Guu kan - a blog of randomness

There are a few free applications that can be of use if you are researching and need to keep track of online resources and make citations. A few are available as Firefox plugins: CiteGenie Zotero (open source) wpcite - specifically for WikiPedia citations Standalone products: BiblioExpress JabRef reference manager (Java dependent)

Knowmore.org - what you are paying for when you buy a product/service from a company (the major/well known/high street ones). Includes information on the various companies' business ethics, human rights, worker rights, environmental impact and political influence.

Earlier today at work, someone bought up the topic of chatbots (chatterbots) on our discussion board, so I decided to check them out. Chatterbots are software programs that emulate conversation. They use artificial intelligence to form a response to input (be it text or speech). What you can do is make them converse with each other (which involves copying between the bots, which can take some time). Two such bots I have experimented with are Jeeney and jabberwacky . The conversation (unedited by me) went as follows (started off fine, but then went quite random): jaberwacky: Are you an American? Jeeney: No, I was born in Canada. JW: Do you remember what I just said? J: Not really, I hope I didn't forget anything really important. JW: Do you know? J: I don't think so, perhaps I was never introduced properly. JW: Some people are nice. Some people are mean. Most are inbetween. J: Hmm, I suppose you're right. JW: Right. J: Uhuh... JW: You're not so smart. have yo...

There are many dictionaries available for free online. Some are purely for looking up words and finding the meanings of them and any synonyms or antonyms. The Free Dictionary Answers.com Dictionary.com Thesaurus.com Chambers Merriam-Webster Cambridge Dictionaries Online My preferred source is The Free Dictionary and Answers.com. The following are still English, but slightly different (contains slang): Dictionary.co.uk UrbanDictionary.com Others can be used to translate words between languages: EUdict :: European dictionary (despite its name, it includes non European languages like Japanese) freedict.com (includes European as well as others like Latin, African, Indonesian and Swahili) Applied Language Solutions free translation service BabelFish Majstro Translation Dictionary FreeTranslation.com Google Translate Japanese <=> English dictionary (romaji/kana/kanji) You also get specialised ones: FOLDOC - Computing Dictionary Medical Dictionary Legal Dictionary Financial Dicti...

'Guu kan' 偶感 (or 'Guukan') is a Japanese word meaning 'Random Thoughts'. Just a place to post any kind of topic (except web development related, which is what my Web Developer Blog is for). I also thought of 'Futokutei' 不特定 (unspecified / random / indefinite), but spelling it is harder (I have to keep double checking the spelling). 'Randamu' ランダム was also an option, but it is close to the English word (which could also be misspelled). Disclaimer: I don't know Japanese, just what I've learned from online translation tools and Anime's!