– mapping human rights abuses in the ME

mtadros

Update: everything is working now – images and all. Took a while though.

I finally was able to install ushahidi, a crowdsourcing mapping software. It is fatnastic and makes life easy creating geospatial mapping – however installation took quite a bit of effort because some files were missing and directions are not clear. I also succeeded in translating the interface into Arabic and managed to have Arabic language on it. A proud moment in my life for sure! 🙂  So.. while it is still in beta, some things don’t work – such as the images do not show up and some minor stuff, but for the most part, this is the first geospatial mapping of human rights abuses in the Arab Middle East after al Jazeera used it to record the War on Gaza.

Mapping human rights abuses in the Middle East

 

– right to research and open access

mtadros

Celebrate open access week with Harvard 19-23 October 09:

Four schools at Harvard University have adopted open access policies for their scholarly articles.  In celebration of Open Access Week (http://www.openaccessweek.org/), Stuart Shieber (Faculty Director of Harvard University’s Office for Scholarly Communication), Peter Suber (Berkman Fellow and leader in the open access movement) and representatives from the schools with open access policies will be hosting a forum to answer questions you might have about Harvard’s current activities in implementing these policies and issues about open access generally.

Visit: http://www.openaccessweek.org/

and Right to Research: students’ statement on the right to research:
http://www.righttoresearch.org/

– the new influencers

mtadros

Currently reading The New Influencers: a marketer’s guide to the new social media,  by Paul Gillin.  Having new influencers definitely changes how we do our marketing and advertising.  While the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ helps people make better decisions, they sometimes make ‘colossal’ mistakes as well. Gillin focuses mostly on blogging and bloggers as opposed to any other social media tool.

In any case, bloggers, according to Gillin, the new influencers of social media, have a sort of set of unspoken and unwritten defining standards… akin to a constitution of their own: thou shalt link [which is the ‘glue that holds it all together for credibility]; thou shalt not diss [practicing parliamentary civility]; thous shalt be transparent [includes ‘honesty, integrity, humility, open-mindedness and fairness’]; thou shalt comment [‘commenting is a core part of blogging protocol’] . thou shalt not blather [posts need to be concise and to the point].

He goes on to talk about blogging for and within corporations as public relations issues and gives examples of those he calls the top ‘A-list’ bloggers who are the most influential in present day markets.

– delete: forgetting in the digital age

mtadros

Sounds like a great book because the idea behind it is great. I will read it and then post here what I think of it. First time I ever see a book trailer. 🙂 The book is Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, published by Princeton Univ. Press. [link]

Here is what it says about it:

Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we’ve searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all.

Perfect.

– citation game

mtadros

Rutgers is doing a great job on that. Plagirism is big especially with the Internet now and the availability of information without much ado – so here are Rutgers’ games:

Link 1 http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/douglass/sal/plagiarism/intro.html

Great to play with students AND faculty.

Is plagiarism in the eye of the beholder?

Another is on how to write a research paper, evaluate sources and create citations:

http://www.ub.ntnu.no/viko/en/start.php