December 2005 Pre Dinner Presentation
Knowledge is Power: 40 Tips in 40 Minutes Presented by Richard Gillen, Mary Maida and Maria Pagnotta, all from Medtronic
Richard began the presentation by stating that while knowledge is power, it is found in ever-increasing and new ways and forms. The internet has volumes of information but not all of it is trustworthy or easily found. He and the team set up a magnificent presentation showing forty websites that could dig deeper or in a more organized way than a simple search engine could.
Three computers were set up, each with its own screen. The first used a Power Point presentation which showed the site under consideration at the moment. A second and third computer was actually at the site, live, where the team demonstrated some of the capabilities of the site. The second and third computer alternated demonstrations so there was no lag in the presentations.
The forty sites were broken up into three groups; desktop productivity, emerging technologies/communication applications and search & find. All but a few of the sites presented are free to use. The team admitted to a bias toward Google products but alternatives were included.
Some of the desktop productivity sites were 10 by 10, Answers.com and Babelfish. The sites in this group allow you to receive alerts for changes at the site or breaking news in the world. Some translated text or performed better web searches for your need than general search engines. Some help you improve the productivity within your own computer.
The emerging technologies/communication applications group included Blinkx TV, Google Mobile, and Technorati. These sites allow you to improve the performance of your PDA or use and receive podcasts or RSS (rich site syndication) enabled sites.
The search & find group included site such as Clusty, find articles and Grokker. This group demonstrated improved searches by focusing the search. There are sites for patent related information, full text sites of articles, or images.
There was an avalanche of information presented in a short time. Each site presented was live and available but several of them are in their infancy and their volume of information is just beginning to grow.
Thanks are also due to Darrell Untereker for assisting the team on their Power Point computer.