Cuil

New search engine Cuil, claims to search "more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft" and to return more relevant results because rather than relying on "superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance."

Knol from Google

Knol: A unit of knowledge

Google has announced Knol, their response to Wikipedia. From the Official Google Blog:

"Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects....The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content....With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public...." {emphasis mine}

There aren't many knols yet, but this may be something to keep an eye on. The eclipse knol is written by an astronomer who also writes astronomy textbooks. Many of the knols are on health and medical issues, so Amy K. might recognize some authoritative names as well...

Distracted?

TimesOnline article about the difficulties of concentrating in modern life, which also mentions several interesting-sounding books.

Free Screenshot Utility

I saw Bug Shooting mentioned as the "poor man's Snag-It" - might be useful for students.

Cheat Sheets

Free computer program cheat sheets, including Microsoft (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, etc.), Adobe (Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Flash) Mac, and more. Each is a 2-page .pdf. These might be just the thing for students who have questions about a new computer skill they are trying to learn.

Five Things You Should Read About

A response to Educause's 7 Things Series is ACRL Instruction Section's Five Things Series. Although this series will focus on library instruction, the first subject they've tackled is copyright and sharing instructional materials.

ALPSP database collection

FYI for reference staff. After talking with our linguistics liaisons, I have removed ALPSP database from the alpha and subject list pages on our website. It was never really a database per se, but rather a collection of journals like others we get from our subscription vendors. Users will still have access to these journals via the homepage search box, only the destination site will revert back to the label "Swetswise" for Swetswise Online Content.

7 Things You Should Know About...

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has a series called "7 Things You Should Know About..." emerging learning technologies. Among the seven things covered for each topic:

• What it is
• How it works
• Where it is going
• Why it matters to teaching and learning
  

Topics covered include Wikipedia, YouTube, podcasting, screencasting, virtual meetings, Google Earth, Creative Commons, and many more.