Tag Archives: Friday links

Friday Links – Nov. 15, 2013

For those of you with kids, this article “Teach Kids how to Code, Make Apps and 3-D Models With These Tools” lists some interesting possibilities. From School Library Journal and The Digital Shift.

Announcement: “Digital Public Library of America Launches DPLA Bookshelf”

“DPLA Bookshelf lets the user scroll a visual representation of a bookshelf… When a user of the DPLA site searches for books, the results are displayed as books on a bookshelf; the shelf is shown as a vertical stack so that the titles and authors are more easily readable on their spines. The width of the book represents the actual height of the physical book, and its thickness represents its page count. The spine is colored with one of ten depths of blue to “heatmap” how relevant the work is to the reader’s search.” Follow the announcement link to learn more.

3D Printing is a hot topic, but have you heard of 3D scanning? Lucky for us – the Smithsonian has, and has been busy scanning several artifacts that you can now view online! Their 3D exploration tool is in Beta so they are looking for feedback and bug reports. Load time is a little slow – but it’s worth it! (Check out the Woolly Mammoth!)

Smithsonian X 3D of a Wooly Mammoth, http://3d.si.edu/explorer?modelid=55

Screen shot of Smithsonian X 3D of a Woolly Mammoth

Curious about how 3D scanning works? Check out the video below.

 

 

Friday links – June 14, 2013

From Cave Paintings to the Internet: Chronological and Thematic Studies on the History of Information and Media
This interesting website from Jeremy Norman “is designed to help you follow the development of information and media, and attitudes about them, from the beginning of records to the present. Containing annotated references to discoveries, developments of a social, scientific, theoretical or technological nature, as well as references to physical books, documents, artifacts, art works, and to websites and other digital media, it arranges, both chronologically and thematically, selected historical examples and recent developments of the methods used to record, distribute, exchange, organize, store, and search information.” (from About the Database).  Images and text (with links to wikipedia) are combined with geographical information to allow mapping of the information.

Friday Links – May 17th

Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online | Video on TED.com

~13 minute video talk by a journalist showing how news organizations verify information posted by users on the web (tweets, photos, videos) using technology such as Google Earth, etc.

How to Read a Book

Did you find an odd box with pieces of paper inside? It might be a book! Some of them still have real pages—and I’ll show you just how to read one.

The Business Value of Google Glass and Wearable Computing – Wearable computing is an emerging technology that’s affecting both the consumer and enterprise space.

Predatory Publishers Strike Back
Predatory publishing is what happens when open access publishing is subverted by manipulation, exploitation, and spammer mentality. Jeffery Beall is a librarian who uses his blog to expose predatory publishers, and they would rather he didn’t. Beall has written a Nature column piece  about predatory publishing, and his blog is Scholarly Open Access.

Friday Links – April 19, 2013

Meet the First Digital Generation. Now Get Ready to Play by Their Rules.  By Jerry Adler, via Wired Magazine.  I found this to be a fascinating description of “the roughly 4 million Americans born in 1993.”  Adler notes that “Each generation imagines itself as rebellious and iconoclastic. But none before has felt as free to call bullshit on conventional wisdom, backed by a trillion pages of information on the web and with the power of the Internet to broadcast their opinions.”  If you do read it, stick it out for the happy ending!