Google has a potential search rival in Dorthy.com, a Web site that takes a different algorithmic approach to search. About.com co-founder Jim Anderson has been named Dorthy.com’s new chief technology officer, and will use his experience in AI and natural language processing to try to refine the new site’s search process.
Source: eWeek
The trend is unmistakable: Fewer Americans are reading print newspapers as more turn to the internet for their news. And while the percentage of people who read newspapers online is growing rapidly, especially among younger generations, that growth has not offset the decline in print readership.
In the Pew Research Center’s 2008 news media consumption survey, 39% said they read a newspaper yesterday — either print or online — down from 43% in 2006. The proportion reporting that they read just the print version of a newspaper fell by roughly a quarter, from 34% to 25% over the two-year period.
Source: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
We break down the key differences between the Amazon Kindle 2 and the company’s original e-book reader.
Source: PC World
Direct to Document (30 pages; PDF)
Source: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Apple’s new browser, the Safari 4 public beta unveiled on Tuesday, will wow users with useful new features, slick interface tweaks, speedy page rendering and smart development decisions based on how people actually surf the Web.
Source: Computerworld
From the Web Site:
Webcast of Tom Hickerson’s Distinguished Seminar Series Presentation, “Convergence of Knowledge and Culture: Calgary’s Design for the Future” Now Available
Tom Hickerson, Vice Provost of Libraries and Cultural Resources, and University Librarian at the University of Calgary, spoke at OCLC on 12 February 2009.
Slides and Video Available Here
Source: OCLC Research
The webcast is scheduled to take place Tuesday, March 03, 2009, 11:30:00 AM (EST).
A one hour lecture on issues of interest to researchers and statisticians. In a very real sense, Google can be thought of as a big statistical analysis system. This talk will describe how Google uses statistics to turn huge amounts of heterogeneous data into information about search, ads, and advertisers.
Speaker: Dr. Diane Lambert, Research Scientist, Google
You’ll be able to view the webcast via this page.
Source: NIH
[Comscore has released] the first study of its cross-media panel of PC and mobile Internet users in the U.S., finding that light PC Internet users are 30 percent more likely than heavy PC Internet users to use their mobile devices to access Internet content. In total, 42 million people used their mobile devices in October 2008 to access news and information content on the Internet, an increase of 57 percent from October 2007.
Source: comScore
Google Translate recently added Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese, and Galician to the mix. The rollout of these seven additional languages marks a new milestone: automatic translations between 41 languages (1,640 language pairs!). This means we can now translate between languages read by 98% of Internet users.
Source: Official Google Blog
U.S. businesses spent $264.2 billion on information and communication technology (ICT) equipment and computer software in 2007, a 4.4 percent increase over 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Each year, the Census Bureau publishes sector-level data from its Information and Communication Technology Survey for noncapitalized and capitalized spending as a supplement to the Annual Capital Expenditures Survey. Noncapitalized expenditures are written off in the same year in which they are made, while capitalized expenditures are usually depreciated over time.
Noncapitalized expenditures made up 35.7 percent, or $94.4 billion, of spending on ICT equipment. Capitalized spending accounted for 64.3 percent of total spending, or $169.8 billion, a 5.9 percent increase from 2006.
Among noncapitalized expenditures, purchases of ICT equipment accounted for $20.2 billion (21.4 percent), an increase of 7.0 percent from 2006; operating leases and rental payments accounted for $17.8 billion (18.8 percent); and computer software expenditures accounted for $56.4 billion (59.7 percent).
Of total capitalized spending in 2007, purchases of ICT equipment accounted for $106.5 billion, an increase of 5.3 percent from 2006. Capitalized purchases and payroll for developing software accounted for $63.3 billion, an increase of 6.8 percent from 2006.
Sector highlights:
* Information — Spending in this sector totaled $63.8 billion, or 24.1 percent of total ICT expenditures. Noncapitalized spending saw a 10.5 percent decrease from 2006, while capitalized expenditures increased 4.1 percent over the same period.
(more…)
More good stuff from Roddy MacLeod and crew from the Heriot-Watt University Library.
The General Services Administration announced on Monday it will be moving the programs that run the federal government’s official Web portal from government servers to those operated by a private company, a strategy known as cloud computing.
USA.gov and its Spanish language companion site, GobiernoUSA.gov, will be hosted and supported by Terremark Worldwide Inc., an information technology infrastructure company based in Miami. The agreement marks one of the federal government’s first attempts at shifting computing resources to the cloud.
Source: nextgov
Towards an Open Source Legal Operating System
An informed democratic society needs open access to the law, but states’ attempts to protect copyright interests in their laws are a major roadblock. This article urges broader access, analyzes the implications and legal arguments for and against copyright in the law, and considers strategies for access advocacy.
Several options available for retrieval of full text.
Source: Social Science Research Network (Katie Fortney)
Hat tip: LibraryLaw Blog
Children are among the most frequent users of the Internet, yet searching and browsing the web can present many challenges. Studies over the past two decades on how children search were conducted with finite and pre-determined content found in CD-ROM applications, online digital libraries, and web directories. However, with the current popularity of the open Internet and keyword-based interfaces for searching it, more critical analysis of the challenges children face today is needed. This paper presents the findings of our initial study to understand how children ages 7, 9, and 11 search the Internet using keyword interfaces in the home. Our research has revealed that although today’s children have been exposed to computers for most of their lives, spelling, typing, query formulation, and deciphering results are all still potential barriers to finding the information they need.
Direct to Full Text Paper (9 pages; PDF)
Note: All but one of the co-authors of this paper (Druin, A., Foss, E., Hatley, L., Golub, E., Guha, M., Fails, J.) are from the University of Maryland. The remaining co-author (Hutchinson, H) works at Google.
Source: Human-Computer Interaction Lab (University of Maryland)
Journalism non-profit ProPublica last week launched ChangeTracker, which will track all changes on WhiteHouse.gov, Recovery.gov and financialstability.gov. By following the site’s feed and clicking the links, you can instantly compare the before and after of every executive order, speech or blog post that is uploaded to the site. Perhaps more interesting will be what’s deleted.
Source: nextgov
Print books or e-books? Uplift or download? Writers and readers or interactive interchange? What is your view on the way that changing technologies and life styles are affecting books, publishing, information and the way that we read?
In November 2008, the network of Edinburgh-based libraries (ELISA) organised a panel discussion and open debate on this very subject as part of Edinburgh’s Festival of Libraries. A panel of five very well-informed people working at the cutting edge of their respective professions, presented and discussed the issues at stake from a wide range of perspectives. The discussion proved to be stimulating and lively and the debate continues.
The debate was chaired by Stuart Kelly, Literary Editor of Scotland on Sunday
Source: OCLC Abstracts
Berners-Lee’s vision of the Semantic Web is hindered by a chicken-and-egg problem, which can be best solved by a bootstrapping method: creating enough structured data to motivate the development of applications. UW CSE believes that autonomously Semantifying Wikipedia is the best way to bootstrap. They choose Wikipedia as an initial data source, because it is comprehensive, high-quality, not too large, and contains enough manually-derived structure to bootstrap an autonomous, self-supervised process. This talk will present their success to date in this endeavor.
The presentation by Dan Weld can be downloaded or streamed online.
Source: University of Washington / ResearchChannel
Topics Include:
1. Web Pages Designed By And For Our Project Gutenberg Readers.
2. Textbooks Are Becoming A More And More Highly Requested Item.
3. Request To Help Complete Our Collection Of Andrew Lang Books.
4. eBooks On Cellphones: We Have Several Formats You Can Try.
Source: Project Gutenberg
From the Web Site:
The upgrade to our search beta is now complete. Registered users can again log into their accounts. New features include the facility to order items for viewing in the Library’s reading rooms, improved tagging, and enhanced functionality in My Workspace.
This test site allows you to search and view the details of 13 million books and other material much more simply than ever before. We will be developing the service further in coming months.
Direct to Beta Version of BL Catalogue
Source: BL
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