| Index of papers | Phil Gyford: web | email |
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| Fall 1999 | |||||
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| Futures Methods I | |||||
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| Research and Scanning | PDF version | 1999-12-01 | |||
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[Comment: This was knocked up at the last minute, and I didn't like the outline anyway: choose research and scanning sources both for general subjects and specific topics. The pre-set structure is far too, well, structured for how I organise such things. It repeats itself and a lot of what I wrote is nonsense.] [ Research | Scanning ] Categories, General There are an infinite number of ways to categorise the world, but I'm not sure of the point in creating yet another means of doing so. I find the STEEP (Sociological, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political) categories work well for in this field, and creating proprietary methods would only confuse matters. Were you to expand this further, Yahoo's categories work well (and have the benefit of testing and familiarity):
Personally however, I prefer a modification of the categories I developed for my site (www.haddock.org):
Categories, Internet
Sources scanned regularly, General BBC News Online. Recently re-designed to make it much less attractive, but a good up-to-the-minute coverage of stories, with extra in-depth reporting, audio and video. Generally excellent science and technology section. EurekaAlert!. Press releases from universities and research institutions. A good source of up-to-date progress and ideas. Flash Art. Monthly fine art magazine. Graphis. Design magazine, from architecture to photography. MIT Technology Review. "MIT's Magazine of Innovation" concentrates on new inventions and the development of ideas. Good for seeing technologies make their way slowly into the mainstream. Moreover. A customisable aggregator of news headlines, scanning 1,500 titles in over 170 selectable categories. Set up your own page of headlines, just how you want it. New Statesman. Left-of-centre weekly British political magazine, although perhaps not as left-of-centre as it might be. New Scientist. UK science magazine. News Unlimited. The UK Guardian and Observer website. Takes too many clicks to get to some stories, and you have to filter out the large amount of worthless lifestyle articles, as with any newspaper, but it has news stories, like any paper. Salon. San Francisco-based vaguely alternative magazine. Not as up to the minute as it once was, but still some good writers and in-depth articles. But if there's a good article you'll probably see it linked to from elsewhere. Weblogs. A whole slew of weblogs (of which Scripting News and Slashdot could also be examples), sites generally updated at least once a day with interesting links. Some which I scan regularly: Sources scanned regularly, Internet All Net Devices. A daily selection of news stories related to anything which can pick up IP tone. From WAP phones to Internet refrigerators. Moreover. A customisable aggregator of news headlines, scanning 1,500 titles in over 170 selectable categories. Set up your own page of headlines, just how you want it. Need to Know. "*The* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the UK." Invaluable weekly newsletter and website oriented towards British geeks. News stories, URLs, events, memes, reviews. And it's funny, too. Risks Digest. Full of reports on the downside of technology, it's a "forum on the risks to the public in computers and related systems." News on bugs, failures, hacks, virii and other such delights. Scripting News. Filter out some of Dave Winer's nonsense and the reports on his companyıs new products and you have a useful, up-to-the-minute log of Net happenings. If something worthwhile happens, it'll turn up here. Slashdot. "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." A hugely popular site oriented towards open source software, cryptography, and anything else technology-related. A dozen or so items appear every day, submitted by its faithful readership. Every item has a discussion board attached, and thankfully customisation means you can filter out everything but the comments rated as worthwhile by readers. Tasty Bits from the Technology Front. An irregular email from Keith Dawson, full of Net-oriented news and insightful analysis. He recently gave in to the pressures of timeliness and started a weblog. Weblogs. See above for links. Wired. The magazine that saw the "digital revolution" coming has lost its edge now that everyone has caught up with it, but still comes up with interesting, in depth articles and names to watch (even if theyıre increasingly involved in setting up revolutionary online brokerages). Wired News. Now a different company than its hard-copy relative, this is a regularly updated news site oriented towards all things technology. [ Research | Scanning ] |
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| Index of papers | Phil Gyford: web | email |
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