The h-index and m-index

Michael Schwartzbach has written a web application to compute the h-index and m-index of an author, using data from Google Scholar. The terms come from Hirsch 2005, which defines h-index as follows:

A scientist has index h if h of his/her N papers have
at least h citations each, and the other (N − h) papers
have no more than h citations each.

The m-index is given by h/n, where n is the number of years the scientist has been publishing papers. Jens Palsberg maintains a list of computer scientists with h-index of at least 40.

Elsevier and the Arms Trade

The BBC writes: "Medical journal The Lancet has launched a scathing attack on its owner, Reed Elsevier, for helping to organise Europe's largest arms fair."

Nick Gil maintains a page on the subject.

Dabble DB

Avi Bryant demoed this at the Dynamic Languages Symposium in Portland in October (attached to OOPSLA). I tried it out on some data I needed to manipulate (computing who has submitted lots of papers to various conferences but sat on few pcs). It worked well and was fun to use.

37 signals

A fun manual explaining how to design an app and run a web company. My favorite chapters so far are 'Make opinionated software' and 'Meetings are toxic'.