New Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Now here’s an interesting development: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has gone online. Again.

The last time the Memorial was in the news regarding the Internet was in September, when a “Turk Defacer” hacked into thewall-usa.com and used it to promulgate Turkish nationalism. And, in fact, the Memorial’s presence online has already been established through thewall-usa.com and other websites, where you can find tons of information on everything from the Memorial’s creation to the hometowns of the deceased.

The most appealing thing about the new “Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial” is that its information is within a digitized Wall. It took five months to photograph and connect every inch of the Memorial and then program it accordingly.

After loading the digitized Memorial, you can use that little PDF white hand to scan along the wall and click on a specific name, on which information and space for images and comments appear. You can even save the image of a name on the Memorial to your computer.

Unfortunately, you have to be a member of Footnote—a do-it-yourself-history site where visitors can upload, comment on, and scan through documents like photos on Flickr—to have full access to all the gizmos; membership runs about $8 a month.

Photo by er3465.