“This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” Google software engineer Paco Galanes wrote on the Official Google Blog.  LIFE was established as a magazine in 1883 and eventually ceased publication in 2006.

Along with displaying the images online, Google said they can be printed for free as long as they are not being used to make money.  Framed high resolution prints in various sizes are for sale online at the click of a button after you select the image you want.

Google offers this search tip:  add “source:life” to any Google image search to search only the LIFE photo archive.  View the LIFE gallery.

Themes didn’t show up in my Gmail account until this morning.  I have had fun playing around with them to see what I like best, at least for right now.  When I selected “mountains,” I was informed that the look would change according to my location and invited to enter it.

I was particularly interested in the Google Maps gadget which pops up when you click on it, allowing you to use it without leaving the site you are on.  Find businesses (and reviews) or get driving directions.

While you are at it, you may want to check out the toolbar gadget gallery.  [via Lat Long Blog]

Quick definition search
I saw this post awhile ago and was reminded that I ought to spend some time learning the ins and outs of Google search instead of just plugging in basic keywords that come to me.

The “define:” search command is an easy way to a dictionary function and it will likely give you several options.

In the Google search bar, enter define:[something] and try it out.    

The National Park Service’s top official in the state calls it “shocking and disturbing.”

The BLM can’t figure out what all the fuss is about.  BLM state director Selma Sierra was defiant, saying she saw nothing wrong with drilling near national parks.  “I don’t see it as something we are doing to undermine the Park Service.”

Conservation groups dispute that, saying never before has the bureau bunched drilling parcels on the fence lines of national parks.

“This is the fire sale, the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry,” said Stephen Bloch, a staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.  “These are the crown jewels of America’s lands that the BLM is offering to the highest bidder,” he said.

An examination of the parcels, superimposing low-resolution government graphics onto Google Earth maps, shows that in one case, drilling parcels bordering Arches National Park are 1.3 miles from Delicate Arch.

“If you’re standing at Delicate Arch, like thousands of people do every year, and you’re looking through the arch, you could see drill pads on the hillside behind it.  That’s how ridiculous this proposed lease sale is,” said Franklin Seal, a spokesman for the environmental group Wildland CPR.

In all, the BLM is moving to open 359,000 more acres in Utah to drilling.

It shows active fires, and those within the last 3-7 days, when you select a city then click on the map for more detailed fire informaiton.

There are also useful links, such as to the Santa Barbara Tea Fire Map and up-to-the-minute news.

OCLC, the schools of Information at Syracuse and the University of Washington, and numerous libraries are exploring the possibility of building a search engine using the expertise of librarians from around the globe.  The idea is that when users enter a search term, results will be weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at major institutions, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus.

Called Reference Extract, it is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN, only with more credibility. A $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is supporting the planning proposal.

One of the proposal’s leaders is Michael B. Eisenberg, dean emeritus and professor at Washington’s information school, who has called for people to submit ideas on the project’s Web site.  “Google is everywhere, easy to use, and somewhat effective in offering useful results.  But, I can’t always trust the results,” he wrote.  “Is there a way to improve on that?”  The idea is to cull and promote recommendations from tens of thousands of librarians around the world.  The technical architecture that would power the search engine is as yet unknown.

We previously covered the first in the series which was on privacy rights and surveillance.  This post focuses on innovation, fair use and intellectual property.

The EFF believes that balance has been lost in the area of copyright.  Powerful entities trying to maximize their intellectual property rights “have run roughshod over the people’s fair use rights.”  In an age of user-generated content, this is particularly problematic.  They offer some suggestions:

• Repair the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) so that copyright holders do not get statutory damages for noncommercial violations, and more along this line.
• Reform the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), emphasizing its role to promote, rather than impede, innovation.
• Don’t let the content industry use our government resources to pressure universities and others to participate in their “intimidating” peer-to-peer dragnet operations.
• Show caution before regulating the use of technologies that limit consumer choice or consumer rights.

Some of the apps available for it have made me wonder about their usefulness — for instance, Barcode Scanner — so I thought this post was interesting.  Jeff Breidenbach, an engineer at Google Book Search, used the scanner on a new book he received and explains how it works.

If a scanned book is on Google Book Search, you’ll be able to search the full text right away.  Say you’re looking for a particular passage, or to find out if a book contains information on your topic of interest.

Breidenbach warns that there may be some hiccups with this new app, and not every book is on Google Book Search, but it potentially moves one another step along the information chain, and he believes, “the tool opens up new ways to experience printed works.”

“Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.”  President-Elect Barack Obama

Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline.com says, “Obama is gong to be the first global leader of the digital age.  We are in totally uncharted territory.”

Change.gov features news stories, bios, and a variety of information and resources, including a link to 2008/2009 Presidential Transition Resources website provided by the General Services Administration (GSA).  It is designed to give newly elected/appointed people an introduction to the operation of the Federal government and the resources available to help as they begin service in the new administration.

Showing its chops as a truly contemporary website, Change.gov will also have social networking possibilities.  Currently there is an open invitation to “An American Moment: Your Story”

They say, “Start right now. Tell us your story in your own words about what this campaign and this election means to you. Share your hopes for an Obama Administration and a government for the people.”

Some of the ideas:

• Office of Government Ethics should post all the financial disclosure forms filed by its appointees online to assure the public that there are no conflicts of interest.
• If lobbyists are hired, require a much higher level of disclosure about their past work, including information on what legislation and policies they attempted to affect, and whether, in the previous two years, they dealt directly with the Department, Office or Agency to which they have been appointed.  All of this information should be available online.
• Online access to meaningful information and data to re-engage citizens, restore trust, and to empower mainstream media and bloggers as overseers.
• Restore the presumption under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that government information is public rather than it is not.
• Justice Department needs to re-establish sensible policies regarding the legal policy memos that the Office of Legal Counsel writes for the administration. The administration can’t even be held to its own standards if Congress and the public can’t find out what those standards are.

See the article for more and for details.