MSNBC’s Hurricane Tracker is a pretty awesome use of Flash provides information I’ve been looking for. I really do hope Hurricane Gustav doesn’t kill any more people, but if it does, there can be no better time than during the Republican National Convention.

This guide to intellectual property rights from the ALA has a really cool Flash UI that mimics those cardboard calculators for particular algorithms like calculating percentages. The interface is really quite striking, but I wonder how many undergrads would have seen a tool like this in real life. It might a case where the interface metaphor doesn’t translate to its audience. ALA: PDTool