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In response to the person who said in class that people who edit Wikipedia "have a lot of time on their hands" -- see this 2008 piece by Very Smart Guy and NYU professor Clay Shirky, who points out that editing Wikipedia is a more productive use of time than watching TV. Which, somehow, a lot of people also seem to have a lot of time to do. *** "I was being interviewed by a TV producer to see whether I should be on their show, and she asked me, "What are you seeing out there that's interesting?" I started telling her about the Wikipedia article on Pluto. You may remember that Pluto got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago, so all of a sudden there was all of this activity on Wikipedia. The talk pages light up, people are editing the article like mad, and the whole community is in an ruckus--"How should we characterize this change in Pluto's status?" And a little bit at a time they move the article--fighting offstage all the while--from, "Pluto is the ninth planet," to "Pluto is an odd-shaped rock with an odd-shaped orbit at the edge of the solar system." So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years.""

I attended one of the events during Open Access Week about the future of libraries and Wikipedia. Jake Orlowitz, recipient of a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant, spoke about "The Wikipedia Library." The Wikipedia Library was a new project he founded in 2012 for the goal of connecting Wikipedia editors with the reliable information sources they need. In the first part of his presentation, he discussed much of what wikipedia is and how it is run. He basically summed up much of what most people don't know about wikipedia and a lot of assumptions that people make about how unreliable information on wikipedia is. Then he went on to discuss more about the wikipedia library and how it would benefit wikipedia editors with vital current reliable sources that they need to do their work. I thought the presentation given by the presenter was very informative and interesting. I learned more about wikipedia and how its more useful than I thought. The most interesting point he raised during his presentation were the benefits of the Wikipedia Library. The thought of connecting university libraries with the wikipedia library will present students and many others information that is reliable and easy to access. Many scholarly articles and information from databases we usually have to pay for will be available for universities to provide students at a much lower cost.

Thanks, Rebecca. I'll add 5 points to your Exam 2 grade.

A nice, short, clear introduction to HTML, if you're interested in pursuing it further. Last revised 2005 -- even that long ago, most people weren't writing it by hand, but it continues to be useful to know how to do so if necessary.

This a great website not only describing how web crawlers work, but how you can create on your own. Descriptions and pictures really help to create one if your stuck too.

That is a good tutorial -- thanks, Gordon. My own PHP skills are good enough to build this, though at the moment I don't need to. I had forgotten the synonym "scrapers," too. Useful quotation: "One typical task that Google performs is to pull all the links from a page and see which sites they are endorsing."

Really helpful tips on how to learn to use Prezi.

Madalyn's presentation informed all of us on how Instagram started and about its founder, Kevin Systrom. This article explains to new feature of Instagram. Now your followers can view photos that other people have uploaded and you can be tagged in photos as well.

Here are some tools that make adding a bookmark to Diigo easier. Particularly recommended for new users is the "Diigolet," which you can drag to your Bookmarks bar ("Favorites" in some browsers) and use to quickly share links with the group by clicking "Diigolet" then "Bookmark" then "Share to group."

Another good Common Craft video about search engine optimization -- says that "Google and Bing are the librarians of the Internet." Interesting, and a total coincidence, that this video also uses the notion of a "recipe" to explain how to make your website more searchable -- the same analogy I used to explain an algorithm.

Turns out yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the worm that Robert Tappan Morris released, so here's another Washington Post article on him. Again, great timing, Britney! Be sure to consult this for your final project.

If you want to gain strong reputation points in the Wikipedia community and therefore gain more privileges, here's how -- this is a tutorial from Wired magazine.

A great read for the next few weeks of presentations! A how-to on constructive criticism!

Thanks, Claire! It's all been pretty constructive so far, I think, but this is helpful.

Good tips on how to improve your presentation.

Just in case you lose Internet connection while doing research for an essay, here's how you can download all of Wikipedia's content

An interesting article from the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times about how the internet has changed the concept and attitudes of R.S.V.P viewed by people. With the modern R.S.V.P, the ability for a host or event producer to painlessly publicize his or her event to many people has replaced the meaning of a social contract.

This article describes the benefits of search engine alternatives to the mighty Google. In doing so, it also reveals how much information Google keeps on you every time you do a search. 

after reading this article my first thought was "Awesome, new sites I can Google on!"

During Open Access week, I stopped by the Fenwick Info desk. I was able to get some informational packets and forms on open access week. There were many packets and brochures describing the history of open access and how students and professors could become more involved in the open access movement. I found one packet to be very informative on how I could learn to use open access to my advantage when conducting research.

Thanks, Lauren -- I'll give you 5 extra points on your Exam 2 grade when I grade them.

An interesting article that shows how you can use Diigo effectively to collect information and bits of information from many different webpages in an organized way. The article presents some questions to think about when doing web research and how we can use tools such as Diigo to aid in gathering a large amount of information in one place. It also explains more in depth what Professor French has told the class regarding Diigo.

Found this timeline of the internet to be interesting. It's fascinating to see how it got started and how it changed since it first began.

I didn't know that Queen Elizabeth was the first world leader to send an email ...

Oddly enough, today the Washington Post has chosen to reprint a 1988 article about the Internet; that article mentions Robert Tappan Morris, the first person prosecuted under the Computer Fraud Act, whom Brittney Douress told us about today. Nice timing, Brittney! :)

Note too that this article came out well before the World Wide Web was invented circa 1992 / 1993. There weren't any GUI web browsers yet; people just used text-only terminals (no pictures, no video) to access stuff. Mostly news groups -- I'll post a picture of what that looked like if I can find one.