Peter Murray

"What I’m proposing is that social media is replicating the old face-to-face interpersonal relationships of a community into an online sphere. The opinion leaders, innovators and early adapters are moving (have already moved) online and their networks are growing exponentially larger than they could in their real-world communities. This means that the potential to spread innovation throughout a society is now easier and harder. Easier because it can spread farther and quicker. But at the same time harder, because it will face increased competition as more and more people attempt to capitalize on these growing networks." - Peter Murray

Compelling social graph visualization of U.S. Congress -- in a 5 minute video. - Peter Murray

Presentation by Adrian Stevenson for UKOLN staff seminar in the library at the University of Bath, 5th November 2009. Good introduction to linked data and semantic web concepts. - Peter Murray

would be interesting to talk to you more about that some point if you are game - Ed Summers

"At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867. In this post, we’ll share how to make one of these storage pods, and you’re welcome to use this design. Our hope is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze." - Peter Murray

"The international standard, now under revision, defined three competing image formats and three compression methods: the IREX I test narrowed the field by determining which ones performed consistently at a high level and are included in the IREX report. The image format test showed that two of the three formats performed well: these center and crop the iris, or center, crop and mask eyelids and eyelashes. The study also determined that two compression standards were found to squeeze the images to a size small enough for storage and transmission while retaining the necessary quality level. One is the JPEG2000 which gives better recognition accuracy than the more commonly used JPEG, and the other is PNG format that employs lossless compression to completely preserve the iris information." - Peter Murray

Commentary about the cost of textbooks and how some are doing without. A notable excerpt: “I spent way too much on books the first semester freshman year,” says Alexander LaBant, a junior at American University. “Ever since then I’ve been more savvy and found ways around it. Sometimes I go on Amazon or Half.com and get used books. But mostly, I’m just not buying the books. Instead I find someone in class who’ll share, or I send around an e-mail asking who might want to get together, study and share their notes and books. It’s a scramble around finals week, but I’m doing all right.” - Peter Murray

Abstract: " Open access (AO) journals are freely available, but non-open access (NOA) journals are available only through payment. Similar to the music industry, one might expect a sharing of NOA articles on the Internet. This paper investigates a site facilitating such sharing amongst medical professionals.Method: A six-month snap-shot (25 May to 24 November 2008) of activities on the site.Results: Total articles requested: 6,587; total found: 5,464 (82.9%). Mean number of views of each article: 4.47. Total estimated saving (or loss): $1.4M for the year of 2008. Nature articles were the most highly requested, followed by Science, and other major medical journals.Discussion and Conclusions: This method of accessing data is highly effective, but issues are raised. Ethical issues and financial implications are the most important. NOA journal publishers should recognise the problem, research its size and implications, but the discussions must occur in the open access area." - Peter Murray

"The Lens correction filter is truly amazing, being able to repair all kinds of distortions. Not only can it remedy the bulging created by a wide-angle lens, and the weird distortion created by taking a photo too close to subject – such as the bulging nose of a friend – but it can also straighten images taken at angles and make them appear as if they were shot straight on. To demonstrate, let’s take an image that suffers from many problems, and correct it." - Peter Murray

"I think part of the gray is also an alignment of values. There are some entities that support the mission of libraries that seem to be in it for the the profit — either for themselves or their shareholders. There are others that are closer in alignment to the education and information dissemination practices of librarianship. I tried to capture this discussion in a pair of blog posts a couple of years ago. If anything, the situation may be even more black-and-white today…" - Peter Murray

Good heavens --- does anyone want to attempt traditional cataloging of this? The FRBR variations just boggle the mind. And the person in the comments asking about ISBNs for the various editions? Wow! - Peter Murray from Bookmarklet

o rly? thaaaaaaaaat's interesting. - D0r0th34

Clearly, we need some sort of revision history on LinkedIn profiles... ;-) - Peter Murray

For reasons I don't understand yet, this photo was geocoded to Columbus. I was really in Oberlin, OH this morning. - Peter Murray from BuddyFeed

Interesting concept about using data generated by the learning management system to predict student outcomes. - Peter Murray

were yesterday's? - D0r0th34

@DOrOth34: if I were your student, that would've been me. :-) While in undergrad, I had a professor who told us he hated to be called "Lastname." Call him "Professor Lastname" or call him "Firstname," either was fine. Just don't use Lastname by itself. I don't know what my sister told her undergrads to call her, but I think most of them call her "Dr. [Lastname initial]." - Betsy (bentley) Vera

Interesting observations about what one might do in the back-channel and the front-channel when a keynoter goes over the edge. - Peter Murray from Bookmarklet

This is a great conversation - I was at HEWEB09. First FF conversation I've noticed about it. :) - Holly Rae, FFer

ChipIn is a Web-based service that simplifies the process of collecting money from groups of people. We make this process quick, easy, and secure, and we provide organizers with numerous ways to get the word out about their ChipIn event. - Peter Murray