The Latest from the Blog

Solar Viewer mini

Yahoo! has just posted our new Widget, the Solar Viewer Mini. O.K., We know it is still a big widget, but compared to first Solar Viewer it is slimmer and who wants to see tiny images of the sun anyway. This version has “drawers” and scrollers to make it more compact. We’ve had nearly 2,000 downloads just today! Our previous solar viewer has over 38,000 downloads in a little over a month. We developed this widget for NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum.

Censoring Truth

A New York Times Editorial has more on the the controversy surrounding the Bush administration’s alleged effort to silence NASA scientist Dr. James E. Hansen after he gave a lecture calling for quick reductions in greenhouse emissions. Apparently, a twenty-four-year old presidential appointee who also lied about his credentials was the censor. According to the Times… In this case, the censor was George Deutsch, a functionary in NASA’s public affairs office whose chief credential appears to have been his service with President Bush’s…

The New Web: Interactive and Collaborative Technologies in the Museum World

A bit of shameless promotion here for a course I will be teaching for the Cultural Resource Management Program at University of Victoria. It is a one-week intensive course looking at new and emerging technologies (a.k.a. The Web 2.0) and their applications for museums. It will be held the first week of June 2006. I taught a Web 1.0 version of this course a few times in 2002-2004, it always had a great mix of people from museums large and small. I know…

Trying to Silence Science

From the New York Times... The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web…

The Strength of Internet Ties: A New Report

The Pew/Internet & American Life Project has just released a new report (1/25/06), the Strength of Internet Ties. As they tell it… “The internet helps maintain people’s social networks, and connects them to members of their social network when they need help. 60 million Americans have turned to the internet for help with major life decisions.”…

The State of Museum Blogs

The Walker Art Center has a post on the State of Museum Blogs focusing on science museum blogs. The Walker has been blogging longer than any museum (that I’m currently aware of). They have six blogs going on a variety of topics.

Solar Widget 31,000?

The Solar Widget has now topped 31,000 downloads on the Yahoo! Widget Gallery. The widget has been available for a little over two weeks. What’s surprising is that even though the widget itself is now buried a bit in the Yahoo! Widget site, we are still getting more than our fair share of downloads. This may be due to the fact that Yahoo! seems to be promoting their Widgets more heavily. I’ve noticed Yahoo! Widgets featured on the front page of Yahoo! last…

So you want to build a Yahoo Widget…

Developing the Solar-Viewer was fun. I was surprised at how native the widget environment seemed to be, though there were a few quirks. If you have some knowledge of XML and Javascript, you will be able to build a widget as well. The widget engine is well documented and you will want to take a look at the development tools and references that Yahoo provides. Definitely print out and read the Widget Creation Tutorial, we…

Solar Viewer 10,000

The Solar Viewer is closing in on 10,000 downloads. Not a bad showing in less four days. While the Sun-Earth Viewer remains a popular Web site, the widget in four days has reached more people than the original Flash-based viewer does in a month. We had a similiar experience when we made a video podcast of clips found in the Traditions of the Sun site. We had over 4,000 downloads in the first week. While much has been made of the…