RSS Feeds

I can see the use of RSS feeds for specific areas of information that are frequently updated or for alerts on new pieces of relevant information. The problem I have always had with them is that they slow down the log on process for my PC and usually I have subscribed to broad feeds (ie news of the day) which tends to remind me of lots of important stuff that I am actually not really interested in.

Of the feeds I subscribed to on Google Reader most of them I would prefer just to periodically check the relevant site (for instance BBC for world news) rather than be advised of everything happening everywhere, all day, every day. The same goes for most individual sites.

Far more useful, I think, are feeds from the subscription databases where I can, in effect, get updated search results. So if I search Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 I will be alerted each time a new article fitting my search is added to Master file and Academic in Ebsco.

Mr Wibbel, in his online tute, suggested there was an option to add my feeds to my blog but I couldn't find that on reader. I could put in a link and see if it works but the url looks too simple and general?....No that link only works for me when I'm logged in, not for anyone else.

Anyone got any ideas?

Wikipedia Watch #2 - The mysterious case of Floyd Landis

The Floyd Landis entry on Wikipedia was an interesting case study. Many will remember that cyclist Floyd looked gone after Stage 16 of the 2006 Tour de France. But the next day he made an astonishing recovery to blitz the field and to go on to win the yellow jersey. Tests indicated his Stage 17 was fuelled by more than blood, sweat and tears, and soon after the Tour, news of a positive drug test emerged. Landis furiously protested his innocence (surprise, surprise) and it has taken until this week for second place getter Oscar Pereiro to be awarded the yellow jersey.

Part of Landis's strategy to fight the drug charges was to use the 'wiki' defence. He posted documents online to get contributions from as wide a range of people as possible, in the hope that some of them would be able to provide concrete support for his defence. He blogged and forumed, there was a web site and a wiki, and he and his supporters engaged fiercely and frequently online.

Here was an opportunity for a bad, biased, doctored Wikipedia entry. But in fact the Floyd Landis Wikipedia entry is an example of a good Wikipedia entry. People from both sides have ensured it is reasonably balanced. Initially I thought it was a bit pro Floyd, but that is the nature of Wikipedia in that the articles are always works in progress.

After seeing fellow Tour de France cyclist and all round super man, Stuart O'Grady, make some damning comments on Australian 60 Minutes I thought I would enter the fray.

I added to the entry quoting Stuies view. I thought it would be interesting to see how long it would take the internet savvy Landis camp to remove my edit. But several months later it is still there. This to me indicates a great victory for Wikipedia as a reasonably balanced encyclopedia, and as an excellent example of creative and positive use of the internet as a broad introduction to a vast range of subjects.

The Floyd Landis Wikipedia entry works well from other points of view too. It is very well footnoted for instance.

Anyway Wikipedia 1 Floyd Landis 0

Wikipedia Watch

Despite wanting to be cynical and wanting to find fault, I love Wikipedia and use it a lot for introductory info on a range of subjects. Despite appearing ripe for abuse, Wikipedia is remarkably reliable. There are faults, and mischievous entries, as would be expected, but given the size of Wikipedia, I reckon it is pretty good, and offers a breadth of information not available in traditional encyclopedias. It is in fact a triumph of breadth over depth, allows us to get quick information, survives on a global co-operative contribution model, and therefore does what the internet is equipped to do best.

Because Google searches so badly - if you get a million or so hits, or even 100,000, or 10,000, and if 90% of those hits are useless, how can that be efficient searching - for many questions about people, places, or events I use Google to search Wikipedia. At least then I can quickly get a bit of fairly reliable information.

#4 Wikis part 2

Had a further look at Book Lovers Wiki. One review did catch my eye, a fairly accurate summation of Dan Brown's execrable dross The DV Code :

I finally got around to reading The Da Vinci Code and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite characters that are beyond flat and a writing style that is almost comically bad. What carries the book is its fascinating premise;

. The 'fascinating ' premise appears to have been totally lifted from Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, regardless what the British courts say.

Anyway, this wiki seems more like a blog. Opinions on books don't build a single entry, but are each separate entries, bit like a forum for posts on different topics.

Speaking of blogs, it seems to me they generally tend to be a particularly clumsy way of having a conversation with anyone willing to listen - typing is a fair bit less efficient than talking - and given that conversations are ephemeral, disappearing into the ether as soon as spoken, and given that humans have committed ideas to paper generally when they have been discussed, thought out, edited, rewritten and generally polished until fit to be published, it seems to me that generally, but not always, blogs diminish the fairly low quality of most 'information' on the internet. They usually tend to be conversations, therefore ephemeral, therefore only worthy of recording after much thought etc, not worth recording merely because those thoughts have existed and have been expressed.

Booklovers wiki seems to fit the above in that the entries are conversational, a bit like asking someone what they are reading on the train, they might say something like

The Cinderella Rules by Donna Kauffman
Cinderella Rules takes a modern day woman and makes her over with the help of three “fairy godmothers.” The relationship dispute of the two men for Darby didn’t seem that tense, but the end had a lovely twist where everyone turned out for the better

. That's a brief conversation on the train or in the lift, hardly worthy of recording and making available to the entire world, yet bookloverswiki does.

Most entries on bookloverswiki are brief, lacking in depth, another hallmark of most (not all) 'information'/data on the internet. This is another by-product of the online'conversation'. Like real conversations they are often off the cuff, not really thought out, worthwhile as ephemeral conversations but not worth recording....yet they are recorded

The subtext of blogs, and some wikis, probably tell us a bit about bloggers and wikiers, and by extension about the society they/ we live in, but the content often doesn't tell us much about the subject....just like casual conversations, except we are recording the conversations and putting them into a global repository of information.

#4 Wikis

Checked this one Book Lovers Wiki. I've got to say, I love getting recommendations on reading but this didn't help much. Not well organised, very brief reviews that don't give me much to hang on to, no links to other reviews. Anyway, I'll have a closer look when I get the chance.

Good acts from USA

Here's some interesting legislative activity from the United States.The Librarian's Act, or more correctly, the Librarian Incentive to Boost Recruitment and Retention in Areas of Need Act of 2007, was introduced into the US Senate in April.

The proposed Act aims to provide student loan forgiveness, and encourage individuals to become and remain librarians in low-income schools and public libraries.

Let's hope it get's through the legislative process and sets a precedent.

Blogger working on Titus Andronicus

Infinite monkey theory....

We all know the old saying... if a million monkeys sat at a million typewriters, eventually they will come up with the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Well, it appears there could be as many as 100 million active blogs, that's a lot of monkeys at a lot of keyboards. Can we expect a blogged version of the bards great works? Perhaps not.

Anyway, try here for an account of the infinite monkey theorem. The University of Plymouth actually tried the theory out using six Sulawesi crested macaques. The monkeys, Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan, knocked out five pages consisting largely of the letter S (clearly trying to write Shakespeare), and made a bit of a mess of the keyboard.

For more about their literary endeavours try Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare or read a news report about the experiment.

Web 2.0 on you tube

This is an interesting video about web 2.0 from an anthropologist at Kansas State Uni

The machine is us/ing us
or straight to the source

Google Watch

What can Google tell me, what good information can I find?

How about the pyramids in Egypt?

I'll ask Google who built the pyramids

I have typed in the question 'Egyptian who built the pyramids'

Interestingly the second result suggests Aliens built them. Wow, who would have thought! That's a turn up, I hadn't known that. I'd thought for years that the Egyptians had built the pyramids in Egypt.

But this is the second result. What does that mean? ....Relevance obviously, and if something is relevant it must be reliable, if Google is reliable, and many do rely on Google for information, then the results Google lists as most relevant will be reliable.

Check it out Aliens built the pyramids Very convincing.

Communication

Are blogs useful? Let's not use this one as the yardstick.

They can be useful as a forum for an exchange of ideas, as a way of communicating. After all the internet is the great communicator, communication is what it does so well.

So if blogs are for thoughts, ideas, discussion, how do they fit into an information environment. Only so far as discussion does I guess. Discussion is good, to provoke more discussion, more ideas. Some blogs might be grounded in facts, used to showcase research, but most probably aren't.

How do we distinguish between types of 'information', types of dialogue, types of entertainment and types of research. The internet has all this and more in one place, and a phenomenal amount of it too. Some people have interesting opinions and ideas, other people just ramble on and on (ie me). So as with anything on the internet it is distinguishing, and then finding, the good stuff.

Anyway here is one blogger's very amusing take on Web 2.0, a bit old now but worth a read - Nicholas Carr's The amorality of Web 2.0