WebliminalBlog

There are a number of Web sites that let you post your bookmarks and then retrieve them using the Web. They are “social” because others with accounts at these sites can view your bookmarks.

It’s getting more and more interesting. These sites provide a nice service that’s been available for awhile, but adding the social connections make them all the more enticing. It’s pretty neat to see that other folks are bookmarking the same sites as you are, especially if it gives you a little boost to know you’re dealing with information that interests others as well. The other aspect s that you can view the public bookmark lists of others, and that leads to resource discovery and social interaction. What could be better than that? 🙂 It’s all part of something great that’s happening, and what exactly that is still has to be determined, IMO.

OK. Here’s a list of three of these types of sites:

del.icio.us – “» del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.” del.icio.us About

Connotea – “Connotea is a place to keep links to the articles you read and the websites you use, and a place to find them again. It is also a place where you can discover new articles and websites through sharing your links with other users.” – connotea: about

CiteULike – “CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there’s no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There’s no need to install any special software. ” –
CiteULike: A free online service to organize your academic papers

Still it’s never been easy to get people to use bookmarks regularly. Some of us are collectors and see the value of saving the collection for future use. To some, organizing bookmarks is too much to deal with.

The article CNN.com – Experts: ‘Phishing’ more sophisticated – Jan 20, 2005 at CNN mentions some new ways that thieves are using techniques related to phishing. The quote “If you think of phishers initially as petty thieves, now they’re more like an organized crime unit,” said Paris Trudeau also ties in with an online interview with Bruce Schneier produced by the New York Times. Schneier also mentions that the situation has moved from misguided hackers getting kicks to organized crime. The CNN article also mentions that attackers have taken to modifying an individual’s host file – the file that can be used to locally translate domain names to IP addresses, and there have been attempts to compromise domain name servers — computers that serve as the authority for IP addresses.

Here’s the lead from the article “Scam artists posed as banks and other legitimate businesses in thousands of phishing attacks last year, sending out millions of “spam” e-mails with subject lines like “account update needed” that pointed to fraudulent Web sites.”

apophenia: Academia and Wikipedia states an opinion about using articles in Wikipedia as citations in research papers. The author makes a good point: an entry form Wikipedia is often only form one source, and has not been vetted. There fore, it’s not appropriate as a citation. He appears to be in favor of the project (Wikipedia), but cautions on its use “I don’t believe that the goal should be ‘acceptance’ so much as recognition of what Wikipedia is and what it is not. It will *never* be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes. If the fuss dies down, i’d be exceptionally worried because it would mean that we’ve lost the ability to discuss the quality of information.” The entry also includes several useful comments.