Eyes on the Earth 3D

Instructors: What if you could enable your students to view Global Climate Change satellite data from NASA in 3D (based on over a dozen key satellites orbiting the Earth; such as AQUA, CloudSAT, OSTM, and so on)? Check out http://climate.nasa.gov/Eyes/ and be sure to watch the demonstration video first. It’ll explain the controls you have to selectively view data from one or more satellites. The site does require you to install the Unity Web Browser, but it’s pretty straight-forward to do.

Be sure to check out the planet’s vital signs on the right, including the long term summer average of Arctic Sea ice, parts per million of Carbon Dioxide, the rise or fall of the sea level since 1992, and the increase or decrease in the global temperature and the size of the ozone hole.

Gadgets I Didn't Get for Christmas

Just before the holiday break, we held a Technology Brown Bag session on "Electronic Gifts for the Season" (see video at http://video.jccc.edu/academicvid/BrownBags/Brownbag12-02-09.asx). I invited several staff at JCCC to participate and Keith Krieger (Technology Training Coordinator) was one of the invitees. Keith was unable to attend but sent me a list of interesting gadgets...none of which I received for Christmas. :-(

We ran out of time to share his information, so the least I can do is share these great gadgets with you. Here's Keith's note:

"Since I can’t be there, I thought I would share a few items I’ve seen.

I’ve done this for the Center for Business for 4 Christmas seasons, and I like to have a bit of fun with the items. Please feel free to pass these along for anyone to review or point out."

Space Food Sampler from ThinkGeek:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/b264/ $20

For aging boomers who bought every Beatle album (not that I would know anything about that):

The Beatles: Rock Band

http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/

For Trekkies (more aging boomers):

An entire set of iPhone applications devoted to Klingon: dictionary, conversational Klingon (“The engines are overheating, Captain!”), and phrasebook. $11.99 for the suite.

http://www.simonandschuster.com/w/klingonApps/content.html#klingon_language_suite

For WoW fans, you can now buy an in-game pet to accompany you:

http://us.blizzard.com/store/browse.xml?f=c:5,c:33

7 Cool and Easy Robot Projects (book):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0072226404/davejohnsonswebsA/

Free virtual robot software to use with the book, or buy expensive Lego Mindstorms kits for real robots!

Simplify charging your gadgets with PowerMat:

http://www.powermat.com/us/home/

Poor man’s network using a plug-in Ethernet crossover adaptor, from ThinkGeek:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/7470/