Online Research Toolkit

Wow, talk about “thin client”. Ajaxwrite (http://www.ajaxwrite.com) runs strictly in the Firefox web browser on any operating system, imports and exports MS Word, PDF, Open/Star Office, RTF, and text (.txt) files. It handles tables, graphics, bulleted and numbered lists, over a dozen common fonts and styles (including strike-through, ^super and _subscripts). The only things it doesn’t do is store your files–you’ll need an online storage or portable drive for this one–and allow you collaborate with others–it’s back to sending the docs back and forth. I don’t see any language support, so my guess is that English style fonts are all that is available.

There is no sign up or registration, so this is a great one to start exploring online word processors. Just go to the site and click on Americas or Europe, and you’ll go directly to the sample document, which you can edit, or load a new or imported document. AjaxLaunch promises new applications and they also have some good implementations springing up. They are also working on a protocol to call Ajaxwrite when you click on a Word document link in a webpage. (They also say that traffic has been very heavy, so there may be delays despite the new servers they’ve put up. I had no trouble this morning.)

Need a table for a web presentation? Want to collaborate on something involving figures? Try the Num Sum Web Spreadsheet. You can import or paste data from Excel or Open Office, as well as start a spreadsheet from scratch. Spreadsheets can be public or private, and you can invite others to work on your spreadsheet. Once you’re done you can export your files as tab or comma deliminated files or as an HTML table. Or generate a small piece of HTML code to paste into a website (via the Post to my blog link).

RefWorks is wonderful, but sometimes you just need a citation formatted quickly. Enter the Landmark Citation Machine. Select the type of resource and fill in the resulting form. Click Make Citations and both APA and MLA versions of the reference will be generated. Both Print and Electronic resources are covered: (more…)

What is a blog? While many people define a blog as an online diary or journal, really it’s just a convenient, chronologically organized, web publishing tool. You can certainly use it as a diary or journal, but it can also be a newsletter (the function of my Frequently Answered Questions), a presentation (see here and here for good examples), a gallery (self-promotion, here), novels, I’ve even tried a CV. The point is that blog platforms offer web publishing without having to know HTML (or have a web publishing software), without having the cost of a site (there are many free blog hosts), and with the ease of being able to publish from any web-accessible computer.

If you can publish pretty much anything in a blog, respecting your blog hosts Terms of Use and general copyright laws, you can use a blogging tool for notetaking. (more…)

del.icio.us is both a clever use of URL naming conventions (.us is for United States registered sites and has mostly been used for local government so far), and a really useful tool. del.icio.us is what is called a “social bookmarking” service. Bookmarking refers to saving links for websites that you want to go back to, like saving into your Favorites or Bookmarks in your web browser. del.icio.us has an advantage over a Favorites list because it’s online, so you can find that site you saved last week from any computer. The “social” part is from that fact that, being online, other people can see what you’ve saved and you can see what they’ve saved. (more…)

Email is a true case of “familiarity breeds contempt”, but it is also indespensible. Email is the one tool that I will say that you cannot do without when doing online research. Not only will you need an email address for registering for various services and resources, but you will at least occassionally want to email yourself notes, links, and attachments. It is possible to use email for organizing your entire research process, especially with a large memory service like Gmail. (more…)

While our Online Databases are great for finding articles (check your own library website if you aren’t from SCSU), they aren’t the only resources out there. There are a large number of open web, free-for-reading resources that are still high quality. Open Access sites are resources that are free to read, but may have costs for publishing. It’s essentially a business model, and is not incompatible with peer-review or other editorial standards that ensure high quality materials. Other sites may specialize in public domain works (works that have expired copyrights or were otherwise released from copyright restrictions and can be freely copied). Still others may allow free reading of certain materials but not others, using the free material essentially as advertising. I use the phrase “Open Web” to describe anything that does not require a password or membership to access, as a contrast to subscription databases, which you can only access on campus or via a login.

I’ll highlight a few sites for open web materials that are particularly good for academic work. There is a lot of junk on the web, but there are also a lot of very good resources. (more…)

Refworks is a web-based bibliographic management utility. That means that it stores references of the sort that you use in an academic paper. Refworks is somewhat outside the scope of this site because it’s not anywhere near free. However, many colleges and universities (like SCSU) subscribe to it for their students and faculty, so from the user’s point of view it may be free for use. (more…)

Email is great, but sometimes you just need to talk realtime with a group. Making decisions on who will do what on a project, for instance. You can do it by email, but it seems to take forever. This is when a synchronous communication service is needed.

The most common synchronous (”same time”) communication that most people are familiar with is telephone, of course. But not everyone has conference lines available. Instant Messaging is another, but you need accounts with the various services, and there are so many services it can be hard to agree on which one to use. Sometimes you just want a quick, no download, no registration, no hassle chat.

That’s what Chatzy (http://www.chatzy.com/) provides. There are no downloads, no registration, anyone can start a chat and you just need the URL to join (so you don’t even need to give an email). (more…)

TagFacts (http://tagfacts.com/) is a note service offered by the creater of Reader2, a social book list service. TagFacts allows you note down, well, pretty much anything, and tag it with keywords. You can also include links, so you can use it as a bookmarking site for web pages, as well as for notes from lectures, books, interviews, conversations, random thoughts, etc. (more…)