ResearchBuzz

Wow! Information and the Future is going to discuss Information Trapping! Awesome! I hope you like it.

Soundscapes coming to Google Earth? Dear Sir: please come to Second Life. Thank you.

Confidential to Zatz: You bet your domain name I’d go nuts.

York Diocese court papers dating back to 1300 will be put online.

Database of food consumption habits across three countries.

Bill Gates says all reading will be online within five years. Well, gosh, he’s been right about everything else so far…

Completely off-topic: Some guy ate just over 7 pounds of hot wings in 12 minutes. When I read that my stomach sympathy-cramped.

A new virtual EMS Museum.

Answers.com adds content.

Google now has “Sort by date with duplicates included” as one of its sort options — sorting by date now seems to automatically remove duplicates (wire stories, etc.) In some of the experimental searches I did sorting by date without duplicates cut the number of results in half.

New U of Iowa digital photo collection: http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070430/NEWS01/70430012/1079 .

Virginia Tech launches April 16 archive.

Online encyclopedia of wild plants in Malta.

The underwater life of the Long Island Sound. In an archive.

University of Vermont Libraries has launched the Center for Digital Initiatives .

New MP3s of Ezra Pound poetry readings.

A new specialized industrial search engine: find fabrics .

Google Reader for the Wii. Silly and fabulous.

New East London theatre archive starting up in 2009.

Upcoming database economic performance of West African countries.

Tony Blair has a posse … I mean a YouTube channel.

Househacker — terrific blog for home enthusiast geekery.

Upcoming digital archive of all films made in Quebec. About 800?!

On May 14, Ask announced Ask Mobile GPS, which it describes as a “GPS-enabled lifestyle application” (uh-huh) which hooks up Ask, Citysearch and Evite. I enthusiastically went to http://gps.ask.com to check it out.

There are some screen shots on the site, and they look great — search Citysearch from your phone, get walking and driving directions around town (with voice prompts) and even, if you’re into it, broadcast your location to folks in your contact list (Twitter gone frighteningly 3D).

The enormous downer unfortunately is that Ask Mobile GPS is available for a very limited number of phones — so limited I’m surprised it’s even been released. I consider my phone to be pretty good, and it wasn’t on Ask’s lists. I don’t get to try it.

Ask is taking a different tack from other search engines by actually offering this as a fee-based service — $9.99 for a two-week trial period. (Plans are in the works for a $2.99/mo version with less features.) It’s a refreshing change from search engines that offer everything for free, confident that advertising will cover it (maybe it will, but such thinking gives me 1999 flashbacks). I think they’ll need more phone models to make it work.