I almost forgot for this week, but found some stuff today, so here goes….
And a small disclaimer, or explanation first. Instead of just making this a list of cool stuff out there, I’m going to try to tie it into the field of history or academia. That will get me to think a bit more and hopefully stay true to my desires to have this blog about history and new media.
So… First off we have a couple of gadgets, of the software kind:
Gadget #1: Paintbrush. [Mac only] Have you ever wanted to just make a quick drawing or picture in Mac. It’s not that easy without Paintbrush. It gives Mac users a semblance of Microsoft Paint. Now, what’s the application to history, et al.? Ummm… I don’t know either. I’ll get a strike for this one…
Gadget #2: Skitch.com This is a new service that allows you to quickly take an image and annotate, draw, and share. You can grab photos from your iPhoto library, take screen shots, or import images. When you’re done drawing and such, you can upload it to your own account on skitch.com and share your photos. Check out my test photo at http://skitch.com/mossiso/ This might come in handy as another way for historians to share photos and their ideas. A teacher could upload some images and draw specific things… yeah, it’s a stretch too.
Tip #1: US National Archives Research Online and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. OK, OK, here’s a real tip for the historians. I’ve been looking for some information on the “Quarz” project started by the Nazis in late 1944. There is supposedly some photos at the National Archives, but I haven’t found them yet. I was tipped off to this topic by a friend and co-PhD student at GMU who works at USHMM. She knew of some nice had drawn maps that relate to project Quarz. So I took some digital copies of these maps, and want to use them in a project this semester. The above linked resources help in searching for documents, images, etc.
Well, the tips, tricks, gadgets and goodies were a bit lacking this week. Enjoy what you can of it.
