Elsevier Petition

From the site:

"Reed Elsevier's main business is academic and medical publishing, but, through a subsidiary company, they help run international arms fairs. These include DSEi, one of the world's largest arms fairs. Reed Elsevier don't see any contradiction between facilitating the sale of arms and either their medical publishing or the corporate social responsibility commitments they've made. We do."

Follow the link to get more information and sign the petition.

-Miguel

28% of Online Americans Have Used the Internet to Tag Content

This is an intersting report looking at the growth of tagging by online users in the U.S.

From the PEW/INTERNET site:

"Just as the internet allows users to create and share their own media, it is also enabling them to organize digital material their own way, rather than relying on pre-existing formats of classifying information.

A December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.

The report features an interview with David Weinberger, a prominent blogger and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society."

-Miguel

Librarian Central Blog

The Google Librarian Newsletter has switched over to a blog format. Here's the text from the email announcement I received yesterday.

"I'm pleased to say that today, we're implementing one of your biggest requests. When we asked how we could improve the Google Librarian Newsletter, many of you said, "Make it a blog!" or "Send more up-to-date information." We've taken your feedback to heart, and we're doing just that. Starting today, the Librarian Center will make its home at http://librariancentral.blogspot.com, where you'll find the latest Google news, updates, and tips relevant to the librarian community. The blog includes links to the Newsletter Archive, the Your Stories page, and the Tools and Videos sections. And of course, we'll continue to add to these pages and develop new features.

We're excited about communicating Google's product and feature launches to you as they happen. You can even sign up to receive these blog posts by email, or choose to read them from your Google Personalized Homepage or Google Reader (or your preferred blog reader). For those of you who still prefer to hear from us on a quarterly basis, we'll continue to send out the Librarian Newsletter, which will include the "best of" the previous months' blog posts. As with many Google launches, consider this blog a beta test, open to refinements and changes over time. We'll be looking closely at your feedback, so please let us know what you think."

-Miguel

Libworm

From the site:

"Search the Biblioblogosphere and Beyond... the librarian RSS engine - over 1000 RSS feeds go in, exactly what you need comes out!"

From the FAQ:

"What is LibWorm?
LibWorm is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries.

How does LibWorm work?
LibWorm collects updates from about 1400 RSS feeds (and growing). The contents of these feeds are then available for searching, and search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his/her favourite aggregator or in LibWorm's built-in aggregator."

Check out Medworm too!

-Miguel

We Are Smarter Than Me

This is a wiki-based collaboration/experiment to write a business book. From the site:

"Be an author of the first networked book on business. Together we will write the book on how the emergence of community and social networks will change the future rules of business. Collaborate with authors from MIT, Wharton, and thousands of professionals from around the world. See your name in print when the book is published next fall by Pearson Publishing. Meet your co-authors in March, 2007 in Las Vegas at the Community 2.0 event."

-Miguel

Healia

Here's a search engine (in beta) devoted to health. From the site:

"Healia is the premier consumer health search engine for finding high quality and personalized health information on the Web. It serves as an independent, unbiased gateway to the highest quality health information resources. We engineered Healia primarily with consumers and patients in mind but health professionals and researchers will also find it useful."

-Miguel

psiphon

From the site:

"psiphon is a human rights software project developed by the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of states that censor"

-Miguel

Collarity

This community based search engine ties results into a user's and community's interests. If you have an account you can sign in and have the results tailored to your personal preferences and history. Interesting way to get relevance into the results.

-Miguel