Measuring customer service

At MeasuredUp.com you "Rate and Review Customer Service" on a 5-point scale from "Amazing" to "Booo":

Not to be taken lightly, Measuredup.com should be used to review and rate the places you go everyday. Remember, anyone can have a bad day or a bad mood so take that into account before writing a harsh review. Take back the power.

Assert your rightful voice as the consumer. Get some good old fashioned revenge, or make someone's day. It is your money and you deserve to be treated like a valuable person and when you get terrible or great service to call out or reward that person and business.

I searched on Louisville and all it turned up was a review of P.F. Chang's. MeasuredUp just debuted in December, so maybe the results will improve with time.

A guide to statistical information at WHO

The World Health Organization an online guide to the 50 health indicators it collects on 192 member states.

Online journalism ethics

Online journalists who participated in a Poynter conference last year have developed "guidelines for doing ethical journalism on the Web."

Moving to Google, part two: Please check your feed

I've moved this blog several times, and in doing so I've had to go through various contortions to make sure everyone subscribing to Depth Reporting could continue using whichever RSS feed they originally signed on with. The feed I've been using the last several years has been http://feeds.feedburner.com/DepthReporting, and that's the one you should be using now. My feed hasn't changed with the latest move to Google, but if you're still pointing to an older Depth Reporting feed, I'd appreciate it if you'd update it to the FeedBurner feed. That will insure that you continue to receive my posts -- assuming, of course, you really want such a thing.

Where's my domain?

Google now allows you to keep your own domain name but host your blog on their servers. I am going to attempt to move Depth Reporting to Google, so it may or may not be available at times during the next few days while I make the transition. Thank you for your patience.

Explaining XML and Web.2.0

A 4 1/2 minute video on YouTube video by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, explains XML and Web 2.0. But you know what those are, right?

This seemingly simple video, by the way, has generated more than 1.3 million views and more than 3,600 comments, proving once again that content is king.

Motion picture databases

The Oscars are almost upon us, so it's a good time to be reminded that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offers an Academy Awards database, a motion picture scripts database, and a motion picture credits database.

If we build it, please don't come

GovExec.com reports that Google is making some progress in its goal of opening up government Web sites to search engines. The story quotes a Google manager who says that nearly half of all government Web pages remain inaccessible to search engines. My favorite part is where the Google manager says one reason government agencies are reluctant to make their sites more accessible to Google is "a potential increase in bandwidth use, which could drive up costs." In other words, they are buildings Web sites they don't want the public to use -- or at least use too much!

FreeGeoTools, including a free TIGER to shapefile converter

Free GeoTools is a blog devoted to "Free (or cheap) GIS/GPS applications, utilities, websites, how-tos." It's been on a roll recently with links to stuff I can see myself using. Most importantly he reports that TGR2SHP, which converts U.S. Census TIGER files to shapefiles and for which I once paid $99, is now free. He wrote about it in a post on "Converting US Census TIGER Data Into Shapefiles For Free." Other posts of interest to mapping geeks include "A Free and Easy Shapefile Coordinate Converter," "Simplifying Line and Polygon Shapefiles," and a series of posts on exporting shapefiles to Google Earth.

EagerEyes compares Swivel and Many Eyes

Here's an in-depth review of the data-sharing Web sites' founders, approach, social aspects, technology, capabilities, broad appeal and ethics, by Robert Kosara, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. EagerEyes is "A website about visualization, art, visual thinking, aesthetics, and the connections between them."

Programmers and Murderers (was Reporters and Parrots)

I just came across a Web page by Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, comparing reporters to parrots ("Can you tell the difference?" he asks). I wanted to link to it here because I'm inclined to agree with his main points: that reporters too often uncritically repeat what others say, sometimes deceive themselves and others, get even basic math wrong, and reduce complex issues to simplistic two-sided debates.

But reading it was a disappointment, considering the candlepower you must have to lead Google's researchers.

First there's his assertion that"Reporters lie, either to advance their career (Jayson Blair) or to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors." Yes, Jayson Blair lied, but the evidence reporters lie "to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors" is what, exactly? He doesn't say.

"Sometimes the deception is self-deception: reporters (and others) believe what they want to believe," he adds.

So true, and an especially fine example of self-deception is to take an example of bad behavior by an individual, and portray it as emblematic of a group. So I can conclude when I encounter a Google bug that all programmers are sloppy and write poor code? Or that because a programmer is accused of killing his wife, all programmers are potentially homicidal? It's the same shallow reasoning.

There are a lot of reasons why reporting is as bad as it often is. Much of it is structural: the news is typically reported and written in a day, and that is the source of many missing, misunderstood and misguided facts. The world is large and newsrooms are small, and growing smaller, so much so that much of what should be covered or covered better simply isn't. Some bad reporting is because of the personal failings of journalists, but most isn't. That's what makes his piece so annoying, because he implies that it is.

At one point, Norvig cites an article about penis size as an example of faulty reporting but doesn't provide an actual citation because he can't find a link online. " ...as anyone with any familiarity with the Internet knows, there are a lot of pages mentioning 'penis', and I couldn't find the article," he explains.

Imagine that, the director of Google research failing at search! We can only hope Norvig is capable of improving his faulty search engine so as to better distinguish all those Web pages mentioning penises.

Norvig offers some curiously thin examples. He says, for example, that he finds it "disturbing" that "reporter" Tim Atkin of the British Observer mischaracterized research on wine. Atkin, however, is a wine critic, not a reporter as I understand the term. Holding him up as representative of the species is a stretch.

Norvig ends his piece with an addendum that includes as an example of an "egregious" reporting error a CNN screenshot. The caption on the screenshot, from coverage of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, says the shuttle was "traveling nearly 18 times the speed of light." Impossible, of course. But an egregious reporting error? No, merely a typing error. Some harried person behind the scenes, more than likely not a reporter, typed "speed of light" when he or she should have typed "speed of sound." The shuttle was, in fact, traveling 18 times the speed of sound when it broke apart.

A mistake, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, big, friggin', deal. Is that the best he can do?

How to Best Use Page Monitors For Online Research

Informit.com offers a free chapter from the book Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web. The book is by Tara Calishain, the proprietor of ResearchBuzz who also co-authored the books Google Hacks and Spidering Hacks.

A PR person's perspective about business journalism

Talking Biz News talks to Hope Heman, a vice president with the PR firm Edelman in New York :

" ... during the past two decades fewer journalists seem to be entering public relations as a second career, and fewer public relations firms are hiring practioners with a journalism background, and I believe this trend has had a major impact on the relationships. This is a loss. Former reporters are particularly good at counseling clients on strategies involving how to put their best foot forward when approaching the media; and reporters sometimes find themselves being pitched by junior public relations people who don't understand the needs and deadlines of the press."

Blog Traffic Generation Tips

Daily Blog Tips offers 30 tips for generating blog traffic.

Web headline writing

CNET writes about the dilemma of crafting headlines for the Web:

"Pithy, witty and provocative headlines--the pride of many an editor--are often useless and even counterproductive in getting the Web page ranked high in search engines. A low ranking means limited exposure and fewer readers."

Justia Federal Court Filings

The federal courts charge an unconscionable 8 cents a page to access their online dockets, even charging for searches that produce no matches, but Justia is now making the dockets available for free online. You can't get the actual records via Justia (you still have to go through the high-priced federal computer system to do that) but you can see what cases have been filed by date, search by party name and subscribe to feeds for federal courts nationwide. It only includes records for cases filed since Jan 1, 2006. Justia also provides quick links to blog searches, news searches and Web searches for the parties in each case. The federal courts say one of their goals is "accurate and informed coverage," but the fact is, if you have to pay hundreds -- even thousands -- of dollars for access to court records, that's a significant barrier to achieving it. Justia's docket search tool thus raises the obvious question: Why aren't the federal courts doing this?

Earthguide

... is an "interactive and easy-to-use educational resource about Earth, oceans and the environment." It also offers a good collection of links to online books and data. From the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Scholar-approved reference on American presidents

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, "the nation’s leading research institute for the study of the American presidency," offers a detailed online reference on American presidents. The site says its information is "reviewed by prominent scholars on each President and administration."

Photoshop tutorials

Good-Tutorials.com links to more than 13,000 tutorials on using Photoshop.

Free file sharing

... offered by senduit. You upload a file up to 100 megabytes, set a duration you'd like it to remain online (30 minutes to a week) and send the recipient a link.

MetaGlossary.com

MetaGlossary.com promises "meaning, not just links." It promises to define more than 2 million terms, phrases and acronyms.

"Meta" means beyond, more comprehensive, or more highly organized, and with respect to other dictionaries and glossaries, MetaGlossary is all these things. MetaGlossary harvests definitions from the entire web, the world's largest, constantly-updated repository of information. Hence, it surpasses traditional dictionaries, which grow more out of date with each passing day. MetaGlossary is as dynamic as the web, offering the most current information out there on the most contemporary topics.

However, unlike other search engines, MetaGlossary is able to precisely extract the meanings of terms and phrases from the often frustratingly unmanageable mass of information on the web. It provides you with concise, direct explanations for terms and phrases, not just endless links to sift through in search of a comprehensive definition.

What's more, MetaGlossary organizes these meanings based on topic and usage, so you'll find the one you're looking for quickly and easily. Since MetaGlossary spans the expanse of the web, even your most field-specific requests for terms, phrases, acronyms, technical jargon, and slang, will be successfully met.

Having been a writer for a living, though, I can tell you that correctly defining a term will in no way give meaning to your life.

ASCII-O-Matic

The t.y.p.o.r.g.a.n.i.s.m ASCII-O-Matic will convert an image into a text-only reproduction.

Guide to covering climate change

Thanks to the CJ's Jim Bruggers for telling me about the Society of Environmental Journalists' guide to reporting on climate change. Lots of good material here, including introductory overviews of the issues, primers on the basic science, relevant federal programs, research institutions and environmental groups, a Rolodex of experts to call and a section devoted to "Deniers, Dissenters, and 'Skeptics'".

How to Open Password Protected PDF Documents

... explained by Digital Inspiration. I can't vouch for the blog's claim that PDF password-cracking software is legal, but the post does explain some of the ways you can extract text from a PDF that is otherwise locked down.

What's new at the GPO

The U.S. Government Printing Office maintains a page where you can find new publications online and in print.

Multiple book search tool

ResearchBuzz writes about a search tool that searches Amazon, Google, and Microsoft Live's book search engines all at once. This tool demonstrates once again that it's always wise to remember that search engines don't return the same results, and therefore you should use more than one when you want to be thorough. When I used the tool to search for my name, Amazon turned up four mentions of me (a book with a chapter by my wife that mentioned me in the acknowledgments; a book about the late activist Anne Braden that cited a profile I wrote of her in the footnotes; a book on ombudsmen that looked at coverage of a police shooting I helped cover; and a history of Scott County, Ky, that mentioned my marriage to my wife, a Scott County native). Google missed two of those, but did turn up a book about Kentucky politics that cited CJ profiles of Kentucky towns. Microsoft Live's book search turned up nothing at all. This shows, if nothing else, that these book search engines can be useful tools for researching someone's background, even if that someone hasn't written a book himself.

How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work

Copyright.gov explains How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work. The U.S. Copyright office's Web site recently added the ability to search for preregistered copyrights that haven't yet been accepted:

Preregistration is a service intended for certains types of unpublished works that have had a history of prereleases infringement. Its purpose is to preserve the remedies of statutorys damages and attorney's fees for copyright owners of these workss when they have been infringed before publication and registration.s A preregistered work must be registered within 3 months after publication.s Preregistration takes place only online, is not a substitute fors registration, and is not a guarantee that the Copyright Offices will ultimately register the work.

You do this on the search page.

2008 Budget of the United States Government

You can get the President's latest budget online. Some of the information is available in spreadsheet-friendly formats (scroll to bottom of page).

Department of Defense Statistical Information Analysis Division

You can get large quantities of official military statistics on personnel, procurement and casualties courtesy of the Department of Defense's Statistical Information Analysis Division. It won't be easy to analyze, however, because the data is provided as unhelpful PDF files.

New and improved "Today's Front Pages"

The Newseum has updated its best feature, "Today's Front Pages", which gives you a daily look at hundreds of newspaper front pages from around the world. The revamped site "will feature larger front-page images, new sorting options that allow visitors to search by country, state and newspaper name, and weekday analyses of trends in front-page coverage," a press release said.

Documents From The Trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby

The Associated Press is putting documents from the trial of Scooter Libby online in PDF format. The trial, needless to say, is a great window onto the ways of the Washington press corps and its government enablers. Documents include Libby's notes, a page from former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer's calendar and reporter Matthew Cooper's email exchanges with his editors at Time.

International Journalists' Network

The goal of the International Journalists' Network is "to help connect journalists with the opportunities and information they need to better themselves and raise journalism standards in their countries." The organization says it "strives to track media training and other assistance efforts in more than 150 countries, helping donors and organizers avoid duplication and learn about innovative programs around the world."

Placeblogger

Placeblogger is a directory of local blogs it calls "placeblogs":

Placeblogs are sometimes called "hyperlocal sites" because some of them focus on news events and items that cover a particular neighborhood in great detail -- and in particular, places that might be too physically small or sparsely populated to attract much traditional media coverage. Because of this, many people have associated them with the term "citizen journalism," or journalism done by non-journalists.

Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone. They're about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn't news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people. However, when news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in unique and nontraditional ways, and provide a community watercooler to discuss those events.

Its collection of Louisville blogs, however, offers little in the way of fresh content. Maybe there's a reason these places haven't attracted much traditional media coverage ...

Pro guide to Google searches

Our-picks.com gives a short review of Google's advanced search syntax, including the exclusion operator ("-"), the numeric range operator (".."), the synonym finder ("~") and the wildcard operator ("*").