Pensacola Junior College Library Blog: October 2006

Adobe Digital Editions Beta Launched

Adobe has launched it's new light-weight, flash based ebook reader. Download it free at the Adobe Labs Digital Editions page.

Be Careful What You Write Online

One in four managers now ‘Google’ potential employees and 51% of applications were rejected because of what was found.

Is Your Computer Ready for Vista?

Want to see if your Windows XP-based PC can run Windows Vista? Just download, install, and run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor RC.

Check out the recommended system requirements for Vista.

Campus Reader

Campus Reader is a website that aggregates the feeds from 300 online college newspapers around the US.

The 10 Most Censored Countries in the World

The Committee to Protect Journalists list of the 10 most censored countries in the world. Initially published in May 2006 the list uses a rigorous set of criteria to rank the countries. Included in this criteria is "state control of all media, the existence of formal censorship regulations, the use by the state of violence, imprisonment and harassment against journalists, jamming of foreign news broadcasts, and restrictions on private Internet access."

The Internet Black Hole that is North Korea

"At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph." -- Tom Zeller, Jr. (New York Times)

FireFox 2.0 Released

Firefox 2.0 was officially released yesterday at Mozilla.com

Really Cool Clock/Calendar

A really cool real time clock/calendar

YUVA Studio

Yuva is an online drawing environment for children ages 4 - 10.

"YUVA consists of five activities: STAMP, PUNCH, PATCH, DOODLE and DRAW. The activities start out simple: choose a shape and stamp it on the canvas, punch it out of the canvas, or use a single shape to make mosaics. Then advance to doodling to add detail to the drawing. Some allow single-color drawings, others multiple. Some use single shapes, others use many. Each activity has been designed to develop different skills of composition and inventiveness." -- YUVA

Ms Dewey - The Saucy Librarian Search Engine

A new search engine that is innovative, entertaining and easy on the eyes.

Find Halloween Events in Your Neighborhood

Enter your zip code to find Halloween events in your town or neighborhood.

Google For Educators

The site includes a teacher's guide to 12 Google products, including basic information about each tool, examples of how educators are using them, and lesson ideas. You'll also find lesson plans and videos from Google partners at Discovery Education focusing on two of our most popular teaching tools: Google Earth and Google SketchUp.

Images of the Sun (Updated Frequently)

From the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) Project. This site shows images of the sun taken several times a day. Also other information about the project and the spacecraft. Classroom resources are also available.

Click here for the latest image of the sun.

Whitehouse RSS Feeds and Podcasts Available

The White House RSS feed for President George W. Bush delivers headlines and links to White House news releases on www.whitehouse.gov/news, including events, speeches, statements, and press briefings from administration officials. In addition to the RSS feed, audio files of the President's Weekly Radio Address and selected remarks are available via Podcast.

Just One More Book!

A thrice weekly podcast about children's books. Each episode is an informal discussion of a favorite children's book. There are also interviews with authors, literacy related discussions or audio reviews submitted by site listeners. The site advertises itself as "A podcast about the children's books we love and why we love them." A great site aimed at "building a lively, interactive community linking children’s book authors, illustrators, readers (parents and children) and publishers."

Internet Explorer 7 To Release in Two Weeks

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 is scheduled to be released out of beta "sometime in the next two weeks" according to Microsoft Corporate VP of Windows Client Marketing. It will be released as a free download. For more information about IE7 and to download the beta click here.

Windows Media Player 11 is scheduled to be released on October 24, 2006. For more information about WMP11 or to download the beta click here.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets Launches

If you've ever struggled to keep track of different versions of spreadsheet or word processor files sent over email, Google Docs & Spreadsheets may be right for you. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that keeps documents current and lets the people you choose update files from their own computers. You can, for example, coordinate your student group's homework assignments, access your family to-do list from work or home, or collaborate with remote colleagues on a new business plan.

Add Emergency Contact Info to Your Florida Drivers License

This service will allow you to provide emergency contact information to law enforcement in the event of an emergency. This information may save crucial time if ever it becomes necessary to contact family members, or other loved ones. This service is only available to individuals holding a current Florida Driver License or Florida Identification Card.

Real learning in a virtual world

They may be college teachers and students, but they're also pioneers - exploring strange new worlds that exist nowhere on Earth. That's because their classes and field trips take place only on computers, using an online digital world called Second Life (http://secondlife.com/).

Web sites offer U.S. students new way to cheat

The Internet has given students access to reams of information, made it cheaper to keep in touch with faraway friends and family and even allowed students to attend universities remotely. But it has also given a new lease on life to an old plague of academia -- the term-paper mill.

Some term paper sites mentioned in this article include:

Custom Research Papers

The Paper Experts

Term Paper Relief

Smalltown: A Local Bulletin Board On The Web

"Smalltown is a user-generated content website that is building a new "local web" platform to connect businesses and neighbors with their surrounding community. Designed to create a neighborhood exchange, Smalltown is a place where communities can interact, share and discover all things local. Unlike most websites and search engines that try to serve local needs from afar, Smalltown's vision for the Local Web is a truly local solution, where neighbors can share information and benefit from community interaction; where pay-for-placement advertising is replaced with valuable merchant-generated content; and where all types of local content are integrated into one easy-to-use web application."

Yahoo! Launches First Internet Time Capsule

Lifehacker reports that the Yahoo! Time Capsule, the first and largest internet collection of historical digital data, launched today.

Free Online Text Books and Lecture Notes

This site lists free online computer science and engineering books and lecture notes, all of which are freely and legally available over the Internet. All the books listed in this site are available for free, as they are hosted on websites that belong to the authors or the publishers. Note that each author and publisher has their own terms and conditions in the forms of free documentation licenses or other specific ones.

Of course, you are most welcome to view, download and print the books for your own private use at no charge.

Free Online Linux Courses

"If you're new to Linux and want to find out how to use the fastest growing operating system today, all you have to do is take our beginner's course and you'll be ready to go! If you're already an experienced Linux user and want to get more power out of your system, we also offer an intermediate level course. This higher level course is geared toward those who want to learn more about Linux system administration." -- linux.org

Free online language courses from the BBC. Includes MP3 downloads, language games, help for tutors and the news in 33 languages. Languages include English, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Greek, and more.

The Free Dictionary

English, Medical, Legal, Financial, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms,Encyclopedia, a Literature Reference Library, and a Search Engine all in one!

Encyclopedia of Earth

The Encyclopedia of Earth is "a new electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other's work. The articles are written in non-technical language and will be useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public."

Sample articles include:

Biodiversity
Causes of Climate Change
Transpiration and Evaporation

Kids.gov is "Uncle Sam’s family-friendly site that links to over 500 websites from government agencies, schools, and educational organizations, all geared to the learning level and interest of kids."

Free Books for your PDA, iPod or e-Book Reader.

Manybooks.net currently has 14, 950 ebooks to download for free. These are available in a variety of formats.

Google Launches Code Search

Google now lets you do searches -- including regular expression searches -- across public source code.

Amie Street Debuts Today!

"DRM-free music marketplace Amie Street is announcing its beta launch this morning. All songs on Amie Street start FREE and can rise to 98 cents. The price of a song depends on how many times it’s been bought on Amie Street. If you buy a song for free, you probably got yourself a deal for getting to the song first. If you buy a song at 98 cents, you know that a lot of people on Amie Street think it’s a great song."

"If you’re into discovering awesome new songs and recommending them to your friends, you’ll be getting free credit on Amie Street. For each dollar you spend on Amie Street, you get one REC. After you buy a song, you can use one of your RECs to write a review and a “sounds like” for the song that will get sent to your friends. Any time a song you RECd goes up in price, you get free credit."

Google Launches Literacy Project

Ars Technica reports that Google has released it's new Literacy Project. "While the site offers little that is new, it's a nice illustration of the way that Google can easily tie its disparate resources together to let people dig more deeply into a topic."

Go to UC Berkeley for free, on Google Video

"In a new deal with Google Video, the University of California-Berkeley is sharing with the public, via the Internet, dozens of videotaped seminars, speeches, special events and even entire courses taught by some of the campus' leading professors." -- Lisa M. Krieger (Mercury News)

Google Reader Available in Beta

Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won't miss a thing. Google Reader shows you all your favorite sites in one convenient place. It's like your inbox, for the web.

Study Says No Video Games On School Nights

Ars Technica reports that "a new study appearing in the October 2006 issue of Pediatrics suggests that any amount of video gaming and TV is too much, if it happens on a school night."