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Tom and Dan are joined this week by Bill Turkel and Steve Ramsey, who provide fascinating insights into the nature of computer programming and how those in the humanities, museums, and libraries can get started with this foreign language. Bill and Steve were also kind enough to add their comments to our news roundup discussion of the launch of Google App Engine, which raises questions about outsourcing, and myLOC.gov, which raises questions about whether digital collections should have their own personalization tools. Picks for the week include two books on programming, an organizational tool for Thunderbird, and a map for browsing American history.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
The Programming Historian
Google App Engine
myLOC.gov
Network in Canadian History & Environment
Social Explorer
MIT Simile’s Seek
Beautiful Code
The Mythical Man-Month

Run time: 48:17
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How can you learn technical skills such as web design, programming, and related methods and technologies for work in the digital humanities? We tackle that difficult question on this week’s show, while also covering the top IT issues that universities face (according to CIOs), transcribing books the new fashioned way, and analog and digital news about Abraham Lincoln.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Your Archives
The Museum of Underwater Archaeology
Google PageRank: What do we really know about it
Is Computer Science an Outdated Term? from Wired Campus
reCAPTCHA
Lincoln to Halleck from Footnote.com
What Al Wishes Abe Said
Top Ten IT Issues from Educause Review

Running time: 55:09

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Bill Turkel joins us on the podcast to discuss his fascinating work on “history appliances,” or the possibility of making history more real by creating physical environments and interfaces that truly immerse us in the past. In the news roundup we ponder whether the opening of Facebook to outside developers means possibly better integration with academic services or merely the end of its pretty interface, applaud Google’s new “universal search” for returning video and other media in addition to text, express skepticism that Google has crushed the market for online term papers, and wonder if a university might soon suffer the same fate as Estonia, which saw its computer networks swamped by “hactivists”–or the Russian government.

Sites mentioned on the podcast:
Digital History Hacks
Dave Lester’s Blog
Seashore
Phixr
Scratch
Place-based Computing

Running time: 45:26

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