I’ve heard for a while that Microsoft plans to produce a single search tool that finds data on your hard disk and on the Internet but I have always assumed they meant to deliver it in their next operating system (Longhorn) in 2006. Now according to Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft’s MSN division it seems this technology will be released within 12 months. Apple also plans to incorporate this kind of search in its OS but “as with Windows”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_search_engines.html#001061 third party apps for Mac OS X are “already available”:http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64070,00.html to search your hard disk.

Here’s something truly hair-raising I’m glad I didn’t know about at the time. Remember in all those movies where the nuclear missiles require a top-secret code to launch? It turns out for about a decade in the US the secret code was 00000000. Apparently, ‘Strategic Air Command remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders.’

An article from the Chicago Tribune about how a neighbourhood email list helped bring neighbours together. “Keith Hampton”:http://mysocialnetwork.net/’s new research appears to “show the same thing”:http://web.mit.edu/giving/spectrum/spring04/internet-connection.html but with a caveat (not noted in the article about it I just linked to). From what I remember of a presentation he gave a while ago online-enhanced networking only seems to take place in areas already conducive to neighbor to neighbor contact – when for example it was tried in an urban apartment block it didn’t take off.

There was a similar earlier article about a virtual community in Orange Country I “blogged about”:https://blog.org/archives/cat_virtual_communities.html#000949 but the LA Times’ link no longer works (curse them!).

A plugin for Movable Type weblogs that allows you to send out notifications to subscribed users when a new comment is posted to an entry to which they have subscribed. This works well with message boards that employ it. I hope “WordPress”:http://www.wordpress.org/ implements the same thing as I am planning to migrate to it shortly (I like the nested categories and the ability to post password-protected posts).

An academic study on “adult learners and how they search for information”:http://www.elearningeuropa.info/doc.php?lng=1&id=5075&doclng=1&p3=1 reveals much I could have guessed but some new things too.

Only in three out of the fifty scenarios performed, the participants (one different in each case) visited a second Web page of alternatives produced by the search engine. In no case did the participants check more than eight websites, and in twenty cases out of the total fifty they only checked one website.

It also backs up what I suspected/feared about search engine use – the illusion that it is easy causes most people not to bother to invest the time to learn how to do it well. As they said:

Computer programmes, like the use of search engines appear as something not worthy to make the effort of learning. An apparent intuitive handling encourages this way of thinking. However, intuition depends on what is known and with what analogies can be built. If the analogies are incorrect, then the use of software will inevitably lead to disorientation

The full report is at “SEEKS”:http://www.seeks-it.net/.

Thanks to Pandia for providing a link and a summary of the results

In light of “this report”:http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2014183 which suggests a quarter of students admit to plagiarising – and almost all of them are getting away with it – here are some UK anti-plagiarism resources.

How did it take me this long to find “Piled Higher and Deeper”:http://www.phdcomics.com/? Written out of Stanford it often seems to speak directly to me… I haven’t read through them all (the archive dates back to 1997) but already several have appealed to me like “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=472 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=47 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=463 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=453 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=302 or “this”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=360 or the series starting “here”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=408.

Rather than wallowing in despair after reading this strip for a while, it might be worthwhile to join “PHinisheD”:http://www.phinished.org/ – a virtual community for people working on their PhDs – or if you are at the LSE “LSE-PhDNet”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LSE-PhDnet/ (think I found another one earlier on too but have forgotten its address). Also see this “guide to professional skills for PhDs”:http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/network.html.

Thanks Kylie for the links

The latest beta version of “Skype”:http://www.skype.com/ – the popular phone software which lets you conduct free calls between PCs anywhere on the Internet – now lets you dial any regular telephone in the world too. It’s not for free but doesn’t cost much (land lines in most industrialised countries seem to cost Eur 0.012/$.014 a minute, though calling most mobiles costs much more).

The “Free World Dialup”:http://www.freeworldialup.com/ network (accessible via “various software packages”:http://www.freeworldialup.com/support/software_downloads) used to offer free calls to ‘normal’ phones as well as free PC to PC calls – it may still for all I know – but it is rather tricky to set up, while Skype is known for its straightforward installation. I haven’t tried either myself recently so caveat downloader.

The MSN Sandbox where Microsoft showcases its Internet content-related technologies (similar to “Google Labs”:http://labs.google.com/) now has a preview edition of Microsoft’s new “search engine”:http://techpreview.search.msn.com/. While it works there are no special features I can see or advanced search syntax to try out at the moment.

Having come back home from holiday to an in-box which I have now managed to reduce to ‘only’ 500 messages I have some sympathy for “Lawrence Lessig”:http://www.lessig.org/blog/’s novel ‘solution’ to email overload. He emailed all the people he had yet to respond to and told them he was declaring email bankruptcy and wasn’t going to reply to any of the messages unless those who had emailed him before felt it was important enough to email him again.

It is certainly hard to know what to do with those emails that don’t have to be dealt with immediately but don’t seem unimportant enough to throw away at once. I believe you should take time once a week to ruthlessly scour your inbox of email that is now outdated on the grounds that if you didn’t answer it within a week you probably won’t. But I confess I haven’t done it. In fact I have email in my inbasket from the start of 2003 (and rough blog postings I have stored but not posted dating back to June 2003). Do as I say not as I do!