Civil War History . . . from Twitter?

A North Carolina historian is presenting a history of the Civil War from the civilian perspective - and doing it via Twitter. Each tweet links back to a blog post containing text from a letter, journal or other information describing the history of the period. It's an interesting way to gain a bit of history. Follow @CivilianWartime on Twitter to see for yourself.

Thanks to Research Buzz for the heads up.

Quake in Japan impacts tech worldwide

ars technica has an interesting article on the impact the earthquake in Japan will have on the supply of tech devices. According to their report, digital cameras will be hurt big time:

For digital cameras, the report has a number of details that show that the quake may have an impact on supplies. At the Panasonic facility in Fukushima, where the company makes digital cameras, workers suffered minor injuries, and the site has been designated off-limits because of aftershocks.

Canon was one of the digital camera makers to be affected, with one of its lithography equipment and digital camera lens sites suffering "comparatively major damage." But the report claims that it's possible to transfer some production to another site. (Likewise with the Canon site in Fukushima that makes inkjet printer heads. Two other Canon plants have had their operations suspended.)

The big problem, though, is Nikon, which has a total of five sites listed in the report as having suspended operations. For the site in Sendai that makes the company's signature DSLR lines, the report notes as of March 14: "Damage to part of buildings, operations suspended. Currently investigating extent of damage and considering restart schedule."

The Nikon plant closures are not just a big deal for shutterbugs—it seems possible that Intel could have its 22nm transition plans set back by the closures.

Three of the Nikon sites that shut down make lithography equipment; these are the high-powered lens systems that semiconductor makers like Intel use to etch transistors onto their chips. Nikon made lithography equipment for some of Intel's 45nm plants, and for all of the company's 32nm plants. The lens maker was allegedly contracted to make some of the litho equipment for the upcoming 22nm transition.

Lanyrd launches plugin to make Twitter even more useful at conferences

Lanyrd, the startup aiming to make meeting people at conferences and other events easier, is today launching a browser extension that should make Twitter a more useful networking tool.

Taking to form of a Chrome and Firefox extension, it overlays Lanyrd users’ profile and event schedule information directly onto their Twitter profile page. It also we also links through to any videos, slides, audio clips and books that users are sharing, enabling you to get a better idea of who that person is.

via thenextweb.com

I'm in love with Hues!

Hues screenHues [$2.99 Mac] is my new best color friend. They took the standard Apple color picker and set it up as a standalone app that will not only pick any color on my screen, but give me the Hex, RGB and HSL codes to boot - and save the color on the color board so I can use it again from any Mac app with a color picker. It now has a permanent place on my Dock so I can get it any time I need it.

Web/iPhone/iPad e-book app review: Ibis Reader

Paul linked to a positive Project Gutenberg review of Ibis Reader a few months ago, but it first came to my direct attention when I tried out Jolicloud and discovered what it was: a web-based EPUB reader. It was an interesting idea, I thought, but I wasn’t sure what it was really good for. But a couple of days ago, my perspective changed.

One of the great things about Baen Webscriptions and the Free Library is that they allow people who have access to Baen e-books to read them on-line as well as download them. Not too many other sites do that yet. Amazon is working on it with its “Kindle Web”, but doesn’t seem to be there yet. And there’s no equivalent for Nook, or a lot of other places that sell e-books. And lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in a place where I have web access but can’t use an e-book reader, and there are certain non-Baen e-books I’ve been wanting to read to pass the time there.

Enter Ibis Reader. Not only does it allow you to upload e-books to it from your hard drive, but it can also access ODPS catalogs—such as the ones you can make your Calibre catalog into with Calibre2odps and host on Dropbox. Which means I suddenly have access to any e-book I can convert into unencrypted EPUB form, from anywhere on the web.

via teleread.com