Week 17 - Depending on how you count -

Perhaps Post 17 is a better way of putting it?

We're going to try and finish the 21 things in the near future, with some Facebook material and a few more interesting things. There will probably be a recap before we're done, too!

This time around, there are a pair of interesting things, though nothing earth shattering or ground breaking. Item one is a current events posting, dealing with Flu Pandemics past and present. It's an interesting way of looking at the situation, and may well come in handy for those working at the ISD, because I suspect that people may well be looking for statistics on the subejct before the term is over. The image itself is located at: http://www.interbent.com/images/flu-pandemics.png though with this sort of resource, it's often hard to tell how long it might be available, or if it will be updated in the near term, as well, so you may wish to take a quick look at it.

The second element for this posting is a bit more fun, and I know that we have some animal lovers around. There is a site that tracks Library Pets worldwide - http://www.ironfrog.com/catsmap.html primarily cats... I wonder, since they list at least one ghost cat, and some stuffed tigers and cheetahs, are our dragon heads close enough to cats, or to pets to try and get them listed in this? Probably not, I suppose, though it does seem like an amusing idea.

jjs

Searching in a new way?

All,
Before much longer, we may have the opportunity to search for information, and particularly data, in a whole new way - Wolfram Alpha will debut sometime in May, and sounds interesting. Here is a quick overview, taken from: http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth

Let me give three random examples. If you enter the query, “3/26/2009 + 90 days” you’ll get a page that gives a date ninety days later than the first date. If you enter “mt. everest height length of golden gate” you’ll get a page expressing the height of Mount Everest as a multiple of the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. If you enter “temperature in los gatos,” you’ll get something like the current temperature, a graph of the temperatures over the last week with projections for the next few days, and a graph of the temperatures over the last year.

While I'm not sure how often we might need to know how many Golden Gates equal Mt. Everest, I can think of some imaginative things to search this way, and if it's as good as doing this type of thing as I hope... It is the kind of tool that could turn out to be really useful over time.

For those of you that hacven't come across Wolfram in the past, his bio is commonly available - http://www.stephenwolfram.com/about-sw/ - and contains such things as: Born in London in 1959, Wolfram was educated at Eton, Oxford, and Caltech. He published his first scientific paper at the age of 15, and had received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech by the age of 20.

Once the site goes live, we'll take it for a test driev, and see what uses we might be able to make of it -

In the meantime, here is an interesting site to play around with:
http://www.papervision3d.org/demos/panorama/

More soon,
jjs

Blog Following, Redux - Week 15

Very early on, in Week 3, as a matter of fact we took a look at blog aggregators, Bloglines and Google Reader - That seems to have been quite a long time ago and it occurred to me, as I was getting ready for this week's posting, that it might be a good idea to return to the idea again - we're now fairly regularly communicating things via Belinda's ISD blog and using an aggregator regularly can make that a whole lot easier.

Assuming that you've created an account with one of them, and most likely Google, log in and see what blogs you read with the most frequency - there are many that will be interesting, either personally or professionally. Since starting this process, my own blog reading habits have changed pretty radically. I dropped Bloglines for Google Reader, I tend to scan more blogs, but only once a day, as opposed to checking in a few times and reading parts of the updated postings each time.

For this week, let's try going back to updating our own blogs, since some of them have been languishing a little bit. Take a look at the blogs you've read in the past, or are reading now, and create a simple post on your own blog that tells us of a newer blog that you've been following, or that you'd like to follow, if it's been a while since you added one, and give us an idea of why you chose that one?

Second, how about giving us a hand and suggesting something interesting for the Oesterle Library blog to cover? We've had a series of really good posts in that forum lately, so if there is something you'd like to suggest, post it to your blog, and we'll see what we can do!

Also, note the new survey in the upper right hand corner!

Next Week - a few new, fun tools to try -

jjs

A Google Earth Update -

"Once obscured by pixilation, Google Earth's aerial image of the vice presidential residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington is now nearly as clear as its view of the White House."
read all about it at the L. A. Times

jjs

Google Earth!

Hi all:
Last week we took a look at MapQuest and Google Maps, two tools that have interesting daily uses. This week, we'll take a look at something that is perhaps less useful and more entertaining, Google Earth. Earth is a tool that has to be downloaded from Google and then installed, as opposed to running within a browser window, but it is all the more powerful for that. You can get a copy of the program itself at: http://earth.google.com/ and then download and install it. [If you have any questions about this process or want some help, send me an IM and I'll drop by to take this step for you].
Google Earth is particularly interesting because it allows you to look at nearly anywhere on the planet, and to 'fly' from location to location. Once you have it installed, and start the program, there is a "Fly To:" search box that shows up in the left hand pane, and you can input your initial destination there. Naperville, for example, or virtually anyplace you can think of. It's worth noting that sometimes you have to try a couple of different spelling options to find the right place, but most work pretty simply.
There are, of course, some locations that have less detail than others. A close up of the middle of the Pacific Ocean offers little detail, and there are relatively well known instances of geographical locations that have little to no detail - The US Naval Observatory, for one, and that place known as Area 51 for another, as well as some locations in China. {http://www.ogleearth.com/2008/09/google_and_cens.html}
A bit further down in that left hand pane, there is a section called "Places" and this area has a built in sightseeing tour - if you click on 'sightseeing' and then press the "Play" button [looks like a triangle facing to the right] just below that pane, it'll 'fly' you through the whole tour, starting in the grand canyon.
There are a whole series of websites, like: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0 that are dedicated to explaining the expanding the use of Google Earth, though most casual users simply find sightseeing fun, and I suppose that there is a library application that would be useful, as well. There are also lots of sites that give the coordinates of... interesting things.
Copy and paste the following lat/long numbers into Earth's Fly to: box and then hit enter...

30 30'38.82"S 115 22'56.14"E

37°41'27.13"N 121° 4'29.99"W

and many other possible locations that you'll have to discover for yourselves!

Once last idea - type in point lobos state reserve and hit enter, and it'll take you to the Northern Calif. coastline. Once you're there, you can use the wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out a little bit. Set up a nice view and the hold your left mouse button down on the map itself and gently 'flick' it down, letting go of the mouse in the same motion. What will happen [and it might take a few tries to get it right] is that the map will scroll to the south, past Big Sur, following the path of Highway 1 [though you may well have to readjust the path of the map scrolling by grabbing it with the mouse and moving it one direction or the other. Once you get a feel for it, you can choose a path and watch the earth rotate as you go...

What else have you found? What part of Earth seem most interesting, and do you see a library application for this, or is it just fun?
Write a Blog post about it, and let us all know!

jjs