A Google Idea

"I don't have time to code this right now, but here's an idea for a Google API app. It's just the sort of thing webloggers would go for, a vanity macro.

• Scrape your referers pages, extracting all google queries and extracting the "q" parameter.
• Run these through the Google API, looking for search terms that you're in the top 10 for.
• Store all of these.
• Every so often (6 hours, or maybe every post), pick one of these results, and create a Google box to upload to your page. (Remove the result if you're no longer in the top ten.)

Why is this interesting? Well, while I'm proud to still be in the top ten for CBDTPA, many of the google queries I'm getting are quite interesting, albiet not in a Disturbing Search Requests way. Who would have guessed I have the top search result for "essay on tragic event to remind us of our blessings"? This would be a really cool vanity thing. I may code it if nobody else does, but it'll be a while." [iRights]

This would be totally awesome, as I get a lot of hits from Google and Yahoo/Google and I don't have time to go through them and figure out what search terms folks are using to hit my site. Part of my curiousity is vanity, but another part is the reference librarian in me that wants to ask these folks, "Did you find what you were looking for? If not, maybe I can help you find it...."

"I thought it would be interesting to see which books are being mentioned most frequently on weblogs. Weblog BookWatch keeps track of weblogs that flow through the recently changed list at weblogs.com and searches for links to Amazon.com. Then it looks at the ISBN in the link's URL, and counts the link as a mention of that book. The most fequently mentioned books show up on the Top 10 list, with references to the weblogs that mentioned them. It's only looking for books right now (not CDs or other products), and only looking for links to Amazon.com." [Paul Bausch]

Too cool! Now if we only had a librarians.weblogs.com against which we could run this type of query! Imagine it for different genres, too. It sounds like Paul is tracking other interesting Amazon services, as well:

"Amazon is offering an XML Platform for developers so they can integrate Amazon's best-sellers into their websites. If you're an associate, log into the associate site for more info. This is an interesting step toward Amazon becoming a Web Service. They're ahead of the curve, and really understand how the Web works. I can't wait to see how they expand this.

An independent developer has already written a Perl module called Business::Associates that works with the new platform."

as well as:

"DayPop is tracking Amazon Wish Lists. (I have one of those.) The next step is to be able to filter a list like that by my friends—or by groups of domain experts in various subjects. (imagine: this is what the top 50 web designers [as voted by their peers] are wanting to read. or doctors. or indy musicians. or anthropology students. etc.)"

Too much to think about at the moment, but I'd like to spend some time on it someday.

iBlog: Running Radio on the iPod

"Today I moved Radio UserLand folder to my iPod. Since moving Radio is usually painful, I renamed my iPod disk with the same name of my PowerBook HD. Everything works as expected, I'm posting this message from my G4, running Radio from my iPod.

This also means that I can walk to any Mac, plug in my iPod and start blogging in seconds." [Paolo Valdemarin Public Weblog, via Scripting News]

Very cool! So Paolo is using his iPod to make his blogging more portable. See also Bryce's Pocketblog application for PocketPCs for more great work in this area (although his doesn't carry around your entire installation with you). C'mon Palm developers - you can do it, yes you can, provide us with some blogging jam!

Nebraska Researchers Measure the Extent of 'Link Rot' in Distance Education

"Nineteen percent of the 515 hyperlinks contained in online materials for three graduate-level biochemistry courses at the university expired sometime between August 2000, when the course materials were created, and last month, the researchers found....

The two researchers found that the rate of link rot is similar to that of the decay of radioactive substances. The links in the three courses had a half-life of 55 months: Half of the links would be expected to have died in 55 months, half of the remaining links would be expected to have died in another 55 months, and so forth....

Academic departments often do not budget for such maintenance costs or consider in tenure-and-promotion evaluations how much time such maintenance takes, he said. 'People think about start-up costs, but they never think about maintenance costs.'

Link rot is particularly problematic for a course that is offered repeatedly, said Daniel Cane, senior vice president of research and development at Blackboard Inc., which produces software used for offering online courses. The company recently started offering its users a program that checks all the links on a Blackboard-based online course and can hide any that no longer work. 'We do see it as a growing issue,' Mr. Cane said of link rot." [The Chronicle, via LISNews.com]

This is a very important issue that I'm happy to finally see addressed by a formal study. I'm starting to worry about this in my blog, too. What are my responsibilities for checking link rot? When I ran the Librarians' Site du Jour, I kept up with checking links pretty well for the first two or three years. By the fourth year, I rarely had time to check, let alone fix, all of the links. Do I have the same responsibility for a blog, though? Or does the nature of the site and the writing give provide some kind of a loophole?

My inclination is to say that I still have a responsibility to maintain valid links, but we need better tools to automate the process. The librarian in me cries out for accuracy! Does anyone have a favorite?