Have you tried Google’s new search options?
I'm not talking about Google's advanced search. I'm talking about it's new search options like "timeline" and "wonder wheel." If not, check out the video:
- Google Search Options May 11, 2009. "Google's Search options let you slice and dice your search results, explore your search and generate different views of your results page to more easily and quickly find what you need."
Minority Business Blog
The Minority Business Development Agency (Dept. of Commerce) started a blog, Minority Biz Blog, in March. "The purpose of this blog is to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on minority entrepreneurship and business in the United States." Althought the blog is linked to from http://www.mbda.gov/blog/ , the actual blog is hosted at wordpress.com, not on a .gov server. Continue reading
2008 Notable Government Documents in Library Journal
Yesterday Library Journal published its annual list of notable government documents, "Looking Back, Moving On: 2008 Best Notable Government Documents" written by Jim Church and his team of selectors and judges on the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) Notable Documents Panel. Every year since 1983, the panel has pulled together and highlighted state/local, federal and international government documents in order to "promote awareness and acquisition of government publications by libraries and use by library patrons." This year's list highlighted such publications as Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports as well as free statistical databases from the United Nations (UNdata), the European Union (Eurostat) and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOStat). Plus there was a special shout out to Carl Malamud and his Yes We Scan! campaign for Public Printer of the Government Printing Office. Check out this year's list of notable documents. You'll be amazed at the depth and breadth of publications by the various levels of governments. And by all means, if you have a favorite government document that you'd like to highlight, the Panel is always interested in nominations! (Full disclosure: I'm the chair this year of GODORT's Publications Committee, which oversees the work of the Notable Documents Panel.) Continue reading
Making the world’s knowledge computable
Wolfram alpha went online on Friday. After much hype in the press over the last couple of weeks (see, for example, The Google Killer, by Nicholas Ciarelli), it is certainly nice to finally see the product. It is definitely worth watching. See the screencast introduction to get an excellent sense of what it can do, and see the blog to keep up with developments. Biggest problem at this stage is the incomplete information about sources. When you get a result and click on the "sources" link, you get a list of sources that may or may not have been used to produce the results. Second biggest problem: everyone is looking at it and it is getting overloaded! Continue reading
What Google knows about you
What Google knows about you. "Google may know more about you than your mother does. Got a problem with that?" By Robert L. Mitchell, Computerworld, May 11, 2009.
Online tools really aren't free. We pay for them with micropayments of personal informationI notice, too, that the Google Privacy Policy does not say that Google is committed to privacy. It says, "At Google, we’re committed to transparency and choice." Continue reading