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January 7, 2008

Learning Del.icio.us

For my first day back, I'm cleaning out all of my notes from 2007! One of the things people have asked is for better instructions for using del.icio.us. I really got the hang of this and used is extensively in 2007. So, my first offering for 2008 is these two guides.

For those who prefer text instructions, How to: Del.icio.us Part 1 from Benibshop.me.uk. There is no part 2, but this is pretty complete for starting.

For video instructions, a simple tutorial from LBurch and posted at teachertube.com. This is 30 minutes long but it's easy to jump around and get just to the part you need instruction on.

Posted by Pat on 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 16, 2007

Search Goes Back to Being Human

For years I taught about the differences between directories (Yahoo, DMOZ) and keyword search engines (Google, Altavista). Then last week I did a presentation about searching and declared that the world of directories was pretty much dead. Everyone goes right to Google or Wikipedia these days. I've already blogged about how much more productive (or distracted) I feel since I added the googlepedia plugin to Firefox.

So today I heard about something new...Mahalo This is only in alpha now and is planning a full release about a year from now. All of the search pages are hand-crafted by humans. So, how can it possibly start doing collecting now and still be viable a year from now? The answer is by including a variety of technologies. The site is built in a wiki (although it doesn't look like that on the outside) and the pages are populated with RSS feeds.

This one will be fun to watch!

Posted by Pat on 8:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 5, 2006

Google AND Wikipedia...What a combo!

One thing geeks have really enjoyed over the past decade is debating which browser is best. Of course, this month with the introduction of Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7, we are just in hog heaven!

These days, I'm splitting my times almost evenly between my MacBook and my desktop Windows XP machines. On my MacBook, it's all Firefox, all the time. On Windows, I jump from IE7 to Firefox and back and forth. Both of the browsers on both platforms have tabbed browsing which is wonderful for juggling the many things I’m working on at any given moment.

Most of my time with browsers is devoted to searching. If I clocked it, I'd bet I spend about 1/2 of my time on a Google page. For weeks, I was really leaning to IE because of the Google toolbar. This gives me access to my Google bookmarks on any machine I happen to be using, as well as a few other items. This is available on both browsers, but the IE implementation has more features.

This week I've really become committed to Firefox because of a new plugin only available on Firefox. This is the Googlepedia plugin. It's just what it sounds like. When you add this plugin, you have the same search box in your menu bar. However, the search returns Google results on the left side of the page and the most appropriate Wikipedia page on the right. Already this is changing the way I look at the world. On the left I have a sampling of points of view and windows on whatever my topic is, but on the right I have a compilation of research on my topic that serves at least as a briefing paper for me to get started on my own information hunt. It's like having a research assistant right at my desk!

The plugin is available on both Windows and Mac, but only for Firefox. So, looks like that's where I'll be staying for awhile!

Posted by Pat on 9:12 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 11, 2006

"That government is best ..."

I started off on this tangent as I was listening to a podcast about biking. They were covering a news story in which a town council in Texas was trying to pass an ordinance to require all cyclists, of any age, to wear helmets. This led to a very loud protest and the ordinance was at least tabled.

So that roused my usual knee-jerk reaction that "That government is best that governs least." I knew if I wanted to include a quote like that in a blog entry I’d have to attribute it. I had always remembered this as Thoreau, but I wanted to be sure so off to trusty Google. By putting in just the first phrase, "That government is best," I got an interesting return.

Now, of course, I know better than to take the first entry so I scanned through a few. The collective wisdom of the Internet is that this was probably from Thomas Paine with a few attributions to Thomas Jefferson. I was suspicious, though, that none of them could give any exact citation.

I ended up at the source, On Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, which is freely available on Project Gutenberg. He opens with "I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically." And doesn't attribute anyone!

Posted by Pat on 8:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack