Use this tool for searching

by digitalART (artct45)
[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]
A search engine for open notebook science:
[Via Michael Nielsen]

There has been some great discussion in the comments on my post about “Open science”. One outcome is that Jean-Claude Bradley has created a search engine customized for open notebook science:

http://tinyurl.com/4multu

Fittingly, many people contributed to the discussion!

This demonstrates one of the nice abilities of Web 2.0 approaches. Google permits you to set up a custom search for a group of websites. This allows you to perform a directed search using specific terms against a designated group of websites.

This example examines a group of Open Science sites but it is easy to see how this might be useful for other sites. This way you do not have to work your way through a multitudeof irrelevant sites.

RSS is really good for bringing me content but what if I want to find an article from one of my newsfeeds from a few months ago? With this, I can simply add all the websites I track to the custom search. Then I am searching a much smaller but very directed subset of the web and am much likelier to find the old article I read.

A user-generated subset of Google web searches may be very useful for linking the content of several sites. This could be fun to play with. I’ll have to put one together for Science 2.0.

Technorati Tags: Science, Web 2.0

Cool Pistols

by ComputerHotline
Science probe for ’space pistols’:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

Scientists investigate whether a former US president’s duelling pistols were really made from a meteorite.
[More]

Short answer – not from a meteorite. but wait, they may not be the real pistols and there is a third pistol that could be the one. They just have to find it first.

Or, the pistols could just be made from an unusual allow that looks more expensive that it is, accompanied by a flowery story to impress an American President. it would not be the first time a tall tale was used.

Technorati Tags: Technology

No wonder

by blakespot
Why is the FEC Using TRS-80’s?:
[Via Balloon Juice]

Am I not understanding this:

The record-shattering fundraising by Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has reshaped the financing of presidential elections and generated breathless coverage and analysis of the otherwise arcane area of campaign finance.

Yet it’s had another consequence that has gone all but unnoticed. The campaign finance reports filed by Obama and Clinton have grown so massive that they’ve strained the capacity of the Federal Election Commission, good government groups, the media and even software applications to process and make sense of the data.

A milestone of sorts was reached earlier this year, when Obama, the Illinois senator whose revolutionary online fundraising has overwhelmed Clinton, filed an electronic fundraising report so large it could not be processed by popular basic spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel 2003 and Lotus 1-2-3.

Those programs can’t download data files with more than 65,536 rows or 256 columns.

***

If you want to comb through Obama or Clinton’s cash, you either need to divide and import their reports section-by-section (a time-consuming and mind-numbing process) or purchase a more powerful database application, such as Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel 2007, both of which retail for $229.

The FEC can’t afford a copy of Excel 2007? I can lend them my laptop if they need, but they better not talk while I am watching BSG, and they should be warned that Tunch loves company and will probably pester them when they come over.

It is not clear that from the article that the SEC has any problem with the data. It is simple stating that the files from Clinton and Obama are so big that you could not use Excel 2003 for them. It does not state that the SEC does not have Excel 2007.

So it is pretty much a filler article trying to look more important than it is. The main bit of real information – the campaigns now have so many donors that they overwhelm old software. Whoopi.

Technorati Tags: Education, Government, Politics