From the Labs site:
A joint Reuters and Nokia project examining how mobile technologies transform the way journalists file news reports when on the move. See the press release for more details. Sample raw materials and stories can be found at reutersmojo.com.
Source: Reuters Labs
Archive for October, 2007
New from Reuters Labs & Nokia: Mobile Journalism
Sunday, October 28th, 2007USA.gov is Mobile Ready at Mobile.usa.gov
Sunday, October 28th, 2007Since Vivisimo and Microsoft took over the search and organization of the former FirstGov.gov site, now known USA.gov, new services have been coming fast and furious. This time around the release of USA.gov Mobile at http://mobile.usa.gov. You can check out the new service on a any web browser and you’ll also see that pages have been transcoded for a mobile environment.
At the moment the site has a search box along with:
+ News Highlights
+ CA Wildfire Response
+ USA.gov Blog (also new)
Specialized Searches:
+ Govt. Web
+ Govt. Images
+ Govt. News
+ Govt. FAQs
+ Weather
+ Govt. Toll-Free
+ Congress
Btw, many general web searches also include direct links to FAQ’s.
Source: USA.gov
Google Bits: Google Transit Graduates from Google Labs & Other Places to Plan and Find Real-Time Transit Info
Sunday, October 28th, 2007+ Google Transit Graduates from Google Labs
Note: Remember, Google Transit only offers a small amount of the transport services that provide real-time travel information as well as interary planning online. Airplanes, trains, and buses are just some of the services that offer real time info. We’ve been building a large collection of services in the ResourceShelf Real-Time Collection. Here are a few examples, many more in our growing real-time info on the web collection:
+ Amtrak Train Status
+ Air Travel: FlightStats, FlightAware, FlightExplorer
+ Australia: Sydney City Rail Service Updates and Planner
+ UK: National Railroad ||| Mobile Site
+ UK: London Transportation Departure Boards
+ Canada: Calgary Next Bus
+ UK: New Real Time Audio Traffic Service for the UK: TrafficRadio.org.uk
+ DC Metro Train Arrival Info ||| Mobile Version
+ Google’s Reputation System Roils Web World (via eWeek)
+ EPIC Urges Congress to Monitor Google-Doubleclick Review
5 pages; PDF.
In a letter to the Congressional Committee that funds the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC urged oversight of the Commission’s review of the pending Google-Doubleclick merger.
Updated Edition: Combating Spam in Tagging Systems: An Evaluation
Sunday, October 28th, 2007Updated Edition: Combating Spam in Tagging Systems: An Evaluation
by Georgia Koutrika; Frans Effendi, Zoltan Gyongyi, Paul Heymann; Hector Garcia-Molina
October, 2007
Tagging systems allow users to interactively annotate a pool of shared resources using descriptive strings, which are called tags. Tags are used to guide users to interesting resources and help them build communities that share their expertise and resources. As tagging systems are gaining in popularity, they become more susceptible to tag spam: misleading tags that are generated in order to increase the visibility of some resources or simply to confuse users. Our goal is to understand this problem better. In particular, we are interested in answers to questions such as: How many malicious users can a tagging system tolerate before results significantly degrade? What types of tagging systems are more vulnerable to malicious attacks? What would be the effort and the impact of employing a trusted moderator to find bad postings? Can a system automatically protect itself from spam, for instance, by exploiting user tag patterns? In a quest for answers to these questions, we introduce a framework for modeling tagging systems and user tagging behavior. We also describe a method for ranking documents matching a tag based on taggersý reliability. Using our framework, we study the behavior of existing approaches under malicious attacks and the impact of a moderator and our ranking method. We use two complementary techniques to generate scenarios: (a) Data Driven. We use a real data set of documents and tags, and inject spam tags based on a bad user model. (b) Synthetic. We generate documents and their tags based on data distributions, and then again inject spam tags.
Source: Stanford InfoLab
Note: We have posted a link to previous version of this paper in February, 2007.
California Wildfires 2007: A Web Archive From Archive-It, Keyword Searchable
Sunday, October 28th, 2007The Archive-It team has been crawling and developing a searchable collection of sites and pages (from government pages to CNN to Wikipedia to Flickr and many more) dealing with the recent wildfires in Southern California. Archive-It is another program from The Internet Archive. However, UNLIKE their most well-known collection, the 85+ billion page Wayback Machine, Archive-It.org collections can be searched by keyword.
See Also: More Wildfire Resources (including maps, satellite imagery, and real-time info).
Digital Preservation: NDIIPP Presents Paper at iPRES in China
Sunday, October 28th, 2007NDIIPP Presents Paper at iPRES in China
Molly Johnson, a senior Library of Congress official, addressed the International Conference on Digital Preservation in Beijing on Oct. 11 on “Creating a Digital Preservation Network with Shared Stewardship and Cost.”
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) was initiated in December 2000 when the U.S. Congress authorized the Library of Congress to work with a broad range of institutions to develop a national strategy for the preservation of important at-risk born digital content. Guided by a strategy of broad collaborations and iterative learning, the Library of Congress began catalyzing a national network of partners dedicated to collecting and preserving important born-digital information. Over the last six years, the Library and its partners have been engaged in learning through action. Our investments in preservation partnerships, public policy deliberations related to intellectual property challenges, basic technical research, and network architecture models have increased our understanding of the sustaining roles and functions for a national network of diverse stakeholders. The emerging network of networks is complex and inclusive of a variety of stakeholders: content producers, content stewards and service providers from the public and private sectors.
Source: NDIPP, LC
Singapore: Digitisation Projects: Straits Times Available to the Public from Second Half of 2008
Sunday, October 28th, 2007Singapore: Digitisation Projects: Straits Times Available to the Public from Second Half of 2008
The National Library Board (NLB) and Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) today signed an agreement to digitise The Straits Times (ST) archives dating as far back as 1845. The digitised archival content will be made available to the public at NLB libraries for individual research and reference purposes from the second half of 2008.
As part of NLB’s Library 2010 plan to help build Singapore’s collection of knowledge and literary assets, the National Library seeks collaborative relationships in which mutual benefits can be derived. The Straits Times, with its 162 year old history, possesses a rich record of Singapore and the region. In collaborating with the National Library, all available printed copies of newspaper will be digitised and made accessible to the public within NLB’s network of libraries in Singapore.
Source: ACCESS
AOL Goes to Sweden, Launches New Language Portal
Sunday, October 28th, 2007AOL Launches Swedish Web Portal
AOL Europe today announced the launch of a new portal in Sweden, AOL.se. AOL.se is free to anyone using the Web and will offer email, instant messaging, photo and video services, in addition to tailored content including local sports, entertainment and celebrity news…[AOL] already operates portals in the Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and UK. Following the launch of dedicated portals in Italy and Spain last month, the launch of AOL.se continues AOL’s ambitious expansion program in Europe. Within 24 months, AOL plans to launch local portals in 30 different countries, a number of which will be in Europe.
Paper: Demand for Electronic Legal Information at the University of Botswana
Sunday, October 28th, 2007Demand for Electronic Legal Information at the University of Botswana
The advent of technology has changed the way legal research is conducted. The study looks at the availability of electronic legal information at the University of Botswana, perceptions of the university legal community about such information, challenges affecting access to electronic legal information and recommended solutions to those challenges. The paper also looks at the contribution that the library can make in alleviating the challenges and addressing the different perceptions by the legal community.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 80 KB)
Source: Cornell Law School. Starr Workshop Series
Briefs: Scirus Extends Journal Search with the Addition of Three New Publishers; HighWire Press Adds New Journal as Database Passes 1.8 Million Free Articles
Sunday, October 28th, 2007+ HighWire Press Adds New Journal From Oxford Univ. Press as Database Passes 1.8 Million Free Articles
+ Scirus Extends Journal Search with the Addition of Three New Publishers
The additions encompass more than 300,000 records from the Nature Publishing Group (NPG), The Royal Society, and Maney Publishing. This brings the total number of journal articles indexed in Scirus to more than 26 million, helping to make the search engine the most comprehensive science specific search engine available. A full list of journal and other sources indexed in Scirus is accessible here.
Databases: Global Compendium of Weeds
Sunday, October 28th, 2007The Global Compendium of Weeds is a list of plant species (over 28,000 names) that have been cited in specific references (approximately 1,000) as weeds. An expert has assessed the status of the weed based on its context in each document. Sometimes, additional information–such as native range, whether the plant has reported medical/herbal uses, etc.–is included when available.
The inclusion of a species in the Global Compendium of Weeds [GCW] does not necessarily indicate that the GCW author or sponsors (or the sponsors of the hosting website) consider the species a weed, nor do those entities vouch for the veracity of any particular source; the GCW is simply an attempt to provide summary information from a wide range of documented sources.
Source: AgWest and the Hawaiian Ecosystems at Risk project (HEAR)
ResourceShelf Weekend Best: Recommender Systems, MovieLens, TechLens, and WikiLens
Saturday, October 27th, 2007Background about collaborative filtering and then a link to MovieLens. This service, free, uses CF to help users find movies they might like to view. It’s a free service.
Learn More About the GroupLens Project at the University of Minnesota and don’t forget their list of publications.
See Also: TechLens
The core of the system lies in its ability to learn users’ research interests from their profiles, and use collaborative filtering algorithms to produce relevant results. Experienced users can create their profile by identifying themselves as ‘authors’, whereas the new users build their profiles as they go about querying the system. Users can maintain portfolios to categorically arrange their research work, and can draw recommendations for each individual portfolio, or for all portfolios combined together.
TechLens also allows users to maintain individual preferences about their searches. Users can save their searches, along with the reviewed items from that result set. Users can revisit these Saved searches at any time for further review, or include them in any of their portfolios.
+ WikiLens
WikiLens is an environment for creating, editing, rating, and recommending items to people. Once you learn how to use WikiLens you will be able to use it for all of those things for any item you can create a Web page about! Examples of items we’ve used WikiLens for include: Soda, Software Projects, Restaurants, Books, and Sailboats.
Statistics: Librarians in Australia and Other Labour Force Stats
Saturday, October 27th, 2007From the ALIA web site:
Library workforce statistics The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released labour force statistics from the 2006 census. The library workforce is grouped under Culture and Leisure Occupations and employs 24,849 people. Of these, 10,085 are librarians, 6,510 library technicians and 8,254 library assistants. Just over 83% of Australian library workers are female, only a slight movement in the gender breakdown over recent years. Details from the ABS data will be provided in the December-January issue of inCite and in the Employment section of this website. In the meantime, data can be viewed on the ABS site at http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au, clicking on ‘Topic’ and then ‘Labour force’ participation.
Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Library and Information Association
New Web Resource: Health Effects from Wildfires
Saturday, October 27th, 2007New Web Resource: Health Effects from Wildfires
The California Wildfires Web page includes information on the health effects from fires and exposure to smoke; links to air quality resources, environmental clean-up following fires, and animals in disasters. In addition, resources for emergency responders and information in Spanish are included. Searches of NLM databases, such as MedlinePlus, PubMed, TOXLINE, Tox Town, and Haz-Map (occupational health) are included for additional health information.
The page also provides the locations of facilities reporting to the EPA Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund sites in and around San Diego (TOXMAP).
Direct to San Diego Area TRI Facilities
Source: National Library of Medicine
You can find many more additional resources about the California Wildfires, including
+ Satellite imagery from NOAA, NASA, and DigitalGlobe
+ Live video and audio feeds from local media
+ National Interagency Fire Center databases
+ and much more in this post.
See Also: Fire Recovery For Collections (via Library of Congress)
Briefs: Web Browsers: Say Hello to Opera Link; WordPress and Answers.com Offer Automatic Linking Suggestion Tool;
Saturday, October 27th, 2007+ Web Browsers: Say Hello to Opera Link
WordPress.com bloggers now have automatic AnswerLinking capability built right into Wordpress editing tools: Press the AnswerLink button and receive suggested terms for automatic linking. Help put obscure words and terms in context for your readers — for free!
Download the plugin here.
Just Released: Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007
Saturday, October 27th, 2007Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007
Eritrea has replaced North Korea in last place in an index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world that is published today by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running.
“There is nothing surprising about this,†Reporters Without Borders said. “Even if we are not aware of all the press freedom violations in North Korea and Turkmenistan, which are second and third from last, Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom. The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticise the regime are thrown in prison. We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate.â€
Outside Europe – in which the top 14 countries are located – no region of the world has been spared censorship or violence towards journalists.
Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba).
Also available as PDF.
Source: Reporters Without Borders (via DocuTicker.com)
Lists and Rankings: The worst jobs for the 21st Century
Saturday, October 27th, 2007The worst jobs for the 21st Century
Health care, education and financial services — if you’re looking for work in the coming decades, these are the fields to get into.
What to avoid? The usual suspects. According to the projections by the U.S. government, manufacturing jobs are expected to decline by more than 5 percent by 2014 as production moves overseas. Same goes for textile workers, such as sewing machine operators, who will see a 36 percent drop in employment. Technology will kill off more office positions, such as file clerks. They’ll see a 36 percent drop in their ranks by 2014. Digital cameras will zap the manual photo processing industry by about 30 percent. And that guy who comes around to read your electric meter? Expect to see a lot less of him, too.
But these are the obvious victims as the U.S. moves from a goods-producing economy to a services-producing economy. More interesting are the jobs that are likely to experience slower than average growth (average being about 13 percent). This is where the surprises are.
+ In Pictures: The Worst Jobs For The 21st Century
Source: Forbes.com
The Guardian Launches American “Version” Newspaper Site
Saturday, October 27th, 2007The Guardian Launches Version of Newspaper Site for America
From CyberJournalist:
Editor Michael Tomasky explains:
The journalistic shorthand version is that Guardian America is the US-based website of the Guardian newspaper of London and Manchester, which will combine content produced in the UK and around the world with content that we originate here to create a Guardian especially tailored to American readers….
Direct to Guardian America
Guardian America RSS Feed
Direct to The Guardian
Source: CyberJournalist
Thanks to PW for the news tip.
See Also: CNN.com Home Page Can be Personalized With Three Versions of the Site
+ International Version
+ U.S. Version
+ Arabic Version
Look for the set edition link near the top, far-right side of page.
