Library Closing

The Pensacola campus Library (LRC) will be closing from May 7 -- June 25, 2008 in order to move to a temporary location in Bldg 5 (The Student Center). The LRC web site will remain up during this period.

The LRC blog will not be updated again until after the move.

I apologize for this inconvenience but sometimes PROGRESS demands sacrifice.

Besides I will be away on summer vacation, hiking in the mountains, surfing, and reading some good books.

Have a good one!

Mike Whaley

MySpace Karaoke Launches

"MySpace Karaoke is dedicated to providing you with the ultimate online karaoke singing experience. The site is the first Web based sing along application to allow users to sing, record, and playback personalized renditions of their favorite songs.

Using state of the art streaming and recording technology, the site presents the highest audio and recording quality with the most advanced sharing capabilities available today. This, with ease of use, provides customers with a fun, complete and exciting online karaoke experience suitable for all music lovers." -- MySpace Karaote web site.

U Rock Hard

A social networking and music video site for fans of rock music.

The Everywhere Girl

If you’ve ever worried about photos from your past coming back to haunt you, get to know the story of the Everywhere Girl. -- Idee Blog

She even has her own blog.

Open Learning

Then Open University has now made a large selection of their learning materials available online for free.

"OpenLearn offers a full range of Open University subject areas from access to postgraduate level and has seen over 1 million visitors in the first year. By April 2008, 5,400 learning hours of content will be available online." -- OpenLearn website

Cue Prompter

CuePrompter is a free teleprompter/autocue service. Your browser works like a teleprompter -no extra software needed.

Alice

"Alice (www.alice.org/) is a revolutionary programming tool that enables computer novices to create computer animations using a drag-and-drop interface. Now used by 10 percent of U.S. colleges and universities and also in many high schools, Alice makes computer science more accessible to students by eliminating the initial frustrations associated with learning how to program computers. A version of Alice developed by Caitlin Kelleher, Pausch’s final Ph.D. student, enhances Alice’s storytelling capabilities and has been developed for use in middle schools, particularly by girls.

Carnegie Mellon makes Alice available free as a teaching tool." -- Webwire

Quotations Online

"Quotations Book is almost certainly the best quotation site in the world. We have 40,000+ quotes by 7,000+ people with hundreds added each day!"

Sports Illustrated Makes It's Archives Available

With SI Vault Sports Illustrated magazine is making 54 years of sports history available to the public.

Five Habits for Greener Computing

Good Earth Day article from Computerworld with hints on how to make your computing environment greener.

Learn to Type Online

typeonline.co.uk is a British based web site that offers online typing lessons.

"Typeonline was designed and implemented by Dave Bartlett, a web developer based in Hampshire, and began as a small in-house project intended to do no more than keep the rust from the author's keyboard skills.

Discussions with family and friends convinced him that a free online typing tutorial would provide a useful resource to a wider audience, and led to revisions of the initial typing practice routine into the full featured offering of Typeonline." -- typeonline web site

PluggedIn.com

"A Santa Monica, Calif.-based company whose investors include actor Will Smith launched a Web site Wednesday that offers 10,000 high-quality music videos and concerts for free. PluggedIn.com has the backing of three of the four major music companies:

Universal Music Group, EMI Music and Sony BMG.
PluggedIn is the latest social networking Web site that seeks to capitalize on people's desire to discover and listen to music online as well as find others with similar tastes." -- Chicago Tribune

Enjoy broadcast quality videos on your web browser at PluggedIn.com

Edward Lorenz Dead at 90

Edward N. Lorenz, a meteorologist who pioneered the field of "Chaos Theory" died Wednesday, age 90 of cancer.

Dr. Lorenz is best known for the notion of the “butterfly effect,” the idea that a small disturbance like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can induce enormous consequences.

FixYa:

Tech Support, Manuals and Troubleshooting for Consumers

Fixya provides Free tech support and technical help for gadgets, electronic equipment and consumer products. Fixya's technical experts advise on fixing problems and provide instructions on proper usage of products either by chat or message posting. Fixya stores manuals and troubleshooting guides for over half a million products. Fixya's tech support community will provide a quick solution for your "how to" problem.

Indeed: Job Search Engine

"Indeed is a search engine for jobs - with a radically different approach to job search. In one simple search, Indeed gives job seekers free access to millions of employment opportunities from thousands of websites. Indeed.com includes all the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages - and we continue to add new sites every day.

With the familiar look and feel of general search engines, Indeed makes it easy for you to drill down by keyword and location to jobs that fit your requirements precisely. You may save your searches and have jobs delivered to you by email alert, MyYahoo, or other RSS feed readers. If you have a MyYahoo account, for example, your saved Indeed job search may be added at the click of a button." -- Indeed web site

Library of Congress Experience

In April, interactive technologies will make the Library of Congress and its collections more dynamic and accessible than ever. This Library of Congress Experience will offer “hands-on” interaction with rare cultural treasures in ways that inspire and engage.

Artifacts like the Waldseemüller map (the first to include the name “America”), the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible and original volumes from Thomas Jefferson’s Library will be virtually at your fingertips. You’ll be able to flip through their pages, magnify sections of interest and access commentary from the Library’s top experts-all on the same touch screen.

EPA Launches Environmental Indicators Gateway

On April 9, 2008 the EPA launched the Environmental Indicators Gateway Web site to provide enhanced public access to environmental and health information generated by EPA. Information is presented in the context of "environmental indicators," numerical values that provide insights into the status and trends of environmental and public health conditions over time.

The Masters Golf Championships Via MS Earth

Enjoy bird's eye coverage of the Masters Golf Championship in Augusta Georgia via MS Earth.

Click here for official Masters Championship site.

Global Monitoring Report 2008

A new World Bank-IMF report warns that most countries will fall short on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight globally agreed development goals with a due date of 2015.

Though much of the world is set to cut extreme poverty in half by then, prospects are gravest for the goals of reducing child and maternal mortality. Serious shortfalls also likely in primary school completion, nutrition, and sanitation goals.

The report also stresses the link between environment and development and calls for urgent action on climate change. To build on hard-won gains, developing countries need support to address the links between growth, development and environmental sustainability.

Read the Report at: GMR 2008

plol: The Public Library of Law

"Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That's why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law -- to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites -- all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web." -- plol website

Stumbleupon: Discover New Sites

Using search engines to locate relevant content typically means hunting through pages of results. Rather than searching for quality web sites, StumbleUpon members are taken directly to web sites matching their personal interests and preferences.

Channel surf the internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

Yahoo! Creates Site for Women

Yahoo Inc. on Monday launched a site for women between ages 25 and 54, calling it a key demographic underserved by current Yahoo properties.

The site is called Shine.

Artist Carves 3-D Sculptures from Books

Brian Dettmer carves into books revealing the artwork inside, creating complex layered three-dimensional sculptures.

Get Your Book Published

WeBook... "is a ground-breaking online resource for aspiring authors, which lets you take charge of your own destiny. This avant-garde book publishing company applies an interactive approach to the process - in every sense of the word - by using the Internet as a platform to connect truly brilliant writers to print publication. Think of Webook as a virtual studio lounge for writers, where self-professed literati like you can wax poetic about the finer points of writing and online book publishing, collaborate on project work, and provide valuable feedback to one another - all in real time through the power of the Internet. Best of all, if your contribution makes the cut, you won't have to spend a nickel to see your name in real, live print. Instead WEbook funds publication of the best books as printed books, eBooks, and other customized downloads. You and your collaborators share in royalties on book sales." -- Webook.com

Adobe Launches Adobe TV

Get instruction and tips and more on Adobe products such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. Adobe has also introduced the Adobe Media Player, which can be downloaded here.

Colleges are Targets of E-Mail Scam

An e-mail scam has hit thousands of users at dozens of colleges over the past few weeks, leaving network administrators scrambling to respond before campus computer accounts are taken over by spammers.

Students, professors, and staff members at the affected colleges received e-mail messages that purport to come from the colleges' help desks, asking users to reply with their log-in and password, and in some cases other personal information including birth date. -- Chronicle of Higher Education

Pulitzer Prizes for 2008 Announced

The Pulitzer Board has announced the Pulitzer Prizes for 2008. The winner for fiction is "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz.

Songwriter and performer Bob Dylan won a Special Citation "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Be the First Colonist on Mars

For thousands of years,the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision.

Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

TV Converter Box Coupon Program

At midnight on February 17, 2009, all full-power television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting. Digital broadcasting promises to provide a clearer picture and more programming options and will free up airwaves for use by emergency responders.

Congress created the TV Converter Box Coupon Program for households wishing to keep using their analog TV sets after February 17, 2009. The Program allows U.S. households to obtain up to two coupons, each worth $40, that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes.

Check it out at: https://www.dtv2009.gov/