Footnote is a website that allows users to examine primary resource documents, make annotations on the documents and create blogs or “story pages” about their research. Currently, the site includes documents and photographs from US history; access to some material is by subscription only, while some collections are open access to get an idea of how the site works. The link below takes you to the “free” complete records of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book.

http://www.footnote.com/browse.php#6283401

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If you are like me, sometimes you resort to using paper and pen to show how tech tools work.

RSS in Plain English

RSS in Plain English

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Here are a few links to Google events and resources you may have missed:

Google Earth Gallery
Google decides to highlight some worth GE projects on their own pages.

Google Developer Day - Conference Videos

Google held its ‘Developer Day’ on May 31, 2007 and promptly turned around and dumped 70+ videos of the event on YouTube. Lots of info on new and upcoming Google Maps and Mashup tools, etc.

www.youtube.com/GoogleDeveloperDay

Embedding KML (Google Earth files) into Google Maps:

Here’s a fun trick.

1) Go to Google Maps.

2) Instead of typing an address in, copy/paste the URL/link to the kml file in the “Search the Map” box . Here’s a URL to a KML file to play with: http://www.nature.com/nature/googleearth/avianflu1.kml

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Several new events and resources for and/or about SecondLife have been appearing on the web. Here’s a summary of the more interesting or useful links:

• Oakland University’s “E-Learning and Instructional Support” site has a basic “Introduction to Second Life” up, with links to videos and the basics of SL, not to mention the growing flurry of listservs and groups that endlessly discuss SL with the fervor of a telenovela.
  
  Oakland’s Introduction to Second Life page

• A new wiki went up for the “SL International Education Research Society”.
  
  http://iprc.pbwiki.com/

• The New Media Consortium’s (NMC) Summer Conference is starting today, and will no doubt heavily focus on SL. They’ll be investigating the new ‘voice’ beta testing options in SL, among other things.
  
  http://sl.nmc.org/wiki/NMC_2007_Summer_Conference

• A PR firm called “Text100″ has been making the rounds in the SL-Education community for their decision to create offices and services in SL. They have a YouTube video explaining their decision that is getting some discussion:Text100 on YouTube

• Finally, for those who missed the link, here’s a short opinion piece (coming close to completely slamming library uses of SL) written by Mark Herring (Dean of Library Services - Winthrop U in SC), plus reader comments from Library Journal.com.Library Journal: Get a (Real) Life!

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Google Maps added a feature called ‘Street View’ which provides (nearly) 360 degree street-level photos of entire streets and neighborhoods. Only New York and San Francisco so far, though. There are a ton of blog links about this, here’s one from Wired:

Street Views -Wired News Compiler

For those that would rather have a man in a huge orange costume take them on a guided tour of the new feature, Google has just the think for you, too:

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/

Or just watch it here:

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