Wikipedia is celebrating the addition of the ten millionth article, a short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard, which was created in the Hungarian Wikipedia by user Pataki Marta, according to Emily Chang.

Wikipedia now includes articles in more than 250 languages, with the English Wikipedia having the largest number, followed by the German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish Wikipedias.  Tagalog, and Cantonese entries are also growing.

The inThemes site was created as an independent directory of iGoogle themes by Sterling Udell.  You can browse themes (currently 81 total) in general or select from a category, including  Natural World, Artistic, Abstract, Places, Sports, Entertainment, Miscellaneous, or Just For Fun.

It’s easy to see good previews of what your iGoogle page will look like with the a given theme choice, but I wish you could tell right in the directory which of them are dynamic, that is, change over time.

To add a theme to your iGoogle page they offer two choices but they recommend that you install the “iGoogle Theme Manager,” (which then resides on your iGoogle page) to assist you with use of themes.

You can also submit a theme you’ve created here.   [via Google Blogoscoped]

Small public libraries can now use Public Library Interface Kits (Plinkits) to easily create library web sites that are full of content and easy to use.  More than 100 are in operation in Oregon, Texas, Illinois, and Colorado.

Darci Hanning, Technology Development Consultant at the Oregon State Library, works with interested libraries’ staff to build and edit the sites.  With a few basic technical skills and training provided by Hanning, staff at small libraries can modify and update the sites that come with pre-built templates and content.

Plinkit began as InformACTion in 2003, with a focus on a few small and medium-sized public libraries in Oregon.  InformACTion was supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Oregon State Library and sponsored by the Multnomah County Library. 

In the spring of 2006, the Plinkit Collaborative was formed by Colorado, Illinois, Oregon and Texas to support software development, training, documentation, and marketing activities.  By December 2007, nearly 100 libraries were using Plinkit Web sites.  Each partner state gets a seat on the steering committee, which is in charge of high-level oversight of the budget and membership.

The Collaborative is currently accepting letters of interest from state and regional agencies that want to join the Collaborative starting July 1, 2008.

“I would like Plinkit to be in every state that wants to participate.  We’re all about empowering library staff to do pretty much anything they want,” Hanning said.  “I would like to see the barriers removed so that states feel confident in hosting and staffing the Web sites for their small or rural libraries.”

Google Maps Street View expands
Google Maps has added imagery for 13 new metropolitan area Street Views and Yosemite National Park.  New areas include:

• Albuquerque, NM (shown)
• Anchorage, AK
• Austin, TX
• Cleveland, OH
• Fairbanks, AK
• Little Rock, AR
• Madison, WI
• Nashville, TN
• Rockford, IL
• Richmond, VA
• Spokane, WA
• St. Petersburg, FL
• Tampa, FL

• Yosemite National Park

Expanded coverage has been added in Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Redwoods.  Street views are easily embedded in other web pages. 
 
The world’s first Document Freedom Day
Yesterday was Document Freedom Day — an effort to raise awareness about and encourage open standards in documents.  Google joined the community of users, organizations, businesses, governments and individuals around the world.
 
Screenshot capture tools
Digital Inspiration explores 6 screen capture tools, including Kwout, Shup, Jing Project and more.

Adobe’s free online image editor, Photoshop Express, was released today in public beta. 

Aimed at the casual rather than the professional photographer, the editor leaves out many of the tools users of the full-fledged Photoshop are accustomed to, but includes many that will help it compete with other free image editors like Picnik and FotoFlexer.

Adobe’s name recognition and status as a long-time leader in pro photography technology should be enough to attract the crowds, says Wired Blog Network.

The service also integrates with a number of photo-sharing websites, they note, enabling the user to push and pull photos from Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa.  Flickr may be available after initial beta testing.

Photoshop Express offers two gigabytes of online storage space and requires Flash Player 9.  Anyone who has used Photoshop or Photoshop Elements should find the interface familiar and find many of the expected tools such as cropping, red eye correction, sharpening, touchup and more.

Mashable’s Stan Schroeder reviews Photoshop Express, noting some important shortcomings.   

“If Photoshop is your bread and butter, don’t expect to be using Express even for the simplest of tasks.  On the other hand, I must admit that Photoshop Express’ GUI is really good looking (albeit a little slow on occasion), and that it offers quite a lot of options: auto retouching, cropping, rotating, red eye removal, white balancing, and sharpening (very important), among others. There’s also a couple of effects available: you can distort the image, apply hue and saturation filters, and there are even some artistic filters like sketch. On top of all that, Express doubles as a photo organizer, with a solid photo gallery (you get 2 GBs of storage with your free account), and the ability to connect with social sites such as Facebook, Photobucket or Picasa,” he says.

In addition to being a satellite photo junky, I recently traveled to the bottom of South America, rounding Cape Horn, though not going farther south to Antarctica.  Hence my interest in the news about an Antarctic ice shelf collapsing much earlier than predicted, giving rise to increased fears about the pace of global warming.  I did my own “sightseeing” trip to view the results.  The Guardian (U.K.) has the story.  (for video only look here). 

You’ll find additional news and satellite images, such as the ones shown here, at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The huge chunk (160 square miles) of floating ice that was part of the 5,600 square mile Wilkins ice shelf collapsed twice as fast as earlier predicted, leaving the future of the rest of the shelf in doubt.

“The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

Jim Elliott, who filmed part of the breakup, said, “It was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage.  Big chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they’ve been thrown around like rubble — it’s like an explosion.”

The Wilkins shelf is farther south than six other ice shelves that have already been entirely lost, so it should have been better protected by colder temperatures.  “It is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region,” Vaughan said.

 There are plenty to choose among when it comes to iGoogle themes.  You can even search for one that changes with the time of day by entering [dynamic] in the new Google Theme Search box as shown here. 

If you have more than one tab on your iGoogle page, you can have a different theme for each if you like.  When you select a theme, it is only applied to the page you have open at the time.

Google Operating System blog says there are more than 360 themes ranging from “Chinese floral designs to clean green, from raspberry cakes to an yellow Escher theme, from intricate patterns to Mr. Bison’s quirky days, from pink flowers to dark summers, from Studio Ghibli to the Yellow Lab Puppy.”  Users have created many of these themes and continue to do so.  Note the easy-to-find reminder under the Search box to encourage theme builders.

“Bookish people may not be known for their social skills, but a crop of social-networking Web sites aimed at bibliophiles are allowing readers to connect with the page — and with each other — in a brand new ‘virtual” environment’ said NPR’s Martha Woodroof.  (There’s a link to the All Things Considered episode at the site)

Book-centered sites like LibraryThing, Goodreads, Shelfari, aNobii and BookJetty, among others, allow readers to keep track of books they have read or books they want to read or buy — and see what others are reading and recommending.

Although book-centered sites only went social in 2005, they are flourishing.  LibraryThing appears to have been first and just passed the 25 million book mark.  LibraryThing allows users to search particular titles to see how many other readers have that book on their shelves, and how many have reviewed it.  There are also suggestions of related books to read.

“When you’ve entered your books on LibraryThing, it tells you that this person shares 50 books with you, and that provides a sort of possibility,” the site’s founder Tim Spaulding explains. “You can look at their library, you can get suggestions from it, you can even engage them in conversation.”

What’s the attraction of the social side of book sites?  “People tend to define themselves by their books, and they love to show off their book collections at home. … I think book social networks act as an extension of that,” says Sean Flannagan of Deeplinking.net.  [via LISNews] 

Online resources for book lovers
Thanks to iLibrarian for pointing out Zigmas Bigelis’ list of 80 tools and applications of interest to librarians and book lovers in general.  The categories include:

• Social Networking for Book Lovers
• E-books
• Online Bookstores
• Find the Best Prices for Books
• Audiobooks
• Study Guides and Summaries
• Library Resources
• Bibliography and Research
• Book Exchanges/Swapping
• Online Documents
• What to Read
• Miscellaneous

It’s a match!
BookLamp.org tries to match readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music.

The technology behind BookLamp helps you find books that are written “with a similar tone, tense, perspective, action level, description level, and dialog level, while at the same time allowing you to specify details like… half the length.  It’s impervious to outside influences - like advertising - that impact socially driven recommendation systems, and isn’t reliant on a large user base to work,” they say.  [via LIS News]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the National Security Archive urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to strike down the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  A federal judge has found the NSL statute unconstitutional, but the government is appealing the ruling.

The EFF’s brief claims that the secrecy surrounding demands for records obtained with NSLs undermines government accoutability and enables misuse of authority.  With an NSL, the FBI can obtain private records of people’s communications without court oversight as long as it claims the information could be relevant to a terrorism or espionage investigation.  Recipients of NSLs may be placed under indefinite gag orders, barring them from revealing even that they have recevied one.  You can read the full amicus brief (PDF) here.

“The FBI’s ability to issue gag orders without meaningful judicial oversight means there is no check on overreaching by the FBI,” said National Security Archive Staff Counsel Kristin Adair. “This kind of secrecy does not make us safer. It simply allows the government to cover up abuses and mistakes.”

We have previously reported on legislation to reform the NSL provisions and the consequences of the gag order to recipients.