Et tu Snarkus

I read about "the rise of the ridicule" or "online snark culture" in a newspaper article by Melissa Martin of the Winnipeg Free Press on July 25, 2010. What was it comedian Rodney Dangerfield said, "Can't get no respect." The article is essentially a paen of praise for April Winchell's Regretsy.com. She mocks "the most hiedeous or head-scratching items on the handmade online marketplace, Etsy." Get it? Etsy + Regrets = Regretsy. Winchell, the article recounts, "was something of a connoisseur of really crappy art." So now she's laughing all the way to the bank with no regretsies. Did I mention she's also published a book titled Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF.

14th European Conference on Digital Libraries, Glasgow, Scotland, September 02010

The 14th European Conference on Digital Libraries, also known as the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL), has issued its call for participation. ECDL 02010 is organized by the University of Glasgow and is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK from September 6 to 10, 02010. There's already a fascinating array of accepted research papers, poster sessions and demonstrations.

TinEye Reverse Image Search

I have not tried a search with TinEye, "a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for non-commercial searching. TinEye regularly crawls the web for new images, and we also accept contributions of complete online image collections. To date, TinEye has indexed 1,630,532,499 images from the web to help you find what you're looking for." (http://www.tineye.com/about)

New English language publication from the Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation

The Netherlands Coalition for Digital Preservation released an English language translation of A Future for Our Digital Memory (2): Strategic Agenda for Long-term Access to Digital Resources (2010-2013) (PDF) in June 02010.

Google purchases Metaweb

Google announced on its official blog the purchase of Metaweb, the company behind Freebase, about which I wrote an article for Searcher, "The Freebase Experience: Getting Addicted to the World’s Largest Open Database" Searcher, v. 16, no. 2 (February 2008): 26-29, 49-58. According to the Freebase Blog's announcement of the purchase,

"Whoah… what’s going to happen to Freebase?" you might ask. Well, we're also extremely pleased to be able to say "nothing"…. or rather, nothing other than getting better, and yes, even more open.