April 2007 Issue

"How does one quantify the cumulative impact and relevance of an individual’s scientific research output? In a world of not-unlimited resources, such quantification (even if potentially distasteful) is often needed for evaluation and comparison purposes (e.g., for university faculty recruitment and advancement, award of grants, etc.),” from An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output by J. E. Hirsch, Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, September 2005. Hirsch's solution considers the publication record of an individual, the number (Np) of papers published over n years, the journals (j) where the papers were published, and the number of citations (Njc ) for each paper.

Scott Madry remembers how hard it was to get a decent aerial photo before Google Earth. Getting these views, however, often required snapping photos through rented airplane windows during low-level flyovers, an expensive process he describes as “extremely inefficient and not a little dangerous.”

Journal rankings: What is it about this modest little metric that causes such uproar in the research community? Hiring, tenure, and grant awards are often influenced by whether or not one’s research has been published in a journal deemed “prestigious” by its placement in the ranks.

To turbo-charge child-abuse investigations, LTU Technologies has combined two investigative tools that will provide enhanced resources for victim identification and rescue.

Given the emergence of two wildly popular online communities—MySpace and Facebook—and new social networks springing up every month, it’s a tall task for parents to determine which sites their kids are logged onto, what information they’re sharing, and with whom.

When most of us think of content management, we think of the enterprise variety—a large database repository for all of our documents—or we think of the web type, which manages our web content from the back end. However, another type of content management has emerged, one that has been specifically designed to let users slice, dice, and reuse information at virtually whatever level of granularity they desire.

As digitized content disperses, publishing brands and content wares splinter across countless platforms, devices, feeds, and syndication venues; the business and editorial infrastructure beneath it all, is fragmenting and reassembling just as quickly. The business models, like the content, are flying everywhere and the trick is to keep the overall vision on target, not just cope with content shrapnel.

Involving the users, and integrating their content, requires deeper engagement and the right tools. Building and improving social networks to meet the needs of diverse communities is no small task. Fortunately, the maturing of technology and business models has spawned a new generation of enablers to help get users to join in.

As spatial boundaries and modes of communication converge, disruptive new technologies emerge to give people the experience of being connected with content from anywhere. But ubiquitous access is no longer just about seamless content portability; it's about empowering individuals to access content on their terms and across devices.

Examples of fixed and fluid organizations abound. There are those that rely on size and dominance to maintain the status quo and those which, even if they are large, stay nimble and evolve with the marketplace, in part by tapping the collective web whims and wisdom.

I wrote this month’s column online. Normally I use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, but the hard drive on my main laptop computer crashed and though all my document files are backed up, it will take some time to reinstall my applications so I figured, why not write about Google’s online office tools?

Sometimes my personal interests coincide with my professional life. Not often, thank goodness, or I’d probably spend my days working as a reference librarian in Second Life (otherwise known as The New Crack).

Online media rooms provide many lessons in leveraging the value of econtent. This is the one place on any type of organization’s site where marketers and communicators act like publishers to create valuable and original content that reaches all of their constituents.

Dear Warner Music Group Executives:

The BBC reports that 20 million people wanted to purchase tickets to the historic Led Zeppelin show held at the O2 Arena on Dec. 10, 2007. Needless to say, with only 20,000 tickets available, there were many disappointed fans who couldn’t be there when the band took the stage for the first time in 19 years.

All I know about sprockets is that they figure prominently in the work life of George Jetson. I really don't know a sprocket from a cog, although I hear that competition between the two products is fierce…and often quite personal. Nevertheless, when I plug the term "sprocket" into the vertical search engine at ThomasNet.com, I get something that I am sure would make Cosmo G. Spacely gush.

"We drive the vision and the strategy of the product lines."

NewsGator Technologies helps Edelman tap the power of social media to enhance its public relations practice.