Other tools and resources for crowdsourcing of emergency and disaster relief:

• CrisisCommons and CrisisCommons Wiki - "CrisisCommons seeks to advance and support the use of open data and volunteer technology communities to catalyze innovation in crisis management and global development."
• InSTEDD - "InSTEDD has a unique niche — we design and use open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow and knowledge sharing to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations."
• Ushahidi - "We built the Ushahidi platform as a tool to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web."

Video - Google I/O 2011: Crisis Response 2.0 – Empowering Developers in Times of Crisis

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. The Online Collaboration Tools Guide
2. Christchurch earthquake: images, updates and information resources
3. Web Apps & Software for Distributed Teams

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Use of the Internet in Crisis Situations – Video Lecture, Tools and Resources
2. Finding the Right Solution – Explore As Many Different Ideas as Possible Within Given Constraints
3. Get a Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts

Machine readable?

Machines, like search engines and any other computer on the internet, can't understand the content of webpages. They can only present it to human beings to make sense of. There are several ways to make this content more structured, allowing machines to better 'understand' it.

The concept of adding meaning to webpages in not new. In a way, it has been around since the web was invented. However, the combination of lack of the right technology, and more importantly, incentives for websites owners to take the extra effort in making the pages more readable to machines, has left this field obscure.

Machine readability of webpages, called by some The Semantic Web, got a major push last year when Facebook announced about the Open Graph protocol. The Open Graph uses structured information in webpages to make better use of their content.

For example, presenting the correct image and name of a website when it is liked and added to a user's stream on Facebook. Facebook announcement of the Open Graph protocol caused lots of websites owners to add structured information to webpages, including some of the top ranked websites.

Now, an even stronger force – search engines – is taking this factor into account, officially.

How will you be affected

Web users

As a web user, you can expect new, smarter applications and extensions that use the structured information (like the demo-extension Creative Commons Laser Highlighter does). For example, your browser might be able to automatically detect events in webpages and ask if you wish to add them to your calendar.

People mentioned in articles could be detected and offered more information about, such as their profiles on social networks or other items about them from across the web.

Products showing up in webpages will be added extra information that was not written by the original author, maybe even a comparison to similar products in other websites. The potential is huge.

Google Recipes is an example of an existing service that takes advantage of the structured information in webpages. It offers faceted browsing, searching recipes by their ingredients, and more.

Websites owners

As a website owner, you should start thinking about enriching webpages with semantic information. Expected results include better recognition by search engine, potentially leading to more visits. These visits will be more focused, since visitors will be more informed about what they're about to see.

To sum up

I think that this initiative has a lot of potential, and I hope we will see its fruits soon. However, as great projects can fail (see the Google Wave case for example), you should exercise caution with decisions you take about your website's markup.

As users of the web, we only need to wait and see if indeed Sechema.org get's picked up by websites owners. I hope that within a few months I'll be writing here about new apps and services that leverage these new capabilities. 

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Some Tips About Web Stuff – June 2010
2. Prevent Major Third Parties From Tracking You With Chrome Extension ‘Disconnect’
3. Two Free Website Building Platforms Compared – WordPress VS. Google Sites

She also talks about several points of view about net neutrality, and the importance of preserving the characteristics of the internet that led to innovation. She emphasize that it doesn't mean preserving the same architecture, but identifying the things that enable anyone to innovate.

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. ‘Social Media and the Enterprise’ Explained (Presentation)
2. 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes
3. Video – Building Innovation Teams – What is Your Learning Type?

This is a guest post by Maria Rainier. Maria is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online degrees, and what it takes to succeed as a student getting an online masters degree from home. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

General Search Guidelines

• Be specific in your choice of keywords, i.e. a search for “Libya protests” will yield more relevant results to the current situation than simply searching for “Libya”.
• Use parentheses to group phrases. This will cause the search engine to give results that contain that specific phrase. Without the parentheses, all pages containing any of the search terms will be returned, and you will have more off-topic results.
• Use the add and subtract operators to narrow the results. For example, say you are interested in Gaddafi’s response to the protests. A Google search for Gaddafi will yield few relevant pages, but by using the add operator, “Gaddafi+protests”, pertinent results will be obtained.
•  Use a wildcard operator If you find that your search results are too narrow. Typically an asterisk is used for this purpose. Each asterisk represents a single unknown keyword in a search. This can be particularly useful for finding what phrases others are writing about.

Sources for Finding the Latest News

• Facebook has a large number of news profiles with up to the minute posts.
• Twitter has an up to the minute feed as well and is similar in content to Facebook.
• Twittergrid allows multiple twitter feeds to be displayed at once.
• User created Google maps provides useful geographic information along with the news.
• Flickr and Google Images are useful sources for finding photographs.
• YouTube and Google Video are useful for finding video of current events.
• Most corporate news organizations provide a live RSS feed.

Chaos in the Middle East

• Libya is the latest country in the Middle East to experience social unrest, this news profile is from Facebook and provides news on the situation. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Libya-Protest-News/184318354937923
• This Twitter feed, found using the search term “Twitter Libya protests” provides news on the situation in Libya. http://twitter.com/libya
• This Twitter feed contains news on the situation in Egypt, returned from the Google search “Twitter Egypt”. http://twitter.com/egyTweets
• Here is an image from Flickr for the search term “Libya unrest”. http://www.flickr.com/photos/21862466@N06/5480290158/
• Here is an image from Flickr for the search term “Egypt unrest”. http://www.flickr.com/photos/amnesty-international/5415754207/

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Presentation: Tools and practices for Finding and processing information online
2. How to Search the Web Real-Time
3. Search Twitter with Google – It’s Great!‎

Flickr Images

maching the quary christchurch earthquake.

Live tweets

in a three column layout webpage via Tweet Grid with these quaries: #eqnz OR #Chch filter:links | #eqnz OR #Chch twitpic OR video |  near:"christchurch, new zealand" within:15mi

A map showing reports

from Ushahidi (a crowdsourcing desaster reporting tool) and other sources (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr)

A google map

called  'Christchurch earthquake: Map of the destruction' – contiatning "Information about what's been damaged in the aftermath of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake on February 22nd, 2011, and where people can get help".

More resources and meta-resources 

1. eqnz – Earthquake New Zealand Information Page
2. Christchurch 22 Feb 2011 Earthquake
3. #EQNZ: The Web Mobilizes for New Zealand Earthquake
4. New Zealand Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management: – Homepage
5. google crisis response – Christchurch Earthquake

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Use of the Internet in Crisis Situations – Video Lecture, Tools and Resources
2. Survey: How do You Process Online Information?
3. Presentation: Tools and practices for Finding and processing information online

The keyboard shortcut for inserting the current date into a Word Document is ALT+SHIFT+D. The problem is that the inserted date is a live filed, so it is being updated every time you open the document.

To insert the current date without it ever being updated (that is, to insert the current date as simple text) – press CTRL+SHIFT+F9 when the cursor is inside the added field.

So, to add the current date as simple text:
press ALT+SHIFT+D > press the left arrow (to stand inside the field) > press CTRL+SHIFT+F9.

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Tip – Microsoft Word Keyboard Shortcut to Find the Next Instance of Text You’ve Already Looked For
2. Tip – keyboard Shortcut to Jump Back to the Last Place Edited in a Microsoft Word Document
3. Edit MS Word default template to save time and get better branding

Find Videos

drag the link to your bookmarks or right click  and choose "Bookmark This Link"

image by By The Pug Fathe, licensed CC BY 2.0

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Create a New Email With the Title, Content, and a Link to a Webpage Using a Gmail Bookmarklet
2. New Bit.ly Bookmarklet Released
3. Software Recommendation – MySpeed Lets You Control the Speed of Online Videos (YouTube Too)

Short answer

Save the link below to your bookmarks. When you think of an interesting topic, just write it in the search box and click search. You will get back  videos from across the Web (not only YouTube), published since 2007, and longer than 20 minutes.

Find full length videos

Answer explained

The link above takes you to an advanced search on Google. The results match your search query and the following criteria:

1. Find videos,
2. published since 2007 (this is an arbitrary time frame, you can change it), and that are
3. longer than 20 minutes.

Note that you can search for topics, people, or any other thing that you find interesting.

Some search terms to get you started

Here are some topics I got interesting results for: 

• creativity
• information retrieval
• PayPal
• Lawrence Lessig
• internet future
• Clay Shirky
•  Identity and Trust
•  Social engineering
•  network security
• interpersonal communication
• Wikipedia

image courtesy of Arto Teräs (licensed CC-by-SA)

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. A Bookmarklet to Help You Find Videos Online
2. Inspiring Video – “Did You Know 2.0″
3. Video – The Three Factors That Motivate People

If you’re a typical web user, you’re unintentionally sending your browsing and search history with your name and other personal information to third parties and search engines whenever you’re online.

Take control of the data you share with Disconnect!

• Disable tracking by third parties like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, without requiring any setup or significantly degrading the usability of the web.
• Truly depersonalize searches on search engines like Google and Yahoo (by blocking identifying cookies not just changing the appearance of results pages), while staying logged into other services — e.g., so you can search anonymously on Google and access iGoogle at once.
• See how many resource and cookie requests are blocked, in real time.
• Easily unblock services, by clicking the toolbar button then services (and reloading current pages) — e.g., so you can play games on Facebook.

Get Disconnect.

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. How to Search the Web Real-Time
2. The web gets smarter with Schema.org – how will you be affected?
3. New Bit.ly Bookmarklet Released

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Survey: How do You Process Online Information?
2. A Guide to Finding Up to the Minute Details on the Latest News
3. Christchurch earthquake: images, updates and information resources

To see your site's 'In-Page Analytics' click this option under the 'Content' section in Google analytics.

See Google's review of the new feature in the video below (5:20 minutes).

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Two Free Website Building Platforms Compared – WordPress VS. Google Sites
2. Get a Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts
3. Roundup – Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google Tips and Practices

Subscribe to the feed of the podcasts I listen to: Daily email | RSS | iTunes (lunches iTunes).

Note that I hand pick each episode (according to my preferences, of course). I'm subscribed to lots of podcast channels. Every  time a new episode is published, I read what it is about and decide if I want to download it – and now, share it with you.

Topics

These are the topics you can expect to hear about:

To share an episode, I add to it a tag that generates a public RSS feed. You can find more public feeds in the bottom of the 'Recommended Reading' section.

please let me know if I can improve it in any way – I'd be glad to get your feedback.

P.S there is an audio  version of this blog as well, you are invited to subscribe to it.

​

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. The ‘Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs’ Search Engine
2. New in Google Analytics: See Your Stats laid Out on Your Website pages
3. Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users

Incognito Mode

In Google Chrome, to get to Incognito mode press CTRL+SHIFT+N in the keyboard, or click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar and select New incognito window.

In Incognito mode, pages won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however" (quote from the opening page of incognito mode).  

 Since no session data is stored or transfered between the regular window and incognito window, you can stay loged in to all your accounts, and in addition log in to other accounts in the incognito window.

Better then Google's 'Multiple sign-in'

There are tow main advantages to using an Incognito window to access two accounts:

1. It's less error prone. I figured it when I tryed to activate this feature (in https://www.google.com/accounts/MultipleSessions), and was asked to sign these conditions:
   

   • The account you’re currently using is displayed at the top of most Google product pages, or at the bottom of most pages on mobile devices. Always check to make sure you’re using the account you want.
   • Not all Google products support multiple sign-in. When switching between Google products, the account you’re currently using may change.
   • Google products not listed above will default to the first account that you signed in to using your current web browser session.

2. You can access other accounts, not Google's. For example, you can access another Facebook account or any other services.

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes
2. How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload
3. Make Gmail More Secure By Setting It to Use HTTPS Connection

Example

I'm subscribed to some big websites that publish several posts a day. The thing with big websites is that they tend to publish things like "time wasters" or popular topics, and not just high quality content (in my opinion, of course). To identify them faster, I add a series of hyphens before and after their name, like this:

 —————————– site's name ——————————–

You can do the same with very important websites (but remember to use a different visual cue, like the plus sign  '+' or the ampersand sign  '&' ).

I've explained the idea behind changing the name of RSS feeds, and how to do it, in the section 'Prefix feeds for Second level categorization' in Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users.

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users
2. How To Use RSS – Beginners Guide
3. Get a Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts

Images might change

Instead of just uploading an image and adding it to the email, when you create your rich signature you are asked to give a link to the image (see screenshot below). The link is of a web address, not a location on your computer. When you send an email, the link is a live link.

This mean that whenever someone opens an email you sent, the image is retrieved from it's original location on the web. If the image changed in the meantime – your recipient will see the changed image, and if it no longer exists – he will see no image at all.

This is a Huge problem!  You can't really be safe when using images in your signature: If you host the images on your servers – you will have to keep them alive forever, and if you link to someone else's image (say, on Flickr) – they might decide to change it or remove it one day.

I discovered it the hard way

After using a rich signature for about a month, I noticed that one of the images I used have changed on all the emails I sent(!). It changed to a huge, gray image saying that the the trial period of the image hosting has ended! this happened because I used a link I got from a chrome extension that takes a screenshot and automatically uploads it to the web. It seams that the image was only hosted for a short time. Of course, I did not know that the image is not beeing actually added to the emails I send…

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Tips and Examples for using (the new) HTML Signatures in Gmail
2. Make Gmail More Secure By Setting It to Use HTTPS Connection
3. How to Send (Almost) Anyone on Linkedin a Message

• Autonomy - the ability to be self directed, that is, control our activities rather than being managed.
• Mastery – the urge to be better at stuff we do. The example given in the video is of people who play instruments just for fun, and not for money.
• Purpose – making a contribution to something transcendent.

I think that the most interesting practical suggestion in the video is this:

Pay people enough so that monIey is not a consideration anymore, and then making sure the three motivation factors are satisfied.

Image by by laverrue

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Video – How to Find the Right People For a Job With Linkedin
2. Find Full length Video Lectures on Any topic
3. Video – Building Innovation Teams – What is Your Learning Type?

When you’re trying to organize a particular area of your life, perhaps shopping, your finances or stock orders, it can be a huge help to have technology on your side. Just recently I’ve been trying out Google’s Gmail filters, and I’ve found that if you use them in a certain way (in conjunction with FireFox and its addon), you can come up with some cool ideas.

One of the most fun ways to use Gmail Filters is to use it for organizing coupon codes and hence creating shopping lists.

Set-up Gmail Filters to Email Yourself and Filter Deals and Coupons

Gmail filters are designed to organize your inbox, so that different types of email get sent to different folders. You might have come across this type of thing when you’re teaching your email client to recognize what’s junk mail and what’s not. Filters mean messages don’t go into your inbox and clutter it up, and help you to carry out the right task, when you need to do it. Implement these two steps and you’ll never miss a trick…

It’s quite simple to set up a Gmail filter. Just open up Gmail within your browser, choose settings > filters > ‘create new filter’. From there you can choose to make your very own ‘DEALS’ list (or something like that), which essentially involves you emailing deals you plan to use to yourself. This way, you could even email deals to yourself from your cell phone, and it will go into your filtered mailbox ready to be reviewed later on.

First let's create a filter:

• From: your email address
• To: your email address
• Subject: DEALS (or whichever label you wish to give it)

After the first step, you can then use the various settings for different options. For instance, you can choose these emails to bypass the inbox completely (not checking this option will mean the message appears twice; once in your inbox and once in the filtered box too), and automatically star each email (to then unstar it once the deal is reviewed / used):

Use "Email Yourself" FireFox Addon to Collect Deals in Your Inbox

If you’re not already using the Mozilla FireFox browser, I highly recommend you install it and transfer your bookmarks over. It is incredibly useful for the simple reason that you can install plenty of cool add-ons. In this case, the Email Yourself! addon provides users with the ability to:

1. Select a part of the web page they’re browsing,
2. Send the summary of the page in an email (with the link and page title) to yourself.

Now, edit the add-on settings (navigate tools > add-ons) so that the add-on uses your own Gmail address, and the subject title to match what your filter recognizes. The default for Email Yourself! is ‘Sent via Email Yourself!’ so you could keep it as that, but it could be anything, for example ‘DEALS’ (in this specific case).

Basically, you are sending an email to yourself via the add-on, so you want your Gmail filter to recognize the specified name. From then on, you’re free to test out the add-on tool.

For example, using my favorite coupon collection from PromoCodes or CouponSherpa, easily select the deal details (like coupon code and the amount) you want and email the deal yourself using the tool:

Now, whenever you need any deal, just enter the "DEALS" folder within your Gmail and find the collection of your selected deals. Go shopping and save now!

coupon image by striatic

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload
2. 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes
3. Make Gmail More Secure By Setting It to Use HTTPS Connection

Gmail now natively supports rich signatures (with images, font size and colors, links and so on) . Just go to 'Settings' and customize your signature under the 'Signature' section. Here is an image of my new signature:

Some tips

Finding icons: Want to find icons to put next to your details? Here is a special Google search (opens in a new tab) that will help you find small icons. Just type the name of the services you're looking for in the search box, and you'll get icons size images you can copy and add to your signature.

More than one signature : Note that you can set up more then one signature if you have more than one email address associated with your Gmail account.

Track website traffic: If you have a website, you can monitor how many people get to it from the link in your signature. To do that, you need to tag the link, so that Google analytics (if that's your analytics application) will recognize the visit source. For example – to tag the link in my signature, I could add this tag:

http://www.productivewise.com?utm_source=MailSignature

To monitor clicks to your site, just replace the base  address in the example above, and add the link to your signature.

But there is a problem with using images

Note, that until the recipient actively  allows images in the email to be download, your signature might look somthing like that (tested on Outlook 2007):

That is, instead of the icons you've added to your signature, they might see just a placeholder….

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. Don’t Use Images in Gmail’s signature!
2. Roundup – Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google Tips and Practices
3. Guest Post – Get Ready for Shopping Season: Collect Deals in Your Gmail Inbox

What is a Gmail multiple inboxes

Gmail multiple inboxes allows you to have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view. You can have up to 5 additional panels and set them to display labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want next to your inbox. To learn how to set it up read my previous post about it.

My views: main inbox, non-work, daily stuff and newsletters, to-dos and drafts

My views are separated mainly based on their importance and urgency levels. Note that about 90% of the e-mails I get are automatically directed to their view using Gmail's filters. See a screenshot of my inbox below:

click the image to enlarge

main inbox – most important and urgent

The main inbox view contains e-mails that didn't go to any other view. Hopefully, these are the most important and urgent to answer our deal with.

Non-work – important but less urgent

This view gets  e-mails from family members and friends,  messages I get on Facebook, Aardvark answers, calendar notifications and so on. The point here is that it's OK to delay the answer to these e-mails if necessary. Usually I will get to them the same day  they were sent in, or one day later. But if I read them (or only their subject) and decide not to answer right away, they will stay out of the main inbox and will not interfere with more important e-mails.

Daily stuff and newsletters – Less important, not that urgent

Newsletters and other e-mails that are sent to me automatically, go to this view. It includes Linkedin updates, mailing lists I'm subscribe to (only if they don't have an RSS feed, of course. If they did, they would go straight to Google Reader), meetup notifications, new twitter-follower announcements, and so on.

To-dos – not urgent

The To-Do view usually gets e-mails I sent myself (from work, from Google reader and the like). These are e-mails I want to deal with when I have some free time. I will usually empty this view once every few weeks.

Drafts

As the name imply, the drafts view contains  e-mails that I have started to write but did not send. It will usually be empty. I find it comfortable to have the draft e-mails in front of me when they exists, otherwise I tend to forget about them.

Got any questions about this post or you want to share your own e-mails processing methods? Feel free to share them with us in the comments.

Like technology podcasts?

Get an RSS Feed of Awesome, Hand Picked, Technology Podcasts from all over the web

Related posts:

1. 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes
2. Use Incognito Mode to Log in to Multiple Accounts Simultaneously
3. Roundup – Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google Tips and Practices