A Video on Open Access

Open Access to Scholarly Publications (Updated May 10, 2008) from Sean Kass on Vimeo.

Yet another URL Shortening Service

Came across yet another URL Shortening Service - Xrl.in - Really Tiny Links. It also provides "Bookmarklet" link to shortened the URL of the current page in your browser. For this, you can also download an extension for your Firefox. It promises to come with a facility to manage your shortened links.

Snipr still remains my favorite service for shortening long URLs. It let you to select your own suffix text (if available) and title to the URL being shortened.

More link shortening services

Found two more link shortening services - http://lin.cr and http://www.moourl.com/.

Lin.cr appears to be more attractive in the sense that its own URL is short and sweet.

Google Reader evolving into a Social Networking Site?

Just wondering whether Google Reader is gradually evolving into a Social Networking Site? It has now improved its Sharing options. It has become easier to share your favorite sites with your friends. It provides for a “Note in Reader” link that can be dragged and dropped in your browser’s bookmarks bar. Once that is done, you are ready to share your favorite sites or the sites you just discovered. Select a relevant portion of the site you wish to share through Google Reader and click on “Note in Reader”. (Well text selection is optional, but it is also better to be focused). A window will open up with title of the site being shared with selected text already filled. Now just put your annotation (yet another optional step) about the site (your friends might like to know as why you are sharing?) and click “Post Item”. You have now shared an item through Google Reader. You can email the links of shared items to your friends, share through your blog (ready to add clip in Blogger available) or copy and paste relevant HTML snippet in your site.

Will Google Reader continue to add such features and evolve into a Social Networking Site? It can add profiles, favorite contacts, communities, pictures and all that stuff. With all these usual social networking stuff powered with shared knowledge (sites), Google Reader could become “Google Wisdom” for a participating virtual community.

Open Access Directory (OAD)

A new wiki - Open Access Directory (OAD) - has been rolled out. It would serve as a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship.

Page2RSS - Create RSS feed for any web page

Page2RSS is one of the services available for monitoring non-RSS enabled web sites. Such services monitor requested sites. Once a change is noticed, a RSS feed is generated and delivered to subscribers.

Hindi included in Google Translate

Google Translate has now included Hindi in its list of languages. So now you can translate 'English to Hindi' or 'Hindi to English'. See also few useful tools available with Google Translate. You can read English sites in Hindi or Make your own site avalable in Hindi or English. The translated text for Hindi would be in Devnagri.

But don't start celebrating yet! Translated text does not follow the grammar or syntax of Hindi. For example "My name is Sukhdev Singh" would be translated as "मेरा नाम है सुखदेव सिंह", when it should be "मेरा नाम सुखदेव सिंह है". You can suggest Google the right translation by clicking on "Suggest a better translation". It may improve translation quality in future by learning from suggestions.

List of Free Tools for Learning

Nice post listing free tools and sites that can be used for learning:

ZaidLearn: A Free Learning Tool for Every Learning Problem?

"..every learning problem (or issue) we have today, there is probably a free tool or site out there that enables us to solve it.."

Open Science Directory

Open Science Directory has been developed by EBSCO and the Hasselt University Library. About 13000 scientific journals are listed in this directory. It contains open access journals and journals in the special programs like Hinari, Agora,
OARE etc. Some other
programs like INASP-PERI and eJDS will also be added in the near future.

Test Speed of your Broadband Internet Connection

Looking for a way to test speed of your Internet Broadband connection. Try Speedtest.net. It will tell both uploading and downloading speed of your connection.

Blacklight - an open source OPAC

Blacklight is an open source OPAC. Libraries can use it to allow people to search and browse their collections online.

Trooker for Searching Online Videos

Trooker is a useful search engine for finding out videos from various online services like the kind YouTube. [Found via]

Blog on use of social networking sites for Libraries

Friends:Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services - is a blog on use of social networking sites for any and all types of library-related programs or services.

Predictive Input System for English and Indian Languagues

Found a wonderful site lipik.in [via]. It is a service that helps you to save your typing time. It would be especially useful if you are trying to write in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil or Kannada. It is an online predictive input system that anticipates your intention and tries to complete the words for you as you type. It shows you a on-screen keyboard with a suggestions panel.

If you are a registered user, it learns your writing style and suggests you better. You can store your documents online as well as search Internet from words in your documents.

yBook - a freeware ebook reader

yBook - a freeware ebook reader software provides provides a 'paper book' experience on the computer screen: like it shows two pages side-by-side instead of just one page in the middle of the screen.