Scirch.com

Scirch.com is my default search engine for scientific papers. It is powered by Google Custom Search, and gives priority to predefined publishers and other academic sites (e.g. jstor.org, arxiv.org, ams.org, springerlink.com, nature.com, sciencedirect.com, siam.org, acm.org, *.ac.uk/*, *.edu/*, etc.) and to pages with relevant keywords (e.g. science, scientific, paper, article, abstract, author, math, physics, journal, preprint, publisher).

Don't get me wrong - I love Google Scholar as much as the next guy, but when I want to find a specific article (the publisher's page) and I haven't got a DOI, but only author, title, and/or journal/volume/year, Scirch usually spits out what I look for as the first result. Google Scholar, on the other hand, provides more than I need - I don't really care about alternate versions. Also, it's got lots of duplicate entries, and you often get a result that refers to the correct paper, but with no link to the full text in sight.

The very short time that took me to set up this search engine (probably no more than 30 minutes) paid off big time: it must have saved me hours and hours of searching so far!

You can contribute to improve Scirch!

ezproxy Google Toolbar Button

Ever felt the frustration about not having the hassle-free access to all papers from home as you do from your University office? If you have Google Toolbar installed in your browser, with this button all those papers are just one click away from your home! What the button does is append .ezproxy1.library.arizona.edu (or other ezproxy server of your choice) to the domain in the URL, preserving all of the remaining URI. When you use it for the first time in a session, you will be prompted for your University credentials (at the UofA you need your CatCard number); once logged in, clicking the "ez" button will have essentially the same effect as accessing the current page from your office.

TealPages.com

Teal Pages is a global business directory that currently covers some European and Middle-Eastern countries. There are many yellow pages websites, yes, but:

  • That is true for some countries more than for others.
  • Yellow pages is an old concept that is looking for a new identity in the digital age. Some sites are pushing the envelope far, but in directions that I'm not crazy about, while other, major sites, like YP.com seem to be stuck in the last century.
  • Yellow pages are typically huge sites, often with hundreds of thousands, even millions of entries. Most of these sites suffer from performance issues. Teal Pages was built from the ground up with performance in mind. A 3KB web page is hard to beat, and, on top of that, the site is hosted on the Amazon cloud, so it is extremely fast.
  • Yellow pages are supposed to be simple, streamlined. You look for contact info, you get it right in front of you. That's what Teal Pages does.
  • Other yellow pages sites are developed with computer screens in mind. Teal pages works just as well on mobile devices. In fact, it is even more useful on a mobile device, as phone numbers are clickable: just click'n'call.

This is not supposed to be a revolution, but an evolution. Yellow pages, more vivid = Teal Pages.

LaTeX-wiki.org

I was surprised to find out that there was no open-license LaTeX wiki in English, so I made one. Contributors are most welcome!

GREdic.com

A few years ago, as I was preparing for my GRE test, I parsed several GRE word lists I could find online (including Barron's and Princeton Review's) into one large database of 10,000+ word definitions to study from. Later, I turned it into a web site that has since become increasingly popular: right now it gets about 5,000 page views daily. Every once in a while I get emails from grateful visitors saying how this site helped them in their preparation for the test.