You are here
Books, essays and websites that have influenced the development of iMechanica
In this blog entry, I'll maintain a list of books, essays and websites that have influenced me in developing iMechanica. I'll also list my notes on them whenever available. Because iMechanica shares many common problems with other online communities, it is natural that we find solutions discovered by other online communities helpful. At the same time, iMechanica is unique in some respects, and has its own unique problems, so that we cannot adopt any methods or viewpoints without adjustment.
You are most welcome to add more helpful references in the comment section of this post. Thank you.
Books and essays
- C. Anderson, The Long Tail. Hyperion, 2006. (Amazon. See The Long Tail of papers).
- E. Anderson, P. Greenspun, and A. Grumet, Software Engineering for Internet Applications. The MIT press, 2006. (Amazon, free online).
- J. Battelle, The Search. Portfolio, 2006. (Amazon)
- Y. Benkler, The Wealth of Networks. Yale University Press, 2006 (Amazon, free online. See How is iMechanica is managed?).
- chromatic, B. Aker, and D. Kriger, Running Weblogs with Slash. O'Reilly, 2002. (Amazon)
- R. Dawkins,The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976. (Amazon).
- C. DiBona, D. Cooper, and M. Stone, Open Sources 2.0. O'Reilly, 2005 (Amazon)
- R.T. Douglass, M. Little, and J.W. Smith, Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. Apress, 2006. (Amazon, notes by Douglass).
- A. Ebersbach, M. Glaser, R. Heigl, Wiki: Web Collaboration, Springer, 2006 (Amazon).
- C. Figallo and N. Rhine, Building the Knowledge Management Network. Wiley, 2002. (Amazon)
- P. Ginsparg, Creating a global knowledge network, 2001.
- K. Kelly, We are the web, Wired, August 2005. (See Applied Mechanics in the Age of Web 2.0).
- L. Lessig, The Future of Ideas. Vintage, 2001. (Amazon).
- L. Lessig, Free Culture. Penguin, 2004. (Amazon, free online).
- L. Lessig, Code: Version 2.0. Basic Books, 2006. (Amazon, free online).
- Andy McKay, The Definitive Guide to Plone. Apress, 2006 (Amazon, free online).
- T. O'Reilly, What is Web 2.0 (2005). (See Applied Mechanics in the Age of Web 2.0).
- E. S. Raymond, The Cathedral & The Bazaar. O'Reilly, 2001 (Amazon, free online)
- W. Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. (Amazon)
- R.M. Stallman, Free Software, Free Society, GNU Press, 2002 (Amazon, free online).
- J. Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds. Anchor, 2004 (Amazon. See Journal publishers are pioneers of Web 2.0).
- J. Webb, Essential SharePoint. O'Reilly, 2005 (Amazon).
- S. Weber, The Success of Open Source. Harvard University Press, 2004 (Amazon).
- D. Weinberger, Everything Is Miscellaneous, Times Books, 2007. (A cooment on categories in iMechanica)
Websites
- Amazon.com (see Libraries and Amazon)
- arXiv.org
- Creative Commons (iMechanica adopts a copyright license devised by Creative Commons; see the footer of iMechanica)
- del.icio.us
- Connexions (see Connexions: knowledge as commodities)
- Digg.com
- Drupal.org (iMechanica is powered by Drupal, an open-source content management system)
- Facebook.com
- Flickr.com
- Google reader (See How to subscribe to RSS feeds)
- Last.fm
- The Mathematics Genealogy Project (see We are mechanicians)
- New York Times (See Let us seize the greatest opportunity of our time)
- Slashdot.org (see What if all papers become openly accessible?)
- Skype.com (see How to make long-distance phone call for free, including conference calls)
- Wikipedia.org (see Wikipedia and Applied Mechanics)
- Zhigang Suo's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
- 28920 reads
Comments
Scholarship in the Web 2.0 era
Dear Prof. Suo,
Here is a bit of anthropology of collaborative technologies which might interest you; to whet your appetite, here is a quote from the post (which is itself a quote from an interview to which the blogpost links to):
"The radically collaborative technologies emerging on the Web create the possibility for doing scholarship in the mode of conversation rather than argument, or to transform the argument as war metaphor into something that suggests collaboration rather than combat.
Personally, I prefer the metaphor of the dance and that we are all here in this webscape dancing and playing around with ideas. The best dancers are those that find a way to “lose themselves” in the music – pushing the limits of the dance without fear of tripping or falling because they know that it is all part of the dance."
Guru
This delightful video of new web tools
Dear Guru: Thank you so much for this link, which I followed and found this delightful video of web tools made by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of anthropology at Kansas State University. In the last 18 months or so, guided by Michael Suo, I have tried most of these web tools featured in the video.
Before this exploration, my use of web was limited to emails and download journals papers, and an occasional google search. This new world is the world of our children, and I'm delighted to be a small part of it. Thank you again for pointing out this link. It reminds me of the early days of Applied Mechanics News, and of the best time I have spent with Michael, when he taught me, instead of the other way around.
More videos
A good resource for videos of talks on various aspects of science and engineering is Scitalks. We could try a similar idea here.
keeping a check on features
I've been reading more books on topics related to the development of iMechanica, and will add them as comments to this post. Please do so when you read a good one.
Yesterday I checked out from my local library the new book Designing for the Social Web by Joshua Porter. The 188-page book is a delight to hands, eyes and mind. Many full-colored screen shots, and concise analyses. I'll let customers at Amazon give you an overview of the book.
On p. 23 of the book, Porter talked about the AOF method of design:
Toward the end of the chapter he advised keeping a check on features:
Porter related an anectote about Steve Jobs. Jobs was talking to music industry people, and said the following:
I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes *could* have. So do we. But we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about a thousand features. It's about saying No to all but the most crucial features.
growthflex
Thanks for your article. You told about maintain essays, books and websites. It is a good thing. What are all the information you maintain in your site via essays, books and websites.