YouTomb

If you have an interest in copyright, open access, and culture, you might want to check out YouTomb, a research project of MIT Free Culture, a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. YouTomb tracks videos on YouTube that have been removed for alleged copyright violations. Copyright holders can submit takedown notifications under the Digital Millennial Copyright Act that cause YouTube to remove the video. YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns, and provides information about the video, including how many days ago it was removed, how long it had been viewable, and the name of the copyright holder. There's more about YouTomb here.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Another Search Engine choice

I know the name needs work, but I am still a fan of the Web search engine, Clusty . What makes it different and worth a look is that it "clusters" your results. So, if you search for something, for example "pet insurance" you will get your results in topics such as "health insurance", "cat insurance" and "compare" as well as just the usual list.

In case you are interested, health insurance for felines does not look any better than for you humans!



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Once you start looking, you'll "notice" that they're everywhere: Myriad signs with odd and unnecessary quotation marks. For instance, one that tells you there "will" be an extra charge, or another that urges you to step right “in”.

The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks photographically chronicles these oddities. Just click the highlighted link and “scroll” down to see some amusing examples.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Discover who is Tweeting with We follow

Are you having a tough time finding out who is Tweeting? Try We follow. We follow is a "user powered user directory" that ranks Tweeters by the number of followers and sorts the followers by user-defined tags. Popular tags include "celebrity," "news,""politics," and "socialmedia."



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Revolving Door | Open Secrets

The Center for Responsive Politics is a donor supported research group dedicated to tracking money in politics and its effects on elections and public policy. Their mission is:

• Inform citizens about how money in politics affects their lives
• Empower voters and activists by providing unbiased information
• Advocate for a transparent and responsive government

The mission is pursued mainly through the website. They follow the money and report to us.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

UN Secretary-General's Database on Violence Against Women

The UN Secretary General's Database on Violence Against Women contains information about violence against women and the measures taken by various countries to combat this violence. The advanced search feature allows you to search by type of measure taken, the form of violence and by country. It also has a profiles on several countries that outline that country's legal framework, policies and strategies, institutional mechanisms, services and preventative measures and statistics related to violence against women.

Hat tip to Cornell's Insite.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Bing

The launch of Microsoft's Bing reminds us that search engines other than Google do, in fact, still exist. PC World compares Bing with Google and Yahoo!. (from the Law Librarian Blog).



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat