General Interest
http://www.labs.cancer.org/lifeclinic/kiosk.html
The American Cancer Society is intimately involved with cancer prevention and creating various tools to help people who might be dealing with the effects of cancer. They have recently created this site that can be used by the general public or people working in the field of public health. From the homepage, visitors can look over sections that include “When should the doctor check for cancer”, “Quitting Smoking”, and “Eat Well & Be Active”. Within each of these sections, visitors will find helpful and well-researched tools designed to help them in each of these different areas. The “Health Tools” section is definitely worth a look, as it contains an interactive body mass index calculator and a feature that tabulates the cost of smoking based on an individual’s particular habits. [KMG]
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/macdowell/
Artist colonies have always fascinated the American public, and whether they have been informally organized or not, they seem to provide great opportunities for a variety of collaborations. One of the oldest of these colonies is the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The colony was started in 1907 by the composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian, and over the past century it has been host to the likes of Willa Cather, Leonard Bernstein, Thorntown Wilder, and James Baldwin. This site was created in conjunction with an in situ exhibit at the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress, and visitors to the site will be able to learn about the history of the colony through first-hand accounts, video clips featuring the curators of the exhibit, and objects that have been part of the colony’s history. Some of these digitized objects include photographs, manuscripts, and musical scores. [KMG]
http://www.peoplesdesignaward.org/designlifenow/
Design is one of those elements that we encounter hundreds of times each day in our wanderings, yet many give it nary a second thought. This recent exhibition from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York has given it about 86 second thoughts, as it features the work of 87 designers and firms. All told, they include those in the fields of architecture, robotics, interactive media, landscapes, interiors, and film. Visitors to the site can click on an alphabetical list of the designers featured here, or they can take a look at a list of popular tags, such as “defense research”, “magazines”, and “animatronics”. Not surprisingly, the site includes a number of podcasts that feature interviews with selected designers, including fashion designer Han Feng and textile designer Jessica Smith. The site is rounded out by a blog, which includes the posts “The Craft of Manufacturing” and “Are Designers the Enemies of Design?” [KMG]
http://www.g-8.de/Webs/G8/EN/Homepage/home.html
Every year, the member states of the Group of Eight (G8) convene in one of their countries to discuss a wide variety of subjects, including globalization, economics, and other weighty matters. This year, the G8 Summit will take place in the German city of Heiligendamm on the Baltic Sea. With all of the preparations going on, it makes sense that the German government has created this site as a clearinghouse of material on the summit. Visitors will find an outline of the summit’s agenda, news updates, and an extensive section that details the history of these international forums. Also, the “Video/Audio” section contains webcasts of various events at the forum, including press conferences, meetings, and different briefings. The site is rounded out by an area that lets visitors sign up to receive both email updates and RSS feeds. [KMG]
Started in 1993, The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is part of WGBH’s Media Access Group. They are primarily interested in creating appropriate policy and technology programs to make sure that various media and technologies are accessible to people with disabilities. On their site, visitors might wish to start by reading over their “What’s New?” area, which features some updates on their latest projects, such as their work on simplified captions and access to in-flight entertainment. Moving on, the “Projects” area contains information on their ongoing and completed projects, which include work on increasing access to emergency alerts and research on edited captions for profoundly deaf children. This area also includes a number of useful publications, such as the 2006 document, “Accessible Digital Media: Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web”. [KMG]
There are baths all over the world, and then there are the very unique baths in Bath, England. As the official site for these marvelous edifices proclaims, they are “the best preserved Roman religious spa from the ancient world.” For first-time visitors, the best place to start is “The site today”, which is a section that will take visitors around the different parts of this World Heritage Site. In the “Curator’s Comments” area, visitors can read comments from Stephen Clews about the ongoing work being done at the site. The site also includes helpful sections on planning a visit and the various collections that are available for use by both the general public and scholars. [KMG]
http://www.le.ac.uk/cc/tutorials/c/
Computer programming can be both a delight and a challenge, so it is nice to know that there are a number of online tutorials designed to provide information about entering the world of C programming and other such applications. This particular C programming tutorial was created at the University of Leicester and is designed to provide both an overview of this type of programming, along with some introductory materials on the structure of such programs. This online tutorial is divided into eighteen different discrete sections, such as “Control Loops”, “Conditional Execution”, and “File Handling”. A course assessment form and a database of example programs round out the tutorial. [KMG]
http://www.sfmoma.org/hiddenpicasso/index.html
This short web feature from SFMOMA (the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) shows how art conservators discovered a nightclub scene that 19-year-old Pablo Picasso had painted over completely, transforming the painting into a street scene. Conservator Will Shank believes that Picasso may have done this because the artist thought the street scene would be easier to sell. In a video at the web site, Shank points out that Picasso returned to the nightclub theme in later paintings, further justifying his obliterating this early example. The web feature also includes archival photographs and drawings by the young artist, and views of Paris in 1900. [DS]
