Google just announced on its blog that they are developing a new tool which aims at integrating email, live chat, photos, videos, maps, feeds, gadgets, and more! The idea is to centralize communication, but also to make collaboration easier.

Google acaba de anunciar en su blog que están desarrollando un nuevo sistema que integra email, chat, fotos, videos, mapas, feeds, gadgets, ¡y más! La idea es centralizar nuestras comunicaciones, y facilitar la colaboración.

Right now the project is still being developed, but they are looking for techy people who can help out. If you want to get involved check out their Google Wave Developers Blog, the Google Code Blog, as well as the Wave Federation Protocol. You can also sign up to be notified of Wave’s release here.

En este momento el proyecto todavía esta siendo desarrollado, y están buscando la ayuda de quienes saben mucho de tecnología. Si quiere colaborar por favor mire el Google Wave Developers Blog, el Google Code Blog, y el Wave Federation Protocol. También se puede apuntar para recibir notificación del lance oficial del proyecto.

I also found a detailed explanation of the project on Web Monkey, which you can read here. They sum up the project as follows;

También encontré una descripción detallada (en inglés) del proyecto en Web Monkey que podrá leer abajo.

A user starts a “wave,” a new thread in the system. At first, it looks just like an e-mail. A wave usually starts as text, but photos can be dragged in, and videos or maps can be embedded. The user invites friends by dragging and dropping names from a list of contacts in a sidebar. New users can start leaving comments in line, setting a break point in the original text and adding a comment directly below the paragraph, photo or whatever piece of the wave they want to comment on. There’s even a built in spell-checker that’s context-sensitive.

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Addict-o-matic is a clever page that instantly builds you a customs made page displaying results in a variety of formats on your topic of interest. Depending on the topic you may get results from paid websites, blogs, newspapers, youtube, or any number of other sources.

You can also just click on some of the already made categories, such as Web 2.0, Gadgets, Green, and Top News.

Go ahead, give it a try. Type in a few keywords, and watch it work!

Thanks Eugene for pointing this out!

Addict-o-matic es un sitio web súper ingenioso que en un instante le construye una página de resultados en diferentes formatos acerca de un tema determinado. Dependiendo del tema podrá obtener resultados de sitios web pagos, blogs, periódicos, youtube, o cualquier otro número de sitios.

También puede hacer clic sobre una de las categorías ya determinadas, como Web 2.0, Gadgets, Verde, y Noticias.

¡Gracias Eugene por mostrarme este sitio!

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The current USA administrations is keeping its word of making more information available to everyone. Today, 120 into the new administration the site Data.gov has been launched. This new site aims at providing data in a variety of formats that web developers can convert into web applications.

Here’s an article in today’s Washington Post commenting on this project, and other White House initiatives towards being more accesible.

La actual administración en la Casa Blanca esta guardando su palabra de ser más accesible. Hoy, 120 días desde el cambio de mando están lanzando un nuevo sitio web llamado Data.gov que proveerá data en una variedad de formatos, y que cualquiera podrá convertir en aplicaciones web.

Aquí hay un artículo (en inglés) en el Washington Post de hoy explicando un poco más el proyecto y otras iniciativas parecidas de la Casa Blanca.

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Mario Benedetti, Uruguayan journalist, novelist and poet passed away yesterday May 17.  I’ve loved Benedetti’s work from the minute I heard his poem “Hagamos un Trato” back in the tenth grade. From there on I’ve continued to  seek out his work and recommend it to others, every chance I get. I just love the beauty he always found in everyday life.

Mario Benedetti, periodista, novelista, y poeta Uruguayo ha muerto ayer, mayo 17. A mi me ha encantado su obra desde que escuche el poema “Hagamos un Trato” en una clase de español en décimo grado. De ahí en adelante siempre lo he recomendado a otros. Creo que lo que me gusta de su obra es que siempre logra encontrar belleza en los actos más simples de la vida viaria.

Hagamos un Trato

Cuando sientas tu herida sangrar
cuando sientas tu voz sollozar
cuenta conmigo

(de una canción de CARLOS PUEBLA)

Compañera
usted sabe
puede contar
conmigo
no hasta dos
o hasta diez
sino contar
conmigo

si alguna vez
advierte
que la miro a los ojos
y una veta de amor
reconoce en los míos
no alerte sus fusiles
ni piense qué delirio
a pesar de la veta
o tal vez porque existe
usted puede contar
conmigo

si otras veces
me encuentra
huraño sin motivo
no piense qué flojera
igual puede contar
conmigo

pero hagamos un trato
yo quisiera contar
con usted
es tan lindo
saber que usted existe
uno se siente vivo
y cuando digo esto
quiero decir contar
aunque sea hasta dos
aunque sea hasta cinco
no ya para que acuda
presurosa en mi auxilio
sino para saber
a ciencia cierta
que usted sabe que puede
contar conmigo.

Here are a few resources/facts about his work;

• Poesia-inter.net: Mario Benedetti
• His poetry was features in the Argentine movie “El Lado Oscuro del Corazón“
• Books by Mario Benedetti
• His page of Tribute.com
• Audio to some of his poems

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Now that most of us have so many online accounts I was wondering what happens to these when we pass away or become incapacitaded; NPR just answered me questions. Last Monday Omar Gallaga, of All Tech Considered ran an entire show on these issues. For instance the show explained that different email providers treat your email differently. Google and Yahoo say your email account is private properly and if your in-laws want access to the account, they will need legal documents to do so. Other providers are apparently less protective.

This brought up issues of how we should prepare for the future, and some of the people being interviews were explaining that these days we should include information, and passwords to our online account in a will or other similar document. This brought up the company Legacy Locker, a company that, for a fee, will store all your online information and grant access to those you authorize.

This approach makes sense, especially since we are likely to leave behind not only personal email accounts, but public accounts such as facebook pages, and some of us have blogs, online companies, and many other accounts with sensitive information.

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My friend Samira just showed me this blog entry from Shoestring Venture, which although quite sarcastic, absolutely hits the nail on the head. They argue that universities are overpaying for journal articles which vendor are getting, essentially for free. To quote them;

The scheme worked like this: [vendors]  charge incredibly high prices for a journal subscription (hundreds to thousands of dollars for one four to twelve issue subscription — no joke), then “bundle” all the journals together at a substantial discount, thus forcing universities to break the bank for a couple journals or break the bank less severely to buy everything in your catalog.

Then they add;

Here’s the kicker. Academic journals are written, refereed, and edited for free by university professors. Since all the work that goes into producing the content of a journal (research, writing, refereeing, and editing) is free labor, why is any university paying for journals in this day and age when all academic work can be researched, written, refereed, edited, and then distributed online for free?

I completely agree, and fortunately a few alternatives are starting to spring up. For one there is the Directory of Open Access Journals which proves open access to thousands of journals, many of them searchable, and covering a wide range of topics. Oxford Journals offered some 90 journals, many in open access format. SCOAP3 gathers open access article in the area of physics.

Major universities like Harvard, Boston University, and UC Berkeley have committed to making most of the literature produced by their faculty available to the world in an open access format. Berkeley has also set up a website encouraging others to participate in this process. Cornell set up the arXiv.org site which gathers open access article in the field of physics, mathematics, computer sciences and the like.

I encourage you to look around because every day it seems more and more people are committing to a free exchange of information!

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This is what the world looks like in terms of prisoners. / Así se ve el mundo en cuanto a gente encarcelada.

Think your old map doesn’t reflect this world accurately? Well Worldmapper might help. The site offers a number of maps that have been “distorted” to reflect a variety of issues.

¿Le parece que su mapa viejo no refleja el mundo correctamente? De ser así, Worldmapper le podrá ayudar. El sitio ofrece una cantidad de mapas que han sido “distorsionados” para reflejar una variedad de hechos.

The site is organized in a very straight forward matter, making searching easy. They first divide by large categories, such as population, fuel, work, disease, food, housing, etc., and then further break down each of these categories. Maps are also shows as thumbnails, and alphabetically, for easy browsing, Maps can be viewed online, and a good amount of them also come in PDF format for easy saving and downloading. Below each map you will find links to spreadsheets clearly explaining (and beautifully color coded) where the data originated for each map.

El sitio está organizado de una manera bastante clara, facilitando búsquedas del lugar. Primero dividen por categorías básicas como población, energía, trabajo, enfermedades, comida, vivienda, etc., y luego dividen otra vez cada categoría. También podrá ver los mapas en versiones reducidas, y por orden alfabético para facilitar su navegación. Podrá ver los mapas en línea, pero también hay bastantes que vienen en formato PDF, así es que los podrá descargar e imprimir fácilmente. Debajo de cada mapa encontrara enlaces a varios documentos explicando claramente el origen de las estadísticas que crearon dicho mapa.

You really should poke around this site, because they have some fascinating stuff there. They have maps on all sorts of interesting topics such as midwifes working, aircraft departures, amphibians at risk, books published, and hundreds more.

Realmente debería echarle una ojeada al sitio ya que tienen mapas realmente fascinantes, y sobre una cantidad de temas. Por ejemplo, tienen mapas sobre el trabajo de parteras, el despegue de aviones, anfibios en peligro, libros publicados y centenares más.

This maps shows books borrowed from public libraries around the world. / Este mapa muestra los libros prestados de bibliotecas públicas alrededor del mundo.

The project is kept by a group of academics, all but one based out of the University of Sheffield. The group includes professors, cartographers, researchers, and IT support.

Este proyecto lo mantiene un grupo de académicos, casi todos basados en la Universidad de Sheffield. El grupo reúne profesores, cartógrafos, investigadores, y especialistas en tecnología.

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President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speak together sitting at a picnic table April 9, 2009, on the South Lawn of the White House. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.
El presidente Barack Obama y la Secretaria de Estado Hillary Rodham Clinton hablan, mientras sentado en una mesa de picnic en al jardín sur de la casa blanca, el 9 de Abril, 2009. Foto Oficial de la Casa Blanca por Pete Souza

I just saw an interesting blog entry at DigiZen listing all the places online where you can find information posted by the current White House administration. Thinking back to the last administration, I’m delighted that Obama is really trying to make government accessible to everyone, and using modern tools towards this goal. Below is a list of places where you can find the While House on the web.

• Facebook.com/WhiteHouse
• MySpace.com/WhiteHouse
• Twitter.com/WhiteHouse
• Flickr.com/WhiteHouse
• Vimeo.com/WhiteHouse
• YouTube.com/WhiteHouse
• iTunes (videos and podcasts)

Acabo de ver una entrada en el blog DigiZen listando todos los lugares donde podemos encontrar información sobre la presente administración en la Casa Blanca. Recordando la última administración, me encanta ver que Obama realmente está tratando de crear un gobierno más transparente y accesible, todo por medio de una variedad de herramientas modernas. Arriba está la lista de lugares donde puede encontrar contenido sobre la Casa Blanca.

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