How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic

 

 

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How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic

via ReadWriteWeb by Marshall Kirkpatrick on 12/30/09

Let's say you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker. You want to get up to speed on the social media activity in your market, as fast as you can. Or perhaps you want to sell things to candlestick makers online, or you're a journalist writing a story about blogging butchers, or maybe you've got some kind of weird baking fetish or academic interest.

Is there any way to ramp up your knowledge of these fields, fast, other than the "Google and wander" method? We think there is. Below you'll find step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for the process we use when we want to get smart about a new field in a hurry.

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Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we'll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

Works With Just About Anything

We'll use the field of Education as our example, because there is a lot of activity there and we presume we've got more educators as readers here than butchers or candlestick makers. These methods can be applied to discovering the hottest people and topics in social media in any field, though.

If you doubt that these kinds of steps could help in your line of work - check out this post, where we found the best work-related RSS feeds for Fire Inspectors and Physical Therapists, just to prove that we could.

In the following 13 steps, we'll walk you through how we identify top blogs on any topic, how we quickly figure out what their most popular recent posts have been about, how we incorporate their blog archives into our knowledge about the field and how we find where else they are participating in conversation around the web. Going through the whole process takes us less time than it took us to write this post.

No end of variations are possible, of course, on this method - but we expect a lot of readers will find this useful. People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to "join the conversation" - because they aren't sure where to find the conversation. Here's how we find and track the most popular conversations in niche fields. Popularity isn't a perfect judge of quality by any means, but it's a good place to start from.

Is this post a cheat sheet? Maybe, but we think of it as a way for you to make your cheat sheet on whatever sector you follow.

Find The Most Popular Blogs in Your Field

There are many different ways to identify the top blogs in a given field, systematically, but some methods work better than others depending on the niche you're looking at. We compared six of our favorite methods in this post. Here, we found that visiting http://delicious.com/tag/blog+teaching gave us good results. By default the URLs are listed in reverse chronological order - the most recent items that anyone has bookmarked and have ever been called both "blog" and "teaching" will appear first. In the image above you can see that we're running two Greasemonkey scripts called Autopagerize and Sort By Popularity. Greasemonkey is really easy to use, see our post How to Learn to Use Greasemonkey in 5 Minutes.. These scripts let us open multiple pages of bookmarks all at once and then sort them in order of popularity.

So we did that, then scanned down the top several pages of most popular items tagged both "blog" and "teaching." We tried words other words like "education" as well. Each time we found a good site, we copied the link to it and went to step two.

Add The Feeds to a Reader

We like to use Netvibes to build collections of feeds because it's easy. Click on "add items" then "add feed" and paste in the link to the top blog you found. Netvibes will auto-discover the RSS feed for the site, often multiple variations but it shouldn't matter which one you choose. We pick "RSS 2.0" just because it's the most standard. Add it to your page and then go back to Delicious to find more sources.

We repeated the discovery step until we found about 10 good blogs to subscribe to. Then we visited those blogs and looked at their "blogrolls" or sidebar links to their favorite blogs. We found a number of good sources to include in our list that we had never heard of before. One was a good looking blog about education and technology that was written in Spanish, so we grabbed its feed and ran it through Mloovi.com to have it automatically translated into English, then put that translated feed into Netvibes.

Once you've got a good collection of top blogs in that Netvibes "tab" it's time to get it out of there. You can read the blogs in Netvibes, but there's more that we're going to do with these blogs. When you're in the "add feed" screen, you'll see an "OPML Export" link. OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is the format that reading lists are imported and exported from feed readers in. It's really simple. Export it to your dekstop and then move onto the next step below. We're now going to edit an OPML file - but don't be scared! It's easy, we promise. Anyone can do it.

Pull Out Your New Tab's Feeds

This step assumes you've using Netvibes, or some other start page, for other things in addition to this project. If that's not the case, skip to the next step. We use Netvibes for a number of different things, so when we put together a new collection of feeds in it and want to export them, we have to deal with the fact that our whole collection of feeds in all our tabs gets exported. Simply search for the title of your tab in the file, then delete everything outside of that section! Everything except the very beginning and end of the file, that is. You can see what it should look like below, in the next step.

The Top of the OPML File.

Don't delete the document type declaration of the body tags. Rename the title of the file and resave your document. Now don't you feel smart? That was really easy though!

Now to Find the Hottest Posts from Those Top Blogs

Now that you've got an OPML file of the most popular blogs in your field, you can take that file over to Postrank.com and import it. You'll need to create an account, and the service doesn't allow you to manage multiple OPML files, so you may need to create a new account for every time you do something like this. I just create a new account with a GMail alias. Did you know that as while other apps, like Postrank, think that emailmarshall@gmail.com, emailmarshall+1@gmail.com and emailmarshall+2@gmail.com are all different emails - Gmail considers them the same thing? It's true, that's an alias and all emails sent to any of those will end up in the same inbox. So I create a new account for each OPML file (silly, but that's how you've got to do some of these things) and then import my new OPML file.

Rank the Blog Posts With Robots!

Once you import that OPML file from your desktop, you'll probably notice that Postrank has seen some of the feeds and not seen others. You should probably come back in an hour once they've processed the remaining feeds. What are they doing? They are checking every item in every feed to see how many comments it has, how many inbound links, how man times it's been bookmarked in Delicious or Digg, how many times people Tweeted about it, etc. It's then ranking each item in each feed on a scale of 1 to 10, relative only to the other items in that same feed.

What does this mean? It means you can have Postrank show you only the most popular posts in each of these top blogs, as determined by the blogs' own communities of readers. That's valuable information! It's a very fast way to get up to speed on the latest hot topics in your field and by subscribing to the feeds filtered for popular items, you can pay peripheral attention to this field but know that you'll never miss a really big story. Thanks Postrank!

If you're interested in the Greatest Hits of Top Education Bloggers, here's the OPML file we built with the feeds we've found so far: Top Education Blogs - Greatest Hits. Just right click and save that link, then upload it to your feed reader.

Banish Content Overload

By selecting all the feeds in your collection, then setting their filter to "great" - you'll be shown just the hottest posts from each blog. Selecting "best" will show you almost nothing at all, though. Once you've set the filter to Great, export this filtered version of your OPML file and move on to the next step!

Pretty Up Your Collection

We would recommend opening this new OPML file in your text editor and renaming it something more useful.

Check Out the Hotness

By clicking on any of the feeds you imported into Postrank, you can check out the hottest posts in that blog's recent history. Hello time saver! Some of you might be temped to call it a day at this point, and we have captured a lot of good intelligence with relatively little work - but don't stop now, there's more we can do! You'll want to take these next steps, too.

Import Into a Feed Reader

Go back to your Netvibes or other reader's "add a feed" page and you'll see the option to import an OPML file. Import your new Postrank.com filtered OPML file and you'll be subscribed to just the hottest posts from the best blogs in your field of interest. Oh but there's still more we can do!

Make a List of the Links You Found

There's a number of different ways you can do this, you could have made a separate list of your links before you subscribed to their feeds, but I didn't in this example. Instead I went into Netvibes, clicked on the title of each blog and copied its home page URL over to a list in a text editor. Why do you want this list of links? Check out the next step.

Make a Reference Search Engine!

Google Custom Search Engine is really easy to use and is an incredibly powerful tool. Just paste the list of all your top sources in your field into the box on the page, save it, then bookmark the URL of the resulting search engine. Now any time you want to look real smart on a topic in education, you can just search for keywords in your Top Education Blogs Custom Search Engine. We have a lot of different Custom Search Engines that we use here at ReadWriteWeb.

Want to see what the results look like? Here's the Custom Search Engine we've got so far for Top Education Blogs. <-- Feel free to bookmark that and use it anytime, or suggest more links we should add to it.

Finally, Discover Community Leaders Elsewhere, Too

Blogs are great, but they aren't the only place where important discussion is going on online - not in almost any field anymore. Thought leaders in the education blogosphere are also having a lot of conversation on Twitter and FriendFeed, they are uploading presentations to SlideShare and participating in other online communities. You can connect with them quickly and easily by using the Google Social Graph API. Martin Atkins has built a very handy little interface that anyone can use to discover social media accounts registered to a person's name. We use that daily.

In the example above, Dave Perry of Academhack mentioned his Twitter account, so we searched for his Twitter name in the Google People Search site and found his Slideshare account too. This will work better for some people than for others, but sometimes it's a really big help.

So there you go. If you follow these steps, you'll be able to discover the top bloggers in any field, view or subscribe to just their most popular posts, search against their archives and befriend them elsewhere around the web! We hope this has been useful. Thanks for following along. If you can suggest better steps to take at any point in this process, or additional things you like to do - we'd love to hear about it!

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Did you get an e-book this holiday?

This holiday marks a watershed moment as Amazon sold more e-books this Christmas than physical books. See the story as reported in Gizmodo.



If you were lucky enough to get an e-book reader this holiday don't forget that our Maryland Public Library audiobook consortium, allows you to transfer your library loaned e-books to a Sony Reader and the B&N Nook. (Sorry not a kindle yet).

Let us know how you like it.

2010 Consumer Trends Influencers: Slides Predictions in 140 Characters, by TrendsSpotting

TrendsSpotting's 2010 Consumer Trends Influencers: Predictions in 140 Characters

View more documents from Taly Weiss.

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists | Best Colleges Online

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists

By Sarah Russel

Unless you’re enrolled at a top university or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet, and our list of 100 incredible lectures, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world.

General

Let the world’s top scientists explain exactly how they do their job when you listen to these lectures.

1. Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe: Listen to this talk from biologist Richard Dawkins to consider the strangeness of our universe, and how there are so many things out there we can’t comprehend.
2. Kary Mullis on what scientists do: Biochemist Kary Mullis references the 17th century as he talks about the nature of discovery and experimentation.
3. Explanation of objective, issue and element of strategy: Nadine Hilgert discusses research ethics and experimentation in this lecture.
4. Lee Smolin on science and democracy: Physicist Lee Smolin discusses how democratic (or not) the scientific community it.
5. A Passion for Discovery: Peter Freund of the University of Chicago considers the entanglement of physics experiments and their effect on the behavior of scientists.
6. A New Age of Exploration: From Earth to Mars: This video isn’t just about space exploration: it’s about the new age of experimentation and research.
7. Dr. Hugh Ross PhD. Lectures on "Creation as Science": Dr. Ross blames the science education crisis for all the hostility in creation vs. evolution debate.
8. A New Kind of Science – Stephen Wolfram: Stephen Wolfram’s talk A New Kind of Science, credits simple computer experiments with challenging him to look at research in a new way.
9. Science and the University – An Evolutionary Tale – The Endless Frontier: Donald Kennedy reflects on how modern research universities and programs were founded.

Science and Engineering

From materials science to the study of thermodynamics, learn more about the science of engineering here.

1. WTC Lecture – collapse of WTC Buildings: Steven E. Jones discusses the collapse of the World Trade Towers from a physics perspective.
2. Aircraft Systems Engineering: Jeffrey Hoffman of MIT lectures about the origins of the space shuttle, thermal protection systems, main engines and more.
3. Symmetry, Structure and Tensor Properties of Materials: Learn about crystallography, 2D symmetries and other materials science principles.
4. Machine Learning: Discover how machines "learn" due to statistical patterns, learning theory, adaptive control and more.
5. Innovation Design: In this lecture series, you’ll learn about environmental innovation and the innovation process in general, as it’s related to engineering and science.
6. Introduction to Biomedical Engineering: Mark Saltzman from Yale discusses then nature of biomedical engineering, including cell culture engineering.
7. Nanophotonics: Discover the Magic of Light in Nanostructures: Evelyn Hu discusses optical materials and beyond in this lecture.
8. The Second Law and Energy: Listen to Steven Chu’s talk about thermodynamics.

Biology and Medicine

From drug research to evolution to writing the genetic code, watch these lectures for the latest developments in biology and medical research.

1. A Paradigmatic Complex System: The Immune System: Irun Cohen of the Weizmann Institute of Science is a physician and researcher who is trying to understand the complex immune system.
2. Bioinformatic, Structural Biology and Structure Based Ligand Design in drug discovery: Discover how drugs are researched and developed.
3. Molecular Biology: Macromolecular Synthesis and Cellular Function: Qiang Zhou from Berkeley discusses new findings in DNA research.
4. Evolution of the Human Species: The discussion about evolution is still active. This lecture considers evolution from genetic and fossil records.
5. Ventricular fibrillation in the human heart. Why is it different from the dog and pig heart?: Kirsten ten Tusscher looks at the structure of the human heart in this talk.
6. Craig Venter on DNA and the sea: Biodiversity and genomics scientist Craig Venter talks about starting to writing the genetic code instead of just reading it.
7. How Bacteria Cause Disease: Warren Levinson explains how bacteria are transmitted.
8. The Origin of the Human Mind: Insights from Brain Imaging and Evolution: Find out how the human mind continues to evolve.
9. Engineering New Approaches to Cancer Detection and Therapy: Find out what’s on the brink of cancer research.
10. Principles of Systems Biology illustrated using the Virtua Heart: Denis Noble from the University of Oxford discusses complex organisms.
11. Biological Principles of Swarm Intelligence: Guy Theraulaz discusses animal psychology and swarm intelligence.
12. How the body fights infection: Discover the processes that occur when your body tries to protect you when you’re sick.
13. Biological Large Scale Integration: Here Stephen Quake discusses his theories on tiny "plumbing tools" he uses to analyze DNA sequences.
14. Psychology, Sex and Evolution: This lecture combines psychology and biology to find an answer to how preoccupied we are with sex.
15. Dynamics on and of Biological Networks: Case Studies on the Machinery of Life: Stefan Bornholdt discusses molecular networks in this lecture.

Chemistry

These chemistry scientists discuss the atomic theory of matter and other mind-boggling principles in the following lectures.

1. Graphite: a new twist: This University of Sussex scientist talks about carbon, diamond and graphite.
2. Thermodynamics and Kinetics: Learn about work, heat, internal energy and more.
3. Principles of Chemical Science, Normal Track: This course from MIT scientist Sylvia Ceyer covers atomic theory of matter, radiation and more.
4. The simulation of structures in modern materials with the theory of density functional calculations: Karlheinz Schwarz takes on the theory of density functional calculations.
5. Liquid Crystal Elastomers: Professor Heino Finkelmann talks about rubber elasticity and inducing the liquid crystalline state of elastomers.
6. Janine Benyus shares nature’s designs: This lecture covers chemistry, nature and biomimicry.
7. Penelope Boston says there might be life on Mars: Listen to Penelope Boston reveal the possibility of chemical and biological properties that may indicate life on Mars.
8. General Chemistry: Kristie Boering introduces shape matters, chemical bonds and equilibrium in this series.
9. Monodispersed particles in technologies and medicine: These scientists from Clarkson University discuss the chemical properties and use of monodispersed particles.
10. Chemical Structure and Reactivity: Peter Vollhardt from Berkeley gives listeners an introduction to organic chemical structures, organometallics and more.
11. Introduction to Solid State Chemistry: This MIT course lecture introduces you to solid state chemistry.
12. The Families of Sugars and Chemistry of Aldoses: This lecture serves as an introduction to organic chemical structures.
13. Properties and Chemistry of Heteroaromatic Compounds: Learn about heterocycles here.

Physics and Astronomy

Turn to this list of lectures to discover how scientists are harnessing the infinite wonders of the universe.

1. The Physical World: Topics in these lectures from The Open University include quantum physics, Einstein, helicopter flight and more.
2. Astronomy Lecture 1: What is a star?: Finally learn what a star really is and how we all fit into the universe.
3. Quantum gravity in three dimensions: Andrew Strominger discusses quantum gravity.
4. Challenge in Astrophysics: Sarah Bridle introduces the challenge to measure and identify the shapes of distant galaxies.
5. X-rays from comets – a surprising discovery: Watch this talk to learn how comets can be X-rayed and what the images reveal.
6. The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy: Nobel Prize-winning Charles H. Townes talks about what’s next in terms of deep galaxy exploration.
7. An overview of the United State government’s space and science policy-making process: Find out what driving forces control the government’s policy-making decisions in regards to science and space exploration.
8. Loop Quantum Gravity: Carlo Rovelli discusses superstring theory here.
9. Forty years of high energy string collisions: Gabriele Veneziano reviews what’s been going on during string collisions for the past forty years.
10. What is the simplest quantum field theory?: In this lecture, Freddy Cachazo brings forth ideas of simpler quantum field theories.
11. Physics III: Vibrations and Waves: Learn about forced oscillations and other physics properties here.
12. Stephen Hawking asks big questions about the universe: Stephen Hawking asks questions about the beginnings of the universe, where humans came from and more.
13. The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether and the Unification of Force: Anticipating a New Golden Age: Frank Wilczek introduces listeners to his new physics theory.
14. Transitioning from the Space Shuttle to the Constellation System: In this talk, you will learn about the future of space exploration.
15. The Second Law and Cosmology: Max Tegmark asks questions about entropy, temperature and equilibrium when studying the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Earth and Environment

Discover deep sea ecosystems, global warming and other Earth science phenomena here.

1. David Deutsch on our place in the cosmos: Scientist David Deutsch urges the greater scientific community to seriously consider global warming.
2. Nature, not human activity, rules the climate: This controversial opinion gives nature all the credit in our changing climate.
3. Stanford Experts on Climate Change and Carbon Trading: Dr. Schneider, one of the leading experts on climate change, talks about the crisis.
4. The Invisible Forest: Microbes in the Sea: Learn about these key ocean organisms.
5. Planet Water: Complexity and Organization in Earth Systems: Rafael Bras is credited with launching the science of hydrology and discusses water complexity here.
6. E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth: Biologist E.O. Wilson entreats society to become more educated on natural life on Earth.
7. The U.S. Energy Crisis and the Role of New Nuclear Plants: Thomas A. Christopher considers the effects of nuclear plants on the energy and environmental crises.
8. CO2 beyond tomorrow: a fundamental approach: This panel featuring Helmut List aims to predict future CO2 emissions effects.
9. Sea Levels and Climate Change: David T. Pugh is a physicist who is concerned with sea level rise and coastal flooding.
10. Importance of Science in Conservation: Conservation isn’t just a social or political issue: Peter Seligmann argues that science is also a strong part of the picture.
11. In Antarctica: The Global Warming: Sebastian Copeland explains how Antarctica is a microcosm for what will happen to the rest of the world due to global warming.
12. Climate change from the scientific point of view: Listen to a scientist’s view of what’s going on in the development in climate change.
13. Robert Ballard on exploring the oceans: Discover the new research projects going on underwater.

Technology

For the latest in technology and computer science, see what these top lecturers have to share.

1. Saul Griffith on everyday inventions: Listen to inventor Saul Griffith discuss the importance and elegance of designing everyday materials.
2. Energy Efficient Transistors: Alan Seabaugh from the University of Notre Dame explains how transistors are becoming more energy efficient.
3. Bounding nanotechnology: Deconstructing the Drexler-Smalley Debate: Sarah Kaplan dissects the Drexler-Smalley debate in this lecture.
4. Introduction to Robotics: Stanford’s Oussama Khatib covers the history of robotics, spatial descriptions, kinematics and more.
5. Computer System Engineering: Learn the basics of computer system engineering as explained by MIT’s Hari Balakrishnan.
6. Ray Kurzweil on how technology will transform us: Ray Kurzweil introduces the idea of a future populated with nanobots.
7. Technology and Social Responsibility: Larry Page and Sergey Brin hold technology projects, researchers and companies to a higher standard in this lecture.
8. Living with Catastrophic Terrorism: Can Science and Technology Make the U.S. Safer?: Lewis M. Branscomb is actually a public policy professor and co-chair at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, but this lecture takes on a critical debate about the importance of science and technology in government.
9. Steve Koonin- Chief Scientist BP: Steve Koonin talks about his job’s challenge to plot long-term technology strategy.
10. The Inner History of Devices: Sherry Turkle combines a study of psychology with physical science and technology in this lecture.

Science in the Future

These scientists share a glimpse into a future with customized human babies, synthetic chromosomes, and more.

1. Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling science: Juan Enriquez explains how forward thinking and science are going to pull us out of any crises or disasters.
2. Craig Venter is on the verge of creating synthetic life: Discover how synthetic chromosomes may be in the future.
3. To upgrade is human: How can technology help human evolution? Gregory Stock considers customized human babies and the future of adoption.
4. Next Generation of Solar Cells — Lowering Costs, Improving Performance and Scale: Tonio Buonassisi talks about capturing the sun’s power.
5. Do-It-Yourself Biology: Natalie Kuldell combines computer engineering history with genetic engineering to predict a DIY future and scientific community.

Science and Business

Learn about the relationship between science, policymaking and business when you watch these lectures.

1. Balancing Science and Business: Understanding technology and modern business principles is ideal, argues Marc Fleury.
2. Leading Innovation: This talk explores responsible, effective strategies for uniting technology and business.
3. Globalization of Science: Opportunities for Competitive Advantage from Science in China, India and Beyond: Fiona Murray reveals how science, technology and engineering are valid forces in the business world, especially in competitive markets like China and India.

Miscellaneous

From studying the brain in love to monitoring the future of science education, these lecturers continue to explore every avenue of science.

1. Helen Fisher studies the brain in love: If you’ve ever wondered about the physical changes that the brain goes through when you’re in love, watch this lecture.
2. Fuzzy Logic: This lecture from computer and information scientist Michael Berthold reveals how fuzzy logic is used for data analysis.
3. Science Education in the 21st Century: Using the Tools of Science to Teach Science: Dr. Carl Wierman is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who comments on the future of science education.
4. The Evolution of Trichomatic Color Vision: Consider genetic evolution of sight and brain processes here.
5. Probability for Life Science: This mix of math and life science covers probability and beyond.
6. Psychology in Human-Computer Interaction: David Kieras considers human-computer interaction in this talk.
7. Electrons, Life and the Evolution of the Oxygen Cycle on Earth: This talk examines several different scientific properties and questions.
8. Renaissance Physicists: Steven Weinberg isn’t too optimistic about the future of science and discusses the characteristics that define a truly ambitious scientist.
9. Worms, Life and Death: Cel Suicide in Development and Disease: Consider cell death as a key factor in biological development after listening to this lecture.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 12:20 am and is filed under Features, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Posted via web from John Taube's Posterous

8 Spectacular Christmas Light Shows on YouTube [VIDEOS]

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Posted via web from John Taube's Posterous

Best of the Decade: A Collection of 30 “Top 10″ Lists

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Best of the Decade: A Collection of 30 "Top 10″ Lists

Best of the Decade: A Collection of 30 "Top 10″ Lists

From publications dealing with gadgets to those that cater to soccer fans, everyone is compiling lists commemorating the first decade of the 21st century. Here are some publications' choices:

• 10 biggest advertising stories of the decade, includes hottest brands of the year (AdAge)
  
• PC Magazine's best of the decade tech list
  
• Biggest legal stories of the decade (National Law Journal)
  
• The top 10 things you never heard of 10 years ago and use all the time now (Newsweek)
  
• Decade's best political scandals (Washington Post's Dana Milbank)
  
• The top stocks of the decade (Time)
  
• Best books of the decade based on an online vote (Goodreads.com)
  
• Most influential person (Washington Post)
  
• Top 10 science stories from i09 (Pluto got a downgrade, Hubble worked overtime and we met Ardi.)
  
• The 10 biggest NHL stories of the decade (from Puck Daddy)
  
• Best (and worst) in all pro sports (Forbes)
  
• NFL best of the decade (Sports Illustrated)
  
• The biggest soccer stories of the decade (Yahoo sports)
  
• The economy in review (BusinessWeek)
  
• 10 top fitness trends/fads of the decade (About.com)
  
• 10 best movies of the decade (Entertainment Weekly)
  
• Best films list from Richard Brody of the New Yorker (I suspect you have not seen most of these.)
  
• 10 best TV shows of the decade (Entertainment Weekly)
  
• The 100 best albums of the decade (Rolling Stone)
  
• Top health stories of the decade (Associated Content)
  
• The top 10 happiest endings of the decade (Newsweek)
  
• Top 10 dates of the decade that we should not forget (Newsweek)
  
• Top health concerns of the decade (Forbes)
  
• The worst ideas of the decade (Washington Post)
  
• The 100 best songs of the decade (Rolling Stone)
  
• The best innovations of the decade (Washington Post)
  
• Top patent stories of the decade (ipWatchDog)
  
• Best comics of the decade (techland)
  
• Best Hollywood red carpet dresses of the decade (Entertainment Weekly)

Source: Al's Morning Meeting

Jtaube@allconet.org

301-697-7384

Saint Paul Public Library to Launch Mobile Computer Lab with Grant from Knight Foundation « ResourceShelf

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e-Books (Digital Comics): Wallace & Gromit for iPhone Receives Half a Million Downloads (and Still Counting) in Six Weeks »

Saint Paul Public Library to Launch Mobile Computer Lab with Grant from Knight Foundation

These days when we talk “mobile” and libraries we usually have smartphones or other devices in mind. However, that’s not the case this tine. Today, we’re actually talking about something on four wheels. Congrats to the everyone in St.Paul on receiving the grant.

From the Announcement:

The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library and the Saint Paul Public Library will expand computer training to underserved neighborhoods with a mobile computer lab, thanks to a $300,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The project features two components. First, the library will launch a mobile service delivery van, complete with 10 laptop computers loaded with teaching and testing software. The Mobile Workplace will regularly visit at least nine community partner locations where library staff will offer job search assistance and computer training. The second component is the participation of multilingual cultural liaisons who will ensure that services are offered in high-priority languages, including Spanish, Hmong and Somali, with outreach to specific cultural communities.

“Libraries are the greatest providers of free Internet – offering residents access to the critical skills and information they need to find jobs in the 21st century workforce” said Polly Talen, program director for Knight Foundation. “Through this initiative, we hope to augment the library’s role as a vital community center while helping to create informed and well-prepared communities.”

Source: Knight Foundation (via @ KIMatYEDITEPE)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 and is filed under Libraries and Librarianship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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e-Books (Digital Comics): Wallace & Gromit for iPhone Receives Half a Million Downloads (and Still Counting) in Six Weeks

News of an e-book bestseller.

From the Article:

A free inaugural Wallace & Gromit digital comic for the iPhone has been downloaded 500,000 times in barely a month and a half…

Titan Publishing’s inaugural episode of the Wallace & Gromit comic for the iPhone and iPod touch has been downloaded more than half a million times, the company said Tuesday. The digital comic landed on the App Store November 7 and quickly became the #1 free book download, only to be topped recently by Amazon’s Kindle app.

[Snip]

Titan Publishing is offering Wallace & Gromit: The W Files edition free of charge for a limited time in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the first ever screening of Wallace & Gromit, so grab yourself a copy (iTunes link) while the deal is still valid.

More issues of the Wallace and Gromit series are online and for sale at $.99.

Source: Geek.com

See Also: “And it’s not only us Brits who can’t get enough of Aardman’s iconic duo – it’s currently the number one free book download in America and Canada and number 2 in Australia!” The digital comics are now rolling out for the PSP. (via IGN)

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One Response to “Saint Paul Public Library to Launch Mobile Computer Lab with Grant from Knight Foundation”

1. Saint Paul Public Library to Launch Mobile Computer Lab with Grant … | Mobile Metering says:

   December 23, 2009 at 1:24 pm

   [...] from: Saint Paul Public Library to Launch Mobile Computer Lab with Grant … Tags: actually-talking, blackberry, most-likely, other-devices, running-the-windows, tine, [...]

via resourceshelf.com

Pretty Cool Idea.

Posted via web from John Taube's Posterous

Track Santa and his sleigh with NORAD

via googleblog.blogspot.com

Posted via web from John Taube's Posterous

Too Many Databases?

We have had a lot of discussion about how to increase usage of our subscription databases. Maybe we are coming at the issue from the wrong side, maybe we have too many databases offering things our customers don't want.

How would you feel if our database page were set up like our catalog page, just one box searching just one big database? Lots to think about, like an easier web page to navigate and saving library dollars.

What do you think, is access to 50 databases overkill?
thanks

unemployment and disengagement » Contexts Crawler

A USA Today Op-Ed by Thomas Sander and Robert Putnam reveals a long-term consequence of unemployment:

Recent studies confirm the results of research during the Great Depression — unemployment badly frays a person’s ties with his community, sometimes permanently. After careful analysis of 20 years of monthly surveys tracking Americans’ social and political habits, our colleague Chaeyoon Lim of the University of Wisconsin has found that unemployed Americans are significantly less involved in their communities than their employed demographic twins. The jobless are less likely to vote, petition, march, write letters to editors, or even volunteer. They attend fewer meetings and serve less frequently as leaders in local organizations. Moreover, sociologist Cristobal Young’s research finds that the unemployed spend most of their increased free time alone.

These negative social consequences outlast the unemployment itself. Tracking Wisconsin 1957 high school graduates, sociologists Jennie Brand and Sarah Burgard found that in contrast to comparable classmates who were never unemployed, graduates who lost jobs, even briefly and early in their careers, joined community groups less and volunteered considerably less over their entire lives. And economist Andrew Clark, psychologist Richard Lucas and others found that, unlike almost any other traumatic life event, joblessness results in permanently lower levels of life satisfaction, even if the jobless later find jobs.

Equally disturbing, high unemployment rates reduce the social and civic involvement even of those still employed. Lim has found that Americans with jobs who live in states with high unemployment are less civically engaged than workers elsewhere. In fact, most of the civic decay in hard-hit communities is likely due not to the jobless dropping out, but to their still-employed neighbors dropping out.

Some possible explanations for this disturbing trend:

What might explain the civic withdrawal during recessions? The jobless shun socializing, shamed that their work was deemed expendable. Economic depression breeds psychological depression. The unemployed may feel that their employer has broken an implicit social contract, deflating any impulse to help others. Where unemployment is high, those still hanging onto their jobs might work harder for fear of further layoffs, thus crowding out time for civic engagement. Above all, in afflicted communities, the contagion of psychic depression and social isolation spreads more rapidly than joblessness itself.

via contexts.org

I wonder what lessons we can draw from WMD's long term economic slump?

Posted via web from John Taube's Posterous

Cumberland Times-News - South Cumberland Library may be renovated

Published: December 10, 2009 11:46 pm     

     -->

South Cumberland Library may be renovated

Kevin Spradlin
Cumberland Times-News

CUMBERLAND — An architectural firm from Baltimore has deemed the 27-year-old South Cumberland Library building on Seymour Street to be “sound” and is recommending renovating the existing structure for the Allegany County Library System’s next planned capital project.

John Taube, library system director, said Wednesday during the monthly board of trustees meeting that options Murphy and Dittenhafer Inc. were able to consider included relocating and constructing a new building.

The feasibility study, which Taube said was about halfway complete, indicates the building has “served the library system well” for nearly three decades.

The study notes that the library system would “get the biggest bang for our renovation dollar by staying in the building at that site,” Taube said.

Board members Jeff Getty, Mary Jane O’Rourke, Sandy Grandstaff, Bill Bingman and Barbara Leasure endorsed the idea of allowing the firm to complete the study based on the notion the current building would be renovated.

“I’m glad we’re able to stay there and utilize that facility,” Getty said.

O’Rourke agreed.

“It means a lot to that community,” O’Rourke said.

Taube said the South Cumberland branch has the largest walk-in patronage of any of the system’s six fixed branches across the county.

Getty noted that the decision to renovate an existing building could “give us greater bargaining power for dollars we’re spending.”

That’s important, Getty said, because the library system’s two primary funding sources — state and county governments — aren’t likely to increase funding in the near future.

In fact, Getty said, “there may not be any public money for a long time” for building any new facilities.

Branch Manager Nora Drake and Larry VanMeter, facilities coordinator for the library system, first met with Taube and representatives from Murphy and Dittenhafer on Oct. 29.

The meeting consisted of a tour of the facility, an explanation of some concerns noted by library staff and described programs and functions of each room in the building as well as the volume of services.

The study could be complete and ready for presentation at the board’s next meeting, scheduled for 4 p.m. Jan. 13.

Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.

      -->  

via times-news.com

Posted via web from John Taube's posterous

The magic of dynamic pricing

 

 

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The magic of dynamic pricing

via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 12/10/09

Status quo seekers in publishing are now talking about delaying Kindle and other ebook editions of their new books. The idea would be to come out with a hardcover, then a few months later an ebook, then a year later a paperback.

This is lame-brained thinking on many levels, one involving teaching the market a lesson. Leaving that aside, it ignores the magic of dynamic pricing.

When you produce a physical good like a book, it's really hard to change the price over time, especially if there are retail stores involved. But changing the price on an electronic good is trivially easy.

So, for example, you could charge $24 for the Kindle edition for the first two weeks, then $15 for the next two weeks and then $9 for the year after that. Once it's a backlist classic, it could cost $2...

Or, thinking about how you might create launch excitement, you could reverse it. $2 the first day, $5 the first week, then $9 later. Better hurry!

Or, to get more sophisticated, you could reward the market for getting excited. What if the price for everyone drops if enough people pre-order it?

This isn't just about books, of course. It's about anything where you have the ability to change pricing based on time or demand... tolls, music, phone calls, consulting... We need to stop assuming that digital goods are just like physical goods, but shinier.

Technology puts a lot more pressure on your imagination and creativity, even in pricing.

 

 

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For Elderly in Rural Areas, Hard Times Get Harder

via nytimes.com

Posted via web from John Taube's posterous

NYTimes: For Elderly in Rural Areas, Times Are Distinctly Harder

From The New York Times:

For Elderly in Rural Areas, Times Are Distinctly Harder

The recession and cuts to programs for aging Americans have made
growing old in isolated areas even tougher.

http://s.nyt.com/u/i59

Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting
http://itunes.com/apps/nytimes

Jtaube@allconet.org
301-697-7384

Google's "Living Stories" News Experiment

 

 

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Google's "Living Stories" News Experiment

via Google Blogoscoped by Philipp Lenssen on 12/8/09

Google has partnered with the New York Times and the Washington Post news organizations to create an experimental type of news page they call "living story". In a blog post announcing this move, Google says that Living Stories try a non-traditional approach of presenting news: "They unify coverage on a single, dynamic page with a consistent URL. They organize information by developments in the story. They call your attention to changes in the story since you last viewed it so you can easily find the new material. Through a succinct summary of the whole story and regular updates, they offer a different online approach to balancing the overview with depth and context."

What does the article aggregation page feature? One page, for instance, is titled "The Politics of Global Warming". On it we can find interacting elements such as evolving textual summaries, timelines, audio content, image and video content. Areas can be expanded, while other areas scroll with you. You can sort in a variety of ways, like to restrict the news to quotes, or US news, or by showing the oldest news first. There are widgets like maps showing a person's location while streaming their audio quote. User comments are available too. Clicking on "Opinion" will list editorials only. Additionally, you can subscribe to email updates for a particular story set.

That's a lot of variety and room for interaction, though I can't yet tell if I wouldn't actually prefer a mostly-text-only overview of the same thing, presenting overviews, quotes, insights, images etc. in the order the journalist (or the editors of Wikipedia collectively presenting a topic) would deem most reasonable... to decide on that I'd have to give this a longer try. Are these many choices empowering, or confusing?

In regards to partnerships, which always creates interesting fields for conflicts of interests, the New York Times is probably the one news organization that Google grants closest insight access for reporting. For instance, Google once allowed a NYT reporter to spend a day with the search quality team, "observing some internal meetings and talking to several top engineers." The NYT has also employed search engine optimization techniques in the past which were often found to be borderline, even though we didn't see Google punish them for it (I won't conclude anything the NYT did was blackhat, because we often don't know what exactly the Googlebot saw at which point in time; we may want to assume innocent until proven guilty, but we also need to realize that the one most likely to have proof in these and future cases will always be Google Inc). Instead, Google has started to offer more official ways for news organizations to get their content indexed in Google while hiding it to a portion of users through a "First Click Free" policy. This is not to state that Google is already playing favors or will do so in the future, but when Google calls a particular source a "world-class" news organization in a blog post and partners with them in their tools, we at least have reason to take a closer look.

Now, in old Google News, the bias created by any particular news organization is somewhat balanced by presenting a huge variety of news organizations. Google's new experiment does not have this great source variety. Thus, the bias from the content producer is carried on by the tool maker. Here is a sample of NYT bias alleged by editors of Wikipedia – whether or not you agree with this particular bit, it goes to show that there's at least grounds for discussion when Google decides to go with a limited set of sources only:

In the build up to the 2003 war the New York Times published a number of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in particular, written by Judith Miller helped persuade the American public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material. It is now clear that they could not be used for that purpose. The story was followed up with television appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action against Iraq. Miller's sources were introduced to her by Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile favorable to a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Miller is also listed as a speaker for The Middle East Forum, an organization which openly declared support for an invasion.

From another angle, propaganda and power structures critic Noam Chomsky in an interview once stated:

[T]he elite media are sort of the agenda-setting media. That means The New York Times, The Washington Post, the major television channels, and so on. They set the general framework. Local media more or less adapt to their structure.

And they do this in all sorts of ways: by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict – in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

The New York Times is certainly the most important newspaper in the United States, and one could argue the most important newspaper in the world. The New York Times plays an enormous role in shaping the perception of the current world on the part of the politically active, educated classes. Also The New York Times has a special role, and I believe its editors probably feel that they bear a heavy burden, in the sense that The New York Times creates history.

That is, history is what appears in The New York Times archives; the place where people will go to find out what happened is The New York Times. Therefore it's extremely important if history is going to be shaped in an appropriate way, that certain things appear, certain things not appear, certain questions be asked, other questions be ignored, and that issues be framed in a particular fashion. Now in whose interests is history being so shaped? Well, I think that's not very difficult to answer.

And again, I don't think it's important whether we agree with this personal particular view... we just need to realize that these are the types of issues that come up when there's a limited source set. Google as a content-agnostic "mere toolmaker" needs to answer less questions on editorial guidelines – favoring one news source over another, however, is in itself an editorial decision. Thus we will need to ask new questions aimed at Google, too, like the following: How would a "living story" present the build up to another war?

[Thanks Mbegin!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google's "Living Stories" News Experiment | Comments]

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Google Goggles - Search with your Camera

Short Google Real Time Search Demo

Twitter lists goodies without paying attention

If you are like me you sometimes want to keep up with whats going on but not right now. I subscribe to several Twitter lists but send the posts to my RSS reader so they are there when I can read them. I use Twitter List to RSS to create a feed out of a Twitter list. Just enter the Twitter list address in the box provided


If you need a list to follow, why not follow the library list of Twitter posts?
Use this address:
http://twitter.com/johntaube/alleganycountylibrary

Was Jane Austen killed by cows?

Was Jane Austen killed by cows?: "

What was the mysterious ailment that killed Jane Austen? Could she have been felled by the lovely cows in the English countryside? That's the theory of an article in the journal Medical Humanities.

Many have assumed that Austen died from Addison's disease, a once-fatal condition triggered by the failure of the renal glands. But in Medical Humanities, K.G. White examined the author's letters and found no mention of the painful symptoms common to Addison's. Her theory: Austen may have succumbed to tuberculosis contracted from cows. Here's a summary of her findings:

"Important symptoms reported by contemporary Addison’s patients—mental confusion, generalised pain and suffering, weight loss and anorexia—are absent from Jane Austen’s letters. Thus, by listening to the patient’s perspective, we can conclude it is unlikely that Addison’s disease caused Jane Austen’s demise. Disseminated bovine tuberculosis would offer a coherent explanation for her symptoms ... ."

A bit more on the topic from The Guardian.

Thanks to ReadStreet for the article tip.

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