Well, this was supposed to be for school and a course, but the course has long since ended and the school long since been left. This one is for myself. Like all great blog entries this one too begins with the writer not having any idea of what is to be written. Man! I don't even want to write haha!

And thus ended the semester…

As the sem draws to a close, I realize that there are still atleast a hundred more things that I want to talk about: books being published in the SMS (Short-Messaging Service) lingo, books being published using electronic ink, issues related to piracy, electronic newspaper broadsheets, interactive and collaborative fiction on the Internet….so much really! As the sem draws to a close, I realize that maybe it is time to take a breather, before restarting the blog with new zest in a new year!

In the famous words of the famous Governor of California....I'll be back. :)

Policing link

http://tinyurl.com/vo62p

Policing the net ?

Mention Web 2.0 in front of an IT expert or a tech geek and you’d hear mild snickering directed at the comment, however intelligent you try to sound. Trust me; I’ve been on the receiving end a few times. But Web 2.0 is a reality and it’s been silently changing the communication channels and protocols of propagating information on our beloved “set of tubes” aka the Internet. The beginning of the revolution was as we all know blogs (especially self-proclaimed exceptional blogs like this). From there it spread far and wide. We had the Flickrs, the YouTubes, the GMails, the Wikipedias, the Diggs and a host of other applications come up.

Web 2.0, basically, is the phenomenon where you control the content that the web delivers to you. It is to traditional web what open source is to closed source software, what blogs are to web-pages and what wikis and feeds are to encyclopedias and news sites. It is where all users directly affect the content that is served to all other web users. But in this open form of communication emerges a problem unique to the internet – policing and controlling the content. When I say unique to internet, it’s because the internet never had that problem. It was always solved by the site’s webmaster controlling the communication and content on his page. And the problem is certainly not new to our lives, where the dilemma always is the balance between freedom and order. And the problem remains as vexing as ever in this new avatar of the internet.

A while back there was a lot of talk about the content on Wikipedia and other wiki sites being incorrect, misleading and often times even biased. Blogs, just like Flickr and YouTube, have been the target of the decency patrol ever since they came to the fore. There’s also been the talk of the content served on Digg being more pop culture based and less informative. For example post the “Coke and Mentos trick” story and you have more chances of it coming to the front page of Digg than you would have of a story about …oh say… the consequences of market fluctuations. Then again, you have to wonder if that isn’t actually what the purpose of it all was.

And while I defend these services and speak of these “allegations” with a note of sarcasm, I have to admit most of them are actually real problems or at least issues that require an amount of discussion.

Go to digg.com and watch a bunch of “Top Ten lists” and NSFW (Not Safe For Work) YouTube video posts appear on the front page along with scattered regular news articles. Here's a sample of the top stories today...the effects of collective wisdom so to speak.



A good article on the various aspects of the Digg story appears on CNN

http://tinyurl.com/kmkk2

This BBC news story, from about a year ago, reports the unpopular decision to tighten the posting and logging rules on Wikipedia, to eliminate false postings and edits by users

http://tinyurl.com/ygsdff

Blogs are proven to be biased simply because they are the personal opinions of an individual. How it affects the opinions of the collective is the matter of discussion. But then that discussion could be held for a host of traditional news networks and newspapers too.

So yes, there is that problem of letting things go out of hand. And yes, the problem does require review. But suggest that we change the spirit and ideology of this unique communication revolution that has emerged in the past half-decade, is not just wrong it’s almost ridiculous. The need for constant evolution is ever present. Things have to change as usual with people coming up with ideas to change this stream of communication to serve better quality information. And maybe one day when we do solve this freedom versus order debate for our beloved Internet, we may be able to bring the same concept of individual freedom within collective responsibility to our day to day life. If only things ever turned out that simple…

Schoogle link

Here is a librarian’s blog devoted just to Google Scholar, an interesting read.
http://schoogle.blogspot.com/

Schoogle

All things Google are news. And so also, was the release of Google Scholar in late 2004. The goal, according to Anurag Acharya- the engineer behind the idea, “is to allow and enable users to search over scholarly content." Google scholar made visible a lot of the “invisible” content hidden behind the “veiled curtains of subscription”. You would still require a subscription to read the whole article, but the article’s existence would be visible. To show up on Google Scholar, Google maintains all you have to do is contact their office and then their spider’s crawl through your website. But sites must provide access for non-subscribers to bibliographic citations and abstracts even for non-subscribers. This way a search using last name can also be done in the format :
author:lastname + (title terms) .

And how does Google rank its results?
According to the official About Google Scholar page, Google Scholars ranks its articles based on the content of the article, the journal it appears in and the number of times the article is cited in scholarly literature. And the main grouse the critics have against Google Scholar is regarding their definition of “scholarly literature”. The list of providers and how exactly the ranking is done is not very clear. Serious research still depends more on sites like WebOfScience. As Google becomes BIG and expands its areas of service, Google bashing is emerging as a new fad to replace chants of “Google is God”. There are discussions on how Google might be spreading itself too thin. The literature analyzing Google Scholar too has been more on the critical side. This includes critiques by university libraries like this one http://web.library.emory.edu/services/ressvcs/howguides/googlescholar.html.

For me, Google Scholar remains the easiest way of searching and procuring (since it got connected with the University’s library holdings) scholarly articles on the Internet. I guess I am still addicted to the ways of Google (aren't we all :) )

If you still can not decide whether to use Google Scholar or a specialized electronic journal like Communication and Mass Media Complete, here’s a comparison of Google Scholar with Psych Info found on the UCLA website à
http://www2.library.ucla.edu/googlescholar/results.cfm

Scholarly links

A nifty collection of journal databases (taken from the UCLA website):

http://www2.library.ucla.edu/googlescholar/searchengines.cfm

Scholarly communication revamped

Every assignment that I have done this semester has left me with a slight jaw dropping awe at the convenience with which I can access the work of hundreds of thousands of researchers without having to shift so much as an inch of my posture.

A quick flashback to the day the first assignments were given out in class. While instructions were being given on how to look for relevant material online, my brain started conjuring romantic little trips on lonely nights to the library, to be spent working amidst lots and lots of thick BOOKS and yellowed JOURNALS…….ONLINE?? Did I just hear online?? The word shook me out of my reverie and electronic reality began to dawn on me. Doing that first assignment using a single computer in the library, and the subsequent ones done at home on my laptop rubbed away the remaining romance for good-old fashioned time consuming research. The good-old fashioned charm notwithstanding, all of us owe the existence of a LIFE outside the libraries to these journals available online.

According to Professor Garvey, a psychologist at The John Hopkins University, communication is the essence of Science. In other words, communication is the key to research and learning. To be effective this communication has to be timely and accessible. While eliminating manual processes improves upon the time factor, electronic handling also mean better accessibility because of the lower production costs. It makes sense to have research paper cost as less as possible since, the general public does sponsor research in a way having already paid taxes to the Government.
What was made easy by electronic journals has been made easier with newer tools, not the least important of which is Google Scholar. But that again is another topic for another time …..

Fictitious links

A comprehensive scholarly work on the subject of fanfics:
http://tinyurl.com/yedkow

A dated yet, interesting view on fandom, fanfic and its repercussions on popular culture. (the NYtimes archive)
http://tinyurl.com/yfq78f

And to read fanfictions try,
http://www.fanfiction.net

Fictitious??

One fine day, a few years ago, I went to the movies to see X2. Movie magic happened and brawny Wolverine found himself a drooling new fan. The Pow!Wowy! action movie and Mr. Jackman’s muscle flex had me hooked, the night was spent researching the two. It was then that I stumbled upon the myriad world of internet fan fiction. It was a world where fans made sure Wolverine bagged Jean, where Magneto turned over a new leaf, and a world where Jack returns an old man just as Rose is wrapping up her story about the Titanic. And by Jove! it is an amazing world.

We are all born actors and story-tellers. Fanfics are one way of not agreeing with how your favorite work of entertainment (movies/television series/books/game) developed, while at the same time exercising our humanness by telling a story. Although the credit of “decultifying” the concept and bringing it to the mainstream (not necessarily a good thing, some would argue) lies with the Internet, fanfics have been around longer than has the Internet. There are some works of scholarly research on the subject as well. No mean achievement for what was considered an outlet for nerdy fantasies.

There are issues of copyrights associated since fanfictions build on existing work, lots of information floating on the Internet and battles being fought on that front. What is more interesting is how fanfics have come a full circle. This art form (yes! I dare call it art!) is increasingly being used to bolster interest in the original work that they take off from. A very neat example was the crazy creativity and interest that Peter Jackson (that nerdy fellow J) generated before the release of his trilogy by indulging Tolkein fans to unleash their creativity and add to the already complex story with a few hundred more side-characters resulting in a few thousand more sub-plots.
And these fan are not your run-of-the-mill fans, the fanfic writing world is populated by a devoted fan base. It would be interesting to see if fanfics can actually work the other way round and create hardcore fans out of the regular fan populace.

All said and done, the next few years, fanfic, along with mobile games (based on the fictional work’s characters) is going to become an integral part of pre and post movie/TV show/game/ book release hype.

Here is a list of the top 5 movies by way of the amount of fan work put into their characters, in no particular order:
LOTR (No prizes for guessing this one)
Star Wars
Star Trek
X-men (all the three from the franchise)
Pirates of the Caribbean

Source: My very unscientific observations.

And the same for TV shows:
Star Trek
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Smallville
X-Files
*Why do none of the above surprise me*
Gilmore Girls (Boo! Here’s the surprise!)

Source: The same unscientific observations.