NorthStarNerd.Org

Colleges Don't Like Being Graded!

I give the Annapolis Group of colleges an F. This fairly prestigious group of schools doesn't like the US News and World Report College Rankings. It's one thing to give grades; it's another thing, apparently, to be graded!

As my youngest child prepares to finish the college admissions process, I'll just note that I have always found US News rankings helpful. If you're curious, read more ...

• Annapolis Group Overview
• Annapolis Editorial on US News & World Report Ranking System
• US News & World Report Response to Annapolis

William Shakespeare and Dinner! (+ Web 2.0)

My wife just said, "What a Nerd!" Yup, that's me!  I am sitting at my computer, eating a frozen pizza, and looking at a cool new software application (Shared Word Diagrams). Okay ... why do I think this is neat? Let's examine the data:

• I was not an English major (I do like to read)
• Researching document differences visually is intriguing
• Expand the thumbnail to see my example

I compared:

• Encyclopedia Britannica's William Shakespeare Overview
• Wikipedia's William Shakespeare Overview

I thought ... what better way to try out this application than by comparing a Web 2.0 application with it's Web 1.0 counterpart, and the resulting overview of the original bard himself? Seriously, if you had never thought of graphically comparing documents, you must spend some time on Neoformix Blog. In addition, link to the Neoformix Document Arc Diagrams to view examples of Alice in Wonderland, The 2007 State of the Union Address, and  a Hard Rain  is  Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan).

Quite frankly, I haven't quite yet figured this application out. If you try an example, be patient. It can take a while for the results to appear. Once you create a comparison, while connected to Neoformix you can click upon words to further explore the relationships.  It's interactive.
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The Bourne Report

Earlier today while doing a search on my company's internal Connectbeam / Google search engine, I discovered a cool external web site! Let me repeat that ... while doing an internal search, I found an external web site.  Sort of sounds like a contradiction, but because another employee had tagged the Bourne Report, even though I wasn't searching for the site, I found the podcast series. Pretty cool.

Oh yes, the Bourne Report is a podcast series that describes itself in this manner: "Discussing Real Ways Nanotechnology, MEMS and Other Emerging Technologies are Changing How We Live, Work and Play". In addition, I've added this engineering podcast to my specialized podcast search engine.

The CBC, Roswell and Wikipedia!

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation must be an unusual place. Apparently their employees like to edit the Wikipedia Roswell entry! Seriously, the blog ... the Inside CBC.Com has a posting on what their employees edit on Wikipedia. Please note that because the CBC firewall presents only one I.P. number to the outside world, one may only see a collective list of edits, not individual employees. Given the CBC is a major news organization, viewing the collective lists of edits is intriguing:

• Inside the CBC Wikipedia Posting
• CBC Wikipedia Edits (history)
• Some Roswell Edits (#1) (#2) (#3)

Someone out there is watching you!
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Google Notebook

Given some needs at work, I've been trying out various collaboration tools ... including Google Notebook. Although this tool does not meet my specific needs, if you are in the market for a free online collaboration tool, check out Notebook.  Here's why (including some screenshots):

• Easy user interface ... copy and annotate web content
• Allows you to control with whom you wish to collaborate
• Searchable via Google

The power of Google Notebook becomes apparent if you need to do collective research. Here is a link to some notebooks with which I am playing around. Just as a fyi ... I don't intend to update these notesbooks; they were created only as a test.
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