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Is Computer Science an Outdated Term?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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Web design guru Jeremy Boggs joins Dan, Tom, and Mills to discuss the past, present, and future of designing websites for academia, museums, and libraries. In the news roundup, we cover a number of situations where information and images have shown up at inopportune times and in inopportune places, including the case of the MySpace photo that got a student in hot water, a chart on a blog that caused a copyright furor, and the “liberation” of class-related documents that got some Harvard students in trouble.

Sites mentioned in the podcast:
Molly.com
SimpleBits
mezzoblue
meyerweb
Color Blindness Simulator

20 Usability Tips for Your Blog
Google Earth Overlays of Greensburg, Kansas
Directory of Open Access Journals

Running Time: 50:24

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We take a break from our normal format to spend the entirety of this episode thinking about the role of technology—its great power to forge social bonds and enable a new kind of memorialization, as well as its unfortunate ability to underscore the separation of those who remain outside social circles—in the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. We discuss the April 16 Archive website and Omeka, the software that runs it, as well as issues related to social networking sites, online gaming, and text messaging.

Running time: 29:28.

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Can social networking sites like Facebook play a productive role in the humanities? In this episode Dan plays the old fogey, while Tom and Mills talk about how to use these sites in an advantageous way. We also report on recent meetings on the digital humanities and digital museums, and discuss Google’s My Maps and Creative Common’s Learn initiative. And Mills and Dan plot an intervention to get Tom off of Twitter.

Also discussed were iGTD, Scenemaker, and the new digital humanities PBWiki.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt.

Running time: 47:57.

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[Editor’s note: This podcast was recorded before the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech–thus our normal, jovial tone and failure to mention that horrible day. Our hearts go out to the entire Virginia Tech community, some of whom are now or have been our colleagues at the Center for History and New Media.]

Our third podcast begins with some discussion of April Fools’ pranks, including a great one about Google acquiring the OCLC, and how blogs and the internet can foster hoaxes. This week’s feature takes a look at the hot topic of cyberinfrastructure. We also take a look at Turnitin, and the larger issue of plagiarism. Links for the week include Librivox, Swivel, and the Center’s own research tool Zotero.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt

Running time: 55:16

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In our second podcast, we revisit the debate over Wikipedia, including hearing from Mills about how Cambodians are using it (and whether you can find a WiFi signal in the jungle of Cambodia). Our feature story explores whether and how YouTube is useful in the classroom. Links for this week include a podcast on Byzantine rulers, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and a tool for making timelines. And we make a solemn pledge not to discuss Vista for a long time.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt

Running time: 43:52

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In our inaugural podcast our feature story covers the controversy over whether Wikipedia is a useful or problematic resource for students. In the news roundup, we wonder if the launch of Windows Vista has any significance, ponder the rise of Google Docs as an alternative to Word, and cover recent stories about Blackboard‘s patents and their social bookmarking site, Scholar.com. And at the end of the podcast, we share links to the best wiki software and sites on digital maps and books.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt

Running time: 40:25

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