Archives: July 2003
Wed Jul 30, 2003
Search the Wide World of Blogs with Feedster
The most advanced tool for finding fresh blog information is definately Feedster.com.
As described by the developers "Our mission is to allow organizations and individuals to harness the rich quantity of information available in today's ever growing weblog or "blog" universe. We offer users access to an index of over 1,000,000 weblog posts and, more importantly, up to the minute access to weblogs - our crawlers index on an hourly basis. We maintain our leadership position in the weblog industry through continual innovation"
Blog authors can use Feedster to add a number of features to their blogs.
Feedster can provide your blog with several powerful features: My blog search -- allow your readers to search only your blog. Trusted blog search -- allow your readers to search only your blog AND any blogs that you read (as defined by an OPML file). Filtered blog search -- allow your readers to search ANYTHING but your blog BlogToc -- allow your readers to get a list of all your blog entries (toc is short for Table of Contents)
Campus Mediation Session Reopens Student Pubs
The Federation of Students and the University of Waterloo are pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached regarding the Federation-run campus bars, the Bombshelter Pub and Federation Hall, which have been closed since January 20, 2003. The agreement was reached at a mediation session at the Waterloo Inn yesterday. More...
Free Full-Text Articles at FindArticles.com
While many folks in higher education are benefiting from full-text library resources available electronically, access is usually restricted and not always convenient. A free, but ad-sponsored alternative is FindArticles.com. The site provides a large archive of published articles that you can search and view online for free. Constantly updated, it contains articles dating back to 1998 from more than 300 magazines and journals.
You will find articles on a range of topics, including business, health, society, entertainment, sports and more. Unlike other online collections, each of the hundreds of thousands of articles in FindArticles can be read in its entirety and printed at no cost. Tip: using the print view reduces the number of ads and makes reading the article easier (less screens to page through).
Our friends at CRInfo have thoughtfully created a page of preset search links into FindArticles.com and other online news services for folks in a hurry.
FindArticles is a content-distribution partnership between LookSmart, which provides the search infrastructure, and the Gale Group, which provides the published editorial content.
Mon Jul 28, 2003
The EduResources Portal—a Gateway to Higher Education Instructional Resources
Joseph Hart at Eastern Oregon University has been busy developing a portal to instructional resources of interest to higher education faculty. During the 2002-2003 acadmic year he was on sabbatical, investigating the growth of online instructional repositories, and then he put together the EduResources Portal and the EduResources Blog to share what he was finding. He has recently added a visual sitemap to his now quite rich collection of resources.
Check it out for yourself. As an interesting aside, the EduResources portal was built using the free and feature rich Scout Portal Toolkit. The Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT) is a turnkey web-based software package designed to allow groups with collections of information and very limited technical resources to share that information with others via the World Wide Web.
There is no charge for the Scout Portal Toolkit. SPT is open source software that is licensed under the GPL (GNU General Public License). SPT was developed by the Internet Scout Project under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation .
Sat Jul 26, 2003
Nonviolence - A Force More Powerful
The PBS website built for the documentary A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict provides attractive and informative materials that support the 3-hour documentary series on PBS on the same subject. Instructional materials include 3 full lessons and a simulation exercise.
Lots of good information is provided on nonviolent resistance theory and practice.
Fri Jul 25, 2003
Wisconsin Online Learning Objects collection
The Wisconsin Online Resource Center project is a Web-based teaching, learning, and assessment resource center for instructors to use when designing or revising online courses.
More...
Higher Ed Law Stuff at UnivAtty
Readers might be interested in the feeds coming from the ::UnivAtty:: site. Their tagline: "blawging on legal and privacy issues in higher education".
Have a look or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Super Conflict Resolution MetaSearcher
The Campus-adr.org metasearch "LaunchPad" provides quick access to the conflict resolution and higher education field's searchable databases.
CHNM Syllabus Finder Leverages Google API
The Syllabus Finder is an experiment in the fledgling world of web services.
The Syllabus Finder sends an optimized, specially packaged version of your query to Google, which sends back information and possible matches. The Syllabus Finder then processes this information and combines it with simultaneous searches on in-house databases (e.g., a database of educational institutions, so it can tell you which university or college a syllabus comes from). It also has algorithms that try to extract additional information from matching syllabi, such as assigned books. When this complex process is finished, the Syllabus Finder displays all of the information it has found.
The Syllabus Finder uses the Google Web API ,PHP ,PEAR ,SOAP , and MySQL.
It's working!
It looks like everything is in working order now. Time to start blogging...
Thu Jul 24, 2003
Opening Day Jitters
I've had some "permissions problems" getting set up, so I really hope this works!