WORST ADVICE EVER “I before E except after C.” Oh, yeah? The feisty foreigner seized the beige reins in one vein-bulging hand and – weirdly adorned in leis (a veil of distraction so no one would remember his face?) feigned disinterest no more. The heist of his neighbor’s heir’s freight had begun. What…
I’m not usually a USA Today reader, which is why I managed to miss this article by Elizabeth Weise from December 18, 2005. I think the title says it all: "This is the Google Side of Your Brain." On the tiny chance that I’m not the only person on the planet who hasn’t read this…
Xeni Jardin writes on the nature of what, in her experience at BoingBoing, gets filtered out of which websites, and why and how. Meanwhile, Lily Pregill (NYAM’s Special Projects Librarian who works across the hall from me) points to an article in the current issue of Harvard Magazine, entitled "The People’s Epidemiologists" by Madeline Drexler. …
I know I’m a day late and dollar short with this, as I am with everything I write here, but it’s Wednesday and this caught my eye. Linking to the NY Times is always problematic because of their new NY Times Select subscription package, but this makes linking to non-subbed articles a lot simpler. In…
Making Your Web Searches Smarter By Michael Masterson Recently, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about "hidden features of Google and Yahoo engines" that make research on the Web faster, easier, and more rewarding. Neanderthal though I am with regard to technology, I was actually aware of several of them: Using two or three…
This bit comes from Terry Allen from In These Times, and it’s titled "Information Is Power." It begins thusly: "Sometimes it’s the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is…
Jeremy Clarkson opines thus in The Sunday Times: ". . . the worst word. The worst noise. The screech of Flo-Jo’s fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the world, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby when you’re hungover, is ‘beverage’." It’s a fun article, but I am forced to disagree:…
Found this on SearchEngineWatch.com: Hot:Real Estate Industry Uses of Satellite/Aerial Imagery. It’s a longish post with about a million hyperlinks, but it’s worth it if you have the time. The databases that are being developed in this area are huge: "The combo of online maps, satellite/aerial imagery, and real estate are a hot combo these…
Will Femia, author of the "Clicked" blog on MSNBC.com, declares today that: "Lessig is wrong — Lawrence Lessig is a champion of the Creative Commons movement and an advocate for loosening copyright restrictions. His current battle is over the digitization of books. Google wants to scan books into a database to make the text searchable. …
I think "Ick!" says whatever the title doesn’t: Human Skin-Bound Books in Many Libraries Apparently this was a big thing in the 19th century. Enjoy! (or, well . . . whatever.)