Public School District Finance Peer Search

The Public School District Finance Peer Search lets you compare any U.S. school district's revenue and expenditures per student with peer districts and with national and state averages.

Poynter Online: You Think You're Overworked?

If you're feeling put upon you should read this 37-year old memo to a new hire at the St. Petersburg Times. You can't fault her new boss for not communicating expectations.

LLRX.com competitive intelligence selective resource guide

Competitive intelligence is where a business researches competitors. LLRX.com offers a competitive intelligence resource guide that includes information on search engines, meta search sites, news search sites, business info websites and databases, online people trackers, television and radio news transcripts, legislative monitoring and tracking, e-newsletters, online newspapers, journals and news sources, monitoring trends, companies and products, rss feeds on business related content, identification of company legal representation, online tools for competitor monitoring, benchmarking, web directories and portals, website trackers and more.

Industry analyst blogs

Here's a list of 117 blogs by industry analysts.

SchoolMatters

Standard & Poor's has an impressive site gathering information on U.S. schools called SchoolMatters. It offers school-by-school data on test scores, race and ethnicity, disabilities, poverty, teacher experience, class size and much, much more. You can search by school, district, name, city, state or zip, compare whichever schools you want and download the data as an Excel spreadsheet. Thanks to Al Cross of the Institute for Rural Journalism & Community Issues for telling me about it.

Opposition to Army sexual assault database

A proposed Army sexual assault database reported here previously is generating opposition in Congress and among advocacy groups.

Simple Memorizing Techniques

Positive Health offers basic techniques for memorizing lists, numbers and names.

Factbook on the family

The writers Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman have put together a "Factbook" sharing their research into the family. It is in the form of nearly 100 "memos" they wrote "synthesizing facts, statistical data and opinions" that were used in the writing of Bronson's book, "Why Do I Love These People?" They cite their original sources, so you don't have to take their word for it. "I felt this material was simply too valuable not to share with others," Bronson writes.

Wex public-access law dictionary and encyclopedia

"Wex is an ambitious effort to construct a collaboratively-created, public-access law dictionary and encyclopedia. It is sponsored and hosted by the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School."

THOMAS

THOMAS, the Congressional search portal from the Library of Congress, has received an upgrade since last I looked at it. I like that on the home page you can quickly find all the bills sponsored by a particular representative or senator. You can also search past Congresses back to the 101st, browse committee reports, get roll call votes, find presidential nominees by state and find any mention of any senator or representative in the Congressional Record, among other features. Now if only every state, county and city government would make it so easy ...

Sealing divorce records for corporations

The National Law Journal writes about how corporations are increasingly asking courts to seal divorce records to protect trade secrets or financial information. "Such attempts to restrict public access to divorce documents have irked First Amendment lawyers and many family law practitioners, who argue that the proceedings are too secretive and foster the perception that the rich and powerful get special treatment in the courts," it reports.

Kentucky Workers Compensation Resource

CompEd Inc is "A Kentucky non-profit corporation dedicated to the educational and informational needs of the workers compensation system of Kentucky." It publishes online decisions by the Workers' Compensation Board and Kentucky Court of Appeals. I learned about this from the Kentucky Law Blog, which offers "eLegal Commentary on Kentucky Law - Appeals, Statutes, Laws, Regulations, Appeals, Trials, News and more."

Using R to analyze stock and housing prices

This article demonstrates how the free R programming language can be used to analyze the stock market and housing prices. But it's not for the math or programming faint of heart...

A lesson for a lazy scribe

Yesterday you may recall that I wrote about the Telephone Number Database. You may also recall that I ended by saying "The rest of the site is a mystery to me - such as who operates it and why ... " Now as soon as I wrote that I should have said to myself, "Well, duh, moron, that's because you didn't even try to find out." Faithful reader Jim Malone took the extra steps your humble scribe didn't and found a few more interesting details about the site. First, using directNIC's WHOIS, one of many sites that let you find out who registered an Internet domain, he found tndatabase.com's registrant:

Michael Wally
P.O. Box 234
New Kensington, PA 15068
US
724-335-3590
Fax:206-202-0202

Then he did a quick Web search and found a blog posting pointing to this Pittsburgh TV story.

WSJ reporters on must-read blogs

Wall Street Journal reporters offer their take on "the most influential blogs across industries ranging from publishing and finance to health care and Hollywood":

"No self-respecting industry these days is without a must-read blog. Although they vary wildly on fine points like accuracy, they are now so widely read that it's assumed anybody in the business is up to speed on the latest postings. For outsiders, they are also a window into the inner workings, preoccupations and gossip of fields ranging from real estate to mergers and acquisitions."

This is a "free feature" so you don't have to be a subscriber, as you do for most of the WSJ's content.

Investigating fraud by satellite

Matt Waite of the St. Petersburg Times says an NPR story on farm fraud is "a giant, flashing billboard of an idea for any ambitious investigative journalist in a farm state." He writes how a government investigator is using "remote sensing" - i.e. satellite photos - to find farmers who claim subsidies for crops they aren't growing.

Google Base

Google Base allows you to post your own content to Google. Essentially it lets you use Google as your personal Web host and database. It will give you your own Web site URL where you (and anyone else) can view your stuff, and an anonymous email address anyone can use to get in touch with you. Google suggests posting course schedules, list of events, things for sale, profiles of people, reference articles, reviews, news articles - but you can post anything you want, including pictures, as long as it isn't obscene or illegal. You can also tag your stuff so others can find it, upload things in bulk, and set expiration dates so they will eventually go away. Just remember that anyone can view what you post to Google, and by doing so you will be participating in Google's stealth campaign to take over the world ...

Top ten worst graphs (in the scientific literature)

Newspapers get beat up regularly, and justifiably, for our sometimes clumsy and misleading use of graphs. Here's a page devoted to the Top ten worst graphs in scientific literature.

Telephone Number Database

I'm not sure this has much use, except for telemarketers looking for call lists. But the Telephone Number Database allows you to drill down from area code to individual numbers. It tells you if the number has been assigned and which phone company phone company has the number, which can sometimes be useful to tell if a number is a cell phone or not (For example, Bellsouth cell phones are identifiable because they're controlled by Bellsouth Mobility). You can also type the number directly in the URL and go straight to the record for that number, such as http://www.tndatabase.com/502/582/4691/. The rest of the site is a mystery to me - such as who operates it and why ...

Cyburbia urban planning portal

Cyburbia is an urban planning portal. It has what look to be pretty active forums for discussing urban planning issues.

Visualizing the Bible

Exegesis graphically represents how often particular Bible passages are found on the Web, as measured by Google searches. But you must have Java installed and the site warns it takes a while to load and works better with a fast computer. If that interests you, you'd also be interested in Gospel Spectrum, which uses "data visualization and data-mining to deconstruct and then visually reconstruct the story of Jesus as presented in the Bible." (I learned of both of these courtesy of the information aesthetics weblog.)

Curing education-reporter myopia

A long-time education writer offers his thoughts on "how to cure education-reporter myopia and cover the reality of schools."

digg offers "non-hierarchial editorial control"

digg is generating a lot of hype, interest from venture capitalists and an article at BusinessWeek online. "Digg is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do," the site says. I should disclose here that my Web page, "The most useful Web sites for reporters," has received 12 diggs. It attracted two comments: "big ol' list of sites. too big to be useful" and "not worth a digg." I think I'm going to cry ...

Census age search service

I didn't know the Census did this: For $65 it will research Census records from 1910 to 2000 and issue a transcript of the results. "Individuals can use these transcripts, which may contain information on a person’s age, sex, race, State or country of birth, and relationship to the householder, as evidence to qualify for social security and other retirement benefits, in making passport applications, to prove relationship in settling estates, in genealogy research, etc., or to satisfy other situations where a birth or other certificate may be needed but is not available," the Census says. But this "information can be released only to the named person, his/her heirs, or legal representatives."

Famous birthdays

FamousBirthdays.com is a site devoted to, uh, birthdays of the famous. The most useful thing for journalists is the list of birthdates - assuming they're accurate, of course. The site says "Webmaster Edward Morykwas carefully checks each famous birthdate with at least two authoritative sources before posting it on the site. ... Sometimes he'll even write to a celebrity personally, just to verify that the biographical info is accurate. (FamousBirthdays.com has been online for eight years, so there aren't many errors left for visitors to catch.) " But the sources themselves aren't listed, as far as I can see.

Database of Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s opinions

askSam, the makers of a free-form database often used by journalists, has put online a searchable database of Samuel A. Alito Jr's published opinions.

More women = cleaner politics

A professor plotted the percentage of women in the legislatures of 30 countries against the perceived cleanliness of those countries' politics. His graphic shows that the more women there are, the cleaner the politics. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if there's a lurking variable or two here.

Social networking for journalists

Poynteronline writes about "how journalists can make use of social networking Web sites." The writer, Sree Sreenivasan, says they are especially helpful for journalists looking for sources.

Freakonomics on tomorrow's news

Stephen Dubner of the The Freakonomics blog had this to say yesterday:

"A couple days ago, Levitt and I were in Orlando for a lecture. Driving down the freeway, I spotted a flashing billboard for the Orlando Sentinel. The first screen was headlined 'TODAY:' and trumpeted the current issue's lead article. Then the next screen flashed. It said 'TOMORROW: RIOTS IN PARIS.' Tricky business, I thought, trying to predict tomorrow's news. The following day, I woke up to an article in USA Today stating that 18 of the top 20 newspapers in the U.S. had circulation losses. The Sentinel's loss was one of the largest."

That prompted this reply from a reader:

I have no sympathy for newspapers. Their incentive is ad revenues. So they print PR releases and whatever else they can get cheaply such as government propaganda and wire service stories. I also don’t blame them, this is the situation they find themselves in. Their market is spreading horizontally and they have to compensate by becoming shallower. It’s a death spiral.

Federal e-mail alerts and newsletters

FirstGov.gov has a one-stop page where you can sign up for government alerts and newsletters on business and finance, defense, education, employment and benefits, environment and agriculture, foreign affairs, health, safety and consumer protection, taxes and travel.

Essential social science reference sources

Members of various librarian and reference email lists were asked which social science reference sources they couldn't live without and their answers are here. And yes, these are sources journalists can make good use of, too.

Google golf

Someone has created a Web page - Gmap Golf - where you can "play" real U.S. golf courses using Google Maps' satellite view.

Uh, um, uh-huh, um-hum

A writer at the Language Log blogs about his research into differences between men and women and the young and the old in how often they say "uh", "um", "uh-huh" and "um-hum." But he failed to address "D'oh!"

Real-Time Flight Tracking

SearchEngineWatch writes about how to "check on the status of a flight that's currently in the air" using major search engines and specialized flight-tracking sites.

NYT: "Beware Your Trail of Digital Fingerprints"

The New York Times writes about how "metadata" unwittingly left in a Microsoft Word document identified the authors of an anti-Alito memo. Metadata is data about data - in this case information about a document's authors, revision history and comments often left carelessly within Word. "It pays to mind your metadata," the Times explains.

Reader Profiles of Top 150 Newspapers

With newspaper circulation plummeting nationwide - 17 percent at the San Francisco Chronicle! 9 percent at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution! - now's a good time to point out you can get detailed reports on the readers of the 150 top circulation newspapers online at the Audit Bureau of Circulations. These don't include the latest numbers, however, and can be a year or more old.

Google serves public domain books

Google Print is now offering the full text of books in the public domain, with the help of its library partners: the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library and Oxford. If a book is still under copyright you can only view a few pages, but if a book is out of copyright you can read it all. I did a search on books mentioning Kentucky before 1925, and the first result was an 1899 dissertation, "History of Higher Education in Kentucky." Wrote the author, Alvin Fayette Lewis:

"The first thing that strikes our attention in the educational history of Kentucky is the early establishment of schools at its various stations, or settlements, notwithstanding the extremely unsettled condition of its affairs, and the great difficulties and dangers, especially from the Indians, which constantly beset its early inhabitants."

He'd have been disappointed to know that Kentucky's affairs are still unsettled.

Books for Understanding

"Books for Understanding is a free, easy-to-use resource to help you find books on current events. New bibliographies are compiled when a major news story breaks or public debate heats up."

Baby Names, Meanings and Origins

Here is a "Dictionary of Baby Names, Meanings and Origins."

Critical Thinking portal

The Critical Thinking portal offers links to articles about skepticism, fallacies, propaganda, coercive persuasion, statistics, debunking and more.

Weblens

Weblens promises "easy access to almost 5,000 Internet research tools and resources!"

Mapping Toponymy

A while ago I posted about a U.S. map that shows where people prefer to say soda, pop, Coke, or something else. This blog looks at regional use of geographic terms such as gulch vs. valley, or brook vs. creek. It draws its information from the Geographic Names Information System, the "Nation's official repository of domestic geographic names information."

Annual Electric Utility Data

The Form EIA-861 Database from the Energy Information Administration contains information on electric utilities - including "peak load, generation, electric purchases, sales, revenues, and customer counts."

Zoho Writer

Zoho Writer "is an online Word Processor to Create, Format, Store & Share Documents online." It's like Writely and Writeboard.

Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly

I haven't played in decades but you may be interested in "Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly." The author wrote a computer program to simulate game play and compute such things as the "Long term probabilities for each square," "Expected income per roll for each property," Expected income per roll for other squares," "Payback times for purchases," and "Mortgage payback and loss times."

RedLightGreen

RedLightGreen is a gigantic library catalog that lets you search for more than 130 million books and other research materials held by libraries around the world. It also connects you to your local library, and lets you save bibliographies in your choice of styles.

Google Video TV legend archive

Google Video has put online an archive of videotaped interviews with 450 "TV legends" such as Grant Tinker, Normal Lear and Ted Turner.

Comparing Lists in Excel

I confess I have never gotten the hang of the Vlookup function, which allows you to compare lists in Excel. This explains how.

Data, information, and knowledge software primer

Here. Essentially it's quotes from users on the strengths and weaknesses of assorted software.

Creative Reporter System

Is this the business model that will replace us? The Creative Reporter System promises to pay $10 to anyone who contributes a news item to its collection of blogs that generates 1,000 or more page views. Cyberjournalist.net quotes the CEO saying, "There is no line for us between blogger, amateur, and real journalist. We are blurring the lines." Maybe so, but given that a new visitor to their site can't even figure out what they're all about, they have a long way to go before they prove there's no distinction.