ResearchBuzz

I get the impression that this site is meant to be used with Last.fm, but actually it’s a pretty good tool all by itself. Sleevenotez is in alpha at http://www.sleevenotez.com .

Sleevenotez allows you to search for musical acts and get information from several different sources on one page, including from Wikipedia, Flickr, and YouTube. And though sometimes it’s hysterically wrong, it also found me things that I hadn’t found before.

The front page will encourage you to log in, use Last.FM, etc. Ignore that. Use the artist search in the upper-right corner. I started with a search for Eurythmics. I got two matches — both Eurythmics and Eurythmics/Aretha Franklin. Choosing Eurythmics, I got a page of Eurythmics information. Starting with artist information from Wikipedia, the page also contained list of albums from the band, photos from Flickr, a discography, and videos from YouTube.

The Wikipedia article of course was right-on, and the list of videos was interesting (though by no means complete.) On the other hand the Flickr photos contained a variety of images, including a picture of a slug and a skyscape. There were also shots of Eurythmics album covers and a live appearance of the Today show, but it looks like Sleevenotez is just searching for Eurythmics as a keyword.

Professor Longhair as a search term worked both better and worse. Searching for that term found both the artist name and his real name (Henry Byrd). A listing for Professor Longhair also found the Wikipedia article, Flickr photos, YouTube, etc. Interestingly the Flickr photos were more relevant (including paintings and a shot of the sign at Tipitina’s) but the YouTube videos were all over the place. Some of them were Longhair performances, some of them were other artists performing Longhair songs, and one of them was a guy playing a Longhair song and singing the theme from the Dukes of Hazzard (this worked disturbingly well.)

Sleevenotez works best when the artist name is distinct. When it isn’t the system breaks down. Searching for The Peels found the correct discography and some interesting Flickr photos (unfortunately the Peels don’t seem to have a Wikipedia entry), but the videos were all wrong. Searching for techno artist Olive was hysterically funny — the discography and a couple of the YouTube videos were right, but the Wikipedia article was for olive-the-food, and the pictures of course were similarly-oriented. If the name of the artist you’re seeking is common, you might want to use a musician name instead.

I found this a great information aggregator; it introduced me to a lot of videos and photos I might have missed otherwise. Worth a look.

It’s billed as a “user-created reference resource” but I think that the range of articles available makes that too narrow a description. And while the content generated is described as “articles,” a lot of them seem to be too short for a thorough overview of a topic. But I like Helium anyway, at least as a beginning point.

Helium ( http://www.helium.com ) is a user-generated collection of articles (in some cases very short articles) covering a variety of topics from arts to travel. Articles are arranged in a searchable subject index, and are daisy-chained together through recommended and related articles.

The front page starts you out with topics related to news (”Why did the Dow collapse?”) and posts article teasers that direct you to a variety of other articles covering everything from health to car buying. I looked at an article on tax breaks for buying hybrid cars, which seemed to be comparing getting a tax break on a car to going on welfare. There were two more articles listed with this one that didn’t go much further with the discussion. I was looking for a state-by-state breakdown on incentives for buying a hybrid, thoughts on which hybrid to get, pointers to information on pending legislation — in other words I was hoping for way too much.

Other articles were better. You can browse articles by category or search by keywords. After wandering around a bit I ended up at a few articles on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk — both overview and user experience with. Those were interesting. I did a keyword search for weeds (it’s almost spring!) and came up with several sets of articles. Unfortunately one of the most interesting ones was the hardest to read — it hadn’t been formatted with lines between paragraphs. Perhaps contributors should have some kind of template or style guide? (Perhaps they do and they don’t use it.) Members of the site are able to rank articles by usefulness — I found that the #1 article for a topic was not always my favorite, but generally at least the top three articles in any field of ten were useful.

Of course with user-contributed content Helium is looking for people to provide articles to the site (users can earn both fame and cash, though I suspect writing for Helium is not going to give you enough money to retire to Maui.) Users are encouraged to write to already-existing subject headings within categories, which explains why there are so many articles grouped under topics and why some of them are only marginally relevant (Helium says, “pick the title closest to your idea.”)

Most articles I looked at were not very deep, and one thing I’d like to see is link lists for all articles — where to go for more information. But if you’re looking for a topic overview, one that will perhaps educate you enough to give you more questions to ask a deeper source, this is a good place to start.

This post came from ResearchBuzz, a site with news and information about online data collections. Visit us at ResearchBuzz.com .

I’m sure I’ll find this much more interesting during baseball season. If you’re looking for a place to find event tickets, check out Ticketwood ( http://www.Ticketwood.com ) which first finds events for you and then finds tickets for those events.

Not every last event out there, however. Ticketwood finds tickets for major sports (NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, etc.) Theatre and concert tickets are also covered. You can do a keyword search to find events. I searched for finals and found dozens of results, from tennis to NCAA basketball to, I am not kidding, cricket. (They seem to be listed in order of date, nearest events listed first.) Search listings contain event name, location, and date. The event name looks like a hyperlink but it’s not — click on the View Tix button to get listings of available tickets.

I looked at the Minnesota State High School Class AA Hockey Tournament Quarterfinals. Viewing tickets here found eight tickets available, listed in order of price, with information on the vendors and the location of the seat. (Some of the seat location information is more useful than others.) Vendors available here included StubHub, GreatSeats, and TicketsNow. Again, the vendor looks like it’d be clickable, but it’s not — click on the Visit button to take you to the vendor’s site and actually buy the tickets. A nav on the left will point you to related events, areas, and venues.

It’s a little hard to find but you can browse for events by venue as well as get information on the various ticket brokers on this site. The front page has pointers to cities where you can look for events, but not many are listed. The page for reviewing city-specific events looks like this: http://www.ticketwood.com/cities/New-York-Events.php. If you want to see if your city has listings, substitute your city’s name for New-York. Phoenix, for example, looks like this: http://www.ticketwood.com/cities/Phoenix-Events.php.

Of course this site isn’t going to cover every event in your city, but it’s a great place to get started, especially when you’re looking for sports happenings.