Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Going.. Going.. Gone: Technologies on the out

Who would ever have thought that there were certain things that we have had around for a long time and taken for granted would go the way of the Dodo never to be seen again.

Let me ask you these questions:
1. When was the last time you actually saw a Cassette Tape? (You know those things that came between Vinyl LP's and a Compact Disc)

Now here are some things that you may not have considered could be gone.

2. How many of you have a home analog telephone? (hint: the one you plugged into the wall). Maybe the question should be, how many people under 30 have seen an analog phone? You know the standard phone companies around the world are fearful of losing the last of their die-hard customers to cell phones.
3. How many of you still have VHS tapes to watch your favorite movies? What do you think about DVD's going away as well. DVD's, why would they go away? Well there is Blu-Ray now and with that quality it won't be to long before DVD's end up like VHS tapes.
4. How about Cable TV becoming the next technology to go away? With the rising costs of Cable many people are turning to web-based sources for TV and Movie content. You can go to websites now that are completely devoted virtually commercial free content.

Makes you think about how fast things are changing in the world.

Resource Gathering: Revisited

How are you looking for, and organizing your resources? Are you going to Google, Digg, Diigo, Delicious, or other products. Why not try another resource that will pull in from all of these sites to bring you all the resources at once. Try Thought Ark to perform your searches to gather in information from all of your sources. Once you have completed your searches you can then take the results an create your citations and apply to your research and projects.

Some of the features that are available from Thought Ark are:
  • Store and share collection of saved bibliographic searches.
  • Value resources based on usage
  • Paper writing and citing interface
  • Paper publishing
  • Comments on resources and published papers

Developed by a team comprised of students from Purdue University's TLT department along with Dr. Sonrin Matei, Thought Ark is an open source "free" utility to allows you to determine bibliographic resources through a collaborative space that also gives you the ability to identify resources you search for and those of others whose searches are similar and provide you the opportunity to utilize their results.

Now some unfortunate news, even though you can go directly to the site and use it just like any other search engine, you have to create a login to store your search results and to use some of the advanced features of the site. Once you create your login, I would suggest making it something that you are use to, then you have the ability to save and share resources, as well as to create Classes and Papers that you post onto the site.