Google Bibliography?

No, Google Bibliography is not a real product. I really wish it was though. I am currently starting to collect documents for my doctoral dissertation proposal and I keep running into the same issue over and over again, redundancy. I am absolutely fearful that my EndNote library is going to get squashed by any number of possible deaths. Call me paranoid, but when it comes to data, well...ok I guess I'm paranoid.

Large journal sources such as ACM already have a system for exporting to any number of citation storage packages, including the ever popular EndNote, here is the issue I have though, EndNote does a great job of keeping my references together, but does so in such an inelegant way. After 3 years of Gmail, 3 years of Google Docs, and access to a lot of these services on the fly via mobile, I came to rely on elegance of Google software, even more than that elegance, I rely on the cloud to store the most critical information as a backup device. The culmination of my academic career is more than "critical" to me.

What to do? I could just continue to use EndNote X3 which my university makes available to me for free. I then have the issue of storing my library, and all pdf articles associated with it in a central repository and "syncing" them. I use multiple computers for this process, so now I am almost tied to those little flash drives for my sync. Ug. I suppose I could "upload" my library files to Google Docs as a backup, but that again seems "inelegant". Why could I not have a solution where I can store, modify, read, relate, tag, and organize my citations in the cloud, as an integrated service with the apps I already rely on from Google?

What I want: I want a service which ties in to a document storage package like Google docs, can easily be updated like Google Bookmarks for Scholar searches, easily tagged (like all Google products). I want a Google citation database! In the cloud, massive storage, tags, easily searchable (search through the pdf uploads too), and linked to Google Talk for collaboration. I think this need fits right in the middle between Google Docs and Google Apps.

Please don't make me carry all my research and literature on a flash drive...please?

Goodbye Lala, You were good to me

My Friend Tivo25 introduced me to lala.com a few months ago. I am always looking for new music and even spins on old music. Lala is great, it offers a queue for sampling music, social networking to find people with interests and get introduced to music and share it with other networks (facebook), and most of all a great way to easily and comfortably purchase music on a tier.

Chairman Steve at Apple thinks it's good too. Apple recently purchased Lala.com. Like myself, many users had hoped this site would become an extension of iTunes or simply just left alone.

Nope....it goes down May 31st. Thank you Apple, you cheeky B&^@6@!(&%#s. This is something I expected from the likes of Microsoft, not Apple. The iTunes store has many merits, and I am loyal fan, but social networking really leads to music discovery, something Apple has yet to grasp in it's push to appease the big labels, which I hope die in a fiery, brimstone laden, smelly, smoky ball of financial ruin. Sorry, lost it there for a second. Nothing stifles new music faster than shutting down avenues of discovery. Not everyone can go to SxSW every year and we rely on services like lala to produce new music for us.

Today, another avenue was roadblocked, and unfortunately it looks like music lovers on the web will ultimately suffer the consequences. Had it not been for lala and a local radio station (PBS funded 91.7 in Dallas-FortWorth), I would have never discovered St. Vincent, Passion Pit, Little Dragon, Aqualung, Fanfarlo, Efterklang, Shiney Toy Guns, or Ok Go. This leaves Pandora and perhaps last.fm. I will be showing my support for Pandora now with a paid subscription and will create an account on Last.fm probably this weekend.

Bye Lala, I hope to see you on the other side. :(