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PDF storage site on the web -- need to take a look at this....
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Library Hacks » SimplyMap
SimplyMap lets users create professional quality maps for use in presentations, research reports, business plans, or Websites. Data variables can be viewed at the State, County, ZIP Code, Tract and Block Group levels.
Want to know the top 10 wealthiest ZIP codes in your state? How about the top 25 counties with the most elderly residents? These and similar questions are easily answered by ranking locations using any data variable in SimplyMap.
SimplyMap includes access to thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables such as consumer expenditure, real estate, crime and many more.
Everything you do in SimplyMap can be exported in multiple formats for further customization and analysis. Create and export large amounts of data or detailed reports as Excel or CSV files. Advanced users can even export shapefiles for use in their own GIS software.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail | MakeUseOf.com
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail | MakeUseOf.com
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail
Jan. 22nd, 2009 By James Withers
Say goodbye to ‘copy & paste’. There are easier ways to organize information. Zotero, a handy Firefox extension, picks up where Google’s ailing Notebook application leaves off.
Marketed as a research tool, it is actually a tiny miracle. Not only can it be used to bookmark information, but it also permits its user to highlight or add sticky notes to pages. Furthermore, it sports an impressive search capability, just as Google Notebook has done.
Fortunately, Zotero also allows users to drag and drop highlighted information directly into a note, eliminating the need to press a “clip” or “paste” button. For this reason, Zotero is an excellent program to use if you desire to put together a mailing list.
Download Zotero
Zotero is a free & handy piece of software that is easy to install. Equipped with a portable bookmarking tool, the Zotero application provides space for you to deposit information you discover on the internet. Doing so is easy. Once downloaded, Zotero’s extension can be opened from the bottom corner of your screen (just like Google’s soon defunct Notebook extension). Once opened, it will expand to fill a third of the screen.
To get started with a new notebook, you will only need to press an icon titled “New Standalone Note” and begin to type into a blank page in the 3rd column of the Zotero pane. Next, highlight any information from the internet that is of particular interest to you, just as you would do if you were preparing to copy & paste it into a document . However, instead of needing to worry about opening up a Word document, you can simply drag the info directly into the notebook. Here, it can be modified, and can later be exported by being dragged outside of the notebook to a desired spot.
In addition to this convenient drag & drop feature, Zotero also permits users to simply record a page’s URL, as well as record a screenshot of the page.
Research Your Prospects
Plenty of information exists online to suit the needs of a wide range of aspiring entrepreneurs. When useful email addresses are collected in one place, they can be worth a pretty penny. Instead of worrying about needing to purchase this information from data gathering experts, why not just gather it yourself?
Since Zotero’s extension does not require repeated users to enter user IDs and passwords, it is an easy place to store useful information about potential business prospects. In fact, getting in and out of Zotero is even easier than logging onto the internet.
Open & Title a New Standalone Note
While Zotero permits you to tag items with the URL code from which they originate, the easiest way to save email addresses is to simply drop them one by one into a standalone note. Should you later have questions about the email address you’ve saved, you can always Google the email address in question and you’ll most likely get a list of results that includes the site from which you extracted the address.
Conveniently, Zotero automatically saves your work, just as Google’s Notebook & Google Docs does. This can be a lifesaver if you’re called away by an instant message, by a co-worker, or by a family member.
Send Your Mail Via Gmail
I recommend Gmail over Hotmail because, of the two, Zotero proved to be more compatible with Gmail when I performed a side-by-side comparison. A chunk of email addresses can be pulled out of your Zotero notebook and dropped directly into the BCC line of an email. Although Standard Edition Google accounts permit users to send 500 emails per day to external recipients, Google itself recommends to users to bypass this restriction by creating multiple email accounts.
And this is the least of what Zotero can do. Although using Zotero takes a little work & ingenuity, it is a real lifesaver in the end. It frees up your energy to tackle complex projects without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.
Better Than Google Notebook?
Now it’s time for the big question: Do you feel like Zotero is a worthy replacement to Google Notebook? Let us know if you’ve tried Zotero yet. If you have, how do you like it? Do you have any tips for others about how to make the most of Zotero?
Photo Credit : Smil
Photo Credit : Crumj(By) James Withers--a firm believer that fun & entertaining posts are what makes the web go around. Explore his corner on the web at Associated Content.
Assemble A No-Fuss Mailing List Using Zotero & Gmail | MakeUseOf.com
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
TheStar.com | Opinion | Open Access would solve piracy issue
TheStar.com | Opinion | Open Access would solve piracy issue
thestar.com LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Open Access would solve piracy issue
Jan 14, 2009 04:30 AM
Re:Textbook piracy thriving around
city's campuses, Jan. 10
During my engineering undergraduate years at U of T, I found the best textbooks were informal documents maintained by my own professors. We paid only in comments and corrections, which we knew would benefit our juniors in the same courses.Using the numbers from your thorough article, the $150 provincial grant barely covers two years of 6 per cent price increases on a $1,000 set of books. The student saves nothing, and the grant is pure profit for publishers.
The same publishers receive hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from Canadian universities for subscriptions to academic journals – even when those journals contain the products of publicly funded science. These costs are passed on to students as tuition increases.
The Open Access movement recognizes that this impedes the spread of knowledge, and advocates for free academic materials. MIT's OpenCourseWare project is a laudable example. As in the arts, digital media are allowing creators and consumers to both gain through bypassing the large corporations that have, until now, fed at both ends of the trough.
I hope to see continued treatment of this important issue in the Star's pages in the future.
Paul Kishimoto, Toronto
Your reporter writes that students are now photocopying textbooks to save money due to rising costs of post-secondary education. But copying textbooks was rampant in several Ontario universities I attended in the 1980s.Dr. Peter Rozanec, Toronto
University textbook prices always ticked me off. I often thought the real criminals were the schools and the publishers. The teacher would say that we needed the "new" edition and that the previous year's edition would not do. But the only difference was that a new index page was inserted with a different publishing year inside. It was a joke, especially when the year was done and you realized how little of the book was actually used for the class.Many students buy old editions at used bookstores, but aren't the schools and publishers just double-dipping on the sales of the same product? Additionally, how many schools make textbooks available in the school libraries?
And to be fair, why are the books so expensive? I expect an autographed Harry Potter or a first edition of A Tale of Two Cities to be pricey, but Calculus?
I'm glad I don't have to be bullied like that anymore. We should be helping kids, not exploiting them.
David Syrie, Mississauga
As a co-author of a university science textbook, I sympathize completely with the student concerns about the cost of textbooks. They do indeed seem exorbitant. As an author, I am not in a position to justify the publisher's price. I can, however, comment on a few points.Textbooks are generally a "small market" project. Textbooks are not published in anything close to the volumes of a popular novelist. Most textbooks are also illustrated, which requires the services of an independent art firm to translate author's sketches into final illustrations. Text illustrations also complicate the production process.
Few textbook publishers maintain in-house production teams but, again, rely on outside production and design firms that specialize in technical publications. No matter how you cut it, most textbooks require the input of a lot of people with specialized talents and that drives up the production expense. Those costs have to be recovered with a relatively small number of unit sales. Photocopy piracy serves only to drive down unit sales and drive up the price.
You can't beat the price with soft covers. I am told that there is very little difference in the production costs for hard covers vs. soft covers. And I am not aware of any texts that are "revised" on an annual basis – the costs would be prohibitive. Our own book is revised on a 4- to 5-year cycle and, yes, it is significantly updated each time to reflect new knowledge in the field.
Publishers are in the business of producing and selling a product. They know that in order to sell that product, it must be competitively priced. I know from personal experience that they try everything they can to keep that price down. I can also guarantee you that most textbook authors are first of all teachers and they don't do it for the money.
William G. Hopkins, Professor Emeritus, University of Western Ontario
TheStar.com | Opinion | Open Access would solve piracy issue
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Instructables.com
January 5, 2009 - 9:00 am, By Elizabeth - Baruch College
Don’t you ever get tired of not knowing how to do the crap that other people know how to do? Your computer cable breaks and you resign to just buy a new one because you don’t know how to fix it. You see girls wearing cute t-shirts that have been cut into elaborate halters, but you just buy the generic version of the shirt at the store because you have no idea how to turn so much fabric into something so little.
For all of you out there who have ever wanted to do all of that crap that other people know how to do, your prayers have just been answered:
Instructables is here to save your life.
This site is one of the coolest sites ever (second only to CollegeCandy…) and I can hardly begin to explain all of the reasons why. Ok, so I will try. Here goes: they walk you through the instructions of how to do just about everything.
Literally, everything! No more asking guys to help with “guy” things or calling up your sister to teach you how to get your hair doing that perfect balance between chic and messy.
The Instructables people break their projects down for you by category. Once you decide between Art, Craft, Food, Games, Green, Home, Kids, Life, Music, Offbeat, Outdoors, Pets, Ride, Science, Sports, and Tech, they send you on your way to DIY heaven.
Step by step. Project by project. It doesn’t get any better than that.
The next time you have a project in mind, but just don’t know how the eff to do it, I can guarantee you Instructables will. And they’ll show you, too.
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