Did you know about the incredible literary resource of books.google.com? Search for a title, and you can see previews of any book that Google has scanned into their databases, and download the full text of any book under a creative commons license or in the public domain. That means, for instance, you can find high quality scans of books from the 2nd edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, to the whole story of Peter and Wendy: Margaret Ogilvy by J. M. Barrie, that is, Peter Pan and a biography of Barrie's mother. It's a great way to get the feel of a book, or a version of a book, before you commit to it. I always suggest using creative commons resources, so you might also consider using a site like Creative Commons: Books , which is a list of books released under a creative commons resources. Another source of public domain books is Project Gutenburg, and LibriVox that reads Project Gutenburg books aloud.

Happy Pi Approximation Day! Pi is 3.141592654 for the purposes of this discussion.

Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day are two holidays held to celebrate the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is celebrated on March 14, which, in America, is 3/14. March 14 is also the birthday of Albert Einstein and the two events are sometimes celebrated together. Pi Approximation Day is held on July 22, which, in Europe, is 22/7. The fraction 22/7 is an approximate (and slightly more accurate) value of π. However, on 12 March 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (HRES 224), recognizing March 14, 2009 as National Pi Day.

If you wanted to get really geeky, you could also celebrate the Pi Minute on March 14 at 1:59 am, and Pi Second at 26 seconds. In 2015, a Pi Second with an accuracy of 10 digits will be held on 3/14/15 at 9:26:54 in the morning. Pi Day in 2016 will be special as well, since 3/14/16 equates to a rounded version of pi.

The first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then consuming fruit pies. The museum has since added pizza to its Pi Day menu. The founder of Pi Day was Larry Shaw, a now-retired physicist at the Exploratorium who still helps out with the celebrations. Here at Fresno Pacific University, the mathletes celebrate Pi Day with a pie fundraiser. They buy pies from Marie Callendar's and set up tables in front of the cafeteria and on the first floor of AIMS Hall of Math and Science.

Of course, I don't think we'll be getting quite as into the spirit of Pi Day as MIT Admissions, who releases decisions at 1:59 pm on Pi Day, or MIT students who in 1994 put a campus police car, number pi, on top of their Great Dome. Or did they?

To learn more, visit these cool sites:

Pi Day at the Exploratorium
Pi Day .org

Some entertaining videos to watch:

The Pi Song - singing Pi to 50 places.
Say that Funky Number, Math Guy - a video by Al G. Bra and Cal Q. Lus that you have to see to believe.
Pi Pi Mathematical Pi Song (Full Version) - "Pi, pi, mathematical pi" is the first line of the chorus. ((The first time I heard this song was in Academic Decathlon... I believe a guy named Marcus Cope was singing it. Hey, Marcus, what's up? Happy Pi Approximation Day!))
The Tales of Fort Lego: Pi Day - Silliness with Legos and pies.
Pi Day - cute pi day short in preparation for Pi Day 2010... which has passed, but it's still cute.

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab. "Residents" can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another. Built into the software is a 3d modeling tool where users combine basic shapes ("primitives", or "prims") to build virtual objects. They then use the Linden Scripting Language to add more functionality, even animations, to their objects. "Sculpted prims" (or "sculpties"), textures for clothing or other objects, sounds, and animations can be created using external software. SL has it's own economy and residents can use real world currency to purchase "Linden Dollars" for buying higher quality items and renting land.

There is also an open source simulator (called "OpenSim") similar to Linden Labs' Second Life, and this is the basis for a variety of open source "grids". The most popular of the grids would be OSGrid, which works by having server users connect "regions" to the main grid. Another option for the tech-savvy is to connect "standalone" configurations (like the "Diva Distro") through what's known as "hypergrid technology". Almost everything created for Second Life can be used in OpenSim.

Second Life and OpenSim are currently available for Windows, Mac and Linux; both PCs and servers.

Read more about Second Life on Wikipedia!

Read more about OpenSim on Wikipedia!

Learn about Second Life, OSGrid and OpenSim by visiting these sites:

Second Life Official Site
OSGrid - the open metaverse

Open Sim

List of Grids (and standalones) running Open Sim software

Metaverse Ink - Standalone But Join the Party

Did you know that your computer, your iPad, and even your smartphone can tell another person quite a bit about where you are? In fact, Google's geolocation software is so accurate that it can often determine what side of campus we're accessing Google Maps from, using the school network. Most internet-based geolocation software uses internet protocol (IP) addresses which are assigned by your internet service provider (ISP) and can be easily read and analyzed by server-side software. This is legal, and in fact encouraged by banks and law enforcement, as in the first case it helps to prevent fraud, and in the second case it helps to track down criminals. Organizations providing location-based content often utilize this software to return the most helpful content to the user, such as Google's Maps Search function, which returns the "closest" options.

Read more about Geolocation Software on Wikipedia!
Learn about Geolocation by visiting these sites:
Geolocation 101: How It Works, the Apps, and Your Privacy - PCWorld
Geolocation by IP Address | Linux Journal
Geolocation on Wikipedia

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a collection of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications made by Adobe Systems. Macromedia Studio, a predecessor, was designed and distributed by Macromedia, who released the last version (Macromedia Studio 8) on the 13th of September, 2005. After Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia, however, Macromedia Studio was replaced, modified, and integrated into Adobe CS3, CS4, and CS5. The latest version, Adobe Creative Suite 5, was released on the 30th of April, 2010, and still includes programs like Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks - essential for web designers.

Read more about the Adobe Creative Suite on Wikipedia!
Learn about Flash by visiting these sites:
About.com: Internet for Beginners: What is Flash?
Adobe Flash on Wikipedia

Tim Berners-Lee’s dream for his invention, the World Wide Web, is a common space where users can share information to work together, to play, and to socialize (The World Wide Web, A very short personal history ). People known as web developers, usually for reasons of their own, work alongside Berners-Lee to continue making his dream a reality. Web standards guide developers to help ensure that everyone has access to the information and to allow it to be created in as pain-free a manner as possible. The discussion is very diverse on what the standards should be, but most developers will agree that standards that support building and running on all platforms are the ones that they should support. Almost every webpage you visit complies with the W3C standards, and you can see which one it complies with by "viewing source" and looking at the declared "doctype" in the first line. For instance, this page [referring to COL Home Page] mostly complies with the xhtml 1.0 transitional standard.
...to learn more, visit "W3C Standards" (http://www.w3.org/standards/), "The Web Standards Project FAQ" (http://www.webstandards.org/learn/faq/), and "Web Standards" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_standards) on Wikipedia.

The Moodle Learning System was created by Martin Dougiamas from Australia. Dougiamas believes students learn best when they are able to learn through experiences, so he wanted to create an online environment where students would be able to explore and learn without a teacher telling them exactly what to do. He released the first version of Moodle in August of 2002, and continues to be a major developer of the CMS even today.
...from Moodle on WikiEd.

By using applications like Google Docs you can edit, share, collaborate, and even track revisions to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents... from any computer with internet access.