Tag Archives: databases

Google’s “We Wear Culture” project is a stunning, searchable archive of 3,000 years of world fashion | Quartz #databases #digitallibraries #archives #fashion #culture

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Google’s latest project may be the most widely accessible and comprehensive fashion collection on the planet. All you need to view it is an internet connection.

“We Wear Culture” is a collaboration between Google and more than 180 museums, schools, fashion institutions, and other organizations from all parts of the globe. It’s part of Google’s Arts & Culture platform, which is digitizing the world’s cultural treasures, and functions as a searchable guide to a collective archive of some 30,000 fashion pieces that puts “three millennia of fashion at your fingertips,” Google says.

But it isn’t just a database. Google has worked with curators to create more than 450 exhibits on different topics—say, how the cheongsam changed the way Chinese women dress—making the site an endlessly entertaining, educational portal filled with stunning imagery touching on everything from modern Japanese streetwear to the clothes worn at the court of Versailles. READ MORE: Google’s “We Wear Culture” project is a stunning, searchable archive of 3,000 years of world fashion |  Quartz

Pairing Wine and Cheese with Data Science | Center for Data Innovation #dataviz #data #datascience #databases #visualization

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University of Toronto computational biology professor Gary Bader has created an interactive data visualization that allows users to identify complementary wine and cheese pairings based on different factors, including a wine’s country of origin and a cheese’s moisture level. The visualization uses software called Cytoscape that Bader and other researchers initially developed for complex genetic and molecular analysis, such as mapping the relationship between different genes and autism or cancer. Users can search for approximately 1,000 ideal pairings between 100 different red and white wines and 270 cheeses. READ: Pairing Wine and Cheese with Data Sciencw | Center for Data Innovation

This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free. | WaPo #academia #journals #research #databases #copyright #publishing #crime

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Alexandra Elbakyan is a highbrow pirate in hiding. The 27-year-old graduate student from Kazakhstan is operating a searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers. READ MORE: This student put 50 million stolen research articles online. And they’re free. | The Washington Post

‘Her Story’ is a Compelling New Type of #Interactive #Storytelling | Ars Technica #video #gaming #transmedia

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To anyone who was paying attention to video games in the mid-’90s, the term “FMV game” probably still inspires snorts of derision. The handful of titles that shoehorned simple gameplay on top of highly compressed full-motion video (FMV) usually suffered from low-quality sound and images, poor production values, limited interaction options, and ponderous repetition of a few short video clips through multiple plays. The results ranged from mediocre at the high end to some of the worst games ever made at the low end. By the end of the ’90s, filmed, live-action video clips gave way to polygons and animated, pre-rendered sprites as the gameplay and story-telling engine of choice.

But just as failed ’90s experiments in virtual reality are leading to a resurgence in the form today, the FMV gaming failures of decades past are finally being explored with the technology and game-design advancements of today. Her Story is proof that FMV games don’t have to be awful and that filming actors on a set could be a criminally underexplored form for interactive storytelling. READ MORE: Her Story is a compelling new type of interactive storytelling | Ars Technica.

B.C. Court of Appeal Upholds Global Deletion Order Against @Google | Michael Geist #search

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The B.C. Court of Appeal has released its decision in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack, a closely watched case involving a court order requiring Google to remove websites from its global index. As I noted in a post on the lower court decision, rather than ordering the company to remove certain links from the search results available through Google.ca, the order intentionally targets the entire database, requiring the company to ensure that no one, anywhere in the world, can see the search results.

READ MORE: B.C. Court of Appeal Upholds Global Deletion Order Against Google | Michael Geist

Learn SQL with Khan Academy’s New Interactive Course | LifeHacker #sql @khanacademy

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SQL, the popular programming language used to manage data in a relational database, is used in a ton of apps. Khan Academy’s introductory course to SQL will get you started writing SQL in an interactive editor.

READ MORE: Learn SQL with Khan Academy’s New Interactive Course | LifeHacker

Cheetyr is a Searchable Shortcut Cheat Sheet for Designers and Devs | LifeHacker

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If youre a regular user of Photoshop, Illustrator, or do general web development, you probably find yourself drowning in a flood of keyboard shortcuts. Cheetyr helps make sense of them with a searchable database of keyboard shortcuts for several common apps and services. Currently, Cheetyr contains shortcuts for Photoshop, Illustrator, CSS, Git, and Vim. The site is accepting submissions and assistance, so the database is likely to grow over time. You can search for any function in the search box for each product to find the shortcut youre looking for.

via Cheetyr is a Searchable Shortcut Cheat Sheet for Designers and Devs | LifeHacker

Fans Create Database of Over 200,000 Jeopardy Questions | Center for Data Innovation

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Reddit users have created a machine-readable data set of over 200,000 Jeopardy questions. The data, which the dataset’s creators scraped from fan-created question repository J!-Archive, contains each question’s answer, along with category, dollar value, air date, and other data.

READ MORE: Fans Create Database of Over 200,000 Jeopardy Questions | Center for Data Innovation

NASA’s About To Release a Mother Lode of Free Software | Gizmodo

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If you’ve been thinking about getting started on the rocket project that’s been on your mind for ages, now is a good time to get serious. Next week, NASA will release a massive software catalog with over 1,000 projects. It’s not the first time the space agency’s released code, but it is the first time they’ve made it so easy.

The breadth and variety of the software projects that NASA’s about to give away are difficult to express. It’s not just a bunch of algorithms and star-finding software, though stuff like that is in there. The crazy geniuses that land rovers on Mars are actually releasing code for ultra high-tech NASA stuff like rocket guidance systems and robotics control software. There’s even some artificial intelligence.

And did I mention it’s all free? Read more: NASA’s About To Release a Mother Lode of Free Software | Gizmodo.

See also: NASA Technology Transfer Portal

Researchers build[ing] ‘Google Earth’ project for the ancient world | theguardian.com

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A tool developed by researchers at Southampton University has indexed historic maps, photos and historic documents to provide a simple location search tool for the UK.

The Pelagios 3 project takes data from ancient Latin and Greek sources, which formed the basis of two previous Pelagios projects, and builds on it with documents and maps from Arabic sources, medieval European and Chinese maps, and seafaring charts from the 13th century, cross-linking them into one searchable database. 

Read the full story: Researchers build ‘Google Earth’ project for the ancient world | Technology | theguardian.com.