Google Earth has updated its images for North Carolina (and many other places) on October 23, 2007. Bostock library is now visible in Google Earth (but not yet in Google Maps)! Below,  I’ve embedded the Google Map above an image from Google Earth. Do you see what’s missing in the map?    Google Maps images of Duke were updated less than a week after Google Earth; now the images are the same.

There have been updates to other areas - Crater Lake in Oregon is an even better demonstration of the terrrain in 3D.

There are new tutorials for Google Earth to show you how to publish the same material in both Google Earth and Google Maps, including videos in your materials.

Here’s a PowerPoint presentation on including Google Maps in your website. And a tutorial. (But, it’s pretty easy - you can go to Google Maps, click “link to this page” and follow the directions. )

Frank Taylor, on his Google Earth Blog, points to several sources of images and mapping tools for the California fires.

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The Creative Commons add-in for MS Office allows you to embed a CC license of your choosing in your Word document, Excel Spreadsheet or your Powerpoint show. A big advantage of doing this is to explicitly specify how you would like others to use your work. For example, a “Share Alike” license specifies that others may use your work as long as it for non-commercial purposes, you are given credit and anything they make with it has to carry the same license. You can get the add-in or read more about Creative Commons.

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Verizon has announced the Verizon LG Voyager to be released in the Fall of 2007, a product that will directly compete with the Apple iPhone. Verizon’s Wireless Chief Marketing Officer claims, “It will kill the iPhone.”

The Voyager has a touch screen exterior (like the iPhone but smaller), but users will be able to unclamp the phone to reveal a second screen that comes with a full QWERTY keyboard. Other features include:

* HTML browser
* Full V CAST-capabilities
* V CAST Mobile TV
* V CAST Music
* Ability to play .mp3, .wma and unprotected .aac files
* V CAST Video
* High-Speed Wireless Broadband Access
* Removable microSD memory (8GB).

Verizon says the Voyager should be in stores for the holidays.

You can see photos of the Voyager or watch a video demo of the phone. No word yet on the price, but reviewers say they expect it to be in the $300 and up range. One reviewer gushed, “The Voyager is so awesome, your hand will tremble in fear.” (Maybe he works with the Verizon Marketing Officer.)

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“Authentic learning”—or learning-by-doing— engages students in the multidisciplinary problem solving and critical thinking researchers and experts use every day. Advances in technology enable access to a greater range of real and virtual environments. Why Today’s Students Value Authentic Learning, a white paper from the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI), explores student attitudes toward authentic learning, highlighting its benefits as well as potential concerns.

Haptic technologies are one way to make learning more realistic for students. Haptics simulate physical properties such as weight, momentum, friction, texture, or resistance through interfaces that let users “feel” what is happening on the screen. For example, medical students may use haptics for a simulation of giving an injection or performing a surgical technique. ELI’s paper on The 7 Things You Should Know About Haptics provides a simple overview of how haptic technology can enable authentic learning.

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A new software package, eJamming, available for the Mac and Windows, allows musicians to perform together live through the Internet.  The software is free during the public beta period.

The software synchronizes audio from different users in a “group” so that they can play instruments and sing in “real time”.  There’s a slight delay in the audio due to Internet latency, but the site has a tutorials that teach you how to work with the delay and features of the software.  The site also includes a forum where users can look for other musicians to form an online group or to offer or take lessons.

Besides musicians, the software might have applications for actors performing radio scripts or readings or different types of language instruction activities.  The software is getting considerable attention in the press and the founders were named in May as one of the top 24 new innovators on the net by “Fortune” magazine.

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Google Earth has recently published new imagery, allowing higher resolution viewing in some areas in over 130 countries. You can read more about it and follow clues to the new images at the Google Lat-Long Blog.

The Google Earth Blog (not affiliated with Google) highlights interesting uses of Google Earth, including a visualization of Burma, and a description of new, free tools to explore census data in Google Earth. From Frank Taylor’s Google Earth Blog:

“A nice new US census visualization tool for Google Earth has been released by Zonums Software. The new tool is called GE Census Explorer and allows you produce colorful 3D bar charts, pie charts, histograms, and scatter-plots. FreeGeographyTools has a good review and lots of screenshots. This new tool requires you to download an application, but a web interface is promised “soon”. Meanwhile, you could also try gCensus which does something similar for Google Earth using a web interface.”

The Center for Instructional Technology is offering workshops for anyone interested in Google Earth, including a brief lunchtime introduction, a hands-on workshop to create your own materials within Google Earth, demonstrations by the Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness and a Google Earth users group. Come and find out what you can do! Register on the CIT website for these events.

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See the listing of tools. Many of them are FREE. These tools can be used to capture screens, create screencasts or demonstrations (ie narrated recordings of a system’s screen output) and/or simulations which also include functionality to interact with the simulated system.

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As we know Microsoft rival Google has its own Web-based office application known as Google Apps, users are now invited to pre-register for Office Live Workspace, which allows those with Microsoft Office to access their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online. The software giant is dubbing the offering an “online companion” to the Office product. More…

But there is a catch: Users will not to able to edit the documents they are viewing through a browser unless they have Office installed on their computer.

“You need Microsoft Office to edit Office documents, but if you do not have it installed you can view Office documents in a browser [both Internet Explorer and Firefox will be supported] and can comment on them,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told eWEEK Sept. 30.

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DabbleDB is a free online database tool that allows you to easily create a simple relational database and share it with others on the web.  If you wish to share the data publicly, an account is free; a subscription fee is required for sharing and collaborating on private databases in small groups.

The site also includes a seven minute video showing features of the software:
http://www.dabbledb.com/explore/7minutedemo/

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CommentPress is an open source software tool that allows readers to make notations in the margins of a digital text. The developers of CommentPress, at the Institute for the Future of the Book, designed the tool to make reading a more social process and to encourage close textual analysis. Individuals can view other readers’ comments next to individual paragraphs, or sorted by section or by commenter. CommentPress works with WordPress, a popular blogging tool.

You can read an article about the software and its use in the Chronicle of Higher Education or see examples of the software in action at the CommentPress website in the About CommentPress section.

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