TagCloud of Rider University’s Strategic Plan

academic achievement action activities additional adoption affairs alumni approval arts assessment assoc benchmarks budget build business campus campuses career chair classroom co-curricular college community comprehensive connections continue deans departments development director diverse division education engaged enhance enrollment ensure establish existing expand experience faculty fundraising goals graduate implementation improved include increased indices information institutional integral international kpis leadership learning life management needs objectives ongoing operating opportunities overall page plan potential professional programs provide provost rates recruitment relations research resources responsibility retention rider school sciences service skills social specific staff strategic strengthen students success support teaching technology timeline undergraduate university vp year

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freshmeat.net: Project details for MaCollec Collections Manager

I have a lot of books, music and other media in a few different places, at home, and at the office. Keeping track of it all requires a sort of collective that I hadn’t come across for free until now.

freshmeat.net: Project details for MaCollec Collections Manager
MaCollec is a Web-based collections manager written in PHP/Javascript. It’s based on the AJAX technology to produce a nice-looking and pleasant interface. It doesn’t require a database. Item information (including cover pictures) are retrieved from online libraries.

freshmeat.net: Project details for Métamorphose File -n- Folder Renamer

I work with lots of files. I often find myself staring at 300 files all needing to have something chnaged in the filename, like the removal of capitalized letters for standardization, or  the addition of a timestamp. Sometimes the change is just about clarity, and other times the change is just aesthetic. Very often, depending on what machine I’m on, I don’t have the tools I need to change all 300 files easily. The result is that it doesn’t get done. On windows, there was magic file renamer, but that is neither open source [preferred] or free [acceptable] and so, I find it disgusting to use, despite a great interface and very useful toolset. When I came across this today in Freshmeat’s RSS feed, I was thrilled.

freshmeat.net: Project details for Métamorphose File -n- Folder Renamer

Métamorphose File -n- Folder Renamer is a mass file renaming program that combines great flexability with an intuitive interface. It allows many command line renaming operations in a single utility, well-suited for those who need to rename large numbers of files and/or folders on a regular basis. However, the ease of the interface ensures that a first-time user will not find it too frustrating to use.

A Journey to the Center of Yahoo - New York Times

Although I use Google services where available, Yahoo! definitely has some good stuff going on. This NYTimes article [get it while you can] talks about what Yahoo is trying to do, which is essentially, I think, to keep up with Google.

A Journey to the Center of Yahoo - New York Times

Late last year, Yahoo made a deal with the tiny X1 Technologies company, which had created the best desktop search system for files on Windows computers. (X1 rivals the Spotlight desktop search, which is built into the latest Macintosh operating system.) As a stand-alone product, X1 sells for $75 and up; under the name Yahoo Desktop Search, Yahoo’s Web site offers its version free.

This year, Yahoo also bought Flickr, a system for storing, sharing and commenting on photographs; a scheduling application called Upcoming; and the mail utility Oddpost, on which it is basing a new e-mail system. Last year, Yahoo overtook Hotmail to become the world’s most-used free e-mail service. Its new e-mail system, now running in a limited beta version and scheduled for release next year, applies technology called Ajax, discussed in a previous column, to mimic the speed and power of a normal desktop program.

When I tried the beta release of the new mail program, I was amazed that I could, for instance, quickly view the contents of an e-mail message without opening it, via a “preview pane” like Outlook’s - while operating over a normal Web browser. Yahoo, meanwhile, has intensified operations in its offices in Santa Monica, Calif., to bring more music, video and news content to its sites.

USB flash drive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a result of a request of a former employee and his subsequent departure, I have become the recent keeper of a 1GB USB Thumb Drive. Not having been very excited in the past in USB drives due to a real lack of usable space on these kinds of drives, I was happy to find that this was no longer an issue with the 1G USB drive.

So for the last few months, I have been using the drive pretty regularly to take things back and forth from home to work and back, and to use key applications like Portable Firefox, which runs from the drive, but does not need to be installed.

My other big use right now is sneakernetting movies and tv shows back and forth to watch during lunch. I can get hour long TiVo recordings down to about 700MB in Mpeg 2 format, or backed up DVDs into 800 MB MP4s, both of which fit nicely on the drive alongside some portable apps.

VLC++

At this point, I am totally obsessed with finding more portable apps to use with the drive, and today I hit the info_motherlode where you might expect I’d hit one: Wikipedia.

USB flash drive -

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Keydrive applications

* USBApps - Listing of USB keydrive applications
* TinyApps - Tiny applications for your USB keydrive
* StandAlone - Stand alone applications for your USB keydrive
* airWRX - USB Keydrive application framework
* kikizas.net - Freeware programs to run from a USB stick
* Portable Freeware - The Portable Freeware Collection
* RUNT - ResNet Network Tester for USB Keydrives
* CryptoStick Software - Encryption, Private Internet Browsing, PestPatrol, all for your USB Device
* USB driver
* Dekart Private Disk - User-friendly disk encryption software for Windows XP/9x/2000 - AES 256 bit encryption
* Truecrypt - Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003

* Gaim - a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows.
* Portable OpenOffice - A complete office suite for your USB pen drive
* Portable NVU - The Complete Web Authoring System
* Portable AbiWord - the popular word processor AbiWord optimized for USB pen drive use
* Portable Mozilla Stuff
o Portable Firefox - Web browser
o Portable Thunderbird - Email
o Portable Sunbird - Calendar application

[edit]

HOWTO pages

* Encrypted thumb drive and autoplay howto - Open source tools and a very clear walkthrough
* Combining encryption and mobility howto - A guide on using Portable Firefox, Thunderbird, Instant Messenger in a secure way

[edit]

GNU/Linux distributions for USB

* DamnSmallLinux (DSL), a small derivative of Knoppix, tailored to USB
* Knoppix USB Based.
* featherlinux - distribution specifically created for USB sticks
* Flash-Puppy a mature distro designed for keydrives
* Flonix: USB Keydrive Operating System
* Generic Howto on USB booting, incl. with using a floppy/CD for the initial boot if the BIOS does not support USB
* Installing Debian from a USB stick
* LiveDistro.org - Operating systems and HOWTOs for LiveUSBs

Grokker as a Search Tool

Grokker is a search engine front end for Yahoo! Search that displays results in circles of related topics. It is a unique and interesting way to look at any topic, but particularly fun for ego-searching. I like it so much, I wrote a grokker search plugin for mycroft, Firefox’s built in search tool, and if the database on that site ever works again, I’ll submit it. Below is an invitation to see how Stanford uses Grokker to improve the way patrons use the Library’s vast resources.

Event Status

Stanford’s Success Story Using Grokker for Federated Search and Visualization
Does your library need to uncover quality information hidden deep within multiple data sources? Are your patrons increasingly turning to Google as their primary research tool despite the many quality information resources available? Are multiple points of access and disparate user interfaces posing significant barriers to full utilization of quality research sources in your library?

Join us for a free live Web seminar sponsored by Groxis Inc. and featuring Chris Bourg, Associate Director for Communications of Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources.

Chris Bourg will present:
Stanford’s success story using Grokker for federated search, results categorization and visualization

Attendees will learn how:

* Grokker increases the utilization of Stanford library subscription content (i.e. EBSCO, IEEE, HighWire, etc.)
* Grokker’s federated search gives Stanford researchers the ability to simultaneously access and efficiently explore hundreds of results from disparate sources
* Grokker’s visualization and clustering tools improve the quality of research by facilitating deeper exploration of research materials
* Grokker’s document summaries and previews allow Stanford researchers to quickly assess the content of returned documents

Who should attend:

* University Library Professionals
* Corporate Library Professionals
* Researchers
* Knowledge Management Professionals

What is Grokker?
Grokker helps libraries add value to databases and subscription content by facilitating the delivery and exploration of those resources. The result is fuller utilization of resources and higher quality research.

To learn more about Grokker, please visit www.grokker.com or contact our sales team at sales@groxis.com.

Productive Strategies: List of Academic Lecture Podcasts

I would love to intigate smething like this at Rider. It would be a relatively simple task for the Instructors, no student voices would likely ever be heard, ceasing privacy/inclusion issues, and the workflow would ensure a auick turnaround and availability - additional benefits would be that the students would have a way to review the lectures. Oh, and there is still value added by coming to class, going to University, etc. because a lot of the value of in class education is the visual aspects, the human interaction, and the ability to dig deeper into the topic with an expert in front of you, none of which can be gotten with these mp3s. Together with the BBC’s annotatable audio tool this could be a fantastic teaching and learning tool.

Productive Strategies: List of Academic Lecture Podcasts

Several universities are making lectures available as Podcasts. Not every class is work well on an iPod, but the content is much more directed toward people who want to learn and not just be entertained. Of course the flip side of this is that some of the professors are boring in person, to say nothing of listening to their recordings on an iPod. You may need to look around to find someone who is interesting to listen to, but once you find the right feed, you have a tremendous amount of content regularly published for entire semester.

Alexa - Web Discovery Machine: Watching the ‘Net Trends

I was a bit surprised to find that I had been doing many of these. It really does give you a heads up on what’s going on to pay close attention to del.icio.us/popular, for instance. You end up being the one who says “Hey did you hear that ?” all the time, and people respond with some wonder, thinking “How did he hear about that - I’ve been on CNN all morning and they never said a thing. That’s web 1.0 thinking right there, buddy.

I must say though, I’m not as big of an alexa fan as this guy.

John|work++

Alexa - Web Discovery Machine: Watching the ‘Net Trends

Watching the ‘Net Trends
My job requires that I keep tabs on all the latest trends on the ‘Net, but there is no single good way to do that. Some things still escape my attention. So, I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion about trend-watching on the ‘Net and the methods for keeping up.

ZillionBits » What is keyword researching?

Since I have been doing my own research of how people value content and ‘vote’ for links of their own high value rank on http://del.icio.us , I have found sites I never would have been exposed to otherwise. social_bookmarking++

Paying close attention to /popular on http://del.icio.us has been an enlightening experience to say the least.

At any rate, this is one of the links I found by regularly scanning /popular, and it’s sort of related to my recent research activity. It involves the idea of learning how people search via keywords and finding out more about how to search more effectively as a result. Good stuff.

ZillionBits » What is keyword researching?

Keyword Research describes the practise of looking at what users are searching for and how they search for it on the Internet, Keyword Research helps us understand the types of things people are trying to find, as well as the words they’re using.

There are a two common methods that Keyword Research tools use to give an indicator of competition

The first one is called the R/S ratio, which shows the ratio of searches to web pages containing that keyword or keyword phrase. R/S ratio is how many times something is searched for against how many pages are found in the search engine with that keyword or phrase included in the page.

The second common indicator is KEI, which stands for Keyword Effectiveness Index. This is very similar to R/S, however, it’s weighted so the higher the keyword volume, the more tolerance it has to lots of competing pages. Keywords or phrases with lots of searches will have a higher KEI compared with ones that have fewer searches, even though their R/S ratio may be exactly the same.

Jonathan Schwartz’s Weblog: The World Changes this Week

Sun is about to make a major announcement about a partnership with Google. This blog entry from Sun’s CEO is mouth watering for lovers of Open Source.

Jonathan Schwartz’s Weblog

But there are a couple of trends running counter to this looming force - especially among consumers. The trend is away from the upgrade cycle that benefits this traditional notion of distribution. For example, when’s the last time you upgraded your set top box? The answer’s probably never, and suggests that at a certain level, convenience has more value to consumers than the hassle of upgrading. Or ask a teenager which they’d rather have, a new iPod Nano, or a new PC, I’ll bet you money it’s the former (underlying the global trend that suggests more of the world will experience the internet through handsets than PC’s).

Or finally, as I did last week at a keynote, ask the audience which they’d rather give up - their browser, or all the rest of their desktop apps. (Unanimously, they’d all give up the latter without a blink.) All these trends show a slowing upgrade appetite calling into question the power of traditional distribution. In stark contrast to the value of volume, community and participation

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