and life scientists and allows the comparison of various resources, products and services. I have just listed in my Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM The Australasian Journal of Combinatorics http://ajc.math.auckland.ac.nz/ The Combinatorial Mathematics Society of Australasia provides their first decade of their journal for free. The latest decade and a half is limited to tables of contents. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:00 AM Digital Libraries Magazine http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january04/01contents.html The January, 2004 Issue of Digital Libraries Magazine is now Online. posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:55 AM Friday, January 16, 2004 Articles, Abstracts, Documents, Papers, Reports, and Literature Resources 2004 - Internet MiniGuide by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. http://www.InternetMiniGuides.com/ http://academicresources.blogspot.com/ Articles, Abstracts, Documents, Papers, Reports, and Literature Resources 2004 - Internet MiniGuide has just been updated and is now available at the above URL for purchase and immediate download. This 55 page Internet MiniGuide has the following table of contents: Research Sources Reference Sources Search Engine Sources Directory and Database Sources Articles, Abstracts, Documents, Papers, Reports and Literature URLs Articles, Abstracts, Documents, Papers, Reports and Literature Bots Dissertations, Theses and Lectures Sources Technical Reports and Manuals Research Papers, Terms Papers and Essays My Internet MiniGuides now total nine and cover a wide variety of niched subject areas. My first miniguide was called Linkseries and listed all the gopher sites by selected topics for university reference libraries and was first published in 1993! posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:30 AM A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services By Martha L. Brogan - Digital Library Federation, Council on Library and Information Resources http://www.diglib.org/pubs/brogan/ http://www.diglib.org/pubs/brogan/brogan2003.pdf This 100-page report, commissioned by the DLF, provides an overview of a diverse set of more than thirty digital library aggregation services, organizes them into functional clusters, and then evaluates them more fully from the perspective of an informed user. Most of the services under review rely wholly or partially on the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI-PMH). Each service is annotated with its organizational affiliation, subject coverage, function, audience, status, and size. Critical issues surrounding each of these elements are presented in order to provide the reader with an appreciation of the nuances inherent in seemingly straightforward factual information, such as "audience" or "size." posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:29 AM World Internet Project http://www.worldinternetproject.net/ The originators of this project believe that the Internet (in whatever distribution system: PC, television, wireless or some yet to be developed system) will transform our social, political and economic lives. We further believe that the influence and importance of the Internet will dwarf that of the most important cultural influence of the past 50 years: television. Potentially the Internet represents change on the order of the industrial revolution or the printing press. Believing this, our Internet Project is designed to get in on the ground floor of that change and to watch and document what happens as households and nations acquire and use the Internet. Findings from the first UCLA World Internet Report. See the press release and charts: Press Release (.pdf 67kb) Charts and Slides (.ppt 361kb) posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:28 AM CC/PP Structure and Vocabularies 1.0 Is a W3C Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-CCPP-struct-vocab-20040115/ http://www.w3.org/2004/01/ccpp-pressrelease http://www.w3.org/2001/di/ The World Wide Web Consortium today released "Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies 1.0" as a W3C Recommendation. CC/PP 1.0 is a system for expressing device capabilities and user preferences using the Resource Description Framework (RDF). CC/PP guides the adaptation of content, making it easier to deliver Web content to devices. Read the press release and visit the Device Independence home page. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:20 AM W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee to Be Knighted by Queen Elizabeth http://www.w3.org/2003/12/timbl_knighted Buckingham Palace has announced that Queen Elizabeth II will make Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director, a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). UK Honours are available to all who give service in the United Kingdom. Mr. Berners-Lee, a British citizen, is being knighted in recognition of his services to the global development of the Internet through the invention of the World Wide Web. Please read the press release. Congratulations Tim!! posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM IBM's Web Fountain: Creating Computers that Are Not Glueless http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jan04/0104comp1.html Computers can manipulate vast amounts of data, without knowing what any of it actually means. Now a major breakthrough in the field of machine understanding could spell big business for its developer, IBM, as well as data miners, content providers, libraries and anyone else who relies on information. IBM's WebFountain is a huge collection of processors, routers and disk drives running a menagerie of software applications, all dedicated to one purpose: making sense of the churning ocean of information, opinion and falsehood that floods the Internet. WebFountain sucks in data like a search engine. Then its analysis engine sniffs out its own clues about a document's meaning and provides insight into what the search results mean in aggregate. WebFountain's most amazing trick: it converts unlabeled data into XML-labeled data. A variety of annotators, each specializing in a separate subject, scans each document looking for familiar references, and automatically adds XML tags when it spots them. Result: a uniform, structured format that can be searched and analyzed. In a few months, in partnership with online news company Factiva, IBM will launch a service to allow companies to track their reputations online: what journalists are reporting about them, which blogs have said what about them, even the latest buzz in chat rooms. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:10 AM My Expert Doctor http://www.myexpertdoctor.com/ Myexpertdoctor was created by Dr. Christopher Sciamanna, a Brown University physician who specializes in the use of computers to improve health care quality. Dr. Sciamanna has brought together a group of nationally recognized experts to help translate the most up-to-date guidelines into tools that patients can use to improve their care. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:05 AM Thursday, January 15, 2004 Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 - Internet MiniGuide by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. http://www.InternetMiniGuide.com/ http://educationresources.blogspot.com/ Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide has just been updated and is now available at the above URL for purchase and immediate download. This 43 page Internet MiniGuide has the following table of contents: Research Sources Reference Sources Search Engine Sources Directory and Database Sources Education Resources URLs Distance Learning Resources URLs Online Tutorials "I'm personally very impressed with the Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide since I finished 3 years of distance learning without any guide or guidance. The guide that Marcus has produced would have made my learning experience so much faster and less frustrating. As an ambassador to my University, I will recommend this guide to the Education and Distance Learning Deans, for their students to use as a resource. Amazing information!" Betsy Glass, Ph.D. uniquegenes.us My Internet MiniGuides now total nine and cover a wide variety of niched subject areas. My first miniguide was called Linkseries and listed all the gopher sites by selected topics for university reference libraries and was first published in 1993! posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:15 AM There have been several newly created and a number of updated web applications current news aggregators on the Internet. I have listed a number of the most competent resources below to use as one of the resources to aggregate current awareness news and happenings on the Internet: Columbia Newsblaster: Summarizing All the News on the Web http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster/ Gixo - Personalized Online News Service http://www.gixo.com/ Google™ News http://news.google.com/ Google™ News Alert http://www.google.com/newsalerts/ memigo - Cut Through the InfoGlut http://www.memigo.com/ Moreover Technologies http://w.moreover.com/ NewsInEssence: Web-based News Summarization http://www.newsinessence.com/nie.cgi NewsIsFree http://www.NewsIsFree.com/ NewsKnowledge http://NewsKnowledge.com/ NewsNow - Automatically Searching 15424 News Sources Every 5 Minutes http://www.newsnow.co.uk/ NewzSnap™ http://www.lobbynet.com/promo.htm RocketNews - Breaking News and WebLog Search Engine http://www.rocketnews.com/search/index.html Topix.net - News Organized By Topic and Location http://www.topix.net/ Yahoo News Front Page http://news.yahoo.com/ Let me know if you recommend any other current news aggregators and I will list them here as well. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:14 AM Topix.net http://www.topix.net A very comprehensive news aggregator organizing news by topic and location. We are observing a number of new news aggregators appearing on the scene that will allow us to redefine the method that we monitor and access current awareness news and happenings on the Internet....truly exciting times!! posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:13 AM YSearch - Y-DNA Public Database http://www.ysearch.org/ Much has happened since Y-DNA testing first became available commercially through Family Tree DNA in February of 2000. Many thousands of people have tested to find family connections as well as family origins. Since then, other labs have entered this market, and the number of tested individuals is growing as the use of DNA is becoming more and more accepted as an important tool for family research, enhancing traditional genealogy research methods. In order to allow people that have tested with the different companies to make their results available for comparison, Family Tree DNA is offering Ysearch as a free public service. We have added several tools that allow you to compare side-by-side different users - the YsearchCompare - as well as generate a Genetic Distance™ Report, and many other features. This has been added to Genealogy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:05 AM Software Repairs Itself On the Go http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/011404/Software_repairs_itself_on_the_go_011404.html Computer software has become more sophisticated and we've come to rely heavily on it. This is a problem because it's a challenge keeping complicated programs running. The emerging field of self-healing software aims to make programs take care of themselves. A tool that models data structures helps computers get the picture. [Technology Research News January 14/21, 2004] posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:59 AM Quantum Dice Debut http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/011404/Quantum_dice_debut_011404.html Einstein famously objected to quantum physics by saying that God does not play dice with the universe. The quantum world is filled with uncertainty, so much so that getting a quantum computer to generate random numbers would require an impractical amount of computing resources. A scheme for generating pseudo-random numbers, however, makes for practical quantum dice and could also play a key role in constructing quantum computers. [Technology Research News January 14/21, 2004] posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:59 AM Guidelines to Authors of Internet-Drafts http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt The IETF Secretariat has updated its procedures for processing expired Internet-Drafts. The updated procedures, which are presented below, can also be found in the document entitled "Guidelines to Authors of Internet-Drafts" . An Internet-Draft will expire exactly 185 days from the date that it is posted on the IETF Web site unless it is replaced by an updated version (in which case the clock will start all over again for the new version, and the old version will be removed from the Internet-Draft repositories), or unless it is under official review by the IESG (i.e., a request to publish it has been submitted). Specifically, when an Internet-Draft enters the "Publication Requested" state in the I-D Tracker, it will not be expired until its status is resolved (e.g., it is published as an RFC). I-D Tracker states not associated with a formal request to publish a document (e.g., "AD is Watching") will not prevent an Internet-Draft from expiring after 185 days. Internet-Drafts will not expire during the period surrounding an IETF Meeting when submission of updates to Internet-Drafts is suspended (i.e., between the cutoff date for submission of updated drafts, which is two weeks prior to an IETF Meeting, and the date that Internet-Draft submissions are once again being accepted). All Internet-Drafts scheduled to expire during this period will expire on the day that the Secretariat reopens Internet-Draft submissions. When an Internet-Draft expires, a "tombstone" file will be created that includes the filename and version number of the Internet-Draft that has expired. The filename of the tombstone file will be the same as that of the expired Internet-Draft with the version number increased by one. If a revised version of an expired Internet-Draft is submitted for posting, then the revised versionwill replace the tombstone file and will receive the same version number as that previously assigned to the tombstone file. Tombstone files will never expire and will always be available for reference unless they are replaced by updated versions of the subject Internet-Drafts. posted by Marcus Zillman | 4:55 AM |
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