Is Twitter The Next SEO Haven? (The Blog Herald)

...With the newfound popularity of microblogging/presence networks like Twitter and Jaiku (and a host of others), these may well be the next haven for people looking into optimizing their sites for search engines. For instance, Neil Patel at Search Engine Land recently wrote that Twitter can be used not just for messaging, but also to generate traffic, particularly since Twitter allows for embedding links in tweets. Plugins like Alex King’s Twitter Tools even automate things for WordPress bloggers. You can set it to post a tweet automatically every time you publish a blog post.

Secondly, Twitter status pages themselves are starting to get indexed by the search engines, and I would think many of these have been getting good Google PageRanks on their own. To illustrate, the twitter.com home page has a PageRank of 8/10, which is considerably high. Robert Scoble’s Twitter page has a pagerank of 5/10, while my own Twitter page has a PR of 4/10. (more . . .)

Hallelujah Nuns

A really hilarious version of the Hallelujah Chorus, with flash cards. Thanks, Noel Hart!

Library Camp is coming!

Library Camp 2007 will be held Tuesday, August 14th at Baruch College. It sounds very cool, but I'm not sure what I'll present on.

American Classics Concert: Gershwin, Glass & Adams,

It's time for great American Music at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday, May 23 , 8 p.m. , when the New York Choral Society will perform a concert version of "Porgy and Bess" by George Gershwin. This is the all-time American classic. Songs like "Summertime," "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'," "Bess, You Is My Woman," and "I Loves You Porgy." It's a program with soul. I've heard the soloists at rehearsal and they're fabulously entertaining.

Plus there's a piece by the contemporary composer Philip Glass called "Itaipu". For those who don't know his style, think a modern Bolero or Carmina and add the setting of a waterfall in the tropical jungle of Paraguay. Based on the creation myth of Guarani Indians, for whom the Parana River is the place where music was born. Believe me, you'll know what I mean, after you hear this piece. It's quite breath-taking.

Order tickets directly online. Tickets are $20-$75. Limited student rush tickets are $10 the night of the concert with valid ID.

Interest in Summer Jobs at Top Firms Cools Down (Law.com)

Leigh Jones
The National Law Journal
05-21-2007

Tom Nosewicz interviewed with about 15 top law firms during Stanford Law School's recruiting season last fall. He heard promises of big money, engaging work and a shot at full-time employment once he completed his law degree.

"I did so many interviews it was sort of ridiculous. I felt like a salesman," said Nosewicz, who just finished his second year at Stanford.

Later this month, he'll head to New York to begin that summer job. But he has decided against filling a slot at one of the big firms that courted him last fall. Instead, he has taken a job without pay at the federal defender's office, where he said he'll get "on-the-ground training" not available as a summer associate at a megafirm.

Nosewicz, 26, is part of a faction of law students at top schools whom associate-hungry law firms are salivating over, but who nevertheless are rejecting big firms' advances for what they say are more meaningful summer jobs.

Although the majority of law school graduates continue to take jobs in the private sector, the percentage of jobs at private firms -- particularly large ones -- has declined each year since the class of 2001. At the same time, the number of attorney jobs across all sectors has increased, according to NALP, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks legal employment. In addition, the number of graduates has remained at about 40,000 for several years. (more. . .)

That Coram Boy Choir (Ask Playbill.com)

...The show has 75 minutes of music. About 15 percent is by Handel, and about 85 percent is new music written by the composer Adrian Sutton, though Sutton's music often uses elements from Handel. While the show has some parts in which the choir takes the lead, Zachary James, one of the choir members, likened the choir's function to that of a film soundtrack, which "enhances the mood without being too obtrusive," he says.

Kitsopoulos made sure to hire singers well versed in the style of choral music. "I would describe it as a very clean sound," Kitsopoulos says. "You could very clearly define and listen to 'Oh, those are the sopranos, those are the altos, those are the tenors, these are the basses." In a Broadway chorus, however, the idea "is to create a harmonic texture, like a wall of sound," and opera choruses work similarly. Broadway and opera choruses also use more vibrato (the throbbing effect that trained singers will sometimes use) than choirs do. (more . . .)

Gather.com First Chapter Competition: Final Round!

Thanks for visiting Gather.com's First Chapter competition and voting for my friend, Candida Korman. She's made it through Rounds 1 and 2 and it is now down to ten semi-finalists!

You now have the opportunity to vote for her work in the final round.

Her novel, Wendy and Alice, is a mystery set in contemporary New York and featuring a soon-to-retire FBI agent contemplating the next chapter of her life. Alice is at loose ends until Wendy, a little girl she rescued from kidnappers decades ago, reappears as a controversial photographer. Wendy's work is targeted by a conservative family values organization and when the leader of that group is murdered she is the obvious suspect. Freedom of expression, sexuality and the definition of art are explored as passionate characters on both sides of the red/blue divide people this murder mystery.

Candy mentioned that this book has come close to being published...repeatedly. One publisher held onto it for a year before turning it down, another held it for 6 months.

You can read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Please read and vote on Chapter 3. Here's a sample from Chapter 3:

Alice was less concerned with a child accidentally seeing a sexual image -- they certainly saw enough nudes and near nudes in fashion magazines and movie ads -- than she was with the likelihood that pedophiles would find Wendy Liddell's work alluring. That held a real possibility of danger, but Alice wasn't sure if banning images was a valid option. Once one started banning art, it was a classic, slippery slope toward censorship of all kinds.

According to the New York Times art reviewer, the photos were " . . . poetic expressions of burgeoning sexuality that rode the fine line between innocence and knowledge." Were such poetic images dangerous to children? Alice would not have permitted her own daughter to pose nude, nor would she have displayed books of nude children in her home, but that did not mean she harbored naiveté about childhood. Children did not suddenly wake from innocent slumbers and transform into sexual beings. They were, although certainly not old enough to consent to sexual activity and not physically mature enough to experience a full range of sexual feelings, on some level, sexual beings all along.

Little girls and their kissing games, little boys and their curiosity about bodies, roughhousing, staring, pointing, accidental touching, sneaking peeks at magazines, stealing into the ladies room and so much more that is part of the normal development, and natural curiosity of children. Add the peculiar interventions of parents, and other adults, and the sexual evolution of children gets distorted and accelerated. Alice recoiled in disgust at the baby beauty queen industry, which dressed little girls in Miss America gowns and makeup. But the miniature, sexualized adults in these contests were not creatures out of context, they were simply an extreme example of the clothes, hairstyles and mannerisms of ordinary children, who rushed ahead toward adulthood.

You need to be a registered member of gather.com and be logged on to the site before you vote. The site has *truly horrible* navigation, so please click on the links I've provided.

Voting ends Wednesday, May 16th, so please vote soon.

Always Connected, But Hard to Reach (Educause)

By Raju Rishi

Students seem to be always connected through their computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or mobile phones, making it easy to reach them—if you are a peer. For colleges and universities, reaching students with timely and relevant information often proves a challenge. With rapid changes in both technology and social practices, what should higher education do to ensure effective communications with students now and in the future?

A key element of the communication barrier is the fragmented nature of students' media. Contemporary students use a new and different model for communication and information access, one created by the Internet and fueled by mobile technology. This predisposition makes it difficult for colleges and universities to reach their student populations via "traditional" channels and can broaden the divide between an administration and its students.

For colleges and universities to bridge the communication gap, they must not only accept that the mobile revolution has indeed arrived but also better understand their options for effectively communicating with their students. Almost all students already own PCs and are accustomed to getting official institutional communications by e-mail or posted on the Web.1 The single biggest new opportunity for more-effective communication involves the mobile phones that most students carry today. (more . . .)

[via Susan Mernit]

Legal Wikis Are Bound to Wow You (Law.com)

By Robert J. Ambrogi
Law Technology News
May 7, 2007

When published in 1999, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig's book, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace," earned praise from a reviewer as "paradigm-shifting."

When Lessig set out to update the book, he shifted the paradigm again, posting the entire manuscript to a Web site where anyone could contribute edits. Eventually, he took the publicly edited text, added his own edits, and, in 2006, published the resulting work as Code v2. Soon, he will post the finished book online for readers to continue to revise.

U.K. solicitor Justin Patten is taking the same approach to a book he is writing about blogging and social media, http://humanlaw.pbwiki.com.

The key word in these experiments is collaboration and the engine driving them is a type of Web site known as a wiki, from the Hawaiian word for fast. A wiki allows any Web page visitor to easily add, remove or edit content. (more. . . )

Seeking Former New York Choral Society Members

In anticipation of the 50th Anniversary of the New York Choral Society, an Alumni Association is being formed.

Are you a former member? Would you like to renew "old" friendships?

Let's hear from you. Please visit our website, www.nychoral.org/alumni or call us at 212-247-3878.

(Photo by Juey Chong Ong)

"Online Communities and related points of interest" (XKCD)

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version) (YouTube)

An explanation of Web 2.0, in under 5 minutes.

Law Firm Rescinds Offer to Ex-AutoAdmit Executive (WSJ Law Blog)

The Law Blog has learned that law firm Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its job offer to Anthony Ciolli, the 3L at Penn Law who resigned as “Chief Education Director” of AutoAdmit last month. His resigned in the wake of a WaPo exposé on how the site in part served as a platform for attacks and defamatory remarks about female law students, among others (see our earlier post here).

Charles DeWitt (pictured, left), managing partner at Edwards Angell’s Boston office, where Ciolli was slated to be a litigation associate, told the Law Blog: “He worked for us last summer. He’s not going to work for us in the fall.”

(more. . .)

Questions Linger for Beard Foundation (NYT)

By NICK FOX

ON Monday the year’s biggest gathering of chefs, food journalists, and other culinary professionals and amateurs will convene at one of the grander locales in New York, Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, for the James Beard Foundation Awards.

It will be quite a step up from the ballroom at the Marriott Marquis, the longtime venue for the food world’s most prestigious awards.

After cleaning up an embezzlement scandal that led to the imprisonment of the foundation’s former president, the current president, Susan Ungaro, said it was time for the organization to show some pride and have some fun.

“The foundation needed to take its rightful place as a place of excitement, and a place of intelligent planning,” Ms. Ungaro said, “after a few years of hard knocks.”

But the hard knocks continue more than two years after the former president, Leonard F. Pickell Jr., and later the entire board of directors, resigned. While it is being run more professionally and openly, the organization is in worse shape financially. And questions about its mission that were raised by the scandal have not all been resolved.

After being robbed by a president who worked for years without pay, and few fiscal controls, the foundation now has a salaried president (who earns $225,000) and chief financial officer, auditors and a bigger professional staff. (more. . .)

Free Screening: Broadway: The Golden Age

Date: Saturday, May 12, 7:30pm
Location: Westbeth Community Room
55 Bethune Street (in the West Village, at Washington St).
Admission: Free to the public
Info: 212-989-4650

The film's producer, Richard Eric Weigle, will screen the award winning documentary, Broadway: The Golden Age. This film chronicles the Broadway theater from the 40’s through the 60’s and stars over 100 legends including: Angela Lansbury, John Raitt, Kim Hunter, Julie Harris, Uta Hagen, Eva Marie Saint, Bea Arthur and Ben Gazzara.

Mr. Weigle will also talk about the sequel Broadway: The Next Generation to be released in 2008.

I know about this film because Rich and I have sung together for many years in the New York Choral Society. This is a really terrific documentary - I saw it when it aired on PBS. Want to know more? This screening also features an additional 30 minutes which was cut from the version shown on PBS. See the IMDB listing, which has great photo galleries and trivia, or watch trailers from the movie.

Library to be Repaired (Washington Times)

By Kristen Chick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published May 3, 2007

D.C. officials will spend $15 million to $20 million to repair the Georgetown public library damaged this week in a three-alarm fire, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said yesterday.

Mr. Fenty has identified $7.2 million in capital funds for the repair project, which library officials said will take years to complete.

"The administration's No. 1 point here is that we are committed to rebuilding Georgetown's historic library 100 percent," the mayor said in a press conference in front of the building, in the 3000 block of R Street Northwest.

The fire started about 12:30 p.m. Monday.

An electrical short sparked another fire that day, at 1 a.m. at the Eastern Market in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Damage to the market is estimated at $5 million to $10 million.

(more...)

Reference services and Twitter

Academic librarian Stephen Francoeur posts about reference services and Twitter, the micro-blogging service:

Let's leave the issue behind of whether or not users would really want to add their local library as a Twitter friend; assume for the moment that they do. Is there a way that we could use Twitter to provide "reference" in some way? Perhaps. Here's an idea that builds on the way that the Case Grande Library users Twitter (use a pre-existing RSS feed to populate your Twitter account with content) and is inspired by the way that the Nebraska Library Commission promises to provide question and answer pairs:

1. User submits question to library (via Twitter direct message option or via chat, IM, email, reference desk, SMS reference, etc.)
2. Library answers the question and asks permission to add it (stripped of all personally identifiable information) to a publicly searchable knowledgebase available from the library's web site. That knowledgebase spits out a RSS feed of all newly entered question/answer pairs.
3. With permission from the user, the question and answer are added to the knowledgebase, which in turn sends out its RSS feed, which itself is sent to rss2twitter to be passed along to the library's Twitter account.