Knowledge Handler

Information Sources & Information Sifting Techniques

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Location: Independence, Ohio, United States

I am a retired librarian, most recently serving at Indiana Wesleyan University's Cleveland Education Center.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Banking Malware Hijacks Cameras and Microphones

Lucian Constantin reports in Network World that "Banking malware monitors victims by hijacking webcams and microphones, researchers say". The additional information and feedback from spying on their victims apparently makes hackers more successful. [As a potential victim, I am concerned.]

-DD

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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Bing Social Networking Links

According to a Fox News article titled "Search Engines at War, Releasing Biggest Changes in Years," Bing has added a social networking component to their search results.

-DD

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Google Knowledge Graph

Sharon Gaudin, a ComputerWorld reporter, notes that "Google Aims to Make Search Smarter, Easier". The Google search engine will have an upgrade with an added "Knowledge Graph" to guide further queries.

-DD

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Friday, May 11, 2012

Where Good Ideas Come From

Steven Johnson has written and intriguing book, Where Good Ideas Come From, whose primary premise is that open access and interaction is key to innovation. Johnson clearly applies Stuart Kauffman's concept of "adjacent possible" and how it limits the leaps in both the evolution of ideas and organisms.



-DD

Friday, May 04, 2012

Bubbling

The May 2 New York Times ran an article by Kate Murphy titled "How To Muddy Your Tracks On The Internet." This was my introduction to the verb "bubbling," which she defines as "the filtering of search results based on your search history."

This term appears to be derived from Eli Pariser speaking out against Google's practice of displaying only those results that your history indicates you would be interested in, which causes two people doing identical searches to obtain differing results. He gave a TED Talk on this subject exactly one year before Murphy's New York Times article, titled "Beware Online 'Filter Bubbles'."



-DD

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Thursday, May 03, 2012

University Students Are "Free Range Learners"

Researcher Glenda Morgan reports that many university students are "free range learners." As cited by Chronicle reporter Marc Parry, students search the Internet for additional resources to supplement those assigned by their professor. Parry cites Morgan's description of student behavior: "It’s almost like they [the students] want to find the content by themselves."

Based on this research, I wonder if it might be useful if student are surveyed at the close of a course as to whether unassigned resources contributed to their success. Such a survey may disclose if the students are using inaccurate resources, or it may uncover resources which are superior to the assigned text.

-DD

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Wednesday, May 02, 2012

InstaGrok

Tech and Learning blogger David Andrade reviewed InstaGrok, an education-oriented, multi-format search tool that includes an option for creating journal entries.

The reviewer neglects to mention that the scripting does not work with Internet Explorer -- only the Chrome or FireFox Internet browsers are explicitly supported. A typical search only obtained a dozen or so results. This is not due to the text results being whitelisted, because a search for the word "positions" resulted in lots of inappropriate material. Definately a work in progress.

-DD