Reporters Desktop
http://www.reporter.org/desktop/
Direct forms for searching a variety of search engines, databases, dictionaries, and free news archives. Especially check out his guide to public records searching, "Who Is John Doe and Where To Get the Paper on Him."

[Neat New Stuff]

9:51:53 AM    

Translation Wizard - Fagan Finder
http://www.faganfinder.com/translate/
"a tool which connects you directly to online translation tools. Fagan Finder itself does not contain these translation tools. Instead, it includes a listing of many translation tools, each of which has different language and translation capabilities. It matches up the translation you want with a tool that can handle it." Type in a URL or copy and paste a block of text to be translated, specify from which language into which language, and voila, you'll get a fairly passable machine translation.

[Neat New Stuff]

9:49:04 AM    

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/hall/
Creating clear instructions and self-evident diagrams is an art not yet mastered by many manufacturers, as evidenced here by examples that are "inexplicable, strange, and surreal."

[Neat New Stuff]

9:46:52 AM    

What's New - Government Resources on the Web http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/whatsnew.html
Now all links added to the University of Michigan Documents Center pages are noted on this What's New page. Another terrific annotated resource from documents librarian extraordinaire, Grace York.

[Neat New Stuff]

9:45:40 AM    

Reporters without Borders
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20
"like a press-freedom news agency." It presents articles that have been banned in their country of origin, hosts newspapers that have been closed down in their homeland and serves as a forum where journalists who have been "silenced" by authorities can voice their opinions. Includes its Worldwide Press Freedom Index and "The Internet under Surveillance - Obstacles to the free flow of information online."

[Neat New Stuff]

9:39:23 AM    

Resources for Readers and Writers
http://marylaine.com/readers.html
Outline and links for a presentation I just gave.

[Neat New Stuff]

9:37:22 AM    

Primary Sources on the Web
http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/History/RUSA/
Excellent tutorial that defines primary sources, shows how to find them on the web and evaluate them, and then cite them appropriately.

[Neat New Stuff]

9:34:10 AM    

YAMS: Yet Another Music Service.

Downloadable Music Floodgates Opening

"Reports say EMI, one of the world's largest music companies, is about to open its entire catalog for downloading to subscribers of wippit.com. Apple's newly Windlows-friendly iTunes system will reportedly add 50,000 new songs next week, and Napster's new legit download service launches on Wednesday." [Lost Remote]

Wow, these services are popping up like weeds. I still say they need to start differentiating themselves more, with lyrics, printable CD covers, listener reviews, and the like. I'm really surprised Apple hasn't figured this out yet, because they already have such a rabid, built-in community.

Wippit's main page touts "unlimited MP3 downloads for $49 a year (or $6.50 a month) plus 20 ringtones and a promise of no spyware or adware. That's a discounted price for the moment, as the site says the cost is normally $80 per year. It's also different from the major label services because it's a P2P engine. right now they have 60,000 titles from 96 record labels, so maybe they have some indie stuff that the others don't.

I don't see any mention of DRM or copyright protection in a quick skim of the site. Maybe I'll play around with it this weekend and see. But as I noted at the A/V panel this week, these online music services are the future, and librarians should start to track how they work, if only to understand what our patrons will be using in a few years.

[The Shifted Librarian]

9:31:06 AM    

Weekend Wanderings - Henry Petroski. Weekend Wanderings - Henry Petroski - With the passing of Lewis Thomas and Stephen Jay Gould, I've had to find a new favorite author for non-fiction non-managerial subjects. Given my tech/engineering bent, civil engineering professor Henry Petroski seems to be quickly rising to the top of my list of possible replacements. While his subjects come uncomfortably useful to my work thinking (as did Gould, surprisingly, from time to time), they are delivered in a too entertaining way to feel like work. The books of his that I've read include...

To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design

Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering

...See the theme in those two titles? (S**t not only happens. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't.)

Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing

...Where do designs come from, anyway?

The Book on the Bookshelf

The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance

...The assumed natural design of everyday things.

His latest, Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design, looks like a prime candidate for next on my bookshelf. According to Publisher's Weekly's review at Amazon.com, "...his latest effort, a wide-ranging exploration of the history and design of the everyday technologies like supermarket aisles and telephone keypads that are practically invisible in their ubiquity. Petroski emphasizes that these "small things" aren't in fact the results of a smooth and simple design process, but are rather the products of a constellation of oft-conflicting constraints, frequently with unintended consequences (consider the recently redesigned, fat-handled toothbrushes that, while more ergonomic, have rendered millions of traditional toothbrush holders useless)." His themes surrounding engineering and design make one all the more appreciative of the serendipitous successes and "good enough" failures we run into every day. [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog]

9:28:00 AM    

Welcome misbehaving.net.

we're misbehavin'. I’m delighted to announce the debut of a new weblog on the topic of gender and technology: misbehaving.net We’ve got a really amazing group of women participating on this site: danah boyd Caterina Fake Meg Hourihan me (Liz Lawley) Dorothea Salo Halley Suitt Gina Trapani Jill Walker We all believe it’s important to begin changing the public perception of women in the context of technology, and that one of the best ways to do that is to make women’s accomplishments, writings, and contributions more public and visible. I hope you’ll add the new site to your blogroll and/or aggregator list!... [mamamusings]

From the site's description:

misbehaving.net is a weblog about women and technology. It's a celebration of women's contributions to computing; a place to spotlight women's contributions as well point out new opportunities and challenges for women in the computing field.

Since I already have about half the group posting here in my subscription list, I suspect this will be worth the attention. The RSS feed (RSS 1.0 format) is truncated, which wouldn't be my first choice, but better than no feed at all.

 

[McGee's Musings]

8:49:31 AM