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NewsGator Makes Client Apps Free
NewsGator Makes Client Apps Free: NetNewsWire 3.1, FeedDemon 2.6, and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile 2.0. and NewsGator Inbox 3.0 are now free to download and use. FeedDemon is a desktop news aggregator that I helped beta test and I have used off and on and Bradbury is a tremendous developer. If you were looking […]

NewsGator Makes Client Apps Free: NetNewsWire 3.1, FeedDemon 2.6, and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile 2.0. and NewsGator Inbox 3.0 are now free to download and use. FeedDemon is a desktop news aggregator that I helped beta test and I have used off and on and Bradbury is a tremendous developer. If you were looking for a powerful desktop aggregator that is easy to use, FeedDemon might be the ticket.

Productivity Boost: Key Stroke Launchers

Productivity is a tricky thing. Once you’ve found your way to get things done, you aren’t likely to change anything until the system (your workflow or your tools) doesn’t work any more. For instance, many developers tend to use the very same versions of applications they’ve been using over years. After all, you get things done and you’ve got used to it — so why should you introduce any changes? “Never touch the running system” is the principle which is often followed in such situations.

However, this approach has its drawbacks. For instance, you might simply be not aware of some useful tools which would save you many headaches, a lot of money and dozens of sleepless nights. Using them, you can become more efficient, more productive and consequently minimize the time you spend on tiring, monotonous daily routine tasks.

Over the next months we are going to cover a number of useful tools, services and applications which might help you to improve your workflow and increase your productivity. Most of them will turn out to be life-savers in practice, as they help you to accomplish some tasks automatically and you would need to do them manually otherwise.

In this article we present some free key stroke launchers — desktop-applications which you can use to start some other applications without a single mouse click.

Productivity is a tricky thing. Once you’ve found your way to get things done, you aren’t likely to change anything until the system (your workflow or your tools) doesn’t work any more. For instance, many developers tend to use the very same versions of applications they’ve been using over years. After all, you get things done and you’ve got used to it — so why should you introduce any changes? “Never touch the running system” is the principle which is often followed in such situations.

Touch The Running System!

However, this approach has its drawbacks. For instance, you might simply be not aware of some useful tools which would save you many headaches, a lot of money and dozens of sleepless nights. Using them, you can become more efficient, more productive and consequently minimize the time you spend on tiring, monotonous daily routine tasks.

Over the next months we are going to cover a number of useful tools, services and applications which might help you to improve your workflow and increase your productivity. Most of them will turn out to be life-savers in practice, as they help you to accomplish some tasks automatically and you would need to do them manually otherwise.

In this article we present some free key stroke launchers — desktop-applications which you can use to start some other applications without a single mouse click.

Key Stroke Launcher?

If you are a professional web-developer you might have dozens of different tools you use on a regular basis. And, once you have them, you also want them to be ready to hand once you need them. However, the regular Windows start menu consists of a long list of applications, and the desktop is usually full of icons, so it’s pretty hard to have a big picture of what is where placed.

Not every application’s shortcut is perfectly arranged for a quick launch, because the programs are not sorted in an alphabetic order or the desktop looks like an icon-jungle. So you need to navigate through the Start menu or minimize some windows to finally click on the desktop icons. That’s not effective.

Good news: you can do better. In such cases you can use Launchy, KeyBreeze or Google Desktop to improve your productivity.

Launchy

Launchy is a free, lightweight Windows utility which helps you to open files, folders, web-sites and applications with a few key-strokes. In the shape of a little search bar, the tool appears to your service by pressing the Alt + Spacebar key combination.

Just type the first letters of the program you’d like to start or site’s URL you’d like to visit and the tool provides you with possible matches of your query.

Image: Launchy

Apart from a number of plug-ins, Launchy also offers some further functionalities for specific search. To look up some topic in Wikipedia or Google, type in “wikipedia”, or “Google” then hit the tab key and enter the topic you are interested in. If you’d like to check the weather, type in “weather”, then input the zip code, city name or state. Similarly, you can also play your favourite tracks and search local directories for some file.

If you don’t like the default look or would like to change it from time to time you can can select one of the skins. You can find a number of Launchy skins here; however, most of them don’t work with the latest version of the tool, so you might need to download the previous version (1.25).

“Aero” skin

Launchy is the winner in the category “Best new project” in the Sourceforge.Net 2007 Community Choice Awards.

Keybreeze

Similarly to Launchy, KeyBreeze is a free key stroke launcher which tries to guess the application, document or site you’re looking for. However, it has a dozens of further features which can serve as little productivity tweaks.

The tool also enables you to perform system tasks, control windows on your screen and use macros for some repetitive tasks, such as backing up files and folders.

If you’d like to insert some phrase you tend to use often in your conversation, you can instead of using some data stored on your PC, you can use text functions which will paste predefined text automatically into the document or text field which is currently active.

What makes KeyBreeze particularly useful is that you can create notes and to-do lists on the desktop and also set reminders — instantly.

There is also a portable USB version of the tool as well as a number of plug-ins which are available on the official web-site.

Google Desktop

Actually, Google Desktop has proved to be the ultimate solution when it comes to desktop search. Coming with a Google Sidebar, Desktop brings the advanced search functionalities as known from the conventional Google search.

However, Google Desktop can also be used as the ultimate key stroke launcher. Once the tool has finished indexing your data, you can hit Ctrl twice and the quick search box will appear. As Google Desktop provides full text search over email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail and web pages that you’ve viewed, you can launch applications, open files and load web-pages in a browser without a single click.

Apart from that, there are a number of great uses for Google Desktop, such as file versioning or file recovery. You can also place gadgets on your desktop to show you new email, weather, photo and personalized news. In fact, we’ve covered a number of useful gadgets and modules for Google Desktop in our article Google Gadgets, Widgets and Modules.

Conclusion

Whatever tool you choose in the end, used properly, it will save you a number of unnecessary clicks and help you to get a little more productive without any effort. On a large scale these small changes can completely reduce annoying tasks you needed to do on a regular basis. Just getting rid of them is a significant step towards a more effective and productive workflow.

Uninstalling Conundrum Part 2
First off, I want to thank each and every one of you who put your thinking caps on and came up with some awesome ideas and solutions for this perplexing problem. I think its time to consolidate the ideas that we came up with, and review what the underlying problems are. Nick was first out of […]

First off, I want to thank each and every one of you who put your thinking caps on and came up with some awesome ideas and solutions for this perplexing problem. I think its time to consolidate the ideas that we came up with, and review what the underlying problems are.

Nick was first out of the gate

For both of my plugins, I provided uninstall capability. Whenever the user deactivates the plugin, it is effectively uninstalled, removing all data related to the plugin. The user could then do whatever they wanted with the file containing the plugin.

It was easy to do it this way because WordPress provides a hook for action upon deactivation of a plugin.

The problem that I and many others have is that, deactivating a plugin should not have the same affect as uninstalling it. This is wrong. Who wants to reconfigure their plugin after deactivating it, when all we’re trying to do is upgrade WordPress?

Michael Martin then chipped in and offered up his opinion:

You would then have to have an “Uninstall” function, completely separate from the normal “Deactivate” function.

When upgrading WordPress, or trouble-shooting a problem, you constantly active/deactivate plugins. When you reactivate them, you expect all of your settings to have been retained. That’s why “Uninstall” would need to be a separate function.

And then what happens when certain plugin authors don’t bother with an uninstall? They aren’t under any forced rules to offer it (Unless the WP.org directory adds them, like you said). Does that make the plugin worse really? And what if the plugin doesn’t add database entries anyway? It wouldn’t need an Uninstall option, but regular users would get confused at some plugins being able to be uninstalled, whilst others are only deactivated.

I think that adding the option would get a little more confusing than things should be. WordPress have never hidden this (”Deactivate” was a carefully chosen word I imagine). I suppose it’s just a bad assumption that has developed over time (I have it too I imagine. I’ve never gone through my database to properly remove a plugin!).

Michael raised quite a few interesting points. First off, I completely support the Uninstall function of a plugin becoming seperate of the Deactivate function. His next point is one that seriously needs some undertaking. He is right. There are no rules or concrete guidelines for how a plugin should be uninstalled. Which means, there are no guidelines for which to enforce upon these plugins. This a problem in and of itself, at least with all of the plugins associated with the official WordPress.org Plugin Database.

As for Michaels next point, this is one of the problems that I haven’t been able to come up with an answer for. He is right though. While some plugins would have an uninstall button, others would not, causing the end user to be confused. So help me out, how do we solve this particular issue?

Toxic happened to mention a plugin called Clean Options.

Clean Options can be used to clean up some of the detritus left over from deactivated plugins.

Kirk M reminded us that it’s just not the plugins that add or modify database information that are the problems.

There are plugins that create DB tables that do have the uninstall feature built into the plugin’s options page and of course many that don’t. Usually these uninstalls can be found at the bottom of the a plugins options page as a “Reset and Remove” (or something similar) link. But it’s not just the plugins that create new database tables that are the problem when removing, it’s also the plugins that add files and entries to the WP core files and/or add entries into your .htaccess file that are not removed when a plugin is deleted.

And that is indeed true. Which goes back to the topic of how there are currently no strict guidelines that discuss how a plugin should be removed, if it happens to modify core data or modify database information.

Andrew Rickmann actually created a tool that adds an uninstallation option to the plugins page. However, the option will only show up if the plugin is deactivated, and if the plugin author has created an uninstall file. Andrew’s tool has been very well received. But the problem lyes again with every plugin author not including this installation file which then, makes this tool somewhat obsolete.

And last but not least, Keith has created a WordPress Plugin Framework (WPF) which allows plugin developers to deactivate and uninstall their plugins.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The only way of fixing the uninstalling problem, is a round of solutions to what I believe are multiple problems. As for uninstalling a plugin, as an end user, this is the way I’d like to see it done.

I don’t want options or anything to change when I deactivate a plugin. What I want to see is an uninstall button if the plugin is deactivated. If the plugin is activated, I want the Uninstall button to be greyed out. We also have to make sure there is a confirmation message when you click on the uninstall button to protect against MISS CLICKS.

As for tighter restrictions on the official WordPress plugin database, I feel they are necessary. I talked with Photomatt himself today, and suggested that WordPress come up with a quality assurance team or what can be called a plugin validation team. This is a similar approach that folks from PHPBB3 have taken with their mod database. This is how I explained it:

PHPBB 3.0 which is a complete rewrite of their forum software, they have a mod validation team. Mods are submitted to the database but the validation team has to go through the code and ensure that the mod was developed, following the coding guidelines they have set forth. This ensures maximum compatibility and it also keeps crappy coded mods from entering the official mod database.

So what I’m proposing is that, the WordPress team should get together along with the community and develop a series of coding guidelines. These are the guidelines that third party plugins would have to abide by, in order to be housed within the official WordPress plugin database. This is the only way WordPress would be able to somewhat control the quality of plugins that are coded and released to the public. Granted, you’re not going to solve the problem completely as people will still be able to code plugins for WordPress and release them via their own website, but then, end users of WordPress should think twice about those particular plugins and realize that the only safe route to go should be through the official source of plugins that being the WordPress.org plugin database.

Matt thought the PHPBB3 mod validation process was interesting and has stated that perhaps in the future, parts of their process could some day be implemented into WordPress.org. Until then, we will need to use the solutions that have been provided by the community.

Don’t build your Web site in a vacuum
This is the fifth in a series of posts that discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and other Web marketing strategies. This week we’ll go beyond the Web.

T-shirts, the Web site and other strategies featured
common visual elements. These examples were
produced prior to the 2004 branding initiative.
While this plan used a logo, you do not need a
department or project logo to create a
consistent message.

This is the fifth in a series of posts that discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and other Web marketing strategies. This week we’ll go beyond the Web.

Coordinate your online presence with your other marketing strategies

Today at lunch I saw a post on Pownce from a fellow looking for someone to design a t-shirt. I’ve designed t-shirts in the past, and while I wasn’t volunteering, I did suggest that he provide more information—so any designers might get a better sense of the project. He wrote back that he wanted something that would be eye-catching, abstract (perhaps like graffiti), highly readable, and that his company colors were white, green and dark gray/black. I wrote back asking more questions about goals, target markets, how the t-shirts would be distributed, quantities, printing methods, PMS colors, his other marketing strategies, etc.

As a marketer I wanted to know how the t-shirts would fit into his overall marketing plan, something the designer would need to know as well. As it turns out many of the questions I asked were similar to questions one should address when building a Web site. As those who’ve read my Planning your Web site tutorial know, I feel the first steps in planning a Web site involve establishing clear goals and defining one’s target audience. What I haven’t yet discussed is how your Web site fits into your other marketing strategies.

Marketing Goals

Whether your site showcases your research in advanced robotics or is meant to sell dog-shaped robotic toys, you have marketing goals. Such goals could include:

• Establishing your personal or organizational brand
• Getting invited to speak at conferences
• Having your book published
• Acquiring research funding
• Attracting an audience for your lecture/symposium
• Selling your product or service
• Recruiting students or faculty
• Driving traffic to your Web site in order to share information, disseminate knowledge, and of course, to further those other goals!

Marketing Strategies

When we think of marketing we often think of things like advertising, junk direct mail, telemarketing, e-mail (opt-in and/or spam) and the Web. In addition to these common techniques, a well-thought out marketing campaign may also include: media relations, trade shows/conferences, newsletters, flyers, posters, sidewalk chalk, promotional items (t-shirts, pens, etc.), social media networking, viral marketing (word of mouth 2.0), promotional videos, etc. Which techniques one uses will depend on goals, target audience and budgets, but in most cases a combination of strategies will be more effective than just one. Naturally one of those strategies will involve a Web site.

For most of us, our Web site is our most visible and prominent marketing strategy. It’s available online 24/7 for anyone who wants to visit. While it takes time to plan and build, it can be edited, expanded and delivered in it’s new improved state without the high cost of things like printing, video, buying advertising space and mailing. In an age when we are trying to reduce paper consumption and cost, the Web is ideal.

But our audience isn’t surfing the Web all day. They’re often out in the real world driving past billboards, reading magazines, chatting with friends and so forth. If we want to reach them, we have to reach out to them, not just wait for them to come to us. Just as we use e-vites and printed cards to invite people to our parties, so can we use other strategies to promote our goals in conjunction with our site.

Marketing Plan Example: Thursdays in the Park

In the summers of 2002 and 2003, Case held a series of concerts in the Turning Point Garden called Thursdays in the Park. Our goal was to provide an activity where faculty, staff and students could come together and to bring members of the Greater Cleveland community to campus. University Circle, Inc. (UCI) later expanded on this idea with Wade Oval Wednesdays.

In an effort to reach out to both the on- and off-campus communities we put together a marketing plan that included:

• Listings on the Case Web Event Calendar and UCI online and printed calendars
• Space ads (print and online banner ads) in the Free Times and Scene Magazine (local entertainment weeklies)
• Announcements on WRUW (Case’s radio station)
• Street banners along Euclid Avenue
• Posters and flyers on kiosks and bulletin boards across campus
• T-shirts (worn by staff, available for sale, and thrown out to the audience by the performers)
• Listings on the Web sites of the various bands
• News releases sent to local media outlets such as The Plain Dealer (who then featured us in the events section of their Friday Magazine
• Audience surveys to determine how they heard about the concerts
• E-mail to select audiences, such as local alumni, and those who had signed up for our mailing list
• Word of mouth
• Thursdays in the Park Web site

Our media plan focused on outlets that Clevelanders regularly use to learn about concerts, as well as those typically used to reach the university audience. Having a plan in place also meant that we could choose visual elements and colors that would provide a consistent image across our print and online presence.

Later as each concert series progressed we learned from our surveys that attendees discovered the concerts through a wide variety of our marketing channels. This in turn helped us to fine-tune our strategy in the second year. And while some channels, such as space ads, couldn’t hold all of the information about the concert series, all of them (except the banners) did have room to list the Web site. By publicizing the event in these different ways we were able to reach a wider audience, draw a respectful crowd and also direct them to the site—where they could get directions, see photos from past performances and find other pertinent information.

Conclusion

While your Web site is likely the backbone of your marketing strategy, there are many methods you can use to augment it. These efforts will be most effective if they can be coordinated to focus on a common goal and deliver a consistent message. In future entries I’ll review some of these strategies in greater detail and discuss how members of your team can work together and/or with University Marketing and Communications to coordinate how these strategies can fit together.

29 Brilliant Music Videos

Music has always been an excellent source of inspiration. Particularly if you are stuck with some problem you can’t find a workaround for, a beautiful song can give you a new perspective, let you see the problem from a different angle. And sometimes it’s just useful to make a break — for instance, watching some music videos.

In this post we present some unusual music videos for your monday’s coffee break. Some of the videos are thought-provoking, some of them are funny and some are bizarre. While many of them are well-known, you’ll probably find some videos you’ve never watched before. The videos all perfectly to the music which is being played in the background. Hopefully, everyone will find something new and inspiring for himself/herself. Please notice that you might need to watch some videos at least twice to get the idea behind them.

You might want to read the descriptions of the videos — they are provided below every link. The screenshots often don’t reveal that much about the videos they stand for.

Music has always been an excellent source of inspiration. Particularly if you are stuck with some problem you can’t find a workaround for, a beautiful song can give you a new perspective, let you see the problem from a different angle. And sometimes it’s just useful to make a break — for instance, watching some music videos.

In this post we present some unusual music videos for your monday’s coffee break. Some of the videos are thought-provoking, some of them are funny and some are bizarre. While many of them are well-known, you’ll probably find some videos you’ve never watched before. The videos all perfectly to the music which is being played in the background. Hopefully, everyone will find something new and inspiring for himself/herself. Please notice that you might need to watch some videos at least twice to get the idea behind them.

You might want to read the descriptions of the videos — they are provided below every link. The screenshots often don’t reveal that much about the videos they stand for.

Music Videos

Unkle - Rabbit in your Headlights (hi-res Quicktime)
What is the guy whispering? Who is the guy? And what is he doing in the tunnel? You need to watch this video till the very end. You won’t be disappointed.

Jason Forrest - “War Photographer” (2005)
These freaking vikings are both cool and strange. But it doesn’t make them less sympathetic. And they can play both on drums and guitars pretty well.

Bat for Lashes — What’s A Girl To Do
00:38 is the best moment in the history of music videos. Well, this one is kind of scary. Hares driving on the bicycles and clapping their hands at the same time? A masterpiece from the year 2007.

Nick Cave & Kylie Mingoue — Where The Wild Roses Grow
Probably one of the most beautiful music videos ever made. There is no need for words. Watch it.

Rob Dougan — Clubbed To Death
Incredible editing and directing. So symbolic, so powerful.

Fujiya & Miyagi - Ankle Injuries
What about a music video which is made with thousands of 6-sided dice? Exactly. And the music fits perfectly.

Radiohead – “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” (1995)
The video for this song was shot using different film frequencies, allowing various actions to unfold at different rates within the same frame. The emotional effects of this practice range from silly to unsettling. Try not to watch this video too many times; it begins to feel a little more disturbing each time. [Jeff Shreve]

Sia – “Breathe Me” (Quicktime)
The production of this video clip took several thousands Polaroid photos. The result is… at least unusual.

Citizens Here and Abroad - You Drive and We’ll Listen To Music
Jason Koxvold’s video pairs crashing cars with crashing guitars. Rock. Very well executed and perfectly edited. Must see.

Moby - Porcelaine
Such a beautiful song. One of the videos you are amazed about once, and you never forget again.

The Strokes - You Only Live Once (Imeem)
With a Hundred ways to do a dozen things, why not try it all? Directed by Warren Fu.

Arctic Monkeys - A view from the afternoon (Quicktime version)
A song about a passion and unstoppable willingness to do what you love. Simple, yet so effective.

“Glosoli” - Sigur Ros
“Glosoli” depicts a young drummer boy gathering up the other denizens of what appears to be an adult-free utopian land, and leading a revolution to freedom. So beautiful and so touching. Don’t miss the last scene.

The Avalanches - “Frontier Psychiatrist”
This is freaky. Sometimes the most obvious concept for a video also turns out to be the best. The ghost choir is the best. Except for the nightmarish old-man turtle, of course. [via PitchForkMedia]

Royksopp - Remind Me
We’ve featured this movie already, but it’s worth mentioning it in this post. You can watch it dozens times and still not catch everything. A day in the life of an average working Jill, broken down into its minutest component parts. The unstated joke: mankind has erected immense, resource-devouring systems of almost incomprehensible complexity just so you can sit in your cubicle.

Blur - “Coffee & TV” (Quicktime)
Actually, this song is about a dancing milk carton. However, its adventures are funny, cute, but with a pleasing streak of cruelty. The milk-carton protagonist even has its own fan site.

Boards of Canada: “Dayvan Cowboy” (Quicktime)
It’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in the grainy, existential pulchritude of this thing and completely miss the cheeky self-reference. So, um, where can one surf in Canada? Directed by Melissa Olson.

Move Your Feet - Junior Senior
That’s weird. And that’s what makes it special. A pixel-based video clip.

Daft Punk - One More Time
Probably one of the most colorful animated music videos of all time. Daft Punk, one more time.

Xploding Plastix - Joy Comes In The Morning
A music video about the world we live in and the world we’d like to live in.

Unkle - Eye For Eye
A haunting track with a creepy animation, which won an award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Nasty weirdness drops from the sky and then moves on.

Vitalic - Poney
Flying dogs in light of a laser and in slow-motion. Nobody has ever done something like this before.

OK Go - Here It Comes Again

Justice “D.A.N.C.E.” (Quicktime)
Sometimes even T-Shirts can speak. For instance, in this music video. “D.A.N.C.E.” was nominated for “Video of the Year at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. On the first of November Justice received the “Video Star” award at the European Music Awards in Munich.

Forss - “City Ports”
The visualization fits perfectly to the music.

Radiohead - Just
What could the man on the street possibly have said?

Prodigy - Out Of Space
Prodigy’s “Out of Space” is probably one of the weirdest videos ever created. Welcome back to the 90s — this is how some videos looked like then. The song which was * for the whole generation.

The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony
A video everybody has seen. And everybody would see again.

RJD2 - Work It Out
This guy just want to have some fun with his crooks and his skateboard. A one-shot-video from 2007.

Tips for Nonprofits Meme
Elizabeth Able, of Able Reach Arts and Web Development, recently started a blog meme in support of nonprofits that have an online presence. She asks that we write one tip on ways nonprofits can benefit from having an online presence and have others do the same.

Snowcrystals.com shares a wealth of knowledge

Elizabeth Able, of Able Reach Arts and Web Development, recently started a blog meme in support of nonprofits that have an online presence. She asks that we write one tip on ways nonprofits can benefit from having an online presence and have others do the same. Tips can have similarities so long as each offers new insight into the topic.

This meme comes with four guidelines:

1. Offer one tip
2. Tag three people. Bonus points for including blogs that support or represent nonprofits.
3. Please link back to the original entry page. If you link, Elizabeth will contact you about including your tip in a compilation of tips generated by this meme.
4. Remember to pass on the guidelines

Now that we know the rules, here is my tip.

Share your knowledge and expertise in the form of educational resources

Nonprofits come in many shapes and sizes. Whether they are confronting issues relating to poverty, arts & culture, health care, education or public policy, each is likely to have specific and in-depth knowledge relating to their mission. While their Web sites will often focus on their core mission, volunteerism, fund-raising and related issues, much can be gained from sharing their broader knowledge base as well.

In this case, when I speak of knowledge, I’m not referring to the facts and figures used in support of the cause, but the more in-depth knowledge or data related to the topic. Thus a public art organization, that uses its site to announce projects and explain how art benefits society, may also want to publish related resources such as:

• A walking tour of public art in the region served by the organization.
• Interviews with artists explaining how they came to the field, what education this required and where they seek their inspiration.
• A history of the role of public art from ancient times to the present with images and links to more specific resources.
• Pages explaining how sculptures are made, from the design process to the casting of metal and other techniques.

Benefits of knowledge sharing

Sharing such knowledge can support an organization in many ways. In most cases the expertise and knowledge is already in the minds of the staff—who draw on this information in their own work. Sharing it with others benefits society by providing information resources, but also supports marketing and fundraising.

• Educational resources geared to K-12 students and/or the general public help the organization to reach a wider audience geographically and demographically. This builds name recognition and supports the organizations brand, enhancing the reputation of both the organization and its staff through the quality of its content.
• Sites providing educational outreach may be eligible for additional funding from foundations and government agencies that support such programming.
• Informative, and fun, resources help to stimulate interest in the topic thus cultivating readers towards becoming future donors, volunteers and champions to the cause.

Bastions of Knowledge: Examples

Many faculty and staff here at Case have heard me discuss sites I call “Bastions of Knowledge,” places where faculty and staff can share their expertise with the public. As mentioned above, such sites provide educational outreach and support marketing. A site that becomes known as one of the leading resources in a given field bolsters the organizations reputation, but can also draw additional traffic to the rest of the organization’s site. Two of my favorite examples are:

Snowcrystals.com, produced by Kenneth G. Libbrecht, chairman of the Physics Department at Caltech

This site has anything you could possibly want to know about snowflakes, from the physics of how they develop and the impact of temperature on crystal formation, to some stunning photographs of individual snow crystals. If you Google the term “snowflake,” this site shows up as the number 2 result—out of 9,050,000. A search on “snow crystal” puts them 1st out of 366,000 results. When you consider the number of children studying snow in school, the adults who are curious to learn more and scientists interested in crystal formation and/or considerations of temperature, you have to imagine that this site gets a lot of traffic. Professor Libbrecht didn’t have to share his research with all of us, but in doing so he has provided a fascinating resource and made more people familiar with his department and Caltech.

The eSkeletons Project, University of Texas at Austin

The e-Skeletons project doesn’t rank quite as high in Google, it comes in 8th out of 6,760,000 on a search of the word “skeleton.” but that’s still very impressive. So is the content. This site provides images of individual bones, from all orientations, from 12 primate species including humans. Animations, FAQ’s and other information make this a terrific resource for teachers and students alike. As a K-12 educational resource, the site also receives both corporate and government support.

In Conclusion

If you’re working for a non-profit or similar organization, go ahead and share the information in your head. You’ll provide a service to others as well as yourself.

As per the instructions of the meme guidelines, I’ll tag Mano Singham, Jeremy Smith, Lev Gonick and Gina Prodan, as I’m curious to hear what they have to say on the matter.