Category Archives: News
Database of Moving Companies has 7,500 Listings
I do love seeing a database where the creators have gone above and beyond and organizing the information. I love it even more when the database is a services directory, and not something academic or institutional. I’m talking about Movers Reviewed at http://www.moversreviewed.com/, a database of 7,500 active, licensed moving companies in the US and Canada. (It says “Reviewed,” but I didn’t see a lot of “reviewed” — mostly I saw “listed.” But that’s okay as there is plenty of information to gather from a search here, as you will see.) It’s in beta.
From the front page you can specify where you’re moving from (by state/province or zip code.) You can also search by mover name or for a particular moving specialty or feature (like piano movers, auto movers, commercial movers, employee relocators, etc.) I looked for all mover types, moving from Maryland.
I got 130 results. Listings included standard stuff like contact information, but also information on any associations to which a company belongs, the number of registered vehicles, and links to safety information from the DOT. (Well, sort of. Each company has registration numbers listed and a link to the US DOT site but you have to run the search yourself.) If 130 results are too many for you, you can use the nav on the right to narrow down your results by a variety of factors including just companies with Web sites, association memberships, or types of specialty movers.
There didn’t seem to be a lot of extra information on the Maryland movers page, but that wasn’t always the case. The list of movers in Florida had all kinds of extra information for some listings, including pictures, amount of warehouse space, brief description of the company, and some descriptions of the different types of moving they do. There were also checkboxes for some listings by which you could get a quote for moving jobs.
In addition to the lists of movers, the site also has a page of tips and information, including what to know about hiring a mover, “red flags,” how insurance works, how to spot a company that brokers moves, but doesn’t actually perform them, most common consumer complaints for movers, etc.
Somebody put a lot of work into this and it shows. I love the way you can slice-and-dice the lists of movers. The only bump is looking at safety information via the US Department of Transportation’s Web site, and that’s more due to the way IT’S organized than anything else. A good reference site.
Get Your Jazz Quotes in a New Web Site
Jazz-Quotes
Matt Mullenweg is starting off 2012 right, with a new Web site devoted to jazz quotes. (This site is for quotes by jazz legends, not necessarily quotes about jazz.) The site is available, strangely enough, at http://jazz-quotes.com/.
I like the presentation on the front page, with several jazz legend photographs with a name/number next to each one. The number is the count of quotes available for that particular artist. There are also several names below the listings with no pictures, but with numbers.
I looked at quotes for Jaco Pastorius, Sun Ra, and Frank Zappa. Each artist’s page I saw had a list of their quotes, a picture, and a form for submitting more quotes. The Zappa page had just one quote (“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny”) but other pages had dozens (Miles Davis’ page has 26 quotes.)
This isn’t an exaustive collection by any means, but the selection and the presentation are both great.
National Archives Puts Genealogy Workshops on YouTube
The National Archives announced yesterday that video of some of its genealogy how-to workshops have now hit YouTube (though looking at the dates on some of these they appear to have been up for a while, BUT ANYWAY.) The URL for the archive’s YouTube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/usnationalarchives. Videos available include:
“Genealogy Introduction — Military Research at the National Archives: Regular Service” (available here.)
“Genealogy Introduction — Immigration Records at the National Archives” (available here.)
“Genealogy Introduction: Census Records at the National Archives” (available here.) (This appers to be, by far, the most popular of these three!)
The channel has 878 videos in total, with playlists that include “Inside the Vault,” “Public Programs from the National Archives,” and “ARC Film Clips.” So you’ll be better prepared this spring, there’s also a series of four short films, produced around 1940, about the 1940 Census.
As you might imagine, 878 videos equals a LOT to see here.
Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper Puts 5000+ Issue Archive Online
Indianapolis Recorder Archive
The University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and Indianapolis Recorder newspaper have teamed up to put issues of the Indianapolis Recorder newspaper, an African-American newspaper, online. The years spanned are 1899 to 2005 and total over 5000 issues. The archive is freely available at http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/digitalscholarship/collections/Irecorder. (This archive is not complete; issues from 1917-1925, and January-April of 1932, are missing.)
You can do a text search, browse by year, or do a full browse of the archive (over 5200 items!) I went to browse the 1904 archives. I got 53 thumbnails of the newspaper. Clicking on one took me to a large version of it, with tools for zooming, moving around, and clipping. Unfortunately the panning was done by clicking and not click-and-drag; made it more difficult to enjoy the archives.
The 1904 papers I looked at were all four pages. The scanning was very good and I didn’t have any trouble reading anything once I zoomed in enough. The pages are whole and also include those nifty old advertisements.
Trying a keyword search, I looked for Evansville and got over 4000 results. The keyword for which you’re searching is highlighted in bright red and easy to find even when pages are displayed at only 10% size. (Even the ads have the text indexed; useful.)
It would be great if it were somewhat easier to read these pages, with better zoom and pan tools (downloading issues would be especially great but I’m guessing that, with the archive going to 2005, that’s not going to be possible.) This archive, spanning over 100 years, has tons of content to explore.
Google Launches Web Site to Cover US Elections
Google Elections
I don’t know about you, but I’m already up to my elbows in election coverage. But there’s no avoiding it — there’s a presidential election in November and we’re going to be hearing about it until then. So to make it a little easier to keep up, Google has announced a new election hub at http://google.com/elections/ed/us. (There’s one for Egypt, too, at http://google.com/elections/ed/eg, but I’ll be covering the US version here.)
The site contains news about the elections in general in the middle, with the Democrat and Republican candidates on the left nav. And let me start my rant here.
I don’t care what your politics are. Truly. I strive to keep ResearchBuzz apolitical, because ideally, an interest in well-crafted information pools, organized data, and groovy pinball machines should cross all political boundaries. Right?
But it bothers me that in these times, when dissatistfaction with politics is so intense, that Google is sticking with providing information on only two political parties. It’s not like Google doesn’t have enough newsprint or space in its magazine. It’s not like there aren’t automated mechanisms for gathering information. Yes, there are eight gazillion political parties and maybe you don’t want to include the Tomato Donut Party that has only three members. But you could make a case for the Green and Libertarian parties, which have appeared regularly on many state ballots. You could make a case for the Constitution Party, which is the other “third party” with over 100,000 registered voters according to Wikipedia. And you could point at the many independent candidates in recent history which have managed to get on state ballots despite, um, interesting ballot access laws (that’s a whole ‘nother indignant post) as an indicator of voter interest in choices.
My point is that you could use standards to define political parties and candidates for inclusion that would reach beyond Democrat and Republican. Would you make everybody happy? Good grief, no, this is politics after all. On the other hand, Google could choose to do what mainstream media has often failed to do: let the American voter know they have other choices besides Democrat and Republican.
Okay, I’m done. It’s 3:30 am and I just finished a political rant. I feel all icky.
HOW ‘BOUT THEM WELL-CRAFTED INFORMATION POOLS?
Anyway, candidates on the left. Also on the left: political issues! Yes, you can choose from several issues, including Economy, Heathcare, and Social Issues. (That seems somewhat limited, but remember, you can always run your own search, as I did for “Pizza” above. THIN CRUST PARTY!) Choose one and you’ll get news in the middle. You can choose to look just at news, or just at video. Google puts only a few videos on the site put points you to an entire YouTube channel devoted to politics if you want more.
Google also has trends for the candidates, showing volume of search, news mentions, and YouTube video views. (You can break these down to the day, and theoretically look at individual candidate results, but every time I tried that I got an “unresponsive script” warning.) There’s an “On the Ground” section that maps not only news stories but also YouTube videos (including adorable local car dealership ads.) Iowa is the hot spot right now as you can imagine.
This is a good start, but considering the rise of Facebook and Twitter, it felt a little lacking. When reviewing candidate news I could start here, but I would rapidly branch off in other directions.
Obituaries Australia Provides Information on Over 2700 Australians
Obituaries Australia Home Page
In April, The Australian National University launched Obituaries Australia, an online Web site that aggregates information on over 2700 Australians, in obituary or biography format. It’s available at http://oa.anu.edu.au/. You can search this Web site by keyword, of course, but there are a number of ways you can browse, too. You can browse by date of death, date of birth (I saw biographies going back to the 1700s), name, author (who wrote the item), or publication (where the item appeared.) You can also browse by lists (awards, clubs, military service, etc.)
I did a name search for Smith and got 26 results. Results include name of the person, birth-death years, and sometimes a little blurb about the person (“diplomat, public servant and Japanophile,” “ironmonger,” “surgeon and photographer,” etc.) “Surgon and Photographer” looked interesting, so I clicked on the obituary for Julian Augustus Smith.
This detail page had the obituary as it originally appeared in The Argus (there’s also a link to the original), a picture of Dr. Smith, and a sidebar with a life summary including birth and death dates, religious influence, and occupation. The items in the sidebar are clickable so you can browse lists of Australians by various characteristics — occupation, cause of death, religious influence, etc. There’s even a list of bushrangers available which includes Jack Donohoe.)
Sometimes the biographies are more extensive, as for Issy Smith. Sergeant Smith’s obituary information includes links to another obituary, several links to articles about him in newspaper archives, and a very extensive sidebar.
I’m impressed with both the amount of information here but also the external links to newspaper archives and the extensive cross-linking. Useful reference site.
Database of Pinball Machines
Internet Pinball Database
Oh, I love the Internet. The Internet Pinball Database, available at http://www.ipdb.org claims to have information on virtually every commercially-produced pinball game (that’s over 5400 games) as well as other pinball-related files and links to pinball-related sites. The site does not, as is constantly emphasized, have pricing information, nor does it buy or sell pinball machines. All it has is tons of information (and a list of skills to be devloped to become an excellent pinball player, which would have come in handy many years ago.)
I started with the glossary because my pinball vocabulary is lacking, and I didn’t know why the machines were divided up into SS and EM. (SS stands for “Solid State”, while EM stands for Elecro-Mechanical games are are usually older, pre-1978.) Once you’re brushed up on your vocabulary and want to look for machines, you can do a simple keyword search or do a more extensive field search.
Not remembering any particular pinball game, I did remember a pinball game that said something like “Quit talkin’ and start chalkin’!” constantly. I thought it was called “Eight Ball” or something like that, so I did a search for eight. I got 46 results, presented in a table including the name of the pinball game, manufacturerer, number of pictures available, type of game (SS or EM, or PM for the really old ones) and rating.
After looking at a couple of results I recognized the game I was thinking of as Eight Ball Deluxe. The detail page had a huge amount of information, including manufacturing date, number of units produced, model number — there’s even a link to download the manual for the machine. You can either go to yet another pinball site (The Internet Pinball Serial Number Database) and get a list of serial numbers for the machine submitted by users. But there were two things that really impressed me.
"Stripped" playing field for Eight Ball Deluxe
The first one was the collection of 45 pictures, which included the full machine but also detail pictures of the playing field, cabinet (both inside and out) and even the front and page of a promotional flyer. The second was the set of reviews. This pinball game had 63 ratings and 52 comments. I’m pretty sure I’ve played Eight Ball deluxe and I could tell you it’s a pinball game and that’s about it. I certainly wouldn’t know anything about machines which are “draino,” or “side drains” or a “shotmaker’s table” or have “liberal tilt settings”. Reviews can rate games in four different categories. (Apparently Eight Ball Deluxe is rather iconic, which might be why I’ve actually heard of it.)
I’m kind of a hardware nerd so the detail provided on these machines and the love from the site is just wonderful. If you ever played pinball, visit.
