This site, Academia.edu, is kind of nifty, but it'll be even niftier when more people join up. It's a web page that indexes academics, displaying them and their affiliations in a tree diagram. Play with it, if you're one of us, sign up, and if you know a professor, let 'em know about it.
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It seems alright, but the interface is kind of awkward. Still, it could be useful if enough people signed up.
It doesn't even have Deakin Uni.
Putting David Horowitz out of a job. Now anyone can Discover the Networks!
Seems to me that this could get out-of-date very fast.
This made me wonder if anyone's made a graph of mathematicians arranged by their Erdos numbers.
So, I googled it and lo and behold:
http://www.oakland.edu/enp/
-jcr
I don't see the point. Why is this supposed to be an improvement over putting information about yourself on your own department's web site?
Brian - You can add Deakin Uni by clicking on the arrows coming out of the university boxes.
Brodie - As people move around, they will be able to update their affiliations on Academia.edu, and they will be able to display their previous affiliations.
D. Eppstein - the main value is that you can keep track of all the research that is going on in your area on Academia.edu's News Feed (http://www.academia.edu/News) - all the new people, papers, talks, conferences and blog posts in your field.
Even at this early stage there are a lot of news items on the site; there have been 15,890 news feed stories across various research fields since we launched the site two months ago. You can filter these research areas by highly specific research interests (the most specific filters appear when you are logged in). The news feed will get more useful as the number of people on the site grows.
Richard Price,
Founder, Academia.edu
I found the site unbelievably slow. Couldn't sign up. Couldn't add people to my department.
I have fios and and a fast computer. Perhaps overload?
SG
I managed to add myself and my department, but the site is as crisp as post nasal drip.
Given DIL the heads up. Thanks.
What a crappy implementation. I just see all the universities scrolling by, with no apparent way to stop the madness. I did see my own university flash by, but it was gone in the blink of an eye. (Insert rant about the power of simplicity and the fragility of overly complex software here.)
I would have left a comment on the web site itself, but I saw no way of doing so in the twenty or so seconds before I ran away screaming.
Seems like a need idea, and I added myself. I do agree with others about the odd implementation. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to recommend it to colleagues yet.