2 handy handouts

2 recent CRS handouts that might be particularly useful for correspondents departing for the U.S. (or others interested in following legislation) are
Tracking Current Federal Legislation and Regulations: A Guide to Resources (02/28/07) and
Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade: Key Issues for the 110th Congress

Consolidate your email addresses

Gmail has a new feature that allows you to funnel mail addressed to various internet email accounts (gmail or any other service that supports pop3)into a single Gmail inbox. This is useful when you have many mailboxes to check - personal mail, family mail, user-response mailboxes attached to specific blogs and websites, etc., and checking all of them regularly becomes an easy-to-forget nuisance. You can also choose to retain the original address (e.g. irc@usa.no) as the "From" address, even when replying from Gmail. To add additional accounts to Gmail, select settings/accounts/add another email address. Note that you must enable pop3 in the email accounts before they can funneled to your default Gmail account.

GovBudget.com

Govbudget.com is a useful and graphically pleasing site that explains how the U.S. raises and spends $3 trillion per year.

miniajax.com

Webmasters at play will find lots of neat stuff at miniajax.com

DivShare

DivShare is another free and easy way of sharing files (similar to Senduit, reviewed below)

LetterPop

Letterpop.com is an entirely web-based 2.0 application that enables you to edit, publish, share print and share newsletters. This won't be of much use to anyone who has a dtp program at their disposal, but it serves as an interesting example of how much can be done on a web platform. You can choose from a selection of newsletter templates, add formatting and style to your taste, and upload photos and paste them into your newsletter. It took me just a few minutes to produce this dummy newsletter...

Badger

Badger uses Yahoo! Pipes and JavaScript to create Web badges out of any RSS feed. You can see examples of RSS feeds in the left margin of ircworld - for those I've used another service, Feedigest, but Badger is easier to use (and free). Badger is essentially the same kind of tool as USINFO's magnet, which allows you to stream USINFO's RSS feeds to a webpage of your choice, but with Badger you can select from any valid RSS feed. Here's an example of three colorful Badger-generated feeds. (For some reason, the page does not render correctly when viewed through Firefox..but it works in IE)

Golden Mouse Awards

Brazenly grabbing the limelight from Helen Mirren and others, the Congressional Management Foundation shifts public attention away from the Oscars by awarding the Golden Mouse Awards only 24 hours after the Academy's gala event. The Golden Mouse Awards go to the best congressional member and committee websites. The 2006 Golden Mouse report includes useful information about latest Web developments and user expectations, analysis of trends and important findings regarding the overall state of congressional Web sites, best practices of the award-winning sites, and a handy guide for congressional offices seeking to improve their site.

OpenCongress

(Tatiana, thanks for alerting us to this!)
excerpt..."OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation.

OpenCongress brings together, for the first time in one place, all the best data on what's really happening in Congress:

* Official Congressional information from Thomas, made available by GovTrack.us: bills, votes, committee reports, and more.
* News articles about bills and Members of Congress from Google News.
* Blog posts about bills and Members of Congress from Google Blog Search and Technorati.
* Campaign contribution information for every Member of Congress from the website of the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org.
* Congress Gossip Blog: a blog written by the site editors of OpenCongress that highlights useful news and blog reporting from around the web. The blog also solicits tips, either anonymous or attributed, from political insiders, citizen journalists, and the public in order to build public knowledge about Congress."

Onbeing

This new Washington Post site by Jennifer Crandall has a pd angle (domestic pd?) and is graphically very impressive. In its own words, Onbeing is

"a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better. What you’ll find here is a series of videos that takes you into the musings, passions, histories and quirks of all sorts of people. The essence of who they are, who we are. There will be a new video every Wednesday, so check back often. In the meantime, feel free to add your thoughts to the comments section and tell us about someone you’d like to see in onBeing. Over time, we should end up with a pretty cool community."

CQ Researcher: "Rethinking Foreign Policy"

CQ Researcher has published a new 24 page resource "Rethinking Foreign Policy," dated February 2.
It offers a broad survey of the current state of American foreign policy and the issues at stake, a little historical background, some "where do we go from here" ideas, links and a bibliography.
This resource should serve as introductory material for high school and first-year college students, via a subscription to the online edition, which our post is fortunate to have. The approach is very professional, as you would expect from this source. New reports are published weekly, and give useful outlines of topics in the news.
While the CQ Researcher is not freely available on the web, the Ralph Bunche Library has access to the print edition in its print periodical collection.

Senduit

With Senduit you can upload a file to the internet, generate a url for the file, and set an expiration date from 30 minutes to 1 week. If you need to share a file with someone but are having trouble emailing it (and sometimes OP+ firewalls can cause problems with emailing files..), just upload the file to Senduit and send your contact the url. Very easy to use...and free!

FGI Toolbar

The Free Government Information site now offers a toolbar, with (among others), the following features:

* Easy access to federal government publication web sites.
* Quick access to reports from the Congressional Research Service and Government Accountability Office.
* Four ways to ask government information questions online.
* Links to easy-to-understand information guides written up by documents librarians from around the country.
* A 50-state directory of Federal Depository Libraries
* Links to major Freedom of Information Act pages and written guidance on filing FOIA requests
* Easy access to all sections of the Free Government Information web site

I installed it in Firefox, and it looks very useful. The screenshot above shows what comes up when I hover over the RSS button. (practicing what I preach, the screenshot is enabled by the really cool tool FastStone Capture, discussed in a post below)

A-Z Guide to Political Interference in Science

(another interesting post from Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff)"The Union of Concerned Scientists has produced this guide to the ways in
which the work of scientists at federal agencies has been suppressed or
distorted for political purposes. Browse alphabetically, by agency, or by
topic, or view the timeline. See also Scientists and Engineers for America, an organization devoted to explaining to the public the importance of scientific integrity. It includes a "scientific bill of rights."

Primary document resources

This posting to PubLib is a compilation of useful sites for locating primary documents. (thanks to MaryLaine Block's Neat New Stuff)

Alternative search engines

Here's an article about search engine alternatives to the big 4, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com. Includes a listing of the "top 100."

Techpresident.com

Here’s the Online Line on Online Politics - New York Times: The New York Times describes Techpresident as an "online equivalent of a trade magazine, aimed at political professionals who need to keep up with the Internet and technology executives involved in creating the tools they use. A group blog with a dozen contributors, it is an extension of Personal Democracy Forum, an online publishing and conference business owned by an Internet entrepreneur, Andrew Raseij." thanks for the tip, Ute!

FastStone Capture

FastStone Capture is a very handy (and free)screen capture utility that allows you to capture all or parts of screens (also scrolling screens), and save, edit and add captions to the images. Very neat..get it at http://www.faststone.org/

Brain Pop and Black History Month

Here's a posting from LIS news - something that might be useful for younger audiences or American Corners in connection with Black History Month..
"BrainPOP is an educational computer program, providing content spanning 7 main subjects including: Science, Math, English, Social Studies, Health, Arts & Music and Technology. They feature a special Black History Month Module, which is free for all during the month of Febrary."

Images of American Political History

This is a good source for digital images of American political history. "About this site" information is scanty, but it appears to be the work of Dr. William J. Ball of the Dept. of Political Science at the College of New Jersey. The search feature doesn't seem to be working, but you can find lots of images by browsing by era or by special topic. The noble intent of the site is "to support the teaching of American political history by providing quick access to uncopyrighted images for inclusion in teaching materials. All images are strongly believed to be in the public domain. They were obtained from non-copyrighted U.S. government holdings and publications and from published works with clearly expired copyrights. Thus there are absolutely no restrictions on their use."

Page2Rss

Page2rss is a service that helps you monitor web sites that do not publish feeds. It will check any web page for updates and deliver them to your favorite RSS aggregator.

13th Amendment Anniversary

Here's a Black History Month resource from Virtual Library Cat:
"On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished the institution of slavery in the entire country. Having already passed the Senate, the amendment was on its way to the states for ratification. The fascinating story of the proposed and adopted methods for ending American slavery, with a timeline, biographies of the major players, and links to articles and documents, can be found at the 13th Amendment Site--"The End of Slavery: the Creation of the 13th Amendment." What makes this site especially engaging are the primary source materials--news items, editorials, illustrations, cartoons--taken directly from the pages of Harper's Weekly, described as "the leading American illustrated newspaper in the second half of the nineteenth century." Check out this outstanding source for Constitutional history background and research."

Pipl - People Search (BETA)

a search engine to add to other favorites such as zabasearch and peoplefinders

A "New Paradigm": the private sector and public diplomacy

Craig Hayden at USC's Center for Public Diplomacy takes a critical look at the "Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy" hosted by the State Department in January. He concludes, with little enthusiasm, "A corporate vision for public diplomacy appears to be on the rise again... It would seem that branding-as-public diplomacy has once again surfaced as a corrective for U.S. communication strategy. Does any of this sound familiar?" Richard Edelman's words will presumably be music to the ears of USIS diehards... (p.s. - that was another example of CiteBite in action...wonderful tool!"

Reporters Without Borders Issues 2007 Annual Press Freedom Survey

(from BeSpacific)"The survey, published on 1 February, reports on press freedom in 98 countries and includes the main violations of journalists' rights in 2006 and regional aspects of media and Internet freedom...The report lists the worst violations in repressive countries, including major culprits North Korea, Eritrea, Cuba and Turkmenistan, but also looks at democracies, where progress needs to be made too,” the organisation says."

2007 Annual Report (156 pages, PDF)

Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity and Medical Care, 2007 Update

The Kaiser Family Foundation's updated version of Key Facts: Race, Ethnicity and Medical Care, 2007 Update, serves as a quick reference source on health disparities, presenting the best available data and analysis.

This report includes data on the uninsured and access to care by race/ethnicity as well as information about the disproportionate effect that specific conditions such as diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and asthma have on racial and ethnic minority populations in the U.S. New in the 2007 Key Facts are demographic data on the racial/ethnic minority population in each state and the U.S. territories. This edition of Key Facts also includes data from the National Healthcare Disparities Report, examining changes in health care disparities over time. (source Kaiser Family Foundation via Docuticker )

Public Papers of the President

I was recently looking for Public Papers of the President for the Nixon administration. A quick check at GPOaccess and NARA suggested that the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents are searchable from 1993 and browsable from 2001, and the Public Papers are available (search and browse) from 1991. I thought I was out of luck and then stumbled upon the American Presidency Project - there you can search or view by month/year public papers from the Hoover administration onward, as well as The Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1913!!! Perhaps everyone knows this (I'm rusty on reference) but I was amazed and delighted!

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

This is an impressive example of displaying graphic information through mouseovers.

Evil RSS is good

EvilRSS is a service that turns Google search results into an RSS feed. Just enter your search query, click submit, and it generates a feed you can subscribe to using your RSS reader or browser(although I don't know why people use rss readers, now that they are built into Firefox, Opera and the latest version of IE) Note that Google News has this service built in to it (just click on "RSS"on the left side of the page after you've performed the search to create your rss feed), but this is the first service I've seen that generates an RSS feed out of a general Google search.

Guerilla Mail

"Guerrilla Mail provides you with disposable e-mail addresses which expire after 15 minutes. You can read and reply to e-mails that are sent to the temporary e-mail address within the given time frame."

Find sounds

...if for some unimaginable reason you need to embellish your website with sounds, this is a good site for searching for soundfiles. You can also browse categories (animals, birds, holidays, household, mayhem, etc.) for the sounds you need.

Heritage Foundation on PD

This executive memo from the Heritage Foundation makes some recommendations for moving U.S. public diplomacy forward. Among them, "look beyond short-term needs, assign clear authorities and responsibilities, and establish sensible processes to aid PD research, planning, clearing, and assessment."

Useamap

This is the neatest map utility I've seen yet. Choose a name (e.g. myshack)for your map, find your location, annotate the map, and save it to useamap.com/myshack, and hey prest you've got a map at an easy to remember url that you can refer people to. And its free! (sponsoring an event at an offsite location? Take 2 minutes to create a map for invitees!)

2 prong

Many services/tools on the internet require email confirmation to sign up, and leaving one's email all over the net can of course generate a lot of annoying spam. One solution is to have a separate email account for sign-ups, but another nifty solution comes from 2 prong When you visit the 2prong page, a disposable email address is automatically copied to your clipboard. Paste(ctrl V)that email address into any email confirmation form, and a few minutes later the email will pop up in a box in the "2prong" window. Then just click on the confirmation url you've been sent, and you're all signed up.

Page Bull

Sometimes its useful to preview thumbnails or images of pages before you click through to them. Page Bull
provides your search results in a grid of pages (3x4,2x6,or 4x3), so that you can see where you're headed. This is particularly useful if you're making stylistic comparisons or window-shopping for a new look. Try searching for "u.s. embassy", and you'll be overwhelmed, to put it gracefully, by a very familiar look and feel. Awesome!

American dialects

This overview of U.S. dialects was generated by a survey of pronunciation patterns in some 30,000 participants across the U.S. The results are broken down by survey word and state...if you click on the word "aunt," you'll be presented with a map of the U.S. showing the pronunciation distribution of "aunt," covering a range of sounds from "ah" to "ant" to "caught." Regrettably, small enclaves in Arizona and Tennessee also pronounce it as "ain't." If on the other hand you'd like to click to see how things are said in a certain state, you click on survey results/breakdown by state/Oklahoma, for example, and you'll see how all the survey words are pronounced in the Sooner state. Fascinating!

Poverty in the United States

(from BeSpacific) Two GAO reports on poverty:

Poverty In America: Consequences for Individuals and the Economy, Full text GAO-07-343T, and Highlights, January 24, 2007: "In 2005, 37 million people, approximately 13 percent of the total population, lived below the poverty line, as defined by the Census Bureau."

Poverty in America: Economic Research Shows Adverse Impacts on Health Status and Other Social Conditions as well as the Economic Growth Rate, Full text GAO-07-344, and Highlights, January 24, 2007: "Economic research suggests that individuals living in poverty face an increased risk of adverse outcomes, such as poor health and criminal activity, both of which may lead to reduced participation in the labor market."

Cultural diplomacy for armed forces

Through the Lens of Cultural Awareness: A Primer for US Armed Forces Deploying to Arab and Middle Eastern CountriesThe statement "Cultural understanding is necessary both to defeat adversaries and to work successfully with allies" sounds a bit peculiar to a librarian, but I guess cultural awareness is always a good thing. This 150-page primer addresses the critical task of providing U.S. armed forces with a better cultural understanding of adversaries as well as allies.

Report on the American Dream

"The American Dream" a perennial favorite among topics for student papers, is the subject of this report by the MetLife insurance corporation. The report reveals that the American dream is still alive, despite the erosion of corporate benefit programs and social safety nets, and is being propped up by American optimism; while a majority (66%) of Americans feel they have yet to achieve the dream, they remain optimistic about the future and feel it’s still possible to achieve the American dream in their lifetime (67%).

World View of US Role Goes From Bad to Worse

Time to put some more Public Affairs Officers in the dog house, they just can't seem to get it right...or perhaps we IRCs are to blame? According to this BBC World Service poll, released January 23, the view of the U.S. role in the world has deteriorated both internationally and domestically. What's a librarian to do?

State of the Union policy agenda

This White House 2007 SOTU policy overview is a handy 26 page pdf that gives a brief summary of the president's agenda on just about all the issues. For more SOTU materials, see beSpacific

Military commissions

Sabrina Pacifici has compiled some useful links regarding the hot issue of implementation of military commissions.

Wikiseek

Wikiseekis a custom search engine that searches articles in the wikipedia as well as sites that are referenced within Wikipedia articles. And, as described in previous post, if you have Google toobar ver3, you can add Wikiseek search to your browser toolbar and have it at hand wherever you browse!

Search any site from anywhere

A nice feature of Google Toolbar ver.3 for Firefox is that it allows you to focus your toolbar search window to specific websites. For example, I often have occasion to search just usinfo.state.gov, or ircworld.blogspot.com, or our own embassy website. Rather than going to each of those sites and entering my search in their respective search windows, I just enter the search word in the search window in my Google toolbar, then select the appropriate icon from my toolbar (I've got one for each of those sites) - or from the Google searchbar dropdown menu - to focus my search to one site. The built-in search window that comes with Firefox has had a comparable feature for quite some time, but there one is dependent on help from resourceful programmers to develop and share the plugin you need for the specific search (many are available - even local ones such as the Norwegian white pages - but they of course comprise only a tiny fraction of all the local searches that exist on the web). With the Google toolbar you can create the local search yourself simply by right-clicking in the search window of the site you want to search, and hey presto, you've created an icon and menu item that allows you to search that site from your browser toolbar, no matter where on the web you might be! Nifty!

National Archives and Footnote digitize historic documents

NARA and Footnote have embarked on a project to digitize historic documents. Many are already accessible at www.footnote.com/nara. The project will digitize:

** Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 — Including Journals of the Congress, correspondence, drafts of treaties, and papers related to Indian Treaties.

** Mathew B Brady Collection of Civil War Photographs — 6,000 glass plate negatives acquired by the War Department from Brady in 1874-1876. This includes work from other photographers, and includes images of famous people as well as shots of battlefields, landscapes, camps, hospitals, etc.

** Name Index to Civil War and Later Pension Files — Pension applications for service in the US Army between 1861 and 1900. There are over 3 million index entries that cover applications for soldiers and sailors as well as their widows.

As Researchbuzz points out in its review, there's some good news and bad news...

"...the good news is that these materials will be digitized fairly soon. By February 6, the announcement said, the digitized materials will be available at no charge in National Archives research rooms in Washington DC and regional facilities around the country. The bad news is that the digitized documents will not be available at no charge through the National Archives Web site until five years have elapsed."

Merger of State and DOD

This piece, by former FSO, former colleague and mensch David Arnett, is a fable about something that could happen - but I suspect it's also a tale of something that has already happened...

(Incidentally, here's an example of how useful "Deepquote" - which I described in an earlier post - can be. David's fable is located at the very bottom of this page, at the USC Public Diplomacy site. It's kind of hard to find, despite the well-intentioned notice at the top of the page (ie. For “The Merger of State and DOD: A Fable” by David L. Arnett, please scroll down to Section E.) This is when Deepquote, now renamed CiteBite, comes in handy. When you provide CiteBite with a chunk of text and the url of the page, it generates a new url that goes straight to the selected text. Neat!)

Peggy Garvin tests Thomas BETA

Here's a brief walk-through of the new BETA version of revamped Thomas, for gov. info enthusiasts.

Circling the Oval Office

Nice overview of the candidates, courtesy of Wall Street Journal

State seeks private sector help on PD

PR Week reported that the "US State Department and the Public Relations Coalition on January 9 to 10 are co-hosting a summit at the State Department that will look at how businesses and other private sector organizations can support and improve US public diplomacy. " According to a Fox News article, much of the advice from private sector PR experts focused on toning down confrontational policy messages and accentuating everyday good news stories, and doing less preaching and more listening. At the summit, 150 top public relations professionals and State Department leaders identified 11 action steps for greater private sector involvement and support for U.S. public diplomacy.

Thurgood Marshall Law Library - United States Commission on Civil Rights Collection

For Martin Luther King day...
Thurgood Marshall Law Library - United States Commission on Civil Rights Collection
"In conjunction with the Thurgood Marshall Law Library's strategic plan to enhance its civil rights collection in support of the School of Law's teaching and research mission, the Library has worked since 2001 to create a complete electronic record of United States Commission on Civil Rights publications held in the Library's collection and available on the USCCR Web site. The publications are made available over the Internet as page image presentations in PDF format. Each item is linked to the appropriate bibliographic record in the Catalog. Publications are also searchable by keyword and accessible by date and title."

Google Patents

Search seven million patents at Google Patents! When someone calls to share/sell an idea for an ingenious invention, its a good idea to have them check this database first. Even if you're not looking for something specific, searching/browsing this collection of human creativity and ingenuity provides endless hours of fascination. See for example the hydroelectric generator assembly for use in footwear. Includes a pair of fluid filled sacs contained in the sole of the footwear. The sacs are connected by conduits whereby, when the footwear is used for walking, fluid is transferred between the sacs via the conduits, generating hydroelectric power! Best of all, lots of great drawings!

Embassies as Command Posts in the Anti-Terror Campaign

This report to members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations by its chairman, Richard Lugar, discusses the relationship between DOD and State at post, and the role that embassies and ambassadors play in furthering counterterrorism strategy, policy and activities.

2008 White House Derby

Here's a useful overview of the field taking shape for the 2008 elections, and CQ promises
the lists will be updated promptly as developments warrant.

Thomas revamp

Here's something I lifted from beSpacific, who lifted it from SLA

THOMAS Releases New Features in Beta

Peggy Garvin posted this information on the SLA Government Information Division blog about the new features as follows: "The THOMAS legislative information system from the Library of Congress has posted beta versions of several new features. The direct link to the new features being tested is thomas.loc.gov/beta/ -- or you can click on the Explore new features link on the main page to check it out.

New capabilities being tested include:

Search all THOMAS databases for all congresses with one search.

Sort search results by document type (bills, committee reports, etc), relevance, or date.

Navigate and refine searches with new options on the search results and document display screens.

THOMAS includes a link to offer comments on the new features. Before doing so, be sure to read the helpful section About the New THOMAS (Beta) and--in particular--the helpful FAQs."

Links from Wikipedia

If you want to see which Wikipedia articles link where - to your website, for example - use the "Search web links" page. You can also use wildcards...by entering "*.usembassy.gov", you'll get a list of articles that link to embassy websites, ordered alphabetically by embassy. Neat!

more PD resources...

See also the Public Diplomacy Council & Public Diplomacy Institute's list of key PD resources, and PDI Director Bruce Gregory's periodically updated (but unfortunately not cumulated) review of PD books, articles and websites. The Public Diplomacy Council is also the publisher of a new (December 2006) book edited by former PD officer William P. Kiehl: "America's Dialogue with the World" includes contributions by Dan Sreebny and Joe Johnson, among others (see TOC below). Some of the contributions are available in article form at the the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.

Introduction
--William P. Kiehl
The Message is “Liberty”
--John Hughes
The Indispensable and Unappreciated
Global Role of the United States
-- Michael Mandelbaum
Refocusing America’s Message
--Anthony C.E. Quainton
You Talkin’ To Me?
--Ralph J. Begleiter
The Role of Competitive Fellowships
--Alice Stone Ilchman
Professional Exchanges, Citizen
Diplomacy and Credibility
--Sherry Lee Mueller
Arts Diplomacy: The Neglected
Aspect of Cultural Diplomacy
--John Brown
Public Diplomacy: The Field Perspective
--Dan Sreebny
The Technology Dimension
--Joe B. Johnson
Many Voices: Is Anyone Listening?
--Adam Clayton Powell III
Opportunities for Public Diplomacy
Programs in USAID and the Peace Corps
--Jerrold Keilson
Conclusions & Suggestions
--William P. Kiehl

Interesting PD site

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy website has much information about cultural and public diplomacy, including a very impressive list of recent books, articles, reports and other resources on cultural diplomacy.

FirstGov Visitor's Portal

FirstGov has added a "for visitors to the U.S." section to the portal, providing information presumed to be of interest to anyone planning a visit. Includes border wait times, college/unversity locator service, information about travel, study, doing business and working in the U.S., visa and immigration information, history, culture, U.S. government, laws, etc.

New laws 07

Stateline.org has compiled a list of new state laws taking effect 1/1/07. Maybe of interest to journalists?

Thumbnail previews

If you'd like to provide thumbnail mouseover previews of urls on your site, snap.com provides the service free of charge. All you need to do is paste a little snippet of code into your html page.