This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Copyright P. Kerim Friedman.
Whenever Darwin encountered a “published fact” or “new observation” that contradicted one of his beliefs, he forced himself to “make a memorandum of
In his review of Google+ Farhad Manjoo compares their “Circles” feature to arranging wedding seating charts. Having to sort people into lists before
I wrote my first serious research paper in high school; about ethnographic film. In 1988 the only way to see many classic ethnographic films was on
Two years ago I wrote a post about the various complicated ways I kept my home and office computer synchronized. Because my office computer recently
If you google the letters “GTD” you’ll get seven million hits back. GTD stands for “Getting Things Done,” a time management book, method and
After spending one week trying to use Safari as my default browser, I decided to go back to Firefox. I was able to find numerous substitutes for my
Firefox is much more than a web browser — its a platform. Numerous applications run on Firefox’s XUL framework, mostly as plugins. This
I don’t normally accept advertising here on Keywords, but I think Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing is too good a deal to pass up. I am constantly
I don’t normally accept advertising here on Keywords, but I think Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing is too good a deal to pass up. I am constantly
When I was telling people I wanted a compact camera which could perform well at a high ISO, I think many misunderstood. What I really should have
I wanted to announce two projects which I think should be useful for English speaking residents of the Taiwanese interweb: First is a Yahoo! Pipes
If you walk around Taipei these days you’ll be sure to see the word KUSO written in big letters all over the place. For instance, this summer there
Does the writer’s strike have you down? Miss The Daily Show? Here are some things you can do: Download Miro. Watch some classic Daily Show clips
A map of the world showing the ratio of patients to doctors. {maps, tufte, inequality}
Turns out there’s a reason they called it The Manhattan Project. In “The Manhattan Project” … Dr. Norris writes about the Manhattan Project’s
I am very excited about IMAP support on Gmail. Maybe it isn’t healthy for someone to be so excited about e-mail … but this is huge. Why? Especially
(Click here to see a side-by-side comparison of the cameras discussed in this post.) Buying a compact digital camera is always a trade-off. In such
In his book The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki relates an anecdote about “Francis Galton’s surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately
iPhone owners are up in arms about the fact that Apple blocked third party applications. Personally I think these people should focus their wrath
Via How Design: “Moon Mapping from the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Research Project.” {design, maps, moon, astronomy}
As of now I will stop posting tweets to this blog. Once again this blog will become a space reserved for long-form blogging. You can continue to
Every Taiwanese has a National ID Card 身分證 with its own unique number, not unlike a Social Security number in the US. The difference is that every
The Palm Treo is a decent device, but it costs twice what it should and it hasn’t been significantly upgraded in years. Unfortunately, I need one. I
Back in the old days, when Wikipedia was new, there were just a handful of rules, and one of the key ones was “Ignore all rules.” Or, more
A year ago I wrote about various alternative services I use in lieu of Apple’s .Mac suite of online tools. With Apple’s recent upgrades to .Mac, I
I don’t have an iPhone and won’t have one for at least a year or more because I live in Taiwan and iPhones are currently restricted to the worst US
Via Strange Maps, a chart/map showing US States renamed with the names of countries where the GDP is similar to that of those states. {maps, GDP}
So you want me to give you all my personal data? Don’t make it any more difficult than it has to be. Don’t make me fill it out more than once.
Who knew that New York’s turn-of-the-century pneumatic tube system could be used to deliver burritos all the way to from San Francisco? The
I never liked team sports, I never liked playing the dozens, I never liked being put on the spot … Its not that I’m introverted — I’m not. I’m just
I know I’m not the only one who will miss Ze, as he ends his one year video blog which rocked the interweb. I think the secret to Ze’s success is
I’ve recently gotten very good at using WordPress to power static websites. The reason being that recent changes to WordPress have made it really
is having a dashboard widget (Mac OS X only) for all of your own web feeds. I doubt anyone out there, except perhaps my mother, will want to
Why, after just a few days of use, would I switch from using a rock-solid piece of software I paid for and have used for years to a public beta
As noted here previously, Taiwan is 1911 years behind the rest of the world in counting years. 2007 is thus the year 96 in Taiwan. So I was
I recently wrote about a great new Taiwan mapping service called UrMap, well now they’ve added satellite imagery far more detailed than Google
Last election bloggers, many of whom had initially supported the tech-savvy Howard Dean campaign, felt that they had to drag the Kerry campaign into
In his classical work, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin wrote that modern technology would free art from its
Teresa at Making Light has a great post about how deaf people are using YouTube: Why did it not occur to me that the signing deaf would be using
[Be sure to see updated links at bottom.] Even if you aren’t a foreigner who’s vainly attempted to book tickets online in Taiwan, the irony of the
As someone who has run several wikis, I know all too well that they are only as good as their user-base, so because I would really, really, like to
Thinking of building a better mouse trap? Now with Google patent search you can instantly browse 576 previous mouse trap patents. [via Boing
Via Language Hat, I discovered a revolutionary new approach to sorting one’s books: by color! The funny thing is that this is how I usually look for
Are you a social web junkie? Then you might want to gather all your online identities into one place. Even better, registering for a ClaimID account
True bilingualism is a rare thing. As we get flooded by more and more information, who has the time to painstakingly read through hundreds of blog
Want to create your own radio station, one which plays music you like? Pandora is amazingly simple to use: you enter the name of an artist whose
Now that I live in the tropics* with a south-facing window, I no longer have much trouble waking up in the morning. The huge flood of natural
Although Google has great satellite images of Taiwan, until recently I knew of no decent online maps of Taiwan. There seemed to be nothing
Inspired by my friend Ilya, and because I’m going to three conferences in the next four weeks, I thought I’d give Plazes a try. So, if you want to
Graduate Student Rashi Jain is running in a marathon to raise money for a program to set up Radio Schools for rural Adivasi communities in India.
One of the hardest things about learning Chinese is the lack of good dictionaries. I have one of the best — the ABC dictionary with “over 10,000
Since their recent upgrade, I’ve switched from using my desktop client, NetNews Wire, to using Google Reader online, something I was never willing
I really have very little to say about the phenomenon known as lonelygirl15, except to point you to a few good articles, and this excellent video.
The Wikipedia disambiguation page for “synchronicity” lists one of the meanings as “A goal or result of synchronization.” I mention this just so you
Wikipedia and Digg are both sites which supposedly aggregate the collective wisdom of the internet. However, in reading about recent controversies
Shashwati asks why I chose to work in one of the most earthquake and typhoon prone regions on the planet. One good reason is that they are much
When I was a kid the tooth fairy only gave me a quarter, this site says the going rate is a dollar, but this news story has me thinking that
is a new exercise machine from Panasonic. It is a home version of those mechanical bull rides you find in bars out West (at least according to
Here is a map of where we live. I threw it together pretty quickly after discovering Quikmaps (thank’s Ish!), and will probably add more details to
Do any of my readers have a Writely account? I very much need an invitation for a project I am working on regarding using online tools for teaching.
We are happy to announce some very exciting news … Today we signed a contract with Documentary Educational Resources (DER) to distribute two of our
I recently wrote about our attempts to find a simple, cheap, and effective way to send very large files over the web. One solution I found, Jungle
With my Luxsci IMAP account and lifetime web hosting from TextDrive, not to mention Flickr, I’ve never even considered a .Mac account from Apple,
In this part of the world, MIT stands for “Made in Taiwan.” Today I just learned (via Jason at Wandering to Tamshui) that one of Taiwan’s number one
One of my many summer projects (it currently seems like those precious two months are infinitely long) is to crack into the alternative online world
According to Wikipedia, one of the characteristics of indexicals is that “in order to successfully interpret them the hearer must know the
I feel a pain in my chest every time I see someone trying to do work in Internet Explorer. It is like watching someone try to walk with their
The NY Times has gotten into the whole Google Maps mashup craze with this map identifying every murder committed between 2003 and 2005. Between
The assumption out there seems to be that the only people who will really care about a system which can dual boot in both Windows and OS X are
Not the first time I’ve been linked to by BoingBoing, so I know from experience that after the link disappears from the front page of BoingBoing few
Now that I’m in Taiwan, I guess I should remove my listing from the NYC Bloggers subway map. Too bad I’m not living in Taipei, then I could be on
Dakxin Bajranage’s play, Budhan has been up on the web for some time. The wonderful thing about making art and literature freely available on the
It seems that one stamp is not enough. It is a little out of focus, but you can see they gave me a second stamp to use to sign all “Payments
Believe it or not, I was actually given a rubber stamp so that I can rubber stamp all the ridiculous paperwork that we have to deal with. Some memos
How to fold a shirt (click to watch video): (via Lifehacker) {folding, hacks, lifehacks, shirt}
Guest post by tf The French government plans to introduce a draconian copyright law, the DADVSI, to be discussed in parliament on December 20th and
Guest post by tf Each French cabinet ministry has its own official responsible for the national defense related aspects of that ministry’s work. For
There are two models of tags in use on the web: tags-as-folders, and tags-as-meta-info. Gmail uses the first form, allowing you to store messages in
I got this SPAM/virus/phishing scam e-mail which said: Dear Sir/Madam, we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.
Do you use Devanagari on a mac? Firefox? Then please vote for this bug. Firefox 1.5 is almost ready for release and they still haven’t fixed this.
What I want to know is, when Kyle gets his house, will he trade it to me for a red paperclip? (via BoingBoing) {barter, house, paperclip}
I long ago discovered that the best way to reduce the amount of SPAM is to have two e-mail addresses, one private and one public. I use the private
is a Firefox Extensions which allows you to more easily manage your tabs: When tabs overflow the first line they wrap around and can
A very well done and important story on This American Life: About a year ago, a study estimated the number of civilian casualties in Iraq. It came
Thanks to a friend I discovered JustGive.org, which allows you to donate to charities and non-profits online. This is great for us, because we’ve
The way weather reports work is all wrong. They always tell you the next three-to-five days. What I want is just two days, and one of those days
People are being really great about leaving their Acting Like a Thief BitTorrent files open after they finish downloading. That means right now
This short film just changed my life. Really. More information here, here, here, here and here. (via Alex King) As I get ready for my trip to India
If you’ve tried clicking on any links on any of my sites (my homepage, my wiki, or this blog), you will get a 404 error telling you that the page
If you don’t know who Phil Schaap is, you don’t listen to jazz radio in New York City. But this post isn’t really about Phil Schaap the man, it is
I just learned via Crooked Timber that one now has to pay $50 a year to gain access to the New York Times Op-Ed page. I’ll occasionally read
John Emerson’s concept of a blog tabloid is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, but I know realize I was thinking about it all
My brother, a computer-scientist, often jokes that my beloved Zojirushi rice cooker, which boasts “Advanced neuro fuzzy® logic technology,” is all
After wasting an afternoon figuring out how to set up Audio Hijack to automatically record yesterday’s All Things Considered, Fresh Air, and
Could someone please explain to me how, when we can see all the way to other galaxies, we somehow missed a planet in our own solar system? Is it
This site, using Google maps to show the location of all convicted sex offenders in Utah has me really freaked out. On the one hand, having entered
Last week Bill Poser of Language Log had a post about Leo Stoller, a Chicago businessman who claims not only to have copyright over the word
Have an interesting link you think I’d be interested in? Tag it in del.icio.us with the tag “for:kerim” and I’ll see it when I look at
I’ve been dealing with my jet lag after returning from Taiwan by upgrading all the software on my web site. Its all gone pretty smoothly, except for
In the early days, my blog was actually an e-mail list sent out to a group of friends and family members. Then I figured out how to post everything
The most rewarding aspect of blogging for me has been all the other bloggers I’ve gotten to know. Unfortunately, it is only rarely I get to meet
While we are speaking of etymologies, one of the most popular ones on the internet is that for “wiki.” As more or less everyone who’s worked with
A large satellite image of home via Google Maps Wallpapers: Click for a larger view, with the train stops marked. Also, via the Map Room, the
The Linguistlist now offers RSS Feeds. These are really nicely done — you can get the most recent posts, or you can subscribe to individual
I’m very upset to report that I’ve been demoted. In Google’s English edition Keywords is now only the number two result for “Kerim.” I am no longer
I am not a programmer. Except I am. What I mean is: I never sat down to study how to code, or ever wrote anything from scratch. However, at some
Last September I wrote an article in Anthropology News encouraging my fellow anthropologists to get online. I was frustrated that while there are
Help! I’m suffering from a plague of web sites I am unable to access. I’ve listed all the offending sites here. Some of them are major sites — like
A team of artists from Brazil and Portugal has produced this wonderful series of flags-as-infographics, discussing pressing social issues. Here is
I’m just going to steal Lorenz’ entire blog post, because I have nothing to add, other than the fact I’m always happy to discover another
Mark Auslander has an interesting post on how his students are using podcasting to create an audio tour for a campus exhibit: I first thought of
Are you an anthropology blogger? If you are, and you aren’t on this list, let me know! {anthropology, blogs}
Another anthropology blogger finishes his dissertation! Congrats Alex! {anthropology, Bloggers}
In his book Envisioning Information Edward Tufte discusses the graphical timetables used by the Japanse bullet train, or Shinkansen: Station stops
My latest Anthropology News article is now online. It is a general introduction to “folksonomy.” I explain the concept by comparing folksonomies to
From a thread on Slashdot: You know it is Apple related software when the review uses an entire page to comment on the look of the cardboard box.
Alex alerts us to a few new Anthropology blogs. John Norvell has thrown his hat into the ring with anthroblogs.org, an MT install with a few blogs
$2.5 million for a pyramid that isn’t even a pyramid. {design, tufte, food pyramid}
First there was Pimp My Firefox (explanation here), now there is PimpMySafari.com. I’ve just gotten Firefox working the way I like, with all my
In the comments to a post I wrote about various devices designed to get you out of bed in the morning, Tim May directed my attention to the
In graying Japan, more than one-third of households have members older than 65, and 4.8 million households are composed of elderly couples. An
In graying Japan, more than one-third of households have members older than 65, and 4.8 million households are composed of elderly couples. An
Very exciting. I just discovered via a discussion on Golublog that CiteULike provides RSS feeds for a number of anthropology journals, including The
In a followup to my last post on efforts to map the news, comes a Slashdot post about Buzztracker. A neat project called Buzztracker.org has been
I’m heading to Taiwan this summer, and I’m looking forward to meeting some Taiwanese bloggers! (Besides Scott that is.) Although I doubt I’ll meet
A recent Business Week article about the sole surviving pinball machine manufacturer, Gary Stern, seems as good an excuse as any to write about my
I wasn’t surprised that the recent AAA member survey regarding the use of various forms of electronic messaging didn’t mention wikis, but I thought
If you thought Firefox was great because it allows users to “take back the web” from poorly written, intrusive, and annoying web sites, you ain’t
Years ago I had a vision of what my ideal world news web site would look like. Well, it still isn’t there, but several sites now come close enough
I’ve given Shashwati’s blog a makeover. Check it out! It was a tougher theme to work with, since it uses images and not just straight CSS, but
Why do the French hate Google? First the national French press agency is suing Google: Agence France Presse is suing Google for $17.5 million for
Getting up is hard to do, and here is a gallery of some ingenious gadgets that are designed to get you out of bed: Tennis alarm clock This tennis
Sheesh, make one small edit in a Wikipedia article, and spend the rest of your day justifying it! {wikipedia, photo}
I’ve redone my blogroll, which was getting helplessly long. Actually, it was so long that it wasn’t all showing on the site. Because it seems that I
The upgrade redesign of Keywords is now complete. Like I said, the new system should allow me to change things even more in the future, and maybe
When I travelled in mainland China in the late 80s there was a black market in currency, trading government issued currency specially printed for
I recently discovered, looking around my site’s stats, that many people are subscribed to the category feed “General.” This is a big mistake on my
Many people are still subscribed to receive e-mail updates of this blog via Bloglet. I urge all of you to sign up for a free bloglines.com account
Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights) has a campaign to send letters on behalf of an imprisoned Iranian blogger:
This is a review I posted for the Mac OS X citation management application Bookends. I tried to keep it short, so I didn’t even list all of the new
Via Fables of the Reconstruction: Get movie listings on your cell phone or on your computer from Google. {google, movies, sms}
A new ad campaign from IBM “shows a young Chinese girl asking to join a virtual classroom because her village is too far from the nearest school.”
Via Jonathan Benda I discovered Googlism, a site that “will find out what Google.com thinks of you” (at least circa 2004, at which point Google
There is a lot of discussion on the web about e-mail overload (here, here, and here). So I thought I’d share my tips. I’ve been using e-mail since
They say that on the internet nobody knows your naked, but one can feel quite naked after living one’s life online for some time. Unless you use a
From around the web: Google Maps! (via the Map Room) How to fold a map. (Via 43 folders.) AppRocket — looks like Quicksilver for the mac, but for
Unfortunately, the SPAMmers have won this round. I’ve had to disable trackback entirely. Although I had already subverted trackback SPAM by
I know it has been relatively quiet here the past few weeks. There is a simple explanation for that: I’m teaching again! This semester I’m visiting
Since finishing my dissertation and getting back from our trip, I’ve been in “cleanup mode”: not only physically cleaning up my desk which looked
Agencies tasked with defending America from terrorism were among the top employers of workers with phony diplomas. (via Scott Sommers) How crazy
I’m tired of listservs, but I am unfortunately unable to subscribe from many of the ones I belong to. I much prefer blogs, fourms, and wikis, each
One of the annoying things about managing a blog — the only one actually — is SPAM. For a long time I was able to block spam with a program which
Dan Gillmor has an interesting piece on blogging in China. Blogging isn’t big business here, at least not yet. At least three blog software
No time to write much these days, but please take the time to read David Neiwert’s 7 part article on “The Rise of Pseudo Fascism.” Some
Even though I’m not yet done with my thesis (three weeks to go!) I decided to reward myself for passing my oral defense by purchasing a Panasonic
Wow, Google keeps popping out new services. The latest is Google Scholar. Here is a link to a search for “author:bourdieu, p“. So far it seems that
The vast majority of people still visit this web site using Micro$oft Internet Explorer. Do yourself and the rest of the world a favor: Download
If you are an academic department conducting a faculty search: Please either include all the necessary information in the job announcement itself,
Following up on my recent post-election map post, here are two interesting historical maps. Look familiar? The 1896 election: And a map of free
Red vs. Blue have you down? Here are some other ways of looking at the results. By county (I don’t have time to make a picture of it, but I
Following Joi Ito, I am going to quote David Weinberger’s post in its entirety. I’ve really become interested in the way tagged meta data works (see
Two posts over at LanguageLog discuss research showing that “gaydar,” or the ability to detect who is gay and who is straight (in this case using
I haven’t been blogging about Sinclair since so many other people have been doing it better. But I think it is exciting to report that the
I generally try to respect the fact that the vast majority of my users visit this site using a PC, but I liked this comment from Brent Simmons,
I’ve slowed down on posting regular updates about things you can do with RSS. This is partially because most people who are prone to trying out new
On MacOSX you can customize the icons for just about anything. Here are the custom icons for two of the folders I use most regularly
Derrida (1930-2004) famously argued that writing preceded speech. By this I believe he meant that the “iterability” of language logically preceded
I guess it was just a matter of time. Photo blogs have been around for a long time already (I’ve even added one to my sidebar), as well as MP3
stands for “Content Management System” and refers to software which makes it easy to update and maintain a website. The content is usually
Here are some very cool tools I’ve found recently: Peform Google queries using text messaging from your cell phone! Add a del.icio.us sidebar to
I believe in trying to give credit where credit is due. Some bloggers always put a “thanks,””via,””by way of,” etc. credit in their posts, pointing
I recently posted about how the diaries of Samuel Pepys were being released as a blog. Well, today I discovered a bunch of other sites releasing
Joi Ito just got his student I.D. card, and now he can access all those wonderful academic databases, like Lexis-Nexis. His thoughts on this are
My latest Anthropology News article, “Open Source Anthropology” is now available online as a fully editable wiki article. Please feel free to
Who is Daisuke Inoue? He’s only the guy who invented karaoke! Born in Osaka in 1940, he grew up in the same area where he now works, Nishinomiya,
Reading this NY Times article about how parents and students have thwarted attempts by schools to ban cell phones reminded me of an incident in the
This doesn’t surprise me: “The Justice Department’s translation mess has become a chronic problem that has obvious implications for our national
As much as I love Billmon’s web site, I wasn’t going to comment on his silly op-ed about how the good-old-days of blogging are behind us. Of course
In my article on blogging, I commented on the links between contemporary blogging and diary writing in the seventeenth century: This is not unlike
Reporters Without Borders is outraged at this latest escalation in the government’s attempts to suppress the right to inform the public via the
I’ve added a new feature for all those who simply can’t get enough of Keywords — a “side blog” or “link blog” of fun, interesting links that I like,
A few days ago Munin posted about how Google was offering localized news in Japanese and Korean. At the time I was upset that there was no Taiwan
Every once in a while a meme starts circulating from one blog to another. Either everyone is supposed to list sentences from random books on their
With Skype’s SkypeOut service, internet telephony has truly arrived, but this brings with it a whole set of questions. Most importantly, will VoIP
I just read an article in the New York Times, and two minutes later I was speaking to a friend in Taiwan for €0.022 a minute! That’s right, less
I’ve created a handy bookmarklet you can use to instantly get the Coral version of a link. This should allow even the smallest of web content
Two excellent graphics I’ve recently come across which link size to frequency of word use (click on images for the original pages). The first is
Free stuff! I have a bunch of Gmail invites to give away if anyone wants one. Gmail is Google’s new web based e-mail service, and they offer 1 GB of
An excellent article about the various theories concerning how we recognize words can be found here. Rather than blogging it myself, I e-mailed the
So I’m in upstate New York last night and the power goes out. My satellite internet connection is down, so surfing the web is out. It is too dark to
while Google is accessible to Chinese users, not all of its functions are available; because of China’s content filtering technologies, users of
My article, for Anthropology News, “Stop Yelling at the TV and Get Online!” has just been published. This is the first of a series of articles I am
From Boingboing.net, three stories on “freedom of speech” (1, 2, 3): First, a story from the ACLU, whose court filing was censored by the Justice
A million thanks to Carthik!!! This blog is now running on WordPress instead of MovableType, but Carthik has helped do it in such a way that all the
I love WordPress. Not just because it is Open Source, but because it is written in the PHP coding language. (I like PHP because it is easy to
A poem I composed from today’s SPAM “subject” lines: rhodolite demonstrable codfish Re: Everything went giddy with Are you a loser? buddy,deal
The Passion of the Present is “an independent, non-partisan, all-volunteer community initiative to stop the genocide in Sudan.” This link via
addresses a critical problem: US policies impact the whole world, but non-Americans have few ways to communicate directly with mainstream
I’ve long been reading the multilingual blog, Blogalization, so I was very interested to read this article by one of its founders, Ethan Zuckerman,
Syndicate your schedule! I’ve long been using PHP iCalendar which allows me to sync my iCal Calendar without using an expensive .Mac account, and
It seems that we are still very far from a paperless world: WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. It doesn’t stand for What You See Is
I’m very happy to announce, that after much thought and preparation, I have finally launched my own personal wiki! It isn’t the first time I’ve run
It is now commonplace, thanks especially to the widespread popularity of the book Chaos, that a simple set of rules can produce complex results. But
Somebody’s set up a web site to coordinate voter-registration drives in swing-states. If you plan to take a trip this summer, maybe you could
78% of South Koreans have broadband internet access. But none of them can access most blogs. Why? Because the government is trying to limit access
The winners have been announced!!! Below are just some of the winning T-shirt designs from the Designs on the White House t-shirt contest. Support
I just had to share this amazing picture of a Copepod from the Smithsonian’s web site: “The World of Copepods” I discovered via Mark Liberman’s
One of the big problems with running a full-text newsfeed on your website is that it makes it difficult to keep track of how many people are reading
I was contemplating purchasing a laser printer from a company called Legend Micro — until I read their return policy. Return Policy In order to
Continuing my ongoing quest to document new and innovate uses for RSS feeds… Looks like Google is pushing Atom (a standard that “competes” with
I’m upgrading my blogging software to MovableType 3.0. (Note: It is hard to find the free version for download, but its still there.) This means
The government is going to have to come up with new ways to block out information in public documents. Already there was a scandal when a sensitive
For the longest time I’ve been telling people to use Typepad instead of Blogger, because Blogger didn’t seem to get it. Well, now they do. All those
Hey, Designs on the White House got written up in the Boston Globe! Giving the lie to the notion that designers are obsessed with style over
In spite of advanced technology and the Unicode character convention, people are still in the habit of neglecting the diacritics of foreign
For much of history, the science of biology was the science of classification. As can be seen by the text accompanying this image (from a web page
What is IMAP? It is simply a way of accessing your e-mail. Right now, if you use Entourage, Outlook Express, Eudora, Apple Mail, or some other
A while a go I wrote a post asking, why can’t academic research be more like blogging? Well, I’m happy to say that I am not the only one thinking
For those who don’t know about Slashdot, here is the wikipedia entry: Slashdot (frequently abbreviated online as “/.”) is a popular
If you use Google to search for “Judaism,” “Jewish” or “Jewish people,” the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for “Jew”
Using standard spammer substitution-techniques on the word “viagra” yields 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 possibilities: Viagorea ViagDrHa V l a g r
Chris Mooney (who still doesn’t have an RSS feed) has an interesting post about how Republicans have undermined important public policy initiatives
Gnews2RSS An experimental convertor that takes a Google News search and turns it into RSS Very cool. Although, it seems that Google doesn’t like
A while back I wrote about how much better academic research would be if academic publishing was more like blogging. The catch, of course, is the
Xeni Jardin of boingboing.net wrote the following: In an item about RSS for the current issue of Wired Magazine, I wrote: “Job seekers anxious
A few weeks ago I asked, in regards to US concerns about the offshoring of high-tech jobs, just how many American’s were doing these jobs to begin
It is possible to finish your dissertation and blog at the same time!!! Even more evidence of this in the comments over at Crooked Timber. Very
I’ve been very happy with my Amazon RSS Feed Generator. It has alerted me to quite a few new books coming out on topics that I’m interested in. The
This is a post for the New Yorkers out there. I’m sure there are similar services for other cities, and I hope people will write about them in the
This is an exciting technological development by NASA: they’ve found a way to detect “subvocal” speech! “A person using the subvocal system thinks
In an interesting post on Japanese cell-phone e-mailing (not instant messaging, it turns out), Mark Liberman said something which made my thumbs
Although I’ve had my disagreements with Kevin Drum (the biggest, of course, being that he has never linked to my blog!), there is no doubt that he
Over the past year I’ve seen a lot of bloggers write that they wish there was a search engine that would search only the sites that they read every
Philips is getting a lot of attention for having invented a new kind of lens that might be used in cell phones and other small electronics that
This is an exciting time here at Keywords. Just after announcing one new feature on this blog, I’m already announcing a new one! Announcing “Feeds.”
So it turns out that the biggest act of (terrorist?) sabotage this century was committed by the CIA: “In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply,
Scott Sommers discusses some of the shortcomings of the Social Science Citation Index. I would add that the problem goes beyond the fact that the
Ampersand says this about Keywords: …a very smart lefty blog that I’ll definitely be checking in the future. You know, it doesn’t take much to
Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science Nobel Laureates, National Medal of Science Recipients, and Other Leading
UPDATE: Apple has finally extended the Logic Repair Program to cover late 2001 iBooks!!! Took them long enough, but I’m glad they did the right
I’ve been following stories about outsourcing to India, and while this one from Wired magazine is one of the least insightful I’ve read, it did have
Tired of having to login to websites? Tired of making up information to be able to download something or read some news story? Try bugmenot.com!!!
I’ve been spending some time this morning looking at different ways of charting electoral votes: The traditional “red and blue” map, showing
It is hard to explain to people who aren’t computer savvy just what an RSS feed is, and why it is good for them to know. So, instead, I’ve set up a
Though a bane to teachers of public speaking, people around the world fill pauses in their own languages as naturally as watermelons have seeds. In
Nowadays, anyone with a Mac can easily make their own movie — even Lawrence Lessig. Tapping into the tremendous potential afforded by the widespread
Some interesting work being done in Afghanistan by a Canadian media organization: A Canadian organization is reaching out to women in Afghanistan,
This chart shows the Languages Used to Access Google from March 2001 till November 2003. There isn’t much explanation of what this means, but I
The Black Commentator called this speech by Howard Dean “the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician
When I was in college I took a year off and backpacked around Asia for a while. I’m glad I did it then, since it is a lot more expensive to travel
The New York Times must have turned over a new leaf this holiday season. In just the past few days there have been four excellent Op-Ed
How to deal with institutions that simply don’t “get” the internet? In response to a call by Body and Soul, I wrote the L.A. Times and requested
Announcing RSS feeds for Amazon.com searches!!! That’s right — you can find out when a new book comes out on your favorite topic, or when that PDA
You know that scene in Dr. Strangelove when the Russian Ambassador is allowed into the war room? And General Turgidson says “But he’ll see
Let me start with a personal revelation: I have toenail fungus. It is a very common problem, one that can easily be cured with a pill. The problem?
In an e-mail discussion about Congress’ efforts to make funding for area studies conditional on “loyalty”, someone alerted me to a story from back
A recent article in The Nation starts with an account of the grass-roots mobilization (from both the right and the left) against further
If your cell phone stopped working the other day, here is why: A massive solar flare erupted from the surface of the Sun at 9:51 UTC on October 28,
I can’t remember when I received my first “Space Pen” — I used to love those things. The Astronauts used them! You could write upside down, on an
I haven’t written anything about the Diebold electronic voting scandal because Body and Soul has done such a good job, there seemed very little to
is an remarkably powerful tool that can ease and enhance your Internet exploration. Google’s search options go beyond simple keywords, the
We got a “free” Lexmark printer with the purchase of one of our computers. Don’t ever fall for such a trick. It is like giving crack out for free.
No posts today because I spent my blogging-time trying to categorize all the blogs which have piled up in my “More blogs …” section. Eventually, I
On the one hand … our government is funding the internet service Anonymizer.com to protect Iranians from the prying eyes of their government. On the
I was reading Daily Kos who reports that Clark is now second only to Dean on Meetup (although Dean is still way ahead). But what is Meetup? Meetup
One myth that never seems to go away is the “divine inspiration” of the artist. People refuse to believe that artists work hard, study, take notes,
Taken from a Monty Python skit were vikings sing a tribute to the canned meat, the word is no inextricably tied to junk e-mail and even Hormel Foods
Those of you who used to read my old blog have probably noticed that things are a little spiffier since I switched to my new site. Part of the
The plan to establish a futures market in terrorism may have been quietly scrapped by the defense department, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still
It seems that some artists are boycotting the Apple Music Store because they won’t sell albums unless the artists also agree to let Apple sell the
The word “blog” is listed in the March 2003 draft of the OED. It is listed as both a noun and a verb. Both uses are first dated as appearing in
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Copyright P. Kerim Friedman.