Technology

What Do You Want to Know (about history)? Wolfram Alpha and the Computational Knowledge Engine.

August 22, 2011

Wolfram Alpha lets users interact with over 10 trillion pieces of information curated by a large research team. You just type in what you want to know, the engine tries to figure out what you’re asking it, and you’re presented with a remarkable array of information (as well as ways to refine your subsequent searches). This has tremendous historical applications, both for teaching and for historical research.

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Writing Digital History

July 13, 2011

As of December 2010, I have been engaged in a digital history project for the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) in New York. The project is a web history being created to coincide with the centennial of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) in 2013. The goal of the project is to create what essentially amounts to an online [...]

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Like history? There’s an app for that

July 11, 2011

I recently purchased an Apple iPhone, so that means I now enjoy texting, web browsing on the go and, of course, a higher monthly cell phone bill. But I’m also able to use a number of great apps that relate to history. An app (short for “application”) is essentially a computer program for a smartphone. Apps are [...]

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Must We Associate Innovation With National Identity?

July 6, 2011

Are associations between nationalism and technological innovation useful?

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Sir John A. Uses Twitter?

May 30, 2011

A look at dead, historically prominent Canadians who have twitter accounts

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The Rise and Fall of Ideas: Having fun with Google N-Grams

May 23, 2011

We need to make sense of large quantities of information in order to do ‘big history’ and provide a context into which we can write our smaller studies. In this post, I’ll tell you what an ngram is, show some cool pictures, and hopefully drive you to have some fun with this.

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Stewart Brand and the Nuclear Renaissance that Should Not Be

April 8, 2011

By Lisa Rumiel Note: Again, the author would like to thank Linda Richards for her helpful comments and suggestions in preparing this article. It is time to stop claiming that a nuclear renaissance is the solution to the current environmental crisis. I’m talking to you, Stewart Brand. A sort of Nostradamus of technological and environmental [...]

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Website Review: Location Based History via Historypin and WhatWasThere

April 7, 2011

WhatWasThere and Historypin are websites which emphasize history’s connection to geography. Last August, Teresa Iacobelli wrote a great post on Historypin, its predecessors, and location based history. WhatWasThere is a similar site that has been gaining popularity in recent weeks. Both sites are based on the idea of attaching historical photographs of buildings, landscape, and [...]

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Open Source Tools For Heritage Organizations

March 10, 2011

Heritage organizations are continuously working to establish a digital presence and integrate digital tools into their collection management practices. Open source software can be a huge benefit for an organization with a limited technology budget.

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