What exactly are digital tools or apps? In my simplest term, an app is a piece of software that allows a user to accomplish a task. The app can be something created/written by the user, or written by someone else and then just used by the user. The app can be simple or quite complex; it can be desktop-based; smartphone-based; or it can be web (or cloud)-based. By "based," I mean where the software is actually running.
An "app" can also be called a "tool," because like a tool it is helping you to do something.
In the last five years, there has been a literal explosion in the number of web-based tools (again ranging from simple, like a calculator, to complex, like creating an online timeline. What is amazing to me is that so many of these tools remain free, or at the very least exist in some free version. These tools are transforming the way that we work and display data, and they are slowly changing the way that historians "do" history.
I will also admit that the tools are appearing so fast that it is hard to keep track of them and even harder to find enough time to try them out and decide what you can do with them.
Miscellaneous digital tools that I have not figured out where else in the course that I should have covered them
Have a look at the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. It is kind of an internet archive, because stuff does disappear on the web. If you know a URL, you can use the Wayback Machine to see what that URL looked like at an earlier date.
Sendspace (for sending large files); another way of doing this is with Dropbox, but Dropbox does require software installation on your computer.
Lulu for self-publishing
Doodle, a great tool for quickly scheduling a meeting
Brainshark, a tool that allows you to create online and mobile video presentations. You can turn a PowerPoint slideshow into a video lecture with audio.
Zotero (documentation seemed weak) works with Firefox as a research organization tool. I have not used it because I did not understand the format in which items were actually saved and indexed. There is also a stand-alone version that you can download and run on your computer.
Topic modeling sorts texts into topics (as if that makes sense). This is very confusing to me, but see the Mallet software package or the Stanford Topic Modeling Toolbox as examples.
Snagit is screen capture software that works on a Mac or PC. On my Mac, I use Snapz Pro X for video capture.
Google Docs
Trello to track projects and work collaboratively
Viewshare: "is a free platform for generating and customizing views (interactive maps, timelines, facets, tag clouds) that allow users to experience your digital collections."
Writing History in the Digital Age: a born-digital, open-review volume edited by Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki (There is an early review of this volume by The Guardian.)
Europeana (Europe's digital library, archive and museum. It currently gives people access to over 20 million books, paintings, films, recordings, photographs and archival records in 29 languages. It represents 2,200 partner organizations, including all the great national collections such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library in London and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.)
The Alphabetizer; see also Alphabetizer.org
HTML 5 and Apps
HTML5 Introductions
Creating Apps (There seem to be many available now, but don't forget Dreamweaver itself.)