Awesome tool for Mac users

I've fallen in love with XtraFinder, an app for Macs that gives "finder" file windows the same tabbed windows feature available in browsers.

Now, instead of having multiple windows open, I can just have one split one (one of the features), for instance, as shown below. Or I can have numerous tabs open in just one window, taking up a lot less real estate and improving my workflow tremendously.

If you are a journalist using a Mac, this will definitely help you keep things organized and speed up your ability to flip among things.

Thank you Tran Ky Nam.

Here, by the way, is a pretty complete tutorial on how to speed up workflow using a lot of Finder options (as well as some alternatives to XtraFinder).

Liquid Text, file this under WOW

Pointer from Jack Lail to a project coming out of Georgia Tech called Liquid Text.

Can you imagine how this could change journalists' ability to extract and organize info?

Jtools: Trunk.ly to save links

I've been playing around today with trunk.ly, a new free site that will fetch your links from your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and save them for you.

I'm kind of liking it as a way to stay organized and find stuff I've forgotten about. You can import a bookmark file too.

Try it and let me know what you think of it.

New Twitter tutorial for journalists

The new tutorial is  from the Knight Digital Media Center, and it's pretty cool.

I recommend checking it out.

Tax time for journalists

CCH, the venerable publisher of those thick tomes explaining tax law (and many of the other arcane corners where government and commerce intersect), has its 2011 tax site up - the Whole Ball of Tax.

It has some good stuff, including various data sources that may be useful for reporters working on tax-related stories (and that may even be useful for some other stories).

As a bonus, at the bottom of the page there is a PDF link to a tax guide for journalists.

Happy hunting - for those deductions.

Internet stats resource?

Came across this set of Internet statistics from an outfit called Pingdom, a website monitoring service.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers

Take it FWIW, but at least this outfit does list its sources at the bottom, so A+ for transparency.

Pointer from Resource Shelf.

Reporting, editing resource: County boundaries atlas

The Newberry Library has online a digital atlas of county boundaries in every state from 1634 (if your state goes back that far) to 2000.

Thanks to Research Buzz for the pointer.

Useful Resource - technical glossary

Ever need to know what 1080p vs. 720p really meant? Or 3GPP or M4V? (Don't say no - as journalists these days, we are more likely than even to encounter these tech terms - or have to actually produce in some of them.)

In my wanderings I came across a useful resource, a tech glossary from afterdawn.com. There are some others out there, but this is one of the better ones. Most of the definitions are simplified enough that, even with a few tech-talk spots, you can work your way through them, and the site internally links to lots of other guides.

For your reference library - Green's Dictionary of Slang

With Christmas approaching, wordsmiths might want to add the massive Green's Dictionary of Slang to their wish list.

At $360 and three volumes, this is not for the faint-hearted. But it gets high marks all around (so much so that it already has its own abbreviation, GDoS, according to World Wide Words).

(If you want something a bit more manageable, both in size and price, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, also by Jonathon Green, is a good option.)

Tech Tip: Bitly click through stats

Hadn't realized this until I saw it in a comment, but adding a "+" to the end of a bit.ly link gives you the click-through stats on that link.

Check it:
http://bit.ly/hagapx+

Useful Resource - American Medical Association Archive

From Research Buzz: The American Medical Association has opened access to American Medical News.

There are about 15,000 articles, and the AMA (unlike some publishers) is welcoming links to them.

For the 'peevologists' among us

Excellent piece this week at On The Media -- on the anniversary of Samuel Johnson, father of the dictionary, it looks at how far we've come -- and how far we haven't.

Largely built around the much-despised Merriam-Webster's Third New International, now almost five decades old, the piece by Mike Vuolo is a common-sense look at what dictionaries are and are not and the never-ending disputes surrounding them.

What's that headline reference to "peevologists"? You'll need to listen to find out. Hopefully, you're not one. (If you are, that previous sentence probably will send you twitching.)

Useful site - sports calendar

In this morning's e-mail was a pointer to what looks like it could be a really useful resource, an international sports calendar on the International Olympic Committee site.

Right now it goes back as far as 2002 (settle some bar bets?) and as far ahead as 2013 (plan that TV watching schedule?)

Thanks for the pointer to Resource Shelf.

Thanks, Copyediting

Thanks to Copyediting and Wendalyn Nichols for the kind words this week about this blog (Wendalyn featured it in her tip of the week). It's always nice to hear such things from those you respect in the industry.

Let me return the favor and suggest that you invest in a subscription to Copyediting newsletter. It isn't cheap, but I get more out of every issue than almost anything else I read.

If you are serious about the language and its evolution, you'll find a wealth of informed, reasoned discussion.

Learner's Dictionary Online

A good editor or copy desk should have at least one learner's dictionary available. Merriam-Webster has just put its online at learnersdictionary.com

Such dictionaries are written for English as second language and other English-learning students. Some might find it beneath them to consult one ("after all, English is my mother tongue"), but learner's dictionaries bring a valuable dimension to your resource shelf.

Unlike the dictionaries we traditionally reach for, learner's dictionaries provide more guidance on idiom and collocation (words used in common patterns).

For instance, look at the entry for resource in M-W's Learner's Dictionary. The usage examples show that "for" is the common collocated preposition used with "resource." Of course, you say, I knew that. But these kinds of things do come up on a desk (I chose this word because a recent Copyeditor newsletter tip of the week included a reader's question of whether a charitable organization was a "resource to" or "resource for" abused women).

Now look at the entry in M-W's standard dictionary. It gives you much less on idiom, but much more on etymology and synonyms.

(Another example: Rein in the M-W standard and in the learner's, which has many more phrasal uses. I just wish M-W would show misuses under their improper spellings, such as "free reign," and then point to the correct entry.)

Put the two books (or online sites) together, and you have a pretty good resource for those sticky issues.

Municipal ordinance sites

Need to find full text of a municipal ordinance or code?

Find a searchable database at http://www.municode.com/Resources/OnlineLibrary.asp

Click on your state map.

Not all cities and towns are in there, but many are.

Update 10/10/08
Here is another site. You may have to check both. In our area, for instance, about half of the towns and counties are on Municode and the others are on AmLegal (American Legal Publishing)

http://www.amlegal.com/library/

Folliowing tropical storms, etc.

For several years I have subscribed to an e-mail alert site, emergencyemail.org. If you are a reporter on crime, courts or anything similar, you should too.

And editors, your paper, which should have a central, unlisted e-mail account to aggregate these kinds of feeds, should have a subscription (free) as well and a plan to monitor it.

But today from Emergencyemail came a link to another neat site for tracking weather, especially tropical weather:
http://www.vuetoo.com/vue1/Situationpagenews.asp (links on the left rail take you to the latest tropical stuff).

File this under Very Cool.

It may be old hat to some of you, but I suspect many more may not know about it. Get a link into your browser right now. The image below is of the overall national weather situation page.



By the way, another useful tool, if you did not know it, is that the FBI now provides its news releases and other alerts by RSS or e-mail feed. Go to www.fbi.gov, and you will see the links on the left rail.

Also, several services out there will turn an RSS feed into an e-mail for you. Sometimes that can be the more convenient way to get the info, especially if you are using a mobile device. I use Feedblitz, but there are others (and, yes, I have been slothful about setting up a Feedblitz feed for this blog. I promise to do so soon.)

Talkinator & other stuff

• Talkinator, a no-registration chat site, has debuted from the creator of Mailinator, which has become one of the most popular sites on the Net to use to keep yourself from being overwhelmed by spam. Cringley has details and suggests that these days a 5% margin of "better" might be enough to thrive. (Personally, I've pretty much stopped using chat, what with Twitter and other things. But then again, I still use e-mail. What a dinosaur I am.)
  
• David Sullivan aptly notes that in all the hoo-ha about Tribune's/Zell's pronouncement that the ad/news ratio in the papers would be rejiggered, some basic journalism was overlooked -- so what exactly is the typical ad/news ratio. Some of the figures he has from earlier years might surprise you.
• KnoxNews's posting from this weekend's church shooting shows why every reporter should have a Flip or similar video camera.
• I've seen some broad themes develop and coalesce lately across the new media discussions. One is the realization that the business model is a tough nut to crack but one that has to be. Another is the idea that young journalists are starting to flee traditional newsrooms almost, it seems, at the same rate as the layoff notices are coming for older ones. The latest entry: Braden Nicholson leaves Indy.com. Pat Thornton has more. And this comment on the Gannett blog. Frankly, this kind of stuff worries me a lot more than whether newspapers are innovating. If you are eating your young, you are R.I.P. (Earlier from Mark Glaser's interview with Vickey Williams who studied newsrooms as part of the Learning Newsroom poject.)
  
• The Citizens Media Law Project has launched the final section of its online media guide. Sadly, it includes only the 15 largest states for now. It's a lot more than just a libel guide. There is information on freedom of information, forming a business, etc. Get the details at the Media Shift Idea Lab blog.
  

25 advanced search engines

OK, if you have the better part of a day to blow (cumulatively, of course), check out this post from the Online Education Database -- 25 search engines trying to harness advanced technology to dig deeper into searches or make them easier to understand. It's an oldie (February 2007) but a goodie that resurfaced on my radar thanks to Dave Dillard and his Net Gold site on Yahoo.

Bottom line: If you still are just using Google, you are soooo Web 1.0.

Converting numbers to useful comparisons

We've already talked on this blog about Weird Converter, the online site that allows you to convert numbers into very odd, but fun, comparisons, such as how many kegs of beer in an Airbus 380.

But there also is SensibleUnits.com, which has, as its name suggests, some sensible units (type in "10 feet" and you'll get "46 dollar bills end to end," but also some fun/weird ones like "13 chopsticks end to end" and "2.3 Alaskan moose antler spans." (There are some gross ones, too; we'll skip the reference to fetuses, thanks.) Click on and off the "objects" tab and you get some new ones each time. (For instance, the earlier fetus example was replaced by "25 CDs side by side." Much better.)

(Thanks to 10,000 words for the pointer.)