Google now allows you to keep your own domain name but host your blog on their servers. I am going to attempt to move Depth Reporting to Google, so it may or may not be available at times during the next few days while I make the transition. Thank you for your patience.

Labels: About this site

A 4 1/2 minute video on YouTube video by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, explains XML and Web 2.0. But you know what those are, right?

This seemingly simple video, by the way, has generated more than 1.3 million views and more than 3,600 comments, proving once again that content is king.

The Oscars are almost upon us, so it's a good time to be reminded that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offers an Academy Awards database, a motion picture scripts database, and a motion picture credits database.

Labels: Movies

GovExec.com reports that Google is making some progress in its goal of opening up government Web sites to search engines. The story quotes a Google manager who says that nearly half of all government Web pages remain inaccessible to search engines. My favorite part is where the Google manager says one reason government agencies are reluctant to make their sites more accessible to Google is "a potential increase in bandwidth use, which could drive up costs." In other words, they are buildings Web sites they don't want the public to use -- or at least use too much!

Labels: Google, Government and politics

Free GeoTools is a blog devoted to "Free (or cheap) GIS/GPS applications, utilities, websites, how-tos." It's been on a roll recently with links to stuff I can see myself using. Most importantly he reports that TGR2SHP, which converts U.S. Census TIGER files to shapefiles and for which I once paid $99, is now free. He wrote about it in a post on "Converting US Census TIGER Data Into Shapefiles For Free." Other posts of interest to mapping geeks include "A Free and Easy Shapefile Coordinate Converter," "Simplifying Line and Polygon Shapefiles," and a series of posts on exporting shapefiles to Google Earth.

Labels: Maps, Software

Here's an in-depth review of the data-sharing Web sites' founders, approach, social aspects, technology, capabilities, broad appeal and ethics, by Robert Kosara, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. EagerEyes is "A website about visualization, art, visual thinking, aesthetics, and the connections between them."

Labels: Data

I just came across a Web page by Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, comparing reporters to parrots ("Can you tell the difference?" he asks). I wanted to link to it here because I'm inclined to agree with his main points: that reporters too often uncritically repeat what others say, sometimes deceive themselves and others, get even basic math wrong, and reduce complex issues to simplistic two-sided debates.

But reading it was a disappointment, considering the candlepower you must have to lead Google's researchers.

First there's his assertion that"Reporters lie, either to advance their career (Jayson Blair) or to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors." Yes, Jayson Blair lied, but the evidence reporters lie "to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors" is what, exactly? He doesn't say.

"Sometimes the deception is self-deception: reporters (and others) believe what they want to believe," he adds.

So true, and an especially fine example of self-deception is to take an example of bad behavior by an individual, and portray it as emblematic of a group. So I can conclude when I encounter a Google bug that all programmers are sloppy and write poor code? Or that because a programmer is accused of killing his wife, all programmers are potentially homicidal? It's the same shallow reasoning.

There are a lot of reasons why reporting is as bad as it often is. Much of it is structural: the news is typically reported and written in a day, and that is the source of many missing, misunderstood and misguided facts. The world is large and newsrooms are small, and growing smaller, so much so that much of what should be covered or covered better simply isn't. Some bad reporting is because of the personal failings of journalists, but most isn't. That's what makes his piece so annoying, because he implies that it is.

At one point, Norvig cites an article about penis size as an example of faulty reporting but doesn't provide an actual citation because he can't find a link online. " ...as anyone with any familiarity with the Internet knows, there are a lot of pages mentioning 'penis', and I couldn't find the article," he explains. Imagine that, the director of Google research failing at search! We can only hope Norvig is capable of improving his faulty search engine so as to better distinguish all those Web pages mentioning penises.

Norvig offers some curiously thin examples. He says, for example, that he finds it "disturbing" that "reporter" Tim Atkin of the British Observer mischaracterized research on wine. Atkin, however, is a wine critic, not a reporter as I understand the term. Holding him up as representative of the species is a stretch.

Norvig ends his piece with an addendum that includes as an example of an "egregious" reporting error a CNN screenshot. The caption on the screenshot, from coverage of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, says the shuttle was "traveling nearly 18 times the speed of light." Impossible, of course. But an egregious reporting error? No, merely a typing error. Some harried person behind the scenes, more than likely not a reporter, typed "speed of light" when he or she should have typed "speed of sound." The shuttle was, in fact, traveling 18 times the speed of sound when it broke apart.

A mistake, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, big, friggin', deal. Is that the best he can do?

Informit.com offers a free chapter from the book Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web. The book is by Tara Calishain, the proprietor of ResearchBuzz who also co-authored the books Google Hacks and Spidering Hacks.

Labels: Research tools

Talking Biz News talks to Hope Heman, a vice president with the PR firm Edelman in New York :

" ... during the past two decades fewer journalists seem to be entering public relations as a second career, and fewer public relations firms are hiring practioners with a journalism background, and I believe this trend has had a major impact on the relationships. This is a loss. Former reporters are particularly good at counseling clients on strategies involving how to put their best foot forward when approaching the media; and reporters sometimes find themselves being pitched by junior public relations people who don't understand the needs and deadlines of the press."

Labels: Journalism

Daily Blog Tips offers 30 tips for generating blog traffic.

Labels: Blogs and blogging

CNET writes about the dilemma of crafting headlines for the Web:

"Pithy, witty and provocative headlines--the pride of many an editor--are often useless and even counterproductive in getting the Web page ranked high in search engines. A low ranking means limited exposure and fewer readers."

Labels: Journalism

The federal courts charge an unconscionable 8 cents a page to access their online dockets, even charging for searches that produce no matches, but Justia is now making the dockets available for free online. You can't get the actual records via Justia (you still have to go through the high-priced federal computer system to do that) but you can see what cases have been filed by date, search by party name and subscribe to feeds for federal courts nationwide. It only includes records for cases filed since Jan 1, 2006. Justia also provides quick links to blog searches, news searches and Web searches for the parties in each case. The federal courts say one of their goals is "accurate and informed coverage," but the fact is, if you have to pay hundreds -- even thousands -- of dollars for access to court records, that's a significant barrier to achieving it. Justia's docket search tool thus raises the obvious question: Why aren't the federal courts doing this?

Labels: Government and politics, Law

... is an "interactive and easy-to-use educational resource about Earth, oceans and the environment." It also offers a good collection of links to online books and data. From the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Labels: Environment

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, "the nation’s leading research institute for the study of the American presidency," offers a detailed online reference on American presidents. The site says its information is "reviewed by prominent scholars on each President and administration."

Labels: Government and politics, Reference

Good-Tutorials.com links to more than 13,000 tutorials on using Photoshop.

Labels: Photography, Software