Online Research Toolkit

We’ve all gotten spoiled by the simple search interfaces available these days: a single keyword box with no frills. Just plug in some words and Poof! results show up. But most searches, both web search engines and database search interfaces, have advanced searching available as well, and you can save yourself a lot of time by learning to use them. In this post, I’m going to go over a few of the common features available in advanced searches and a few specific examples.

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I mentioned Portable Thunderbird in the Email post. The same person who allows us to carry our email around on a USB drive has also developed several other portable versions of applications. You can download them individually or as a whole collection in the Portable Apps Suite (http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_apps_suite/0 ). Imagine carrying around an email program, a web browser, a calendar, an office suite, a chat/IM client, even a web editor and FTP client, all on a USB drive to plug into any Windows computer. (more…)

Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) is one of a growing number of Online Desktops. These services are meant to aggregate as much of your online life as possible onto one private page. You can link (and sometimes view) your email, create notes, to do lists, and calendars, read blogs and other RSS feeds, and link to other Web 2.0 services, like Flickr (photo sharing), Writely (word processors), Box.net (file storage), and del.icio.us (links).

Update: Here’s a great example of using an online desktop for teaching: Owen James’ HigherEdBlogCon presentation and his SuperGlu site. (more…)

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).

If you’re the type to carry around a notebook and jot everything down, you’ll like TiddlyWiki, http://www.tiddlywiki.com/. Wikis are editable online documents–you make the edits right online and the changes appear right away, no tedious uploading. TiddlyWiki is a wiki on a selfcontained HTML file. All you need is a single file and a web browser. It doesn’t have to be online, either. You can use it right from your desktop or USB drive. Which also means that your notes aren’t live on the web for everyone to see. (more…)

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…)