BREAKING SURF
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Situated Software |
| April Fools 2004 |
| Touring Chernobyl |
| A History of North American Exploration |
| Geosnapping |
| The Open-Source Travel Guide |
| London Underground Animal Drawings |
| BBC Offers Language Lessons |
| Tour Ancient Greece with Hermes |
| NASA's Sun-Earth Viewer |
| One of the First Information Highways |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
Googlemania: Web Alerts, Personalized Search, and Gmail
Google produced a flurry of news this past week. The new Google Web Alerts is kinda cool. Enter a search term, and Google Web Alerts will send you an e-mail whenever Google detects a a new Web page or update that matches your search. Google Personalized Search is similar. First, you mark some checkboxes to indicate your interests; when you perform a standard search, you can use a slider to personalize the results on the fly. It's easier to do than to explain. The biggest news is Gmail, Google's planned venture into free e-mail. Google will not only provide users with a gigabyte of storage, but also an integrated search function, threading, and - here's the cost - Google text ads. Gmail is not available to the public yet, but it's already a significant development in the online e-mail services market. You can sign up for future info. Gmail: https://gmail.google.com/Google Web Alerts: http://www.google.com/webalerts/
Google Personalized: http://labs.google.com/personalized/
Newsmap is a visual representation of the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. It's basically a large graphic that shows the top headlines from Google News color-coded and size-adjusted to reflect the content and importance of the news story. The idea is based on the concept of treemaps as aids to visualization of concepts and hierarchies. The Newsmap Web site has links to the relevant references. Newsmap has certainly made a splash online. The site was Slashdotted a day after it was released, causing server and bandwidth problems for Newsmap creators Marcos Weskamp and Dan Albritton, who amusingly logged the troubles in the site's news section.
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales
According to researchers at the Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina, the effect of file sharing on sales of CDs is virtually nil. This is not new news, but it is another point in the debate. The music industry has for years argued that file sharing is hurting business and thus must be destroyed. The researchers matched a dataset containing 0.01% of the world's downloads against US sales data for a large number of albums. After taking into account things like school holidays, bandwidth, and song length, the researchers conclude that "downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates." Read it for yourself.http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
Scientists and naturalists have accepted evolution since before Charles Darwin postulated a mechanism for it, but that hasn't stopped its opponents from attacking it, misrepresenting it, and assaulting its place in an educational curriculum. If you feel a little spooked by the relentless tide of creationism and its legions of zealous ignorami, here is succor. The Panda's Thumb explains evolution, debunks the arguments of those opposed to it, and stands up for science education. The strong stable of contributors mercilessly skewers the arguments of anti-evolutionists and exposes the misinformed and often deliberately misleading arsenal of creationists. Unfortunately, there's a lot to skewer - those who prefer intelligent design to explain the origin of species are numerous and busy. As well, supporters of evolution are sometimes inept themselves. The frequent postings at this new blog are often long and involved and usually draw robust rounds of comments and reaction. The site does a nice job of beating back those who assault the theory of evolution and defends the integrity of science education.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/
Why the Web Has Failed to Foster Democracy
If you think of the Web as a tool of democracy and democratic revolution, think again. A different perspective comes to the fore in the New Republic's excellent analysis of online life under dictatorship. While the inhabitants of dictatorships embrace some Western values, such as computers and online music, one cultural element is conspicuous by its absence from computer monitors: news. Just as the economic potential of the Web appears to have been somewhat overrated, so too has its political potential. Tyrannical governments may allow citizens to go online, but they can restrict access to content if they know what they're doing. China has shown that it's possible to, as the article states, "nail Jell-O to the wall."http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=oGG%2BvQEIjJRNjHGlOJiX4X%3D%3D
New Pigeon Data-Transfer Record
Intrepid Israeli researchers have measured the bandwidth of a (laden) pigeon and found it to be faster than ADSL. During the recent experiment near the Sea of Galilee, three pigeons carried 4-GB memory cards over 100 kilometers, achieving a data-transfer rate of about 2.27 Mbps. This far outstrips the previous pigeon data-transfer record of 0.15 bits per second, achieved by Norwegian researchers in 2001, even considering questions of air density and temperature. The Israeli researchers also claim two other records. They claim, plausibly, maximum data-transfer throughput per mass of infrastructure. Their claim of greater wireless range than a Pringles cannister antenna is padded with irrelevant citations, perhaps indicating a somewhat relaxed peer review process, and we view it with skepticism. We eagerly await the results of similar tests to determine the bandwidth of African and European swallows (laden), while being cognizant of the difficulties inherent in implementing reliable swallow-routing algorithms.http://www.notes.co.il/benbasat/5240.asp
Starving for conversation? All those hot "girls" on AIM not doing it for you anymore? Don't despair. We are about to introduce you to an embarrassment of riches in the online conversation department. The Chatterbox Challenge is an annual contest to honor the best in artificial conversation programs - a.k.a. chatterbots. The bots come in three main categories: stand-alone programs you must download; IRC bots; and Web bots. You can chat with all of them in one way or another, then vote for your favorites. Voting closes Apr. 30, and you'll need all that time to make up your mind because there are over 60 bots to test. There's a lot of fun to be had, as well as some serious cleverness to be discerned in the work of the programmers who contributed their chatterbots. This is a time-sucker if you let it be, but it's worth it.
http://web.infoave.net/~kbcowart/
Lessig's Latest: "Free Culture"
Larry Lessig, the amazing patron saint of open source and the public domain, has a new book, "Free Culture". It's a must read for anyone who believes that copyright is becoming a way to limit innovation. Lessig practices what he preaches; he offers his book under the Creative Commons copyright licence. that means that you can download the text for free, in a variety of formats. For example, the minute the book was released the online community was ready to enthusiastically embrace its philosophy, and thus was born the community generated audio version of "Free Culture". And don't forget to check out Lessig's blog - he tosses off ideas about the legal dimensions of cyberspace, and like a great chef working in a kitchen, he makes every dish sparkle."Free Culture": http://www.free-culture.org/
Audio Version: http://www.turnstyle.org/FreeCulture/
Lessig: http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/001798.shtml
Security Across the Software Development Life Cycle
That short, snappy title is the name of a mind-numbing report from a computer industry consortium that proposes improvements in software security. The recommendations are on the whole rather banal: better education of programmers; software security certification; and more awareness of security through publicity and rewards to catch cybercriminals. What is new and noteworthy is the call for the Department of Homeland Security to get involved in overseeing software security for certain critical parts of the American national infrastructure. Nobody in the software industry was previously willing to stomach the suggestion that the US government be allowed to regulate security practices in the software-development industry. Keep in mind, however, that the author group is hardly representative of companies and government organizations. Despite the press attention paid to it, the report probably does not mean much, other than serving as a possible political excuse for more regulation.http://www.cyberpartnership.org/init-soft.html
American talk radio is generally a vast wasteland of right-wing propaganda these days, mostly due to the politically conservative cant of the corporations that own the bulk of radio stations in the country. For years, the left has not been able to mount any kind of effective broadcast rebuttal to these talk shows, responding to date with such exciting fare as Mario Cuomo pontificating about welfare reform on his now-defunct radio show. The forces of liberalism are trying to mount a serious challenge to the right-wing domination of talk radio with a new talk-show network. A fundamental problem with the network is that Air America is only available on satellite radio and in five mostly Democratic cities, although you can listen in on an Internet stream.
http://www.airamericaradio.com/
NASA's unmanned X-43A scramjet hit Mach 7, seven times the speed of sound, on Mar. 27. In ground speed, that's better than a mile per second - it covered 15 miles in about 11 seconds. The 12-foot scramjet splashed into the Pacific Ocean after the test run as planned. The data it produced will be examined with an eye toward replacing the rocket-powered Space Shuttles with a delivery system less complex and more reliable. Scramjets, unlike rockets, collect oxygen from the atmosphere (rockets carry it in storage). NASA's plans for the technology are well underway. It has overcome the first hurdle, as no air-breathing engine has ever before hit hypersonic speeds. Space.com covered the event.
NASA: http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.Projects/Aerospace.Technology/Research.Aircraft/Hyper-X/
Space.com: http://space.com/missionlaunches/x43_launch_040327.html
Beatrix Valentina MacNeill, "Trixie" to her friends, is an adorable baby, eight months old. She is also going to be among the first children to successfully sue their parents over blog abuse, if she decides to. Trixie's parents have a blog, the Trixie Update, that details the life of their soon-to-be toddler. We're the first to concede that babies are wonderful, especially when we don't have to change the diapers, but what is Trixie going to do when that special friend comes over and her parents bring out the embarrassing Web site album? Reservations aside, the site is a marvel. take a look at the Sleep Log, Bottle Log, and Diaper Log, with their graphs and tables. Any geek planning to reproduce will be pleased to learn that Telemetry, the code that Trixie's dad developed to run the site, will be available in May.
http://www.artshare.com/trixie/
Online Civilization Comes to the Coast of Mexico
Mexico's Bay of Banderas, where Puerto Vallarta is located, features some of the most pristine beachfront property in the northern portion of the country. Development is coming to the region, however, and this four-part series in Salon describes how the region is changing as money and tourists flow in. It's not a tale of despair, or even of paradise lost; instead, it's a story of accommodation and the recognition that much is going to be lost as electricity, paved roads, and tourists invade the native population, which eagerly awaits the opportunity to make money from the newcomers. Far from being a simple morality tale, Salon's piece is a genuine story of globalization, warts and all.Salon, part 1: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/11/banderas_one/
Salon, part 2: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/18/banderas_two/
Salon, part 3: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/29/banderas_three/
Salon, part 4: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/29/banderas_four/
Microsoft Hoist by Its Own Petard
Microsoft Word, as everyone should know, retains information hidden within documents even if those words have been deleted from the visible text. The hidden info includes things such as user data, self-edits, and changes wrought by the collaboration tools. Michal Zalewski harvested a bunch of Microsoft's own online Microsoft Word documents. After running the docs through wv, a software tool that reveals all the invisible text, he found himself learning quite a bit about Microsoft's marketing strategies and public relations. Zalewski teases out the influences that shaped the documents - overaggressive marketing, made-up quotes for attribution, and telling edits. Zalewski says he looked at hundreds of Microsoft documents, but posts only a few tantalizing morsels. He leaves the rest as an exercise for the reader.http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/strikeout/
100 Movies That Deserve More Love
Dan Whitehead has assembled a list of movies that he thinks haven't received the recognition they deserve. You can probably find these unjustifiably ignored gems in the less visited shelves of your local video outlet. Whitehead is not talking about subtitled foreign language masterpieces or arty intellectual fare, but chooses good ol' Hollywood films for the most part. The list includes cerebral SF tales like "Gattaca" and "Contact", Sidney Lumet's "Night Falls on Manhattan", Clint Eastwood's "In the Line of Fire", and a low-budget goodie about the Devil called "Mr. Frost", to name but a few of the 100 chosen films. Thanks to the robust rental and purchase afterlife of cinematic releases, you still have a chance to see these movies, many of which may have come and gone before you noticed or may not have played near you at all. This is a meaty list worth consulting before you head out to the video store. We should also note that the list itself is lot's of fun to read through thanks to Dan's irreverent and witty writing style.http://www.chud.com/news/mar04/mar22underdog1.php3
Dogging Is So Last Week - Here's Toothing
The British really are different, and we don't mean just "The Benny Hill Show" and "Are You Being Served". Last week, we noticed that Wired reported on dogging, the practice of having pre-announced sex in public spaces. This week, Wired has an article about the related practice of toothing, in which british users of Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones message each other to arrange spontaneous anonymous sexual liaisons aboard commuter trains and in bars. It is certainly another reason for Bluetooth to take off. Silicon Valley folks, just wait for it to hit BART.http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62687,00.html
A New Yorker's girlfriend disses his gift of an expensive handbag; she wants an iPod Mini, because if (when) they break up, she'll have something to remember him by. At least three other New Yorkers offer sexual services in exchange for iPod money. There's a joke there involving Apple, apples, and the Big Apple, but we're not clever enough to think of it. These personal ads at the New York City Craigslist, Wired reports, are a phenomenon in that city alone. Craigslist sites for other urban centers lack the crazed craving for iPods that New York seems to harbor.
http://wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,62744,00.html
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases
Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Conan of Cimmeria, Book 1)
Evolution and Structure of the Internet: A Statistical Physics ApproachONLINE CULTURE
Clay Shirky is experiencing cognitive dissonance. What brought him into this distressed state was the realization that his students are cheerfully ignoring the old way of writing software - scalable, generalized, and complete - and instead are creating ad hoc code good only in the immediate environment. Shirky calls it situated software. In this essay, he outlines how to approach software meant for a specific, small group of users who, more often than not, know each other socially or professionally. Much of the software designed for use by small communities has to rely on the cognitive abilities of the group rather than the mind of a single user. Shirky illustrates his points with examples from his classes that show how students used social context to create software that would not work as well in other settings. Best quote: "the ability to sort is a public good."http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html
Allow us to ever so briefly point you toward a round-up of this year's best online pranks, at Waxy.org. Urgo has a similar list. We've featured the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time before, but heck, it's that time of year and it is one hella fun list.
Waxy.org: http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/04/01/internet.shtml
Urgo: http://www.urgo.org/aprilfools.html
Top 100: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/aprilfool2.html
ONLINE TRAVEL
Imagine having miles of almost deserted highway to ride on, yours almost alone to explore on your Kawasaki Ninja. There's just one catch: radiation monitors and checkpoints. This is Chernobyl after all. Elena doesn't mind, though, and once she's free of the guys with the dosimeters, she can let her hair blow in the wind and speed along the highway on her powerful bike. On the whole, Elena has little to worry about. The reactor that spewed radiation for miles and killed rescue workers on the spot is entombed safely and solidly in concrete. With people gone, the populations of wolves, foxes, wild boar, and deer have soared. Background radiation levels are significantly elevated off-road but are acceptably low on the paved roads - and there's no one else around to stir up dust. Elena even has a map of radioactivity at various parts of the dead zone. Elena's English isn't perfect but that's no detriment to this evocative word and picture essay. There is beauty in the aftermath, along with eerie reminders of collections of abandoned vehicles and helicopters, ships rusting at anchor, and crumbling houses. At Elena's site, you can share the visceral excitement of exploring alone with the wind in your face and strange beauty all around you.http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/
A History of North American Exploration
More a virtual library than a Web site, American Journeys is the place to visit for a look into the history of North American exploration. The hundreds of images alone make this worth checking out, but there's a lot more. Hit the highlights, and you can read the adventures of Eric the Red and Leif Ericsson. There's a link especially for teachers, and great search tools. Spend any time at all here, and it will become apparent that the immigration issues facing the US and Canada are far from new. Indeed, many of the problems these countries now face may be directly traceable to the failure of the original inhabitants to establish an orderly and comprehensive policy in regard to immigration.http://www.americanjourneys.org/
Travelers and military personnel aren't the only ones who find a GPS device useful. GeoSnapper is a community site where photographers share not only their photos but also the terrestrial coordinates at which they took them. The high concept is that you can share the photographer's experience by going precisely where the photographer snapped the photo. You can also find out whether someone has preceded you along such a path. For now, contributors need GPS hardware along with a camera, but cameras with built-in GPS systems are on the way. So are digital photos with embedded GPS data. GeoSnapper is positioned to help you prepare for this convergence. You can browse by photographer, category (such as mountain, beach, or airport), and popularity. The site hosts - well, did when we last visited - 1,670 photos in 293 albums. In addition to a clickable map, you can use the advanced search engine to find photos by geographic criteria such as city and state as well as by latitude and longitude.
http://www.geosnapper.com/
World66 is a travel guide that's hooked into the fact that people like to talk about their vacations. Much like the original Internet Movie Database, the content here was contributed by readers for readers. It's open source. Because of its nature, the content more thoroughly covers those locales where many travelers choose to vacation; descriptions of destinations off the beaten path are more sparse. World66 seems to derive revenue from the pocket-sized digital guides it puts together for the Palm - they cost only a few bucks. We didn't try any of them, but they seem reasonably priced if the site content is any indication.
http://www.world66.com/
London Underground Animal Drawings
If you're the sort of person who stares at floral wallpaper until it forms into cars, or at the shadows of trees until they reveal monsters in the pattern of branches and leaves, then Animals on the Underground is for you. The map of the London Underground tracks is a complex mesh of routes. This site uses these mapped route lines to sketch simplistic animal outlines ranging from a whale to an elephant. Circles indicating larger junctions are used to provide eyes and even bubbles - from the goldfish. Although these animal patterns began as the commute-time musings of one man (obviously without a Bluetooth-equipped phone, q.v.), anyone can now plot out an animal and send it in for inclusion on the site. You can even get your favorite animal on a funky T-shirt, so you can stare at the patterns even when you're not on the Tube.http://www.animalsontheunderground.com/
There's nothing like ordering your cafe au lait in Paris or your cappuccino in Rome while impressing the cute waiter with your language skills. If you fancy really communicating with the locals on your next trip rather than merely pointing and making odd faces, why not drop by the BBC? The Beeb provides a wealth of online tools for learning more than 30 languages, from Welsh to Italian to Japanese. The site offers printable phrase books, sign language advice, the history of some of the tongues, news broadcasts in 43 languages, learning through sports and music, and even a language gauge quiz to help you work out what level you have reached. The courses are broken down into short lessons and include practical items like how to use the language for work or where it is spoken.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/
Tour Ancient Greece with Hermes
Winged Sandals, a collaboration between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the University of Melbourne's Centre for Classics and Archaeology, teaches classical mythology. An itty-bitty Hermes who looks like a cross between a Teletubby and the Pillsbury Doughboy guides users through various interactive, often-animated, educational tools. Adults will find the navigation annoying at best, but the site is probably highly usable by the targeted age range of six to 12.http://www.wingedsandals.com/
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
In most photoblogs, the pictures seem to illustrate the words. At Sensitive Light, the words illustrate the photographs. Some days, Sensitive Light's offering comes accompanied only by a title. Other days, the daily photo is paired with a lengthy diatribe. Either way, this photoblog is worthwhile, especially if you're a lover of winged things. The anonymous photographer has a way of capturing birds that makes them seem to express their thoughts, which sometimes are as simple as, "Now, where did that seed go?"http://www.sensitivelight.com/blog/
With satellite TV, you can get channels that play only music. We wonder why, to our knowledge, no TV channel has taken a cue from Enchanted Ceiling, a Web site devoted to photographs of the sky. That's it, folks: sky and more sky. Even the self-effacing site creator, David Huyck, a programmer by day, is a little unclear about the purpose and future of his wonderful gallery of skyscapes. Clearly, his contributors and he aim to give instant artistic gratification. We came across no advertisement, a nice exclusion that keeps your focus on beauty. Some of the pictures are better than others, as you'd expect of snaps of sunrises and sunsets, bad weather and good, professional and amateur. All photos are presented in uniform size (750 by 375 pixels). Contributors are welcome, retain copyright, and will find tips on cropping. Whether you browse randomly or across the archive, you'll find this site a delightful patchwork of heaven.
http://www.enchantedceiling.com/
Hardcore Tapheads will need no introduction to the monstrous rock phenomenon that is Spinal Tap, immortalized both in music and in the Marty DiBergi's documentary that followed the 1984 Smell the Glove tour, "This Is Spinal Tap". SpinalTapFan.com is the labor of love of one committed Taphead who spent months sinking countless hours and beers to put together a repository of all things Tap-related. The uninitiated can show up to learn about the band, to hear MP3s of such classics as "Bitch School", and to see video clips from DiBergi's film. Also on site is the enormous "Spinal Tap A to Zed", an alphabetized manual of everything you could possibly want to know about the band, available in HTML or as a PDF doc.
http://www.spinaltapfan.com/
Some like the gritty realism of home-made porn, some like high-budget airbrushed perfection, some like their porn straight, some like it gay, and some like it, well, let's just call it exotic and leave it at that - but one thing all porn fans can agree on is that the soundtrack music stinks. A group of classical musicians decided to do something about that. They formed the PornOrchestra, which provides live orchestral accompaniment to pornographic films, featuring radical reinterpretations of porno soundtracks. This delightful article from Adult Video News (AVN; the article itself is safe for work, though expect porn ads) explores this groundbreaking musical phenomenon further, and PornOrchestra has its own delightful Web site with MP3 files of its work.
AVN: http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=74619
PornOrchestra: http://www.thewrongelement.com/pornorchestra/
Bernard Herrmann, Movie and TV Composer
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer who specialized in and excelled at the difficult art of scoring film. Virtually everyone has heard his scores whether they realize it or not. Among numerous movies and TV efforts, his work includes the scores for "Citizen Kane", "The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Psycho", "Taxi Driver", and "Have Gun, Will Travel". His music always added to the visual images it worked with. He died nearly 30 years ago, but his efforts still strongly influence today's scoring world. The Bernard Herrmann Society site is dedicated to his work and memory.http://www.uib.no/herrmann/
When you think of cross stitch, do you picture a sweet little old lady rocking in her chair, perhaps a kitten playing with wool at her feet? Well, it's time to update that image. Modern cross-stitchers are a subversive gang - perhaps not all of them, but certainly the ones that buy their kits from this site have a zany sense of humor and the creative skills to match it. Instead of traditional and charming cliches such as "Home Sweet Home" or the alphabet, cross-stitchers who frequent this site opt for slogans like "People Are Cattle", "Irony Is Not Dead", and - for the romantics - even a heart-bordered "Kiss Me, You Fool". The collection began as one stitcher's way to deal with an idiot boss and now the site owner wants to share the smiles with other stitchers around the world.
http://www.subversivecrossstitch.com/
Eric Shackle's Super E-Zine of Nifty Articles
Eric Shackle's eBook site proves that the age of the Internet does not belong solely to geeky teenagers in darkened bedrooms. One outgoing, insightful and funny octogenarian in Australia, and his "mousemate" in South Africa, have staked out their territory, too. Having discovered the joys of his iMac a few years ago, Shackle now writes articles on almost any subject for his own e-zine. His theme appears to be anything that tickles his keen sense of humor. Visit and you'll read about bras hanging on New Zealand fences, men pretending to be penguins, and the nicknames for cities in the United States. Shackle should inspire younger generations, if they ever manage to catch up with him on his virtual voyages to the places his readers hail from. Lately he has been to the North Pole, Guatemala, and Wawa, Ont.http://bdb.co.za/shackle/ebook.htm
Astound your dinner guests by preparing classic French cuisine. Don't know how? At A La Carte, you'll find loads of recipes that will help you add that "je ne sais quoi" to some basic ingredients. The site sorts recipes by ingredients or courses and offers both French and English text. Simply choose a recipe and the instructions appear in a pop-up window, allowing you to easily and quickly return to the main recipe index. You'll also find lots of great articles that deal with various topics including the right temperatures for cooking meat, preparing a banquet for 50 people, and how to produce jambons (hams) at home. The recipes and articles we enjoyed are sure to add a sophisticated flair to your home cooking.
http://www.hertzmann.com/
SURFING SCIENCE
NASA may have problems with its image, but it sure knows what to do with the celestial images its spacecraft and facilities provide. NASA's Sun-Earth Viewer is a well designed Flash application built to support its education and public outreach activities. Once we got there, the Image section's reddish image of the sun drew our eye. Zooming in on a sunspot and accomanying scale image, we saw that the sunspot was about five Earths wide. We felt properly humbled. Curiosity gets fed, though, here and in the Illustrations section. Even so, something tells us most students and adults will find the Visualizations (movie) and Interviews more enjoyable. The 29-second-long "Multi-Mission View of a Solar Flare" is cool. The interview section gives a human face to the site, with multiple subjects and questions answered by space scientists in short videos. Each video is accompanied by a transcript. Teachers who grade papers will be glad to know you can't screenscrape the text.http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/viewer/flash/flash.html
One of the First Information Highways
The first transatlantic cable to link mainland North America to Europe - Ireland, to be precise - landed in Canso, N.S. in 1874. For the first three decades of operation, the power required to push the signals through the cables came from large banks of batteries, as large-scale power generation technologies had yet to be developed. For nearly a century, transatlantic submarine telegraph cables spread news between Europe and North America. Technological advances, including deployment of a new transatlantic telephone system, eventually rendered the oceanside stations obsolete. The final blow came Dec. 20, 1961, when Queen Elizabeth II of England placed the first transatlantic telephone call, to Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. The Transatlantic Cable Communications site looks back fondly at the bygone era.http://collections.ic.gc.ca/canso/index.htm