Thinking about the ethical care of information, knowledge, culture, and what we do for societies over a very long time.
Last Friday night, I watched the new documentary, Paywall: The Business of Scholarship. If you’re involved in research, scholarly communication, or even just concerned with the availability of knowledge (especially as it results from public funding), then I recommend watching this film. You can easily stream it and, in-line with its subject matter, it will not cost you anything.
Continue reading “Paywall Is A Compelling Documentary, Advocates OA”
The Mastodon social network system is the most promising advance I’ve seen recently toward establishing a better, more compelling social networking system.
I’ll explain why I think it’s worth leaving closed networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, etc. for Mastodon. I’d also like to say a little about how Mastodon works and mention something nice for the academic community. Perhaps you use something like Academia.edu or ResearchGate? Or just a general purpose social network? Then perhaps you should know about some other options. But first, what is Mastodon.
[Note: I’ve updated this several times since originally posting it, as things shift and more people use Mastodon. Most recent edit: 1 November 2022.] Continue reading “Switch to a Mastodon Social Network”
Newsblur (www.newsblur.com) is a Web-based RSS feed reading service. This is a review of how I found the service useful while working on some competitive intelligence (CI). It’s convenient and conducive for tracking issues, trends, commentary, and news.
Newsblur has a set of features that I find make it worth paying for an annual subscription (it also offers a no-cost option). I’ve long used RSS readers, initially preferring desktop readers like Akregator or RSSOwl. The quantity of feeds that I follow is so large now that it can take desktop readers a long time to update, whereas Web services can use their resources more efficiently to deliver the feed content. I currently use Newsblur to follow about 1300 feeds but I’ll just cover a few examples in the context of how it might be used in CI work. Continue reading “Newsblur as an Intelligent Agent Used for CI”