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New ELI 7 Things… Brief Explores Google Wave

Friday, October 30th, 2009

From the Summary:

Google Wave is a web-based application that represents a rethinking of electronic communication. Users create online spaces called “waves,” which include multiple discrete messages and components that constitute a running, conversational document. Users access waves through the web, resulting in a model of communication in which rather than sending separate copies of multiple messages to different people, the content resides in a single space. Wave offers a compelling platform for personal learning environments because it provides a single location for collecting information from diverse sources while accommodating a variety of formats, and it makes interactive coursework a possibility for nontechnical students. Wave challenges us to reevaluate how communication is done, stored, and shared between two or more people.

Source: EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

A Brief Comment From Gary:
I’ve been using Google Wave for about a month and I’m still unsure if this is going to be the next big thing. It’s a potentially powerful tool and might be extremely useful where and when instant collaboration needs to take place between people at different locations. Yes, many of these things can be done with any IM client and that’s how I think of Google Wave as of today (remember this is not even a beta release, it’s a preview) as IM on steroids. If developers are able to integrate compelling and useful applications into the Google Wave service, then it might be a home run. The other challenge Google could face if they expect the masses to use Wave is the learning curve. For many potential users, it will not be as easy to ue as is, let’s say, Google search is. Just type and press search. There are a lot of bells and whistles and without using some of its many features these users might stay with tools they are familiar with like IM, SMS, e-mail, and/or one of the many collaboration tools the’re already familiar with. Of course, for many companies who pay for this type of service, the price point, free, might be a reason to retrain staff on how to best use the power of Google Wave.

Posted in Information Industry, Software and Web-Based Applications, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Google Search Helps Uncover a Rare Photograph at the National Library at the National Library of Australia

Friday, October 30th, 2009

From a Brief Article in eNews (National Library of Australia)

A small, brown photograph recently uncovered at the Library has been confirmed as the world’s only known vintage print of the arrival of Roald Amundsen’s 1911 expedition at the South Pole.

The vintage print was brought to light when a Google search led the Curator of the Pictures Collection at the National Library of Norway, Harald Ostgaard Lund, to the National Library of Australia’s collection.

An iconic image in Norway, it is expected to go on loan to Norway in 2011 for a special exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of Amundsen’s arrival at the South Pole.

You can view the photograph here.

Source: NLA

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Search News, Web Search | No Comments »

Changes to the Internet: Group Approves Non-Latin-Script Web Addresses

Friday, October 30th, 2009

From the BBC News Article:

The board of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) voted at its annual meeting in Seoul to allow domain names in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts.

More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts.

It is being described as the biggest change to the way the internet works since it was created 40 years ago.

The first Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) could be in use next year.

Source: BBC News

“This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet ,” said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s President and CEO. “The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online – people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives.”

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Google’s Enhanced Music Service; Real Estate Listings on Google Maps

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

We said yesterday in our post about Google Navigation Mobile, that it seems lately a day doesn’t go by with something new or enhanced from Google. Today is no different. Matt McGee from Search Engine Land tells us about a new layer in Google Maps containing real estate listings and the emusic service that launched last night.

First, real estate listings are now more visible in Google Maps with the new real estate “layer”. To access the listings, click the “More” button at the top of a map (near the satellite imagery or terrain maps buttons) and select real estate. Immediately, the listings become visible on the map. Click any red “pin” and you’ll see the address, get driving directions, etc. Click the “more info” link to see all the information about the property. Here’s a view of properties for the Zip Code 90210. Now you can zoom in and out and move the around the maps like you’ve always done.

Also, note the listings located on the left side of the page. Here, you can find basic info about each property and find a link to click and get all the available info. You can also refine your results here by:

+ Price Range
+ Listing Type
+ Number of Bedrooms
+ Number of Bathrooms
+ Area Range (in Square Feet)

It’s possible to only search to real estate listings by selecting “Real Estate” in the drop down menu located next to the search box at the top of the page.

Next, Matt introduces the new, improved, and enhanced Google Music Search. Google has offered a music “one box” located at the top of a results page for since December, 2005. Here’s an article that Gary wrote about music search at that time.

This is a major enhancement to the music search.

Matt writes:

According to today’s announcement [this story and news release are from late Wednesday afternoon], searches for the name of an artist, album, or song will show the new OneBox in Google’s main search results.* If you search for an artist or album name, the OneBox will include a set of four songs that are chosen algorithmically by the partner music site*, not by Google. Each song will be linked to an audio clip that will play in a Flash-based pop-up window provided by the partner site. In some cases, the partner may provide one full play of the song before defaulting to a 30-second preview.

Matt points out that the rumors about Google selling music are not true (at least for now).

Google’s RJ Pittman told us today that, while some of their music partners have a commerce element, the focus of Google’s new music search is information, not selling digital songs. In fact, there’s no commercial arrangement at all, we’re told, between Google and the music partner sites included in this launch.

Finally, the article correctly notes that Yahoo Music has been available for years and they
continue to offer music info and the ability to preview music/watch videos, link to the official site, get lyrics, photos, videos, etc. from a box at the top of web pages when a group or solo artist triggers the database.

He also points out (this is cool) that in some cases, if you enter song lyrics into the search box, youll get back the song info as a “one box” result. Here’s an example.

Speaking of song lyrics, a few weeks ago we posted about a searchable song lyric service, LyricWiki, being acquired by Wikia, an online community of wikis and content hubs that was started by Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales.

* Partners include: MySpace, Pandora, Lala, imeem, and Rhapsody.

Source: Search Engine Land

Posted in Information Industry, Multimedia Search, Search Tools, Web Search | No Comments »

Libraries Highlighted in Recent Broadband Discussions, Activity

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

From a Blog Post:

As one of the founding members of the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Washington Office has actively participated in communicating the role of anchor institutions in national broadband build-out to members of Congress, the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The post goes on to discuss:

+ Senators Send Letter to NTIA

+ Libraries emphasized in Senate oversight hearing
You can watch the hearing online or go to the blog post for a summary.

Source: ALA District Dispatch

Posted in Libraries and Librarianship, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Global Phishing Survey: Trends and Domain Name Use in 1H2009

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Global Phishing Survey: Trends and Domain Name Use in 1H2009 (PDF; 673 KB)

The battle against phishing is a seesaw contest. On one side are the phishers, looking for better ways to steal money and Internet users’ personal data. On the other side is an array of security and software providers, financial institutions, and other like-minded parties who fight back with counter-measures of their own. While phishing remains a dangerous criminal activity involving great losses of money and personal data, the latest statistics also show that phishing has not increased by some measures, and that some anti-phishing measures have had a beneficial impact.

This report attempts to understand the scope of the global phishing problem, especially by examining domain name usage and phishing site uptimes. Specifically, this new report examines all the phishing attacks detected in the first half of 2009 (1H2009) — between January 1, 2009 and June 30, 2009. The data was collected by the APWG and supplemented with data from several phishing feeds and private sources. The APWG phishing repository is the Internet’s most comprehensive archive of phishing and e-mail fraud activity. Our data confirms new and ongoing trends, and we hope that bringing them to light will lead to improved anti-phishing measures.

Source: Anti-Phishing Working Group

Posted in Privacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

FCC Announces Release of Report on Barriers to Broadband Adoption by the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

FCC Announces Release of Report on Barriers to Broadband Adoption by the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute (PDF; 64 KB)

The Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School has released a report identifying major barriers to broadband adoption among senior citizens and people with disabilities, and across the telemedicine, energy, education, and government sectors. This report was prepared in coordination with staff of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative (OBI) for use in the development of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.
…
ACLP Director Charles M. Davidson said “The report provides the FCC with a comprehensive analysis of major barriers to broadband adoption among under-adopting demographic groups and sectors of the economy. Our hope is that this report will be used as a starting point for further discussions regarding ways to maximize the adoption rate across every demographic group and sector.”

+ Full Report (PDF; 1.7 MB)

Posted in Access to Information, Government Documents and Political Information, Information Policy, Papers and Presentations, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Webcast: Google’s Vint Cerf Talks to Info Pros at Internet Librarian Conference

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf, was the keynote “interview” at the Internet Librarian 2009 conference in Monterey, CA. The event took place on Monday, October 26, 2009. Cerf was interviewed by Paul Holdengräber, the Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library.

Access the Video via Ustream

Source: Info Today (via Ustream)

Posted in Technology and Internet, Webcasts and Podcasts | No Comments »

New Research Findings: Students and the Mobile Internet

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Some new research from the U.K.

From the Summary:

The qualitative research with second year undergraduate students from a range of disciplines and universities, consisted of four focus groups and eight depth interviews, held in Manchester and London. The research was conducted by FDS International on behalf of Intute and the findings reinforce the motivation behind the work of the project, which is to provide a user friendly mobile site that is fast and inexpensive to load, providing the right content, presented in the right order and with an adapted layout.

[Snip]

The extent to which the mobile Internet was used varied greatly, with only a small number of students using their mobile Internet for academic work. Given the cost and generally slow access to the Internet from mobile devices, primarily determined by the type of contract and the handset, most students only ever occasionally accessed the Internet using their mobile phone for social purposes and for short durations of time. Consequently, those most likely regularly to access the internet on their mobile phones possessed new telephones with large screens, and had a contract which included free internet access. These represented only a small fraction of those interviewed.

Despite the fact that students rarely used the mobile Internet for their university course, many stated that they would if:

+ their phones had larger screens;
+ it was quick and easy to load and navigate websites; and
+ it was cheaper or free (included in their contract) to access the Internet.

Access the Complete Summary

Source: Intute

Posted in Information Literacy, Technology and Internet, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

As with previous spam attacks, which have included the names of high-ranking FBI executives and names of various government agencies, a new version misuses the name of the United States Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The current spam alleges that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were informed the e-mail recipient is allegedly involved in money laundering and terrorist-related activities. To avoid legal prosecution, the recipient must obtain a certificate from the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Chairman at a cost of $370. The spam provides the name of the EFCC Chairman and an e-mail address from which the recipient can obtain the required certificate.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Posted in Information Literacy, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Google Social Search Goes Live at Google Labs Experimental

Monday, October 26th, 2009

From a Search Engine Land Post by Danny Sullivan:

Google Social Search is rolling out, a new service from Google that allows you to easily find material written by people you know and trust. It’s a pretty cool idea, especially in that it’s pretty painless to get started using it. The service will be available through Google Labs Experimental.

Danny goes on (it’s important reading) to explain what Google Social Search is and is not.

He makes it very clear the Google Social is NOT real time search and NOT Twitter search although Google made an announcement last week that they had made a deal with Twitter.

What is it?

It’s a way that Google figures out people you trust, then ensures that you see content from them showing up in your search results.

[Snip]

How does Google know what your social circle is, in order to produce the social search results? Three methods, the company told me, when I talked with Google about the service:

* Your Google Reader account
* Your Google Chat / Gmail Contacts
* Your Google Profile

You can access Google Social here.

Source: SEL

Are You Ready to Go to Googland?

Monday, October 26th, 2009

A day doesn’t go by that Google is announcing, updating, or just doing something they want to tell the world about. While sites like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal do a great job of not only presenting the news but also offering some perspective, they always don’t get to everything from the folks in Mountain View, CA.

Of course, the ResourceShelf team also tries our best to make sure you know about what Google is up to. But, like the others, we don’t get to everything.

That’s why Googland is so useful. Google usually makes their “official announcement” on one of many blogs. Googland aggregates content from many (not all) Google blogs into a single location (with an RSS feed, of course). After a few days of visiting the Googland you’ll be simply amazed at the number of posts that come from the ‘Plex.”

Access Googland

Posted in Information Industry, Web Search | No Comments »

Social Networking – Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Social Networking – Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators

Should an investigator or attorney “friend” a prosecution witness in order to find impeachment evidence? Are there legal or ethical bars to surreptitiously gathering data from social network profiles? Should the intent of the user have any bearing on the formulation of law related to access? These and more questions were stirred up in the mix of case studies presented at the (first, annual?) symposium, Social Networks: Friends or Foes? Confronting Online Legal and Ethical Issues in the Age of Social Networking, sponsored by UC Berkeley School of Law. Yeah, a long title but, hey, these folks are academics. And the case studies constituted just the first panel (”Problems Unique to Social Networking and the Law”) of an extraordinary assemblage of academic, government, activist, policy and practicing lawyers rounding out the 5-panel day.

Much of the discussion concerned access to profile content, – the difference between civil and criminal (where there’s the familiar prosecution/defense imbalance) cases – whether certain information should be private even if it can be viewed by unintended parties. For example, should employers be able to view deleted personal information? No one mentioned the issue of whether schools have a legal right to compel students to turn over their user names/passwords (See: “Area School Wants Access To Students’ Social Networking”). There may be instances when a legal requirement for disclosure would apply. Lauren Gelman, Executive Director, Stanford Law, Center for Internet and Society, raised the question of whether evidence in the online sites could be used, say, in divorce cases, to support evidence gathered by other means. The Deputy General Counsel for Facebook took the position that user’s profile content is private, begging the audience to sue the company to settle issues of access.

See: Social Networks: Friends or Foes

Source: PI Buzz

Posted in Legal, Papers and Presentations, Privacy, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

The Fifth International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration Begins Today

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

WikiSym begins today in Orlando, FL. at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.

From the Web Site:

WikiSym is a symposium (conference) series dedicated to wiki and open collaboration research and practice.

Here’s a link to the program and another link to the proceedings.

Here are links to abstracts for some of the sessions that we found most interesting:

+ Opening Keynote: Visualizing the Inner Lives of Texts by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg (IBM Research)

+ Closing Keynote: Community Performance Optimization: Making Your People Run as Smoothly as Your Site by Brion Vibber (Wikimedia Foundation)

+ Understanding Learning – the Wiki Way by Joachim Kimmerle, Johannes Moskaliuk, and Ulrike Cress (University of Tuebingen) (Germany)

+ rv you’re dumb: Identifying Discarded Work in Wiki Article History by Michael D. Ekstrand, and John T. Riedl (University of Minnesota) (USA)

+ The Singularity is Not Near: Slowing Growth of Wikipedia by Bongwon Suh, Gregorio Convertino, Ed H. Chi, and Peter Pirolli (Palo Alto Research Center) (USA)

+ Analyzing the Wikisphere by Jeff Stuckman and James Purtilo (University of Maryland, College Park) (USA)

+ Social Search and Need-driven Knowledge Sharing in Wikis with Woogle by Hans-Jorg Happel (FZI Research Center for Information Technologies) (Germany)

+ A Jury of Your Peers: Quality, Experience and Ownership in Wikipedia by Aaron Halfaker (University of Minnesota), Aniket Kittur (Carnegie Mellon University, CMU), Robert Kraut (CMU), and John Riedl (University of Minnesota) (USA)

+ Organizing the Vision for Web 2.0: A Study of the Evolution of the Concept in Wikipedia by Arnaud Gorgeon and E. Burton Swanson (UCLA) (USA)

+ Practitioner Report: Wiki for Law Firms by Urs Egli (Egli Partners Attorneys-at-Law, Zurich, Switzerland) and Peter Sommerlad (HSR Hochschule für Technik, Rapperswil, Switzerland)
Note: We were able to access the full text of the paper (PDF) and slides.

+ Leveraging Crowdsourcing Heuristics to Improve Search in Wikipedia by Yasser Ganjisaffar, Sara Javanmardi, and Cristina Lopes (University of California, Irvine)

+ Creating “the Wikipedia of pros and cons” by Brooks Lindsay (Debatepedia) (USA)

Access the WikiSym Web Site and Archives

Access the WikiSym 2009 Wiki

Posted in Social Media, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

“Web Science” as a Research Discipline

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

What is web science? No, it’s not a database from Thomson Reuters. (-:

From the Web of Science Research Initiative Web Site:

The Web is the largest human information construct in history. The Web is transforming society. In order to…

+ understand what the Web is
+ engineer its future
+ ensure its social benefit

…we need a new interdisciplinary field that we call Web Science.

Tim Berners-Lee was one of the founding directors of the initiative.

From the Web Site:

“Since its inception, the World Wide Web has changed the ways scientists communicate, collaborate, and educate. There is, however, a growing realization among many researchers that a clear research agenda aimed at understanding the current, evolving, and potential Web is needed. If we want to model the Web; if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth; and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for social boundaries, then we must chart out a research agenda that targets the Web as a primary focus of attention.

+ New Centre for Doctoral Training in Web Science
The centre is at the University of Southampton.

+ Web Science Curriculum
Via the Web Science Wiki

+ Papers
One article, “Web Science Emerges” by Nigel Shadbolt and Tim Berners-Lee in Scientific American is Available on the Web (6 pages; PDF; 2008)

Source: Web Science Research Initiative

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

ALA on Proposed Net Neutrality Rules

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

FCC’s consideration of net neutrality principles key to preserving free Internet

The American Library Association (ALA) strongly supports Chairman Julius Genachowski’s efforts to move the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forward in consideration of principles to protect the free and open nature of the Internet.

The FCC voted unanimously today to proceed with issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking, which would add two principles of non-discrimination and transparency to the existing four principles of network neutrality, and to allow a period of public commentary.

“We thank the FCC commissioners for establishing a way for the American public to participate in this important debate,” ALA President Camila Alire said.

“ALA has long supported network neutrality. As information professionals, we know how essential it is to have a diversity of information sources, and we believe an open Internet benefits all. Chairman Genachowski is heading in the right direction by revising and expanding the principles of net neutrality.”

Source: ALA District Dispatch

See Also: From the FCC: News Release (PDF) ||| Access the Proposed Rules Document (117 pages; PDF)

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Just Published: Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

From the Summary:

Since 2004, the annual ECAR [EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research] Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology has sought to shed light on how information technology affects the college experience. We ask students about the technology they own and how they use it in and out of their academic world. We gather information about how skilled students believe they are with technologies; how they perceive technology is affecting their learning experience; and their preferences for IT in courses.

Some of the Topics Covered:
+ Student Ownership and Use of Computers

+ Interactive Communication Tools

+ How Students View Their Own Technology Adoption and IT Skills

+ Course or Learning Management Systems

+ Student Perceptions of IT in Courses

+ Undergraduates and the Mobile Revolution

+ Mobile Devices in the Academic Environment

+ Emergency Notification

+ Key Findings (PDF)

+ Table of Contents (HTML) (Report by Chapters, PDF)

+ Complete Study (PDF)

+ Roadmap (PDF)

+ Survey Questions

Source: EDUCAUSE

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Going Mobile: Internet Trends 2009

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Kent Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen Blog does a very nice job summarizing a presentation (it’s an annual event) about the economy and Internet trends by Mary Meeker, a highly respected industry analyst at Morgan Stanley. The presentation took place on Tuesday at the Web 2.0 Conference.

Here are a Few of the Highlights from The Scholarly Kitchen Post:

Meeker notes that while the desktop Internet was largely paid for by advertising and other sources of support, the mobile Internet is so far largely paid for by individuals, a significiant shift in payment sources.

She also notes that social networking has gone mobile in Japan, with Mixi’s traffic flipping from 86% desktop in 2006 to 65% mobile in 2009, mostly due to the emergence of mobile bandwidth.

Facebook has quickly assumed a leading position in its share of global time spent online (6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day).

Apple and Facebook together create an interesting innovation intersection, with Facebook bringing 390 million users, 350,000 applications, and 500 million downloads, and Apple bringing 85,000 applications and 2 billion downloads. Whether the two will dance more closely remains to be seen.

Source: The Scholarly Kitchen

Here are a few more notes from Meeker’s slides:

+ This is her sixth Web 2.0 “Trends” presentation. Other have focused on social networks and online video. This year it’s mobile. Meeker says that mobile, “is and will be bigger than we think.”

+ Mobile Internet adoption outpaces desktop Internet adoption

+ Apple iPhone/iTouch fastest hardware user growth in consumer history

+ Social Networking and Mobile is a Key Theme

+ Facebook numbers one site in global minutes, YouTube second global minutes and the second largest global search engine.

Posted in Technology and Internet, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Technology and Internet’ Category

New ELI 7 Things… Brief Explores Google Wave

Google Search Helps Uncover a Rare Photograph at the National Library at the National Library of Australia

Changes to the Internet: Group Approves Non-Latin-Script Web Addresses

Google’s Enhanced Music Service; Real Estate Listings on Google Maps

Libraries Highlighted in Recent Broadband Discussions, Activity

Global Phishing Survey: Trends and Domain Name Use in 1H2009

FCC Announces Release of Report on Barriers to Broadband Adoption by the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute

Webcast: Google’s Vint Cerf Talks to Info Pros at Internet Librarian Conference

New Research Findings: Students and the Mobile Internet

Spammers Continue to Abuse the Names of Top Government Executives by Misusing the Name of the United States Attorney General

Are You Ready to Go to Googland?

“Web Science” as a Research Discipline

ALA on Proposed Net Neutrality Rules

Just Published: Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009

Going Mobile: Internet Trends 2009

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