Category Archives: geek

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Via http://www.worldwidewords.org, the brilliant news that people “in England (but not the other parts of the UK) are now likely to have free access to several of the major archive resources of the Oxford University Press through their local library membership. All participating libraries have access to the Oxford Reference Online, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the Dictionary of National Biography. Most also give access to Grove Art Online and Grove Music Online. The best part is that you don’t need to visit your library: you can log on to the sites from any computer at any time using your library card number.”
Links to the participating libraries and URLs of the resources.

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“Bloggers and internet pundits are exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society, a report by technology researchers says.
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More than half of the continent’s internet users are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23 per cent only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net – through message boards, websites and blogs – are helping change national conversations, the study says.” (Age)
The study seems to be more about the impact of grass roots campaigns but it would be interesting to examine whether dissatisfaction with traditional media also had an effect.

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“Search users ‘stop at page three'” (BBC)
I’m surprised they get that far, as earlier studies showed that most people didn’t go beyond the first page.
This has all kinds of implications: “It also found that a third of users linked companies in the first page of results with top brands.”
This is kinda encouraging, however: “And 41% of consumers changed engines or their search term if they did not find what they were searching for on the first page.”

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“…science has come to the rescue with a wearable computer system that alerts speakers when the person they are addressing is becoming bored.” (Age)

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A.Word.A.Day was quite amusing today, stating:
“In late seventeenth century, William III of UK imposed a window tax, levied on each window in a house.
Three hundred years later, William III of US imposed a Windows tax, levied on each personal computer manufactured, whether it had Windows or not, but I digress.”

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It’s been ages since I’ve had a properly geek post, so here you go: one really annoying thing about SQL Server 2000’s stored procedures is that it doesn’t automatically update the relevant script if you update the stored procedure name. The solution is to manually update the name in the script, or you’ll get a lovely SQL-DMO error 21037.

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“Platial provides a home for people who love quirky geographical information or just want to mark the locations that have meaning to them.
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You might say Platial is a cross between MapQuest and LiveJournal. Built on the open interfaces for Google Maps, the 2-month-old site is one of a new breed of map mashups — web applications created by mixing an already-existing open mapping platform with original software.
Platial co-creator Di-Ann Eisnor says she built Platial for what she calls “neogeographers,” who use digital maps to tell stories and chart eccentric routes through familiar terrain.” (Wired)

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Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0 (and other topics): “Mash-ups are called Web 2.0, but they are data integrations – taking a piece of display technology like a map application and doing a handcrafted data integration. I’ve yet to see a mash-up that uses semantic Web data and crafts it – the fact that everyone has their own mash-up tells the story. What I’ve always wanted to do is take an arbitrary thing, a data file, and if it’s got something that can be mapped, drop it into a map and see what occurs without programming.” (BCS)
And he has a blog!