I was reading Rebecca's post the other day about file dis-organization and her journey to figure out what to do with a problem that plagues most academics that I know: that of finding interesting articles, downloading them for potential future reading, and then losing track of things (or not knowing where things are).  I have to say that I've struggled with the same problem as well over the past few years and I think I've given up on trying to figure out how to organize things - luckily MacOS has a good enough system search (provided that everything is indexed) that allows me to find (most) things.

My files reside on my hard drive, on MobileMe iDisk (even though that is going away soon), Dropbox, sugarsync, SkyDrive, and ZumoDrive (again, even though this is going away soon). I was thinking of getting Papers for the Mac, but then I thought to myself: what about times when I am not using my mac? In retrospect I should have just gotten it because I almost always use a Mac, and if I don't have one at work I always try to find a way of getting one.  I have tried zotero, but I honestly didn't like it because of the need to use Firefox (which has become pretty unstable over the years, and zotero tends to make it crash, at least in my experience).  Mendeley is not bad, it was introduced to me by @cdetorres, but I've never really gotten "the hang of it" - perhaps it's now time to revisit it, given that it is getting good reviews from people I know and whose opinions I value. The one fly in the ointment is that their iOS client kind of stinks... oh well.

So, my file organization? Just create a folder named "articles" and dump things in there.  If I am working on a specific project, that project gets a folder, but other articles that are interesting just get dumped in "articles" and I figure it out later ;-)

Adieu ZumoDrive???

I got the following message from ZumoDrive support last night:

This is an important ZumoDrive service announcement. You are receiving this email because you have an active ZumoDrive account.
Motorola is excited to announce that we’ll be moving over to MotoCast to continue delivering innovative, cost effective solutions for accessing, sharing, and consuming your digital content. MotoCast provide seamless, instant access to all your computer's content from your smartphone, tablet or even another computer safely and securely. Stream your own music, videos, photos and files without the burden and cost of uploading to a public cloud. For more information or to download the free MotoCast application please visit http://www.mymotocast.com.
As part of this transition to MotoCast, Motorola will be shutting down ZumoDrive. After May 1, 2012, ZumoDrive users will no longer be able to use the service. Any content remaining in your ZumoDrive account beyond May 1, 2012 will be securely deleted along with all account records.
If you want to retrieve your data stored on ZumoDrive, we strongly recommend you take action as soon as possible to download it. We have made it easy for you. All you have to do is:
Get the ZumoDrive downloader tool from here:
- Windows downloader: https://d1tsx1og7dz7v4.cloudfront.net/ZumoDrive+Downloader.exe
- Mac downloader: https://d1tsx1og7dz7v4.cloudfront.net/ZumoDrive+Downloader.zip
Log in with your ZumoDrive account within the ZumoDrive downloader
Choose a location on your hard drive to save all of your ZumoDrive files
Make sure that you have enough space on your hard drive for everything in your ZumoDrive account.
For more information, see our support article at http://support.zumodrive.com/kb/general/how-to-use-the-zumodrive-downloader-tool and see answers to frequently-asked questions at http://support.zumodrive.com/kb/general/zumodrive-shutdown-faq.
Note: Users of HP Cloud Drive, HP Web Service Store Bundle Customers, Cruz Sync and Toshiba App Place Bundle subscribers are unaffected by this shutdown and can continue to use their ZumoDrive powered service. ZumoCast service is also unaffected by this shutdown.
We thank you for your support and use of ZumoDrive. We look forward to sharing the new MotoCast experience with you!
The ZumoDrive Team

ZumoDrive is one of the cloud storage providers that I use, and given that it has a pretty nifty iOS client, and it integrates with Yahoo! Mail (which I still use) it was pretty useful.  The weird thing is that their website is operating  as if the shutdown will not take place, but they knowledge base FAQ article spells it out.  I wonder why they decided to shut down. They were one of the better online cloud storage providers 

This past weekend I got more gaming in that other weekends (mostly because most of my other work is done...except I've been procrastinating on one project...more on that later).  I ended up going a but past the 50% sync on Assassin's Creed Revelations having retrieved 2 (out of 5) Masayf Discs, cleaned up all of the templar dens (and getting all of my assassin recruits trained to some level) and getting most viewpoints synched (and most shops repaired).

I've said this before, but I will say it again, Inception-like environment of Desmond in animus, being Ezio, while he is experiencing Altaïr's memories...not bad!  It also helps with tie things together.  With 50% of the game done, I am wondering how things will wrap up in the end (or will they?)  The one issue (thus far) is that I have no idea how to find animus data fragments in an easier fashion.  If I bump into one, great, but other than that, there are no treasure maps that lead to you to animus data fragments.  Luckily you only need 30 or so to unlock all of Desmond's memories, but there are 100 (and you can bet there is some sort of achievement associated with getting all 100).

More playing later... now time for work!

Την πρωτοχρονιά του 2011, όταν επέστρεψα στην δουλειά (βιβλιοθήκη) μετά τις γιορτές έμαθα πως μου έδιναν μετάθεση στο τμήμα ΙΤ, χωρίς να με ρωτήσουν με μετέθεσαν Το καλό είναι πως το τμήμα ήταν πολύ γαμάτο οπότε για μένα ήταν κάτι σαν προαγωγή ;-)

Πριν περίπου ένα χρόνο λοιπόν, πήρα μετάθεση και ήρθα στο τμήμα ΙΤ (που μου έδωσαν και ένα καινούργιο 27αρι iMac!) και όλα ήταν καλά. Τώρα πάλι αλλάζω τμήμα, αλλά αυτή την φορά εθελοντικά και πάω στο τμήμα εφαρμοσμένης γλωσσολογίας ως μάνατζερ του διαδικτυακού τους προγράμματος Μάστερ. To 27αρι iMac το αφήνω πίσω (σνίφ σνίφ) αλλά μάλλον με περιμένει νεότερος υπολογιστής το νέο τμήμα. Το τμήμα γλωσσολογίας είναι στα παλιά μου λημέρια, το κτήριο Whealtey στο οποίο βρισκόταν η πρώτη μου δουλειά. Τώρα μετά από 6 χρόνια επιστροφή στο κτήριο! Το καλό είναι πως τουλάχιστον τώρα θα έχω ένα παράθυρο, στην παλιά μου δουλεία στο Whealtey ήμουν λες και ήμουν στην φωλιά του Batman ;-)

Άντε να δούμε τι νέες περιπέτειες θα έχουμε φέτος στο νέο τμήμα :-)

The other day I saw a friend of mine (and I hope it's OK to pick on you for a bit :-) ) who had a twitter (and Facebook) post like this one (content is made up):

I am really #psyched about this #awesome #content on this #fabulous #topic that I am #super #interested in. This is #seriously #awesome.

My friend, if you are reading this I am not picking on you, I am only using your twitter post as a jump off point to talk about the excessive use of hashtags in twitter posts by many of the twitterati :-)

Back in my days as a linguistics student I remember Grice's Maxims of Cooperation (or conversation). Grice's Maxims in short are:

• The maxim of quantity: where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
• The maxim of quality: where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
• The maxim of relation: where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
• The maxim of manner: when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

I was sort of joking the other day when I said to my friend (also a linguist) that these #hashtag #laden #tweets probably violate one or more of Grice's Maxims of cooperation :-)  Today, having a look see at the maxims again to remind myself I can probably argue that these types of posts do violate all four maxims :-)

#tweets with #excessive #hashtags #violate #GricesMaxims in the #following #ways

• The maxim of quantity: By trying to be more informative and including more #hashtags, you actually end up being less informative because your post lacks a clear focus 
• The maxim of quality: I would argue that even though deceit is not intended, by including way too many hashtags in your post, search engines grab your tweet as a relevant post in some other category that it is not meant to be.
• The maxim of relation: Clearly, way too many hashtags are not relevant to the discussion.
• The maxim of manner: Too many hashtags make it so that the post isn't brief or obscure.  Sure you are limited to 140 characters in a tweet, however too many hashtags do lower the readability of the text thus making it less clear and harder to decode.

What do you think?  How would you apply Grice's maxims to tweets or other web communication? :-)

I was looking at my amazon gift points the other day and I noticed that I had enough to buy& Assassin's Creed: Revelations and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow as used games (heck even the new price for Assassin's creed isn't bad now that a few months have passed since its release!)