Google Updates Transparency Report

From Google Official Blog:

We’re updating the Transparency Report with data about government requests from January to June 2012.

This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise. As you can see from the graph below, government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.

Free gov pubs online

The press release read: "Through a partnership among GSA, the U.S. Government Printing Office, and Google, 100 of the most popular government publications are now available to download for free online. This partnership will allow for greater access to these documents and contribute to an open and transparent government. As more documents become available online, it will eventually reduce the number of documents that GSA’s Federal Citizen Information Center prints while reducing costs and the environmental impact."

Sounds great! So I decided to check it out at pueblo.gpo.gov/FreePubs.php. I should note that one can order almost any of the physical items and receive them in one to three weeks, rather than writing to Pueblo, Colorado, like I used to.

First couple categories, Cars and Consumer Action Handbook, each had only one item, but one could click on the link and make a PDF.

But several areas had no such link. Under Small Business was Diversifying Your Workforce, with no link. What to do? Check out the FAQ!

"During this pilot program, we are limiting copies to one per person. However, you can download and print copies of government publications from Google Books (http://books.google.com) or order print copies of publications from the Federal Citizen Information Center (http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov) and the Government Printing Office Bookstore (http://bookstore.gpo.gov).

I tried Google Books first. The export citation choices were BiBTeX (.bibtex), EndNote (.enw), and RefMan (.ris); my computer recognized none of the extensions. At the FCIC/Pueblo site, not only did I find a PDF of the resource, but links to related items. I couldn't find the item at all at the GPO bookstore.

Next I looked for, under Money, the item Identity Theft and Your Social Security Number. Both Google books and FCIC/Pueblo led me to the Social Security page with a PDF link. Again, no luck at the GPO bookstore.

Your experiences may vary.

Google Down, World Stands Still?

Google Outage Shows Site's Ubiquity, Our Overdependence. From Hispanic Business.

Google Starts Begins Making Public Data Easier to Access, Visual

Google is adding search power to public data. The new public records search and visualization service (it's in the very early stages of development) went live Tuesday afternoon. Check it out.

Article in the Washington Post
Google's official blog

Can the Web Make You More Productive?

Every weekday, I get an e-mail from About.com containing links to some thematic area. Might be about film, or health, or holidays. I've ound it at least interesting and occasionally useful. An e-mail from last week posed the question of the title above.

The first link was to Top Ten Productivity Web Sites. A number of them are organizational tools. I have a Gmail account, useful for a number of functions, including this blog. My favorite tool in this grouping is TinyURL., where you go to tinyurl.com/create.php and plug in a URL that goes to the second line of an e-mail you're sending and make the URL much shorter.

The second link was to Tips for Searching Effectively with Google. Look near the bottom to see how to find synonyms and searching within a range of numbers, things I've done in the past but had forgotten.

The final link is to How to Do Everything in Mozilla Firefox. I use Firefox at homwe, though not at work, and I like it better than Explorer; your experience may vary.