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Vatican Meets Facebook, Wikipedia, Google

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

From the Article

Executives from Facebook, Wikipedia and Google are attending a Vatican meeting to brief officials and Catholic bishops about the Internet and digital youth culture.

The symposium, which opened Thursday and runs through Sunday, also will address Internet copyright issues and hacking — including testimony from a young Swiss hacker and an Interpol cyber-crime official.

[Snip]

The symposium, which is drawing about 100 participants from around Europe, could be seen as part of that effort.

Panels will discuss social networks, the Web generation, the church’s communication strategies, and whether the Internet is changing religious practices.

Much More in the Complete Article

Source: AP

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

Comments About Works for the Blind and Visually Impaired Filed by the Library Copyright Alliance

Friday, November 13th, 2009

From a District Dispatch Blog Post:

…the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), composed of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries, filed comments on behalf of LCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) to the Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) regarding the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) draft proposal to facilitate access to copyrighted works for persons who are blind or have visual impairments and other reading disabilities in response to the Federal Register Notice of October 13, 2009.

The comments address possible solutions to enhance accessibility to information for the blind or other persons with disabilities, and also include an analysis of a new treaty proposal currently under consideration by WIPO and its effect on U.S. copyright law. LCA believes blind or persons with other disabilities should be afforded the same access to copyrighted materials as sighted persons. Accordingly, LCA believes that the United States should work for the adoption of a treaty at the WIPO that facilitates such access. We also recommend that legal solutions must be combined with practical solutions to improve and expand access for the blind and persons with other disabilities.

See Also: Access the Full Text of the Comments Filed Today (26 pages; PDF)

See Also: Issue Brief: Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled Persons (via Library Copyright Alliance)

See Also: U.S. Copyright Office Publishes Request for Comments on Facilitating Access to Copyrighted Works for the Blind or Other Persons with Disabilities (10/13/2009)

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

25% of Web Users Around the Globe are Browsing With Firefox

Friday, November 13th, 2009

From the Article:

Firefox reached the 25% milestone on Sunday, said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of California-based Net Applications, which measures browser usage by tracking the machines that visit the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients.

“We always thought that Firefox would be in a great position to compete with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer if it made 10%,” Vizzaccaro said today. “Now one in four people globally are browsing the Internet with Firefox.”

Mozilla passed the 10% market share mark in March 2006, said Vizzaccaro.

Much More in the Complete Article

See Also: News Release About Firefox Reaching the 25% Mark (via Net Applications)

Source: Computerworld

Posted in Statistics, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Do You Watch Video on Your Computer? If You Do, Clicker Might Be For You

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Do You Watch Video on Your Computer? If You Do, Clicker Might Be For You
by Gary Price, Senior Editor
Note: The Founder and CEO of Clicker is my friend, Jim Lanzone. Jim was the CEO at Ask.com when I worked there. We haven’t worked together in 20 months.

Until today, Clicker was a “closed beta.” Today, the beta sign has been removed and everyone has access to the service.

For the past several months I’ve been using Clicker to find, access, and watch a very wide variety of video content (tv shows, music videos, etc.) from a large and growing catalog of content and providers. In fact, the company said today that their catalog of content has just increased with the addition of 30,000 on-demand streaming movies from Netflix and Amazon VOD. Excellent!

I’m very impressed with how comprehensive Clicker is and how easy it is to be watching, either something you’ve browsed for or a known program you’ve searched for, in just a few seconds. And talk about access points? Clicker has a lot of them and they are easy to find and use.

Bottom Line? Clicker is worthy of your attention (if watch or help people who view online video). Of course, no resource is perfect (especially on day one), I’ll share a few suggestions of things I would like to see at the conclusion of this post.

The Numbers
If you’re a numbers person, here are few about the content in the Clicker catalog
+ Over 400,000 Full Episodes from over 1,200 Sources in More than 1,200 categories.
+ 30,000 Movies from Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon VOD (New Today)
+ 50,000 Music Videos from Over 20,000 Sources

The Home Page

The home page is clean and easy to navigate.
You can:
+ Search for videos by program name or topic
+ Browse by title
+ Browse by category (note the link here to view all categories.)
+ Browse beginning with type of media (tv, movies, “web originals,” and music)

Searching and a Search Results Page
Even before you click search, a box appears with direct links to what you might be searching for. A search for “SNL” immediately offered a direct link to complete programs and clips from Saturday Night Live. Again, this happens even before clicking the search button. Useful! In some cases this features offers “interesting” results that might not make sense until you visit the complete results page. For example, a search for “trains” shows a box for “Hogans Heroes” and CNBC’s Power Lunch. Huh? However, when you click through to the actual results page, you’ll see the words trains was in the title of a CNBC Power Lunch segment and also in the title of a Hogan’s Heroes.

This is a good time to point out that when you’re searching with Clicker, you’re searching metadata, not the actual transcript of the segment or show.

Here’s a search for “Seinfeld.” Let’s review some of what you’ll see on a results page.

+ At the top of the page a search box with direct links to category pages, a trends page (what are people watching), and a link to your playlist page (if you’re registered and logged-in) where you can “store” videos you plan to view. You can also connect your Clicker account to Facebook.

Next you’ll see page totals along with options to:

+ On what to display (all videos or online)
+ Filter by media

Moving to the right, options to sort your results list by relevance, popularity and airdate. The airdate option is useful when you have some idea of when a specific episode might have aired and need help flushing the video out of the results. The actual result list is what you would expect and also show logos for each program listed next to each entry or group of entries to make it identification easier.

Finally, on the right side of the page you’ll see the sources for all of the results. Each source logo is hyperlinked to a page for the sources. Think of it as the “x network” home page. Here’s the page for PBS. Very nice. In one location I can see all of the programs that Clicker has in its catalog from that network or other source. Of course, each show (e.g. Charlie Rose) also has its own page. Quick aside. Clicker has over 2300 episodes of the Charlie Rose show in its catalog. Wow!

On the right side of the page you’ll also see a list of shows that the Clicker database says are related and might also be worth a look. Finally, right below the episode “header” you’ll see a search box. This search option allows you to “search within” a show. Again, you’re searching metadata but if you want to know if Bill Gates has been a guest on one or more of the 2300 episodes of Charlie Rose, just enter his name in the search box and click search. Btw, Bill Gates has been on Charlie Rose more than 15 times.

Browsing

Not much to say here. It’s what you would expect. Browsing by category provides a bunch of data. Here’s the category page for documentaries. You’ll see sub-categories (in this case they are decades), featured programs, and a list of top episodes. If you begin browsing by media, the top-level page is what you’ve come to expect from Clicker–it’s full of interesting data. Here’s the movies page. Now, you can browse only movies by category, source, or title.

Viewing Content

So you’ve searched and browsed and now you’re ready to view a video. Here’s a page for the PBS program Frontline. Btw, notice how you can limit your search to the year the programmed aired on the left side of the page. This is available for many shows. Also, below and to the right of the search box you’ll see two buttons. One is labeled “All Episodes” and the other “New Episodes.” Again, if you’re a registered these button will tell Clicker to add all or just new episodes to your playlist. Yes, it’s a virtual DVR.

Now, select the specific program, click, and one of two things will happen. Either the program will begin playing or you’ll be given a direct link to watch the program elsewhere. In many cases you’ll be off to that network’s web site or a service like Hulu. It takes just seconds and the link Clicker provides is specifically for the program you’ve requested. You will not have to browse or search again.

Things I Would Like to See (No Pun Intended)

+ Keep a close eye on categories. I found a number of shows that just didn’t seem to fit in a category. For example, a TLC show about real estate being a documentary.
+ Content from C-SPAN. Even if it’s only online for a short time I would like to be able to find it with Clicker.
+ A constantly updated and browsable list of content as it enters the database
+ Local news content, both live streams of newscasts and recorded segments. Perhaps Clicker should talk with Newsy.
+ The ability to browse one page of all sources and then see what they offer. You can sort of do this now but you first have to search and you’re not getting a complete list of sources.
+ Transcript search would be great for all shows but for news, business news, public affairs, it’s very important and makes Clicker not only an entertainment resource but also a research tool.
+ A mobile version of Clicker. There is already a lot of content that will play on various mobile device. In fact, I watched Saturday Night Live on my iPhone last night.
+ Integration with various devices. I’m thinking of Boxee at the moment.

Final Thoughts

One thing that’s quite noticeable when browsing and searching Clicker is the amount of content that can be viewed online. Just a couple of years ago almost none of this content was available and this is just the beginning. In the next 5-10 years all material (say a new DVD) will be streamed directly to your home. You can see it with Netflix and others as the amount of on-demand streamed content grows. Networks will offer similar services. And of course, you’ll be able to watch this streamed content on your tv. On top of this, we’re going to see more content (including web only material) being made available by over-the-air networks, cable networks, and web only services.

Why am I mentioning this? Because Clicker is off to a great start to become the guide or perhaps better said, gateway, to all of this content. As I said earlier, the service offers numerous access points makes it easy (even for grandma) to watch her favorite shows on her computer (O.K., you have to give one lesson) but my point is that Clicker is easy to search, browse, find and perhaps the most difficult step, view the actual content, in just a few clicks.

Posted in Media, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

A Look at the Visualization of Government Information

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

From the Article:

The good news: data from governments and other organizations is increasingly open and online. The bad news: it’s rather dull.

The result? A booming interest in data visualization, which can transform boring stats into compelling graphical presentations explaining our world.

“Institutions, governments, and companies more and more are releasing and making publicly available their own data sets,” notes Manuel Lima, an interaction designer and data visualization expert.

Source: CNN

Ed. Note; Here are Five Data Visualization Sites and Tools to Know About

1) Visualization Complexity
The catalog of data visualizations. The owner/developer of the site, Manuel Lima, is quoted several times in the CNN article.

2) Muckety
See the relationships between people, companies and stories in the new with Muckety Maps. Here’s an example, a map for Bill Gates. and another for Google. You can expand and refocus the map by clicking on a name.

3) NNDB Mapper
Another tool, based on the NNDB site, to see relationships. Here’s one for White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Remember, hover over any name icon on the map and you can start expanding or contracting.

4) World Development Indicators 2009 Visualization Tool

5) The SmartMoney Map of the [Stock] Market
One thing this service does is allow you to easily see what are the active sectors market.

Source: CNN

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

New Book: The Google Generation: Are ICT Innovations Changing Information Seeking Behaviour?

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Here’s news of a new 200 page book from the UK that will be released at the end of this month.

Authors: Barrie Gunter, Ian Rowlands and David Nicholas

+ provides a one of the most comprehensive analyses yet on the evolving nature of information search behaviour
+ combines a review of a wide range of international research evidence combined with original, cutting edge research
+ directed towards industry end-users and policy makers as well as academics with shared scholarly interests
+ presents a distinctive generation-based analysis of information search behaviours
+ identifies the complexity of digital divides and shows that age-related differences in use of new information and communications technologies are more sophisticated than previously realized.

The Google Generation examines original and secondary research evidence from international sources to determine whether there is a younger generation of learners who are adopting different styles of information search behaviour from older generations as a function of their patterns of use of online technologies. The book addresses the questions: might the widespread availability and use of search engines, such as Google, give rise to a different type of scholar who seeks out and utilises online information sources and thereby develops a different orientation to learning from older generations whose information seeking practices became established initially in the offline world.

More about the book along with brief author bios here.

Here’s a price comparison table with the cost of the book from Amazon U.S., Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, and Buy.com. For those of you who work in a library perhaps the person/people responsible for this subject area is planning on getting the book. Here’s its Amazon U.S. page.

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

Tim Berners-Lee and the Semantic Web, Linked Data, RDF and a Worldwide Database

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

This post includes four articles from Government Computing News. After reading the first article you’ll quickly realize why information professional will be? could be? should be? essential in the development of the semantic web.

1) The Web’s next act: A worldwide database (7 pages)

“Now I want you to put your data on the Web,” Berners-Lee said at a talk hosted by the Technology, Entertainment, Design organization earlier this year, where he introduced his concept of Linked Data. He identified the U.S. government as a candidate for early use of this format.

[Snip]

For many, Linked Data is still a difficult concept to understand. After all, isn’t data already on the Web, in terms of text on Web pages? Berners-Lee told the TED crowd, “You can read [documents] and follow links from them, and that’s [about] it.… There is still huge unlocked potential.”

[Snip]

RDF is based on making associations. It describes data by breaking each data element into three nodes: a subject, predicate and object. For example, consider the fact that Yellowstone National Park offers camping. “Yellowstone” would be the subject. “offers” would be the predicate and “camping” would be the object. All three elements get uniform resource identifiers, or a globally recognized Internet addresses.

2) How the Semantic Web would work (2 pages)

Rendering data into RDF, which is used to create the Linked Data necessary to the Semantic Web, can make it easier to interpose it with other sets of data to create entirely new datasets and visualizations, [project researcher Li] Ding said.

3) 2 examples of how government data linking can work (2 pages)

4) 13 Resources for Government Linked Data

Note: The links for the three W3C documents do not work. Here are the correct links.
+ RDF Primer
+ Web Ontology Language Primer
+ RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing

Source: Government Computing News

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Google Adds New Features to Movie Listings

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

A brief post to alert you that the movie listings Google provides and the way they’re provided has been enhanced. Let’s break down the announcement from the Google Blog.

+ You can find movie listings by searching for the title of the film or the name of a specific theater in the main Google search box.

If the area is incorrect (remember they’re taking a well calculated guess) there is a link next to the location to change the area. You could also search with the title and a city name or Zip Code. This is also useful if want to see a film outside your own area. If you click on the title of the film you’ll find showtimes for area theaters (and the option to change dates), the film’s trailer, photos, and reviews culled from the web. While Google Movies has been around for several years this page has been enhanced.

+ When you go to http://www.google.com/movies you’ll be able to only search the movie database and find the detailed page with pictures, trailers, etc. that we just mentioned.

+ You can now search by genre. Here’s an example. We hope Google provides a list of the genres that can be searched.

+ Finally, another new feature is “Map View.” After you’ve selected a film, look in the left column of the Google page for that specific page. Click “Show Map View” and now you can see where the film is playing throughout the area you’re searching. Clicking on any of the pins brings up a link for the theater. Click and now you have showtimes for the new theater.

Source: Google

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

Available Today For Facebook Users: Facial Recognition Tagging, “Face” Alerts Also Avaiable

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

From the Article:

Photo Tagger [via Face.com], which launched to a limited group of users in July, scans a user’s photo albums on the social-networking site, then lets him tag faces it identifies. It groups multiple shots of each person, making it easy to tag large albums, and users can also adjust or remove incorrectly tagged pictures.

Once a member has been identified, the app prompts him or her to approve the tag — a crucial privacy step, since he or she may not want to be labeled in a photo. It also works with a member’s current photo-privacy settings on Facebook.

[Snip]

Face.com is also introducing a new Photo Tagger feature, dubbed Face Alerts, along with the launch. It allows members to be notified through Facebook or email when new public photos are uploaded of them or their friends. “It’s a Google Alerts for faces,” Mr. Hirsch said, and a way for members to gain more control over where their image appears.

[Snip]

Photo Tagger is free, though he said Face.com is considering fee-based services that it could provide over the system. He declined to say what they might be.

Source: Digits, Wall Street Journal

Note: Not mentioned in the WSJ article is another service (it’s a private alpha release at the moment) from Face.com named Photo Finder.

Here’s how the service describes itself, “A powerful app for finding lost photos of you and your friends on Facebook.” On another page it offers a clearer view of what Photo Finder does, ” Photo Finder scans facebook photos looking for untagged faces of you and friends.” As we said, it’s a private alpha release but you can register for a logon/password here.

Although Photo Tagger has undergone months of testing and more testing it will worth watching to see if it can handle the massive number of Facebook users who will likely use the service for the first time in the next few days.

Posted in Information Industry, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Bing! Bing! Bing! A Busy Week at Bing and It’s Only Wednesday

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Things sure have been hopping at Bing lately. We’ve posted several items this week and have several more to add to this post. Plus, Bing has said more new services will be going before the end of the week. Here’s a review of what we’ve posted so far. Items that are bolded are ones we are posting for the first time here. We will begin on Monday and work are way to today.

+ Blog Post: “Bing’s Next Chapter Begins Today”
A review of what Bing has been up to along with the introduction of several new features.

Since June we’ve released a bunch of new stuff to try and meet the demands of our users – Twitter integration, Visual Search, Twitter Search, better maps [we love bird's eye imagery], and a host of user interface and index improvements.

NOTE: The following examples are not working (at least for us) as of 7:30pm EST. It’s going to take some time to roll-out all of these new feeatures. Also, it’s up to the user to determine if the results are actually improved compared to what they were before any changes were made. As these features become available we will update this page. Please check back and we will link to as many of these new features as possible. Plus, Bing has said to expect even more “new” features in the next few days.

+ New: Scroll over the world “travel” on the home page, click, and now you’re at a place to run travel-related queries

+ New: Smart Answer: Enter your origin, destination, travel dates, in the Bing search box, click, and your in Bing Travel

+ New: “Enhanced Results” for several hundred cities via Bing Travel. Direct links to neighborhood info, local newspapers, points of interest, etc.

+ New: “Enhanced Results” for a number of cities that also include “high-resolution slide shows”

+ New: Integration of images into some preview results. What’s a preview result? Run a Bing search and move your cursor to the right of any result and hover, a box should appear (as well as an orange dot). In the box you should get an idea of what’s on the page your hovering next to. You might also find contact info (e.g. telephone number), popular links based on your search terms, e-mail addresses, etc. Now, you’ll also see an image of the page for some results.

Much More After a Click
(more…)

Posted in Information Industry, Web Search | No Comments »

FDA Grapples With Regulating Social Media Ads

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

From the Article:

Hundreds of pharmaceutical experts, advertising specialists and social media gurus will be descending Thursday on Washington to tell the U.S. Food and Drug Administration how it should regulate ads on everything from Google to Facebook.

The two-day meeting is a widely sought after event by FDA standards. More than 900 people wanted to register for the event but only 350 got seats.

[Snip]

FDA’s uncertainty about how it should regulate Web ads has compounded problems. The FDA sent waves through the pharmaceutical and ad industries when, after markets closed on a Friday evening in April, it posted warnings to 14 major pharmaceutical companies for misleading Internet ads that appear when people do online queries through search engines like Yahoo! and Google.

It is these sort of surprises that the industry wants to avoid. So they, along with representatives from Google Inc. (GOOG), groups like Consumers Union and WebMD Health Corp. (WBMD), will give their opinions about how the agency should regulate Internet ads.

One of the main questions is whether the FDA will treat Internet ads the same as, or differently from, ads on television and in print magazines.

[Snip]

Google spokesman Eric Obenzinger said a company representative plans to tell the FDA how important the Internet is for consumers researching health information. He said there are more than 4.5 billion searches annually for health information.

Google also plans to propose a new type of search ad that would be designed only for FDA-regulated companies and, the company hopes, “satisfy the FDA’s desire” for a balance of risk and benefit information. The ad would appear next to searches and would include an extra line for risk information and a link to further risk information.

Source: Dow Jones Newswires / Wall Street Journal

NOTE: Both days of the event will be streamed on the Internet.

See Also: Who Wants to Talk to the FDA About Google and Facebook? (via WSJ Health Blog)

See Also: Drug industry presses FDA to allow more online ads

Posted in Information Industry, Social Media, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

Two Items from Google: 17 World Bank Development Indicators Added to Main Database; New Option to “Lock Down” SafeSearch

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Two items to report on from the Googleplex today.

1) At the end of April, 2009, Google announced that they would start adding “public” data to search results “when available.” They launched with a couple of datasets from the U.S. Census and the U.S. Department of Labor. Here’s a Census result and one with labor data. Trigger words that would show the data have to be precise. For example, unemployment in California does not return a result with labor stats but unemployment Rate in California does.

It would be very useful for info pros and researchers if Google would provide a list of what data sets are available and what trigger words have to be used to get results that include “public data.”

Since the initial launch we’ve heard almost nothing about the program until today.

As of today, Google’s main database includes content (17 development indicators to be precise) from the World Bank’s Development Indicators (WDI) (2009 edition that looks as if it will be updated regularly). The complete WDI has over 800 indicators. Although the full text book is fee-based they do make some indicators available in this free “Quick Query” database and this VERY COOL WDI visualization tool.

The Google blog post points out seven indicators and the terms to trigger them:
1) [gdp of indonesia]
2 [life expectancy brazil]
3) [rwanda's population growth]
4) [energy use of iceland]
5) [co2 emissions of iceland]
6) [gdp growth rate argentina].
7) [internet users in the united states]

Here’s a search for GDP of Canada and as promised, you see the stat and a graph at the top of the page. If you click on the graph, you’ll be taken to a page where you can select a country or countries and see a graph comparing the statistic. Here’s an example. Links to email, IM, etc. as a well as code to embed the graph are located top right on the graph, “labeled ” link.

The indicators are:
+ CO2 emissions per capita
+ Energy use per capita
+ Electricity consumption per capita
+ Exports as percentage of GDP
+ Fertility rate
+ GNI per capita in PPP dollars
+ Gross Domestic Product
+ Gross National Income in PPP dollars
+ GDP deflator change
+ GDP growth rate
+ Imports as percentage of GDP
+ Internet users as percent of population
+ Life expectancy
+ Military expenditure as percentage of GDP
+ Mortality rate, under 5
+ Population
+ Population growth rate

Almost forgot. The two datasets that Google began the program with from the U.S. Census and Dept. of Labor are still available. According to this page, no new content from these organizations have been added to the database.

2) In other Google news, the company released a new feature allowing their SafeSearch filter to be “locked down in the “Strict Search” mode, the highest level of filtering. A password is required to change the setting. Additionally, pages will have drawings of colored balls (in Google’s colors) on them to indicate that Strict Search is on and locked.

From a Blog Post:

Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don’t see them, it’s quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch.

To change settings, head to the “search settings” page. If you’re going to use the new “search lock” feature, it would also be a good idea to take a look at this 95 second video.

Although it’s unlikely that Google would release the numbers, we wonder what the adoption rate of this service will be in 4-6 months. Will schools use it in addition to any third party filtering they use? Will Google continually market the service (perhaps even with paid ads) or will it only get major attention in the search industry press for a few days?

Source: Official Google Blog

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Information Industry, Search Tools, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

Deal Time: Some Wolfram|Alpha Data Will Soon (Very Soon) Be Available on Bing

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Word in two different blog posts that some Wolfram|Alpha data and functionality will be available on Bing very soon.

Key Points from the Wolfram|Alpha Blog Post

Starting today, Wolfram|Alpha’s knowledge, computed from expertly curated data, will enrich Bing’s results in select areas across nutrition, health, and advanced mathematics.

From the Bing Post:

You will begin to see the benefits of this unique partnership over the next several days as we roll it out in the US.

Specifically, we will bring nutritional information and tools into Bing’s search results, as well as some straight up hard math and homework help.

Examples of what Bing will provide include:

+ Nutrition Information (W|A version)

+ Interactive Body Mass Index Calculator (W|A Version)

+ “Complex Math Functions” and Knowledge About Unique Math Concepts”

Bing is one of the first commercial customers of the Wolfram|Alpha API. Btw, the blog post also contains a funny story involving Stephen Wolfram and Bill Gates.

Source: W|A, Bing

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

A New eReader from Intel Aimed at People Who are Blind, Have Weak Vision, or are Dyslexic

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

From the Computerworld Article:

Intel Corp. today started selling a new e-reader that can snap pictures of books and newspapers and then read them back to people who have a hard time reading the printed page.

Called the Intel Reader, the $1,499 device assists people who are blind, dyslexic or have weak vision, said Ben Foss, the director of access technology with Intel’s Digital Health Group, who came up with the idea for the reader. “It’s designed to give them independence and access to reading.”

Intel estimates that there are as many as 55 million people in the U.S. who could use its device. Foss said the Reader will give many of them a new freedom to read books, magazines and newspapers that would otherwise be inaccessible. Users hold the Reader a few feet above the paper they want to read; it snaps a photo, and within seconds converts the page to text, which it can then display in a large font or read out loud.

Read the Complete Article and Review the News Release with Pictures.

See Also: Yesterday’s announcement from Intel comes only a few weeks (mid-October) after Ray Kurzweil in partnership with Baker & Taylor announced an eReader for the blind and others. We have a post about it here with a number of links.

Baker & Taylor announced a partnership with acclaimed scientist, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, CEO of Kurzweil Technologies, to supply digital content for K-NFB Reading Technology, a newly developed e-book reading software created by Kurzweil in collaboration with the National Federation of the Blind. The software will be offered to consumers for free. B&T unveiled the software at the Frankfurt Book Fair with plans to launch the new reader in the U.S. at the end of November. (via PW)

While they are both aimed at the same used group both devices are quite different. The Intel Reader is an actual device that allows users take a pictures of something containing text ( say a restaurant menu) and then reads it to them out loud and/or displays the text in large print.

There is no actual eReader device from KFNB. The eReader software (which will be available for free) will run on several smartphones and operating systems including the iPhone, PCs, Macs, and Windows Mobile with more mobile devices to come. The eader will allow eBooks, articles and other textual material to be read out load on these devices. The software can handle many text formats including PDF and ePub. Elsevier Science and Technology Books is an early partner.

KFNB also offers other software, KReader Mobile and the knfbReader Mobile which, like the Intel Reader, allows users to snap pictures of text and then have it read back to them immediately. However, unlike the Intel product, these devices work on cell or smartphones.

Also in October, the U.S. Copyright office put out a call for public comment on, “possible solutions to enhance the accessibility of copyrighted works for the benefit of the blind or other persons with disabilities.” You can read the Federal Register with all of the details (3 pages; PDF).

Posted in Print Publications, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Problem Solved: Producing Direct Links to Specific Locations with Bing Maps

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

During the past few days we mentioned Bing Maps a couple of times and more specifically Bing’s Bird’s Eye imagery that is very cool and useful. Comparing “Bird’s Eye to Street View from Google is really unfair. Both offer different perspectives and depending on your information need. One might be better for your research on Monday but on Wednesday the other database helps you get the job done.

Yesterday, Bing Maps got a makeover and added some new features. The problem was we were unable to find the location where you could create a direct link to a specific location on a map and either place it on a web page, share it by e-mail, tweet it, etc.

However, we now have the answer. It’s quite easy.

1) Find the location you need by using the large search box at the top of the page.

2) Now that you’ve found the location you can zoom-in or zoom-out and view the aerial and “Bird’s Eye” imagey by pulling down on the “aerial arrow” at the top of the page. Now you can select the type of imagery you want and it’s easy to move from one to the other. It’s interesting to compare the aerial imagery with the Bird’s Eye content. Of course, it’s also easy to move back to the map view. Btw, the Bird’s Eye view is available for many locations around the world but it’s still not available in some areas. If it’s not available, the “Bird’s Eye” box will not be active.

3) You’ve found the map and now you have the imagery you need. Now, how do you share it?

4) At the bottom of the page look for an envelope icon, Click it. You should see a box that contains a URL to that precise location. In many cases, once your looking at a Bird’s Eye image you can zoom-in one more level.

Have fun! Here are a few examples:

+ O’Hare Airport, Chicago

+ The London Eye

+ Fenway Park, Boston

+ Colosseum, Rome

+ CN Tower

Posted in Geographic, Search News, Web Search | No Comments »

An Interview with Google’s VP of Search Products & User Experience, Marissa Mayer

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

From the Interview:

An edited transcript of the the conversation between Juan Carlos Perez (from IDG News Service) and Marrisa Mayer is included in the article.

Here is just one exchange:

IDGNS: At the user interface level, Google gets criticized by its competitors constantly for what they pejoratively disdain as Google’s “10 blue links” results page. They say Google is old school, that its paradigm of search is inefficient and inconvenient. How do you respond to that kind of criticism?

Mayer: I’d point to the fact that Universal Search was really a watershed moment in this. You get diagrams, pictures, blogs, local information, books, news, all stitched into your search engine. While many of our competitors are still busy building small, vertical search engines where you have to remember they have them, we’re busy doing a very difficult computer science problem: How do you stitch all of these disparate mediums together into one coherent set of answers, and how do you synthesize all of that? We’re doing all of that because it’s better for users: Here’s the tool and it gives me what I want, regardless of what format it came in.

We have two, three, five changes every week that are visible to the end-user in the user interface. We don’t [publicize] the ranking changes. We are making changes to our ranking algorithm at the rate of two per day. Interestingly, some of our competitors haven’t made any changes to their ranking function for quite some time. Search needs to evolve: the user interface, the ranking function. It’s a process of making lots of small changes all the time and to constantly make things better.

Other topics include:

+ What Would the Perfect Search Engine Look Like

+ Semantic Serarch

+ Google’s Universal Search

Source; Computerworld / IDG News Service

See Also: Does Marissa Mayer’s “Perfect Search Engine” Already Exist In Siri? (via SEL)
Based on Mayer’s response to the interview question about the “perfect search engine,” Greg Sterling says that the Mayer may have “unknowingly” described the SIRI. What’s a SIRI?

Sterling calls the Siri, a “virtual personal assistant” that uses artificial intelligence to determine user intent and then match data or applications that can fulfill that intent. The company will launch its iPhone application soon and already has a deal with a “tier one” US mobile carrier. He also shares his views (Sterling has seen the Siri in action) and points to this NY Times article. A must read.

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

An Interview with Project Gutenberg Founder Michael Hart

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Andrea Kobeskzo recently interviewed Michael Hart and now you can read the Q & A interview on the Project Gutenberg News Portal.

Here’s an interesting passage when Kobeskzo asks Hart about how Project Gutenberg has evolved over the years (PG began in 1971). Hart says:

Believe it or not people were still saying eBooks were never going to make it just a few years ago. Look for a quote in the Wall St. Journal: “Ebooks are never going to make it.” Before that the NY Times: look for: “twitchy” screen. However now that it’s obvious they are moving eBooks on their own, but I can’t tell how serious they are. They may just be following the rule of simple reporting: “Follow The Money.” If eBooks fall flat will they all just move on and pretend there was never any interest?

The first goal of PG was just to prove eBooks feasible. My own estimations were that it would take about 10,000, and that seems to have proved correct as Google called me in to advise them ASAP after we hit 10,000, and we went to do just that on December 14, 2003: and they announced they had invented eBooks and eLibraries December 14, 2004. However, they did the opposite, or rather exact opposite of what I said they should do and look what happened. Most of the big legal fray is because they were more money oriented, and as such may have intentionally played the copyright cards that got them in the big legal hassles. If they had started out by emphasizing the public domain it probably would have worked out a lot better for them in the press as the good will they would have built up would have gone a long way.

Personally, I am OK with nearly any eBook format that is compact and search quote friendly.

Access the Complete Interview

Posted in Digitization Projects, E-books, Information Industry, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

UK: Results of a Contest to Create Innovative Applications Using Library Data

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

From the Announcement:

Figures showing everyday use of a university library are the unlikely stars of a JISC-funded competition showcasing innovative approaches to presenting library data.

The winning entrant, an undergraduate computer scientist, created an imaginative ‘book galaxy’ showing books as stars in the galaxy of library resources accessed by University of Huddersfield students and staff – scroll down this page to see it.

Note: You can try Book Galaxy at the bottom of this page.

Alex Parker’s space-age entry presents library data in three different ‘galaxy’ views where library books are represented as moving stars that change speed and location according to how popular they are within a given course. They also join together in constellations to show books on connected topic, while orbited by meteors representing the courses of the students using those books

[Snip]

Starry-eyed Alex, a University of Southampton student, admits that he was “amazed” to hear the news of his winning entry. He explains: “The main reason I entered this competition is that I think that doing a keyword search and presenting lists of books to users is not always the best way to find what you want in a library, especially if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I had an idea that if you linked similar books together in a ‘web’ and did that for every book in the library interesting patterns would emerge.

[Snip]

Other entries include an application which suggests a subject course based on the books you’ve enjoyed reading, a facility for sharing your reading list with others, and way of finding out which books students on a given course have taken out, as well as how much they’ve saved by using the library rather than buying them.

Source: JISC

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

Semantic Web: Can Your Computer Read a Web Page Without Your Help? Soon it Might

Friday, November 6th, 2009

From the Post:

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web format, and the organization that keeps the standards of the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium, have recently been promoting the idea of making the Web machine-readable, or a Web of data. What does that mean? After all, at least in one sense, the Web is already being read by a machine — namely your own computer — when you surf the Web.

The article goes on to provide an example of what might happen if you were travelling for business or pleasure. This use of the semantic web comes from Dean Allemang, chief scientist at Semantic Web consulting firm TopQuadrant.

Source: GCN Tech Blog

See Also: Dean Allemang’s Weblog, S is For Semantics

Posted in Technology and Internet | No Comments »

GAO — National Archives: Progress and Risks in Implementing its Electronic Records Archive Initiative

Friday, November 6th, 2009

National Archives: Progress and Risks in Implementing its Electronic Records Archive Initiative (PDF: 154 KB)
From Highlights (PDF; 45 KB):

NARA has completed two of five planned increments of ERA, but has experienced schedule delays and cost overruns, and several functions planned for the system’s initial release were deferred. Although NARA initially planned for the system to be capable of ingesting federal and presidential records in September 2007, the two system increments to support those records did not achieve initial operating capability until June 2008 and December 2008, respectively. In addition, NARA reportedly spent about $80 million on the base increment, compared to its planned cost of about $60 million. Finally, a number of functions originally planned for the base increment were deferred to later increments, including the ability to delete records and to ingest redacted records. In fiscal year 2010, NARA plans to complete the third increment, which is to include new systems for Congressional records and public access, and begin work on the fourth.

Source: Government Accountability Office (David A. Powner, director, information technology management issues, before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform)

Posted in Access to Information, Archives and Special Collections, Government Documents and Political Information, Info Management and Retrieval, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

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