nichole's auxiliary storage

Jessamyn and a monkey

In Milwaukee, no less!

SAD, CLAD and glad.

OK, so it really is a slow day at the reference desk. This just in from Australia, where it is, after all, winter...

P2P: the new info war? Part 3.

I checked back on opendemocracy.net and saw that part 3 of Siva's series is posted. More serious food for thought.

July the last

• Tart cherries
• Sweet corn
• Leeks for soup
• Onions

Ugh, still eating cucumbers every day. Can't you make beauty aids with them? I should look into it.

Manifesto

When I finally write it, mine will be called "The pathology of least resistance." You read it here first.

But of course, this is under creative commons license, so go ahead and write it but it better be good. And you better send me an illuminated copy.

Get gas at Taco Bell

New contest: buy a larger drink, and enter a drawing for a free year of petrol. Not quite as much fun as the "volcano burrito."

Maxwell Street Days

Mom came up to visit, and we got to do a survey on the market. Hugely crowded for the sidewalk sales. Bucket (!) of cukes for $3 Zinnias -- couldn't resist. Sweet cherries Stella's hot spicy cheese bread Not as much variety this week. I sadly had to throw out the tail end of my chard last week since I went so overboard. This time I'm gonna make cucumber freezer relish and a double batch of cucumber salad, and after that I just don't know. Maybe more tomato-feta salad. I don't have the capacity for pickles, the obvious choice...

Beanie babies

I picked (and ate) the first string beans right off my plants today. Here's hoping Ms. Betty Schanaman had lead- and PCB-free soil in them thar pots I used unquestioningly to plant my first beans since fifth grade in. The fifth-grade plants were a grand experiment, triumphing over the hard-packed alkali of our yard behind the playhouse in El Paso (home of the Sapphire Club, top-secret enclave of my friend and I, both born in September) until we moved away and the next Army brat stomped them into the dust. Ah, the nomadic life.

It's in my other suit

I have a "spare moment at the reference desk:" Auxiliary brains in the form of IT and all this content management stuff are great, don't get me wrong. But in the course of my daily activity I've always got this unsettling feeling, which I finally fingered today. The feeling is like realizing you've left your bag/notes/planner at home, and you can't be fully at a meeting or even in a serious conversation without mentally reaching for files that aren't stored in the wetware. At least until you get completely woven into the grid.

file under self-indulgent

I've wanted to use a blog like a food journal for awhile -- not the calorie and carb counting kind, but the Ed Cortez kind, to keep track of what I buy at DCFM and what I cook with it. Frivolous, yes... Bought this week: beets, dill, cukes (yum, no food-grade wax on these), huge bag o' lettuce Bleu Mont: farmer & 5-yr cheddar Goat feta rainbow chard Pecatonica: brats & eggs Tip Top Tom guy: 3 for $2 strawberries (yuck, several were smushed. Don't buy from one-week white folks again.) Notes: Art Fair on the Square. Crazy zoo. Northwood Farms wasn't there so I couldn't the beef I wanted to have on hand for the Folks (on the Atkins maintenance diet). Got pork brats instead and ground turkey at the co-op. ($39 for one bag of groceries again, and I feebly try to justify it by citing the $12 for toothpaste and vitamins, and $8 of deli potato salad for the Folks, who then brought their own.) Sunday afternoon + 2 beers = cooking. Beets=beet risotto from Star Liquor recipes in Reader. Haven't tried it yet. The grill is great for roasting them. Chard=steamed with beet greens and wild rice. Oops, just remembered forgot the vinegar dressing, guess I was drunk. Toms, cukes, dill+lemon, olive oil, rice vinegar, S&P=the usual. Brats & lettuce for Sunday dinner w/Folks. They brought Norske Nook blueberry pie -- ohhh yeah. Eggs to be transformed into husband-dubbed "Mighty Taco Scramble," from a cryptic crossword clue: Batman digs mighty taco scrambles (6, 4) = Gotham City. Thinking ground turkey+chili powder etc., eggs, cheese, tomatoes, top with salsa. Straight out of Taste of Home.

July 10: Smart Mobs (that's us)

Free-form finale The future of the 875 blogs Keep 'em if you like. Movable Type manual can help if you want to import/export your entries to/from another blog. Blogs judged an unvarnished success in expanding the class discussion and increasing understanding of the material. Toby: "Like WebCT that really works." The story of IT: about half of all products fail, and don't do any users any good. Information anarchy Siva: Is it really information anarchy? Code does not allow for compromise, so at some point you have to choose whether to clamp down control or give it up utterly. Lessig et al. point out that the attention in this debate is focused on the network. S: Is there hope: there could be internet 2.0 and internet 3.0? JB: Internet 3.0 might take most of the internet with it. If there were proprietary protocols, control would follow. Example: SMB was reverse-engineered to samba, a protocol for sharing drives. Problem: with every new version, the reverse-engineers have to scramble to adjust. Parallel situation with filtering software and voting machines. There are degrees of openness: there's "open" (adobe pdf) and "private" (most microsoft stuff). The controversy of RSS is, at root, an argument over open and closed specification. Collaboration between librarians and IT folk Belew is one of the best at acknowledging the commonality, and the history of computers. This course hoped to help bring some of the IT stuff to our attention. Library school offerings tend to lean towards reference (how to find/evaluate websites). Computer science, meanwhile, is working on neater p2p networks and automatic indexers and text extractors. Librarianship is rather conservative...holds on to the old ways of doin' stuff... J: Desk Set: we can keep our jobs if we know how to work the technology and our patrons don't. Why automation? Why not? Libraries cultivate community, so technology that eliminates that is less good. but, if automation replaces busywork, all workers don't necessarily get bumped up into realms of intellectual fulfillment. Shift in outreach? If you're not busy with your old job, you can teach tech skills to your patrons. Digitizing ... Dots Per Inch is the hurdle ... Copyright ... music industry ... teelcommunications conglomerations ... digital dark age (loss of content because of obsolescence) ... LOCKSS lots of copies keeps the stuff safe, a p2p model ... virtual worlds and their benefits and pitfalls ... people molding technology as they use it ... cyborgs ... ubiquitous computing ... it's not the technology that does the creeping, it's the people ... consumption of a frosty beverage.

Updated keywords for n's blog

The extended entry is a list of my keywords. Some "known problems," as LC would put it, are below. Most are controlled vocab issues, the rest are bold. ACTORS person: plural monkey(s)? middle initials: period or no period? organization: my use of acronyms is inconsistent. I used 875 instead of 875 itself (like Steve and Sarah) CONCEPTS technological: the plural problem again. And I'm not sure I chose them correctly in all cases (permalinks?) TECHNOLOGY is a wireless network really hardware? is rdf a protocol, or a concept technological? PLACES they're as granular as I got in my post. ACTIVITIES I didn't use a hyphen in googlewhacking, but Sarah did. I used classifying for all posts related to our 875 discussion of indexing our blogs. Perhaps indexng would be a better choice? And, in general, I need to cite the websites we talked about better. ACTORS "person:greg downey" "person:rebecca blood" "person:hakon lie" "person:stuart davis" "person:nichole's mom" "person:bob edwards" "person:john morse" "person:richard d hendricks" "person:anna lewis" "person:michelle laycock" "person:monkeys" "person:sean weitner" "person:jakob nielsen" "person:edward castronova" "person:sam ruby" "person:dave winer" "person:lars marius garshol" "person:john searle" "person:amy j warner" "organization:875" "organization:they might be giants" "organization:riaa" "organization:library of congress" "organization:wisconsin library association" "organization:education librarian" "organization:cimc" "organization:internet scout project" "organization:mrso" "organization:library and information technology association" "organization:ebay" "organization:w3c" "organiztaion:google" CONCEPTS "technological:information ecology" "technological:dynamic templating" "technological:metadata" "technological:blogs" "technological:tags" "technological:code" "technological:protocols" "technological:osi model" "technological:markup languages" "technological:permalinks" "technological:rdf" "technological:xml" "technological:content management" "technological:semantic web" "technological:trackback" "technological:zipf's law" "technological:artificial intelligence" "technological:pagerank" "technological:p2p" "techological:search engine optimization" "social:digital divide" "social:technology adoption" “social:information foraging” "social:sex differences" "social:anonymity" "political:copyright" "political:copyleft" "scientific:genetics" "scientific:rh factor" TECHNOLOGY "hardware:servers" "hardware:wireless networks" "software:blogging" "software:movable type" "software:search engines" (plural?) "software:p2p" "protocol:php" "protocol:html" "protocol:cgi" "protocol:rss" "protocol:xml" "protocol:public key encryption" PLACES "place:chicago" "place:wisconsin" "place:germany" ACTIVITIES "activity:blogging" "activity:classifying" "activity:composting" "activity:notetaking" "activity:file sharing" "activity:googlewhacking" "activity:gaming" "activity:card sorting"

Hey, Jonathan?

Sorry for the broadcast message...but I wanted to ask you if you could please add your powerpoint slides from week 2-4 lectures to the outline/topic page. And before we're dismissed, could you talk to the class about how to continue blogging, perhaps how to set up our own MT blogs and import these 875 entries, so you can free up your server someday? Thanks!

July 9: Peer-to-peer networks

*Pre-class blogtalk/exploration* Tweaking the schema for our metadata. *Lecture* Virtual worlds; Peer-to-peer networks *Pre-class blogtalk* Difficulties applying the schema to our blog content are partly a result of the nature of social software and taxonomies: they are shared systems, with user-centered design. "ask the users at every opportunity during the design process". Humans are the "compilers" of this kind of program. So, let's clear up some grey areas. Is a web site a place or an organization? The answer? It depends. "The Web" is an ideal. If we choose to make it a place, perhaps we should subdivide "place" into virtual and real. Individual's web sites: are they organizations or people? Most of the ones we're talking about are individuals. We "go" to web sites. Some sites have one person, many people, or no identifiable people; are they an organization? Recreational reading suggestion from JB: George Lakoff. Women, fire and other dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. How metaphors affect our thoughts. Place vs organization How do they bear content? Taxonomies only go so far. Topic maps can handle some of these problems: virtual places would be labeled, and can be looked at from many angles. S: If we call Lessig's web site a place, we lose content about the rest of his life. JB: but his site is separate from him. Our scheme is also missing the idea of "object" "Concept" is too broad, perhaps -- right now it encompasses all human thought (pretty much) P: Add another level: "resources" to deal with the "object" problem? books, web sites, other information carriers How to handle an article on a web site? Make sure you're really assigning the keyword that desribes what your entry is about; and then it becomes easier to choose. Should we take "resources" down a level? Divide into physical manifestations and online? Let's add the facet: "thing" to stand for objects in the physical world Here's the choice with "concept:" No children As is, with some children With a long list of children Keep some children. Fix the list: political social economic technological: includes the organization of information scientific cultural: replace with artistic? No, we came back and decided to leave it in. Sticky wickets: grammar, syntax, philosophy, religion. They all go with "cultural" So much of classification and listmaking has to do with our social constructs...and no system can endure. What about the seven liberal arts, or the structure of academia? Reclarification of Resource: It would be nice to be able to pull up a list of all web sites we discuss in our entries. How do we do this? Web site as a specific instance of a resource? Convention of indexing: list subtypes in the singular. "resource:website", not "resource:websites" Well, we're not in our happy place quite here, but we'll have to live with it. Housekeeping: Post a list of the keywords you use Use the terms "sharing," "seeking", and "commenting" for the categories we marked with punctuation. *Lecture* But first: Why get involved in the virtual world? See Cris' post; the draw of vr's is related to the social interaction and influence over the virtual environment that they provide. VR are not so far removed from reality any more. And now... _Peer2Peer_ Puts you and your computer into contact with so many others... Very radical, decentralized way of being on the web. _A network of edges_ p2p makes up a huge percentage of internet traffic recent study from Cornell showed that 60% of their traffic was p2p activity the commons grew exponentially because it costs no more to share files than not to share the business model bottom line: it costs almost nothing to distribute information _The Master-Slave Dialectic_ What are we contrasting p2p with? The client-server model. The servers have all the resources, and the clients ask for little pieces of the action. The communication is not symmetrical: the server talks to all the clients, and the clients just talk to the server. Servers don't necessarily need huge MHz for processing speed. But computer resources are so abundant that the old client-server model is becoming eclipsed. Clients don't keep materials. All network resources are centrally located. This is the model that still runs the web, to a large extent. In the mainframe days, the terminals (clients) didn't even have memory or processors. _Client-server illustrated_ imagine a diagram of a cluster of grapes: the clients are graps hanging off the server vine _Beyond master and slave_ Many kinds of software borrow from both: decentralization (networks): symmetrical, ad-hoc communication networks. Server is entrirely removed and each client does some of the work. Clients become "neighbors": the scope is narrow, but everything is within a few degrees of separation distribution (resources): also called parallel processing or grid computing, but not true p2p. _Peers of the realm_ "peer" is master and slave, plays both roles from time to time peers don't need to know everyone (degrees of separation again) no peer has the central role (in implemented networks like gnutella, this isn't necessarily so) _p2p network topology_ imagine a diagram with four nodes. All four interact with each other: A asks for a file from everyone it knows, B included; B asks all its friends, C included; C has it, and can get the file to A in a variety of different ways, usually by telling B its address, who tells A, who then asks C for the file directly. Some systems: each peer keeps a copy of the files that are shared as the files move along. The path becomes shorter as the file becomes more widely distributed. Does this fill up the peers? Depends on the configuration, but not usually a problem. _Many hands make light work_ Taps into idle computing resources by turning the client-server arrangement upside-down Great for huge parallel problems (Grub, Google, SETI at home) Threads: thousands of times per second, your computer is processing threads (chunks) of data, in each process and program running. Lots going on at once. _SETI@home_ Imagine a diagram of a "queen bee" with peers hanging off. Each client requests a packet of data to process, and when it's done, it sends the results back to the queen. _Napster_ imagine a diagram with a central index that keeps track of which peers have which, and tells peers that request files where to find them. Then peers make direct connections to share files. Kazaa has no index. Freenet: peers don't even know what they have on them. Napster was shut down when the index was closed. Bootstrapping protocol: how the p2p services introduced peers to one another and got new nodes hooked up with the network. _Applications of p2p_ killer app=file sharing but also: data processing, content distribution (streaming is really hard with the traditional server-client model), spam filtering, instant messaging, storage, collaboration, hard-coded free speech The p2p setup protects the participants by making sure the traffic is distributed, and no one peer knows more than a couple other peers. Especially safe if transactions are encrypted. Plausible deniability. (this makes nichole think of kudzu, crabgrass and creepin' charlie) _Freenet_ How it works: a pure p2p network. No supernode, no centralization of any kind. Content is inserted into the network and encrypted (this can lead to problems storing and retrieving files) and stored on your computer, in memory you allot to it. All content is inaccessible without a key, and with a key you don't know where the content came from. Is it redundant? JB: Yes, many copies of content exist. Siva article explores information anarchy; read it. Isn't the cost of monitoring traffic prohibitive? Carnivore. But gathering and indexing data is one thing, but finding relevant information is not as easy. What do you think about Freenet? --It's an ideal; free speech would be a reality, but there would be objections. Freenet wants to take it out of political hands altogether. Menezes: "Time is past for protecting ourselves with laws. The time has come to protect ourselves with mathematics." --but China, for example, is an anomaly, b/c there are so many people. Freedom in numbers. --or is it a lot of fear?

Keywords thus far.

This is what I used going through my "personal" entries. I'll do the class notes next -- those will be whopping big. And I'll have to pay more attention the authority control issue... ACTORS "person:greg downey","person:rebecca blood","person:hakon lie","person:stuart davis","person:nichole's mom","person:bob edwards","person:john morse","person:richard d hendricks","person:anna lewis","person:michelle laycock","person:monkeys","person:sean weitner","person:jakob nielsen","person:edward castronova" "organization:875","organization:they might be giants","organization:riaa", "organization:library of congress","organization:wisconsin library association","organization:education librarian","organization:cimc", "organization:internet scout project","organization:mrso", "organization:library and information technology association","organization:ebay" CONCEPTS "technological:dynamic templating", "technological:metadata","technological:blogs" "social:digital divide","social:technology adoption",“social:information foraging”,"social:sex differences" "political:copyright" "scientific:genetics","scientific:rh factor" TECHNOLOGY "protocol:PHP" PLACES "place:chicago","place:wisconsin","place:germany" ACTIVITIES "activity:blogging","activity:classifying","activity:composting","activity:notetaking","activity:file sharing","activity:googlewhacking","activity:gaming"

Ouch it hurts!

Here are some more concept "orphans" I can't find homes for. Now, at the heart of my difficulty is that everything that is a concept has to fit into the *children* of "concept," yes? So maybe "concept" has to get busy and lay some more eggs. From the WLA entry, and its friend about the word blogging, LCSH comes up. It's a product of an organization, but is it a technology? It's a *work*. Where do they go? What did we decide about blogs, blogging, and bloggers? Hm. I feel odd to be doing this so publicly. Like I should know what I'm doing or something. And the temptation to run home crying to LCSH and DDC to borrow from their trees is very great, though whether it would be appropriate is questionable.

I need help...

Some roadblocks on my way to metadata. If you all have any insights, chime in... Monkey news entry. It's "about" monkeys, genetics, and sex differences. I already chose "social:sex differences", but am stuck on monkeys. If they are a concept, to which lower-level category do they belong? Ditto genetics. Is that a technological concept? What am I missing? I definitely want to bring out the monkey aspect....

July 8: Blogs and the Information Ecology

*Pre-lecture blogtalk* Cruising thru recent posts *Exploration* Metadata for our blogs. Disambiguating the idea of "Concept." Directions for adding metadata to the blogs. Here's our topic list in brief: actor --person --organization concept --technological --political --economic --cultural --social technology --models & concepts --standards and protocols --software place activity *Lecture* Social Software *Pre-lecture blogtalk* Howard Rheingold is definitely a hippie. Ad-hocracies Cell phones can be used to orchestrate criminal groups, like pickpockets in Brazil. _Wireless networks_ Technology can leapfrog: developments spring from milieu to milieu. The US has an excellent wired infrastructure, but the "last mile" problem prevents broadband from taking off. (The last mile=getting the wires from the "feed" to the consumer's door.) This is where wireless helps. But wireless is harder to manage. Freenets are springing up all over: people with broadband put an antenna up and share their broadband connection with whoever's around. Telecommunications companies do not like the implications for their market share. K: But wireless "leaks," how can BigCo. enforce this? JB: Telecom might enforce that broadband customers practice "due diligence." Wardriving=trolling for loose wireless access. The struggle becomes: who will control this kind of network? Companies (middlemen) come up with all kinds of ways to make applications more baroque, hence harder to get around. Citation web Compare blogs to other kinds of citations. Blogs work something like The Academy: reputation and citations matter. The quality of the discussion can be maintained even while many participate. Advantages of the blog: you can avoid the filler. S: In the blogosphere, you have no idea of scale. "Am i agreeing with 18 people, or 18,000?" JB: there's no one single "horizon," blogospheres overlap but do not all connect. S: Ah, but if I agree with something I've read, I might not post an entry that repeats it. JB: Vote posts and consensus come into play here. Matrix reloaded endless comments are an odd phenomenon. The blogosphere is so cliquish, and so social, but hard to measure. Identity and group formation can be observed. People develop groupthink and get entrenched opinions (just like in academia) *Exploration* Where we left the topics: event, actor, technology Where we pick up topics today: event actor concept technology place Categories: question (?) sharing/suggestion (!) comment (…) P: What about pointing? This is a subset of (!) Testing the new topics by fitting the cardmobile concepts (lower-level, from cards) into them. The tricky ones are listed below with commentary. event (use activity instead?) actor: person people actor: organization SLIS 875 concept _think platonic_ digital divide business privacy semantic web technology _(to be broken into three or more subsets: models and concepts; standards and protocols; software) search engine p2p protocol topic maps web publishing software place activity facet analysis blogging web publishing The difference between topic maps and semantic web: the SW is the idea driving the implementation of TM. Blogging: in both technology and concept? Is a blog a place or an organization? Names don't denote the same idea every time. "Blogging" can be a concept, but aslo a social construct, an activity, etc. _Disambiguating the idea of "Concept"_ Talking about "stuff in general" (e.g., search engines) is talking about a concept. Talking about a specific instance of stuff (e.g., PageRank) is talking about a technology. Everyting that isn't the "real technology," the "implementation of the technology," not directly related to a specific instance, is a concept. Think of technology as nuts and bolts. If it doesn't exist in the real world, it's a concept. Remember the platonic ideal. Back to technology: break it into another level. Standards and Protocols Models and Concepts Software One of the perks of being an electronic librarian/systems librarian/information architect is that you can play every day with things other librarians never get to do because they're dealing with other people's controlled vocabularies. _So how will it work?_ Jonathan will adjust the XFML template. Then we will all add to our entries the keywords that belong with the entry. It will function just like a back-of-the-book index: searches will point to pages featuring the search term. The occurence of each keyword will be associated with a topic. _Summary_ We will apply two types of metadata to our blogs: keyword field categories _Categories_ <...> Describes the type of post. You may keep your own categories, but you will add exactly one category specification to each entry. (use the "add multiple categories" feature in MT) _Keyword field_ All this facet work will be used to classify the keywords we choose for each entry. We're less interested in the structure than indexing the post and making note of every keyword used. _The heart of it all_ facets keywords --will appear in one or more pages (of multiple blogs, even) pages This is the convention to use: parent:topic use the lowest level parent that's relevant. there is no limit to the number of keywords, but 2-5 is optimal use all lower case web sites cited will generally be organizations (NYT, for example) keywords will probably show up An example of how to do an entry from Cris' blog From Edit this entry, click Customize the display of this page; choose "keywords" from custom display; add keywords as below. "place:Africa", "social:digital divide", "hardware:cell phones" actor --person --organization concept --technological --political --economic --cultural --social technology --models & concepts --standards and protocols --software place activity *Lecture* see also ppt slides _From information to communication_ _Communication and behavior_ media: that which lays between. The things that different media can inspire us to do are different for each kind of media. Examples: radio in the rise of Nazi Germany; television in the role of withdrawing from Vietnam War. _Historical media_ whispering remains one of the most secure forms of communication, especially if you have a white noise generator. This list elaborates how we build on the experiences of our forebears. The graph of innovation would reveal an exponential increase. Emerging technologies drew sound and light right into the transmission. Internet is media: but if you think about it a certain way, it is completely made up of TCP/IP packets. This is one difference between digital and analog media. _Virtual media_ _Virtual places_ Media and place intertwine. Place is necessary for identity to form and reputation systems to persist. BBSes - mid-80s MUDs and MOOs -- text-based adventures, may be easy to dismiss, but became quite sophisticated. MOOs allowed people to collaborate in the construction of objects and spaces. See law in virtual worlds article. Sort of like "choose your own adventure," but more flexible. MMOGs (Massively multiuser online games) like Elfquest, in contrast, are graphical, and commercial. Chat -- IRC=internet relay chat. Different from IM because it's a channel, a virtual room, with a group of other likeminded chatters web sites -- can be thought of as both a virtual media and a virtual place. _The media is messages_ email -- the most important thing that happened to the internet. It changed communication and collaboration. Newsgroups -- similar to p2p networks, where servers synced up and kept track of postings. Newbies overloaded the system and it disintegrated. IM (Instant Messaging) -- popular and flexible. The next killer app? _There's no where there_ Chat: the many to many nature makes it a place, where the one-to-one nature of IM isn't Try Friendster.com for kicks _The Web_ killer app #2 to be continued...

Castronova: the gender of avatars

Can someone explain the author's use of the word "hedonic" in the title? It seems to mean more than pure epicurean delight. Ah sweet insight, from the horse's mouth! Castronova justifies his use of ebay observations by citing other sources that establish that "online auction data capture the price of goods in an economically meaningful way" (p. 19). If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me. I note that folks are selling Simoleans (Sims' money) on ebay for real money as well. The exchange rate is about $1 per 20,000 Simoleans. (For a quick discount, search for "simoleons." You can sometimes get a good deal on 'plam' pilots on ebay as well...) Castronovo found that the best indicator of avatar value was the "level" it had achieved, which represents the time its creator had invested in developing skills in the game. He then concludes that "all else being held equal," bids were higher on male avatars than female avatars (p. 37). However, I can't see that he actually holds the level of the avatar equal while examining prices based on gender. This brings the question, Are female avatars cheaper because their creators spend less time developing them? Is there less demand for developed female characters because there are fewer female players, the average player being your single, white, twentysomething guy? And do said guys just prefer to continue to be guys in EverQuest, yet satisfy the occasional impulse to play a female by using a roughly sketched character of their own design?

July 7: somewhat departed from its title

*Pre-lecture Blogtalk/Lecture 2-4-1 special* New googlewhack feature in The Blog; a tour of the weekend's posts *Exploration* Tweaking the facets *Pre-lecture Blogtalk* _Googlewhacks_ There is a new box for Googlewhacks on Jonathan's blog. Add our "successful" whacks to the list here. What it does: Enter your terms. The search is sent to google, and uses a php library module to ask how many hits each term and the pair have, and submits successful whacks to a google-free area of the blog. (Did I get that right?) We only get 333 of these a day, so use sparingly! A peek at the code that keeps our Googlewhacks unique: Part of the http header announces/identifies itself as it scopes out a web site. Hence, we can ID the googlebot before it indexes the site, and ask it to stay out. Essentially, if the googlebot appears, the program will keep it from seeing the "googlebox" (for whacks). Also, you could have hidden the page behind a Javascript button since the googlebot will not get around the button. The syllabus is a little derailed! We've covered many of the topics originally set for this week, so we'll start with social software and talking about communication (rather than just information). _A tour thru recent entries_ Information foraging Models info-seeking behavior in almost exactly the same way as zoologists study the way animals eat. People follow the "scent" (a cluster of symbols that matches what they expect to find) until they find what they want, and then move on when the balances tip to finding better sustenance elsewhere. The availability of resources has everything to do with how people look for them. Organizing Asking, "Who is the user of our metadata for this cluster of blogs?" If we keep the audience small (us), the task becomes easier. Blogs at work Advantages:

cuts down on email--also a good substitute for listserves could be great for project management produces a paper trail (archive) of electronic communication

Possble disadvantages:

adoption depends on the culture of the workplace need to be searchable: full-text extraction indexing will not cut it in a long-lived blog with hundreds of pertinent entries creepy to take notes on people during interviews

Google for the governement MIT developed a searchable database of spooks and other gov't types that parallels the "TIA" Is data addictive? Can we get more done by multitasking? Do we even absorb all the data that washes over us as we surf? There is a transaction cost -- a drag factor -- that perents us from really learning what we read. Creative Commons license working Can this be true? Is CC working, to pry us loose from the private ownership of information? Power of anonymity Vandal mentality that causes some people to use anonymity in hurtful ways On the Web it's easy to superficially hide your tracks, but it's also hard to hide for good. RIAA sued Verizon to get 4 file-sharers; Verizon lost, tho it argued that it just provided the service, and was not an accessory to a theft. Verizon is suing spammers using their networks; MAPS is a spam-fighting service, but it's losing. Larry Lessig has staked his career on fighting spam. Dave Winer sets his sites on New Hampshire Courtesy of Nexcerpt news-clipping feed -- do give aggregators another try. They help you manage your info processing. Dean is raising lots of funds, possibly by blogging. Can internet presence work better than TV? Are blogs scalable? They have buzz, but can more than a couple thousand readers be supported? Dean also uses meetup to help organize his suporters. Flash mobs Political implications of smart mobs: harder to respond to and contain civil protests when the protesters are using mobile technologies. Currency, rather than encryption, is the more important element of this info. Enforcers (police) need to have current and accurate intelligence, otherwise they can't enforce... Google as information source Brin and Page want to improve Google. Are they shooting for the semantic web, or what Ask Jeeves was trying to do (convert natural language into search syntax)? Google hasn't really changed in years -- so a new incarnation must be forthcoming. Smart query comprehension? Annotating the index? Refining the algorithm? Librarians might ask, Who are the users Google's trying to serve? Google has the benefit of huge numbers and processing power. Can they get over the "investment hump" and reap the benefits of their research? C: The semantic web might also make it harder to come across information serendipitously. JB: The lack of organization can dampen serendipity because the information can seem not worh searching. If metadata doesn't enable more productive use of information, metadata's not useful. On the other hand, metadata can increase serendipity. Amazon a good example of using metadata to increase connections. Faceting especially brings out all the aspects of information. *Exploration* Revisiting facet mobiles Reflections: are our facets too granular? Better facets?

person organization protocol (agreed-upon procedure) software event

T: Could we combine person and organization into actor? As in, actor, action, result? Adopts more from grammar and parts of speech. But not low-level enough for us to use in our index. JB: Let's adopt a user-centered approach, and think about what searchers would want in an interface. At every level of the taxonomy, you should know where you are. Especially important for browsers (i.e., people who browse) to be able to know where they are. Steve Krug: Don't make me think. Recommended reading for user interfaces. P: The facets (above) aren't intuitive, they don't describe or categorize the info we're dealing with. The eleven ideas on the blackboard were more helpful. JB: The mutually exclusive nature makes searching and constructing this index easier. Also, we can hang other relationships off of each item in a facet. There is a different set of relationships for each facet. Testing: try putting the items from our mobiles into these facets. T: how about:

event actor technology

I ask (for next time) can we add Place?

Google and Info Foraging

Via the LITA-L listserv, I just read this short article about the idea of "information foraging" that tweaked my interest. Check out the rest of Jakob Nielsen's site while you're there.

"Du, Affe, magst du nicht ein Semmel?"

Via Flakmag, more monkey news, this time from Germany. Flakmag and Rhesus monkeys have intersected once before, when Flak editor Sean helped me explain the Rh factor to someone. Me:"If the mother's Rh positive and the father's negative, if it's a second pregnancy..." Sean: "She gives birth to a Rhesus monkey!" Klar, das ist nicht so lustig. Das ist lustig.

I pretend ye care...

I'm heading to the North for the holiday weekend, the better to see the saucers if they make it this year...My in-laws lack the caliber of technology I've become accustomed to, so I may be quiet for a couple days...and a good holiday to you all.

July 3: Advanced Interfaces & the Dark Web Challenge

*Blogtalk/Lecture* Catch-up: Other search engines *Exploration* Card-sorting for topics *Lecture/Blogtalk* P: search syntax for Google? JB: From the book "Google Hacks" by Rael Dornfest (O'Reilly) J: www.google.com/help/operators.html K: Are blogs really clogging up Google search results, as discussed in Cris' blog? JB: Check out David Weinberger's article responding to criticism of how Google handles blogs. Blogs are weighed more heavily by their nature. It's technically impossible to distinguish between a blog and not-a-blog sites. Besides, it's hard to draw the line between them: Slashdot is a blog, but has tons of valid, searchable content. You could develop a heuristic, a set of "best-practice" approximation rules to define a blog. False positives are a problem with this approach, though. Hacking Google: the algorithms of search engine operation are easy to reverse-engineer, making C: Sarah mentioned people turning to Google rather than reference librarians. Can librarians learn something from Google, about being easy to use and accessible. JB: Library school taught me about the incredible laziness of information seekers. People will go to great lengths to do easy searches. Google wins with its simple interface. No one understands what Google can really do -- and really detailed searches are generally independent of the search engine used. Search engine poll: Vivissimo: organizes results by facet Alltheweb Teoma Ixquick Hotbot MSNsearch (bad!) Limitations of the web: Bandwidth. One way around it: Grub, a parallel processing program, that works with wisenut.comto make an up-to-date index, that's better than Google. Why should we care? Because, even though it's not a really open-source program (which would be cool, to have the index live on a distributed network, where eveyone's computer was part of a shard) but no, they're just using the network to do the work of the search engine. Inktomi -- powers MSN and Hotbot, but is not a search engine unto itself. Overture: middlemen between search engine developers and advertisers. Search engine co.s like it because they don't have to think of a way to turn search engine traffic into dollars. This kind of action is related to the stuff that popped the internet business bubble. The most successful business model at this time is ebay -- no overhead at all. half.comis good too. P: esnipe will even bid for you. Altavista has not changed much, but they used to be the best AskJeeves: selling to entrepreneur intranets (?) cuz/ "google ate their lunch" Quiver owns the algorithm to automated text classification. Metacrawler Dogpile Metaspy powered by metacrawler "Volcano Burrito" anecdote Quick eavesdropping into the metaspy world "Disturbing search requests" *Exploration* Card-sorting Label cards and use to group and regroup ideas to build taxonomies. Also good for user testing, to define the user's mental model.

WLA discussion update

Well, I think the blog thread petered out on the WLA listserv. 875 was a full one-third of the reported library-related blogging! WOo-hoO! Perhaps the trend in the corporate world will trickle into libraries. There were two other thoughtful replies, from people of whom we've already heard. This response from Anna Lewis, of CIMC fame: I run a weblog called The Education Librarian (at http://www.educationlibrarian.com) it's primarily intended for other librarians working at education libraries or curriculum materials centers at the post-secondary level. Staff from the UW-Madison CIMC also contribute to the blog. The major categories of information / news items that are covered are: research tools, education technology, teacher education, library news, curriculum materials centers, education & library organizations, and K-12 news. If anyone is wondering "what exactly is a blog?" you might want to visit David Winer's definition at http://www.userland.com/whatAreWeblogs For other examples of library weblogs visit: http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html For examples of news feeds from library weblogs visit: http://www.lisfeeds.com/ The UW-Madison CIMC will actually be piloting a library newsletter in weblog format this September. If anyone is interested in knowing more about this venture - just let me know. Cheers, Anna Lewis And, from Michelle Laycock: The only other well known Wisconsin blog (at least that I know of) is "Internet Scout" maintained by some computer science gurus at UW-Mad. I have a link to it in my sidebar. I started the MRSO blog back in January as a reference newsletter for reporting staff at the K-News. I have since added some library science topic links as well, so I guess now my audience is composed of librarians as well as reporters. I update it when I have the time. In my job I really need to keep up with the latest news/resources and scheduling about an hour or so in the morning for "resource surfing" has more than paid off. In the next AWSL News I am going to write a followup to the article in the last edition. DEADLINE: Aug 1 (not July 1) Feel free to send me any cool links or pass me some Wisconsin news that catches your attention. I welcome anyone to email me even if you just want to chat about blogs! Michelle K-Town Lois Lane [library[at]kenoshanews[dot]com]

Defining our "types"

Would y'all say these are accurate definitions of what we decided on? question (?): an entry which asks for information. suggestion (!): an entry which is imperative and/or exclamatory; it calls for action or directs the reader's attention outward, or provides a reference to another information source. comment (...): a self-contained entry; one that is more reflective; will be used frequently to describe the type of entry previously known as "mixed."

July 2: Search Engine Optimization

*Pre-class Blogtalk* More googlewhacking; More metadata for 875 blogs. *Lecture* Search engine optimization *Exploration* Wordtracker and Inktomi *Pre-class Blogtalk* A little more googlewhacking fun. Honestly, this insight into Google can help you understand its workings. T: Could be good for haiku, too. *Exploration* _Category/Keywords metadata problem in our MT blog_ Where did we get stuck? Wrestling with "Type." "Type" ended up a facet of topic. Not as appropriate to attach the "type" to the entry itself. Faceting doesn't affect what's going on in the "facet next door." J: What about sentence type? JB: It could be a good controlled vocabulary for describing the entries. Instead of "seeking," "sharing," "mixed," use "declarative," "interrogative," "exclamatory," and "imperative." Sufficient consent is granted and it's settled, we'll do it. But wait, the four "modes" will be used to describe topics; and they bring out the semantics of the content. Are the four types useful, since the distribution will be uneven? So what's an exclamatory blog entry? "Look at this!" Remember, we are borrowing the terms from grammar to describe the tone of an entire blog entry, rather than a sentence. Combine exclamatory and imperative into one category? Call for action? C: Let's just go ahead and see what happens. _The real origin of Murphy's Law_ If someone can use something incorrectly, they will. Murphy was a lieutenant in the air force; he was referring to the catastrophe-enabling joysticks in airplanes. The degree of ambiguity is proportional to the degree of catastrophe. P: How about rants, raves, edicts? J: Those could be subcategories. How about a new word for the exclamatory/imperative? How about Comments, Questions and Suggestions? How about punctuation marks: . ! ? !=suggestion ...=comment ?=question Stop and regroup: Now we have a 3-4 item core to work with. Hooks into XFML because the entries will be searchable. Definitions: question (?): an entry which asks for information. suggestion (!): an entry which is imperative and/or exclamatory; it calls for action or directs the reader's attention outward, or provides a reference to another information source. comment (...): a self-contained entry; one that is more reflective; will be used frequently to describe the typ of entry previously known as "mixed" Should we add subtypes and topics (more punctiation marks)? Would that introduce more confusion? Yes! Stop now! Tomorrow we'll revisit the topics. *Lecture* Search engine optimization _see also ppt presentation_ In a nutshell, SEO makes a web site rank higher in a search engine's results. Quick distinction to draw: does "stopword" describe what we understand as LIS students, or are they bad words? _The fine line_ The relationship between keywords and documents is rather tenuous, making search engine technology imperfect. The fine line is between compensating for and exploiting weaknesses. _Why you should care_ There are only two ways to get to a site: links and search engines. All sites should optimize for search engines in order to reach the audience you are looking for _How do you fit in?_ _Opera browser demo_ Looking at msnbc.com to show that search engines don't "see" layout at all. Using tables affects how spiders read content. So does Javascript, which pops up links and does other flashy things. _The three "Kuh-sounds"_ Context. Index: Zipf's law. Imagine your document sucked into the huge index and all the keywords it's competing with. About 85% of all searchers click on a link from the first page of results and never look further. Queries. You have to think of your document with the same keywords that your users do. Content. _Context & Content_ You can influence the content aspect of search engines, but not the context they work in. _Queries_ The goal of SEO is to influence the results of queries. There is the fine line again, between "smart positioning" and "spamming" smart positioning: making docs responsive to relevant keywords spamming: making them responsive to irrelevant keywords _Who is your audience? What is your goal for reaching them?_ You can use formal usability studies, feedback, and server log analysis to understand the user group. _Keyword analysis_ Find out how people get to your site now. What's your most important content? How are people actually making their queries? What keywords fit your users' objectives best? _The title tag_ (the practical side of SEO) Title is one of the most important elements. Title=text, usually weighted; displayed prominently. A good title is unique, 5-10 words long, free of filler, and uses "power combos" if they make sense. Power combos: three words that are made up of two, two-word phrases that are frequently searched. _Keywords & Descriptions_ Inktomi is the only keyword-indexing spider J knows of. But use keywords to record the decisions you've made about creating body text. Keywords that aren't on the body of a page, while helpful, might get your page penalized (a spider would assume you're trying to spam) Moral: keep keywords focused, and don;t spend too much time using lots of them. Descriptions: use top 2-5 keywords and include a "call to action" Fun aside if you've read this far: the Wisconsin Lottery advertising division isn't allowed to use "calls to action" in its marketing efforts, because they really do work. Thanks, JmSR. _Main Body_ Top of the page is best; first paragraph is often used for description; keyword density is crucial. _Tricks with Links_ Text links are best on the right side and bottom of page. Make link text descriptive (don't use the word "here") Good text links are how spiders more from site to site _Community of Links_ PageRank redux. Good optimization within your site is not very problematic, but the art of linking is trickier. It's essentially trying to get links from reputable sites (the "right" ones) Directories are now funded mostly by people submitting their sites to be added. Link farms=not the right kind of site. T: how often to search engines change their algorithms? J: about once a month, they tweak the formulas just to keep people on their toes. The phenomenon of the Googledance: Google traffic is worth money. T: But if people look on the first page of Google results, how does anyone get hits from Google? J: The scale is huge; so many queries come in that it's not so unlikely. *Exploration* _Wordtracker.com trial_ This is a database that can be subscribed to daily, monthly, or more by businesses seeking SEO It's an inverse of the search engine: an index of what people are typing into search engines When you enter a phrase, you seek a correlation between the results and what you entered. Wordtracker also tells you how often the given keywords are entered into search engines. It will reveal your "niche keywords" by analyzing similar keywords. Trial 1: monkey training best niche keyword phrase: pet monkey training Trial 2: storm troopers common misspellings of keywords are revealed through this service as well When few pages use a given keyword, but many users input that keyword every day, a big demand with low supply is revealed. This situation is ideal to step into, provide the supply, and get a "bucket full of eyeballs," so to speak. _Bookmarklets_ http:// blah blah is the URI; the same thing can be done in Javascript, when a bookmarklet is clicked, a program can be executed. In this case, J executed a Zipf curve analysis of Amy's blog. From the Search Engine Optimization page. Google visits dynamic pages more frequently. _Inktomi search engine exploration_ Intro: in Google headquarters, giant screens display searches made in real time How site-specific search engines work. The site administrator can give specifications to Inktomi (or whatever search engine is used) for better searching Hidden form fields are attached to the query string The user enters their search, but the site itself restricts the results Robot disallow tags: to prevent spiders from entering test and development sites, and spider traps like dynamic pages. All cgi scripts are also disallowed. Other options: controlling the behavior of spiders "Magic!" Indexer weights: title texts, description, keywords, alt, remote anchors. All weights are measured in terms of body text weight, so if title is weighed at 8, a given keyword is worth eight times as much in the title as it would be in the body. Word spam detection thresholds: for example, if within 100 words a given word occurs more than a certain number of times, it's deemed spam. Spiders just count, they don't perform a complicated algorithm. Quick links: special query terms that are automatically answered with a specified link (when DHFS gives a special shortcut to seniorcare or another program) Content classification engine Tied to the CV/thesaurus previously mentioned. It's a huge browsable topic tree with a Yahoo-type interface. The software knows what the parent and child terms for each term are. Type any phrase, and it will search the metadata; it will find the correct entry in the thesaurus. As the spider works, it's creating an index for each topic and knows what all the pages are that match the rule. The result=a browsable interface to all relevant documents, with what looks like breadcrumbs. Quick blog tip: to add a block quote: bq. Until the next blank line, your text will be in a block quote.

WLA list discusses librarian blogs

A message about librarian blogging came through the Wisconsin Library Association mailing list today. Richard D. Hendricks of Madison asked the list how librarians in Wisconsin are using blogs -- thanks Toby for letting him know about this class! To follow the discussion, I think you can subscribe to the list. I'll also pass on the good bits. They'll eventually turn up in the archive, but they're not there yet.

trial 2

canadian entropy 16600 pancreatica monkey 16 pancreatic monkeys 4960 monkey aioli 447 monkey yarmulke 539 monkey yarmulkes 159 yarmulkes monkeys 67 yarmulkes monkey 101 yarmulke woofer 13 bedwetting yarmulke 1 but didn't pass the whack test ... ... Yeah! Got one! And submitted to the Whack Stack. Maybe I can stop now.

googlewhacking trial 1

dentifrice fricative 6 fricative spleen 76 fricatives spleen 33 dentifrice affricates 12 affricates monkey 80 affricates monkeys 25 affricate monkeys 32 affricates wedgie 0 wedgie dentifrice 7 wedgie dentifrices 0 wedgies dentifrice 1, but in a damn dictionary Gave up for now.

July 1: Google & Co.

*Pre-lecture blogtalk* Chinese room analogy; anonymity and accountability; cryptography *Exploration* Facets and topics continued *Lecture* Google *Pre-lecture blogtalk* _Chinese room analogy_ Strong AI and John Searle's argument (summarized in Jennifer's blog) that syntax can be manipulated by a computer, but it can never substitute for human intelligence Strong AI=equal to humans in decisionmaking power and understanding _Anonymity and Accountability_ Anonymity has a strong appeal: it can be a productive and interesting place to operate. And the embedded ID chip is not a valid option. But if you include accountability with anonymity, is there a way to build the trust so important to interaction? Time is important -- a persistent identity throughout many interactions can add up to trust. kate: Blogs and the library profession: can trust be built here too? Can a blog owner delete responses? J: Yes. They can manipulate content to their heart's content; certain of BurningBird's conversations as an example of the tenuousness of communication Two years ago, about a quarter of Ed's Organization of Information class had heard of Google... _Public key cryptography_ What is it? Steve: cryptography rearranges data and transmits a "key" for decoding The process of taking text, running it through a cipher, turning it into ciphertext, running back through a decipher. _Perfect encryption_ There is such a thing as unbreakable encryption, but it's not very practical: perfect encryption is a one-time pad. It's not an algorithm, but a perfectly random key; make a copy of this key, and send it to the recipient. When you send a message, mix the message text with the random key. Because any kind of order mixed with equal parts pure randomness is also purely random, all traces of syntax are destroyed. When your mixed package arrives at the recipient, it can be decoded by removing the random one-time pad. Computers are terrible at being random. Sometimes they borrow clues from the physical world to generate a little true randomness. Cryptographers can recognize transpositions and anything else you can try to make up. _Back to public key cryptography_ One cipher that will encrypt and decrypt all messages Example on the board: JB wants to send SM a message. JB uses SM's public key to encrypt his message. SM combines his public and private keys to decrypt the message. The public key can be given to everyone, because it doesn't work alone. Combining the public key with the private key decrypts the message. Keep the private key private -- on a floppy, on your person, etc. Steve: what stops people from using other people's public keys to sign messages as other people? J: md5 and RSA algorithms use digested versions of text for further safety Key signing parties amongst geeks = for exchanging public keys _How it fits with anonymity_ Your key becomes part of your identity and can be used to prove digitally that what you write is correctly attributed to you. Steve: BTW, how long do digital media last? J: Since the media is now easier to copy with higher fidelity, this is less of a concern. But electronic archives are indeed very vulnerable. *Exploration* _Facets and Topics continued_ "Types" was the most fascinating of these facets Paul: Better to call "information-providing" "information-sharing" Hm. Our brainstorm: types/objectives/moods: epistolary info sharing proselytizing/soapboxing But who is this for? Us, or the mythical user? There is a lack of gelling here. Nichole: Does seeking/sharing modify/describe the topic rather than the entire post? Paul: Some entries are long enough to justify a number of descriptors Look at the facet map site again today and share with class tomorrow. *Lecture* _see also ppt presentation_ _Google & Co._ Not only is its search engine innovative, but the text ads have revolutionized emarketnig _Backstory_ ("Googledance": when the switch is thrown and the spiders leave the gate) Once upon a time there were many search engines that covered small bits of the Web. From multiple searches on different engines one could piece together some results. But there was a problem of scalability -- as keywords and metadata became more widely used (ca. 1997), people quickly figured out how to abuse the system. Also, paid placement skewed the results. _Google foundations_ Sergey Brin (information retrieval) & Larry Page (hardware) The sheer size of the web is amazing, but Google's got several copies of what it's mapped sitting around in server farms across the country. _PageRank_ PR(A)=(1-d) +d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... +PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) Dampening factor: helps the page rank equation replicate the model in mind, and prevents eternal pagerank loops Paul: Say you have a library web page of internet resources pointing to a number of other pages... J: The important factor is who links to you, not who you link to. _In English this time_ If there were a totally random surfer, every page on the internet would be equally likely to turn up; but since links are followed, page to page, each page has a different likelihood of being landed on. Topography of the internet is not flat -- there are peaks of recognition and valleys of isolation "Pagerank graphs the link structure of the web, and derives its semantics similarly to the way that reverse citation indexing does." _Anti-Spam characteristics_ It is harder to mess with Google, but not impossible, as the ideas below illustrate. Link farms: sites that serve no purpose other than trading links with sites that want to increase their Google rank Guest books: if you sign guestbooks with a signature that includes your URL, you leave links all over the place. Forums: ditto. Google will punish you! See Salon article in J's blog. The end of the Search Engine King, who got blacklisted by Google. He argued that Google is like unto a public utility, and can't cut off their service arbitrarily. _Google's data center_ 15000 networked desktop computers that run ironclad Linux, rather than investing tons in any given hardware Every query is routed to its place in this "hive." It's given to the inverted index, which is made up of "index shards." These are much faster to search than one large index. _Advantages_ When the index grows too large, split it off and start a new cluster. If there are too many requests in a given index, add computers to the cluster. If a clustered computer dies, sledgehammer it and pop in another. Think BORG. Paul: so a shard is a part of the index, like A-M? J: Yes, but a little more random -- heavy-duty math divides them appropriately. High-volume requests get distributed across many clusters. _Search Syntax_ See ppt slide for a great guide Filetype: wroks well for .pdf and .ppt, etc. intitle, inurl, intext, inanchor good at cutting through garbage cache: retrieves Google's copy of "disappeared" info _Google Services_ Google goes around acquiring other utilities and providing other services Images: text surrounding images, captions, and other data near images are used to index the images, sometimes with comical results _AdWords_ Surprised everyone by surprising no one--providing text ads clearly marked as ads and kept separate from the search results. Target market=small businesses. Other sites now use the same idea. _Google API_ SOAP vs. REST Makes the Google API available to anyone who wants to tinker (geeks especially) who then reap benefits as they benefit Google. _Problems with Google_ Has a choke-hold on the competition; verging on utility status; can censor results, and many sites depend on Google for traffic; developer community and civil libertarians are concerned Blogs: a "linky" domain that puts everyone else at a disadvantage; and what happens when Google controlls Blogger or other software? Will they remove blogs from the index? That would be a lot of content gone to a whole nother place. _Here comes Microsoft_ The new bot in town: MSNbot. Prediction: MSNbot 2 will be the big thing. MSNbot can see a lot of things on the Web. And, regardless of what the competition has, MS has LOTS of money. _But ... Googlewhacks!_ Two words, no quotes, dictionary words only. Get exactly one hit! Monkey + ? gets the grand prize! This explores the Zipf's law embedded in the index. Document your attempts and blog about it, man. But don't post it if you find it! Technique? Start with one word and pivot within the restricted document set...

"that word" goes (somewhat) legit

Did anyone else catch the blurb on Morning Edition about the new, 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary? President John Morse even defined "blog" for Bob Edwards, but he said it *wasn't* included. "Dead cat bounce," however, was. On a related note, as of February 2003, "Weblogs" is in the LCSH. As a topical subject heading and a subdivision! Yea!