Friday, May 16, 2008

World Community Grid - Home

World Community Grid - Home: "Donate the time your computer is turned on, but is idle, to projects that benefit humanity! We provide the secure software that does it all for free, and you become part of a community that is helping to change the world. Once you install the software, you will be participating in World Community Grid. No other action must be taken; it's that simple!"

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

About | Addictomatic

About | Addictomatic: "Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It's the perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and feed your addiction for what's up and what's now."

Monday, May 12, 2008

Election fact checking | Free Government Information (FGI)

Election fact checking | Free Government Information (FGI)

"The sheer volume of election coverage can be daunting to follow for even the most hard-core election junkie, let alone the casual observer. A few sites do everyone the favor of breaking campaign reports and statements down to the facts, attempting to separate the truth from the truthiness.

FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It is essentially a multimedia blog that responds to the factual assertions and allusions made in politics at the federal, state, and local levels. FactCheck.org's staff elegantly analyzes candidates' statements on such issues as a potential gas price fix for factual consistency. They dutifully list their reference sources and, for contextual emphasis, they frequently provide audio and video links to the candidates' actual comments.

PolitiFact, mentioned previously on FreeGovInfo, is a service of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly Inc. PolitiFact's trademark is its Truth-O-Meter, which measures political statements on a scale of "True" to "Pants on fire." It's handy for those who want bottom-line analysis straight away. Like FactCheck.org, PolitiFact does have full articles with which it provides sources and multimedia links, although the analysis is not quite as deep. But PolitiFact does a better job of organizing and integrating its content: you can browse statements by Truth-O-Meter rating, by subject, by the person who said it, by whom it was said against, and even by where it was said (TV ad, blog post, speech, etc.).

Other interesting fact-checking sites include:

The Center for Public Integrity - A "nonprofit, nonpartisan, non-advocacy, independent journalism organization" that uses investigative journalism to examine political and campaign issues in depth. Of particular note is the Buying of the President site which looks at how money influences the presidential campaigns.

Opensecrets.org - Tracks money in politics and distills it into graphs, charts, and brief summaries. It is run by the non-partisan, non-profit Center for Responsive Politics.

The Fact Checker - A Washington Post blog that analyzes campaign statements in a similar way to FactCheck.org and PolitiFact. The difference here is that topics are prompted by user suggestions. It employs a "Pinocchio Test" similar to PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter."

Word Wise: Spaced Out

Word Wise: Spaced Out
"Despite what you learned in typing class, stop using two spaces after a period. It’s nothing more than a habit – one worth breaking. ("Curious things, habits,” Agatha Christie wrote in “Witness for the Prosecution.” “People themselves never knew they had them.”)

The practice of double spacing after a period is a holdover from the days when typewriters had “monofaced” type, meaning fonts in which every letter had exactly the same width (in other words, “m” used the same amount of space as “i”). Because of the monoface font, two spaces after a period made it easier to see where one sentence ended and another began."

Monday, May 05, 2008

DigitalKoans Blog Archive Open Access Directory, a Factual Wiki, Launched

DigitalKoans Blog Archive - Open Access Directory, a Factual Wiki, Launched: "Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project in order to collect OA-related lists for one-stop reference and searching.

The wiki will start operating with about half a dozen lists—for example, conferences devoted to open access, discussion forums devoted to open access, and journal 'declarations of independence'—and add more over time.

The goal is to harness the knowledge and energy of the open access community itself to enlarge and correct the lists. A list on a wiki, revised continuously by its users, can be more comprehensive and up to date than the same list maintained by an individual. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier they are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about open access.

The URL for the Open Access Directory is oad.simmons.edu."

Library Receives Original Spider-Man Story - The Library Today (Library of Congress)

Library Receives Original Spider-Man Story - The Library Today (Library of Congress): "Library of Congress Receives Original Drawings for the First Spider-Man Story, 'Amazing Fantasy #15'

In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics' 'Amazing Fantasy #15' -- the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962.

This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories -- also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko -- for the same issue: 'The Bell-Ringer,' 'Man in the Mummy Case' and 'There Are Martians Among Us.'"

Law Librarian Blog: 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials

Law Librarian Blog: 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials: "12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials

Great resource from Mashable: Ever wondered how people show you so clearly what is happening on their computer? Thanks to screencasting software, anyone can do it. Try out one of these 12 tools. Hat tip to iLibrarian. [RJ]"

Recycle your PACER documents | Free Government Information (FGI)

this is so awesome
Recycle your PACER documents | Free Government Information (FGI)
"Just upload all your PACER Documents to our recycling bin. Click on the recycle bin and you'll be presented with a dialogue to choose files to upload. Then, just hit the “Start Upload” button and you'll hear the sounds of progress as your documents get reinjected into the public domain.

We'll take the documents, look at them, and then put them onto bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/pacer for future distribution. This is a manual process and you won't see your documents show up right away. But, over time, we hope to accumulate a significant database of PACER Documents. "

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Twitter Stat Tools - Xefer Analyzes Usage & Habits

Twitter Stat Tools - Xefer Analyzes Usage & Habits: "With so many people addicted to Twitter, it would be neat to view a chart of a person’s tweets statistics, giving an insight into their habits and usage patterns.

Powered by Yahoo Pipes & Google Charts, xefer allows you to create scatter plots and charts of a Twitter user’s tweets. You can choose to view the data by hour, day of the week, month or a combination of those."