Links for 2007-06-19
June 19th, 2007-
Greasemonkey script that helps easily post photos into a comment on Flickr
Links for 2007-06-17
June 17th, 2007Links for 2007-06-16
June 16th, 2007-
plagiarism search tool
Links for 2007-06-14
June 14th, 2007-
(Guardian Unlimited) elephants, antelopes move due to changes in the fauna due to the war
Links for 2007-06-13
June 13th, 2007-
group addresses need for more science and math graduates and teachers
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Firefox extension – quick links to Web caches of a page that comes up as a 404 (file not found)
Links for 2007-06-12
June 12th, 2007-
(CNN) finally a step in some reasonable direction
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The Anti-Phishing research group at Indiana
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by Vishal Agarwala
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amusing
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search Flickr for photos by color and number of petals
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(The Daily Green)
Links for 2007-06-11
June 11th, 2007-
UIUC puts a simple widget in Facebook so users can access the collection from within the system
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Tarleton Gillespie’s blog on technology, law, media, culture
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(Mixing Memory blog)
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(Wikipedia) – one of my favorite chocolates turns 75 this year
Links for 2007-06-10
June 10th, 2007-
Where Are You Now – another trip coordination site (seems quite different from Dopplr, possibly trying to do a bit too much, seems to target a different age group)
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(NYTimes)
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(NYTimes) the military is losing thousands of qualified serviceman and women who are willing to serve due to its anti-gay policies
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image sharing – requires no registration
Links for 2007-06-08
June 8th, 2007-
(Guardian Unlimited) – some basics for those who still don’t quite understand what it’s all about
If I’d only known…
June 7th, 2007I am working on the Introduction to an edited volume on the nitty-gritty behind-the-scenes work involved in empirical social science research (to be published by The University of Michigan Press in 2008). While each chapter in the book gets into considerable detail about how to approach various types of projects (from sampling online populations to interviewing hard-to-access groups, from collecting biomarkers to compiling cross-national quantitative data sets), I want to address more general issues in the introductory chapter.
One of the topics I would like to discuss concerns larger-level lessons learned after conducting such projects. The motivation behind the entire volume is that unprecedented things happen no matter the quality and detail of preparation, but even issues that can be anticipated are rarely passed along to researchers new to a type of method. The volume tries to rectify this.
I am curious, what are your biggest lessons learned? If you had to pick one or two (or three or four) things you really wish you had known before you had embarked on a project, what are they? I am happy to hear about any type of issue from learning more about a collaborator’s qualifications or interests, to leaving more time for cleaning data, from type of back-up method to unprecedented issues with respondents. If you don’t feel comfortable posting here, please email me off-blog. Thanks!
Links for 2007-06-07
June 7th, 2007-
NYTimes op-ed by Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru
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(Slate) – haven’t you always wondered?
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(MSNBC) scary
Links for 2007-06-06
June 6th, 2007-
get voicemail on your cell phone without having to give out your number (but you do still have to give it to the site, of course)
Links for 2007-06-05
June 5th, 2007Links for 2007-06-03
June 3rd, 2007-
(Information Week)
Links for 2007-06-01
June 1st, 2007-
contact the FDA today
Keeping track of friends’ whereabouts
May 31st, 2007Not long ago I was going to post about the challenge of keeping relevant people posted of one’s travels. That is, the challenge of knowing who among one’s friends may be in the same location at the same time. It’s one thing to remember who lives at a particular destination, it’s another to try to guess who may be travelling there at the same time you are.
Fortunately, just as I was about to post on this, I came across Dopplr, which is a site that addresses this precise issue. Once you sign up, you can let the system know about upcoming trips. You also link up with other people to share your itineraries and the system tells you when you’ll overlap. It’s in closed beta, but if you can think of a friend who has an account, you can ask him/her for an invitation.
Obviously, the value of such a service increases by the number of relevant contacts that join and keep their accounts up-to-date. I wonder if they will be adding the option of distinguishing among contacts. You may want certain people to know about a trip, but not others. And of course, if you prefer that people not know about a certain trip at all, you can exclude it from your list altogether.
I’m excited about this service, but the usual challenge remains: getting enough of my non-geeky friends to join and update their travel info.
Upcoming book event on Crooked Timber
May 31st, 2007In the near future, Crooked Timber will be hosting another book event. I thought it would be helpful to alert folks ahead of time so people can read the book and thereby participate in the discussions more actively and in a more informed manner.
The book is “Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children” by Greg J. Duncan, Aletha C. Huston, and Thomas S. Weisner.
During the 1990s, growing demands to end chronic welfare dependency culminated in the 1996 federal “welfare-to-work†reforms. But regardless of welfare reform, the United States has always been home to a large population of working poor— people who remain poor even when they work and do not receive welfare. In a concentrated effort to address the problems of the working poor, a coalition of community activists and business leaders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, launched New Hope, an experimental program that boosted employment among the city’s poor while reducing poverty and improving children’s lives. [The authors] provide a compelling look at how New Hope can serve as a model for national anti-poverty policies. [source]
You can either buy the book directly from its publisher, the Russell Sage Foundation, or get it at Amazon
In addition to Timberite contributions, we’ll have comments by Nancy Folbre and Kimberly Morgan plus a response by Greg Duncan.
Links for 2007-05-31
May 31st, 2007-
very interesting initiative to help against spam while also digitizing books one word at a time
Amusing street scenes wanted
May 30th, 2007
Soon there will be a Web site just for this – if there isn’t one already -, but until then, let’s see what we can collect here.
Yesterday, Google announced a new feature of its Maps service: Street View for select urban areas in the U.S. plus Google’s backyard. We’ve seen this before on services like A9 (which discontinued the feature), and Microsoft’s Live Maps, but this seems more user-friendly.
Boing Boing has a thread with links to some interesting finds. Oh, the temptation to go hunting for more! Spot any embarrassing situations or funny captures? There is potential here for hours of amusement!
I’m off to Trader Joe’s.