Biweekly links for 08/19/2008

• Repository Support Project Blog Directory
  • Useful list of blogs related to academic repositories.
• Wired Campus: When Professors Create Social Networks for Classes, Some Students See a ‘Creepy Treehouse’
  • The comments are well worth reading.
• Social Media Research Blog: Structure of Information Pathways in Social Networks
  • Paper by Kossinets, Kleinberg and Watts which studies how information spreads through social networks.
• An anthropological introduction to YouTube
  • Excellent study of YouTube. 55 minutes long, and worth it.
• MATLAB Programming Contest
  • A radically open programming contest – all the contestants can see each others’ entries, and modify them, in real time. The result is programming as a “full-contact sport” (Jon Udell’s phrase).
• Kevin Kelly: Out of Control
  • This is an excellent, prescient book. Kelly is now making an illustrated version available for free on his website. I definitely recommend a browse.
• Amazing but true cat stories
  • The story of a book entirely crowdsourced off Amazon’s mechanical turk.
• Tim O’Reilly: Why We’re Failing in Math and Science
• Unfavorable ‘Chihuly’ review sparks emotions
  • What art is, the role of criticism, and the critic.
• How to write a lede
• Giles Bowkett: My Approach To Giving Presentations
  • I heard Bowkett got a standing ovation at RubyFringe, so I’d guess he’s entertaining at least.
• …My heart’s in Accra » Who wants what? Google Insight on spam, pirated software and other fun stuff
• The Questionable Authority : Reed Elsevier caught copying my content without my permission.
• The Long Tail: I wish people would stop using economy as just a smart-sounding metaphor
  • I wish Wired would stop using smart-sounding metaphors, too, but this is nonetheless a thoughtful post.
• Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Scholarly Performance Evaluation – Open Access Archivangelism
  • Special Theme section in “Ethics In Science And Environmental Politics”. Many interesting-looking articles I’ll be browsing over the coming days.
• Intellectual lineages: the backbone of scientific social networks
  • Home truths about scientific social networks.
• Research + Web = More Consensus, Less Diversity (At Least, So Far) | Britannica Blog
  • Thoughtful comments on the concentration of attention brought about by filtering tools. Many of these problems can be obviated by personalized recommendations, but they are worth considering seriously.
• Nascent: Data portability for scientific web apps
• Jon Udell: A space elevator might arrive sooner, and cost less, than you think
  • Microsoft is apparently running a conference about building a space elevator.
• MAKE: Home science under attack
  • A chemist in Massachussetts had his home raided by authorities for doing chemistry experiments. The quote from law enforcement is priceless: “Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation.”
• Overcoming Bias: Suspiciously Vague LHC Forecasts
  • “Shouldn’t we expect bigshot physicists who will want to later crow that the LHC vindicated their theories to bother to devote a little time to expressing their predictions in a scoreable form?”
• Twitter is Where the News Happens
  • An example where Twitter and YouTube provided much more rapid coverage of breaking news – in this case, the explosion of a propane factory in Toronto.
• Curious Expeditions: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries
  • It’d be fun to do this for bookstores, too.
• Perspectives on Innovation » Creating a Trust-based Collaboration Market
  • Thoughtful discussion on scientific collaboration markets from David Ritter, CTO at InnoCentive.
• Economist: Stars in their eyes
  • Article about the discovery of the Voorwerp by a schoolteacher named Hanny van Arkel. Great example of how open data enables citizen science.
• The Five Big Mistakes That Changed My Life and How I Moved Past Them
  • Thoughtful piece on mistakes from the founder of Pets.com
• So open it hurts | San Francisco online
  • An extraordinary article about an extraordinary (ex)-couple.
• SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure
  • May have interesting unforseen consequences. It certainly increases the impetus for every large company to be a media company.
• Doc Searls Weblog · A unit of what?
  • Knol is already becoming a den of spam
• Savage Minds: How to do research – special free sample
  • “Key…is having a discovery network in place to do the grunt work of navigating through the data smog for you…constructing a discovery network is central …, because it makes you ask yourself who you are and what sort of things you want to discover.”

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