Author Archive for Jim Spadaccini

The Weather Makers

I just finished reading Tim Flannery’s excellent book, The Weather Makers. For those of you not familiar with Tim Flannery he’s a scientist, conservationist, a writer, and is the director of the South Australian Museum. A very busy guy. I read one of his earlier books, the Future Eaters, a number of years ago while in Australia and really enjoyed it. The Weather Makers outlines the history of climate change focusing on many high-profile weather events such as powerful hurricanes in the…

NY Governor uses “Alternative Fuels” design

This week we were contacted by Governor Pataki’s office about using graphics Ideum developed with California Science Center for a major speech yesterday. The graphics were developed for an interactive exhibit called Alternative Fuels which is in California Science Center’s Transportation Gallery. The exhibit is one of four that we developed with the museum in 2004. Although personally we tend to gravitate to other side of the aisle, it is nice to see our graphics being used for a good cause.

Museum Blog Round Up:4

It’s been a little less than a month since our last Museum Blog Round Up and there’s a lot to report. First, the big news is that Musematic has joined the ever growing museum blogosphere. “An intrepid cast of experts from the Museum Computer Network and AAM’s Media & Technology Committee” are posting on a variety of museum related topics. We’re a bit late in presenting this news, apparently they launched on the date of our last round up, April 13th.

Earth Observatory and NEO

I just returned from Washington D.C. where I was involved in a series of meetings at the Association of Science-Technology Centers. In one of the meetings, I had an opportunity to meet David Herring from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He helps coordinate NASA’s Earth Observatory website. Launched in 1998, the Earth Observatory has been one of the best spots on the Internet for learning about our planet’s dynamic systems. The site is nominated (again) for a Webby Award as Best…

Save the Internet

New proposed legislation that would abandon Network Neutrality could impact all of us. Learn how you can do your part to Save the Internet. Internet Freedom is under attack. Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most. Check out the site, learn more about the issue, see where…

Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Last week I was in Tucson, Arizona as part of the Astronomy from the Ground Up initiative. This NSF-sponsored project involves the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Association of Science-Technology Centers, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Ideum is working with all of the partners to help build an online community and create some online materials and experiences for informal educators. We spent part of the day Thursday trying out some outdoor astronomy activities at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

Museum Blog Round Up: 3

A friend pointed out an interesting post on Fresh + New about the Ontario Science Centre’s weekly podcasts on their Redshift Now site. The post explores the numbers (how many downloads) and where visitors are picking up episodes (iTunes and elsewhere). (I’ll try to see about collecting and sharing some of the number’s from our own Vodcasting efforts.) Fresh + New goes on to examine aggregation, and asks whether we should replace our manual efforts with some sort of an…

RSS Feeds

It seems more and more the projects that we’re involved in, involve RSS. For those you not familiar take a look at What is RSS and Why Should I Care, a very straight-forward article on Search Engine Watch. First off, RSS feeds continue to multiply: RSS Feeds.com has about 120,000 listed which Feedburner claims over 250,000, but since nearly every blog has an associated RSS feed (or multiple ones), there are literally tens-of-millions of feeds (Technorati claims it has over…

Windows XP on a Mac

Just last week Apple celebrated its 30th anniversary. I’ve been an avid user since the days of the Apple IIe and I’ve worked my way through dozens of Apple computers, including an Outbound, Apple notebook clone! (The makers were sued by Apple and put out of business.) Marking the anniversary, a friend sent along a couple of quizzes which test your Apple knowledge: Apple@30 trivia (hard) and How much do you know about Apple (easy). Since the Apple began shipping computers…

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