Research Buzz

This collection is a bit too small to be one I’d normally cover, but when Harvard announced it last week I found the pictures to be compelling, and wanted to make sure you knew about it. The new collection is called the Nicholas V. Artamonoff Collection, and it features 543 photos taken by Artamonoff between 1935 and 1945, at sites (archaelogical sites, and ruins) in Istanbul and western Turkey. The collection is available at http://icfa.doaks.org/collections/artamonoff/items.

The photographs can be browsed in toto, via a map, via a tag cloud, or with a keyword search. I looked at the tag cloud and chose brickwork, for which I got 61 results.

The pictures are presented in a grid with location, thumbnail, and brief description. The individual item pages show larger pictures (but I wish they could be larger, I feel like I missed a lot of detail), date taken, more extensive description, and in many places a Google Map so you can get an idea of what the area looks like now. The announcement of this collection notes that a lot of these sites and monuments have fallen into disrepair or have vanished completely.

In addition to the photographs, there is also a biography of the photographer and a list of sites where the pictures were taken.

I have no idea why these images resonate with me so much. They seem almost haunted, but at the same time they occupy a landscape that is determined to be ordinary (note the imposing exterior of the St. Mary Pammakaristos, before its restoration, with what looks like a string of laundry in the foreground. I’m not much of a critic in these matters but I think it might also be that Artamonoff was a pretty damn good photographer — he was able to take both detailed and long-range pictures without losing any context.

The collection is small enough to browse; if the images themselves were larger this collection would be absolutely incredible. As it is it is well worth a visit if you’re at all interested in history or archaelogy.

Hey, The White House is on Google+!

Google Operating System takes a look at searching Google for punctuation marks and other special symbols.

GOS also notes that you can still find Google Code Search… you just have to know where to look.

The state of Maryland has created an online database of business incentives. “… an online database of the financial incentives that the state provides to companies when they promise to create jobs, open new facilities or otherwise contribute to the economy.”

Wow! A huge roundup of new APIs from ProgrammableWeb.

Congressional Facebook Hackathon: the report.

Archives.com has added a bunch of vital records.

News on Ireland’s national library going digital.

Check out Apple’s press release on its new offerings.

Who’s going to team up with National Geographic for a digital archive? Why, it’s Gale! Good morning, Internet…

Arizona State University announced last week the launch (no pun intended) of the new Project Gemini Online Digital Archive, an online archive of NASA’s Gemini spacecraft flights. (From the announcement: “Project Gemini (1964-1966) was the second United States human spaceflight program, after Project Mercury (1960-1963). The overarching goal was to test systems and operations critical to the Apollo program (1961-1975), conceived with the purpose of ‘landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth’.” The archive is available at http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/.

from the front page you’ll see that there’s already an archive for Project Mercury. The Gemini gallery is divided by each of the ten missions, from Gemini III to Gemini XII. I looked at the Gemini VII archive. The pictures here were presented in a slideshow, black and white pictures first. Most of the pictures were shots of Earth, some with captions (“India, Madras State, Ceylon, Adam’s Bridge, Palk Straits”) and some without. All of them had downloads available, from low resolution to the raw image (the one I downloaded was a 58MB .TIF)

If you look at the top nav bar for the image gallery, you’ll see a pulldown menu called Gemini. This menu will give you background on the missions, information about the images and how they were processed, and a short list of more resources about the Gemini missions. There’s also a link to a page of “movies” — highlights of the best pictures from each mission made into Quicktime movies. This is probably the best way to get all the image highlights.

Unless you know a lot more about astronomy than I do, start with the background and the movies before going in for an archive browse. A great collection but I needed more context to get started enjoying it.

Hat tip to The Spectator for the article about a digitized collection of exhibition catalogs from the Guggenheim Museum. The collection is available at http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/publications/from-the-archives.

There are over 60 catalogs here, and when you sort by date you’ll start with “Amazons of the Avant-Garde” (1999) and end up at “Art of Tomorrow: Fourty-One Reproductions from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for Non-Objective Painting” (1940). The listings contain a thumbnail of the catalogue cover, author, date of publication, and number of pages.

I clicked on the “More” listing for “Mastercraftsmen of Ancient Peru,” by Alan R. Sawyer (1968, 112 pages). I got a larger image of the cover and a brief excerpt of the book, with a “Read Catalogue Online” link. THAT took me to a Flash-based reading application. Navigation of the book at the bottom, double-click to zoom in (to read the text you will have to zoom in.) Double-click again to zoom out. When I was looking at it, it looked like the reader was on “auto-play” — so you’d be looking at some page and it would flip. You can turn that off by clicking the “pause” button on the nav bar. If you don’t want to bother with the nav bar you can also flip through the pages by clicking on page corners.

The bottom of the listing has books related to the catalogue you’re viewing as well as related essays. I’m not sure where “Aestheticism and Japan: The Cult of the Orient” intersects with ancient Peruvian crafts, but I can find out if I pay $1.99 for this 13-page ebook.

An absolute timesink. If you don’t want to do the reading on the Guggenheim site, you can download a large selection of texts — more, it seems to me, than there are at the Guggenheim site — at the Internet Archive. This includes downloading in Kindle, Daisy, and PDF format.

Hey! The Congressional Record is now an iPad app! (Free of course.)

The Connecticut Judicial Branch is now using Twitter. (PDF press release, sorry.)

Hmm. The AP has revised its Twitter guidelines. Again.

As you probably heard, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has resigned. (Yahoo press release.) Very sad day.

Lovely! Zsombor Jékely has an overview of recently-launched medieval art websites. Good stuff Zsombor!

The CDC has created a new web site with state-level disability data.

Oh, wow, hmm. I don’t think ResearchBuzz will be covering this search engine.

TechTarget has launched a new Web site — SearchSolidStateStorage.com. (Press release.)

By the way, it’s the day after the SOPA blackout protests. By all means, let’s continue to talk about SOPA. But let’s also talk about the really awful Research Works Act. Good morning, Internet…

There’s a new Q&A site to compete with Quora! Beepl is now out of private beta.

Temple University has a new archive chronicling the civil rights movement in Philadelphia.

Soon to be an online museum! “Darwin’s fossils rediscovered in cabinet”.

Stanford is going to digitize the Collier Collection. “The collection’s library owns 1 million items — rooms and rooms of archives. Those include every issue of some magazines, such as the hard-cover auto historian’s bible, Automotive Quarterly, and the first edition of the early British racing journal, Autocar.”

Google’s been busy mapping campuses! Yesterday I read announcements from SF State and the University of Delaware. (Nice pic, UD!)

Also speaking of Google: it’s teaming up with the World Bank.

Ever wanted to ask something of the US Department of State? Here’s your chance. Good morning, Internet…

The state of Maine has made publicly available a database of adult prisoners and probationers in the state. It is available here.

You can search for people in an incredible variety of ways, not just by name but also by eye or hair color, offense type, physical characteristic (scar, tattoo, etc.), height range, weight range, or type of offense.

I did a search and found that 38 adult prisoners and probationers in the state of Maine have, according to this database, blue hair. But I also found out that the data probably need to be checked. Most the records I looked at showed people who did not have blue hair. In many cases the eyes were listed as blue and the hair as blue also. Now some of people might have grown their hair out — but I very much doubt that the 50+ guy with the DUI, no tattoos or distinguishing markings, has or had blue hair. Just seems unusual. (Searches for pink and orange hair, a color which is generally not associated with eye color, found zero people. A search for purple hair found one person. Meanwhile a search for green hair found seven people. Go figure.)

Anyway, search results include a MDOC number, name, picture (most of the time, and even for people who are on probation), date of birth, race and gender, earliest date possible for release from supervision, and “Location,” which appears to be a metro area, not a specific address/city.

Individual profiles have a larger picture, physical description, convictions (not, the database notes, a complete criminal history), and whatever conditions necessary for their supervision (no alcohol, drug testing, etc.)

Longtime search engine wonks will remember Gigablast from back in the day as one of the lesser-known search engines with a huge, huge page index and a scrappy founder named Matt Wells. If you weren’t looking at search engines too often then, here’s some backstory.

Gigablast is still around, but Matt is focusing on a new project now with the recent launch of a site called FlurbiT, available at http://flurbit.com/. FlurbiT bills itself as “the largest event search engine in the U.S.”, which it probably is, considering that FlurbiT mines the open, unstructured Web for event information.

From the front page you can go and browse for available events, or you can do a search for specific types of events within a given radius of a place. I decided to look for daily events within 30 miles of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Once you run a search you like, you can save it as an RSS feed.

I did not get a result count, but the results were broken out by date. Because I searched for things that were happening on a daily basis, there were a lot of repeats. Samples of mined events included a day camp, several zoo presentations, and an exercise program.

Almost immediately the issue of the mined data became apparent. For example, a daily exercise event does occur — but is open only to members of Absentee Shawnee Tribe, tribal employees, and Native Americans in surrounding counties. A daily appearance by Ben “Cooter” Jones actually took place in 2007. It would be good if there was an easy way to report when events have expired, are restricted in certain ways, or are otherwise different from their single-line presentation.

I tried another search, this time for events occuring weekly within 30 miles of Decatur, Illinois. This group of results was much better with events including Toastmasters, Church events, 8-ball tournaments, and martial arts classes. There were still erroneous/odd listings, however.

Each listing has a page showing the relevant, mined data with a map, and a highlighted version of the original event page so you can easily see the context for the event.

Should you find a set of event search results you really like, you can get a widget to add them to your own Web site. And you don’t have to rely on FlurbiT’s mining to get your event right; you can submit an event instead.

Trying to datamine the unstructured Web is a difficult, thankless job, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that there are erroneous results on FlurbiT. Having a simple mechanism to report incorrect listings would help a lot, and remove the chaff from what is already a large, potentially useful database of events.

Last week a press release announced that JPMorgan Chase & Co., in partnership with AT&T Business Solutions, EMC, and The King Center, would release The King Center Imaging Project’s Web site on January 16 to note and celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It appears to be live now and is available at http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/. While I think this is a great project for an archive, I found it somewhat hard to use as it is initially presented.

When you first go to the archive, you’ll be presented with some pull-down menus and a tile display of historical documents. The tiles are slow to load, and more have to load as you scroll down the screen. If you hold your mouse over a particular tile (which may show an image or a snippet of a letter or something else) you’ll get some explanation, but often, the image or the snippet aren’t enough. (One image, for an issue of Current, is just a block of the cover with no image or lettering.)

Thankfully you can turn this off by going to the top nav and choosing the “List” display, which makes for much easier browsing. You can go through a huge list of documents on the front page, or use the nav to choose different themes of Dr. King’s life. Themes include Economics, Letters from Children, Nobel Peace Prize, and Telegrams. (Items archived range from pictures to articles to sermons to oral histories to poetry.) I looked at Telegrams, turned off the tile display in favor of the list display again, and reviewed several dozen telegrams both to and from Dr. King. The listings include a brief description and a thumbnail; date and place are also listed when available.

Clicking on an item takes you to the item page with it in full view along with tools to zoom in, print, and share. A left nav gives you additional information on the item, including a link to a transcript and tags in several different categories, making browsing very specific topics easy. Individual items are as simple as a picture or a single telegram, and as complex as an entire issue of Current magazine. The tools and information on the single-item pages are elegant and easy to use.

In addition to browsing categories, there’s also a general search engine. I did a search for birthday card (since browsing had pointed me to a couple) and found six results. If you want to run a more serious search, there’s an advanced search mechanism that allows you to narrow your results in a variety of ways, including by date span, person or organization (the search engine will give you suggestions), or type of content (sermons, telegrams, correspondence, etc.)

I found the initial tile display of the archived items to be very slow loading and lacking context. Once I switched to the list format, it was a lot easier to get into the archives’ extensive content. As today is Martin Luther King Jr. day I suspect the site will be a bit of a slow load for a while, but it’s very worth a visit.

Big archive coming for British Telecom. From the article: “The UK’s National Archive is to digitise 165 years worth of British Telecom’s and its predecessors’ historical documents.”

Wolfram|Alpha has added NFL stats and data.

Is Google going to get a FTC investigation over Search Plus Your World?

Is Vancouver going to get an online rental database?

Hey, I like the new feedback mechanism on Google News.

SPIN is spending 2012 doing album reviews via Twitter. It’s aiming for 1500 reviews. Yoiks.

Flickr is making some changes (no more Picnik?) Good morning, Internet…

Greetings! I don’t normally do weekend updates, so look for regular postings resuming tomorrow. And thanks for coming by!

Robert Hof: Did Google CEO Larry Page Just Make His First Big Mistake?. I’m not sure it was a mistake so much as a case of a very very very very huge company developing a tin ear. (In other words, symptomatic of a larger issue.)

Meanwhile Alexandra Petri merrily slags Google in her column. Amongst all the smart remarks and experiments to see how far you can stretch a metaphor until it snaps, however, is this chilly little ice cube of a paragraph: Ever since Google started to cultivate a robust lobbying presence, I worried. That’s generally a sign that innovation is on its way out and litigation is on its way in.

The state of Virginia has launched a new tool to help track car crashes.

Wow, scary. Interesting to see how this will develop: Google and Mocality.

The White House has announced a new Web site that aggregates information for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Keep an eye out for BusinessUSA.gov, launching in a few weeks.

Nice. “Library and Archives Canada is pleased to announce a major update to its online database ‘Upper Canada Land Petitions (1763–1865).’…Furthermore, Library and Archives Canada is pleased to announce the addition of the digitized images of the Upper Canada land petitions from 326 microfilm reels, representing 357,831 new images to its website.”

Have you read this article from ProPublica about the Research Works Act? I know I try to avoid political commentary in this blog but I would like to invite the Research Works Act to [REDACTED REDACTED]. Good afternoon, Internet…

Snow Folks!

The state of Nebraska has announced a new online filing system for corporations.

Google+ status updates are now showing up in organic Google search results. Unfortunately, even though I only use Facebook and Twitter I still have social network fatigue…

From TechCrunch: Learn a language while helping translate Web pages. Pretty brilliant!

The Roundabout Theatre Company has launched a digital archive.

From Lifehacker comes this cool story on essential car care via quick videos. Nice!

Oregon Trail, now on Android. Hee hee hee.. .

If you’re one of those folks who really likes “Best of” and “Worst of” the year list, then Fast Company’s got a mega-mashup list that you’ll really like. It’s at http://www.fastcompany.com/1801868/a-mega-meta-mash-up-of-the-best-and-worst-of-2011.

It’s raining here and we’re all dreaming of a damp Christmas. If you’re in the same situation, you’ll appreciate this seasonal YouTube feature: the ability to put little snowflakes in videos. So you can keep enjoying the cat hug video, only make it a little more seasonal. Good morning, Internet…

Yeah, like I need this considering the sweet potato pie consumption at my house. Anyway, the USDA announced yesterday the launch of SuperTracker, a site that provides nutritional information and lets you track your food intake as well as your activity. The site is available at https://www.choosemyplate.gov/SuperTracker/default.aspx.

There are some things you can do without registering, like check out the Food-A-Pedia, with information on 8000 foods and beverages. You can also review a “General Plan” if you don’t want to provide the site with any information. But if you want to get a customized plan you have to make a profile. You provide information about your height and weight, as well as your age and activity level. If you are overweight (or underweight I suppose), SuperTracker will ask you if you want to maintain your weight or move toward a healthier weight.

Once you’ve created your profile, SuperTracker will give you a nutritional plan, which looks pretty grain heavy. Also: one slice of bread is one serving, as is one pancake. But to be fair I guess we’re talking about calories here, and not nutrition. You can also enter in your activities — ooo! And SuperTracker has a place I can put in DDR! +1 point.

In addition to tracking what you’re doing you can also track goals, track your weight and get reports on your activity. You can also get e-mails from a “virtual coach” on the site or in your e-mail (hey, how about the option to get messages via SMS? It’s easy to mind your weight sitting in front of the computer — it’s when you’re at El Chompo and the fried ice cream is calling your name…)

I quite liked the design of the site, and the tools were well-explained and easy to use. But I was surprised there was no mention of apps or mobile tools. I would love to see this as an Android/iPhone app. Did I miss it?

Robert Jones-Morris

This one has been sitting in the queue for a while (I have continued checking my information traps even when I haven’t had time to write about anything) and it’s gorgeous! A story in WalesOnline alerted me about a resource cataloging stained glass windows in Wales … over 5000 photographs of about 1800 windows from 350 locations across the country.

The archive is available at http://stainedglass.llgc.org.uk/. You can browse by artist or location, or search by keyword. Being stained glass windows, the archive is pretty much all religous-themed; a search for angel finds 823 results. A search for grail, however, finds four. An advanced search lets you find windows by the date they were created. I found some windows going back to the 15th century.

Individual entries vary a lot. Usually there’s a picture, a link to see a larger version, and a brief history of the window and its location. On the other hand, the entry for “Christ in Majesty with St Michael and Angels” had several details about its history as well as many, many detail photographs including a detail of Robert Jones-Morris, who makes an appearance at the bottom of the window, playing the organ.

A beautiful collection of art. If you like what’s here, check out the Harry Ransom collection of medieval and early modern manuscripts, which have amazing illustrations.

Google Caption Challenge

In an effort to make sure you don’t burn up all your creativity on Star Wars snowflakes or Star Trek light display, Google has announced a search captioning challenge.

You can join the fun at http://www.googleinsidesearch.com/captions.html. Google will show you a series of cartoons depicting people and animals doing Google searches. Your job is to guess the search they’re doing and caption the cartoon.

There are already several captions here; you can scroll through the many cartoons and vote on captions already left. If you want to leave your own caption, you’ll need to log into a Google account and give Google Moderator permission to manage your submission.

I’m apparently not good at this game; I could think of smart remarks but nothing that translated well as a search. Finally I found a cartoon I could caption. A baseball umpire was searching Google while behind a plate. I tried to submit the caption “Lenscrafters coupon” (because he’s a ref and he can’t see, get it?! … I didn’t say it was a GOOD caption.) Google rejected it! I figured it might be because I used a brand name, and tried captions like “Eyeglasses,” “optometrist coupon,” etc. Google rejected them all with a warning box about appropriate content. Mmkay.

The cartoons were in a variety of styles and were on the whole pretty cute. I like the one that appears to be a pear that broke a chair. A little fun to get you into the holidays.

Special Delivery

The VA has announced that all of its medical centers — all 152 of ‘em — are now on Facebook. You can get the full page list at http://www.facebook.com/VeteransAffairs?sk=app_7146470109.

Ancestry.com has released an Android app.

Did you know there’s a database of infants who were born weighing less than 14.1 ounces? I didn’t either. The site has followup information; it’s inspiring to read how many of these children are doing well in their lives.

If you’re using Chrome, you can now read Google eBooks offline.

The California State Genealogical Alliance has announced a couple of new blogs.

A freely-available digital magazine archive: Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. 70 years’ worth in a searchable archive, individual articles or entire issues are available as PDF downloads. Good morning, Internet…

New Boards feature on Quora

This is great timing because I got my Pinterest invitation just yesterday. Cheers to TechCrunch for the story about Quoras new launch of Boards.

Pinterest, if you haven’t heard about it, is a way to collect visual items into one place (and I love the “Prints & Posters” pins.) Quora’s Boards are a way to collect text information, which I think I will find more immediately useful, even if it doesn’t have the ooo-ah factor.

To make a board just log in to your Quora account and you’ll see a link on the right to make a board. You’ll be asked to choose a name for your board. Then you’ll be taken to an interface where you can drop in links and text (and pictures.) The links work like Facebook… put in the link and the Board automatically generates a thumbnail image if available and some context. With settings, you can change the name of your Board, how visible it is, give it topics, etc. (I couldn’t figure out how to move panels around, though, in case I wanted to “pin” some particularly good item up at the top of the page.)

I made a board for Christmas Puns, since I’m seeing “The Wreath of Khan” everywhere I look. Quora makes sure the Board links are near at hand whenever you want to update them, and there are a few mechanisms to share the Boards (though when I tried to post mine to Facebook, it failed twice. Nobody likes a pun; at least, nobody will admit to it.)

It would be good to have a few more ways to embed the board somewhere outside of Quora, and I’d really like to be able to move panels around, but this is a fast and easy information aggregator. Worth a look.

After the Jon Bon Jovi Twitter hoax of yesterday (he’s alive, though no word if his living is still on a prayer) I thought you might find this site useful: “Who’s Alive and Who’s Dead,” an index of famous people and whether they’re alive or dead. It’s accessible at http://www.whosaliveandwhosdead.com or http://www.wa-wd.com if you need a mobile-friendly URL.

Obviously this site can’t index everybody ever. It’s got about 3,000 people in it, including actors, musicians, athletes, etc. You can search by name, browse by last name or by category, or look at the recently-updated or special features. (Bon Jovi is here.) The index pages include the name of the person, birth date, death date (if applicable) and either their current age or the age they were when they died. Each person has their own page that gives this information and a little extra data about what they’re famous for if you’re wondering.

The site had everybody I could think of when I checked it (with one exception, more about that in a minute) though about 3,000 people doesn’t seem like a lot. I was surprised to see some of the people listed here. Are people really wondering whether Jimmy Fallon is alive or not? Kirk Cameron?

If I was going to check on one person I’d probably go to Wikipedia first. But if I were on a mobile phone (this site is very fast loading) or I needed a quick reference site (complete with an RSS feed about recent changes in status) I’d bookmark this one.

And the missing name? Elvis Presley (though I did see Priscilla Presley.) Sorry folks, you’ll have to keep wondering…

A database of public and private gardens around the world: http://gardengatewaysphototours.com/. Over 1800 listed. There’s a database of plant origins as well.

Google has added to its personalized phone call from Santa, the ability to send a personalized video. It’s a lot more personalized than I expected. Sadly, not even Santa can pronounce my name correctly but I fell out when he said “Schmoopie”.

Dogpile.com put out a press release about its top searches for 2011. (Minecraft beat by Webkinz? Really?)

Yahoo gets more integrated with Facebook. (Press release.) Hmm. Y’know, if Facebook bought Yahoo….

Speaking of Facebook, it’s going to put “Sponsored Stories” in its news feed starting next year. Ewww…

Silly: Google won’t give you walking directions to Mordor.

Wow, I love the idea of the Type Heritage Project. “The Type Heritage Project [THP] discovers and documents the histories of digital display fonts originally designed between c1800 and World War I…” Not much going on yet, though. Good morning, Internet…