What You’re Doing Is Rather Desperate

Here’s something we’ve discussed at Nodalpoint many times. Via Pierre:

Thomson Scientific, part of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and leading provider of information solutions to the worldwide research and business communities, today announced the launch of ResearcherID.com. This unique Web environment enables researchers to create stable personal identifiers to present their works and manage public presentation of their personal metrics.

Full press release

Yes, it is that Thomson Scientific, the lovely people who bring you ISI and impact factors. Here is ResearcherID.com. It’s currently “invite only, register your interest”, no clear indication of how it will be implemented or whether open standards will be involved and frankly, all looks rather corporate to me. One to keep an eye on.

ThinkFree is an online office productivity application in the same style as Google Docs and Zoho. I read a favourable review and was all set to try it out…

…when I discovered that for those of us in Australia or New Zealand, ThinkFree is distributed exclusively via BigPond – the internet service provided by Telstra, our largest telco. Which means: not a BigPond customer, no access to ThinkFree.

• ThinkFree? Think again: it’s now a BigPond exclusive
• ThinkFree Not So Free for Aussies and Kiwis

We have a saying in Australia: all telcos are bastards. Now you know why.