State of the Net (online version)

Tell us what you want from SEG Online

Sylvie Dale, Online Editor

The new SEG Online has been active for several weeks, and SEG staff report they have received relatively few help requests from members trying to find specific information or trying to log in.

Because the site is for members and prospective members, it cannot thrive without help and guidance from the SEG membership. The SEG Online Committee, to which the new Web site has been entrusted, has been discussing three possible priority areas on which to focus for 2008-2009—online education, professional networking, and interactive graphics. It is impossible to predict what projects would result from these priorities, but they indicate a step in a positive direction for the society's new Web site.

For purposes of encouraging dialogue with readers, we can discuss what they mean in general. Online education, also known as distance learning or e-learning, provides a way for students to learn without having to be present in an actual classroom. It could be live or recorded and commonly has media elements like video and audio.

Professional networking tools describe possibilities designed to help SEG members connect and share information. Some popular professional networking tools include job boards, blogs, and message forums. They might also include mashups between popular existing tools like Google Maps and message posts from SEG members.

Interactive graphics would be used in news stories and wherever the reader would want to participate in the process of getting and sharing information. Some examples would be embedded maps that can zoom and pan, videos, animated charts, small embedded image galleries, and various other widgets and embedded graphics.

SEG leaders, including the SEG Online and Executive Committees, need feedback from members about what types of tools would be most helpful. An upcoming survey will address these and other questions about future content needs of the members, but readers are also encouraged to e-mail news@seg.org with ideas and preferences.

 Members who have not logged in since 31 March should view a quick tutorial, Getting started with your NEW SEG Online, on how to get a new user ID and password.

You may not have seen the new Foundation program Geoscientists Without Borders section of the Web site. This new program started in September 2007 with a US$ 1 million grant from Schlumberger with a purpose of awarding projects of merit, especially for humanitarian applications of geosciences technology.

The Regional Lecturer program has undergone a name change to the Honorary Lecturer program, as a result, the Web site is being updated to reflect this change.

SEG China regional office, which opened on 31 March, will soon have its own space within the SEG Web site in the “About SEG” area. As other regional offices are opened, new sections of the site will be devoted to them as well.

Following are some examples of how the new site spurred renewed interest in the information housed within. Now that the foundation is built and information has been moved, it is time to add text, images, and downloadable files to its more than 1300 pages of content. The effort to better organize this information will continue indefinitely as a collaborative effort between SEG members, staff members, and the Web Content team.

Web-based productivity tools for geoscientists—geoscience blogs. Geoscience blogs are increasing in number as more Web-savvy geoscientists discover the portability and convenience of sharing information in this way. Blogs are Web sites that function like journals, allowing the blogger to frequently post text and graphics and, in most cases, allow for comments on these posts. Blog entries usually are displayed in reverse chronological order; that is, the most recent post shows at the top of the blog. Most blogs allow readers to search the text of all entries for keywords or tags and archive the entries for easy browsing.

Get more out of your Web experience by publishing a blog in your area of specialty, then write news@seg.org and tell us about it so that we can help spread the word. To learn about starting a blog in general using one of several free and simple-to-use blogging sites, do an Internet search or visit Blogger Forum, a site dedicated to helping bloggers.

Geoscience blogs. The following is a sampling of some of the geosciences-related blogs that are active on the Internet. It should be noted that these blogs are published by outside sources and SEG takes no responsibility for the content in them.

SEG Geo-Mentoring—updated frequently, this blog was created by Bill Barkhouse, longstanding member, former SEG president and a major advocate for developing a geophysics cyberculture for the society's members. 2007-2008 SEG President Fred Aminzadeh shared his vision of a geo-mentoring program with Barkhouse, about which he recently blogged: "My vision of geo-mentoring is a program that would cover a large spectrum: technical issues, career issues, and many other things, including how to become active in professional societies, how to decide a career path, how to define success for yourself, and how to reach that success." It sounds like students are going to be a very important part of this collaboration.

Highly Allochthonous—updated several times per week, this blog was created by Chris Rowan, a post-doctoral student at the University of Johannesburg specializing in paleomagnetism.

Antimonite—a new blog updated several times per week by an anonymous Swedish student of geology at the department of Geoscience at the University of Lund. Hopefully this blogger will publish a name soon to go with the interesting material.

Green Gabbro—updated several times per week, this blog was created by Maria Brumm, a graduate student at UC Berkeley studying groundwater in tectonically active settings.

Google Lat Long Blog—updated several times per week, this blog is written by the Google Earth and Map team with a purpose of encouraging geoblogging, which allows the blogger to link specific geographic information to blog entries using geotags, resulting in a type of mashup (see State of the Net, April 2008). Learn more about geoblogging at http://confluence.rave.ac.uk/confluence/display/SCIRC/Geo-Blogging.

Do you have a geoscience-related blog? E-mail news@seg.org with your blog's Web address and to share any questions or comments.

Webware winners. CNET recently announced its Webware 100 winners, selected for multiple categories from more than 1.9 million reader votes. The site, http://www.webware.com, describes Webware as online applications or services which enable people to network, share their lives, and work together. Ten Webware winners were selected for each of ten categories: audio, browsing, commerce and events, communication, productivity, publishing and photography, search and reference, social, utility and security, and video.

Following are some of the top winners in the Productivity category, which received about 64 000 votes total. The full report is an interesting read.

Basecamp, a Web-based project management tool from 37signals which includes productivity tools such as a task list, shared storage space, message boards, and calendaring. The service is known for fitting both personal and group organization together.

Remember the Milk beta, a task list that is well integrated with several mobile devices and Google Calendar and contacts. The list can be accessed online using a mobile device or a computer, and it can be exported for offline portability.

I Want Sandy, an automated e-mail assistant which allows users to e-mail “Sandy” with a small message to set up an e-mail reminder or calendar appointment. The service, which also works with the microblogging service Twitter, scans the text and converts it into an e-mail reminder or appointment to be sent back to the user and any other users copied on the message at the right time.

30 Boxes, an online calendaring tool which allows the user to create calendar events by typing in a sentence like “Dinner, 6 p.m. Thursday with Susan,” and the tool will create an appointment from the identifiable keywords in the sentence.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets, a Web-based collaborative office suite which allows creation and sharing of documents with other Google account holders and allows multiple users to work on the same document at the same time. Files are stored on the Internet so that they can be accessed from anywhere.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace, a place to share Office documents and important files between multiple users. These documents can have various privacy controls and alerts for when other users are editing them; they also can allow work on the same document at the same time.

Zoho, a tool with more than 20 Web-based productivity applications similar to what Google is offering, and also including some SMB applications including a CRM tool, invoicing service, and a recruiting tool.

Mint, an online financial management service which can interface directly with bank and credit card companies (there are more than 3500 institutions on the system) to keep accounts up to date without having to visit multiple sites. The user can set up e-mails for low balances and other types of alerts.

Google Calendar, an online calendar which lets users add or share events in multiple calendars and access them on their mobile phone or using Google's Gmail. 

Yahoo! Calendar, a free day, week, month, and yearly planning tool which lets Yahoo account holders create their calendar and share it with others. The tool includes sending reminders to e-mail and mobile phones.

The State of the Net column is written by Sylvie Dale, Online Editor, SEG Online. Your comments and questions are welcomed.