Resources of the Week
by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
Last week we showed you two cataloging sites. This week, we introduce you to two completely different resources.
1) GIS--Coastal Observations and Forecasts
Source: NOAA nowCOAST
We feature NOAA websites semi-regularly here because the agency keeps coming up with all sorts of neat stuff. Here we have a "Web mapping portal" that provides point-and-click access to "real-time coastal observations and NOAA forecasts for major U.S. estuaries and seaports, coastal regions and the Great Lakes." It's not that any of this information -- "meteorological, oceanographic, hydrological and water quality data from federal, state and educational observing networks on land and water" -- wasn't available before. It's just that you had to troll for it and bookmark numerous NOAA sites if you wanted to remember how to get back it. nowCOAST's "interactive map interface" relieves you of that burden.
Four dropdown menus allow users to select location, type of obervation/forecast, variables that vary with the type of data you're requesting (e.g., precipitation, water level, cloud cover, etc.), and time. When you click the "GO" button, you get an interactive map that lets you click on hot spots to retrieve data. You can add additional data sets via a scrolling menu with check boxes on the righthand side of the page. The map itself can be controlled via standard GIS features -- panning, zooming in and out, changing scale, etc.
Play around with this site for awhile to get comfortable with it; it's relatively intuitive, but an awful lot of data is available from here and it's easy to get overwhelmed. Users are cautioned to disable pop-up blockers, as these may interfere with the operation of the website.
The site was developed by the NOAA Ocean Service's Coast Survey Development Laboratory. According to a NOAA News Online story, "The nowCOAST Web portal will be monitored in the future by the Continuous Operational Real-Time Monitoring System of the NOAA Ocean Service's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services to ensure reliable operation and that Web links are kept current."
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2) Technology--Statistics ITFacts.biz
In all honesty, we're not really sure who is behind this site; the domain is registered to someone in Sweden. But we like what we see here -- maybe because it reminds us of ResourceShelf's sister site, DocuTicker. Basically, this is a weblog that carries a steady stream of links to news stories in which technology-related statistics appear. Overall, it's an ongoing collection of pretty interesting stuff from reliable media outlets and weblogs.
There are some value-adds here that make this site especially useful. On the right-hand side of the page, you'll see a list of categories -- from Advertising to WWW. Clicking on any one of these will display all stories about that particular topic. (Keep in mind that links to news articles have a tendency to go stale, but if you really need something, you know how to track it down, right?) Pay particular attention to the word "link" found to the left under each article synopsis. If you click on it, you get the article you've just read displayed on top of a whole list of related statistics, each of which is a live link to another story in that category. See this example, for Power and Energy statistics.
And...oh yeah...the site is searchable, too. The search box is below the Categories on the right-hand side of the page. A link underneath will take you to an advanced search page that allows you to use boolean options and/or specify where you want to search (e.g., Title, Title and Entry Body, or Entry Body). Below the search box on the main page is a list of the sources used by this site, each of which is a live link.
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