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25 Essential Web Resources for Researchers and Students

admin — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:50:00 +0000

These are the sites that I found very useful to conduct my research. Due to the nature of my research, these bookmarks may be technology oriented, so do not blame me for that. If you have a good site / web tool that you think is worthy, mention in the comments section.

1. Find a PhD

FindaPhd is the lucky place where you find fellow geeks and nerds, a pretty busy Postgraduate Forum provides advices and opinions on your queries about research life and how to find funds, scholarships. Upon the success of this site, two new sites FindaMasters and FindaPostDoc have been started and serving the student researchers actively busy exchange of advice and opinion on PhD life.

2. Google Book Search

You know Google book search exists, but have you tried citing from those books. Often, I had to produce a write-up, essay or the last-minute paper for a conference. When I dotn have enough time to pull out a strong reference from books, I issue a Google book search, up comes the results from book with snippets view showing paragraphs and texts that I were exactly looking for. I paraphrase them and correctly reference them. Neat hack.

3. Book Finder

If you are looking for any kind of book, whether it is rare or out-of-print, specific edition – You will find it at Bookfinder. Over 125 millions book titles to search, you can actually buy new and old-books from this site. They achieve by doing a search through every major catalog available online.

4. Free Note-taking

Mynoteit is a web service that you need to manage all writing works at uni. With mynoteit, you can upload office documents, scanned notes and audio lectures at one place. Yuo can access them at will with even with your mobile.You can join groups of students who are taking the similar subject all over the world. You can bookmark your assignment dates, deadlines at one place.

5. Re”Search Engine”

Scirus is a popular search engine among research community. Scirus searches for scientific information with its comprehensive trusted network of article bases like Science Direct, PubMed and other journal databases. The results are highly relevant and you can choose the keywords used by authors to search for relevant scientific domain. You get the results in three categories, journal results, preferred web results and web results. If you try Scirus once, you will stick to it. It saved me lot of my research time.

6. Digital Theses Networks

Australia is probably, the only country where every research student is asked to deposit a digital copy of their theses to a national database for a common cause. The Australasian Digital Theses Program is very popular among the researchers as every university in Australia is participating in it. A similar initiative is being carried out at the international level, which is PhDData.org – a 5 year old program which aims to collect the research theses from the universities around the world. There is also another initiative named “Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations” that looks promising as well.

7. Bibliography made easy

It’s a pain to follow the style guide of various journal styles when you are writing a paper. Tools such as EndNote help in maintaining your database of references. If you are looking for an online tool, then Ottobib is a really useful. You can store, organize your references, and Ottobib will format it to a style when you need. There is another web service that does a similar job , which is Easybib.

8. Job portals for researchers

Monster has a special site Phd jobs that lists research oriented jobs. There are sites where you can find Policy jobs, Political jobs, Ethical jobs, Market Research jobs, Museum jobs, PostDoc jobs, Law jobs and Human Rights jobs. All these sites provide world-wide listings of opportunities specific to researchers.

9. Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations

The benefits of Google Docs are obvious, you can maintain your documents and edit on the run. Particularly useful when you are traveling for field visits and you do not have access to your favourite Desktop Office applications. I used to upload a copy of my thesis chapters in Google Docs and share it with my supervisor. He would comment and add suggestions. If you are thinking of developing a document with your peer researchers – across boundaries, you have to use this. No more copying drafts, final versions and confusions on which one is what. With the added spreadsheets and presentations, it is a cool collection of tools for storing documents on the move.

10. List Sharing

Tadalist is about having a to-do list on the web. You can share between your supervisors to track your progress and communicate with your fellow researchers to meet the research deadlines or to organise a holiday.

11. Phd Comics

We are researchers, so what. We need fun, right? I have seen no other humour site that caters exclusive to researchers and PhD students life. PhDComics is awesome because, the site was started by a student and has plenty of cartoon strips on any conceivable aspect of Phd life.

12. Tracks almost everything

An easy way to track all the favourite blogs / research web sites in my subject is to use Google Reader. I use the ‘Star’ function to mark the essential posts, and use them later. A thousand eyes are looking for me and blogging things that are important and I follow them at one place with my reader. Great help – is it not?

13. Research Channel

Research channel is a site that offers videos on various research topics. Research Channel functions as a nonprofit media company with a mission to connect the world research community with latest developments, insights and discoveries across the globe. Anyone can watch the videos for free. But, if you are a researcher or research organisation who wish to contribute video content, you have to apply for a membership to the research channel. All the video submissions are strictly moderated.

14. Wikipedia

Often, the power of Wikipedia is grossly under-rated by the research people, who dismiss it based on the credibility. Well, that is an acceptable fact but from Wikipedia, you will get to know about a human view of a topic. You may get to know the latest happenings or the first hand information on a cutting-edge technology in your field (equivalent of gossips in the film industry).

15. MIT Web

Massachusetts institute of technology maintains a comprehensive web portal on the current research happenings at MIT and covers news and research events that affect humanity. The research covers any conceivable topic under various categories .

16. Eduforge – Free software for education

Just what Sourcefourge did for a programming and application development, eduforge does it for research community. It provides a free, open access to share ideas, form collaborative research groups, content and software development to solve specific research problems.

17. SuTree – Watch and learn

SuTree is a YouTube stye video site for Do-It-Yourself projects. You can watch videos and learn rather than reading plain texts and procedures. You can learn something new, every day. SuTree does not host your videos, users host them on youtube or google videos and provide a link and embed the videos here. These videos are voted by the community and the editors hand-pick them and monitor to keep the scum out of the site.

18. Wridea – Free ideas

Wridea is the place where ideas get into shape. You can record your ideas, browse others’ ideas, rate them, improve them and what not. The design and performance of the site is awesome and you can create unlimited pages for free. Liberate your ideas and watch them grow.

19. World Lecture Hall

World Lecture Hall is the place where you can find course materials developed by the teaching faculty around the world in almost any language. Some courses are only available online, but most of them can be downloaded for offline use. It is a great collection of lectures – a good bookmark.

Academic Materials can also be found at this blog post – 134 free academic podcasts organised by topics.

20. University Channel

University Channel is another directory of lectures (videos, audio and text presentations) developed and hosted by Princeton university. it not only lists the academic lectures and presentations, but also some of the key public affairs lectures, panel discussions and events from the best industrial conferences and academic institutions all over the world.

21. Backpackit- organize your life

You have to experience Backpackit to believe it – this site will be tremendously helpful for keeping track of your research developments. You can track your tasks, references (who said what – over phone / email), appointments, action items etc. If you are looking for an efficient organizing tool, this is the one for you.

22. FreeMind – Free mind maps

If you are looking for a tool to create and organize your thoughts and ideas, mind maps are the best way. With freemind – a java based open source program, you can develop complex yet, easy to organize mindmaps.

23. Free Data and Texts

Freelunch.com – Free economic data for you to download
Geographic Data – Free geographic data (worldwide)
World Bank Economy – Data collected and organised by the World Bank
Project Gutenburg – Free literature (almost any subject)
Bibliomania – free literature online
Literature collection – free literature
Citeseer – Massive resource for papers related to Computer Science.
Algorithms Base – Over 250 algorithms at one place
Tree of Life – Large Biology project that aims to organize the evolution of life.

24. Free Newspaper Archive

Paper of Record is the largest newspaper archive on the web. You can get snapshots of news articles from leading newspapers of the world from pre-1600 era to the current date. You can search through the archive and download the clips as images (gif). You have a quota of 250 mb every day.

25. Citations Database

Refbase is the place where people are sharing their citations and organising them at one place. You can download a copy of the refbase on your PC and connect to the server periodically to update them. Also try CiteSeer for searching through millions of citations.

Bonus Resources:

1. Find quotations

With ThinkExist, you can find a nice quotes for your thesis and papers. The quote is accompanied by the essential information about the author/speaker which will be useful to reference.

2. Research webpages

Research pages at Major companies who likes to share their ongoing developments and trials:

Google Research Blog
Research at Philips
Sun Research
Microsoft Research
IBM Research centre
Yahoo Research Labs
Honda Research
GE Global Research
General Motors Collaborative research centre
Sports Research Centre, Canada

3. All Biographies

Find anyone’s biography here – you can search by a keyword, birth date or place of birth.

Did I miss anything? Which sites are useful for conducting researches?

There are many ways and resources through which one can get information about different online courses. There is lot of material available about 642-503 courses on Google. One can also check Wikipedia for PMI-001 course information. If one is looking for hardcopy or soft copy of 642-825 courses then one can get it on book finder website. Free material of 642-901 courses is also available on free note-taking site. People who are interested in smart business communication systems 650-178 course then they can get interactive test guides on Eduforge – Free software for education site. The world lecture hall site can give free lectures of different course like 70-272 and so on. If you are interested in 70-270 course then its helping guide can easily be searched on yahoo. So there are so any sites from where one can get many helping guide for these courses and thus make exams easy to pass.

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An Anti-social Network is here

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:20:00 +0000

Web 2.0.

Social Network.

Wisdom of Crowds.

These are few buzzwords that have become obsolete because of their overuse. Welcome to isolation.

Isolator , a ~~social~~ personal ~~network~~ anti-network for pure fun. The creator of Isolator will answer no more questions other than those found on their faq page.

There are more than 1000+ social network sites and applications available on the web and you can not easily differentiate between them. Here’s is a megalist of social networks and social web applications available on the web. Yep, you can download it as a spreadsheet.

But, on a serious note, do you know how many people on the internet actively uses at least one social network?

You will be in a shock to know this – just under 7% of all the internet traffic goes to social networks.

Looks like we are living in a bubble, huh? Come on people, join us – dont get left behind.

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Cute Hanging Toys for your Desk PC (PICS)

admin — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:37:00 +0000

These small toys can help to relive the work stress. I dont know where you can find them. Stick them around to fuel some fun into your workplace environment.

Superman takes over!

SUPERMAN can do anything.

Don’t touch

A cat’s tail can be used as CD holder

Hello, is anyone speaking any secrets out there?

A pig that is trying to bite off.

A cute Honeybee hovering on the Escape Key

Yellow dog hangs over Mouse wire.

Yo yo…!

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Gift your loved ones a Real Star! Well, sorta..

admin — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 04:37:00 +0000

Yes, at least thats how the companies who ‘specialize in naming the stars‘ say to you. One of my friend said, he bought a real star for her girl friend for her birthday. I said, ‘A real star? You must be kidding, dude!’. He replied, ‘ Yes, even the company is approved by NASA! (oh buggers!)’ and went on and on. At least, his girl friend believes in the “special gift” given by her boy friend.

I did a bit of research – and found out this. The International Astronomical Union is the official body who can assign name to a star – they do their duty as and when a star is found in the galaxy. In fact, the IAU provides a technical number for each star – not a fancy name. So, none of the companies that proclaim that you can buy a star and name it after anything you like is technically false propaganda.

Here’s what IAU says in its website about the star selling companies.

“As an international scientific organization, the IAU dissociates itself entirely from the commercial practice of “selling” fictitious star names or “real estate” on other planets or moons in the Solar System. Accordingly, the IAU maintains no list of the (several competing) enterprises in this business in individual countries of the world. Readers wanting to contact such enterprises despite the explanations given below should search commercial directories in their country of origin.”

Forget these facts, people are not worrying about them at all. So far thousands of people have bought stars for their loved ones and named after them. Did Nicole Kidman actually bought a star and named as “forever Tom”?

Some star naming companies are honest in saying that it is ‘unofficial’, many are faking it actually.

Now, will you buy or name a star for your loved ones?

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12 More tips to become Famous in Flickr: Part 2

admin — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 03:10:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post, Getting Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users , which provided some tips and tricks on using flickr - the most-loved photo sharing tool on the web – and becoming popular with it. I want to provide some more tips in this second post.

1. Essential things, First
Now, flickr requires a valid yahoo account (username and password) to login to it. As a newbie, you may be disappointed by the less number of views, comments on your uploaded photos. Select 10 best (or at least near best) photos of yours and upload them to flickr. By default, flickr uses your filename as the title of your photo – like this one, ‘DSC4506′ for a photo that you shot using your Point and Shoot camera. After uploading, flickr will ask you enter a title and description for each photo. Add a catchy title and a small description to provide more information on the photo. Additionally, tags can be added to each photo describing the location where you shot this photo, objects, the way you describe the photo and the meaning (story) the photo tries to convey. Tags are the keywords with which people will find your images and so you will add more descriptive tags (no inappropriate tags, please).

2. Write testimonials
I know it is difficult to start with the first testimonial, but, once you start writing one for your close friend. Others will follow. Browse through the photos of a contact and genuinely take notice of their style and what you appreciate in their flickr photo stream (some photos, common theme or lighting style).

3.Take part in flickr community discussions
Ask genuine questions or provide answers, opinions. Get involved in the discussion. There are plenty of groups specific to your camera, subject, geography or culture.

4. Attend flickr meets – Find your local group and join them. Find out when they are having a get-together. Visit and get to know them personally, share your flickr story.

5. Browse the Latest Photos from your Contacts List – Make a habit to comment on the latest photos posted by your contacts. Do it once a week. If you have too many contacts, keep the option of showing one photo per user (in your Contacts List). If you have very little time, find good photos among them and add them as your favourite.

6. Publish your love
You can get a composite image (mosaic) of all your contacts on a single page by following flickr fun buddies page (you must be logged into flickr when you click on the link). Publish your favourite photos once in a while as a composite image. You can visit http://bighugelabs.com/flickr to get various flickr toys – but, you can get your mosaics of your favourites using this mosaic tool.

7. Use GreaseMonkey scripts
A collection of useful scripts for flickr users can save you time and bring in pleasure to your flickr experience. You can do lot in less time and these scripts installed with Firefox browser will increase your productivity.

8. License your photos
If I have to attribute one reason for my popularity (apart from my lovely flickr friends who leave beautiful comments), then it is the Creative commons licensing. Share your photos to the world – so that people can use your photos in their blogs and web pages ( of course with a link back to your photo stream).

9. Concerned about image thefts?
I always resize all my images to 800 by 600 pixels before I upload them to flickr – so, with that small size and 72 dpi, it is hardly any use for publication purposes. If people need high quality images, I can supply them.

10. Flickr swap
Swap your photos with fellow flickrites. Send a flickrmail if any of your contact would like to exchange photos with you. You can exchange postal addresses.

11. Take your flickr photos with you
With Moo cards, you could print 100 of your photos for US $24 and mailed to you. You can choose to include your address, flickr url on the back of the moo card to use them as your business cards.

12. Publish your flickr RSS feeds
With social networks, publish your photo feed. Orkut, Tumblr, Facebook and Ziki allows you to add your photo stream as RSS feeds. All you need to do is point your flickr RSS feed url that can be found on the bottom page of your flickr main page when you are logged in and it will look like this http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=46458074@N00&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

Just use the RSS feed url at those services and forget it. As you upload new photos, they get updated in these places as well. Cool, huh?

Get famous in flickr with these tips. If you have got some tip, share here in the comments section.

How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Get Famous in Flickr: Killer tips for Flickr users

25 Useful scripts for Flickr users that make your more productive

How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

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400th Post:50 Best Posts from the ‘How to Live Online’ blog

admin — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:01:00 +0000

This blog has reached the magical 400. 400 blog posts in How to Live Online. I am taking a break of 7 days (more or less) and would be returning with fresh ideas and blog posts.

Meanwhile, here are the best 50 posts from the How to Live Online blog. Read them today, tommorrow and on the day after.

Stay beautiful!

1. 101 fun things to do online – a list of fun and useful web services available online for you to try

2. How do you send anonymous email messages? – just in case, if you need to.

3. 241 fun things to to online! – another exhaustive list of things to get when you are bored.

4. 7 Best Articles on "How to Make Money with your Blog" - I mean, the very best. They are enough to make money online.

5. Send FREE SMS to any mobile – Yes, absolutely free.

6. Save your blog posts to your PC – How to backup all your blog posts from Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad?

7. Some of the improvements are well on their way – but, Digg has to improve – Why Digg is a failure (as of now) and how it can be improved?

8. Stop wasting your time searching for the movies you will like -Find movies worth watching

9. Do you want to become popular in Orkut – How I built an Orkut Empire in 30 days?

10. Thinking of buying your first digital camera? – Which digital camera to buy? An Easy-to-use 3 step Guide

11. Simple guide to include Adsense code inside New Blogger (in between blog posts) -How to insert Adsense Code into New Blogger

12. How to use Flickr in a productive way? – 25 Useful scripts for Flickr users

13. How to create a viral video campaign for FREE – 9 Tips to become Popular with Youtube Videos

14. Now you can get a "CAPTCHA" program for your website FREE -How to protect your email-id with a free Captcha when you publish on a webpage?

15. Provide full RSS feeds for your readers (they are loving it!) -How to provide Full RSS feeds from New Blogger

16. Like this blog, how do I insert Adesne ads into the blog content – How to insert Adsense Code into New Blogger

17. How I took 25 months to earn the first $100 from Google Adsense – The mistakes I made and the lesson I learnt as a Adsense Publisher. Thank God, I made the next $100 in few days.

18. Build a custom Search Engine and Make some Money with Google Adsense – Customised search engines are the next big thing, jump in and make money early.

19. Earn a Guranteed income from Paid Reviews: at least $150 a month – Failing with Google Adsense and Affiliates? Come home to paid blogging. I will show how you can make money and maintain a dignity as a blogger.

20. How much did I earn from working on the Internet: Report – Yes, I have crossed A$1000 this year alone. Here’s my detailed earnings report for you.

21. Schedule and Publish blog posts on a future date – A killer hack for Blogspot users, now you can also turn a professional blogger by writing and posting your blog posts working on weekends.

22. The visitors of your blog know how to improve your blog: 7 tips to make them speak – 90% of your visitors have an opinion on your blog that you can use it to improve your blog.

23. Get a custom domain with Blogger for maximum benefits: 10 reasons why it is good for you – Do you know the benefits of a custom domain with Blogger blog. It wont cost much but it’s worth every penny.

24. A simple hack to add Recent Posts and Recent Comments to a New Blogger Blog – Simple but quick hack to show Recent posts and comments in a New Blogger blog.

25. How to get more Popular and Famous in Flickr: 9 Killer Tips for Flickr newbies – Do you want to get more comments, more favourites, more friends in Flickr? Follow me.

26. The Ultimate Collection for Facebook users:Tools, Videos and Scripts – A must have collection for facebook users and newbies.

27. Let your Global customers find you:Put your Small Business on Google Maps – Easy steps to add your business on Google Maps for FREE.

28. Ten mistakes most of the web 2.0 starters make: How to correct them – Many of the web companies (start-ups) make these mistakes. Do they learn from them?

29. Five Newest Social Web Services and Applications – Will they make your life easy?

30. StumbleUpon is better than Digg for your Blog’s Growth – 8 reasons why StumbleUpon is better for your blog. This blog post is most read blog post in the month of June with more than 30,000 readers and 40 comments.

31. Do you want to be a Pro Blogger? 23 things you should know about Google Analytics that will help you to build massive traffic for your site

32. Do you know what most people do on the web?: See this picture - Research on what people do by age-group wise.

33. 5 funny websites to make you laugh - bookmark them , in case if you have not done.

34. Imagine Bush, Borat and God in MySpace: Youtube Videos to make you laugh - hilarious collection.

35. History of Web 2.0 – A hilarious cartoon collection.

36.How to add a Favicon for your Blog: A Quick & Easy 3 Step Guide- Add a cute favicon for your site.

37. Are you going to buy the Apple iPhone or Not? – 11 things that you need to check before you fall for iPhone.

38. 10 Freshest and Most Useful FireFox extensions to enrich your browsing experience – Become a power user on the web.

39. How to create a Site Map for your Blog – An easy way to create site maps for FREE.

40. Do you have knowledge in something? Earn money with it – Share your expertise and make money: weRlive.com Review

41. Get on top of ranking web services – Alexa Pagerank, Technorati Rank and Google Pagerank for Newbies:Tips to improve your blog’s rank

42. Screenshots from 2004 to 2007 – How Flickr has changed since 2004:Screenshots Timeline

43. A comic, informative video on YourTube success – A brief history of YouTube:3 Minute video

44. What is LZZR linking and will it increase your pagerank? – What LZZR linking will do for you?

45. What it takes to become a Pro Blogger? – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers:Tips for becoming a Problogger

46. An essential bookmark for people who would like to master Google – Search Google like a Pro:An Ultimate Guide

47. A hilarious picture – Funny:Jaguar S-Type Fully covered with Post-it Notes

48. How can you generate a Complete A-Z list of your Blog Posts?

49. Hilarious Hack: How to print a Microsoft Word Document without a Printer (Picture)

50. How to get into Flickr Explore? (Revised)

Be nice. Leave a comment

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Funny:Jaguar S-Type Fully covered with Post-it Notes

admin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:02:00 +0000

A colleague bought a $60,000 toy, Jaguar S-Type. So, the co-workers decide to play a prank on his car.

How? By pasting millions of post-it-notes.

Ouch, that hurts (does it).

Credits: a digg user lostcannon

Digg this story, if you like

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What lies inside a Web Developer’s Brain? Illustration

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 03:21:00 +0000

from The Mind of a Web Developer: An Illustrated Diagram

Matt who designed this illustration runs Mingle² is a completely free online dating website built with one goal in mind: making online dating easy, fun and accessible to everyone.

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Cartoon:History of Blogs

admin — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 19:06:00 +0000

twitter cartoon by Hugh; Gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”

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Can you Imagine these Four people on MySpace:Cool and Funny Videos

admin — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 06:41:00 +0000

1. Borat on MySpace

2. What if God had a Myspace?

3. Myspace vs. Facebook

4. George Bush on MySpace – SuperNews

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