A collection of letters and sketches penned by a Civil War soldier has been acquired by Springfield’s Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
Source: AP (via CBS Chicago)
Archive for December, 2008
Lincoln Library Acquires Civil War Letters
Sunday, December 28th, 2008Ucrime.com: Crime Maps and Data for Over 200 U.S. Universities
Sunday, December 28th, 2008This mashup offers crime maps for over 200 university areas in the United States. Browse by state and then school name to find maps you’re interested in viewing. It’s also possible to search by address on individual maps. Crime alerts sent via text message or email are available. Free.
Direct to Ucrime.
The New York Times Rolls Its Own Map Mashup: Represent
Sunday, December 28th, 2008The New York Times made news earlier this year through its release of several APIs (our Campaign Finance API Profile and our Movie Reviews API Profile). There’s been promise of more APIs to come, and the latest prototype created by The New York Times gives a preview of what is to come.
Direct to NY Times Represent
Source: Programmable Web
New Web App for CD and DVD Release News: ReleaseDatez
Sunday, December 28th, 2008“ReleaseDatez is a web application that makes keeping track of upcoming releases for DVD and Music easy. It solves the problem of missing new and upcoming release dates of your favorite DVD or Music.”
Personalized “watch lists” can be set-up to track releases.
Source: KillerStartUps.com
All-Poetry Library Proposed
Sunday, December 28th, 2008San Francisco, often seen as a literary haven, could soon become home to the first all-poetry lending library on the West Coast — one with a decidedly modern twist.
The proposed International Poetry Library of San Francisco is the brainchild of Kim Mahler, modeled on New York’s Poets House and London’s Poetry Library. Along with a brick-and-mortar poetry center in The City, Mahler plans to launch a subscriber service similar to Netflix that would lend poetry volumes to writers and scholars nationwide.
Source: S.F. Examiner
Maryland: Tough times boost traffic, but not funds, at libraries
Sunday, December 28th, 2008But greater popularity presents some challenges for libraries, as well. The poor economy has crushed government revenues, and libraries have not been immune to funding cuts — making keeping up with the increased demand doubly difficult.
Source: Baltimore Examiner
Worth A Look: Some New Web-Based Tools and Sites
Saturday, December 27th, 2008+ Personalized Search and Recommendations with Worio
||| Worio Review (via weimo.de)
+++ Foodista.com – Online Cooking Encyclopedia
||| Direct to Foodista
+++ RadioBeta.com – Getting In Tune With The World
||| Direct to RadioBeta.com
++++ BookSprouts.com – A Network Of Book Lovers
||| Direct to BookSprouts.com
Sources: MOMB, KillerStartUps.com, & Simple Spark
‘Modern Domesday book’ builds photo archive of UK
Saturday, December 27th, 2008An ambitious online project to create a “modern day Domesday book” by compiling photos of every square mile of the British Isles has received its millionth submission.
Direct to: Geograph British Isles
Source: Daily Telegraph
Report from the UK: Web Sites Could Be Given Film-Style Ratings
Saturday, December 27th, 2008Britain’s Culture Secretary Andy Burnham says he is pushing for new standards of decency to be applied to the Web and says giving film-style ratings to individual Web sites is a possibility, London’s Daily Telegraph reports.
Describing the Internet as a ‘quite a dangerous place,’ Burnham told the Daily Telegraph he is planning to negotiate with President-elect Obama’s incoming administration to draw up new international rules for English language Web sites.
Source: Fox News
USDA: State Fact Sheets
Saturday, December 27th, 2008State fact sheets provide information on population, employment, income, farm characteristics, farm financial indicators, and top commodities, exports, and counties for each state in the United States.
Data last updated on December 15, 2008.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service
Interactive: How your monthly credit card statement will look
Saturday, December 27th, 2008Interactive: How your monthly credit card statement will look
Federal regulators have asked credit card issuers to make monthly statements sent to millions of credit card users easier to understand. The deadline for the changes to take effect is July 1, 2010, although some issuers may roll out revamped statements sooner.
The changes that clarify statements are part of a much larger series of credit card regulation reforms passed by federal banking agencies in December 2008.
In consumer testing of credit card statements, users complained that wording was confusing, the type too small and key information missing from existing monthly statements. Testers said they liked information presented in boxes that they could clearly read.
The previous standard for credit card disclosure was the so-called Schumer box, which required key terms to be listed in a table and included in credit card offers, applications and monthly statements. The new standard is like the Schumer box on steroids, with much more details about terms and what they mean.
Here’s an explanation of some of the features of the new statements, based on the Federal Reserve Board’s samples. Your new statement won’t look exactly like this; each credit card issuer will design its own.
Source: CreditCards.com
USDA Briefing Room: Child Nutrition Programs
Saturday, December 27th, 2008Briefing Room: Child Nutrition Programs
The Child Nutrition Programs briefing room provides a central point for obtaining information about the four major domestic food assistance programs that USDA administers, exclusively or primarily serving the nutritional needs of children—the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program, and Summer Food Service Program. In addition, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program provides fruit and vegetable snacks free to children in schools in selected States and Indian reservations. The briefing room highlights research, publications, and data related to child nutrition programs.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service
Uproar in Australia over plan to block websites
Friday, December 26th, 2008A proposed Internet filter dubbed the “Great Aussie Firewall” is promising to make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries.
Consumers, civil-rights activists, engineers, Internet providers and politicians from opposition parties are among the critics of a mandatory Internet filter that would block at least 1,300 websites prohibited by the government — mostly child pornography, excessive violence, instructions in crime or drug use and advocacy of terrorism.
Hundreds protested in state capitals earlier this month.
“This is obviously censorship,” said Justin Pearson Smith, 29, organizer of protests in Melbourne and an officer of one of a dozen Facebook groups against the filter.
Source: AP
See Also: Recently Released Report: Australia: Internet Censorship and Mandatory Filtering
See Also: Australia to test Internet filter next month (via AFP)
New Web Database for Non-Profit Reviews and Info
Friday, December 26th, 2008Taking a cue from the online field test movement, a group of Stanford University students created greatnonprofits.org – where volunteers, nonprofit workers, donors and the needy rate the charities they encounter…
Most of the charities reviewed on her site are small, with an average of two people on the payroll, 30 volunteers and an annual budget of $180,000. They don’t have the money for marketing, and their work goes largely unnoticed, she said.
After a beta test, Ni’s Web site went live in June. To date, 400 nonprofits have been reviewed, the bulk of them in the Bay Area. More than 1 million U.S. charities are in the Web site’s database, waiting to be reviewed.
+ Direct to GreatNonProfits.com
Source: S.F. Chronicle
Cool! Boston Public Library System Hires Ad Agency
Friday, December 26th, 2008Though libraries may increasingly become relics in the Google-driven Web 2.0 era, Allen & Gerritsen positions the Boston Public Library system as the ultimate search engine and portrays its librarians as “heroes of information” in a new campaign.
A new campaign by the Watertown, Mass., agency, tagged “What do you want to know?” plays up the resources of the BPL’s 27 branches and focuses on the human element often absent from Internet-based searches.
Source: AdWeek
Hat Tip: Charles K.
Graphic — History of U.S. Government Bailouts
Friday, December 26th, 2008History of U.S. Government Bailouts
With the flurry of recent government bailouts, we decided to try to put them in perspective. The circles below represent the size of U.S. government bailout, calculated in 2008 dollars. They are also in chronological order. Our chart focuses on U.S. government bailouts of U.S. corporations (and one city). We have not included instances where the U.S. government aided other nations.
See also: What Happens After a U.S. Gov’t Bailout?
Source: ProPublica
Hat tip: PW
See also: Slate — An interactive guide to the bailout billions
West Point sets up research center for oral histories
Friday, December 26th, 2008The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has established the Center for Oral History, an online research center gathering the personal stories of U.S. service members, according to a news release.
Direct to New Oral History Web Site
Source: The Virginian-Pilot
Book Review: Review: Collected New York Times fronts make a monumental historical record
Friday, December 26th, 2008It would be easy to say that this book is for older generations, people who read newspapers and now want them compiled into a shiny coffee-table book. And that’s perfectly fine. But the real use of “The Complete Front Pages” is actually very webby: It’s a primary source, offered both in print and an online-friendly format, that will immerse you in contemporaneous stuff about history on your own rather than rely on modern reinterpretations.
Source: AP
