Gerry Stahl’s INFO105 class recently heard about the different kinds of literature I find in the information technology / information systems field.  Following ancient library wisdom  “use the right tool for the job,” students who distinguish between the following 6 types are in a better position to take advantage of the strengths of each, while avoiding some of the “round-peg-square-hole” pitfalls that might otherwise arise. So here’s a quick overview of the talk.  Their assignment focused on “web 2.0″ examples so I may include sample search results along those lines.

The Center City District and the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau, in conjunction with GeoSim Systems, have recently released Virtual Philadelphia, a richly textured 3-D model of the city. The model covers area of the Center City District – roughly Locust to Race and Front to 20th Streets – in great detail. Every building, street, alley, dumpster, and manhole cover is included. You can even click on any building and retrieve its address, history, and current business tenants. It’s just like the real Philly, except the streets are spotless, all the people are skinny, and it’s totally quiet.

One caveat: the Virtual Philadelphia application is a resource hog; make sure you have a high-speed internet connection, a decent graphics processor, and lots of memory. Even with these, it can be crash-prone – please save anything you were doing before you start the exploring! (If you don’t have a computer that will run it, check out this early promotional video; it’s a good demonstration of the model. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxk0Xm0fRFw) Even with these problems, Virtual Philadelphia is a very exciting achievement.

Philadelphia, high and low.