Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Google Tools
Yes, I'm becoming a fan. I struggle sometimes to learn new methods, but i have to say that Shared documents are amazing. Especially when tracking who changed them and archived versions are available. Furthermore. Google Calendar is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Booking numerous bands with multiple people and multiple availabilities is a breeze with Google calendar (provided the humans keep their calendars up to date. My wife keeps me informed through the calendar. These types of tools make email look like snail mail.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Wiki, a change of tune... or an old tune resurfaced?
As I rail on open source information and the influx of useless or cumbersome tools that try to organize the junkyard of words and images available to us all... The i get the wiki exercise for my LIS 506 class, and while there are still major cons with the wiki situation, it is a tool that I actively use for information retrieval.
First, let me address the major pitfalls of wikis... they are too open! Like specialized encyclopedias 9which are closed to specific authors) there is no real editorial policy and contributors can submit some really awful stuff. As Stephen cobert has mentioned, anyone can create their own wikiality - their own reality by posting it on a wiki (wikipedia was his target).
That said, there is a real upside to wikis that i haven't seen in many other 2.0 sharing tools. That is organization and cataloging. This helps information on wiki be policed better, even though their remains no editorial policy.
What do I mean?
So I am interested in elephants. putting a google search for elephants, wikipedia will be among the first hits that come up. It is easy to find my subject (and it is easy for experts to find my subject as well) The community of experts in any field, or subject have a vested interest in having their subject reflected accurately in the most of popular forums and given the easy access they have to finding and correcting information on this platform they can police their subject.
The format, and organization of wikis are the aspect of control that is lacking in tag generators and blog searches. Is it perfect? no, but it better organized and serves a specific online community of users. It is a good example of a public domain digital library.
OK, the philosphizing is over. Why do i have such a glowing review of wikis when all my other posts on web access are awful? One site IMSLP. The International Music Score Library Project. It is a wiki devoted to capturing, storing, cataloging, and retrieving digital images of public domain scores. It is linked with Sibley Music library (which had a $200,000 grant to digitize its scores) so the Sibley collection can be uploaded to IMSLP and accessed by scholars world-wide. Furthermore, the same scholars that use this as a resource post their scholarship in other sections of IMSLP. You can see research and get bibliographic links to your favorite composers or historical aspects of music. Again, because of the organization of the wiki (subjects easily accessible) and the community of users (music scholars) the users police themselves.
This wiki is probably among my top 5 resources for music research and shows how effective an open source, open use digital library can be when it is organized correctly.
First, let me address the major pitfalls of wikis... they are too open! Like specialized encyclopedias 9which are closed to specific authors) there is no real editorial policy and contributors can submit some really awful stuff. As Stephen cobert has mentioned, anyone can create their own wikiality - their own reality by posting it on a wiki (wikipedia was his target).
That said, there is a real upside to wikis that i haven't seen in many other 2.0 sharing tools. That is organization and cataloging. This helps information on wiki be policed better, even though their remains no editorial policy.
What do I mean?
So I am interested in elephants. putting a google search for elephants, wikipedia will be among the first hits that come up. It is easy to find my subject (and it is easy for experts to find my subject as well) The community of experts in any field, or subject have a vested interest in having their subject reflected accurately in the most of popular forums and given the easy access they have to finding and correcting information on this platform they can police their subject.
The format, and organization of wikis are the aspect of control that is lacking in tag generators and blog searches. Is it perfect? no, but it better organized and serves a specific online community of users. It is a good example of a public domain digital library.
OK, the philosphizing is over. Why do i have such a glowing review of wikis when all my other posts on web access are awful? One site IMSLP. The International Music Score Library Project. It is a wiki devoted to capturing, storing, cataloging, and retrieving digital images of public domain scores. It is linked with Sibley Music library (which had a $200,000 grant to digitize its scores) so the Sibley collection can be uploaded to IMSLP and accessed by scholars world-wide. Furthermore, the same scholars that use this as a resource post their scholarship in other sections of IMSLP. You can see research and get bibliographic links to your favorite composers or historical aspects of music. Again, because of the organization of the wiki (subjects easily accessible) and the community of users (music scholars) the users police themselves.
This wiki is probably among my top 5 resources for music research and shows how effective an open source, open use digital library can be when it is organized correctly.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Technorati
I think i blogged earlier in my rss feeds post about how unmanageable Technorati was. I could not find an easy way to search tags. There was a way to search for words in content and titles of blogs, but all in all it is another unwieldy tool trying to organize the infinite volume of cyber-chatter (of which this blog is part of) on the web.
According to Milton Babbitt, there are two subjects that everybody thinks they are qualified to opine on, regardless if they have actually studied them, Music and Politics. He says that no one would dare express opinions on physics papers without actually having a background in physics, so why should they be allowed to have opinions on the subjects of music and politics which they know nothing about.... WELL. Technorati is here to dispel the myth that those are the only two subjects uneducated people can opine on. And, technorati makes finding the actual scholars in these subjects difficult to find as it provides a platform for the ignorant.
Maybe it's my cynical nature, or my lack of sleep, but the more I explore web apps for learning 2.0 and library applications, the more I think that the web and its apps have become an information landfill. If you're willing to spend a lot of time there in the stench, you MIGHT find something of worth.
According to Milton Babbitt, there are two subjects that everybody thinks they are qualified to opine on, regardless if they have actually studied them, Music and Politics. He says that no one would dare express opinions on physics papers without actually having a background in physics, so why should they be allowed to have opinions on the subjects of music and politics which they know nothing about.... WELL. Technorati is here to dispel the myth that those are the only two subjects uneducated people can opine on. And, technorati makes finding the actual scholars in these subjects difficult to find as it provides a platform for the ignorant.
Maybe it's my cynical nature, or my lack of sleep, but the more I explore web apps for learning 2.0 and library applications, the more I think that the web and its apps have become an information landfill. If you're willing to spend a lot of time there in the stench, you MIGHT find something of worth.
It's Delicious!
So, onward with my learning 23 things for web 2.0. Next stop is Del.icio.us. A social bookmarking tool similar to Diigo. There are some neat features that allow you to track other Delicious users (or scholars). A couple of philosophical issues rear their heads. First, it is too easy to rely on specific users and slant toward biased research. Second, the categorizing and indexing of links is purely subjective by users and not professionals. The problem with this is clear; as tags build on any specific link they get too great to be useful, or conversely, if they are not tagged extensively enough in the first place, they don't get found.
This seems to be the common theme I am finding in Web 2.0... But I think I get to write more about that later.... stay tuned
This seems to be the common theme I am finding in Web 2.0... But I think I get to write more about that later.... stay tuned
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
RSS search engines
Warning, this is an opinion piece regarding the usefulness of trying to find anything through an RSS search-engine:
Not a fan of Topix. Tough to search for useful categorized information. The syndic8 website was so horrible I didn’t even want to try to search for anything useful. Technorati was a little better, and Realtime search was also awful.
I don’t subscribe to the popular, because I find the popular is misinformed and looking for sensationalism. The problem with the RSS generators is they rank stuff by popularity and not by useful categorized information. Furthermore, how many RSS feeds can any individual get before they are, once again bombarded with so much useless information to weed through in order to get useful stuff, that they just stop paying attention to everything in their feeds.
There has to be a simpler, efficient way to target information that is useful without fighting through mountains of meaningless words. Navigating the web through these sites is like taking a card catalog, dumping all the cards on the floor, mixing them up, and then trying to find the one you want. It’s not useful.
Not a fan of Topix. Tough to search for useful categorized information. The syndic8 website was so horrible I didn’t even want to try to search for anything useful. Technorati was a little better, and Realtime search was also awful.
I don’t subscribe to the popular, because I find the popular is misinformed and looking for sensationalism. The problem with the RSS generators is they rank stuff by popularity and not by useful categorized information. Furthermore, how many RSS feeds can any individual get before they are, once again bombarded with so much useless information to weed through in order to get useful stuff, that they just stop paying attention to everything in their feeds.
There has to be a simpler, efficient way to target information that is useful without fighting through mountains of meaningless words. Navigating the web through these sites is like taking a card catalog, dumping all the cards on the floor, mixing them up, and then trying to find the one you want. It’s not useful.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
rss
If this is the most difficult thing to do in 23 things then I'm Scott free!. I like the Google reader and search functions, Very quickly I found a number of great Zappa feeds, and musicology feeds. The Alex Ross feed will probably be the most used in the bunch.
Uses for libraries are great. Public libraries can keep their constituents informed of goings on and new acquisitions. One great application for scholars would be to notify when "moving walls" move, or updating users of released electronic journals. This could be even more useful if you could sort Journal entry feeds by LCSH.
Problems exist though, how many feeds can one sift through? Again I confronted with the notion that while we can have more information sent to use quicker than ever before, how much of any of this can one human mind process? This is the persistent question in the technological age.
Uses for libraries are great. Public libraries can keep their constituents informed of goings on and new acquisitions. One great application for scholars would be to notify when "moving walls" move, or updating users of released electronic journals. This could be even more useful if you could sort Journal entry feeds by LCSH.
Problems exist though, how many feeds can one sift through? Again I confronted with the notion that while we can have more information sent to use quicker than ever before, how much of any of this can one human mind process? This is the persistent question in the technological age.
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