Month: June 2009

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LOC Hits iTunes U

Blog. Twitter. YouTube.  iTunes.  Yeah, we speak Web 2.0.

You nation’s Library has millions of stories to tell, so we’re trying to tell them as many places and to as many people as possible–whether on our own website or elsewhere.  And now you can add another biggie to the list: iTunes U.

via Hey U, Tune In: The Library Is Now on iTunes U « Library of Congress Blog.

Importantly, everything available on the LOC iTunes U area is also on the regular old web at www.loc.gov, so we are not required to sign-up for an iTunes account to get at Library of Congress material. Putting stuff into iTunes U is just another point of access. Some major universities would do well to follow this example instead of locking their materials into Apples silo.

BTW, since iTunes U is now directly available on the iPhone/iTouch you can d/l a lot of cool stuff from anywhere.

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FreeCourtDockets Offers, well, Free Court Dockets

FreeCourtDockets is a new, free service which allows anyone to retrieve federal civil, criminal, and bankruptcy court dockets, as well as dockets from the US Supreme Court, Court of Claims, and Court of International Trade. The site is the product of Courtport LLC.

No PACER account is required to view the dockets, but if you wish to view the filings for a case, a PACER account is needed. FreeCourtDockets provides direct links to the filings in PACER.

via WisBlawg – From the UW Law Library: New Source for Free Federal Court Dockets – No PACER Required.

Good review of this new free service. In this case it looks like “free” means “no charge but we are going to bombard you with ads to try and generate some revenue”. I’d be a bit happier if the site was a bit more forthcoming about who is behind and where the data is coming from, but I’ve always been a fan of a good “About” page.

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Serna Free XML Editor

Serna Free XML editor is an easy-to-use WYSIWYG XML application intended for students, open-source project developers, and other non-commercial users. Indeed, Serna Free is the most powerful among free XML editors for WYSIWYG authoring.

via Serna Free XML Editor, Best Free XML Editor, Free WYSIWYG XML Application for Students, Open-Source Projects, and Personal Use | Syntext.

Comes with an assortment of DTDs built-in and will publish to HTML and PDF. At first glance seems useful, but as with XML editors generally, if you are not familiar with the structure of the document you want to create it can be tough going.

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Movable Type Gets Forked

A group of Movable Type specialists – some of them former Six Apart employees – wanted to speed up the development of the open source version of the popular publishing platform and decided to group together in a quest to build an independent, community-driven CMS for bloggers and other publishers.

The platform is dubbed Melody and will be managed by a non-profit named The Open Melody Software Group, which has Anil Dash (Six Apart’s outspoken VP and Chief Evangelist) on its board.

via Movable Type Experts Team Up On Melody, An Open Source Publishing Platform .

Melody is a fork of the open source version of Moveable Type intended to be more community driven, like WordPress. The current open source version of Moveable Type is tied to the corporate development of the commercial MT platform. It is not clear what the exact relationship between MT and Melody will be moving forward, so this may turn out to be a true fork with the 2 platforms diverging from this point.

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Kodachrome, a Sad Farewell

We are firmly in the era of digital imagery now, and most of us are operating with much, much lower resolution than the estimated 20 megapixels to make images of the quality of those old Kodachrome images. I’m glad we all have cameras, glad that our Nedas are borne witness. But I will miss Kodachrome, which connected us simultaneously to the ugliness in this world and, in the same frame, its comprehensive, insistent beauty.

via Kodachrome, the wicked world, and the sunny day | Tech Gear News – Betanews.

Good piece on the demise of Kodachrome. I had the pleasure of shooting many rolls of Kodachrome years ago, and still am amazed at the depth and fidelity of the photos shot on those slides. Like hi-fidelity sound, hi-fidelity images are becoming a thing of the past. As the pace of technology has quickened we have traded quality for speed and ease of use. True stereo hi-fi lost to mediocre MP3 compression. Life-like photography lost to the grainy soft focus phone camera. Have we drifted into a low-res culture?

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Windows 7 RC D/Ls End August 15th, Get ’em While They’re Hot

Still on the Windows 7 Beta,? You need to move to the RC and fast. Starting July 1st, the Beta will start to reboot every 2 hrs and expire Aug 1st.

Want to download the RC? The RC download program closes August 15. After that, you won’t be able to get the download, but you can still install the RC and get a key if you need one. (To get a key, just go to the Downloads page and follow the instructions.)

via Windows 7 Release Candidate downloads will end August 15th – Springboard Series Blog – The Windows Blog .

All teknoids everywhere need to grab a copy of this and get it running because you’re going to see it sooner rather than later and you need to get away from XP.