Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Monday, May 31, 2004  

This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. May 31, 2004 V2N22 discusses the latest Subject Tracer™ Information Blog Data Mining Resources. Click on the below audio posting to hear an audio by Marcus P. Zillman on this latest Subject Tracer™. View this Subject Tracer™ Information Blog at:

Data Mining Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog
http://www.DataMiningResources.info/

this is an audio post - click to play

This research is powered by Subject Tracer Bots™ from the Virtual Private Library™. Isn't yours?

posted by Marcus | 4:30 AM
 

i-medicine.info: Diseases Database
http://www.diseasesdatabase.com/content.asp

From i-medicine.info, the Diseases Database provides a useful reference service for medical practitioners and researchers. The Database website offers a cross-referenced index and search portal that cover such topical areas as Symptoms and Signs, General Internal Medical Disorders, Drugs and Medications, Congenital and Inherited Disorders, and more. The Diseases Database index is modeled after a standard medical textbook, and "was inspired by the 'surgical sieve' classification and memory technique used as medical school..." The site contains dictionary type definitions for many items via links to the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System, A 'pre-loaded' multiple search engine inquiry page using all item synonyms, subject specific hyperlinks to web information resources for many items, and more. Links on the site also include: Tips for Searching, Database Content FAQ, Site Troubleshooting Tools, and a Feedback Page [From The NSDL Scout Report for the Life Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Progress Report On PDF Archiving Standard
http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/25986-1.html

The Federal Publishers Committee is hard at work developing an archiving version of Adobe's Portable Document Format and hopes to release a draft of the PDF/A standard early next year. Committee member Stephen Levenson says the plan is to have a final standard out by the end of 2005, which will be submitted to the International Organization for Standardization for approval as an international standard. The need for an archiving standard is clear, says Levenson. Because Adobe encourages organizations to use its PDF specifications to create their own software for use with PDF file, that customized software may introduce extra features or functionality that make it impossible for outsiders to access certain segments of a file. PDF/A will codify a stripped-down version of the PDF format that will be platform-neutral. PDF/A will standardize aspects of meta-tagging, color representation and multiple language support, and will also require that all fonts used in a document be embedded in the document itself. Once the PDF/A standard has been approved, the committee hopes that software vendors will incorporate it into their own PDF readers and generators. Levenson says he envisions PDF software that would include the PDF/A as a "save as" option, making it easy for users to create archive-ready documents.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Daily Whirl
http://www.dailywhirl.com/

Quick Loading Headlines From 100+ Legal News And Information Sites You Pick The Sites and They Snag The Headlines. This has been added to Directory Resources Subject Tracer Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

FindForward Search Engine
http://www.findforward.com

Philipp Lenssen, full time web developer from Germany, has created this search engine. Search results are delivered with the help of the Google Web API. Thumbnails are from Thumbshots.org. The search types include: normal search, get RSS, get Atom, Ask Question, All-Around, Weblog Newsfeed, Exclude Blogs, Questions, Global, Zip Town Country, Person Info, Thing, Search Grid, Chat Search, Image, Just Files, 1900-1950 and 1950-2000, Meta Search, Directory, Lucky First, Wildcard, and Randomize. Very interesting potential for a research search engine! This has been added to the tool section of Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Minnesota University Library Sponsors Campus Blogging
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA415382

Last month the University of Minnesota Library launched UThink, a program that offers free blogs to the university community, making UM among the first university libraries to become a "blogging center." UM says blogging is key to the library's mission, both for facilitating academic discourse and from a historical collection perspective. "We are not unique in using blogs in an academic environment, but we are unique in that we saw that the university libraries could lead the effort," says UM librarian Shane Nackenrud. "We are also excited about the potential that blogs hold to create communities of interest on campus. We can [combine] blogs based on department, college, major, research interest, or specific classes and bring people together who maybe would never have met if not for the system." Nackenrud says the UThink effort is currently staffed by two people -- Nackenrud and a programmer -- but that could increase if demand grows. The library has addressed the copyright issue by assigning all rights to blog content to its creators. A mechanism allows authors to license their content through a Creative Commons license.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Sunday, May 30, 2004  

Transit of Venus

1) Transit of Venus 2004
http://www.venustransit.ie/

2) The Venus Transit 2004
http://www.vt-2004.org/

3) Transit of Venus
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sunearthday/2004/index_vthome.htm

4) 2004 and 2012 Transits of Venus
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/transit/venus0412.html

5) Transit of Venus, June 8th, 2004
http://didaktik.physik.uni-essen.de/~backhaus/VenusProject.htm

6) Project Venus 2004
http://eclipse.astroinfo.org/transit/venus/project2004/

7) The Rarest Eclipse: Transit of Venus
http://www.exploratorium.com/venus/index.html

8) The 1882 Transit of Venus: Observations from Wellington, South Africa
http://www.saao.ac.za/~wpk/tov1882/tovwell.html

The Transit of Venus is similar to a solar eclipse, where -- from the perspective on Earth -- Venus passes in front of the Sun. This event does not happen very often. In fact, no one alive today has experienced this phenomenon, which will take place on June 8 and will be visible for most of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

First, the Armagh Planetarium created a great, expansive informational site all about the Transit of Venus (1). Users can find basic facts, observing information, histories of past transits, and much more. Next, the European Southern Observatory presents the VT-2004 project's aim to gain knowledge and encourage public interest in the event (2). Users can observe Venus's progression towards the transit with the daily images from April 17, 2004 to present news updates. Educators can discover transit-related activities and educational materials. The third site, created by NASA, discusses the details of the Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum and San Francisco's Exploratorium's live webcast of the Transit (3). The site supplies enjoyable, educational materials for students, educators, museums, scientists, and amateur astronomers. The next site, also created by NASA, provides an introduction to the Venus Transits that will take place June 2004 and 2012 (4). Visitors can find helpful figures and text about the geographic visibility of the events. The site offers an observer's handbook as well as a discussion about the predictions of the event. Next, Professor Backhaus presents a project where schools, amateur astronomers, and universities will collaborate to gather transit data and learn about observing (5). Users can discover the six parts of the project as well as learn how to participate in the worldwide endeavor. The sixth site also discusses a Venus Transit project (6). Endorsed by the Astronomical Association of Zurich, this project's goals are to process data collected by amateur astronomers by different observation methods, to act as a data exchange center, and to determine the astronomical unit. Next, the Exploratorium furnishes general information about the Transit, its history, how viewers observe it, what it looks like, and why it is an important event (7). Users can find out about the live webcast that will begin on June 7, 2004 from Athens, Greece. Educators can find student activities developed to integrate discussions into the classroom. Lastly, Willie Koorts, an employee at the South African Astronomical Observatory, recounts the observations of scientists in Africa of the last transit of Venus (8). The site contains many historical photographs along with informational diagrams and figures.[From The NSDL Scout Report for the Physical Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Vital Statistics of the United States (VSUS)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/vsus/vsus.htm


Annual reports that present detailed vital statistics data, including natality, mortality, marriage and divorce. These reports are available for download or as bound volumes in many large public and university libraries. This has been added to Statistics Resources Subject Tracer Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

BioethicsWeb
http://bioethicsweb.ac.uk/

BioethicsWeb offers free access to a searchable catalogue of Internet sites and resources covering biomedical ethics. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Protocol Online
http://www.protocol-online.org

Protocol Online is a database of research protocols in a variety of life science fields. It contains protocols contributed by worldwide researchers as well as links to web protocols hosted by worldwide research labs, biotech companies, personal web sites. The data is stored in a MySql relational database. Protocol Online also hosts discipline specific discussion forums and mailing lists, and provides a free PubMed search and alerting service. This site, created in June 1999, is maintained by Dr. Long-Cheng Li. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Bioinformatics.Net
http://www.Bioinformatics.Net

Bioinformatics.Net is an advertising-supported catalog of online biological sciences information, specializing in bioinformatics tools. It serves the needs of molecular biologists and other professionals involved in scientific research, including biotechnology and medicine. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

WIPO Newsletters
http://www.wipo.int/tools/en/mailing-lists/index.html

WIPO maintains an automated system which allows users to subscribe to e-mail notification of news and updates on WIPO's activities, services, events, publications and discussion groups. Specific lists are maintained for various areas of interest, with information on available language versions as well as the approximate frequency of notifications.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Saturday, May 29, 2004  

Interactive Health Tutorials
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/tutorial.html

These tutorials are interactive health education resources from the Patient Education Institute. Using animated graphics each tutorial explains a procedure or condition in easy-to-read language. You can also listen to the tutorial. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:30 AM
 

UC Digital Library Changing Scholarly Publication
http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=9357

In response to rising -- "out of control" -- costs of scholarly publications, the University of California Digital Library's eScholarship Repository (http://repositories.cdlib.org/) offers faculty a central online location for everything from technical reports to peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, says Catherine Candee, director of scholarly communication and publishing initiatives at UCDL. It provides university departments, centers and research units direct control over creation and dissemination of the full range of scholarly output, from pre-publication materials through journals and peer-reviewed series, and -- beginning in May 2004 - posting of legally available UC authors' commercially published articles. In addition to practical, day-to-day benefits and savings (in a little less than two years, the repository has seen almost 500,000 downloads of entire papers or articles), serendipitous benefits have surfaced. For example, the UCDL now boasts an infrastructure that allows administrators and faculty to focus on creating systemic change in the way authors and readers work. "We have technologies that allow broader, freer, more creative uses of text and data and we can begin to fashion badly needed services for the classroom, office and lab," says Candee. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Ideas for Online Publications: Lessons From Blogs, Other Signposts by Dan Froomkin
http://ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1085603014.php

The author of washingtonpost.com's White House Briefing column and deputy editor of niemanwatchdog.org shares his ideas on how this new medium must continue to evolve. He calls for a new round of conversations between online and print editors. Very interesting article and well worth the read ....

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

The Information Access Alliance
http://www.informationaccess.org/

The Information Access Alliance believes that a new standard of antitrust review should be adopted by state and federal antitrust enforcement agencies in examining merger transactions in the serials publishing industry. When reviewing proposed mergers, antitrust authorities should consider the decision-making process used by libraries – the primary customers of STM and legal serial publications – to make purchasing decisions. Only then will these mergers be subjected to the degree of scrutiny they deserve and adequate access be preserved.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

ConserveOnline
http://www.conserveonline.org/

ConserveOnline is a "one-stop" online, public library, created and maintained by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with other conservation organizations. The library makes conservation tools, techniques, and experience available to a broad community of
conservation practitioners. This site is intended to foster learning and collaboration, and provide information and support to anyone making conservation-related decisions, from the staff of conservation organizations to land managers at government agencies to local land trusts to private landowners. Through discussion groups and information sharing, ConserveOnline is an open forum for sharing successes and failures, and for connecting scientific research with field-based conservation practice. We welcome anyone with documents, data, maps, or images relevant to the science and practice of
conservation to make these resources publicly available through ConserveOnline, and to share their expertise through the discussion groups.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

TeAch-nology
http://www.teach-nology.com/sitemap/

TeAch-nology.com offers teachers FREE access to 21,000 lesson plans, 5,600 printable worksheets, over 200,000 reviewed web sites, 50+ teaching articles, 60 teaching themes, rubrics, educational games, teaching tips, advice from expert teachers, current education news, teacher downloads, web quests, and teacher tools for creating exciting classroom instruction. This has been added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Friday, May 28, 2004  



Data Mining Resources
http://www.DataMiningResources.info/

Data Mining Resources 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 an ongoing basis for data mining information. 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 is 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 | 4:30 AM
 

SpeechBot™ - Audio Search Using Speech Recognition
http://speechbot.research.compaq.com/


SpeechBot is a search engine for audio & video content that is hosted and played from other websites (listed below). Note: Transcripts of the content based on speech recognition are not exact. SpeechBot currently indexes 17517 hours of content from a selected list of sites. This has been adeed to Deep Web Research Informatioon Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:27 AM
 

Small World Networks Key To Memory by Philip Cohen
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995012

"If you recall this sentence a few seconds from now, you can thank a simple network of neurons for the experience. That is the conclusions of researchers who have built a computer model that can reproduce an important aspect of short-term memory. The key, they say, is that the neurons form a 'small world' network. Small-world networks are surprisingly common. Human social networks, for example, famously connect any two people on Earth - or any actor to Kevin Bacon - in six steps or less. ... 'The philosophical conclusion is that connectivity matters,' says [Northwestern University] team member Sara Solla. 'Our model uses only a simple caricature of neurons, yet this network shows this working memory-like behaviour.' ... They found that when 10 to 20 per cent of the neurons participated in short cuts, the network formed self-sustaining loops of activity."

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Web English Teacher
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/sitemap.html

Web English Teacher presents the best of K-12 English/Language Arts teaching resources: lesson plans, WebQuests, videos, biography, e-texts, criticism, jokes, puzzles, and classroom activities. At Web English Teacher educators [and parents/students/families!] can take advantage of online technology to share ideas and to benefit from the work of others. Beginning teachers can find guidance; experienced teachers can find inspiration. Think of it as the faculty library and faculty workroom on a global scale. This will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

DataSpace
http://www.dataspaceweb.org/

DataSpace is a web services based infrastructure for exploring, analyzing, and mining remote and distributed data. This site describes DataSpace protocols, DataSpace applications, and open source DataSpace servers and clients. DataSpace applications employ a protocol for working with remote and distributed data called the DataSpace Transfer Protocol or DSTP. DSTP simplifies working with data by providing direct support for common operations, such as working with attributes, keys and metadata. This has been added to Data Mining Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Images Canada
http://www.imagescanada.ca

Images Canada provides central search access to the thousands of images held on the websites of participating Canadian cultural institutions. Through Images Canada, you can find images of the Canadian events, people, places and things that make up our collective heritage. You can search across all collections from virtually every page on the site by typing in a keyword in the search box at the top right hand corner of each page. If you would like to refine your search, try the Advanced Search feature. Search Help is also available. If you are looking for search ideas, try one of our Image Trails or browse through the Photo Essays.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Thursday, May 27, 2004  

AwarenessWatch™ Newsletter V2N6 June 2004
http://virtualprivatelibrary.blogspot.com/Awareness Watch V2N6.pdf
Awareness Watch™ Newsletter
http://www.AwarenessWatch.com/

The June 2004 V2N6 Awareness Watch™ Newsletter is available as a 28 page .pdf document (518KB) from the above URL. The Awareness Watch Featured Report this month covers sources for Internet Demographics and Statistics Resources freely available over the Internet. The Awareness Watch Spotters cover many excellent and newly released current awareness and research sources as well as the latest identified Internet happenings. Also included is a special report on Online Social Networks. The book review highlights Internet Research Annual offering a selection of the best work presented at the first three conferences of the Association of Internet Researchers, and provides a useful overview of the cutting-edge in Internet studies. Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs have been updated with three new subjects: Data Mining Resources, Financial Sources, and Reference Resources.

posted by Marcus | 1:31 PM
 

June 2004 Zillman Column - Healthcare Resources on the Internet
http://virtualprivatelibrary.blogspot.com/Healthcare Resources.pdf
http://www.zillmancolumns.com/

The June 2004 Zillman Column is now available and is titled Healthcare Resources on the Internet. This June 2004 Zillman Column is a comprehensive listing of online healthcare search engines and subject guides currently available on the Internet. An excellent 15 page resource of all the best healthcare search engines and indices available on the Internet. Download this free .pdf document today and stay current in the ever changing healthcare field!

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

eBook Information and Resources
http://12.108.175.91/ebookweb/links

A comprehensive and constantly updated set of links and resources to eBook Information. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Mini-Tutorial for Interpreting Journal Citations in Print and Online Indexes
http://www.umsl.edu/services/libteach/cites/start_cites_tut.html

A Web-based mini-tutorial has been created for interpreting journal citations in print and online indexes. Since indexes have their own citation styles the tutorial does not attempt the impossible task of teaching them all. Rather, the tutorial is a general introduction to journal citations emphasizing that they are concise and segmented. Special attention is given to the variety of abbreviations that might appear in journal citations. These can include author names, journal titles, or references to article features such as bibliographies, illustrations, etc. Individuals who have little understanding about what a citation in an index represents (whether print or online) will hopefully come back from the tutorial with a clearer idea. The tutorial is modularized and interactive. It was made with HTML and Javascript so no plug-ins are needed to run it. This has been added to Research Resources and Student Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

id21
http://www.id21.org/

id21 is a research reporting service that aims to be part of the process of putting international development policy into practice. By producing summaries of the most recent UK-resourced development research, id21 is increasing the communication of research findings and policy recommendations to policy-makers and development practitioners worldwide. Online, by email, in print and through the media, id21 showcases recent research findings and policy lessons on major development issues.

id21 currently has four thematic dissemination programmes: Society & Economy, Health, Education and Urban Poverty although its aim is to provide a representative selection of development research across the sectors. The selection process is guided by academic advisors and all entries are seen and approved by research authors. Source materials include peer-reviewed publications, conference and working papers and other 'grey' or pre-publication materials. Work that is over two years old, literature reviews, highly theoretical studies or institutional policy or position statements are normally excluded. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

How Americans Get in Touch With Government - A New Pew Report
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=127

The drive by public agencies to provide information and services on the Internet opens up a way for Americans to contact government that was not available a decade ago. This report takes stock of how e-government is faring by placing e-gov in the context of the other ways people get in touch with government, such as telephone calls, in-person visits, and letters. It then assesses whether different means of contact – or other factors – are connected to the rates of success and satisfaction that users report when they reach out to government. This comparative look at how Americans get hold government reveals the benefits and limits of e-government at its current stage of evolution.

The benefits involve expanded information flows between governments and citizens. In addition, many citizens say the Internet helps in conducting their business with government. Americans with Internet access are much more likely to contact the government than non-Internet users, showing that Internet users have strongly embraced a new communications medium to contact government. The conveniently available information offered at government Web sites makes it easier for Americans to conduct their business with government by whatever means they choose. The ease of email makes it possible for citizens to fire off a missive to express a view about policy or highlight a problem with neighborhood garbage pickup. The upshot is that Internet users say that e-gov improves their relationship with government. It is important to note, however, that there is no independent effect of Internet use on the chances of success with government.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=214

Journalists are unhappy with the way things are going in their profession these days. Many give poor grades to the coverage offered by the types of media that serve most Americans: daily newspapers, local TV, network TV news and cable news outlets. In fact, despite recent scandals at the New York Times and USA Today, only national newspapers ­ and the websites of national news organizations ­ receive good performance grades from the journalistic ranks. Roughly half of journalists at national media outlets (51%), and about as many from local media (46%), believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction, as significant majorities of journalists have come to believe that increased bottom line pressure is "seriously hurting" the quality of news coverage. This is the view of 66% of national news people and 57% of the local journalists questioned in this survey.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Wednesday, May 26, 2004  

SocialGrid
http://www.socialgrid.com/

SocialGrid is a free online dating service and decentralized social networking community that helps people meet through Google. SocialGrid can help you find your “perfect match” and extend your social network by making it possible for you to use Google to search throughout the Internet for people with similar interests, goals, desirable traits and characteristics. Discover a whole new way to “Google People”. This has been added to the Online Social Network posting as mention in my Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet V2N18 May 3, 2004.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

EDGAR Online Offers XBRL for Financial Information
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd040524.shtml

EDGAR Online, Inc. announced that it has completed a conversion and now offers all U.S. public company financial statements in a new importable format called eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an open specification that uses XML-based data tags to aid financial data interchange. One of the first financial services companies to make use of XBRL, EDGAR Online is also offering users for the first time and at no cost a limited number of real-time public company financial statements directly downloaded into Microsoft Excel 2003 worksheets.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

PNAS Introduces Open Access Publishing Option
http://www.pnas.org/

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) now offers an open access publishing option. PNAS authors may opt to pay a $1000 surcharge to make their articles available for free via PNAS Online (www.pnas.org) and PubMed Central (www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov) immediately upon publication. PNAS will offer this open access option as an experiment until December 31, 2005. PNAS will then continue to move toward an author-pays open access model, maintain the option in the same or modified form, or discontinue it. By introducing this option, PNAS strengthens its commitment to making the scientific literature more freely available than ever before, and hopes that its support of open access will encourage other scientific publishers to follow suit. PNAS will evaluate author participation and the financial impact of the open access option on PNAS revenue.

"The benefits to science of unfettered access to the literature are obvious," says Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, PNAS Editor-in-Chief. "Open access publishing offers the immediate release of scientific results to everyone without the delay and cost of obtaining research articles through journal subscriptions. The challenge of open access is how to pay for it. This is particularly important for PNAS, which operates as a nonprofit, break-even operation and does not maintain contingency funds or capital reserves. PNAS is starting by experimenting with an open access option for authors. It is a compromise between open access for all articles and doing business as usual." The first open access article is by Yang and Purves (1), published online in PNAS Early Edition on May 19, 2004.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Getting a Handle on URNs by Glyn Moody
http://snipurl.com/6my9

It is extraordinary how in just over a decade Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) have entered everyday life to such an extent that they are now found practically everywhere - from the side of buses to the back of cornflake packets. But this universality tends to mask the fact that they suffer from a serious defect. Everyone has encountered the problem, which manifests itself as the dreaded "404 page not found" message. The trouble is that changes in site design, file directories and domain names can easily make a URL obsolete, with no means of automatically redirecting to the new Internet location (where it exists). What is needed is a standard way of permanently naming a digital resource similar to that provided by the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for analogue books. The solution is to move from URLs to URNs: Uniform Resource Names. The important thing about URNs is that they do not point directly to an Internet resource, but are rather a placeholder for the location and other metadata. This means that the URN does not need to change if the URL does: it is enough to update the redirection.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Online Business Networks
http://www.onlinebusinessnetworks.com/

Online Business Networks is your one-stop educational resource for learning about finding your next client, your next job, and your next commercial partner online. Their weekly online business networking sites and tips are available. This site is a guide to social network software, online communities, and other tools that help you leverage the internet to build more and better business relationships. This has been added to the Online Social Networks posting and is available by clicking here.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

BetterHumans
http://www.BetterHumans.com/

Aiming to connect people to the future so that they can create it, Betterhumans is an editorial production company that's dedicated to having the best information, analysis and opinion on the impact of advancing science and technology. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Tuesday, May 25, 2004  

Speech: Current Happenings on the Internet: Blogs, Bots and News Aggregators by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A.

Rotary Club of South Miami
http://www.SouthMiamiRotary.org/

Presentation Sources:

Bots, Blogs and News Aggregators by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A.
http://BotsBlogsPresentation.Blogspot.com

Searching the Internet - Online Streaming Video Tutorial
http://www.SearchingTheInternet.info

Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A., Executive Director of the Virtual Private Library™, Internet expert, author, speaker, consultant and creator/founder of BotSpot.com will be speaking on the latest happenings on the Internet with emphasis on the growing areas of bots and intelligent agents, blogs (weblogs), and news aggregators. Mr. Zillman will be showing these new resources live on the Internet and how they will relate to helping you search and find the information you require for both personal and academic research. His presentations are designed both for the “newbie” to Internet searching as well as the seasoned “Internaut”. The Internet continues to change at a record pace, and discovering the latest tools to make your Internet search both easy and competent is the goal of this presentation. Will eMail soon be replaced by RSS and news aggregators? Are blogs, currently the fastest growing area of the Internet, a fad or will they change the entire Internet landscape? These and other questions will be discussed during this presentation by one of the Internet’s pioneers and bot and artificial intelligence experts, Marcus P. Zillman. His latest links and resources are available by clicking here.

Time: 12:15pm

Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Location: Holiday Inn, University of Miami, 1350 South Dixie Highway, Coral Gables, FL 33146

posted by Marcus | 5:00 PM
 

Universe Measured: We're 156 Billion Light-years Wide by Robert Roy Britt
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html

If you've ever wondered how big the universe is, you're not alone. Astronomers have long pondered this, too, and they've had a hard time figuring it out. Now an estimate has been made, and it’s a whopper. The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide. In the new study, researchers examined primordial radiation imprinted on the cosmos. Among their conclusions is that it is less likely that there is some crazy cosmic "hall of mirrors" that would cause one object to be visible in two locations. And they've ruled out the idea that we could peer deep into space and time and see our own planet in its youth. This has been added to Astronomy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Google Guide
http://www.googleguide.com

Nancy Blachman, co-author of How to Do Everything with Google, offers this detailed guide to searching Google. Novice and adept searchers alike will learn something new. My favorite section--Using Search Operators--unveils several undocumented search qualifiers as well as those used exclusively by Google specialty engines. Take heed of the author's warning, though; "Google may change how undocumented operators work or eliminate them completely." [TVC Alert, 24 May 2004]

This has been added to Bot Research Subject Tracer Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Digital Collections and the Management of Knowledge: Renaissance Emblem Literature as a Case Study for the Digitization of Rare Texts and Images
http://www.digicult.info/pages/special.php

A special Issue of DigiCULT on the digitization of emblem books. The twelve articles by distinguished experts stem from the working conference on emblem digitization held in September 2003 at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany. In this volume readers will find valuable information as well as encouragement for their own projects in digitizing cultural heritage resources and digitally enhanced scholarship.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Free Whitepapers on Publishing Technologies and Techniques
http://www.travelthepath.com/HTML/whitepapers.shtml

Free whitepaper on the benefits of structured document publishing and XML. Also available a free whitepaper on indexing methodologies. This whitepaper includes information on evaluating your indexes as well as instructions for designing index entries.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Search Web Services
http://www.SearchWebServices.com/

A comprehensive site for the latest sources and resources on web applications.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Monday, May 24, 2004  

This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. May 24, 2004 V2N21 discusses the latest updates to the Research Browsers posting. Click on the below audio posting to hear an audio by Marcus P. Zillman on this latest update. View the original Research Browser posting with the latest updates at:

Research Browser Posting with Updates
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_zillman_archive.html#106241931557183353
this is an audio post - click to play

This research is powered by Subject Tracer Bots™ from the Virtual Private Library™. Isn't yours?

posted by Marcus | 9:20 AM
 

Super Science Fair Projects: Complete Guide to Science Fair Projects, Topics and Experiments
http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com/

Today your teacher announced that your school is going to have a science fair and students are responsible for exhibiting their projects. What do you feel? Enthusiastic? Despondent? Dreadful? Fearful? Excited?" This statement opens the Super Science Fair Projects site. Actually, whether student or parent, science fair projects, while great ways to get students actively involved in learning the scientific method and problem solving, can be tough assignments. This site may help you with one of the hardest parts: coming up with an idea. The site does a great job of walking the visitor through the steps needed to plan and implement a project, from Choosing a Topic, the Scientific Method, and writing the Project Report. There are even tips on displaying your project, rehearsing, winning over judges, and what to expect the day of the fair. This is definitely a great tool to tap into when planning a science fair project.[From The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Retail eCommerce Sales in First Quarter 2004 Were 15.5 Billion - Up 28.1 Percent from First Quarter 2003 - Census Bureau Reports
http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/current.html

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2004, not adjusted for seasonal, holiday, and trading-day differences, was $15.5 billion, an increase of 28.1 percent (±2.9%) from the first quarter of 2003. Total retail sales for the first quarter of 2004 were estimated at $834.8 billion, an increase of 8.8 percent (±0.6%) from the same period a year ago. The first quarter 2004 e-commerce estimate decreased 11.4 percent (±1.9%) from the fourth quarter of 2003 while total retail sales decreased 8.5 percent (±0.3%) from the prior quarter. E-commerce sales in the first quarter of 2004 accounted for 1.9 percent of total sales, while in the first quarter of 2003 e-commerce sales were 1.6 percent of total sales. In the fourth quarter of 2003, e-commerce sales were also 1.9 percent of total sales.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

On Demand Network
http://www.ondemand-network.com/

From Napster to Cisco offering self-healing network technology to Pop Idol, the show that harnessed the public for both supply and demand, the era of ‘biological business’ is upon us. The application of the science of self-organising systems to achieve business models and technology environments that are naturally adaptive because they are designed from the formulas offered to us by nature itself.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Object Management Group™ (OMG™)
http://www.omg.org/

Founded in April 1989 by eleven companies, the Object Management Group™ (OMG™) began independent operations as a not-for-profit corporation. Through the OMG's commitment to developing technically excellent, commercially viable and vendor independent specifications for the software industry, the consortium now includes approximately 800 members. The OMG is moving forward in establishing the Model Driven Architecture ™ as the "Architecture of Choice for a Connected World" ™ through its worldwide standard specifications including CORBA ®, CORBA/IIOP™, the UML™, XMI™, MOF™, Object Services, Internet Facilities and Domain Interface specifications. The OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA with a subsidiary in Japan. The OMG has international marketing offices in Bahrain, Brazil, Germany, India and the UK, along with a government representative in Washington, D.C.

The OMG was formed to create a component-based software marketplace by accelerating the introduction of standardized object software. The organization's charter includes the establishment of industry guidelines and detailed object management specifications to provide a common framework for application development. Conformance to these specifications will make it possible to develop a heterogeneous computing environment across all major hardware platforms and operating systems. Implementations of OMG specifications can be found on many operating systems across the world today.

The OMG's series of specifications detail the necessary standard interfaces for Distributed Object Computing. Its widely popular Internet protocol IIOP (Internet Inter-ORB Protocol) is being used as the infrastructure for hundreds of technology companies. OMG specifications are used worldwide to develop and deploy distributed applications for vertical markets, including Manufacturing, Finance, Telecoms, Electronic Commerce, Real-time systems and Health Care.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

MightyHot - What Others Are Buying Online
http://www.MightyHot.com/

MightyHot — a website devoted to tracking the hottest products on the Internet! Want to know what books people are buying? We keep track of it for you, right here at MightyHot. We follow buying trends in the hottest categories in e-commerce, including books, DVDs, home electronics, and video games. Our site collects data several times a day, analyzes it, and generates Hot Lists that can help you make decisions about what to buy. See something interesting? Go ahead and click on the product name; you'll be taken to an online store where you can learn more, or even place an order. This has been added to ShoppingBots Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Sunday, May 23, 2004  

Bioinformatics Databases and Tools Guide
http://www.agr.kuleuven.ac.be/vakken/i287/bioinformatica.htm

This web site provides an extensive list of links to web resources that would be of interest to those looking for databases and tools in bioinformatics. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subjerct Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

University of Melbourne ePrints Repository (UMER)
http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au

The University of Melbourne ePrints Repository is an institutional server designed to load and provide free access to the research output of University of Melbourne academic staff. This will be added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Organic Eprints
http://www.orgprints.org

The Organic Eprints archive is a tool to further develop research in organic agriculture. The main objectives are to facilitate the communication of research papers and proposals, to improve the dissemination and impact of research findings, and to document the research effort. In accordance with these objectives the archive is
designed to facilitate international use and cooperation. The archive will accept many kinds of papers: preprints (pre-review), postprints (post-review) and reprints (published) of scientific papers, conference papers and posters, theses, reports, books and book chapters, magazine articles, web products, project descriptions, and other published or unpublished documents. This has been added to Agriculture Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

MetaScholar
http://www.metascholar.org

The MetaScholar Initiative encompasses four projects that provide meta-information for scholars: useful information about scholarly information and special collections held by archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories. The MetaScholar Initiative is comprised of four projects: MetaArchive, AmericanSouth, MetaCombine, and Music of Social Change. This Initiative is creating new models for sharing meta-information and portal services for scholars in focused research areas. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

The Natural Language Software Registry
http://registry.dfki.de

The Natural Language Software Registry (NLSR) is a concise summary of the capabilities and sources of a large amount of natural language processing (NLP) software available to the NLP community. It comprises academic, commercial and proprietary software with specifications and terms on which it can be acquired clearly indicated. Software is organized into the following categories: Annotation Tools; Evaluation Tools; Language Resources; Multimedia; Multimodality; NLP Development Aid; Spoken Language; and, Written Language. Several hundred packages are included.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

LibDocs - Resources for Librarians
http://www.virtualref.com/_libdocs/

LibDocs is a growing database of documents on the Internet of interest to librarians. The project is growing and new documents will be added on a periodic basis. Emphasis is biased toward the interests of the creator, Christopher C. Brown. Thus, there is heavy emphasis on library technology. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Saturday, May 22, 2004  

The Verifier
http://www.virtualref.com/_verifier/

Use this guide to browse or search for verification tools that will help you verify bibliographic citations. This has been added to the tools section of the Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

The Open Video Digital Library
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december02/marchionini/12marchionini.html

"The purpose of the Open Video Project is to collect and make available a repository of digitized video content for the digital video, multimedia retrieval, digital library, and other research communities. Researchers can use the video to study a wide range of problems, such as tests of algorithms for automatic segmentation, summarization, and
creation of surrogates that describe video content; the development of face recognition algorithms; or creating and evaluating interfaces that display result sets from multimedia queries. Because researchers attempting to solve similar problems will have access to the same video content, the repository is also intended to be used as a test collection that will enable systems to be compared, similar to the way the TREC conferences are used for text retrieval." The project has demonstrated the efficacy of many technical processes for organizing, searching, and scaling video DLs. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

The State of the News Media 2004: An Annual Report on American Journalism
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/

This report profiles major journalism sectors such as newspapers, local television, radio, and ethnic media, and aggregates data regarding many of the pressing issues facing the news media. Covers issues such as station ownership, shrinking audiences,
journalistic standards, and the impact of new media technologies. Searchable. From the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "an institute affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism." [Copyright 2004 by Librarians' Index to the Internet, LII.]

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI)
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti

"SCETI, a fully integrated digital library, was created in 1996 to publish virtual facsimiles of rare books and manuscripts in the Penn Library's collections. Its ongoing mission is to make accessible to the global community of scholars and researchers primary source materials that would otherwise be difficult to access. The site is free and open to all in the interests of knowledge and learning." Collections include the following: Furness Shakespeare Library; Smith Chemistry Collection; Theodore Dreiser Web Sources; Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts; 19th Century American History; University of Pennsylvania Art Collection; Marian Anderson Photographs; Jewish Music Archive; and, Virtual Gallery Exhibits. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuides.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

NationMaster
http://www.NationMaster.com/

The Australian site takes material from the CIA World Factbook and other sources (all listed on the site) to generate material that allows users to compare countries based on many different statistics. Features information about specific countries, as well as tables on subjects ranging from agriculture to transportation. Searchable. Some material only available to subscribers. [Copyright 2004 by Librarians' Index to the Internet, LII.]

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Progress Report On National Digital Info Preservation Program
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0503/mgt-campbell-05-03-04.asp

Laura Campbell, associate librarian for strategic initiatives at the Library of Congress, says of her work spearheading the LC's collaborative National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, "It's the best job I ever had." Campbell and her colleagues are finishing up their review of 22 proposals from potential preservation partners and are working with experts to construct a technical architecture for the preservation process. Nearly 5 terabytes of digital works characterized as "at risk" have been collected so far. They include Web pages that document recent events, such as the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the ongoing war in Iraq. Librarians used to worry about preserving access to books and periodicals, says Campbell, but with most Web sites staying up an average of only 44 days, preserving access to them is far more complicated. In addition, the copyright issues surrounding long-term preservation of digital journals, books, and audio and video material have yet to be resolved. "There may be technological solutions that make the management of restricted material much easier," says Campbell. Because so much about digital preservation is yet unknown, Campbell says the library's strategy is to learn by doing and be prepared to make corrections along the way. She credits the many experts she consulted during the planning phase of the program with impressing upon her the need for continuing flexibility: "It helped us realize that we would always be learning and adjusting," says Campbell.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Friday, May 21, 2004  

FindAbility.org
http://www.FinfAbility.org/

This website is a selective, seriously incomplete, and perpetually evolving collection of links to people, software, organizations, and content related to findability. Findability refers to the quality of being locatable or navigable. At the item level, we can evaluate to what degree a particular object is easy to discover or locate. At the system level, we can analyze how well a physical or digital environment supports navigation and retrieval. Findability.org is owned and operated by Peter Morville. Peter is currently working on a new O'Reilly book on the subject of Ambient Findability.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Government's Fifty Greatest Endeavors
http://www.brook.edu/GS/CPS/50ge/50greatest.htm

This Brookings Institution site presents its compilation of fifty endeavors or problems which the federal government has attempted to solve during the last fifty years of the 20th century. There is a brief summary for each endeavor which includes a list of legislation dealing with the problem as well as bibliographic sources and web links.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Companies Browse the Past to Plan Their Future
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040509/BUSINESS06/405090320

As managing director of consumer products consulting firm NewProductWorks -- and custodian of "the collection" -- Marilyn Raymond is the keeper of the keys to a vast trove of consumer marketing knowledge that inspires pilgrimages by consumer products manufacturers eager to plumb the past for tomorrow's next great idea. The private collection is an extraordinary assortment of every new consumer food or health and beauty aid product introduced in North America since the early 1970s. With its 80,000 items housed in a former Ferrari dealership in Ann Arbor, Mich., the collection is a 30-year history of American business marketing ingenuity, providing evidence of both brilliant marketing ideas and spectacular flops. Remember Downeyflake's Toaster Eggs, or Gerber baby food for adults? Giants like Procter & Gamble and tiny mom-and-pop inventors all journey to Ann Arbor to view the collection, pick through it for ideas, investigate possible patent infringement, and aid their product research and development. Although the consulting firm can't predict whether a new product will work, it can provide examples of similar past products and explain why they succeeded or failed. "Ninety percent of it is timing," Raymond says. Plus, companies have to understand the American consumer psyche, she adds. For example, one failed product, Fish Nuggets, was marketed in round ice cream-type cartons. Consumers just couldn't stomach the fish and ice cream connection.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

MagPortal Categories - Current and Archived Magazine Articles by Category
http://magportal.com/sitemap.html#categories

A very comprehensive listing of current and archived magazine articles broken down into selected categories. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

List All People Not On Lists
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994961

KnowItAll, a search engine under development at the University of Washington and partially funded by DARPA and Google, trawls the Web for data and then collates it in the form of a list providing information that probably doesn't exist on any single Web page. The ultimate aim is to have KnowItAll answer questions such as "list all British scientists born before 1900." For any input noun (such as "scientists," "guitarists," etc.) the engine tries to find sentences on Web sites that contain that noun and looks for words that often appear after it. In this way it might find the phrases "scientists such as" and "scientists including," which it then feeds to 12 search engines and extracts the words that tend to follow (which are often scientists' names). KnowItAll then returns a long list of scientists' names, each one accompanied by its percentage probability of being correct, as measured by frequency of occurrence of the names on Web sites. Users will be able to choose the level of confidence they want in the data.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM
 

Outcome Based Evaluation
http://www.imls.gov/grants/current/crnt_obe.htm

The Institute of Museum and Library Studies presents information, resources, and links to resources on outcome-based and other formal program evaluation methods. Emphasis is on outcome-based evaluation materials of particular use to libraries and museums.

posted by Marcus | 3:55 AM


Thursday, May 20, 2004  

Coping with Windows
http://www.hps.com/~tpg/win/index.php

Coping with Windows - May 2004 by Terry Gliedt is an excellent paper discussing Security and Your Cable/DSL Modem, Installing XP, Virus Tools, Update XP, Closing the Barn Doors, Install Applications, Additional Scanner, Spyware, Staying Safe, and Safer Applications. Well worth the read and a bookmark in the current environment of worms, viruses and security patches! This has been added to AntiVirus Resources in Internet Hoaxes Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Kepler - A Digital Library For Building Communities
http://kepler.cs.odu.edu/

The purpose of Kepler is to give any user the ability to easily self-archive publications by means of an "archivelet": a self-contained, self-installing software system that functions as an Open Archives Initiative data provider. Kepler archivelets are designed to be easy to install, use and maintain. Kepler is a perfect solution for those that need to be OAI-PMH compliant, but do not have the resources for more complex OAI-PMH software installations.

In this web site we document and make code available from an NSF supported project to develop Kepler for communities that wish to tailor their publication and search services and enforce configurable standards. Our long-term vision is to provide tools and software for communities to easily deploy digital libraries that are customized for their needs, can be populated, managed, and are "open" for development of future services. This has been added to Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Data Visualization Interface Example
http://www.bml.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Demos/BMLwalker.html

A very good demo of data visualization from the Bio Motion Lab whose major interest is focused on questions concerning the biology and psychology of social recognition. The goal of their current work is to provide a solid basis for the description, analysis and synthesis of animate motion patterns. They want to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the information transmitted through biological motion, its perception and underlying neuronal mechanisms.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Computer Vulnerability-to-Worm Cycle Compressing Dramatically
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040518/185147_1.html
http://www.foundstone.com/

New Research from Foundstone Shows Vulnerability Exploitation Down to 10 Days. Foundstone Inc., experts in strategic security, today published an analysis of computer worm history revealing a potentially dangerous trend. The vulnerability-to-worm cycle has compressed from 288 days in 1999 to just 10 days in 2004, putting organizations and consumers at higher risk for attack. Foundstone's analysis centers on high profile worms released between 1999 and 2004, including: Melissa, Sadmind, Sonic, Bugbear, Code Red, Nimda, Spida, MS SQL Slammer, Slapper, Blaster, Witty and Sasser. Worms that took advantage of user interaction (e.g. executing attachments) and remotely controlled "bots" were reviewed, but not included in the trend report in order to focus on completely automated threats. This will be added to Security Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Rich Internet Application (RIA)
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=RichInternetApplication

A Rich Internet Application (or RIA) uses a proprietary client instead of the web browser as the front end for a Server Side software application program or MiddleWare. The result is a desktop-quality User Interface and application functionality. An RIA allows the website to provide services to visitors, but these should not be confused with Web Services or Service Oriented Architectures, which provide services to other application programs. The RIA depends on the new generation of browser development tools like Macromedia Flash, with its ScalableVectorGraphics?, or Microsoft's Avalon/XAML, or perhaps Mozilla XUL (XML-based User Interface Language).

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Wednesday, May 19, 2004  

Corpus Structure, Language Models, and Ad Hoc Information Retrieval by Oren Kurland and Lillian Lee
http://eprints.osti.gov/cgi-bin/dexpldcgi?qry1131250613;1

Abstract by Authors:
Most previous work on the recently developed language-modeling approach to information retrieval focuses on document-specific characteristics, and therefore does not take into account the structure of the surrounding corpus. We propose a novel algorithmic framework in which information provided by document-based language models is enhanced by the incorporation of information drawn from clusters of similar documents. Using this framework, we develop a suite of new algorithms. Even the simplest typically outperforms the standard language-modeling approach in precision and recall, and our new interpolation algorithm posts statistically significant improvements for both metrics over all three corpora tested.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Find Health News
http://www.FindHealthNews.com/

FindHealthNews.com offers breaking and acuumulated news articles on over 2,000 health topics. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

CompleteRSS
http://www.completerss.com/

CompleteRSS was started with one thing in mind - unlocking the enormous potential of RSS by making it easy for end-users and content publishers to find each other. We are dedicated to pushing RSS into the mainstream by making it well understood, easy-to-use, and supportive of the personal and business interests of the community. End-users that visit CompleteRSS quickly learn how to put RSS to work for them at work, home or school. They come back over and over again because it is easy to find new feeds and search for items of interest. End-users also appreciate access to enticing RSS feeds that some publishers make exclusively available through the site. CompleteRSS provides publishers with the best platform to launch and promote RSS-driven content to a broad demographic audience. The site's inviting appearance and ease-of-use makes CompleteRSS the first stop for anyone looking to evaluate, subscribe and search the latest and hottest feeds. Beyond a free directory listing, several promotional options are available to maximize exposure for any feed.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Explore Open Archives
http://opcit.eprints.org/explorearchives.shtml

Explore Open Archives - Core Metalist of Open Access Eprint Archives. The original, annotated version of this metalist appeared in the ARL Bimonthly Report, No. 227, April 2003. A truly excellent resource and metalist for exploring all open archives for knowledge discovery! This has been added to Knowledge Discovery Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Research Mapper
http://www.xrefer.com/research/index.jsp

xreferplus Research Maps enable you to quickly find information when you don't know exactly what to look for or want to expand your knowledge of a given area. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This has also been added to the my Research Browser listing posted here.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Project Euclid: Mathematics and Statistics Journals Online
http://projecteuclid.org/Dienst/UI/1.0/Home


"Project Euclid's mission is to advance scholarly communication in the field of theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics. Project Euclid is designed to address the unique needs of low-cost independent and society journals. Through a collaborative partnership arrangement, these publishers join forces and participate in an online presence with advanced functionality, without sacrificing their intellectual or economic independence or commitment to low subscription prices. Full-text searching, reference linking, interoperability through the Open Archives Initiative, and long-term retention of data are all important components of the project." Access to the contents of several dozen ejournals is provided. This has been added to Statistics Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Tuesday, May 18, 2004  

The National Academies Space Studies Board
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ssb/index.html

The National Academy of Sciences' "Space Studies Board (SSB) provides an independent, authoritative forum for information and advice on all aspects of space science and applications." Users can learn about the Board's many new projects including Preventing the Forward Contamination of Mars and the Astrophysical Context of Life. Students can learn about the Space Policy and the National Academies Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Internships. The website offers downloads of the Board's reports, Annual
Reports, and Space Science Bulletins. Users can find out about the Board's involvement in eight committees as a way of managing space research disciplines.[From The NSDL Scout Report for the Physical Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/] This has been added to Astronomy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

GISS: Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) presents its work in the prediction of climatic and atmospheric changes in the 21st century. Users can learn about GISS's many research projects in Global Climate Modeling, Planetary Atmospheres, Atmospheric Chemistry, and more. The website provides news releases of its work for the general public. Visitors can download many software packages including the latest GISS coupled atmosphere ocean model, called ModelE. Researchers can find a wide range of data sets of earth observations, climate forcing, global climate modeling, and radiation. The Publications link offers almost 1500 citations and abstracts as well as over four hundred online publications. Students can discover how to become involved with GISS's research activities. This site is also reviewed in the May 14, 2004 NSDL Physical Sciences Report.[From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/] This will be added to Astronomy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

International Economic Development Council
http://www.iedconline.org/

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), was created through the merger of existing economic development organizations, effectively creating the nation's largest association working in this realm of public policy. The IEDC's mission is "to provide leadership and excellence in economic development for our communities, members and partners to build economically strong, sustainable communities." While some of the online materials are available only to association members, there is a good deal of material that may be accessed by the general public. Through the online resource center, visitors may access such materials as the Economic Developer's Reference Guide (which provides an overview of such key topics as tourism, venture capital, and empowerment zones) and an overview of ongoing legislative matters that may impact the landscape of economic development. Finally, the site is rounded out by an excellent section dedicated to brownfields redevelopment, which includes a general manual of redevelopment techniques and links to external websites, such as those offered by the Environmental Protection Agency.>.[From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/] This will be added to International Trade Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Journal of Privacy Technology
http://www.jopt.org/

The Journal of Privacy Technology is a refereed online journal published by the Privacy Technology Center within the Institute for Software Research International, a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Journal is a forum for publication of current research in privacy technology. It will consider any material dealing primarily with the technological aspects of privacy or with the privacy aspects of technology, which may include analysis of the interaction between policy and technology or the technological implications of legal decisions. This has been added to Privacy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

OBBeC Magazine
http://obbec.com/

The focus of the OBBeC series is to highlight the latest technological breakthroughs of life sciences and healthcare technologies and bioinformatics, identifying the pivotal role that information and computational technologies play in such sectors. Through our detailed, cutting-edge editorials, news, hands-on technical advice and in-depth reviews and analysis of the latest life science and computing technologies, OBBeC attracts an audience with a remarkable diversity of industrial and academic backgrounds.

The OBBeC.com website will keep you up-to-date with the latest daily news relating to life science and computing technologies, in addition to monthly editorials, articles and reviews. Moreover, the website will contain an extensive list of several resources of other publications, books, events, courses and career opportunities, as well as readers views and opinions on current issues in life sciences, IT and bioinformatics. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Annual Reports
http://www.AnnualReports.com/

AnnualReports.Com is the most complete and up-to-date listing of Annual Reports online. We are Americas largest annual report service. Our directory is a free Internet service that will enable potential investors to review a company's annual report in an easy convenient manner. Presently, investors obtain information on a company or fund by contacting the investor relations department and requesting a copy to be sent via traditional mail or by visiting their corporate web site on the Internet. But if you're researching several companies at once, you can save time by getting free reports from AnnualReports.Com.

In today's around the clock society, investors need to be given the opportunity to obtain information instantly. With AnnualReports.Com we give our users this opportunity. Our web visitors will be able to log into our annual directory and review corporate information at their convenience. AnnualReports.Com is an easy site to use. Visitors are able to look for a company through 5 search criteria: alphabetically, by company name, by ticker symbol, by sector, or by industry. Once a company is found, it can be viewed in either HTML or PDF format. This has been added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Monday, May 17, 2004  

Latest Publications and Online Resources by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A.

The last few months have been extremely busy for me as I have been in the content creation mode. I have listed some of the freely available content that I have created. I also appreciate comments, suggestions and resources!

Searching the Internet White Paper
Includes 11 Page White Paper, 8 Page Spanish Translated White paper, 10 Minute Audio and five 4 minute segments Online Streaming Video
http://www.SearchingTheInternet.info/

Awareness Watch™ April 2004 V2N4 Newsletter (26 Pages)
Featured Report: Research Tools and Research Resources
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_zillman_archive.html#108026523689394364

Awareness Watch™ May 2004 V2N5 Newsletter (31 Pages)
Featured Report: Business Intelligence Resources
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_zillman_archive.html#108300829695869728

Zillman Column April 2004 Survey Resources on the Internet (9 Pages)
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_zillman_archive.html#108009550550657147

Zillman Column May 2004 eCommerce Resources on the Internet (9 Pages)
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_zillman_archive.html#108256858844754524

Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet Weekly Audblogs
http://www.ListenToMarcus.com/

Current Awareness Discovery Tools On the Internet White Paper
19 Pages) 6-23-04 Update
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_zillman_archive.html#107564288680988251

Using the Internet As a Dynamic Resource Tool for Knowledge Discovery White Paper
(16 Pages) 6-23-04 Update
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_zillman_archive.html#107564288680988251

LLRX: Deep Web Research Feature Article by Marcus P. Zillman including Audio
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_zillman_archive.html#108298511151250084

Robin Good Interview of Marcus P. Zillman: The Future Of News: The Digital Information Librarian
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_zillman_archive.html#108014993785312446

An Expert Helps You Search the Internet
http://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_zillman_archive.html#108017086604698130

The Hindu Subject Tracers™ Article
tp://zillman.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_zillman_archive.html#108067641111150178

Deep Web Research
Updated this Subject Tracer by adding two new sections:
1) Peer to Peer, File Sharing, Grid and Matrix Search Engines
2) Resources - Semantic Web Research
http://www.DeepWebResearch.info/

Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs
Currently 30 Subject Tracers and Growing! Available through:
Virtual Private Library
http://www.VirtualPrivateLibrary.com/

Latest Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs:

Outsourcing/Offshoring Information and Resources
http://www.OutsourcingOffshore.us

Agriculture Resources
http://www.Agriculture Resources.info/

Theology Resources
http://www.TheologyResources.info/

Financial Sources
http://www.FinancialSources.info/

Reference Resources
http://www.ReferenceResources.info/

Zillman Blog
This is where I post lastest resources for research and searching the Internet
http://www.Zillman.us

Upcoming June 2004 Zillman Column features healthcare resources (search engines and subject indexes) and V2N6 June 2004 Awareness Watch Newsletter featured report covers demographics and statistics resources on the Internet.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (May 17, 2004 V2N20) is dedicated to the latest Subject Tracer™ Information Blog Reference Resources. Click on the below audblog link to hear an audio by Marcus P. Zillman on this latest Subject Tracer™. Visit the Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog at:

Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog
http://www.RerferenceResources.info/

Powered by audblogaudblog audio postThis research is powered by Subject Tracer Bots™ from the Virtual Private Library™. Isn't yours?

posted by Marcus | 4:22 AM
 

Netiquette
http://www.albion.com/netiquette

The Netiquette Home Page provides a fulltext edition of Virginia Shea's book on the niceties and proper behavior to be used with others in the realms of cyberspace and email. An index is provided for the electronic book. Also, for users who want to know just the basics of netiquette, a short overview is presented, called the "Core Rules of Netiquette."

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Combinatorial Chemistry - The Information Portal
http://www.combichem.net/

Combichem.net provides comprehensive information on combinatorial chemistry including news, new products, upcoming symposia, published papers, journals, books, jobs, forums and suppliers.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Health Related Virtual Communities and Electronic Support Groups: Systematic Review of the Effects of Online Peer to Peer Interactions by Gunther Eysenbach, John Powell, Marina Englesakis, Carlos Rizo and Anita Stern
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/328/7449/1166

To compile and evaluate the evidence on the effects on health and social outcomes of computer based peer to peer communities and electronic self support groups, used by people to discuss health related issues remotely. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

References Related to the Internet & Psychology
http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~azy/refindx.htm

An excellent resource of references related to the Internet and Psychology created and maintained by Azy Barak, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, University of Haifa. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM


Sunday, May 16, 2004  

Reference Resources
http://www.ReferenceResources.info/

Reference Resurces 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 an ongoing basis for reference information. 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 is 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 | 4:25 AM
 

University of Canterbury: Biomathematics Research Centre
http://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/bio/index.html

Stationed at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the Biomathematics Research Centre addresses contemporary problems in biology using mathematical, statistical, and computer science applications. Examples of ongoing research projects at the Biomathematics Research Centre include: statistical applications in ecology and medicine, computational molecular biology and phylogenetics, and analysis of dynamic biological processes using differential equations. The Centre website offers information about faculty, future conferences and workshops, and post-graduate scholarships. The site also contains a list of related links, and lists of publications and annual reports from 1998-2003. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.[From The NSDL Scout Report for the Life Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Alan Turing - Thinking Up Computers By Andy Reinhardt
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_19/b3882029_mz072.htm

Alan Turing - Thinking Up Computers - The Cambridge University mathematician laid the foundation for the invention of software. As part of its anniversary celebration, BusinessWeek is presenting a series of weekly profiles for the greatest innovators of the past 75 years.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Open-Access Publishing: Creator or Destroyer of Wealth?
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/15.html

Marie Meyer, Managing Director of open-access publisher Vertilog, rejects the idea that an open-access publication is sustainable if a business can deliver what customers need or want, at a price that they are willing to pay. No, she says. Companies are sustainable in the long run only if they create economic value -- and simply generating revenues is not evidence of value creation. "If I set up a business selling £1 coins for 99p, it could easily generate revenue. How long I could afford to stay in business is another matter entirely." Criticizing those who have argued that the Internet changes everything, she says that open-access publishing models don't create new value and "could easily be ushering in a dot-com-style cycle of wealth destruction that will leave them -- and dozens of learned societies -- constantly scratching for funds, with nothing left over for funding innovation." (Nature 6 May 2004)

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Bibster
http://bibster.semanticweb.org/index.htm

Bibster introduces a system which assists researchers in managing, searching, and sharing bibliographic data in a peer-to-peer network. The advantage of the system is it provides the possibility to search on a distributed peer-to-peer network using Semantic Web technologies. It provides an easy way to share data with other researchers. A possible inquiry could be: I am searching for topics about peer-to-peer technologies. As a result Bibster returns bibliographic entries concerning peer-to-peer technologies. This has been added to Deep Web Research amd Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

What Do Intranet Searchers Want?
http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=140

Almost all of the information in an enterprise is unstructured data -- existing in the form of HTML pages, documents in proprietary formats, paper and media objects, etc. As a result, enterprise search differs from Internet search in several important ways. First, on the Internet a user usually seeks the "best" or most relevant document -- whereas on an intranet a searcher is often looking for some specific document that she or he has seen in the past. Second, the Internet reflects the collective voice of many authors -- whereas an intranet typically reflects the view of the organization it serves (and so intranet content is created to disseminate information rather than attract and hold the attention of casual searchers). A third difference is that an Internet search engine is controlled and managed by one organization as a service -- whereas enterprise search software is licensed to and deployed by a variety of organizations in diverse environments, and imposes varying hardware constraints, software platforms, bandwidth, firewalls, heterogeneous content repositories, security models, document formats, user communities, interfaces, and geographic distribution.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Saturday, May 15, 2004  

International Internet Preservation Consortium
http://netpreserve.org

The national libraries of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, The Library of Congress (USA) and the Internet Archive acknowledged the importance of international collaboration for preserving Internet content for future generations and therefore decided to form a consortium called the International Internet Preservation Consortium. The goals of the consortium are:

To enable the collection of a rich body of Internet content from around the world to be preserved in a way that it can be archived, secured and accessed over time.
To foster the development and use of common tools, techniques and standards that enable the creation of international archives.
To encourage and support national libraries everywhere to address Internet archiving and preservation.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Virtual Remote Control: Risk Management of Web Resources
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april04/mcgovern/04mcgovern.html

Numerous Web archiving projects exist, most premised on saving copies of sites. But digital preservationists know both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Internet Archive and other similar efforts. Web sites are vulnerable due to unstable URLs, poor site management, and hacker attacks. Unlike most Web preservation projects, Cornell University Library's Virtual Remote Control (VRC) initiative is based on monitoring Web sites over time, identifying and responding to detected risk as necessary, with capture as a last resort. Cornell is building a VRC toolbox of software for cultural heritage institutions to use in managing their Web resources. It's "Virtual" because the VRC approach uses Web tools to develop baseline data models representing essential features of selected sites that enable ongoing monitoring. It's "Remote" because the resources usually reside on remote servers, not owned or managed by the institution itself. "Control" means the monitoring organization may act to protect another organization's resources by agreement or implicit consent through notification and/or action. The VRC approach utilizes six stages of risk management: identification, classification, assessment, analysis and response/implementation. Though VRC monitoring relies primarily on metadata captured from target sites and is designed to predict risks to avoid loss, the option to capture full pages means that the last known version of sites may be cached, providing a safety net for failed or failing resources.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

FreeCache
http://www.archive.org/web/freecache.php

FreeCache is a system of cooperating caches to move large files of free content closer to users. FreeCache works by moving content "hot spots" on the web closer to users. This provides several advantages to various parties involved: Users get faster downloads, content providers pay less for Internet-bound traffic, and ISPs pay less for Internet-originating traffic. This has been added to Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Digital Reference Education Initiative (DREI)
http://drei.vrd.org/

The Digital Reference Education Initiative (DREI) seeks to bring together the collective expertise of practitioners, library educators, and digital reference software developers interested in issues of education and training in order to develop core competencies, and educational approaches to digital reference. DREI's main goal is to create an adaptable collection of core competencies, standards, tools, and training materials that may be used in various library and other information industry settings, and to provide access to these materials through this site. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

They Rule
http://www.TheyRule.net

They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations. This has been added to Reference Resources and Business Intelligence Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Virtual Learning Resources Center - Access to Quality Internet Reference and Information Sources
http://www.virtuallrc.com/

The Virtual Learning Resources Center facilitates students in their search for quality information for school and college academic projects. There are many quality sites on the Web that provide actual information or links to information covering a variety of subjects. Why not select the best of these and combine them into a single search engine, thereby assuring that the student will find only authorative "hits" as a result of her or his search? This is exactly what the Virtual LRC does by searching the following (and more!) excellent general information web sites with just one search: Infomine, Librarians' Index to the Internet, Galaxy Web Directory, My Virtual Reference Desk, Big Hub, Internet Public Library, Bibliomania, BUBL Information Service, Digital Librarian, Discovery School, Smithsonian, Suite101, InfoPlease.com, the LibrarySpot, the Awesome Library, and an increasing number of university and public library Internet subject guides. At the present time the Virtual LRC indexes approximately 5,000 quality information web pages, all selected by librarians and teachers. This has been added to Reference Resources, Student Research and Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Friday, May 14, 2004  

Scholars' Guide to the WWW
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/index.html

An excellent guide and directory to the world wide web for scholars prepared by Richard Jensen, Professor Emeritus of History, U of Illinois-Chicago. This has been added to Directory Resources and Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Scholarly Societies Project
http://library.uwaterloo.ca/society/

Facilitating access to information about scholarly societies across the world since 1994 including data on 3,881 scholarly societies and 3,615 websites. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

E-STREAMS
http://www.e-streams.com/

E-STREAMS: Electronic reviews of Science & Technology References covering Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Science. E-STREAMS is a collaborative venture between H. Robert Malinowsky of the University of Illinois at Chicago and YBP Library Services. E-STREAMS is free of charge and is available only in electronic form. Current issues and a full archive of E-STREAMS are maintained on the e-streams.com web site. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Assessing Student Learning: Available Resources, C&RL News, May 2004
Vol. 65, No. 5 by Amy E. Mark

http://snipurl.com/6bsx

The national attention on assessment in education is here to stay. Teaching librarians are focusing on assessing student learning both to justify library instruction to stakeholders and to improve student learning by working toward graduating entire classes of information literate students from colleges and universities. Librarians have become increasingly involved in assessment culture while searching for methods to assess information literacy. This column of Internet resources on student learning assessment differs from a list of information literacy assessment Web sites by embracing the paradigm shift away from evaluation and moving toward the assessment of student learning. Librarians are transitioning from skill-based measurements of evaluations to outcomes-based assessment. By reviewing the resources below librarians also open themselves up to research outside of librarianship, cognizant that other disciplines have expertise with measurement and instruments from which we can borrow. This will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

BloomsburyMagazine.com - Research Centre
http://www.bloomsburymagazine.com/ARC/arc_home.asp

The Bloomsbury Research centre is a FREE on-line database of reference books. Over 17,000 entries are cross-referenced providing a wealth of information all linked and all fully indexed. Use our search engine to search on a wide range of subjects including literature, art, myth, human thought, quotations and a thesaurus or browse through each book at your leisure. The Research centre will continue to grow from the extensive list of reference books that Bloomsbury publish … so be sure to bookmark this page for all your reference needs. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Science.gov
http://www.Science.gov/

Science.gov is the gateway to reliable information about science and technology from across federal government organizations. Science.gov 2.0 offers groundbreaking, user- friendly technology enhancements to the interagency science portal. While retaining the content and advances originally unveiled in December 2002, now Version 2.0 will search 47 million pages of government R&D results and present the result to the patron in relevancy-ranked order. The new technology sorts through the government's vast reservoirs of research and rapidly returns information in an order more likely to meet patrons' needs. Science.gov contains reliable information resources selected by the agencies as their best science information. The Science.gov Web site provides the unique ability to search across 30 databases as well as across 1,700 Web sites. The World Wide Web consists of two parts: the Surface Web and the Deep Web. Popular search engines can access the Surface Web, but not the Deep Web. Among the resources in the Deep Web are the huge databases created and maintained by the science agencies. Using a "metasearch" technology, Science.gov 2.0 brings the 30 largest of these databases together and makes them searchable via a single query. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer ™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Thursday, May 13, 2004  

Theory Development for Organizational Platform of User Collaboration Innovation Community by Jen-Fang Lee and Chan Tzu-Ying
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/leechan2.pdf

Abstract:
This study proposes the concept of the “User Collaboration Innovation Community”, tries to understand this new phenomenon by conducting projects where the opening of source software is the subject of this analysis, borrows the observation variables and propositions adopted by Mintzberg on structures of the innovative organization, and summarizes the opinions of scholars of organizational economics, the relationship between property rights and organization performance. This study further infers a series of conceptual framework and propositions on the relationships among “organization structure, property right, and organization innovation” for “the organizational platform of the user collaboration innovation community”. We expect that the construction of this concept framework will function as a concrete description and presentation of the innovation model of the User Collaboration Innovation Community and will serve as a clear path to be followed for continuous research in th
e future.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Status Inertia: The Speed Imperative in the Attainment of Community Status by Daniel Stewart
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/stewart2.pdf

Abstract:
This paper examines the role of tenure in establishing social status within an online community of free software developers. As tenure increases, an actor's status becomes increasingly taken-for-granted, thus making it difficult for actors to generate mobility outside of their current social strata. The results of empirical analyses suggest that the broader community plays a major role in deciding one's social position-a judgment that can be made fairly quickly and decisively. Therefore, members of the community who desire high status should work quickly to establish a positive reputation or else run the risk of being cast into an inert low status social position.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Decoding the "Free/Open Source (F/OSS) Puzzle" - a Survey of Theretical and Empirical Contributions by Maria Alessandra Rossi
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/rossi.pdf

Abstract:
F/OSS software has been described by many as a puzzle. In the past five years, it has stimulated the curiosity of scholars in a variety of fields, including economics, law, psychology, anthropology and computer science, so that the number of contributions on the subject has increased exponentially. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of our understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The exercise suggests that what is puzzling about F/OSS is not so much the fact that people freely contribute to a good they make available to all, but rather the complexity of its institutional structure and its ability to organizationally evolve over time.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Appropriating the Commons: Firms in Open Source Software by Linus Dahlander
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/dahlander2.pdf

Abstract:
Firms in open source software (OSS) are active in a field encompassing all the characteristics of a public good, given the non-excludability and non-rivalry nature of OSS. As the case of OSS demonstrates, the fact that many important inputs to the innovative process are public should not be taken to mean that innovators are prevented from capturing private returns. The objective of this paper is to explore how firms appropriate returns from innovations that are created outside the boundaries of firms and in the public domain using the case of OSS. To do so, the paper draws upon an explorative multiple case study of six small firms that attempt to appropriate returns from OSS, with rich empirical evidence from various data sources. The cases illustrate how firms try a variety of approaches to appropriate adequate returns and that selling services seem to be the dominant trend. Firm also balance the relative inefficiency of traditional means of intellectual property right such as patents by putting greater emphasis on first mover advantages and creating network externalities.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

The Economics of Open Source Hijacking and Declining Quality of Digital Information Resources: A Case for Copyleft by Andrea Ciffolilli
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/ciffolili.pdf

Abstract:
The economics of information goods suggest the need of institutional intervention to address the problem of revenue extraction from investments in resources characterized by high fixed costs of production and low marginal costs of reproduction and distribution. Solutions to the appropriation issue, such as copyright, are supposed to guarantee an incentive for innovative activities at the price of few vices marring their rationale. In the case of digital information resources, apart from conventional inefficiencies, copyright shows an extra vice since it might be used perversely as a tool to hijack and privatise collectively provided open source and open content knowledge assemblages. Whilst the impact of hijacking on open source software development may be uncertain or uneven, some risks are clear in the case of open content works. The paper presents some evidence of malicious effects of hijacking in the Internet search market by discussing the case of The Open Directory Project. Furthermore, it calls for a wider use of novel institutional remedies such as copyleft and Creative Commons licensing, built upon the paradigm of copyright customisation.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

AIS SIGSEMIS - SIGSEMIS: Semantic Web and Information Systems
http://www.sigsemis.org/

This AIS SIG intents to become an open tribune of dialogue for important themes that cultivate the semantic web vision in IS. They are looking forward for your active participation and collaboration to their initiative: SIG SEMIS is an open forum: They invite you to join and to share your thoughts and perspectives. This has been added to the semantic web research section of the Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Wednesday, May 12, 2004  

Natural Language Processing / Information Retrieval Software Repository
http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~rpnlpir/

This directory and account holds centralized software and tools for natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval (IR) research and teaching at the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore. The account is hosted off of sf3 such that students and researchers will be able to get at these tools. Access is granted to all, however, if you'd like to provide and/or install tools, you must first email the administrators (rpnlpir@comp.... This directory has ben added to Directory Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

National Academies Press (NAP)
http://www.nap.edu/info/browse.htm

The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States. NAP publishes over 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health, capturing the most authoritative views on important issues in science and health policy. The institutions represented by NAP are unique in that they attract the nation's leading experts in every field to serve on their blue ribbon panels and committees. For definitive information on everything from space science to animal nutrition, you have come to the right place. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Working Draft: The QA Handbook
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-qa-handbook-20040510/
http://www.w3.org/QA/

The Quality Assurance (QA) Working Group has released the First Public Working Draft of "The QA Handbook." Written for W3C Working Group Chairs and Team Contacts, the document replaces and incorporates the best features of the former QA Framework's Introduction and Operational Guidelines. It provides techniques, tools, and templates for test suites and specifications, and is designed to facilitate and accelerate the work of W3C Working Groups.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

The Academic Web Link Database Project
http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/database/

The Academic Web Link Database Project makes available databases of academic web links to the world research community. This project was created in response to the need for research into web links: including web link mining, and the creation of link metrics. It is aimed at providing the raw data and software for researchers to analyse link structures without having to rely upon commercial search engines, and without having to run their own web crawler. You may use all of the resources on this site for non-commercial reasons provided that you notify them if you have an academic paper or book published that uses the data in any way (so that they know the site is getting good use). This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

W3C Markup Validator Upgraded
http://validator.w3.org/
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/2004May/0014


W3C is pleased to announce an upgrade to the W3C Markup Validation Service. The new release is easier to use and install. It features new documentation and navigation, and offers helpful explanations and recovery mechanisms instead of fatal errors. Managed by a team of volunteers and the W3C Quality Assurance Activity, and supported by a large community, this validator is the single most popular resource on the W3C Web site.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

HRSA Geospatial Data Warehouse
http://datawarehouse.hrsa.gov/

The HRSA Geospatial Data Warehouse and its associated applications provide HRSA with access to a broad range of information about HRSA programs, related health resources, and demographic data useful for planning and policy purposes. A data warehouse is a centralized store of an organization's data resources implemented specifically for query, reporting, and analysis purposes. The HRSA Geospatial Data Warehouse captures grants, scholarship and loan programs, designation of underserved areas, and service demonstration programs and integrates these with data acquired from external sources. For a comprehensive list, refer to the data source listing under Help Resources.

As the central source of information used for reporting on HRSA activities, a map tool is available for users who would like to place the data in a geographic context (i.e. mapping the location of community health centers).The HRSA Geospatial Data Warehouse currently includes 5 years of grants data (fiscal years 1999-2003). The map tool allows users to map the most recent year of grants data, fiscal year 2003. The HRSA Grant Activity Listing describes HRSA Grant Activity, by Key Program Area, Cluster and Program Name for Fiscal Years 1999-2003. The HRSA Geospatial Data Warehouse will continue to evolve with HRSA's growing and changing data reporting and analysis needs. The data are updated regularly and new sources of information are added on a regular basis so check back often to see “What's New”. This has been added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Tuesday, May 11, 2004  

BlogPulse Update
http://www.blogpulse.com/

I just received an email from Sundar Kadayam of Intelliseek to inform me of the immediate release of the latest version of their BlogPulse. New to the site are:

Coverage of over 1 Million blogs

Full-text Search engine (simple and advanced searches including boolean)

New automated Analysis of Blogs (Top Links, Key People, Key Phrases and BlogBites)

New Trends (Trend graphs showcase buzz in the blogosphere on current topics)

A Showcase section which provides access to new and powerful tools from Intelliseek (BlogPulse Trend Tool to create your own trend graphs) as well as its collaborators (HP's Blog Epidemic Analyzer, and Global Attention Profiles on Blogs through Harvard Law's Ethan Zuckerman)

Try out the Trend Tool for sure -- it's addictive! They are excited about their new site. It provides a robust new platform for delivering numerous tools and ideas they have for the world of blogs.

This is well worth the visit and the tools are excellent!! Great Job Intelliseek!! This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:26 PM
 

Business Buzzword Bingo
http://isd.usc.edu/~k.htmarl/Bingo/bbbingol

Print this bingo card and take it with you to your next meeting. Mark the buzzwords as you hear them; the BINGO square is a free square. If you get five in a row (up, down, diagonally), shout "Bingo!". You've won! Also try eBusiness and WiReD Buzzwords too!

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Electronic Discovery Tools
http://www.discoveryresources.org

DiscoveryResources.org, where you will find the most up-to-date information, resources and news available about electronic discovery. Given the rapidly increasing importance of electronic evidence in litigation, DiscoveryResources.org offers much needed resources for legal professionals who seek to understand the many new technological and legal challenges associated with electronic discovery. This will be added to Legal Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

ConsumerHealth Journal (CHJ)
http://www.consumerhealthjournal.com/

For consumers, CHJ is a free, monthly journal dedicated to providing in-depth health information that isn't swayed by market or advertiser demands. With articles from study result analysis (pregnancy and alcohol, milk and cancer) to lighter fare (health insurance for dogs, the geography of fat), CHJ tries to publish information that is otherwise hard to come by. Mainstream health reporting is currently dysfunctional. The media that have the technical information are impossible to read, and the media that are possible to read omit the technical information. Important health news is lost in the trivial, the incomprehensible, and the sensational. Consumer Health Journal is a hybrid: we read the studies for you, and translate them into readable English. But we tell you where to find them, too, in case you want to read them for yourself. We also provide background biology and end-of-article reporter's notes, as well as mid-article links to our sources. You can take our word on the issues, but we won't force you to. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Free Dictionary section on Mathematics
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Mathematics

It's hard to believe it's all free! This trove of information from thefreedictionary.com offers all sorts of information on math. From algebra and integers to derivatives and polynomials, it's all here. By scrolling over or clicking on a link, the visitor is treated to a sometimes whopping amount of information about the given topic. For those simply interested in math, math lovers, or possibly a teacher who needs to venture into a rusty subject area before next fall, this site is well worth a look. Note: while it's free, there are some advertisements. [From The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Surf's Down as More Netizens Turn to RSS for Browsing by J.D. Lasica
http://ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1083806402.php

"Newsreader" software continues to improve, allowing infowarriors better ways to find and assemble what they are looking for on the Web. RSS may be to the Web what TiVo was to TV. J.D. Lasica reviews the latest tools.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Monday, May 10, 2004  

This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (May 10, 2004 V2N19) is dedicated to the latest Subject Tracer™ Information Blog Financial Sources. Click on the below audblog link to hear an audio by Marcus P. Zillman on this latest Subject Tracer™. Visit the Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog at:

Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog
http://www.FinancialSources.info/

Powered by audblogaudblog audio postThis research is powered by Subject Tracer Bots™ from the Virtual Private Library™. Isn't yours?

posted by Marcus | 4:30 AM
 

Newsmap
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe. Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it. This has been added to my updated posting on Research Browsers.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Professor Ian Giddy's Finance Resources on the Web
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~igiddy/

An excellent and extremely comprehensive set of links created by Professor Ian Giddy covering finance resources on the web. This has been added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Alchemy : A Bibliography of English-Language Writings
http://www.cix.co.uk/~apritchard

This bibliography contains 2,800 items on alchemy and its influences on Western thought and science. The author uses the term alchemy specifically to mean "European alchemy in the period from around the 13th century onwards," although works from and about the Middle East, Africa and South Asia are also represented. The bibliography, organized based on a subject index at the site, also contains URLs for those items in the bibliography which are available online. This has been added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Selection, Appraisal and Retention of Digital Scientific Data Final Report
http://www.erpanet.org/www/products/lisbon/LisbonReportFinal.pdf

The Electronic Resource Preservation and Access Network (ERPANET) and the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) are pleased to announce the release of the final report for this seminar and invite all stakeholders involved in the creation and curation of digital scientific data to review the results at the above URL.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Identity Theft Resources Center
http://www.idtheftcenter.org/local.shtml

Identity Theft Resources Center is a private non-profit site which provides information and resources for "consumers, victims, law enforcement, the business and financial sectors, legislators, media and governmental agencies" concerning the crime of identity theft. Information available includes forms and procedures for victims, prevention tips, laws and publications. This has been added to Internet Hoaxes Subject Tracer Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Updated Framework Provides Guidance for Good Collections
http://www.niso.org/framework/forumframework.html

An updated version of the "Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections" is now available for free download from the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) at the URL below. The update adds new links and references to the Framework's established set of high-level principles for identifying, organizing and applying existing knowledge and resources to collections of digital resources. Focusing on four areas -- collections, objects, metadata and projects -- the Framework defines general principles relating to quality and provides a list of supporting resources, such as standards, guidelines, best practices, explanations, discussions, clearinghouses and case studies. Evaluation of "goodness" in the document refers not only to proof of concept and usability, but also -- in today's digital environment -- to factors that contribute to interoperability, reusability, persistence, verification and documentation. Originally prepared in 2001 under the auspices of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Framework earned wide recognition in the library and museum communities and the endorsement of state library associations and the Digital Library Federation. Ongoing maintenance and responsibility for updating the document was transferred to NISO in September 2003.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

The September Project
http://www.theseptemberproject.org

On September 11, 2004, citizens across the U.S. will come together at their local libraries to discuss ideas that matter to all of us. Through talks, debates, roundtables, and performances, citizens will share ideas about democracy, citizenship, and patriotism. What better way to spend September 11th, recently designated "Patriot Day," than by participating collectively, thinking creatively, and becoming a part of the well-informed voice of the American citizenry? Public libraries provide all citizens open and free access to information. Almost all communities in the U.S. have at least one library. There are over 16,000 public libraries in the U.S., and that's not including university libraries, K-12 libraries, research libraries, and church libraries. In other words, libraries constitute an impressive national infrastructure. Moreover, 96% of public libraries have computer technology that can serve to connect events across the nation, thereby constituting a national and distributed media infrastructure. In this way, the September Project will foster a national conversation with, for, and by the people.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Sunday, May 09, 2004  

Google's IPO

1) New York Times: How John Doerr, the Old Prospector, Finally Struck Google
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/technology/03doerr.html

2) NPR's Tech Guru Omar Wasow: Google's IPO
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1874653

3) San Jose Mercury News: Google IPO Translates Into Multiple Billions
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/8601819.htm?1c

4) ITWorld.com: Google IPO May Help Raise Fortunes of Tech Industry
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/4535/040430googleipo/

5) Saint Petersburg Times: Google Sets Up IPO with a Twist
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/30/Business/Google_sets_up_IPO_wi.shtml

While the boom and bust IPO craze of the nineties has largely been replaced by wary investors and a battlefield of tech startups, possibly the biggest IPO of the millennium is about to take place. Google, the inimitable company that has defined the use of the Internet and transformed its name into a verb, is soon to hit the market. In an amusing test, a search for "Google IPO" on Google itself reveals 984,000 entries from which to pick. Thus, here are a few, leaving 984,995 from which to choose at your leisure. The first site (1) takes you to the New York Times' piece on a person you'd love to be right now, John Doerr, who was one of the venture capitalists that put money in Google's pockets at the get go. The second link is to NPR's recent story on Google's IPO and a report from the Tech Guru, Omar Wasow (2). The third link takes you to an article from the San Jose Mercury news that highlights just how much money will head towards Google's employees (3). ITWorld.com highlights how this IPO may resurrect the tattered fortunes of the tech industry in the fourth site (4 ). And, the last site is from the Saint Petersburg Times, which offers this article explaining the Google-like twist Google is putting on this IPO in order to try to allow common folk to snatch a few shares before the mega-investors sweep in (5) [From The NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering, and Technology, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Public Library Personal Investing Resources
http://snipurl.com/67d5

There is a wealth of information available at the public library for personal investors. Information comes in a variety of formats, including reference books, circulating books, periodicals, newsletters, loose-leaf services, CD-Roms, electronic databases, and Internet sites. This has been added to Financial Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Small Business Online Resources Written by Rhonda H. Kleiman
http://snipurl.com/67cp

There is a vast body of information on the Internet for and about small businesses and entrepreneurs. These web sites represent some of the best of what is currently available online. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Open Source Resource Center
http://www.pseb.org.pk/projects/osrc/

The Open Source Resource Center is a first such forum in Pakistan created by Pakistan Software Export Board (G) Ltd. at Islamabad. The Resource Center will bring together wide range of expertise related to Open Source Technologies and Resources at one place. The IT companies can access, share, and contribute the knowledge particular to the development and transformation of IT products on Open Source Technologies. The Resource Center brings together established technology vendors, startups, open source community members and enterprise IT users/customers to jointly explore new opportunities for OSS deployment and how to capitalize on them.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Health InterNetwork
http://www.healthinternetwork.org/

The Health InterNetwork was created to bridge the "digital divide" in health, ensuring that relevant information - and the technologies to deliver it - are widely available and effectively used by health personnel: professionals, researchers and scientists, and policy makers. Launched by the Secretary General of the United Nations in September 2000 and led by the World Health Organization, the Health InterNetwork has brought together public and private partners under the principle of ensuring equitable access to health information. The core elements of the project are content, Internet connectivity and capacity building. As the first phase of making vital health content available, the Health InterNetwork provides here a vast library of the latest and best information on public health: more than 2,000 scientific publications, one of the world's largest collections of biomedical literature. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer ™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Taxonomies Tackle Content Classification
http://www.transformmag.com/enterprise/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=19200201&pgno=1

Finding the information you need is a daunting challenge that consumes about one-third of the typical workday. There is so much information, so many contexts in which documents may be relevant, and so many different file formats, from Office documents to graphics to PDFs. A single business document may cover hundreds, even thousands of subjects, have many authors, and have been created in different contexts for a variety of audiences. Enterprise content management (ECM) systems try to centralize content and enforce the assignment of metadata to simplify the task of finding information. Although ECM systems can bring order to chaos, you'll get more accurate and efficient information retrieval by planning your classification and taxonomy strategy. Creating a taxonomy is the process of classifying information and the associated metadata that further describes the information according to a logical system. There are several ways to create taxonomies, but most organizations build them manually, buy a pre-existing system or apply automated taxonomy/classification tools to their data. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Whichever you choose, advance planning is critical. Develop an information-management strategy, understand your organization's business needs and know what types of information your users require. After these step are complete, you can move on to creating a taxonomy using one of the approaches discussed above.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Gridbus Broker
http://www.gridbus.org/broker/
http://www.gridbus.org/papers/gridbusbroker.pdf

Gridbus is pleased to inform that we have formally released the Gridbus Broker that supports Computational and data Grid brokering and applications scheduling on Global Grids. This broker has been used in demonstration a number of applications as part of our HPC Challenge - demonstration at SC 20003 conference in Phoenix, USA. A technical report abstract and full report can be found above and well as the URL for the Gridbus Broker.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Saturday, May 08, 2004  

Project for Public Spaces (PPS)
http://www.pps.org/

PPS has an international reputation for its work on the design and management of public spaces. A non-profit, PPS was founded in 1975 to continue the pioneering work of writer-sociologist William H. Whyte. PPS has helped over 1,000 communities in 44 states and 12 countries improve their parks, markets, streets, transit stations, libraries and countless other public spaces.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Semantic Blogging: Spreading the Semantic Web Meme by Steve Cayzer
http://snipurl.com/66yj

Steve is a research engineer at Hewlett-Packard's (HP) laboratories in Bristol, England. He is interested in the intersection of semantic web technologies and machine learning techniques, such as automated classification and metadata enrichment. He also has a semantic blog. This paper is about semantic blogging, an application of the semantic web to blogging. The semantic web promises to make the web more useful by endowing metadata with machine processable semantics. Blogging is a lightweight web publishing paradigm which provides a very low barrier to entry, useful syndication and aggregation behaviour, a simple to understand structure and decentralized construction of a rich information network. Semantic blogging builds upon the success and clear network value of blogging by adding additional semantic structure to items shared over the blog channels. In this way we add significant value allowing view, navigation and query along semantic rather than simply chronological or serendipitous connections. Our vision is to use semantic web tools and ideas to help move blogging beyond communal diary browsing to rich information sharing scenarios. We have built a simple prototype as an illustration of this vision. This has been added to the Semantic Web Research section of the Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Florida Electronic Library
http://www.flelibrary.org/

The Florida Electronic Library provides reference and research assistance to all citizens of the state of Florida with a Florida public library card. The Florida Electronic Library is administered by the Florida Division of Library and Information Services. The Florida Electronic Library is a gateway to select Internet resources. Use this site for: Current Events, Business, Health Issues, Homework Help, Finding Full-text Articles, and Florida History & Info.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

CEDICT: Chinese-English Dictionary
http://www.mandarintools.com/

This website aims to provide a complete Chinese to English dictionary with pronunciation in pinyin for the Chinese characters. The dictionary can be used as a local add-on on your machine (desktop, laptop, PalmPilot, WAP) or on-line. [On 30th May2003] the Big5 version contained 25,807 entries with 26,404 definitions, the GB version 23,512 entries with 24,345 definitions. The project is meant as an open collaborative endeavor, submissions for new or enlarged entries are highly encouraged.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Researchers to Help Exterminate Bugs in Spreadsheets, Web Applications
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=93
http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/EUSES/

An error in a spreadsheet or Web page calculation sounds harmless enough, unless you're the person whose retirement funds, credit history or medical treatment rely on decisions based on that calculation. A six-campus team of computer scientists led by Margaret Burnett at Oregon State University is working to help exterminate the bugs that infest the spreadsheets and other "programs" created by millions of computer users. You may not think of yourself as a programmer, but that's just what you are if you've ever created a simple Web application that grabs data, such as current weather conditions, from another site, entered a formula in a spreadsheet or automated a repetitive task in your e-mail client or word processor. Experts estimate the number of these so-called "end-user programmers" to reach 55 million by 2005, and the same experts suggest that nearly half of the programs created by these end users have nontrivial bugs.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

SANS Institute
http://www.sans.org/

SANS is the most trusted and by far the largest source for information security training and certification in the world. It also develops, maintains, and makes available at no cost, the largest collection of research documents about various aspects of information security, and it operates the Internet's early warning system - Internet Storm Center. The SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Its programs now reach more than 165,000 security professionals, auditors, system administrators, network administrators, chief information security officers, and CIOs who share the lessons they are learning and jointly find solutions to the challenges they face. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners in government agencies, corporations, and universities around the world who invest hundreds of hours each year in research and teaching to help the entire information security community. This will be added to Security Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Friday, May 07, 2004  

The Literary Encyclopedia
http://www.litencyc.com/

The Literary Encyclopedia is an authoritative, up-to-date reference work written by named scholars most of whom are current university teachers. Its entries represent the state of the art in scholarly understanding and it grows in scale every week. The publication currently has around 150,000 visits each month. To date we have over 830 distinguished contributors, 1950 completed entries and indexed entries on 5472 writers, 15,826 works and 1406 topics. Our databases can be searched using buttons on our sidebar and by using the our index pages. We welcome suggestions for improvement to the service we provide and offers of contribution from established scholars and researchers. They also provide a growing "Books-in-Print" database which enables users to find what books are currently in print about the topics covered in this Encyclopedia. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

FOAF : Using Open Standards To Support Community Building by Brain Kelly
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue39/web-focus/

Brian Kelly takes a look at the FOAF Semantic Web application and suggests it is time to start evaluating this technology. The term FOAF stands for Friend of a Friend. As might be deduced from this phrase one of the key applications of FOAF is to provide a mechanism for creating links to one's friends. From the links to one's immediate circle of friends automated software can be used to process links from your friends, which can provide a visualisation of 'friends of a friend'. FOAF is a Semantic Web application which can be used to provide personal information in a form suitable for automated processing. On a page created in HTML Web authors often provide personal information, such as contact details, interests, etc. Such information is ideally suited for reading but cannot easily be repurposed by automated tools. FOAF was designed to enable such information to be provided in a form which could not only be displayed as conventional Web page content but also to be used for automated processing. The FOAF Semantic Web application has been added to the Semantic Web Research section of Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. It also has been added to my posting on Online Social Networks.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Object Search Search Engine
http://www.objectssearch.com/en/search.html

Objects Search provides a transparent alternative to commercial web search engines. Only open source search results can be fully trusted to be without bias. All existing major search engines have proprietary ranking formulas, and will not explain why a given page ranks as it does. Objects Search is the first known search engine which cluster its own search results unlike other meta search engines, which get their search results from other search engines. Clustering Engine is a system for clustering textual data.This engine automatically categorizes search results on-the-fly into hierarchical clusters. Objects Search make use of open source technologies such as nutch (www.nutch.org ) and includes software developed by the Carrot2 Project. Objects Search also uses data from dmoz.org and ObjectsDirectory.com

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Ten Efficient Research Strategies for Distance Learning by Thomas C. Wright and Scott L. Howell, PhD
http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/spring71/wright71.htm

Abstract by Authors:
Today's distance education administrator, frequently with an expertise in another academic discipline, is also supposed to be a distance education scholar. This expectation results from the recent interest in distance learning that nearly all institutions of learning and disciplines of study have shown. More research, studies, journals, and essays about distance education also exist than at any other time. A distance education administrator and an education research librarian at Brigham Young University have teamed up to identify ten pragmatic research strategies to help new, busy, and even a few experienced distance education administrators stay current in their field and successful in their applied research. All distance education research strategies identified were required to pass a distance administrator test for pragmatism, user-friendliness, and efficiency. The ten research strategies that will be covered are accessing library expertise, books from your or others' library catalogs, academic journals, databases, current awareness services, subscription services, distance education Web portals, associations, listserv/discussions, and use of research assistants. This will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Cheshire II Project
http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/cheshire/

The Cheshire II Project is developing a next-generation online catalog and full-text information retrieval system using advanced IR techniques. This system is being deployed in a working library environment and its use and acceptance by local library patrons and remote network users are being evaluated. The Cheshire II system was designed to overcome twin problems of topical searching in online catalogs, search failure and information overload as well as to provide a bridge between the purely bibliographic realm of previous generations of online catalogs and the rapidly expanding realm of full-text and multimedia information resources. The system incorporates a client/server architecture with implementations of current information retrieval standards including Z39.50 and SGML.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

UJIKO Search Engine
http://www.ujiko.com/

UJIKO uses the brand new Yahoo® search technology (Yahoo Search Technology). According to search engine experts, results are considered at least as relevant as Google’s ones. This engine gives you access to over 4 billion documents that you may now grade, comment and rank thanks to UJIKO. UJIKO developed a unique patented technology to customize results from its search engine. When you click on one of the results, the page is stored by UJIKO and will instantly appear in the first results next time you search. Choose which site will be first with the heart-grade or, on the contrary, filter the one you dislike. All sites you find can be modified: title, description and heart grade will be memorized and displayed during another query. Finally, you can create filters to mark or delete some results depending on their addresses (URL) or description. Ujiko cares about protecting your privacy. As opposed to other customization systems, all your data are therefore stored on your OWN computer. Only words you are looking for are transferred to our server, just like a classical search engine. All the rest is locally managed, on your workstation. If you share your computer with other persons, you can clear the memory of UJIKO and even deactivate it completely. This will be addded to the Search Engines section of all the Internet MiniGuides.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Thursday, May 06, 2004  

BioMedNet Gateways & News
http://gateways.bmn.com/

BioMedNet Gateways & News provides all the tools a busy researcher needs to keep up-to-date on what's happening in the life sciences. Gateways & News offers a wealth of content created exclusively for BioMedNet. Elsevier's life science gateways offer unique research, comment and context across 12 key areas of life sciences and biology: AgBio Ecology, Evolution and Environment, Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Endocrinology, Molecular Medicine, Cell Biology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Drug Discovery, Infectious Diseases, Pharmacology All gateways feature regularly updated articles and books selected by the expert editorial teams of leading publications in each field, including Cell, Trends, Current Opinion and the Academic Press & Elsevier Books and Major Reference Works teams. BioMedNet Magazine contains free articles from Trends, Current Opinion, Endeavour, and Drug Discovery Today, with a focus on issues of general scientific interest. It provides exciting reviews, features and primary research. BioMedNet Magazine is published every 2 weeks. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) 1.1 Working Draft Published
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-P3P11-20040427/
http://www.w3.org/P3P/

The P3P Specification Working Group has released the second public Working Draft of the "Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.1 (P3P 1.1)." P3P simplifies and automates the process of reading Web site privacy policies, promoting trust and confidence in the Web. Version 1.1 has new extension and binding mechanisms based on suggestions from W3C workshops and the privacy community. This has been added to Privacy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

INASP Health Links
http://www.inasp.info/info/inasp.html

INASP Health Links - the Internet Gateway to selected websites for health professionals, medical library communities, and publishers in developing and transitional countries. INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications) is a cooperative network of partners. Its mission is to enhance the flow of information within and between countries, especially those with less developed systems of publication and dissemination. INASP was established in 1992 by the International Council for Science (ICSU), as a programme of the Committee for the Dissemination of Scientific Information (CDSI). This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Healthcare Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Denver Public Library Launches New Digital Library
http://snipurl.com/65h2

Denver Public Library?s new online service is giving city residents access to popular eBooks directly from their homes and offices. The Library serves over a half-million residents and 80% of the city?s population has a library card and access to the new service. ?This is an exciting opportunity to provide eBooks to the city,? said Michelle Jeske, Manager of Web Information Services. ?This year, we saw a 24% increase in the number of online library transactions. eBooks that can be downloaded from our website fit very well with this kind of public demand,? she added.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Theory and Practice of Online Learning
http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/

A new book entitled Theory and Practice of Online Learning published by Athabasca University is now available for download under an Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommerciallicense. The book is also being sold. Sir John Daniel, Assistant Director-General for Education of UNESCO, had this to say about it: "I am delighted that educators all over the world will be able to enjoy this book at no cost because, in the true academic spirit of an open university, Athabasca has published it as an open source book under a Creative Commons License. UNESCO strongly encourages this form of publication as a way of bridging the digital divide and thereby helping to bring online learning to all the world's people." This will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

The ClueTrain Manifesto
http://www.cluetrain.com/

It was written in 1999-2000 and still reads very well today .... interesting! "A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter?and getting smarter faster than most companies." My posting on Online Social Networks of yesterday reinforces this 1999 Manifesto! Exciting times and the best is yet to begin!!!

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Wednesday, May 05, 2004  

Financial Sources
http://www.FinancialSources.info/

Financial Sources 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 an ongoing basis for financial information. This Subject Tracer™ Information Blog is divided into the following sections: Corporate Conference Calls Sources, Financial Sources, Financial Sources Search Engines, Venture Capital Sources and Other Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs. 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 is 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 | 4:25 AM
 

Open Clip Art Project
http://clipart.freedesktop.org/

This project has the goal of creating a free archive of clip art that can be used with free software, closed software, distributed with various software distributions, or be used in graphic design compositions. There are so many more uses for this graphics repository which haven't been discovered or discussed yet and we hope that you will join the development team to help realize this project. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the public domain according to the statement by the creative commons. There are many pages that talk more about this project as it is currently in the planning stages. If you'd like to help out, please join the mailing list. Also, feel free to browse the archives. This will be added to Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

OpenNet Initiative
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/

The OpenNet Initiative is a University-based policy research project documenting filtering and surveillance practices worldwide. Our aim is to excavate, expose and analyze these practices in a credible and non-partisan fashion to uncover the potential pitfalls of present policies to explore the possibility of unintended and unexpected consequences and thus to help inform better public policy and advocacy work in this area. To achieve these aims, the ONI employs a unique multi-disciplinary approach that includes: Advanced Technical Means -- using a suite of sophisticated network interrogation tools and metrics; and Local Knowledge Expertise -- through a global network of regionally based researchers and experts. OpenNet Initiative research will be published on this website in a series of national and regional case studies, occasional papers, and bulletins. This has been added to Privacy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Sasser Worm (W32.Sasser.A and its variants)
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.asp

What you should know about the Sasser worm and Its Variants. Microsoft teams have confirmed that the Sasser worm (W32.Sasser.A and its variants) is currently circulating on the Internet. Microsoft has verified that the worm exploits the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) issue that was addressed by the security update released on April 13 in conjunction with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-011. This has been added to Internet Alerts Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

EDGAR Index
http://www.edgarindex.com/

SEC filing directory and RSS notification service ... EDGAR Index Free Directory offers free listings and notification of SEC Filings in several categories: IPOs, Quarterly and Annual Reports, and Insider Trading Filings. Users can subscribe to free RSS feeds for each category. SEC Filings contain a wealth of information about the financial and organizational well-being of an organization. Their free directory/blog is available by clicking here. This will be added to Competitive Intelligence Resources 2004 Internet Miniguide and Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

B&E DataLinks: Econ & Financial Data Sources
http://www.econ-datalinks.org/

They provide links to econ & financial data sources of interest to economists and business statisticians. This page is a project sponsored by the Business and Economics (B&E) Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association (ASA). They provide users with a comprehensive set of links to data sites on the Web along with a user-based assessment of the quality of each site. They also provide users the capability to suggest additional high quality sites that could be added to DataLinks. Over time they will modify the evaluation of each site and add additional sites based on your feedback. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and has been added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Tuesday, May 04, 2004  

Jena – A Semantic Web Framework for Java
http://jena.sourceforge.net/

Jena is a Java framework for building Semantic Web applications. It provides a programmatic environment for RDF, RDFS and OWL, including a rule-based inference engine. Jena is open source and grown out of work with the HP Labs Semantic Web Programme. The Jena Framework includes: A RDF API; Reading and writing RDF in RDF/XML, N3 and N-Triples; An OWL API; In-memory and persistent storage; and RDQL – a query language for RDF. Support is provided by the jena-dev mailing list. This has been added to the Semantic Web Research section of Deep Web Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

IT Learning Materials
http://www.itlearningmaterials.com

IT Learning Materials provides annotated internet links for educators, students, and new teachers. There is also a section of tutorials on computer applications and concepts, including: Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, C, C++, Visual Basic, JAVA programming, Operating Systems, Search Engines. and Web Design. This will be added to Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

SCADPlus : European Union Glossary
http://www.europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/cig/g4000.htm

This European Union glossary "contains some 250 terms relating to European integration and the institutions and activities of the EU." Definitions are cross-linked as well, directing the user to related terms and concepts. Available in Spanish, Dutch, German, Greek, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, and Swedish.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Netcraft May Survey - 50 Million Web Sites
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/05/03/may_2004_web_server_survey_finds_50_million_sites.html

We now find more than 50 million web sites on the Internet, as the May 2004 survey received http responses from 50,550,965 sites. The milestone caps a period of revived growth for the Internet, coming just 13 months after the survey crossed the 40-million mark in April, 2003. By comparison, it took 21 months for the Web to expand from 30 million to 40 million sites. May was the 16th consecutive month of growth for the Web after a two-year shakeout to absorb the collapse of the dot-com and telecom industries. The upward trend resumed in February 2003, when we detected 35.8 million sites; about the same number as the Dec. 2001 survey. The rebound in total sites tracks the recovery of the larger Internet economy, as viable companies and business models have emerged from the wreckage of the Internet bubble. Common to the Internet Economy 2.0 is a focus on efficiency and cost management that was largely absent during the boom years of 1998-2000. Recent months have seen reports of strong growth for online ad spending, paid subscription sites, online retail spending, and even modest revivals in venture capital investment and dot-com hiring.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Australian Journals OnLine (AJOL)
http://www.nla.gov.au/ajol/

AJOL is the National Library of Australia's database of Australian electronic journals, newspapers, magazines, webzines, newsletters and e-mail fanzines. The database provides details and links to over 2000 titles that include local and overseas works with Australian content, authorship and/or emphasis as well as entries for sites which advertise or promote Australian journals. The National Library also maintains a separate listing of Australian Newspapers Online. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

World'Vest Base (WVB)
http://www.wvb.com/

World'Vest Base, Inc. (WVB)’s trade is the comprehensive collection of company financial fundamentals worldwide and provision of data that is required to make sound financial decisions. The WVB global database is the financial industry’s premier source of detailed and transparent financial statement data on public companies. The database universe spans over 30,000 companies over 80 countries from Asia, Africa, Australasia, Europe, Latin America and North America. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This will also be added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Monday, May 03, 2004  

Buscando en Internet
http://virtualprivatelibrary.blogspot.com/Buscando en Internet.pdf

María Cristina Alvite, from Biblioteca Popular Asencio Abeijón, Playa Unión, Rawson, Chubut, Argentina; requested permission to translate my Searching the Internet white paper into Spanish. The above URL is where the 8 page white paper without images is located and may be freely downloaded. The .pdf document is 208KB. The 11 page english version as well as audio and video media is located at the home page of Searching the Internet by clicking here.



posted by Marcus | 12:27 PM
 

This edition of Current Awareness Happenings on the Internet by Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. (May 3, 2004 V2N18) is dedicated to the latest happenings in Online Social Networks. Click on the audblog link at the bottom of this posting to hear an audio by Marcus P. Zillman discussing these new and exciting networks. The below listed sites are some of the latest and greatest online social networks updated August 24, 2004:

Affinity Engines
http://www.AffinityEngines.com/
Affinity-based social networking
Affinity Engines is a technology company that provides a secure infrastructure for private-label online social networks. Affinity networks help individuals build and maintain personal and professional connections in a trusted and secure online community

AlwaysOn
http://alwayson-network.com/
AO is the only media brand to combine traditional news and analysis, participatory journalism (blogging), and a powerful social network (AO Zaibatsu) for a growing membership base of senior executives, technology geeks, and investors from a broad selection of industries. No other media brand has dared allow such openness and collaboration amongst its readers and event participants.

Classmates Online
http://www.classmates.com/
Classmates Online, Inc., founded in 1995 and based in Renton, WA, is a leader in online community-based networking. The Company operates Classmates.com, connecting more than 38 million members with friends and acquaintances from school, work and the military.

CriagsList
http://www.CraigsList.org/
Craigslist is about 1) giving each other a break, getting the word out about everyday, real-world stuff; 2) restoring the human voice to the Internet, in a humane, non-commercial environment; 3) keeping things simple, common-sense, down-to-earth, honest, very real; 4) providing an alternative to impersonal, big-media sites; 5) being inclusive, giving a voice to the disenfranchised, democratizing ...; and 6) being a collection of communities with similar spirit, not a single monolithic entity.

Friendster (beta)
http://www.friendster.com/
Friendster is an online community that connects people through networks of friends for dating or making new friends.

GoodContacts
http://www.GoodContacts.com/
GoodContacts is a world leader in managing contact data quality. The Professional and Enterprise product families deliver solutions that span customers ranging in size from a individual business professional to a large enterprise. Solo products verify and update contact data for professionals and businesses managing large contact lists in Outlook, Outlook Express or ACT! while Enterprise products maintain the integrity and accuracy of contact data across enterprise-wide databases, CRMs or personal contact managers.

IKNOW (Inquiring Knowledge Networks on the Web)
http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/Projects/TECLAB/IKNOW/
In short, IKNOW will answer the following: 1) Who knows who?, 2) Who knows what? 3) Who knows who knows who? and 4) Who knows who knows what?

Institute for Social Network Analysis of the Economy (ISNAE)
http://www.isnae.org/index.html
The purpose of ISNAE is to study social networks and use the resulting knowledge to promote economic growth and social well-being.

LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/
Find the people you need through the people you trust - Your trusted friends and colleagues can help put you in touch with many more people than you expect; and those people can refer you to thousands of contacts.

Midentity
http://www.midentity.com/
Midentity helps you stay connected with important contacts by allowing you to create your own Business and Personal Profiles which you can share with them. If you change any of your contact details, simply update your profile(s) and all the contacts you've shared them with will receive the update instantly.

Military Advantage
http://www.military.com/
Military.com is the largest online military destination, offering free resources to serve, connect, and inform the 30 million Americans with military affinity, including active duty, reservists, guard members, retirees, veterans, family members, defense workers and those considering military careers.

Messenger Taps Social Nets
http://snipurl.com/7rn8
It often ends up that the information you need is just beyond your immediate reach, but probably sits at the ready in the mind of an unidentified friend of a friend of a friend. Extending the capabilities of ubiquitous communications tools like instant messaging and email could make that information easier to come by.

Online Business Networks
http://www.onlinebusinessnetworks.com/
This site is a guide to social network software, online communities, and other tools that help you leverage the internet to build more and better business relationships.

Open Business Club (openBC)
http://www.openbc.com/
The Open Business Club (openBC) is the worlds first multi-lingual on-line contact exchange and business networking club for professionals.

Orkut
http://www.orkut.com/
Orkut is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends. They are committed to providing an online meeting place where people can socialize, make new acquaintances and find others who share their interests.

PeopleAggregator
http://www.PeopleAggregator.com/
An Open Source Social Network

Plaxo
http://www.plaxo.com/
Plaxo, Inc. keeps people connected by solving the common and frustrating problem of out-of-date contact information. In 2000, Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, joined forces with two Stanford engineers, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring, to create Plaxo, a service that securely updates and maintains the information in your address book.

Semantic Web Draws On the Power of Friends
http://www.freepint.com/issues/270504.htm#feature
In today's environment of constant "Googling" of people's background, where someone's name or other identifying features are entered into the popular search engine for the sake of finding background information, ShareYourExperiences.com offers an unparalleled service. This online community allows people to directly connect with other individuals who have had direct positive or negative experiences with their search subjects.

Spoke - Extending Business Relationships
http://www.spoke.com/
Delivering insight, influence and access through relationships for greater business advantage.

Smarter, Simpler Social - An Introduction To Online Social Software Methodology by Lee Bryant : Version 1.0, 18 April 2003
http://www.headshift.com/moments/archive/sss2.html
An interestting lengthy read that gives a good introduction to online social networks software methodology and explains what does and does not work ....

SocialGrid
http://www.socialgrid.com/
SocialGrid was founded to provide the world with free search system to promote social networking and enable people to find their soulmate in a way that is cost-effective and universally appealing. SocialGrid is dedicated primarily to improving search quality for its members.

The FOAF Project - Friend of a Friend
http://www.foaf-project.org/
The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

Tickle Social Network
http://web.tickle.com/
Tickle is the leading interpersonal media company, providing self-discovery, matchmaking, and social networking services to more than 18 million active members in its community worldwide. Formerly known as Emode.com, Tickle was founded on the belief that personal insight and connections to others could be both scientific and fun.

Tribe
http://www.Tribe.net
This site is devoted to tapping the power of social networks. Their goal is to provide tools that help make your network most useful.

Visible Path
http://www.visiblepath.com/
Visible Path delivers unprecedented reach into companies and access to decision-makers by allowing sales teams to discreetly leverage the relationship capital of the enterprise throughout the sales cycle.

Word of Mouth Research
http://www.WordofMouthResearch.com/
WordofMouthResearch.com is a background research tool that allows users to access the valuable information source known as "word-of-mouth" on an international scale. People submit their shared experiences on people who they know. The authors of such information are either looking for knowledge or have knowledge to share.

Zaibatsu
http://community.alwayson-network.com/
Listing for this social networked received from a Slashdot posting ....

Zero Degrees™ - The People Network Company
http://www.zerodegrees.com/
ZeroDegrees (ZDI) automates Milgram's process. ZDI replicates the social process we use when we ask colleagues with an introduction. If no one knows the person directly, they ask others on our behalf. If all parties along the way, agree-an introduction is made and discreet contact information shared.

The Slashdot article that discusses PeopleAgreggator an Open Source Social Network is available by clicking here. Social Networks are gaining great popularity and we will be hearing and seeing many new and niched networks in the near future. Please send me listings of social networks that I have not listed and I will continue to keep this posting up to date. I have also written Online Social Networking - An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation (released 08-24-04 .pdf document 13 Pages 675KB) and freely available by clicking here.

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posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Savings Bond Wizard®
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/sav/savwizar.htm

The Savings Bond Wizard® helps you manage your savings bond inventory on your PC. It's a downloadable program that allows you to maintain an inventory of your bonds and determine the current redemption value, earned interest, and other information. You can also print your bond inventory, providing you with an important record if you ever need to replace any of your savings bonds. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This will also be added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

RateNet - Your Financial Connection
http://www.Rate.net

RateNet is one of the largest and most informative indexes of financial institutions in the industry and on the Internet. Over 100,000 rates updated every week. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide. This will also be added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

IRIN - Annual Report Resource Center
http://www.irin.com/

The Investor Relations Information Network (IRIN) provides a single point of reference for accessing electronic annual reports — considered by many investors to be the most valuable means of communication between a company and its shareholders. More than 10,400 current and historical annual reports are available for viewing and printing. And if you want to request a hard copy of an annual report, IRIN will forward your request to the appropriate company. In addition to providing free access to more electronic annual reports than any other site, IRIN offers other useful information, including company statistics and third-party data, as well as a library of Web sites that can be saved and managed in a personalized facility called My Shelf. IRIN is owned and operated by DST Systems, Inc., a leading provider of information processing and computer software services and products for a broad range of institutions, including transfer agents, mutual fund companies, brokerages and publicly held corporations. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and has been added to Business Intelligence Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This will also be added to Financial Sources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Business Filings Databases - Updated
http://www.llrx.com/columns/roundup29.htm

All 50 states make some level of corporate and business filings available online. In a few instances only limited information (such as name availability) is retrievable. The majority of the states, however, use their Web presence to disseminate a range of public business records -- and most of them offer access at no charge. This update adds information for one state and one commercial service, corrects an indexing error and reflects changes that have been made in the previously listed databases. The scope of this roundup does not yet include tax filings. Taxing authorities are mentioned for two states (Maryland and New Jersey) because they offer the only online route to business organization and trade name information in those jurisdictions. Unless otherwise stated, each database listed below is free. This has been added to Business Intelligence Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. This will be added to Business Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Thumbshots Ranking
http://ranking.thumbshots.com/

Thumbshots Ranking is a fun way to learn about search engines and optimizing a site's ranking. Your ranking determines the amount of traffic you will likely get. This project was originally intended to study the distribution of URLs in search engines. (Requires IE5+)

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Sunday, May 02, 2004  

CrossRef Search
http://www.crossref.org/index.html
http://snipurl.com/61mw

Calling themselves the “citation linking backbone for all scholarly information in electronic form”, CrossRef has launched a Google-powered search engine called CrossRef Search. This engine allows users to search the full text of many types of scholarly documents. This will be added to Academic Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:25 AM
 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: VISTA
http://www-gsd.lbl.gov/VISTA/index.shtml

A very comprehensive and well-organized offering from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, VISTA offers "suite of programs and databases for comparative analysis of genomic sequences. There are two ways of using VISTA - you can submit your own sequences and alignments for analysis (VISTA servers) or examine pre-computed whole-genome alignments of different species (VISTA browser)." The site also offers up-to-date updates on genomic sequences. Included in the April 2004 update are the Human-Chimpanzee, Human-Chicken, and D.melanogaster-Honey Bee whole genome alignments. VISTA is definitely a site for researchers and students involved in genomic research. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [From The NSDL Scout Report for the Life Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Artificial Intelligence Remains Elusive by Fred Reed of The Washington Times
http://washingtontimes.com/technology/20040421-092316-6983r.htm

Whatever happened to artificial intelligence? There was a time, a couple of decades ago, when computers were expected soon to be able to behave intelligently -- to talk to people in English, answer questions, and make complex decisions. What people really had in mind was an artificial human. HAL, the computer in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey,' comes to mind. It didn't happen. Today, although computers have advanced phenomenally in power, we see them doing very little that reasonably could be called intelligent. We still can't talk to computers about the meaning of art or why Rome fell. Why? ... First, it's harder than many thought it would be. ... Another reason for the apparent lack of machine intelligence is that, if you know how a computer does something, it no longer seems intelligent. ... An example of what might be regarded as intelligent behavior is automated translation of language. This is done by Google, for example. ... Finally, the use in connection with computers of words such as 'memory,' 'language' and 'logic' raised expectations of potential human likeness that weren't supported by reality."

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Alarm Growing Over Bot Software by Robert Lemos
http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5202236.html?tag=nefd.lede

While many network administrators worry about the next worm, security experts are warning that a quieter but equally damaging threat is slowly gaining control of large networks of computers. Known as bot software, the remote attack tools can seek out and place themselves on vulnerable computers, then run silently in the background, letting an attacker send commands to the system while its owner works away, oblivious. The latest versions of the software created by the security underground let attackers control compromised computers through chat servers and peer-to-peer networks, command the software to attack other computers and steal information from infected systems. This has been added to Bot Research Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Astrophysical Virtual Observatory
http://www.euro-vo.org/

At this website, the European Commission and six European organizations discuss the creation of the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory Project (AVO) for European astronomy. Visitors can discover the function of a Virtual Observatory (VO) as "an international astronomical community-based initiative" aimed at allowing "global electronic access to the available astronomical data archives of space and ground-based observatories." Users can learn about the current problems associated with combining astronomical data collected all over the world and how a VO can streamline this data. The website supplies numerous images illustrating galactic scenarios, AVO prototypes, and AVO goals. This has been added to Astronomy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [From The NSDL Scout Report for the Physical Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

European Bioinformatics Institute: Research Groups
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Groups/

This website features the specialist research groups at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). The EBI's research groups provide "biological data and utilities to aid the scientific community in the understanding of genomic and proteomic data." This site offers a variety of information about numerous research groups including the Computational Genomics Group, Sequence Database Group, Macromolecular Structural Database Group, and Computational Neurobiology Group -- just to name a few. The separate research group web pages vary in content, offering links to such areas as research interests, publications, contact information, funding, projects, and more. This site also links to other sections of EBI including Services, Databases, Downloads, and Submissions. This has been added to Biological Informatics Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [From The NSDL Scout Report for the Life Sciences, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM


Saturday, May 01, 2004  

Higher Education & Research Opportunities in the United Kingdom
http://www.hero.ac.uk/

Given the wide range of higher education opportunities in the United Kingdom, it stands to reason that there would be a website committed to serving as a primary portal for related materials. The site is organized into six zones, including research, studying, business, culture and sport, and two others. Some highlights of the site include the Research Assessment Exercise (which gives ratings to academic departments within Britain's universities and their research productivity), information for international students, and an important reference section. The reference section itself includes a glossary of terms (of which there are many within the lingua franca of higher education in the UK), listings of groups and organizations working in the same arena, and a listing of facilities at different institutions. This has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:20 AM
 

Preliminary Results of Survey of Musicians
http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=123

This weekend, the Pew Internet & American Life Project will present at a conference some early findings of an online survey they did of more than 2,700 musicians to gather their views on copyright and file-sharing issues. Among other things, these musicians are very divided about the problems and marketing potential of online file-sharing systems and they are not sure the recording industry campaign against illegal downloading will help them. Many of these artists themselves share some of their songs for free online and find that it helps them sell more CDs, draw bigger concert audiences, and get more playing time on commercial radio.

posted by Marcus | 4:15 AM
 

Center for International Development at Harvard University
http://www.cid.harvard.edu/

Established in 1998 by the Harvard Institute for International Development and the Kennedy School of Government, the Center for International Development (CID) is Harvard's primary center for research on sustainable international development. The CID is currently headed by Professor Dani Rodrik, who provides oversight and direction for the Center. On the site, visitors can learn about upcoming international development conferences sponsored by the Center, read about the various persons working at the Center, learn about various research programs, along with reading various reports associated with each area of inquiry. The site also contains a host of links to online research data sets for persons working in the field of international development, and to the Center's working papers and special reports. Some of the more compelling working papers address the situation of sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa and the rise and fall of the Indonesian economy. This will be added to International Trade Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and has been added to Research Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog. [From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/]

posted by Marcus | 4:12 AM
 

The Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship Report
http://www.yourlearning.com/churchillreport.html

Shalni Gulati, PhD student in online learning and informal learning, has compiled an ebook report on her recent travels to nine U.S. institutions to learn about online earning developments in healthcare education in the USA. The travels were a result of a fellowship granted by the Winston Churchill Memorial trust in UK. "Healthcare and other academics can read the report to review examples of learning strategies used in online courses to make learning more flexible and student centred. They may want to pursue the possibility of developing direct links with academics identified in the report and share future developments." Gulati's report is available at no cost at the above URL. The main purpose of this report is to give an account of the Winston Churchill Fellowship travel that aimed to learn from online learning developments at healthcare education institutions in the USA. It is hoped that the report gives an insight into the technological influences in healthcare professional education. The report may also add to the developing body of knowledge in the field of online learning and healthcare education. This will be added to Healthcare Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide and Education and Distance Learning Resources 2004 Internet MiniGuide.

posted by Marcus | 4:10 AM
 

Does Backchanneling Compete With Or Complement Lectures/Speeches?
http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i6.pdf

Keeping students' attention during lectures is not a new problem. However, the combination of portable computing devices, wireless networking, and instant communication software have potential to add a new twist to lectures and conference presentations. In "Perspective: Speaking and Attention: It All Depends?" (CITES & INSIGHTS: CRAWFORD AT
LARGE, vol. 4, no. 6, May 2004, p. 6; at the above URL. Walt Crawford recounts his and others' reactions to people at a conference session who engaged in real-time text conversations, backchanneling or backchatting, so they could comment on a speaker's talk during the talk. Some argue that carrying on these side conversations is rude, disrupts the flow of the talk, and takes the audience's focus away from the person at the podium. Others see this multitrack communication as a way to be more engaged in the topic presented and believe that it just shifts the post-lecture chatter forward in time.

posted by Marcus | 4:05 AM
 

Information Science Today
http://www.InformationScienceToday.com/

This is taken from their Introduction Page: Information Science Today welcomes you to the online information science and library science resource pages. Yes this is the time to improve our field and this work is not so easy. Information Science Today hope that if we exchange our thoughts and ideas regarding how we can improve our field then our field information science will be one of the most prestigious field around the world by 2020. All efforts made by Information Science Today is intended to develop our field. So let's promote our field and be a part of the world's prestigious field. This has been added to Directory Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

posted by Marcus | 4:00 AM
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