Google Flu Activity Tracking: Fears versus Symptoms

A genius at Google noticed you could map flu outbreaks quite early because of searches people do about flu symptoms and related terms.  Here is the graph of flu activity so far for this year.  Because of the swine flu, people are a bit more keyed up about flu and are search more, as shown in the graph. That’s one theory.  Or, there is going to be a big outbreak.  Are the searches based on symptoms, as the likely were in the past, or are they about fear because of the new strain?

Zotero Tip: Newspaper articles

I am taking up Zotero and so will gather the tips I come across here.

Zotero can allow you to archive great NY Times articles for use and reference later. NYT generally offers a permalink for articles. If you want the whole article in Zotero, not just the permalink and not just the first page (since NYT articles are broken up that way), one Zotero forum post suggested you find the “print” option in the article and then take that page into Zotero since it won’t be broken up. If you do bring in the whole article as a page “snapshot,” you will be able to annotate (’nuff said).

Don’t forget to tag it a few times when you first bring it in; when are you really going to go back and re-tag? Now or never.

Angel Tip: Making Mandatory Yet Anonymous Surveys

First of all, Angel help at MSU is exemplary, especially when one uses the phone (5-2345). I almost always get a person and my question is usually answered pretty quickly.  Don’t struggle; just call.

So, I called to find out how to make an anonymous survey mandatory after struggling to get feedback from busy MBA students last year.  The way to do it is to set a survey to “anonymous” under the submission tab and then set a milestone for item completion under the assignment tab. Later, you can use the report function in Angel to generate a whodunit report for the item. You thus find out if they did it but you don’t have an ability to match person to specific answers.

Clipboard Recorder – Windows Clipboard Extender

Clipboard Recorder – Windows Clipboard Extender | LW-WORKS

I have been using the basic free version for a few months now. Sadly, many people are thrilled to learn about basic things like ctrl-x, ctrl-c, and ctrl-v in the existing Windows or Mac clipboard, but a clipboard recorder like this one (see link above) is a whole new level of utility. I have been using it in writing, tabulating contact info, etc.

Debaters might really find a clipboard recorder useful in brief construction (just be careful not to forget you are copying direct quotations).  In an electronic source, just copy all the necessary citation elements one at a time (no need to paste anywhere yet), then copy selected quotations.  Finally, inside a word processor, paste the citations elements in, paste the quotations in whatever order you thing makes the most sense and then insert your arguments and paraphrases; this creates a nice grouping of the “cards” that you cut from that source.  Format accordingly, put the whole brief where you need it (file it, put it in Endnote, or whatever you do),  and there you have processed a complete source into a usable form. Now, say you want to make a brief or outline a paper using multiple sources, you can do that too by working from your newly created individual source files or database, copying the cards you want to use, and then pasting them into a new document. If you like working with real paper, just make sure the source citation is on every quotation and you can print your source documents and cut them up into cards.

Back End vs. Vision

Inside the Firm of the Future: Changing Lives . . One By One . . Until We’re All Done!

This post, from Christopher Marston, talks about an issue in the practice of law that I think relates to other professions as well: letting the nuts & bolts of the job override the story or the human element. For myself, I’ve been caught thinking, or at least behaving as if, the nuts and bolts were more important than the vision in teaching (the dubious practice of tinkering). You have control over the nuts and bolts; they are what hold the class together and directly affect learning. However, more intangible features of a class like its fun or desirability may have a larger effect even if it is less direct. Lesson: be methodical and thorough about the nuts & bolts, but don’t talk about it to your audience (students, clients, spouses). Talk about your ideas instead and give them something to be excited about. If you are talking about the nitty gritty, that’s also probably what you are most thinking about, and then where are you? Here’s a related quotation I chose from the post:

I see attorneys who are so entrenched in counting their entire lives in 6-minute increments that they go home to their loved ones and think of time with their family as an “opportunity cost.” These people know exactly how many billing units they are giving up by attempting to have a work life balance, and the very attempt to balance life is offset by a cloud of guilt and worry, knowing that they simply cannot beat the clock.

FastStone Image Viewer – Software Recommendation

FastStone Image Viewer – web site

As you consider processing all the photos you take, and digital cameras let you take many without wasting film, you may be wondering if the file manager in your computer or the software that comes with your camera is the most efficient choice for processing and editing potentially large numbers of images. So, if you are interested in an elegant and useful software utility for managing and editing photos, here are some thoughts.

a. FastStone Image Viewer. This is among the most delightful little discoveries I have made. It makes filing and editing images easy. If you need more sophisticated features, which you probably don’t, then you can use Photoshop or some other program for a cost, but this one is free and excellent. Example, in a folder you double click on the first image thumbnail you want to view and it opens up full screen and you can scroll through the other images following it quite easily using your scroll wheel. Now, without leaving the full screen view, you drag you mouse up, down, left, or right and up pops a window with a group of relevant commands. Click and hold on the image and it zooms in and becomes movable until you let go; useful for testing whether the image can be saved with strategic cropping. If you want to jump to the cropping tool, move the image, or copy the image, the keyboard shortcuts are truly shortcuts: x, m, c. That’s right, one key, one command.

b. Other ideas. I did some reading on ConsumerSearch and found Picasa and Google’s Hello to be highly recommended. I would consider looking that way if I really needed to share and tag photos online, but for just printing, I use Snapfish and upload pics after organizing them with FastStone Image Viewer.

Camtasia for Surveys

Camtasia Studio Screen Recorder for Demos, Presentations and Training

I have been playing with Camtasia this year. I used it for recording my audio lectures over PowerPoint. I have been working on using it to string a series of short videos (speeches) together with rating surveys in between each video. This creates a Flash package and the settings allow you to have the survey answers emailed to you. Here’s my current rough template with no actual speeches. Hit play each time if you don’t want to click through all the survey questions.

Camtasia Example