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Thursday, September 16, 2010
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Free Collaborative Learning Tools for Science—Spotlight on Scitable
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by Paula J. Hane
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As Scott Merrill wrote on CrunchGear, "Social networks are a dime a dozen." He pointed out that many fail and many are just for specific niche audiences (though I don't think niches are a bad thing). So, he was as skeptical as I was about Scitable, a social network for science research and education from Nature Publishing Group, publishers of Nature and Scientific American. I was especially leery given the recent turmoil over licensing discussions between NPG and the University of California. (They recently issued a joint statement agreeing to work together to address the "mutual short- and long-term challenges.") Scitable is an educational website offered by Nature Education (a division of NPG) for biology and genetics educators and undergraduate students, and it provides a free library of high-quality, vetted content and tools. The company just announced the launch of the mobile version of Scitable.
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New Web Accessibility Tool Free to Developers
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Deque Systems announced the global launch of Worldspace FireEyes, a next-generation web accessibility tool that ensures that both static and dynamic content within a web portfolio are compliant with accessibility standards, such as Section 508, WGAG 1.0, and WGAG 2.0. FireEyes is an easy-to-use plug-in that is fully integrated with one of the most popular and powerful web development tools, FireBug, a Firefox extension.
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McGraw-Hill Professional Launches AccessEngineering 2.0
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McGraw-Hill Professional's AccessEngineering 2.0 is now available. It's a redesign of the resource formerly known as McGraw-Hill's Digital Engineering Library. First launched in 2009, AccessEngineering is a comprehensive collection of the complete contents of McGraw-Hill's engineering and technical books, supporting all levels of scientific and technical research and innovation in the academic, corporate, industrial, and government sectors.
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Google Instant: Interactive Searching
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by Greg R. Notess
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Last week, Google held a "press event" to unveil the new, results-as-you-type Google Instant. Enabled by default for Google searchers in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia (if using a modern browser and either logged in to their account or using Google.com), Google Instant starts showing results, not instantaneously but very soon after the first letter of a search is typed. With each subsequent letter typed, the results (and the search suggestions) change. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, says, "Google Instant is a new way to search." Not only do the results appear shortly after just typing one letter, but the first search suggestion also often displays (in gray letters) within the search box itself. The actual results displayed are the ones for the full suggested search or, if none is displayed in the box, for the first listed suggested search.
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