ResearchBuzz

New database on the science and engineering labor force in the US.

Yahoo buys Zimbra.

Someone tries to auction off Belgium. Oh, you wacky eBayers…

Lulu gets a makeover, hooks up with Getty Images.

Thunderbird spun off and funded.

Getcher free spelling bee study booklet.

Googlepedia has a second edition. About 700 pages — definitely a frankenbook. You can download a sample chapter from the previous link.

A compendium of beautiful libraries. Breathtaking.

I just covered BlogTalkRadio, so of course it would get a redesign and several new features.

Google has expanded its Google Docs offerings to include a new presentation feature, aka Alternative-to-PowerPoint. Y’know, I don’t mind Google emulating Microsoft Office via Web applications, but if I ever log in to my Google account and see Clippy? I’m running away screaming.

Anyway, you’ll need a Google account to start using Google Presentations. Log in to http://docs.google.com/, go to your Documents page, and choose New Presentation. If you’ve ever used PowerPoint, what you see will be familiar — a blank slide that you can add text to, add bullets, do highlighting, add links, etc. There’s a way to change a theme, but I didn’t see a way to change a template. You can copy existing slides however so maybe you’d set the first file up as a template, copy as many as you need, and then fill them up with your content.

Google’s presentations can also be imported from existing PowerPoint files. I tried uploading an old PowerPoint presentation from Web Search University and it came out perfect — with the caveat that I do very simple presentations — no funky transitions or odd formatting. Your mileage may vary if you get fancy.

Google’s presentations can be edited by multiple users in real-time, as can other file formats under Google Docs. Of course presentations are just that — presentations. A presenter can lead a slideslow with participants connected through Google Talk and able to chat as the presentation proceeds. you can also save the presentation as a ZIP file (which looks like it resolves to an HTML file and images) or view it in a printable format.

As you might expect, presentations doesn’t have all the bells and whistles you’d see in client-side software, but it’s very functional. The biggest challenge for me would be to find a conference presenter who’s willing to accept a presentation in something OTHER than PowerPoint format.

The New York Times announced last night that its for-fee TimesSelect service is going bye-bye to be replaced with free access to the same content. Furthermore, parts of the New York Times archives will be freely available starting tomorrow.

The TimesSelect has some great content, but what I’m really excited about here are the archives. Freely-available archival content will include archives between 1851-1922, and content from 1922 to the present. Archival content from 1923-1986 will still be available for purchase in single or ten-article packs.

This is going to be a tremendous resource — such a large archive opening up for free! You can get a few more details at the New York Times itself. (I wonder why the NYT still has the TimesSelect free 14-day trial link at the top of its Web pages?)

While I was finding the link to that article I also discovered that eMusic is going to be offering audiobooks. What a great start to the day!