New Intute tutorial for Computer Science

The Intute Virtual Training Suite has had a make-over and a new tutorial has been developed for Computer Science and Informatics, replacing the previous ICT tutorial. The tutorial is a good place to start when learning how to search the web for academic sites, and to help you to develop your internet research skills, while picking up useful links along the way. The tutorial also features new sections on social media sites and tools in computer science subject area, bookmarking, and RSS feeds.

WolframAlpha – will it change search?

There’s a new search service on the block, widely reported to rival Google as search engine of choice. WolframAlpha is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, and it sells itself as a “computational knowledge engine” rather than a search engine. The idea is that rather than providing a list of sites to help you with your query, it will bring you the answer from its knowledge base. It definitely has its strengths when looking for facts and figures. View some the examples of what it can do with certain topics including mathematics, statistics and data analysis, and web and computer systems.

Like many others, I have been testing it over the last few days but often being answered by “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” Another criticism has been the fact that at the moment it has a US bias. Time will tell whether the service will improve or interest fizzles out but it is still an ambitious project worth keeping an eye on. You can follow what others are saying about it on Twitter. Let me know your thoughts if you have tested it out.

Google Books

Google book search provides a simple way to search for books in a range of subject areas. Where the titles are out of copyright, or access has been granted by the publisher, full text download is available.

You will find that full text access is limited via Google and most contemporary titles will have either limited preview or snippet view of the books. More information about the different types of views provided can be found here. Still, like all things Google, it’s a great developing service and the snippets may help you to decide if you want to read the whole text.

Check the online catalogue (OPAC) for availability of titles at Wolverhampton Learning Centres.

Computing Research Repository

Another open access find today and it’s the Computing Research Repository (CoRR). The CORR was orginally set up to bring together research in computer science and to encourage more rapid dissemination of research results. All records provide full text download.

DMOZ

The Open Directory Project is a large directory of web sites put together by a global community of volunteer editors. It contains extensive computing and maths sections.

Citebite

Here’s a nifty service that could be useful if you’ve found a useful section or quote on a webpage that you need to retrieve or reference. Citebite lets you paste a chunk of text and the URL of the page containing the text and gives you a link that opens the page and highlights your section.

Rexa

Rexa is a specialist search engine and digital library covering computer science research literature. Its aims are to “facilitate research progress and collaboration by providing efficient browsing, search, associations and analysis among papers, people, organizations, venues and research communities”. Access is free but you will need to register to use the service.

Podanza

An audio treat today from one of the many podcast search engine sites. Podanza hosts a range of podcasts covering various subjects. A technology highlight comes from David Pogue of the New York Times who reports weekly on new technology. David also writes a blog on the same subject.

Scholarpedia

The latest web search tip is Scholarpedia which presents itself as a scholarly version of wikipedia. Unlike wikipedia, which allows anyone to edit the information, Scholarpedia invites academics to write articles on subjects within their specialist area and edits can only be made by this scholarly community. If you want to see who they are, some are listed on the scholarpedia authors list. Probably more of a traditional encyclopaedia than a true wiki, but an authoritative source nonetheless.

Chipwrapper

Chipwrapper conveniently brings online news together in one place. It searches nine of the leading newspapers in the UK and BBC online to bring you the latest content. If you just want the headlines, subscribe to the feeds. Still in beta form but Goggle powered so it’s bound to be looking at ways to improve.

Don’t forget that you can also search full text newspaper articles using the ProQuest newspaper database.