i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

And now, a word about DEVONthink. They describe it as a "smart information assistant", although you could think of it as a sort of MyResearchBits.

This 4 minute video, created by Dr. Michael Wesch for a class on digital ethnography, became really popular on youtube a couple of years back. It talks about - (really effectively!) - why and what is XML, XML vs HTML, social tagging, and several other pertinant 202 topics in the context of web 2.0.

If you have any doubts about XML vs HTML, do watch this!

http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/cdc-/630785.html

 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/nyregion/connecticut/09crimect.html

This article describes the emergence of a need to interconnect various criminal databases so that a judge, or any other decisionmaker involved in the judiciary process, can have a complete view of the defandant criminal history.

This article, published by the BBC is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8241029.stm.

The author talks about the need for the technology industry to make use of the huge amount of government data the Obama administration is making available to the public.

However, the problem faced, as noted by the article is that all that is being made available is raw data. Innovators need to take advantage of this opportunity to collect these data and combine them into useful information to make the public more knowledgable about the workings of their country.

Article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/technology/personaltech/03pogue-email....

A recent report by the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that the sole central database for Medicaid claims and eligibility information is riddled with problems. The database, operated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), is incomplete, out of date, and less accurate than claimed.

Article - click here to read

Proving identity in India can sometime result in frustrating experience. If you go to Bank for opening an account, they will ask for Permanent Account Number (PAN) card issued by finance ministry of India. If you hail from low income group and want to take advantage of subsidized food provided by the government then they will ask for ration card.

Wolfram Alpha is a new search engine that launched in May that is geared toward an educated audience looking just for data. Instead of providing a list of links like Google or another search engine, WA returns just the data and relevant graphs. The system's strengths are real-time calculations, powerful algorithms that search the web, and curated data sets.