RSS feeds are a way for content providers to send web site updates to users. Users can subscribe via a newsreader or, as I do, add them to a personal web portal page like iGoogle. The user’s feed reader is updated with the latest information as new material is added by the content provider. The USGS uses a variety of social media and RSS to push out late-breaking news, research notes,  and a host of other information. Their Multimedia Gallery (http://gallery.usgs.gov/) feeds are particularly useful for teachers looking for materials to use in their courses. The gallery RSS feed alerts subscribers to new media as its added to their collections. Collections currently include:

Geology
DOI Recovery
Animal
Natural Hazards
Water
Biology
Climate Change
USGS Museum
Natural and Man-made Structures
Astrogeology
Native American and Tribal Activities
USGS Libraries
Employees at Work
USGS Wallpapers
Biologic and Environmental Contamination

Most items in the gallery are in the public domain.

The folks at Google Earth are at it again. Like last year, they have created a folder under “Weather” that lets you track the progress of the current hurricane season. Included in this folder you’ll find updated storm tracks courtesy of the National Hurricane Center. The current position, predicted track, storm overview, NHS storm advisory, reference information, and a near real-time news gadget are also provided.

Source of this post and image: Google LatLong.

The Physical Environment link: Hurricanes

Twitter has become a phenomenon in the Web 2.0 universe. As many know, Twitter is a social messaging and microblogging site for staying connected to people in near-real time. Users send “tweets”, text-formatted posts of 140 characters in length to “followers”. Followers subscribe to these Twitter feeds, getting regular updates on their computers and smart phones. Twitter had been dominated by tech savvy Gen-Xers, Millennials, celebrities and well-known politicians like President Obama. The social networking site has experienced an explosion of subscribers using the service for a variety of different purposes.

Those in the geoscience community have found Twitter a useful way to keep other informed.  Earth science – related professional and governmental organizations are using Twitter to keep the public informed of late breaking developments related to their missions. For example, NOAA’s OceanExplorer (http://twitter.com/oceanexplorer ) uses Twitter to broadcast updates to its site, announce new programs, highlight articles in which NOAA projects are discussed. In academia, professors can “tweet” when they are in their offices and accessible to colleagues and students.

Below is a list of Twitterers related to geoscience and what they are tweeting.

USGS:  http://twitter.com/USGS
Type of Tweets: Program announcements, news, answers to USGS Frequently Asked Questions.

USGS News: http://twitter.com/USGSNews
Type of Tweets: News from the USGS

USGS Earthquake: http://twitter.com/USGS_Earthquake
Type of Tweets: recent earthquake activity

NASA Earth Observatory: http://twitter.com/NASA_EO
Type of Tweets: Imagery added to their site, site updates, new articles

Geostuff: twitter.com/geostuff
Type of Tweets: News articles

Science Dailybot: http://twitter.com/sciencedailybot
Type of Tweets: News fed from ScienceDaily, a premier online new source.

AEG Arizona: http://twitter.com/AEGArizona
Type of Tweets: News links, conference announcements

The GIS Forum: http://twitter.com/thegisforum
Type of Tweets: GIS in the new, workshop announcements, data resources, applications

GetGeologyJobs: http://twitter.com/GetGeologyJobs
Type of Tweets: Geology job postings

I am developing a set of podcasts for introductory physical geography. These are mostly aimed at procedures used in most introductory physical geography lab courses. They are free to download and use.

View them at my site or download free from the iTunes store

Hurricane hunters are the “eyes in the sky” for those studying and forecasting hurricanes. The folks over at the Google Earth Blog describe how you can follow live hurricane recon missions, or see the results from recent missions using Google Earth. Check it out.

For more information about hurricane hunters see:

• The Hurricane Hunters
• NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters Aircraft

The Physical Environment Textbook links: Hurricanes

Hurricane Hunters
Courtesy Discovery News

Description provided by the site: “Compare historical images to learn about deforestation of the Amazon.
Use images from the past 30 years to compare the difference in forest coverage in the Amazon forest of Brazil, courtesy of the United Nation Environment Programme’s Atlas of Our Changing Environment layer in the “Global Awareness” folder in the “Layers” Panel in Google Earth.”

SUNY-ESF and renowned hydrologist Peter Black present a 5-set series of 90-second podcasts covering all aspects of water, “Science/Hydrology”, “Government, Law, & Organizations”, “Culture/History”, and “Management/Policy”. Podcasts are available at iTunesU. Titles include:

• Introduction to Water Drops
• Municipal Water Supplies
• Pricing Water
• Water in Culture
• Water in the World
• Corps of Engineers
• NOAA
• Agricultural Drought
• Chance of Flood
• Runoff

iTunes for OS X or Windows required. Get it here.

The Physical Environment textbook links: “The Hydrosphere”

View recent tornado reports, current radar, photos and historically significant storms using Google Maps with Weather Underground’s Interactive Tornado Map. A great example of Web 2.0 technology in action.

Weather Underground’s Tornado FAQ is a very useful resource as well.

The Physical Environment textbook link: Tornadoes

The Earth Online Media Blog is a companion to this site. It is dedicated to multimedia presentations related to topics discussed on the blog. Check out Earth Online Media.

NetVibes is one of many personal web page sites, much like iGoogle. “Netvibes lets individuals assemble their favorite widgets, websites, blogs, email accounts, social networks, search engines, instant messengers, photos, videos, podcasts, and everything else they enjoy on the web – all in one place. “ A Netvibes “universe” is a special shared page created by an organization like the USGS or Greenpeace, or maybe a newspaper. Widgets in the USGS universe keep you up-to-date with the latest USGS news, recent earthquakes, volcano activity reports, map search, YouTube videos, and much more. You can add their widgets to your personalized NetVibe site too. You can also create a public page to share your digital digs.