Jessamyn posts this, which seems relevant to one of my recent rants: as she puts it, the “Do we make the library more like Google, or make Google more like the library?” debate. She tracks this back to this post on It’s all good. And then, true to form, Jessamyn sums up in one sentence what it took me a very long post to not say very well: she boils.. Read More
Criminal stupidity
The moral of the story: if you want to kill someone, don’t do your research on Google. Or at the very least clear your cache. Web evidence used in murder hearing, from The Lawrence Journal-World
Googlewhacking Is Good For You
Googlewhackers: Two Words, One Hit, reprinted here from the Boston Globe Crazy as it sounds, Googlewhacking may be good for your mental health. “It’s excellent exercise for many brain centers,” says Allen D. Bragdon, founding editor of Games magazine and author of a number of books on enhancing brain function, including “Exercises for the Whole Brain.” “It requires a high order of a cognitive skill called ‘theory of mind,’ ”.. Read More
Google & Wikimedia
According to this post on SearchEngineWatch, Google has offered to donate servers and bandwidth to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is old news apparently; the first post on Slashdot on this was Feb 10. Slashdot has a link to a very brief unofficial statement from Wikimedia on this. The terms of the offer are currently being discussed by the board… …this agreement does not mean there is any requirement for us.. Read More
The Evil Empire vs. Don’t Be Evil
Microsoft releases Google rival, from CNN Because, as the author of this article from Technology Review, wrote: “Microsoft doesn’t innovate, they just steal other people’s ideas and turn them into mediocre products.” Though this does sound useful: One new capability that Microsoft will be introducing with Monday’s launch is the ability to create RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, feeds that allows users to track search results through an incoming data.. Read More
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Google Library But Were Afraid to Ask
Google’s Library Project: Questions, Questions, Questions, from Information Today
Scholarâ„¢
The American Chemical Society is claiming that Google has infringed on the ACS’s use of the word “Scholar.” Now I’m not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that such things as the English language, common phrases, and the like are not trademark-able. Gosh, do you suppose I could trademark the phrase “information science”? Better still, how about just “science”? ACS Takes Legal Action Against Google, from Chemical &.. Read More
The coolest thing I’ve seen today
Google Scholar is of course the talk of the academic town these days. And Firefox is just about the coolest thing ever. So it was only a matter of time before someone created a Firefox extension to harness Google Scholar. Ladies and gentlemen, let me present the Google Scholar OpenURLs extension, created by Peter Binkley of the University of Alberta Libraries. This exceptionally cool extension drops an OpenURL link on.. Read More