Useful Links

How can I design better charts, graphs and information displays?

One place to start in designing better charts and graphs is with the work of Edward Tufte.

If you have any other suggestions, please add them. Thanks

GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location and Tone

April 2013: Researchers have released the GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location and Tone dataset which promises to be an important addition to the social science research community.

In a blog post entitled, The Future of Political Science Just Showed Up, Jay Ulfelder, a Poli Sci researcher, writes, “I suspect this is going to be the data set that launches a thousand dissertations.”

The full dataset contains more than 200 million global events from 1979 to mid-2012 and is encoded in the CAMEO — Conflict and Mediation Event Observations — coding scheme.

For people interested in exploring this data now, U Penn has released a reduced set of the data. Whereas the full data set contains more than 60 attributes, the reduced set offers only 12 attributes. The full list of attributes can be found in the appendix to Philip Schrodt and Kalev Leetaru’s paper: GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location and Tone, 1979-2012.

The reduced data set and some sample Python and R code can be downloaded here http://eventdata.psu.edu/data.dir/GDELT.1979-2012.reduced.zip

What are some good workflow tools/project management’s tools and resources available for us to use?

There are a variety of resources out there available for project management and workflow. Some of the primarily used ones include, but are not limited to: Redmine, Basecamp, MS Project, Podio, Tello, and Yammer.

Redmine: Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database. Redmine is open source and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 (GPL). It includes a variety of features such as multiple projects support, flexible issue tracking system, Gantt chart and calendar, Per project wiki/forums, Multiple LDAP authentication support, etc.

More information on Redmine can be found here: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki

Basecamp: Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool developed by 37signals and launched in 2004. The Ruby on Rails framework was extracted from the Basecamp project. Basecamp offers to-do lists, wiki-style web-based text documents, milestone management, file sharing, time tracking, and a messaging system. It also offers integration with 37signals’ own Campfire product.

More information on Basecamp can be found here: www.basecamp.com

Microsoft Project: Microsoft Project is a project management software program, developed and sold by Microsoft, which is designed to assist a project manager in developing a plan, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing the budget, and analyzing workloads.

More information on Microsoft Project can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/project-management.aspx

Podio: Podio, now part of Citrix Systems, is an online work platform with a new take on how everyday work gets done. Podio gives people more power than ever before to manage their work in their own way and is trusted by thousands of teams, companies and organizations worldwide. Podio users create workspaces to collaborate with specific groups of people, use an Employee Network for company-wide communication across departments and locations, and get their work done using Podio Apps. Anyone can build their own Podio Apps without any technical skills, and can choose from hundreds of readily available, free apps in Podio’s App Market. These apps add structure to any business process or project and are connected to social, collaborative activity streams used for commenting and discussion.

More information on Podio can be found here: https://company.podio.com/about

Tello: Tello is an innovative SaaS and mobile application company committed to helping businesses everywhere by simplifying the latest mobile technologies. PassTools is the easiest way for businesses to build and manage passes for Apple® Passbook®. Whether the customer is an independent store owner looking to create a simple coupon, or an established airlines looking for an industrial strength electronic board pass for Passbook, PassTools provides everything businesses need to support Apple Passbook today. PassTools is built by Tello, Inc. Tello was founded in 2010 in Palo Alto, California by experienced entrepreneur Joe Beninato, and is backed by a world-class group of investors including True Ventures and Bullpen Capital.
More information on Tello can be found here: https://www.tello.com/about

Yammer: Yammer is a secure, private social network for your company. Yammer empowers employees to be more productive and successful by enabling them to collaborate easily, make smarter decisions faster, and self-organize into teams to take on any business challenge. It is a new way of working that naturally drives business alignment and agility, reduces cycle times, engages employees and improves relationships with customers and partners.

More information on Yammer can be found here: https://www.yammer.com/about/

I’m interested in learning about a variety of types of software and programs that would be considere

LearnIt.ucla.edu is exactly what you are looking for. There are many links to all the IT resource options such as www.Lynda.com, Safari Books Online, Microsoft IT Academy, UCLA on iTunes, and the UCLA Knowledgebase. All of these resources offer basic and general knowledge for the basic software and programs that every individual should be proficient with. LearnIt.ucla.edu has also prepared “bundles,” or lists of training resources to bring you up to speed on certain technology topics.

see also, Technical Training and Development

Lynda.com Playlists

Lynda.com has a great feature to assist in organizing all the great course one will want to take with playlists.

Playlists can be created in the iOS app or the web browser version of Lynda.com. It can be more accessible in the iOS app, however the web browser version eases the list arrangement & organization more efficiently. As always, your experience may vary.

The feature is new as of 01/2013:
http://blog.lynda.com/2013/01/09/introducing-lynda-com-playlists/

Note: Courses may be part of multiple playlists

Lynda.com On-The-Go, iOS App

For iPhone and iPad users, Lynda.com has an iOS app to enjoy courses while on-the-go.

The app is free to download, but you must log in to use it.
Select “Web Portal Access” and enter “ucla.edu”, then press the go button. You will be prompted for your UCLA Logon ID credentials.

Notably absent at this time are subtitles and transcripts.

See also:

Digital Research Tools

Please add other tools or registries you know of. Thanks.

Digital Public Library of America

Free web content: sounds/sound effects you can add to your non-commercial sites

Reprinted from the Internet Scout (http://scout.wisc.edu)

http://www.soundgator.com/
If you are looking for sound effects for just about any situation, look no further than the solid aural content right here at the SoundGator website. The offerings here are contained in 26 different categories, including Household Sounds, Fire Sound Effects, Drink Sound Effects, and Crowd Sound Effects. Visitors can search all of the effects as they see fit or browse by categories that include Recently Added and Most Discussed. The materials here are available to embed or download for personal use.

Note: Be sure to read the User License and Terms of Use links in the footer.

What are some cost-efficient resources available for off-campus/online data storage?

Google Drive and Amazon Cloud both provide 5GB of free storage. Google Drive’s pricing options ranges from 25GB – 16 TB costing $2.49 – $749.99 monthly (currently no yearly payment plan available). Amazon Cloud’s pricing options ranges from 20GB – 1000GB (1 TB) costing $10.00 – $500.00 a year.

Another great option is Microsoft SkyDrive, which provides you with 7GB of free storage. Upgrades range from 20GB – 100GB costing $10 – $50 a year.

For more specific pricing information, please refer to the following links:
Google Drive: http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2375123
Amazon Cloud: https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/manage?encoding=UTF8&ref_=amb_link_3652102422
Microsoft SkyDrive: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/compare

Accessing Pew Research Data

Most of the Pew Research Center survey and other quantitative data is freely available for secondary analysis by researchers. (Experience with SPSS, SAS, or STATA software is helpful.)

http://www.pewresearch.org/2013/04/18/how-to-access-pew-research-datasets/

Creating Spherical Panoramic Visuals

Linux Tools for Digital Imaging, Graphics and Spherical Panoramic Photography

Digital photographic image technology, representations, formats, Linux software tools for image viewing, resizing, editing, graphics manipulation, panoramic stitching and spherical panoramic photography. Most of the image processing tools discussed are Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) based tools and all are available on the Linux platform.

Greg Ippolito has a great overview for the imaging, photography, software, and hardware need for 360 degree panoramic visuals:

Collection of spherical panoramic visuals for village, ski resorts, off piste, and backcountry ski areas:

Earth Engine from Google

" Google Earth Engine brings together the world’s satellite imagery — trillions of scientific measurements dating back almost 40 years — and makes it available online with tools for scientists, independent researchers, and nations to mine this massive warehouse of data to detect changes, map trends and quantify differences on the Earth’s surface. Applications include: detecting deforestation, classifying land cover, estimating forest biomass and carbon, and mapping the world’s roadless areas. "

see also,

David Levine eBook

Ex-UCLA Econ Professor David M. Levin’s book is free for Kindle, IOS and Android devices:

http://www.amazon.com/Even-You-Learn-Statistics-ebook/dp/B006OJ2O5A

Book title is:

“Even You Can Learn Statistics: A Guide for Everyone Who Has Ever Been Afraid of Statistics, Enhanced Edition”

It is self-paced, and each chapter has “test”. You can read it on any browser once download from https://read.amazon.com.

"The Cloud" Defined

According to the official NIST definition, “cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

NIST has several reference documents in its Cloud Computing subject area—

Another perspective relating possible confusion with virtualization—

Free Microsoft e-Books

By way of Eric Ligman, Microsoft has made available a large number of free eBooks in multiple formats across a wide variety of topics—

Older links—

Alternate link—

Free Powershell eBooks

Great list of free Powershell ebooks and additional PS resources—

Are there any good collaboration authoring/file sharing tools or resources available online?

There are a variety of great tools including but not limited to Google Docs, Dropbox, and Box.net.

Google Docs is a FREE web-based word processor and data storage service offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online and collaborate with other users in real time. Users can track who made changes, and when, and roll back to any version of the document. They can also give or restrict permissions for others to edit or view the document. Users can save documents on the Google servers by creating them in the application, importing them via the web interface, or sending them via email. Google Docs will take a variety of document formats. There are also templates available within the application. Some new features include: sharing drawings, flowcharts, and more! For a more detailed in-depth guide on how to use Google Docs, go to: http://it2020.ucla.edu/digital-citizens/files/10-minutes-resource-guides/Google%20Docs.pdf

Dropbox is software tool that syncs your files online and on across your computers. There are multiple ways to save your files. Upload them to the Dropbox website or you simply install Dropbox on your computer and put your files into your Dropbox. All your files can then be easily accessed online or on any of your other computers where you’ve installed Dropbox (Windows, Mac, and Linux). While Dropbox functions as a storage service, its focus is on synchronization and sharing. It supports revision history, so files deleted from the Dropbox folder may be recovered from any of the synced computers. For a more detailed in-depth guide on how to navigate Dropbox, refer to this link: http://it2020.ucla.edu/digital-citizens/files/10-minutes-resource-guides/Dropbox.pdf

Box lets you store all of your content online, so you can access, manage and share it from anywhere. Box is a simple, scalable and affordable solution to manage documents, media and all your content online. Share files as a link. Sync files on the desktop. It’s file sharing, reinvented. For more information on Box, check out: https://www.box.com/business/features/

Open Data

According to Wikipedia, Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The first article in the list below is just the tip of the iceberg of what data is becoming available on the Internet. All sorts of data, political and otherwise. Feel free to add to the list. This just seems like something UCLA faculty and students can really use.

Has anyone tried Statwing?

Has anyone tried https://www.statwing.com/ It is free for datasets under 1MB and held for less than 24 hours. It claims to make data analysis very simple to do.

Discovered via Internet Scout Report

Please add your experiences or comments or alternatives here. Thanks

Translating Higher Ed-Speak from US to UK

It seems some of the terms are quite different.

http://www.insidenewcity.com/blog/view/translating-higher-ed-speak-from-us-to-uk/

Lenovo Systems Configuration

Lenovo Personal Systems Reference (PSREF) sheets reveal comprehensive information on the features and technical specifications of Lenovo products.

http://www.lenovo.com/psref/

Convert Word Documents to HTML

If the html Microsoft Word gives you is too much, try this conversion site. Based on my one use today, it gave me nice, clean HTML right away.

http://word2cleanhtml.com/

The only problem I had was that it doesn’t want me to paste in html, just the web version.

Apple Repair Agreement

Apple Repair Agreement (ARA):
bq. The AppleCare Repair Agreement adds two years of repair service coverage to Apple’s standard one-year limited warranty, giving you a total of three years of Apple-certified repairs. It also covers qualified repairs that occur at your location and shipping costs for repairs that must be completed at the AppleCare Repair Center.

see also,
http://www.apple.com/support/products/acra/

ARA Pricing UCLA Store Part Number iMac $95 8975488 13” MacBook/Air/Pro $149 9002395 15/17” MacBook Pro $189 9002402 Mac Pro $159 9002386 Mac Mini $79 9002377

Where can I rent SPSS for 6 months or a year?

http://goo.gl/fxZx3

EduBlog Awards Blog

According to their site http://edublogawards.com/ “The purpose of the Edublog awards is to promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media. The best aspects include that it creates a fabulous resource for educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners. It introduces us all to new sites that we might not have found if not for the awards process.”

Starting in 2004, they hold an annual vote for the best blogs in education. Check out the free web tools and other categories.

Where can I find a place to upload and store my data?

There are lots of ways you can store your data for future use. Some things to keep in mind are:

  1. How long do I need to keep my data?
  2. Is my data in a format that can be used again, even if there are software and operating system changes?
  3. Am I required to store my data by a funding agency or legal requirement?
  4. Do I want others to be able to use my data without my help?

If you need to keep your data for more than one or two years; if you might need to deal with software upgrades; if you are required to store your data; or if you want to be able to easily share your data, then you should choose carefully. Selecting a site where your data are preserved is best , but if you just need a place to store stuff for awhile, then there are also some nice free sites.

If you need help deciding, please contact the Social Science Data Archive archivehelp@ssc.ucla.edu.

Microsoft Virtual Academy

Improve your IT skill set and help advance your career with a free, easy to access training portal. Learn at your own pace, focusing on Microsoft technologies, gain points and get recognition.

How do I merge two dropbox accounts together so there is only one?

At the moment you can only run one installation of Dropbox on a single computer and it can only be linked to a single account. Accessing another account from a computer where Dropbox is already installed (or any computer, for that matter) is as easy as logging in as another user through the Dropbox website. Otherwise, you can link accounts together by creating shared folders. Shared folders are designed to allow you to sync files between multiple accounts.

Please refer to the following link on more information regarding sharing folders: https://www.dropbox.com/help/19/en

Academic Conference Posters

Here is a very thorough article on what content to include and how to design a great conference poster:

http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign

Don’t miss these other related KB articles:

Posters in PowerPoint

Campus Mulitimedia Resources

Free On-line course for research data management: MANTRA

Research Data MANTRA http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/ is a course designed for PhD students and others who are planning a research project using digital data.

This is a free on-line course for anyone who needs to manage research data including faculty and students.

On completion of this course you will:

The course covers data management, data protection, data storage, security and preservation, and offers tools and solutions for organizing data.

publisher’s policies on self-archiving

RoMEO “is a searchable database of publisher’s policies regarding the self- archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories. You can use RoMEO to check whether you have the right to publish your papers on your own site.” – http://myresearchrants.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/romeo-searchable-database-of-publishers-policies-on-self-archiving/

Discovered via exceptionally useful mailing list Research Buzz

Has anyone tried Mukurtu?

Has anyone tried Mukurtu CMS. It’s a free and open source platform for managing and sharing digital heritage, built for indigenous communities, archives, libraries and museums." It’s based on Drupal 7, built by UC Berkeley, and a colleague at U. of Arizona told me about it.

Please add your experiences or comments or alternatives here. Thanks

On the Lynda .com tutorial lessons does UCLA have the premium packag?

Yes, UCLA’s Lynda.com license includes access to the exercise files and entire course library.

YouTube Editor

YouTube provides a simplified video editor:

http://www.youtube.com/editor

UCLA also provides a YouTube Channel for departments to upload videos.

Are there any useful existing tools or software for a department or campus unit to create an online suggestion box?

As of right now, www.suggestionox.com is free while it remains in beta. Other sites, like suggestionbox.com, employeesuggestionbox.com, feedbackroad.com, etc. all have monthly fees.

Microsoft TechEd Sessions Videos & Slides

Microsoft provides TechEd session resources for those who have been unable to attends, and as review mechanism for those who did. Videos are in a wide variety of ready to use formats—including MP3 only for music players—and slide decks are frequently made available, as well.

" TechEd provides the most comprehensive technical education across Microsoft’s current and soon-to-release suite of products, solutions and services. "

" Year after year, technology professionals flock to Microsoft TechEd North America to immerse themselves in more than 1,000 learning opportunities that cover an unparalleled breadth and depth of Microsoft technologies. TechEd is an opportunity to get away from all the distractions at the office and really surround yourself in the technologies that are relevant to you and your business. "

Following are the North America events, but the event is held in other regions of the world—

Additional options—

Has anyone tried SQLShare?

Has anyone tried SQLShare? http://escience.washington.edu/sqlshare

Based out of U. Washington, which is where I heard of it, “SQLShare is a database service aimed at removing the obstacles to using relational databases: installation, configuration, schema design, tuning, data ingest, and even application design. You simply upload your data and immediately start querying it.”

Please add your experiences or comments or alternatives here. Thanks

HTML to Wiki Converter

A fast tool for converting HTML into wiki markup.
http://toolserver.org/~diberri/cgi-bin/html2wiki/index.cgi

Useful for converting wysiwyg html output into markup formats of different wikis, including MediaWiki and Confluence.

reverse image search

6 Ways to Tell If a Viral Story Is a Hoax

6 Ways to Tell If a Viral Story Is a Hoax – Sep. 21, 2015 – “Easy ways to educate yourself amid ever-growing sea of digital media”

Guesstimate, a Spreadsheet for Things That Aren’t Certain

Blameless PostMortems

This is a quick introduction to this powerful idea.

Bitcoin

Creating Infographics

The Mighty Infographic: One Designer’s Personal Recipe for Creating Infographics – March 4, 2016

Managing YouTube closed captions

“For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, Closed Captions can mean the difference between understanding perfectly or not understanding at all. On top of that, if the language of the video you’re watching isn’t your first language, Closed Captions can help you to better process what’s being said. Better yet, subtitles are sometimes offered in various languages, allowing you to view content you never otherwise would’ve understood.

And yet, for all the potential usefulness of Closed Captions and subtitles, they can still be hard to come by on YouTube. Transcribing YouTube videos can be time-consuming or expensive.

Thankfully, there are a good number of tools out there for making the most out of your Closed Captions and subtitles on YouTube. Whether you’re a Creator looking to make your content more accessible, or a viewer who prefers or needs subtitles/CC, we’ve got you covered in this list."

7 Best Tools for Managing Subtitles/CC on YouTube

Images

Looking for images? Check out the Image Resources library research guide at: http://guides.library.ucla.edu/images. It will help you find images and how you can use them!

Tech for Social Good

Civic Hall – “is a one-of-a-kind community center for the world’s civic innovators. Located in the heart of New York City, we are a space where social entrepreneurs, change-makers, government employees, hackers, academics, journalists, and artists can share knowledge, build tools, and solve problems, together.”

And it’s home to Civicist – “We think of civic tech as a big tent. It includes civic apps—tools or platforms designed primarily for a civic purpose—but it also encompasses big apps or platforms that have civic effects. That comprises everything from SeeClickFix or NationBuilder in the former case, to Yelp (when people use it to review government services) or Google (with its Civic Information API) in the latter. People working to upgrade government’s use of technology—govtech—are certainly part of the civic tech ecosystem when their efforts involve engaging with the public.”

Any other examples or sites?

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) consists of best practices for implementing a IT Service Management (ITSM) framework.

Some resources to learn more:

Courses

Lynda

ITIL certification Class Pink Elephant (http://www.pinkelephant.com/en-US/Course/ITIL-Foundation)

Online Articles and Text:

Safari Proqest Books:

Social media: guidelines and expertise for work-related use

I am re-posting information shared by Joseph Maddela on the CWP list on 5/13/16:

Are there campus guidelines/policies for creating a department social media account? Are there best practices for having a shared department account? Where can I find more information?

You can find the info at http://socialmedia.ucla.edu/

Michelle Reardon and Amanda Savercool run social for UCLA.

Google Cardboard

Please add useful articles and links as you find them. Thanks

anatomy of an information trap

I’ve been following ResearchBuzz for years, but this explanation of how the author works is extremely interesting and useful.

Link to a specific tutorial in lynda.com

Let’s say you’ve found a specific tutorial on Lynda.com that you would like to assign to your students to view.

For example if you have already gone to UCLA’s Learn IT site and navigated to our Lynda license: https://learnit.ucla.edu/lynda.com-disclaimer

then you found a link to a tutorial that you want your students to view and it looks something like this:
https://www.lynda.com/After-Effects-tutorials/After-Effects-2015-Creative-Cloud-Updates/378849-2.html

what you will want to do is modify that link so that it includes a parameter that associates the link with the ucla.edu domain like this:

https://www.lynda.com/After-Effects-tutorials/After-Effects-2015-Creative-Cloud-Updates/378849-2.html?org=ucla.edu

When students click on this link they will be prompted for their UCLA credentials before continuing on to that tutorial.

Penn State has done a nice write-up on this feature:
http://lynda.psu.edu/2012/08/linking_directly_to_a_lesson_at_lyndacom/

Google Forms

Google Forms are an easy way to create survey, signup forms and other data collection pages that save to a spreadsheet.

data visualization examples

How to Locate U.S. Congressional Hearings

Organize Photos

The Best Way to Organize a Lifetime of Photos – April 21, 2015 Wall Street Journal

California Wireless Emergency Alert Program

California Wireless Emergency Alert Program are government-issued safety messages that include AMBER Alerts, emergency alerts – such as man-made or natural disasters, and Presidential alerts.

Wireless Emergency Alerts are part of the FCC’s CMAS program:

See also:

monitor changes to Supreme Court opinions

Clever piece of code exposes hidden changes to Supreme Court opinions – June 12, 2014

Free Digital Textbooks

The Price is Right: 11 Excellent Sites for Free Digital Textbooks – Campus Technology 8/14/13

Please add other sources, or related initiatives, as you discover them. Thanks

cvs tools

For those who have to deal with cvs data files, here is a tool to do de-duplication

Here are tools for working with cvs files.
http://csvkit.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Do you know of any others?

Data Mashups with TaDaweb

Described as a cross between Pinterest and Yahoo Pipes, TaDaweb “lets non-technical business personnel target public data feeds from which they want to extract very specific, but constantly changing data.”

Creating videos for flipped classes

One of the keys of a “flipped class” is to have the lectures online.

Lynda.com has an expanding body of modules for flipped class environments—

Please add other links as you find them. Thanks

ProQuest Launches Free Version of Flow

“Acclaimed cloud-based document management platform now available free to individual researchers” ProQuest Launches Free Version of Flow

If anyone has any experience with Flow, please add your comment here. Thanks.

Some thoughts—

Wikipedia - interesting articles about

While you may or may not like or trust Wikipedia, this page is intended for interesting articles about it:

Please add links to other articles about Wikipedia that you find useful or interesting. Thanks.

Is Credit Card Monitoring Worth It?

Brian Krebs, a well-known reporter focusing on computer security, has an article of prospective interest regarding credit monitoring. The article touches on various facets of the service offering—

Google Public Data Explorer

Google Labs’ Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand—

Data Journalism

De-identification doesn't work

Fascinating article. Please add more on this if you find any.

Google's ZeitgeistMinds Series

Google’s Zeitgeist events are a series of intimate gatherings of top global thinkers and leaders. ZeitgeistMinds is a collection of inspiring videos from these events.

Dive in to explore the ideas that affect our social, economic, political and cultural surroundings. Hear perspectives from industry pioneers and states people, renowned writers and bloggers, scientists and artists, activists and musicians. Learn from progressive minds, and discuss topics that influence the world around us.

Listen. Join in. Be part of the Zeitgeist.

Sightseeing in Los Angeles

Please add your personal favorites.

Google Spreadsheet Tricks

Diagramming in Markdown

Markdown is often used for writing documentation, but it doesn’t provide supports for diagrams. Now, something called mermaid does. It can generate diagrams and flowcharts from text in a similar manner to markdown.

There is also a project called viz.js that attempts to do something similar to Mermaid using the estabablished Graphviz DOT language.

urban computing

Urban computing is a process of acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by a diversity of sources in urban spaces, such as sensors, devices, vehicles, buildings, and human, to tackle the major issues that cities face, e.g. air pollution, increased energy consumption and traffic congestion. Urban computing connects unobtrusive and ubiquitous sensing technologies, advanced data management and analytics models, and novel visualization methods, to create win-win-win solutions that improve urban environment, human life quality, and city operation systems. Urban computing also helps us understand the nature of urban phenomena and even predict the future of cities. – taken from http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/urbancomputing/

Wordstar converter

To open and convert old Wordstar for Dos files in Microsoft Word, you will need a converter, which is currently available at

http://www.gmayor.com/downloads.htm

under “WordStar (for DOS) converter for Word.”

More Than You Want to Know About Watts and Amps

Learn more than you really want to know about the differences between watts and VA and how to use the terms correctly.

More than you want to know about watts and volt-amps

What is the best way to send/post documents for my students?

The best thing to do with your documents prior to posting is converting it to a PDF. With Word documents, a lot of the times, when you save your document, other data is saved along with what you have on your document. This might occur when you have multiple word documents open at one time, or if you have been working on a previous document. When you save your document, it saves it to Microsoft’s memory, and sometimes saving might transfer whatever was in the memory to your document. Sometimes you’ll notice it, sometimes you won’t. While posting on the web, I wouldn’t recommend saving it as a word document, because some students might not have MS Word (for example, if they’re using a MAC), plus a lot of that unseen saved data could still transfer over when you post (which might explain the gibberish or random mark up that appears on your document).

HTM is a better alternative than posting a Word document. But it isn’t the best. If you try to go to “Save As” in MS Word and save it as a webpage, other things get saved as HTM underneath the code. If you try to view the code, you’ll see a lot of extra stuff that MS Word inserts.

The best thing to do is convert it to PDF and post it. Converting it to PDF eliminates a lot of that gibberish and extra data. Plus Adobe Reader is free to download, getting rid of that “what if students didn’t have Word on their computer” problem.

Don’t have Adobe Acrobat to convert your documents to PDFs? Not a problem, check out this article about free PDF creators available:

https://kb.ucla.edu/link/187

How to erase old marks off a dry erase board

If you’ve ever wondered what to do to clean old marks off a dry erase board, here is a detailed how-to. It even covers accidental use of permanent markers. I saw the first tip used successfully in a class last week.

What is the EE Times?

According to the wikipedia:

“The EE Times hosts news, columns, and featured articles for semiconductor manufacturing, communications, electronic design automation, electronic engineering, technology, and products.”

What is CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA stands for *C*ompletely *A*utomated *P*ublic *T*uring test to tell *C*omputers and *H*umans *A*part. Basically it means those pictures with wavy letters that you have to type in before being allowed to sign up for a mailing list or other service. They are an attempt to prevent “spamming” or automatic signups by programs. Apparently there are some audio versions as well.

reCAPTCHA is a very intriguing project that uses CAPTCHA authentication to help correct OCRA software and digitize books for the internet archive. Fiat Lux!

Techniques and Arguments against CAPTCHA

Mouse Gestures

What are mouse gestures?

A mouse gesture is a way of combining computer mouse movements and clicks which the software recognizes as a specific command.

Why are they useful?

Gestures help you avoid moving your hands back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard. This speeds up web browsing, thus increasing productivity. It also helps you avoid having to aim for small buttons (like back, or refresh) when using an application.

Examples

In Firefox, holding ctrl (Apple key on Mac) and scrolling the mouse-wheel up or down changes the text size.
If you enable right-click-and-drag gestures with a Firefox extension, you can go back a page by holding the right mouse button and dragging your mouse to the left. Similarly, you can go forward by dragging right. The different extensions have different default gestures and levels of configurability. Other popular gesture actions for browsers include common tasks such as creating new tabs, closing tabs, moving up in the directory structure, or incrementing a number in the URL.

What applications support gestures?

Where can I find UCLA pictures to use on my department website?

This archive of architectural photographs is a personal gift from Rita and Richard Atkinson to the University of California, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/campus_planning/atkinson_archive/index1.html. The photographs have been scanned at high resolution and are available for unrestricted use by the University of California.

just to add—-
The UCLA “graphic identity” can be also found:

http://www.identity.ucla.edu/

Anti-plagiarism Strategies

In addition to Turnitin.com (which UCLA has licensed) there are other strategies for addressing student plagiarism:

If you can find any other articles or strategies, please add them here.

New area code 424

New Area Code 424

On Wednesday, July 26th, 2006, a new area code, 424, will become effective in the Los Angeles area. Campus callers dialing to the 424 area code should use 8+1+424-xxx-xxxx. No changes to on- or off-campus dialing will occur.

The UCLA telephone system was designed to make this change transparent to all of UCLA. When you dial from campus to a 310 area code, you do not need to input 8+1+310+xxx-xxxx. You simply need to dial 8+xxx-xxxx. (If you do dial the 310 area code, however, the call will still go through.)

If you have questions about this new area code, please check the map and list of frequently asked questions provided in the links below by the California Public Utilities Commission. You are also welcome to contact CTS Customer Service at extension 53775.

Taken from an email sent out by Communications Technology Services on June 10th, 2006.

Pandora

Created by the Music Genome Project, Pandora is a neat music site that allows the user to submit music they like. Pandora then opens its box and plays music similar to music the user just submitted. Cool concept.

Are there any practical applications of this concept at UCLA? I’ll think about it.

Computer History Museum

The Computer History Museum, located in Silicon Valley, is a bit far away from UCLA for convenient visits, but it has video archives of many of the events in its Speaker Series. Here are just a few of contemporary interest:

They also have a bunch of publications:

What's the best way to dispose of e-waste?

Computers and peripherals are filled with hazardous waste products, so it’s essential to dispose of them properly and safely. Before doing anything with a computer you no longer want, be sure to wipe the data clean from the hard disk (deleting files is not enough). If you are not selling the equipment, be sure to work with a reputable e-waste operation.

http://www.lacitysan.org/solid_resources/special/hhw/safe_centers/

The West Los Angeles location is at UCLA and has the following hours as of January 31, 2008:
-—— West Los Angeles: UCLA
550 Charles E. Young Dr. West
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Hours of Operation:
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays
8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Outside of Los Angeles, Earth911 maintains a directory of recycling locations:
http://earth911.com/

Google Zeitgeist

Ever wonder about what search trends on Google are?
Google Zeitgeist has an answer.

Previous Year’s Archives—
Google Zeitgeist 2005
Google Zeitgeist 2004
Google Zeitgeist 2003
Google Zeitgeist 2002
Google Zeitgeist 2001

Google Zeitgeist Around the World

Choosing the Name for Your Avatar in Second Life

You’ve heard the buzz about Second Life MMORPG and its instructional potential, but don’t know how to dress and name your character? Try this random name generator. It will generate random names that sound Greek, Elvish, monster-like or heroic, depending on you preference.

Wiki Resources

wiki are a tool for collaborative editing that is growing in recognition and popularity. Here are some (hopefully) relevant resources for those of us at UCLA who are interested in using wikis.

Wiki tools

Conference Schedule

TREES FOR A GREEN LA

LADWP offers free shade trees to City Residents—visit the website at http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp000744.jsp for more details. This was copied from the website:

FREE Residential Shade Trees

LADWP has made it simple for Los Angeles City residents to receive FREE shade trees through the Trees for a Green LA program (TFGLA). Follow these simple steps to enjoy the benefits of cool natural shade, energy efficiency, and clean air:

1. Participate in an online or neighborhood workshop
2. Submit your completed tree order and site plan
3. LADWP will deliver the trees to your home; you then plant and care for them.

Note: You must be an electric customer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to receive free trees.

Workshop Options

To receive your FREE trees, you must first learn how to properly plan for, plant, and protect your new trees through one of our workshops. You may either complete the workshop online or personally attend a workshop located close to your neighborhood. Please select an option below:

Online Workshop
(Approximately 20 minutes) Neighborhood Workshop
(1 hour presentation/assistance)

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call 1-800-GreenLA (800-473-3652) and select Trees for a Green LA or email LADWP at Tree.Program@ladwp.com.

Links to Copyright Information & Compliance Resources

Copyright Resource URL Copyright Clearance Center http://www.copyright.com United States Copyright Office http://www.copyright.gov/ Stanford University Fair Use Site http://fairuse.stanford.edu IUPUI Copyright Management Center http://copyright.iupui.edu/ Web Law FAQ http://www.oppedahl.com/weblaw/ Fair Use Resources http://library.albany.edu/digital/copyright.html Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/copyrightb/copyright.cfm UC Office of Technology Transfer: Copyright Matters http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/crprimr.html UC Policy and Guidelines on the Reproduction of Copyrighted Materials for Teaching and Research (April 1986) http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/uwnews/copyrep.html UCLA Office of Intellectual Property Administration https://oip.ucla.edu/copyright/ A Guide to Copyright for Music Librarians http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org/Copyright/ Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/copyright.html Orphan Works and Mass Digitization – U.S. Copyright Office June 2015 http://copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pdf

This information was originally posted on the now defunct UCLA Photographic Services Website.
Submitted by George Helfand george@lunaimaging.com, formerly with UCLA Photographic Services.

Something more to the point:
Best Practices in Fair Use for Filmmakers
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

Links to Digital Camera & Digital Photography Information Resources

Models and specifications change so rapidly in the world of digital cameras that up-to-the-minute research is essential to choosing the best camera for you. Here are some time-tested Web sites that reliably serve up the latest news, reviews, and user opinions

Digital Camera Resource URL CNET http://photo.cnet.com Digital Camera HQ http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com Digital Camera Resource Page http://www.dcresource.com Digital-Camera-Review http://www.digital-camera-review.us Digital Photography Review http://www.dpreview.com The Imaging Resource http://www.imaging-resource.com Megapixel.net http://www.megapixel.net Steve’s DigiCams http://www.steves-digicams.com Techbargains.com http://www.techbargains.com

This information was originally posted on the now defunct UCLA Photographic Services Website.
Submitted by George Helfand george@lunaimaging.com, formerly with UCLA Photographic Services.

Google Speaker Series on video

Videos from the Googleplex

In addition to helping distribute content from across the world, Google would like to share videos featuring our company. The videos on this page give you an overview of our culture, products and business. Whether it’s a scientist discussing their latest work or one of our campus events, we hope to provide a sample of great conversations and presentations. Over time we’ll continue to add more videos From the Googleplex.

Google has two of its speaker series available for free on video:

Why can't I make a copy of a Movie DVD?

Most DVDs have two issues preventing you from making a copy of a DVD:
1) DVDs are encrypted with a measure called CSS, Content Scrambling System. CSS prevents people from copying movie files to their computers and from burning these files to a DVD.

2) Movie DVDs are 8.5GB in size called Dual Layer DVDs. Blank DVDs are typically 4.7GB. Blank Dual Layer DVDs are available but not cheap.

Newer DVDs also have other preventive measures such as Arcoos protection.

There are software available to get around these measures but most are not free or legal in the United States:
AnyDVD – http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html
DVDShrink – http://www.dvdshrink.org/
DVDFab Decrypter – http://www.dvdidle.com/free.htm

A guide to college podcasts

Audio interview: a guide to college podcasts from Chronicle.com – Today’s News Daniel Colman, director and associate dean of Stanford University’s continuing-studies program, runs a blog tracking podcasts made by colleges and professors. In an audio interview, he talks about the pros and cons of putting recordings of lectures online, and lists his favorites. (for subscribers)

http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v53/i40/colman

Here’s his blog too.
http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2006/10/free_university_1.html

Raster it full size (for your office)

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

take any picture and make it “huge”.

How to put a portrait page number on a landscape page

This need frequently arises in typing academic papers such as theses or dissertations (or sometimes when creating business reports and proposals). Often a table or figure will fit on the page only if it’s turned sideways (broadside). But graduate school requirements may call for all pages to have a page number at the bottom or to have the same header and/or footer as the rest of the document. So the question arises: How do I get my tables printed in landscape orientation and still have a portrait page number?

Go here for step-by-step instructions: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/LandscapeSection.htm

How can I follow technology news in the N.Y. Times?

The N.Y. Times Circuits is their Technology section which comes out on Thursdays, both on their website and via email. (registration required, but it’s free) I particularly like the articles by David Pogue, the author of many of the Missing Manuals series.

How do you keep up with technology?

This will hopefully grow into a collection of mailing lists, websites, blogs and RSS feeds that campus technologists use to keep up to date. To contribute, post an article about the resource first, then add the link in here. Feel free to add categories below. See the ResourceBuzz article as an example.

Notice that there are two sections: Categorized and By Person. Please add to both.
--
Categorized

By Person

What is First Monday?

First Monday is a peer-reviewed journal on the Internet that comes out on the first Monday of each month. Being peer-reviewed, the articles are more academically oriented, but they range across a wide variety of interesting Internet issues. The journal and website are free.

How do I make a bibliographic reference for a data file?

All data used for class projects, theses, disseratations, and publications should be cited in references or bibliographies. Click here for details on how to do it: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/citing/intro

How do I find out about the ICPSR Summer Program?

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) holds a summer training program each year. For more information, click:
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog/

Where can I go for hard disk and storage-related performance

I like this site:

Storage Review

“This paper may be of interest – study done by Google on over 100,000 drives they have/had in service. When they fail, why they fail, what correlates with failure.” https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf – from email to UC-CSC list by UCI colleague Harry Mangalam

"A nine year study of file system and storage benchmarking (2008)": https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1367829.1367831

Associated data and presentations:
http://fsbench.filesystems.org/

Where can I buy that super efficient electronic stapler that is at SSC?

Lots of people ask about our stapler at SSC. It’s a black Swingline electronic stapler, and it staples about twenty pages without a problem. Most people find it very helpful in getting the job done. Known problems include paper jams, but this mostly occurs when you think you can staple a stack of papers that is thicker than the actual opening of the stapling apparatus. It is also moderately loud, but nothing you can’t get used to. So…the big question people ask us at SSC is, “Where can I buy one of these?” For you stapler-lusters out there, here is a handy list of places you can get it:

Shoplet.com: $78.48
http://www.shoplet.com/office/db/SWI50201.html

Lycos.com or Officedepot.com: $81.99
http://bizrate.lycos.com/staplers/products__keyword—electronic%20stapler.html
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=220376&cm_mmc=TLShopping-ShoppingCom--SuppliesBasic%20Supplies%20%26%20Labels-Swingline%20520E%20Electronic%20Stapler%20Black%20220376

How do I find out more about broadband?

Go to DSL Reports

What is ResearchBuzz?

“ResearchBuzz is designed to cover the world of Internet research. To that end this site provides almost daily updates on search engines, new data managing software, browser technology, large compendiums of information, Web directories — whatever. If in doubt, the final question is, “Would a reference librarian find it useful?” If the answer’s yes, in it goes!

A weekly newsletter is available, or you’re welcome to subscribe to the RSS feed." http://www.researchbuzz.com

Users at UCLA:

Mike Franks, Social Sciences Computing

I don’t know where I first heard of this mailing list but the author, Tara O’Calishain is also the author of Google Hacks and I find this weekly (or so) newsletter useful for these reasons:

Assessment Engines (Quiz Tools/Online Exams)

Digital Learning Objects (or SCORM)

OKI

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

As of 2006, UCLA.edu has a RSS Feeds & Podcast Directory to promote and encourage syndication.

What is RSS?

RSS is a free, simplified format for syndicating news and content. RSS feeds are utilized by many major news sites like CNN and Yahoo! through to the UCLA community like the Daily Bruin and Media Relations. Each feed breaks down the most recent updates: headline, summary and link for each update.

Why use RSS?

It’s easier, faster access to updated content from your favorite sites. By subscribing to or bookmarking feeds that you want, your reader or browser will translate code to readable links, updated automatically when new content is available from each subscription.

Using RSS

You can display feeds on several kinds of personalized web sites or a desktop/mobile application. You usually need to copy-and-paste the feed’s URL, but for online readers you may find links that simplify the process in the form of “add to…”

Authoring RSS

Additional Resources

UCLA.edu RSS Resources
RSS 2.0 Specifications
Example Code
SOAP meets RSS
Introduction to RSS

What is Slashdot?

Slashdot is a well-known website that provides a nice starting location for up to date news and commentary about current events in IT and technology in general. Users submit links to stories and people can discuss these stories.

The offical URL for Slashdot is http://slashdot.org/.

Free photo-sharing sites

There are many different free photo-sharing sites on the web. This 2007 article from the N.Y. Times by David Pogue compares 8 of them.

Find images on Google that you can reuse – Google Support article

Some major sites:

Calculate Duration Between Two Dates

Using this website, you can easily calculate the number of days between two dates:

http://www.timeanddate.com/date/duration.html

You can also use a UNIX script to do this. It can be found here:
http://www.unix.com/showthread.php?t=4870

Ideas Worth Spreading

Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

Many are subtitled in a variety of languages, and have an interactive transcript.

Almost as good and almost as free is the site http://fora.tv.

An independently organized TED event is coming to UCLA. June 18, 2011 from 10am-3pm.
http://tedxucla.org/

iLounge – All Things iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Beyond

Great site for all things iPod, iPhone, and iPad –
http://www.ilounge.com/

Have found the FAQ and Tutorials areas to be good to pass along as needed.

25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time

From Smashing Magazine at 25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time:

We’re all mostly accustomed to educating ourselves by reading articles. Rare are the opportunities to attend conferences or watch live shows on subjects that we’re interested in. That’s why we are presenting here phenomenal videos and related resources on the topic of user experience (UX) by different presenters at different events. We have focused on current content but have included some older videos that are still relevant. It will take you more than 16 hours to watch all of these videos. So, make some popcorn, turn off the lights and enjoy.

Google for Educators

Is anyone using this?

http://www.google.com/educators/index.html

Please add comments or known use cases.

. . .

Presents itself as a mesh of Google offerings:
Sites — http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=155427
Apps — http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html

Some higher education customer testimonials:
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/customers.html

Has anyone used Google Alert?

I am using Google Alerts to find information on topics I’m interested in. It keeps you informed about what’s going on around you without having to spend a lot of time looking for information.

-Joel Bellon

Google alerts are great for monitoring Internet trends, which are vital for marketing and your social media strategy. Set up a few alerts to see if you are being mentioned on blogs. This will allow you to interact with your peers online without having to spend hours randomly searching.

-Joseph Maddela

Yes, I’ve had 2 alerts for a number of years and have found them to be useful—1 for Grassian and the other for “information literacy.” You do get a bunch of not very useful or on target items, but I’ve also discovered some news items, websites and blog postings that I wouldn’t have found or known about otherwise.

Innovative Teaching Ideas

There are probably many other collections of innovating teaching ideas and examples. Please add them to this page as you come across them.

Can you suggest some technical, on-line training?

Many staff members have taken courses through SkillSets IT Online:

http://www.skillsetsitonline.com/index.shtml

Course vouchers can be purchased and are typically issued to allow access to a single Skill Set for a 2 week period. Vouchers can be purchased in bulk and then may be used for any two week period during the term of the purchased license (usually 12 – 18 months).

http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/free-video-training/

Train Signal has some nice free training videos.

UCLA now has Lynda.com for free until April 2011. For more information, please visit the KB article on Lynda at https://kb.ucla.edu/link/1334.

Mapping Apps

Make a Map is a website that lets you create your own maps of the US and areas thereof using various demographics data. It’s still in beta stage but it’s got all of the US and so far has datasets for median household income, population change 2000-9, population density, median home value, unemployment rate, average household size and median age. The sitemaker, ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.), also has a pretty good free globe map software, ArcGIS Explorer, for which you download map layers and add-ins. ArcGIS has been used for several years now by the U.S. Census.

Other (non-ESRI) mapping alternatives:

GeoCommons | MapBox | Geoda | QGIS | Maps Geek | Tableau Public | Polymaps | Needle | Leaflet

10 Free Tools For Creating Your Own Maps

To help students get started, here is a list of research-quality data sets:

Data Sets

How to take screenshots

Quick answer: http://take-a-screenshot.org/ (different tabs for different systems, though it looks like it recognizes which system you’re using.)

I have some survey data I want to archive. How do I organize it?

If you have some survey data and you want to store it in an archive or share with others, here is a link to Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving

How can I make a screenshot of a web page that scrolls off the screen?

Web Browser Based

Firefox Add-ons

Standalone

Is Lynda.com available at UCLA for free?

Yes, Lynda.com is available at UCLA for free.

OIT and AIS have currently worked out an agreement with Lynda so that UCLA can have 38 concurrent, unlimited licenses until April 2011. In April, OIT will evaluate how often Lynda.com was used, and decide how to move forward. See update at: https://kb.ucla.edu/link/1420

The licenses can be used by faculty, staff, and students with a UCLA logon.

To log in, please visit: LearnIT.ucla.edu and log in with your UCLA logon. You will be redirected to Lynda.com’s homepage.

You can then access all the training courses as well as exercise files Lynda.com offers.

If you are unable to get into Lynda at the time you log in, it is because UCLA only has a limited number of licenses, and they are all being used. Please try again later.

Please remember to log out if you are taking a break from training so that the licenses can be freed up for other users.

What is Google Scholar, how does it work, & how can you get articles for free through UCLA Library?

Google Scholar (GS) is a single database that allows you to search for some books and some articles. I always tell students to use whatever is helpful, but learn the limitations of all research tools and pose questions, including the following:

Some people are skeptical about using GS because Google does not reveal the scope of GS—i.e., it does not provide complete answers to the three questions above. Here are some articles about GS:

Jascó, P. Google Scholar’s Ghost Authors. Library Journal v. 134 no. 18 (November 1 2009) p. 26-7 [NOTE: Available for FREE through the UCLA Library’s website because the Library pays for a subscription to this journal.]

Jasco takes off from Geoffrey Nunberg’s August 31, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article, Google’s Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars http://chronicle.com/article/Googles-Book-Search-A/48245/

He (Jasco) says that Google ignored metadata provided by publishers and developed their own crawlers to capture data about articles, and as a result, citation counts are skewed. This means that Google Scholar citations may be incorrect in a number of ways.

Example of the problem:

  1. Go to GS/Advanced Search
  2. In the “Return articles written by” box, type login. On 11/20/10, this search retrieved 9,670 results. Jasco reports similar results from author searches for P Options=Payment Options; from TOCs: B Methods

In addition to the problems Jasco points out, other limitations to GS include th following:

  1. We do not know which periodicals it indexes, how far back they go, or which books it lists.
  2. We also do not know what its ranking algorithm is—what makes some items pop up to the top in search results.

What we do know is that Google draws some of its periodical results from free databases like PubMed and ERIC, both paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but freely available to everyone. Some UCLA students also do not realize that the reason they can get many articles for free through GS is that the UCLA Library pays for subscriptions to many online periodicals. These are all important caveats to pass along to students.

But, there are some handy tricks and tips you can use with GS to improve your results.

SET PREFERENCES: For off-campus searching—set for University of California, Los Angeles, so you can get articles for free through the UCLA Library, i.e., by clicking on UC-eLinks.

Note: In addition to setting your GS preferences for University of California, Los Angeles, in order to get articles for free, you will also need to set up your web browser for the Bruin OnLine proxy server or download VPN software from the BOL website: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/services/

Once you have done this, UC-eLinks will appear in your GS results. When you click on a UC-eLinks link, you will be asked for your UCLA ID and password.
USE ADVANCED SCHOLAR SEARCH:

Example:

  1. Click on Advanced Scholar Search
  2. Search for “information literacy” as an “Exact phrase”: 44,700 results
  3. In the pull-down menu, change from “Articles and patents” to “Articles excluding patents”: 42,300 results
  4. In the next pull-down menu, change from “anytime” to “since 1991”: 18,400 results
  5. Now, restrict to “since 2005”: 16,200 results
  6. Scroll down through the first page of results, look at each item, and pose questions:
    1. How has GS has ranked them—By date of publication? By number of times cited? Alphabetically by title? Alphabetically by author? By an
    2. How accurate and up to date are “Cited by” figures?

Note: GS describes its ranking system as follows:
“How are documents ranked?
Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.” http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html

Web Designer’s Guide to PNG Image Format

A nice little guide that recommends when to use PNG vs JPG vs GIF for image formats on the web.

http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/web-designers-guide-to-png-image-format/

Free tool for doing polls without clickers

There is a free tool called PollEverywhere.com which can be used in classes and presentations. This is a web based tool and it uses text messaging from students’ cell phones. (polleveryhere.com)

A power point presentation by Michael Posner from Villanova on using it to teach statistics is here: (PPt about polleverywhere)

What is that Typeface?

If you ever find yourself in the situation where you have to match a typeface but don’t have the original file, then this web site may be of use. Simply scan or take a screen shot of said font and upload it to this web site: What the Font?!

I have found this to be very accurate depending on the quality of the uploaded image.

e-book conversion

Taken from a post on http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/virtualbookclub

Keck Digital Cultural Mapping Program and GIS / neogeography resources

Dear UCLA Faculty and Staff:

The Keck Digital Cultural Mapping Project (in its second year) offers faculty support in adding emerging mapping technologies (such as Google Maps, Google Earth, the SketchUp 3D modeling program, GIS, and more) to their undergraduate Humanities and Social Science courses:

http://keckdcmp.ucla.edu/

We provide consulting services, technology training for faculty and GSRs, some $$ for purchase of maps and satellite imagery, and we have just outfitted the CDH lab and a smaller project lab with high-end visualization software like ArcGIS, Google Earth Pro, Google Sketch-Up Pro, and Adobe Design Suite CS4. Our smaller lab also has new large monitors. We are looking for faculty who want to be creative about adopting and adapting new technologies for undergraduate teaching and student projects. The award-winning Hypercities (http://hypercities.com/) is one of our major platforms, but faculty are using various online mapping and modeling programs to introduce their students to the temporal and spatial dimension of research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Please see the Keck website for our list of involved faculty, our current classes, instructional resources, and online videos of the three faculty workshops held last year.

Then contact us if you would like to get involved!

keckdcmp@ucla.edu

Free Statistical and Research Tools

I have come across a wiki and a web site with free resources to use in research, especially quantitative and survey research.

The Impoverished Social Scientist’s Guide to Free Statistical Software and Resources http://maltman.hmdc.harvard.edu/socsci.shtml

Digital Research Tools (actually has other resources – some not free – for the entire research process – bibliography management, writing, etc.) http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/

Online Books

Listed below is a compilation of sites dedicated to providing electronic copies of books.

FreeTechBooks.com

This site lists free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes, all of which are legally and freely available over the Internet.

Throughout this site, other terms are used to refer to a book, such as ebook, text, document, monogram or notes.

http://www.freetechbooks.com/

Digital Libraries (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

An integrated overview of the creation and the distribution over networks of all types of information, ranging from converted historical materials to kinds of information that have no analogues in the physical world.

http://www.freetechbooks.com/forum-32.html

Taken from web for librarians (Web4Lib) Feb. 11, 2007

Free, Open Windows Image Editor Paint.Net

I have found that Paint.Net does most of the things I want to do with images.

For instance, import and export in multiple formats; resizing images, including drastically reducing file size; and touching up.

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

What is Jottit.com?

Released by Aaron Swartz in 2007, Jottit.com is a website that allows anyone to quickly and simply create their own web page. Upon entering text into the text box on the main page, Jottit.com automatically generates a page for the user. By manipulating the “settings” and “designs,” users are able to customize the appearance, web address and other options for their site. By streamlining the web page creation process, Jottit.com is a great for blogs and simple websites.

Other Reviews:
Webware
Killer Starups
ifacethoughts

Introduction to Choropleth Mapping

Introduction to Choropleth Mapping

This article is intended to serve as a starting point for anyone trying to create choropleth maps. It outlines the numerous free methods for creating a dynamic map from a given dataset.

Choropleth mapping, or “heat mapping” is a ubiquitous element of our visual centric society. It is a method of visually representing data over an area. The most popular form seen today is the election map, where specific counties and/or states are colored to represent their selection of a candidate. Due to the inherent diversity of the United States, they have become a popular form of visualizing the geographic distribution of sociological data.

Until recently, choropleth mapping has been reserved for entities with large resources, that can spend significant amounts of money for software specifically designed for such mapping. Examples of this are Microsoft’s MapPoint or ESRI’s ArcGIS. However, with the advent of AJAX and the increasing popularity of publically accessible mapping software like Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, the costs and learning curve associated with choropleth mapping has virtually evaporated. For professors, as well as students, data can now be mapped to create powerful visual statements.

Choropleth mapping in a dynamic AJAX application operates in a very simple manner. Raw coordinates are fed into the application that specifies an overall shape. This shape is then applied with an appropriate color. The most critical elements are obviously the coordinates, and as such, they take up most of the space in mapping files. This problem can be dealt with in two ways: storing coordinates in a database, or storing coordinates in a generated file.

Because many of the following applications use Google Maps, due to the limitations of Google Maps, each of the following applications have their own strengths and weaknesses. They certainly lack the robust functionality of MapPoint or ArcGIS, but for more casual purposes they are well suited.

Choropleth Mapping with Color-It

Color-It

This article is part of a series on choropleth mapping, to see other solutions, please visit the introduction here.

Color-It is a choropleth mapping application produced by Zonum Solutions. It essentially is a large SQL database of coordinates for various countries and provinces/states. It is used in the following fashion.

Process:
Users must first specify what type of mapping is to be done, either “Color according to a value” (Choropleth) or “Manual Color Selection” (simple colored map). The user must then select the country or region of interest by continent. The list is very comprehensive, but not complete. Once a country has been selected, the user must click “Color this map.” A page with a table on the left and a map on the right will be produced. The table will have regions of interest, followed by a value. Sample values have been given, but data must be manually entered by region. The user may also select start and end colors of the color ramp, as well as the outline color and thickness. Once the user is satisfied with the data and settings, click “Draw map.” It may take a few moments for the application to display on the map on the right, but a rough choropleth map should be generated. This roughness is due to the limitations of Google Maps. If the user desires, there is also the option to generate a KMZ file, which is a standard mapping format for Google Earth. The KMZ file contains the full sets of coordinates, and when viewed in Google Earth, will not have the roughness of the online preview. For more detailed mapping, exporting to Google Earth is essential for combining various regions on a single map, something that Color-It cannot do online due to Google Maps limitations.

Pros:

Cons:

Comments:
I believe that Color-It is the tool that should appeal to most users. It is very straightforward in its interface, and produces quick and easy choropleth maps. When used in conjunction with Google Earth, its capabilities rival those of MapPoint or ArcGIS. The major downside is that the author was unwilling to publish his source code. I have a suspicion that he considers the tool a revenue stream due to the ads that are on the page.

Tutorial Screencast

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Choropleth Mapping with Mapeteria

Mapeteria

This article is part of a series on choropleth mapping, to see other solutions, please visit the introduction here.

Mapeteria operates on the opposite model as Color-It, which is to store coordinates on the generated file itself. Ducky Sherwood, the author, notes that it works well for a small number of coordinates, but becomes unwieldy when more coordinates are added. Essentially, Mapeteria works by taking a gigantic KML file with all of its potential coordinates, and simply modifying the portion of the KML file that controls the coloring. As a result, the generated KML file has all the coordinates, but only some are defined for coloring. The advantage of this is that Mapeteria does not require data to be manually entered. A properly formatted .CSV file is all that is needed to produce the appropriate coloring.

Process:
It must be noted that due to the large size of the KML file, only U.S. States, Canadian Provinces and French Departements are included. A key feature however, is the fact that you can map all three types of regions simultaneously. Users must have an appropriately formatted .CSV file in order for Mapeteria to work properly. A link to a convenient how to is given next to the URL box. Once the .CSV file has been posted to a server, enter the URL. The next section relates to Divisors, as Mapeteria has additional data in its KML file. The values in the dataset can be divided by the total population of the region or divided by the square kilometers as reported by the most recent U.S. Census. Colour (clearly a brit here) Mapping refers to what the maximum and minimum values of the data are. Currently, Ducky admits that, “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s red.” The max and min values help Mapeteria determine what values should be what shade. Descriptive text will add whatever additional information to your map. Resolution selection is recommended to be High resolution. Users can elect to see their data on a Google Maps preview, or downloaded in the form of a KML file for viewing in Google Earth.

Pros:

Cons:

Comments:
This was one of the first solutions I came across while doing research. I was fortunate to have gotten a hold of the author who was very helpful in explaining how Mapeteria worked. Unfortunately, she admits that Mapeteria was something of a jury-rigged solution, something that probably needs a few years and a good programmer to fully develop. She has since moved on to other projects, but has opened the source up to Google Code, but lacking any documentation. Mapeteria is realistically only useful for U.S., Canadian and French projects as it was designed. I attempted to increase the size and scope of Mapeteria’s database by adding elements to the generated KML, but Google Maps can only accept a limited number of coordinates. Mapeteria is more of a proof of concept as opposed to a fully functioning application.

Tutorial Screencast

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Mapping with Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Pipes Mashup

This article is part of a series on choropleth mapping, to see other solutions, please visit the introduction here.

Yahoo Pipes is an exciting tool because of its ability to create web mashups. After working with Mapeteria and Color-It, I came to the realization that it might be possible to have the simple uploading capability of Mapeteria with the large database of Color-It. The key to this system was to have Yahoo produce all the necessary data to produce a choropleth map. It took me a while to understand how Yahoo pipes operated, but once I had a rudimentary understanding, I created a small proof of concept pipe. The pipe takes in a .CSV file with simply location name and data value, and the pipe outputs a map with the location and shows the data value. The key is that no coordinate data was included in my .CSV file. Essentially I turned Yahoo’s engine into a coordinate database like Color-It. The problem of overlaying colored shapes is still being worked out, but I believe it may be possible when Yahoo incorporates more detailed coordinate data like that of region boundaries into Yahoo Maps. I am pretty sure that Google Maps has this ability to some extent; but I wasn’t able to get Yahoo Pipes to communicate directly with Google Maps.

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Convert Pdf to Word/Text with OmniPage

To convert image files to a word or text format using OMNIPAGE Pro.

If you haven’t already scanned your document, you can scan it and save the file.
(You can scan it using the built-in OCR reader which may save you lots of time, but the reader sometimes isn’t as effective when the scanned document is not very good quality and clarity)

In OmniPage, you select from the top left drop-down menu: “To Word and Text”
Click the triangle/play button and OmniPage prompts you to select the image file you want to convert to text.

After selecting the file, OmniPage scans it and produces the file that you can save as a text files (word, etc).

OmniPage Print Screen

Create PDF on the Fly<img src='http://ram.genetics.ucla.edu/j00/a.png'>

My goal is to create PDF on the fly using PHP. I use php to query the database, the result from the database will be listed in a table, and this view need to be output as a pdf file.

The requirements are 1) it needs to run on sun solaris. 2) need to write dynamic data into pdf right at the point user viewing the data. 3) need to work with PHP.

The best product so far is the PDFLib. (www.pdflib.com). They have PDFLib family, requires license as $1999.00 per machine. But it does very sophisticated things, such as extract text from PDF allows searching, import PDF to edit etc. Easy to use. But the license is too expensive. They do come in free version call PDFLib Lite, however, that require build from source, which needs a lot of C programming skills.

The second one is (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdf-php). It does many things that generally enough for many users.

DOMPDF also works pretty well and is is free (http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/examples.php#demo).

Mac Apps for Students

UC Systemwide Electronic Accessibility Efforts

The systemwide UC Information Technology Accessibility Policy has been approved and is effective as of August 27, 2013. The policy promotes and supports an accessible IT environment within the University. By supporting IT accessibility, the University helps ensure that as broad a population as possible is able to access, benefit from, and contribute to its electronic programs and services.

The Electronic Accessibility Leadership Team will continue to develop initiatives to promote the Policy and foster communication between the campuses and UCOP. Each campus has at least one representative participating in the EALT. Under the Policy, each campus or other UC location is charged with developing an implementation plan. This process is now underway.

For reference, this is the official Policy document .

The Problem

Persons with disabilities (visual, auditory, motor or cognitive impairments) often use adaptive hardware or software to access computers and other sources of electronic information. The way the electronic data is created, coded and presented can make it impossible for adaptive technology to interpret.

Governmental Response

In 2001, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act created standards for Federal agencies and contractors, defining 16 parameters for accessible software and Web design. The text of the Section 508 rules can be found under “Section 508 Law” at www.section508.gov . The documents are under review, with possible revisions in 2014.

Industry Guidelines

In 2008 the W3C released Version 2.0 of its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 . These address technologies beyond Section 508 (Javascript, PDF, Flash, among others). These guidelines have gained international recognition, and their Level AA Criteria are the target under the UC Policy.

Practical Implementation

The EALT has created resources to collect best practices across several categories. The Content Developers section will be most relevant for coders and Web authors.

Developers and project managers may refer to the Web Developers section

Documents have also been produced on Procurement and product
accessibility.

Support at UCLA

For demonstrations of adaptive technologies, discussion of Web accessibility techniques, and accessibility reviews of existing sites, please contact the UCLA Disabilities and Computing Program . The DCP will produce documents and launch training initiatives to inform the campus about the Policy throughout 2013-14.

Social Science Simulations

Online simulations are a interesting way to present concepts and ideas visually, as well as provide an interactive element to learning.

This page will serve as a resource for future investigations into creating simulations as well as those that are currently available.

Here are a few examples of Flash simulations:

Becoming Human

Jerusalem Archeological Park

Exploring Ibsen

VoiceThread

VoiceThread enables users to create dynamic presentations that combine audio, video as well as user inputted drawings and text.

Wiki Mapping

Wiki Mapping

The Google Maps API and the KML mapping file format has opened up new ways of manipulating data geographically. The application of geocoding to wikis and other publicly modifiable information banks like Wikipedia open up new avenues of visualizing the world. Recent examples include the new Wikipedia links in Google Maps, which displays links to wikipedia articles in their geographic location. Continuing the tradition of the Wiki, users will be able to contribute their own geographic locations and corresponding articles. This space will be dedicated to examining emerging mashup “Wiki mapping” applications and their potential uses in education.

Google Spreadsheet Mapper

Panoramio

Map Channels

Tagzania

Batch Geocoder

Wiki Timelines

Dipity

Intro

Dipity is an AJAX web application based on MIT’s SIMILE Timeline. It can accept web feeds like xml/rss and output a user modifiable timeline. Because it accepts normal RSS, it works with a wide range of media, allowing the user to create mashups with YouTube as well as Flickr.

How-to

Prior to creating a timeline, you must have an account with Dipity. This allows for access control. To create a timeline, simply select create a timeline from the top menu. You will be required to enter the title, description as well as select a category for your timeline. Optional info like the timezone, picture icon and permissions can be set as well. Click on create timeline. Once the timeline has been created, you can add RSS feeds by clicking manage sources. You’ll have a choice of a large number of sources, from youtube and picassa to flickr. For custom feeds you can click the RSS button and enter the corresponding URL.

Examples

Tickr
TimeTube

Mnemograph

Intro

Mnemograph is a Flash based web application that can also create dynamic timelines from xml/rss sources. Because it uses flash, Mnemograph’s interface is cleaner and more cohesive compared to Dipity. Unfortunately, there are fewer mashup options, as importable media is limited to only photos. Nevertheless, the cleaner interface makes Mnemograph a compelling choice.

Examples

History of the Wright Brothers

Web tools for scheduling a meeting

I’ve used http://doodle.com a few times to quickly arrange meetings, but now I’m running into some limits and am looking for alternatives. I’ll list my comments as I find them. Please add if you know any.

A lifehacker post about diarised has links to other lifehacker posts about whenisgood, pointment, presdo and the already mentioned doodle.

What applications can I use to send out announcements and e-newsletters?

http://www.mailchimp.com/index.phtml

It’s actually a very slick Web app but it isn’t free – however, it’s well worth the money if your budget allows it – and was really easy to use.

I recall it being like $29.00 for 2500 addresses, however there is a monthly plan available.

It has stats tracking as well as reporting features.

How can I connect with other academics with similar research interests?

If you are interested in being able to create a personal web page and be able to upload your papers to share with others then take a look at academia.edu

http://www.academia.edu/

This site can be searched by the name of an academic institution and then by department. It is easy to sign up and if you upload any papers you retain all your rights as to copyright and so on.

There is a nice overview and review at:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080918-academia-edu-traces-academic-family-tree-facebook-style.html

Microsoft Translator for real-time captioning

Microsoft Translator is an AI-powered automatic speech recognition software tool. It can be useful for real-time captioning with the ability to export a transcript when you are done:
https://translator.microsoft.com/.

You will need an Office365.com account and it looks like it is free. Be sure you test your mics before launching the program (via web browser for app).