Morning Toolbox – November 8, 2012 – Post election catch-up

Morning Toolbox is a (nearly) daily digest of interesting tools and techniques that skeptics can use online.

Have to do some catch up today due to several missed toolboxes. (Things have been busy at my day job).

Simon Perry has updated the Fishbarrel plugin for Chrome.  This is a great skeptic tool for reporting online quackery. This fixes some bugs and adds support for some new forms, and it is now easily downloadable from the Chrome store. You should uninstall your existing copy first.

Read on for more tools and ideas for skeptics working online…

Popular Science profiles a climate change denier who long dominated the editing of the Wikipedia page for Hurricane Sandy. This is one of many great examples of why we need as many skeptic eyes as possible looking at Wikipedia. If you’d like to help, contact Susan Gerbic at her blog.

In other Sandy related coverage, The Atlantic recounted their experience debunking fake photos of the big storm.

Skeptic Magazine now makes itself available electronically, and it is far cheaper to subscribe this way. You can also buy back issues. There are apps for iOS and Android, Kindle Fire, Blackberry Playbook and PC/Mac desktops as well.

A Willamette professor investigated how Google keeps in you in bubble by discovering more about you. This phenomenon was the root cause of a very mistaken article by a chiropractor which I documented last year.

If you’re still worried about privacy on Facebook there’s yet another tool called MyPermissions you might want to try.  (I mentioned a similar tool PrivacyFix on Virtual Skeptics #9 last month).

The astronomy and space project site UwingU, which we mentioned on Virtual Skeptics in September, is now in beta test, so check it out.

Don’t forget you can vote in the Podcast Awards.  Vote for your skeptic favorites once per day – awards are very helpful for shows to promote themselves.

Follow me on Twitter at @krelnik.  You can submit stories there or via submit at whatstheharm.net.