• DIY Yahoo! Resignation Letter
  (tags: funny yahoo)

• Notpron – The Hardest Riddle Available on the Internet
  (tags: games puzzle)
• Secret Life of Cell Phones
  “Where do old cell phones and mobile devices go when you recycle them? Why should you recycle them?”
  (tags: environment phones documentary)
• Essential Firefox extension ConQuery for Firefox 3
  (tags: firefox extensions)

• Betterplace
  “People in need of support, meet others who want to help. One to one. Worldwide.” – anyone know how this compares to something like Kiva?
  (tags: charity fundraising)
• Skydeck
  making sense of one’s phonebill (I haven’t signed up, but bookmarking for future reference)
  (tags: mobile social tools)
• Twemes
  aggregates Twitter tags (to tag in Twitter, use the # sign before the tag word)
  (tags: tagging twitter)
• ‘Geek girl’ helps keep Mozilla safe in scary times
  (USAToday) impressive accomplishments
  (tags: people article technology women)

• So Young, and So Gadgeted
  (NYTimes)
  (tags: ToRead article technology youth users)
• Spying on the Text Generation
  (The Boston Globe)
  (tags: ToRead article sms users technology parents children youth)
• Racist German Hooligans Pollute European Soccer Championships
  (Pajamas Media) “German fans reveled in their country’s victory over Poland by shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans reminiscent of the Nazi era.”
  (tags: sports anti-semitism)
• On Google doodles
  (Slate)
  (tags: article political google graphics)

• Perez Hilton: Turning a blog into an empire
  (LATimes)
  (tags: blogger article blogs celebrities)
• FAIL Blog
  funny
  (tags: funny photos)
• Out of Tragedy
  “Federal Judge Joan Lefkow copes with the devastating loss of her husband and mother by calling for more security for federal judges — and by publishing a book of her mother’s poetry.”
  (tags: books poetry people)
• Digital Research Tools
  a wiki with links to all sorts of resources
  (tags: wiki tools research)

• Excerpts From Sex and the City and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)
  (tags: satc funny)
• ‘Quiet Desperation’ of Academic Women
  (Inside Higher Ed) research based on 80 interviews
  (tags: academia gender research article)
• Fields arranged by purity
  xkcd comic
  (tags: funny comics)

In the comments thread over on Crooked Timber about homepages of academics, reader Oisin asks:

I’m a PhD philosophy student, entering my 2nd year; is maintaining a blog a good idea for a PhD student, in addition to having a homepage? Or is it perhaps a bad idea? And if so, why?

How having a blog may influence an academic’s career is a topic that’s been discussed a lot among bloggers in the past. Nonetheless, taking it up once again in light of changes in the blogging landscape makes sense. As I consider the question, I will note some significant differences among blog types and why the term “blog” has limited utility.

To blog or not to blog is not really the question. What parts of one’s self one wants to portray publicly and to a professional community is more the issue at hand.

What do I mean by “changes in the blogging landscape”? The practice of blogging keeps on spreading well beyond the geeky tech-savvy realms of its initial years. I don’t just mean the practice of authoring blogs, but the understanding of what blogs are and the practice of reading them.* Given this change in who is aware of and reading blogs, maintaining one may mean something different today than it did a few years ago so I think it’s worth another discussion.

I started blogging (in May, 2002) just a few months before going on the academic job market. I don’t recall concerns about negative repercussions, but by then I had already been maintaining a mailing list with hundreds of subscribers and mainly saw the value in an activity of the sort (e.g., dissemination of ideas, meeting people) rather than potential concerns. In any case, at that time few people on hiring committees knew what a blog was much less would have been reading them so I think it is easy to argue that blogging at that point may well have influenced an academic’s career less than it might today, for better or for worse.

As I have watched blogging become more mainstream in some circles (e.g., what’s up with the recent upsurge in bloggers among sociologists?), I’ve started to wonder, again, about the potential career consequences of blogging especially given that it is sometimes done in ways I would not necessarily consider conducive to one’s career.

But the general question of whether an academic should blog is complicated. There are several issues at hand and these may all influence its desirability.

First, should one blog under one’s own name or under a pseudonym and how does this decision influence things? Next, what are the types of topics one should cover? Should one stick to or avoid research, current events, professionalization topics, teaching, personal information, pop culture, anything and everything in between? What style should one use (professional, chatty, combative, arrogant**, etc.)? What should be the frequency of posts (several times a day, every couple of days, few times a month)? These are just some of the considerations and potential variations in blogs and how they and their authors may be perceived.

It is precisely this long list of variables that makes it nearly impossible to give general advice about whether an academic (at the grad student level, junior faculty level or any other level for that matter) should or should not blog. I continue to believe that there are potential benefits to blogging, both personal and professional. However, I also think, increasingly, as I come across all sorts of blogs, that some people are likely not being helped by their blogging. For example, if you write under your own name and do so in a style that suggests you think very highly of your smarts yet your posts seem to suggest that you are not very bright then it is hard to see how that would be beneficial (but perhaps it is not detrimental either). On the other hand, if you write really smart commentary, but do so under a secret identity, it is not clear how that is going to be helpful either. (On that note I should add that it seems extremely rare in the case of academic pseudonymous blogging that the identity of the author is not revealed eventually, at least to some, which is something for folks choosing that path to keep in mind.)

So my overall advice? Be smart about your online presence, whether on blog or on email. Realize that what you write – whether under a pseudonym or not – may well be connected to you later so it should be material you are willing to stand up for in situations other than the privacy of your living room (where much of blog writing is likely drafted).

What does it mean to “be smart” in this realm? This is where people will likely disagree, which is why I hesitate to give more fine-grained advice. Personally, I find it off-putting when people’s style suggests that they think highly of themselves, but little of their writing delivers.

But styles can also add something positive to otherwise mundane topics. For example, I don’t know if early in one’s career (or any other time for that matter) is the time to advertise a series of professional rejections broadly (e.g., blog post about having been rejected from a conference followed by a blog post about having been rejected from a journal followed by a blog post about having been rejected in a fellowship application process). On the other hand, even such information could be conveyed in a way that suggests a reflective and careful thinker.

Alternatively, if a graduate student is trying to be part of a professional blogging community – that is, s/he is mainly engaging in conversation with other people from the field – then it may not make sense to focus a string of posts on something like having spent a day at the beach, a day watching football, and a day baking cookies. Nonetheless, if done in a witty, interesting and insightful way, that could be fine as well.

Perhaps where I am going with this is that if it is more likely to be a personal journal of brief notes about one’s everydays then it is not clear why it would need to be linked to a professional community (and thus I would keep the blog separate from a professional homepage and I would not necessarily link to it when commenting on blogs of colleagues). However, if one engages in topics of broader appeal then it can make sense to make that part of one’s public persona as it can be beneficial to come to be known as an interesting and careful thinker.

All of this brings me back to a point I have been making for a while (but to which I cannot find a reference at the moment, perhaps mostly having made this point in talks): the term “blog” is of limited utility as it refers to so many different genres. This applies in the academic realm as well as others. Whether an academic should or should not maintain a blog is partly dependent on how one defines, understands and approaches the writing and communicating with others. Instead of asking oneself whether one should blog, I’d ponder its intended purpose and goals, and contemplate answers to the questions I listed above.

And one important final point. Ultimately, whether one gets hired or gets a promotion will have a lot to do with one’s academic record. In that sense, much of the above may be irrelevant except to consider whether blogging is eating into one’s research time or time otherwise spent on, say, watching reruns of Law & Order (totally random example I pulled out of nowhere;).

[*] That said, I have to share one of my recent Twitter messages here: “reality check: Man taking photos of pastry in store with high-end camera, seller asks if he’s a blogger; response: what’s that?”

[**] For the record, I don’t actually believe that many people make a conscious decision about wanting to write in an arrogant style, but some end up doing so and there is little appealing about it.

A propos the discussion of CVs for academics going on the job market, I’ve been meaning to post about the importance of having some Web presence, especially a homepage one maintains with information about one’s work.

I’ve been continually surprised over the years about how many academics fail to take advantage of the Web as a medium for disseminating their work. This seems especially important in the case of those actively seeking a job in the near future.

Whenever I go to a conference, I’m on the lookout for students doing interesting work. Recently, I saw a few impressive presentations and wanted to follow up by learning more about these students. I know we’ll be hiring next year and I wanted to share information about these potential candidates with my colleagues. I looked them up online so I’d have more to go on. Nothing. This is an opportunity missed.

What should a basic homepage include? It should have information that a CV would contain, but the nice thing about a Web site is that it can easily include additional information. In the least, abstracts of published papers would be helpful. Of course, most helpful is to have full copies of these papers. While copyright issues may arise, preprints are almost always okay to post.

Although I don’t encourage students to post too many details about papers not yet accepted for publication, it is possible to mention one’s areas of interests and expertise and that will give visitors a better sense of one’s work than no information whatsoever.

Over on Scatterplot, there is a discussion of how CVs should look when students (or recent graduates) are applying for academic jobs.

I wrote a long comment that I figured I would reproduce here (with some editing for context). My experience comes from having applied to numerous positions when I was on the job market in 2002 (with several on-campus visits and then job offers resulting) and from having sat on a couple of hiring committees in addition to seeing CVs of additional folks who’ve been interviewed in my department and some others on campus over the past few years.

One way to approach putting together one’s CVs for an academic job application is to look at the CVs of people who’ve gotten jobs recently, jobs of interest to the candidate. If someone’s been out for a few years, it’s fine to ask them for a copy of their CV from the time when they were on the market. (On that note, it’s also worth asking people for a copy of their application letters.)

Overall, it’s important to put the most important information on the first couple of pages. What’s most important? This partly depends on the type of job (top research department vs liberal arts college vs lots of other possibilities). My comments are mainly about applying to top research departments in sociology, communication and some related fields.

Order – For top research positions, I’d start with degrees (including school, field, year), then perhaps a line or two about interests followed by publications, grants and awards, invited presentations then conference presentations, followed by teaching and service. If it’s a type of department where teaching may be more important than research then I may put teaching above presentations to signal its importance. Another place to emphasize teaching is in the application letter as well as by including additional materials in the packet such as teaching philosophy or teaching evaluations.

Formatting – Please skip any fancy formatting, fancy paper or fancy binding. The latter, especially, can be very distracting. The last time I was on a hiring committee, there were a few files where the applicant put his/her material in an additional folder. (The staff putting together the materials tend to create folders for each applicant anyway.) Sometimes, these folders make the CVs and other materials harder to access. I realize it may sound ridiculous that it would be a notable nuisance to deal with this, but when you have just a few hours (yes, that’s the reality of the situation) to go through 100+ applications then any such distractions make a difference.

Papers that have been submitted to a journal for review and have been invited for resubmission – These should be listed, although I’d prefer to see them in a section separate from Publications. One possibility is to have a separate section called “Papers Under Review” where the first entries can be the ones with an R&R (“revise and resubmit) status. However, I would not list specific journal, if for no other reason, because it compromises the blind review process.

Papers under review – I hate seeing these on CVs, but I have experienced colleagues bringing them up in discussion at earlier stages in the process. While I don’t believe it does someone any good at the long-short list stage, it may help in retaining a name/file for that stage. (That is, when the committee is working its way from 100+ applications to, say, 20-30, these entries may help keep a file in the pile.) My preference – as a committee member on the other end – would be to see this under a separate section after publications as noted above.

Unpublished papers not under review – Some folks will list papers that are not under review (e.g., XYZ Title. ABC Department. Unpublished Manuscript). I would not include these. If anything, I’m left wondering why they haven’t been submitted for review if they are full papers.

Declined awards – If these are off-campus awards then I would mention them. These tend to be declined either because the recipient also received another award that created a conflict or for personal reasons, neither of which signal professional concerns (in fact, the former suggests that the recipient is very resourceful in successfully applying for several awards).

Dissertation abstract – While I’ve certainly seen people include this (and have seen such friends get good jobs) I personally hate to see CV space wasted on this. There are plenty of other places in the packet where one can include this information (most notably as a paragraph in the application letter). I turn to the CV for a quick glance at the main accomplishments such as publications, grants and awards. That said, most of our searches tend to be pretty broad so we’re not necessarily looking for very specific things. I guess if a department had a very specific need to fill then perhaps one could communicate a match in the abstract.

Tailoring to job specifics – If a deparment is looking for something specific (i.e., it’s not an open search) then it’s a good idea to tailor either the letter or the CV (or both) to the position.

All-in-all, I’d draft a CV and show it to faculty in one’s department for feedback (obvious person being one’s advisor, but getting feedback from additional faculty can also be helpful).

• Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo
  (Scientific American)
  (tags: photography fun article)
• Seizing cars from drunk drivers
  (Reuters) Italy’s latest move to reduce drunk driving
  (tags: article safety italy)
• Blog Analysis Toolkit
  (tags: research tools blogs)
• ‘Dry drowning’ claims 10-year-old’s life
  (MSNBC) – I’d never heard of this before, scary
  (tags: article health safety)
• Fake bus stop keeps Alzheimer’s patients from wandering off
  (Telegraph) – interesting idea
  (tags: article health elderly)

• Women and Math, the Gender Gap Bridged
  summary of piece in Science; “Analysis of PISA results suggests that the gender gap in math scores disappears in countries with a more gender-equal culture.” (quote from Science)
  (tags: research gender skill international data stats article)
• He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died
  18 years of Project 365
  (tags: photos blogpost photography)

• Doctor uf Humane Lettuce
  nice article about making mistakes in public and how to deal with them
  (tags: article academia higher-education college leadership)

• The Impact of Employment during School on College Student Academic Performance
  NBER working paper
  (tags: research college students)

• North by Northwestern
  online student-run magazine at NU
  (tags: northwestern magazine journalism college news)

• Provalis Research
  text analysis tools
  (tags: software qda)

• ID theft protection firm sued
  (Charleston Gazette) “LifeLock misinformed customers, lawsuit says”
  (tags: article privacy idtheft)
• I Will Not Be Broken
  book on overcoming life crises by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jerry White
  (tags: books)
• Smith College Adopts SAT-Optional Admission Policy
  “Evidence of correlations between race, household income and test performance, along with the recognition that SATs may not be the best predictor of academic potential, prompt the decision.”
  (tags: education higher-education college smith smithcollege)
• BLAST 2008: BLAST Goes to the Movies!
  video of the NU BLAST 2008 concert dances
  (tags: video dance)
• StreetFighter vs. Kid
  ouch!
  (tags: video)
• Star Wars Kid: The Data Dump
  information about how the Star Wars Kid viral video spread
  (tags: video analysis data viral)
• The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking
  Anthropology MA thesis
  (tags: for anthropology ToRead sns research)

• TwitterSnooze
  temporarily stop following people on Twitter (e.g., when they’re actively twittering a conference you’re not interested in following)
  (tags: twitter tools)

• UMG Says Throwing Away Promo CDs is Illegal
  (EFF) – typical “should I laugh or should I cry?” absurdity
  (tags: copyright music law legal)

• A Defense of European Languages
  (IHE) nice article arguing for more foreign language education and learning in the US, not less
  (tags: article language education college)

• Smith College Alum Blogs
  (tags: lists smith smithcollege blogs)