Google Talk

The Google empire continues to spread. There are articles in today's Guardian and NYT about Google Talk, the newly launched VoIP/IM beta. It's limited to Gmail account holders, so I've added a few people to my list to try it out (if you want to add me, it's tmvogel@gmail.com). It looks like you can configure GAIM, Trillian Pro and other third party IM managers to accept the Google Talk information (but not sadly, not the free Trillian). Is it worth upgrading to Trillian Pro? I went ahead and upgraded to Trillian Pro and configured it for Google Talk using the Jabber plugin.

I'm curious to see how it compares to Skype, which has been a joy to use while working on the CMS article with 2 of my friends and former colleagues at Georgia State. It's worked well in my office, outside the library on my laptop, even at home using the dialup.

Webfeeds: Cambridge Journals Online

Cambridge Journals Online, as promised, is now offering feeds (RSS/Atom) for their journals. The feed links are on each journal homepage, as well as listed together on a single page. I didn't see anything on the site that give an explanation of how to use the feeds--or the difference between the RSS and Atom options--but I'm hoping this is in progress. The feed links are not embedded in the RSS and Atom buttons. Instead, they take you to the explanatory page. The two pages are virtually identical, going so far as to include RSS and Atom are just two different formats that do basically the same thing on each, with the feed link at the bottom of the page (RSS 2.0 or Atom 0.3).

This is a vast improvement of that other multidisciplinary publisher (OUP) that still doesn't have all their feeds listed on a single page.

Webfeeds: Cambridge Journals Online

They don't have them available yet, but RSS/Atom feeds are listed as one of the new features available when the CJO site goes live on August 8.

Science News Podcasts

Here are a few good sites that offer science news podcasts. If there are other you'd like to recommend, please do so.

Science AT NASA
Science and Society
Science Friday (NPR) - they also have a good explanation of how to use the files
SETI Podcast
Quirks and Quarks (CBC Radio)

NewsGator and FeedStation (podcasts)

Now that I'm spending some more time with NewsGator (to see if it does a better job than Bloglines with the bold/unread indicator with database search feeds), I've also downloaded the FeedStation beta.

I have subscribed to several podcast feeds. When I open up the feed in NewsGator, I get the option to add each audio file to a My Podcasts folder, which I guess is synched to a FeedStation folder on my C: drive. The selected files get downloaded to my C: drive, and then I can listen to the files when I want in Media Player (or I suppose I could export them to my iPod if I had one).

Bloglines: Bold/Undread feature not working w/ database feeds?

Lately, I've been having problems with my database search feeds in Bloglines not going bold when there's new content. This includes my feeds with ProQuest, PubMed, HubMed and EiV2 (though not Astro Data System)--and it happens with some feeds, not all of them. There are new records, but the feeds aren't showing up in bold. Has anyone else been seeing this?

It's frustruating because I'm showing patrons how to use the feeds offered by these database providers, and while I'm explaining how the reader works I have to give the proviso that the bold/unread feature may not work with these feeds.

I've sent a e-mail to the Bloglines help desk, and we'll see how successful that goes. I'm not sure if it's Bloglines, the databases, or my computer/browser (I've tried 2 computers in IE and Firefox). I've copied the OPML file into Newsgator's Web Edition, and I'll see how the database search feeds show up in this reader.

Webfeeds: PLoS Journals

This may be another one that I didn't catch on my radar, but the Public Library of Science offers feeds for their 3 journals: PLoS Biology, PLoS Medicine, and PLoS Computational Biology. On each journal homepage there's a feed for recent articles, and for PLoS Medicine there's also one for recent research articles. When you access the Current Issue for each one, you also get a choice of 2 feeds under "Download XML" for Table of Contents and Research Articles. I just subscribed to the ones on the homepages.

Not surprisingly, there's no single page that lists all of these.

Testing Blogger Images

Just testing out the new Blogger Images feature, which means uploading images without going through a dozen steps and still not getting a picture.

Here's one of the Geisel (as in Dr. Seuss) Library at UCSD, from the southwest corner. It's home to several libraries, including Science & Engineering. The tower is primarily social sciences and humanities materials, while we're in the grass off to the far right in the east wing.

Photograph by David Westphal

Webfeeds: PubMed!!

Thanks to Steven for the heads-up. PubMed's "send to RSS" option has gone live.

I've already set up a few alerts in Bloglines. The e-journal icons you get in PubMed carry over in the feed so you can go right to the article (assuming you have access, etc.). Unfortunately, it also cut off the names of my search feeds. Substrate specificity and protein phosphatases became PubMed: fluorescent specificit....

The odd thing is that the new results aren't showing up bold in Bloglines. This is also happening with my Factiva and ProQuest feeds, even though I'm getting the new content. Is this a Bloglines quirk with some dynamically generated search feeds? It's not happening with HubMed, ADS or Compendex.

Publisher/Webfeed Report: SLA Toronto

When I asked about feeds:

• Royal Society of Chemistry - coming soon; will probably start with Chemistry World
• Science Direct - coming but no date
• APS was actually promoting their feeds
• AIP, ACM, Wiley, ASME - variations of "don't know"
• Blackwell - no
• IEEE - planning to expand their current list; we also discussed the possiblity of search feeds
• ACS - thinks their working on it, and will check
• PubMed - didn't know when "Send to RSS" option will go live