Clusty has been around since 2004 and if you haven’t used it yet, you are in for a real treat.
Is Clusty better than Google? Overall, I would have to respond “no.” But, if you’re frustrated with the 2 million gazillion hits that you get back on Google, you’ll appreciate the “clustering” feature offered by Clusty.
In this screenshot you can see I’ve searched for the author emily bronte. In the center of the screen is a laundry list of all the relevant websites, much like you’d get from Google. However, using Clusty you can select one of the subject headings in the left sidebar and get more refined results. It’s simple, but ingenious, and a real time saver.
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Recently I’ve noticed this little icon appearing on the blogs I routinely read. I started to wonder, “What is that cute little martian down there?” On the reddit website their description states, “reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web – personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you’ll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes.” This sounds like the tool for me, if it really works like they say. So, I created a login. The great thing about the login—they didn’t ask for my email account! What better way to be assured I won’t receive any spam! After I’ve used it for a few weeks I’ll report back on my satisfaction or dissatisfaction in the comments section of this post. In the meantime, I’m adding the little reddit martian to our pages and please add me as a friend on your reddit account. My user name is ilaurie.
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I was just reading about the upcoming release of the newest version of Adobe Photoshop earlier today, and how basically fewer and fewer non-professional photographer types care about Photoshop any more since nearly everyone just posts their photos to the internet - and use web-based photo editors instead of Photoshop. Not having Photoshop on all of my computers either (its only on 1 out of 3 actually), I thought I would go in search of my own free web-based photo editor. I had downloaded a free editor previously that was kind of clunky, so I was pleasantly surprised on this particular hunt to encounter Phixr. Phixr is a free web editor that does basically everything I ever want to do with photos (which admittedly isn’t an awful lot of things) - resize, crop, sharpen are all at the top of my list - and it has a couple of other options I hadn’t really considered, like adding text bubbles and mixing with other photos. You can upload pictures to be edited either from your computer or from the web, and you can also save your edited photos either to your computer or straight into your favorite photo-sharing site. All in all using Phixr was a pretty pain-free experience for me - I think I’ll move pretty easily into my future Photoshop-less existence.
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Published by Jane on March 26, 2007
Categories: Data and Maps
Now that it’s light out until almost 8pm, I’m more encouraged to get a little exercise at night. I ‘ve tried various ways over the years to measure my distance. Tonight I thought, I bet there is a way I can figure out my distance online. Thus, I found WalkJogRun. After creating an account (easy!), I was able to pretty quickly determine that I walked just one mile. Well, this may not give me great abs, but it’s a start, eh? WalkJogRun is intended to be a running route planner and a distance/speed calculator.
It’s pretty easy to use. You can either create routes or view other peoples’ routes. For instance, when I travel later this week, I can see routes that others have taken before heading out. I like how it gives an estimate of calories burned, time and speed it might take to traverse the route.
When I used it, it took a couple moments to get used to the map’s orientation. It took a little scrolling to find my street after doing a zip code search. I did like being able to see routes in other cities and I liked that I can save my routes. More features are planned, so I’ll come back to it and use it again.
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Lately I’ve been wondering, what’s up with all the chatter about twitter?
I visited their homepage, where the tagline reads, “A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” No other explanations.
I created a login to explore the service more and twitter asked, “What are you doing?” I wrote, “Signing up for twitter”. That’s it. Then, once I’d updated what I was doing, I could activate my phone and IM to receive updates. I could also place a widget on my homepage:
I don’t think I’ll be using twitter. I can’t imagine why I would want everyone to know what I am doing every second of the day. Of course, I can be convinced otherwise by a bright idea, so please, convince me. (I can definitely see teenagers and undergraduates loving this tool.)
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If your only upcoming voyages are vicarious, the last few posts may have left you with a little travel envy. If so, find solace at GoogleLitTrips, a Google Earth tool that puts literature on the map. Teachers Jerome Burg and Matthew Hart have mapped out journeys from the Joad family’s trek in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath to Elie Wiesel’s forced march recounted in Night. Burg and Hart have not only allowed readers to see the places they’re reading about, but have also used Google Earth’s place marker feature to add photographs, excerpts from the books, links to other resources, and other relevant information to the 
locations they have marked from the literature.
The LitTrips are aimed at high school students and the current selection of literature certainly reflects this. Burg has posted helpful tips about how they make the most of place markers (.pdf) and how they format the place marker descriptions (.pdf) for those who would like to create a LitTrip for their own audience.
I would love to work with a class of students who are creating a “lit trip” as a collaborative research project; I’d also love to see information like this available from a publisher’s or an author’s website.
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Obviously traveling is on my brain right now, since my last post was about TripUp. Next week I’m going to a conference in Baltimore and there is no doubt I’ll be looking for food. Usually I ask people at the conference, read reviews, etc. I also have a tendency to just use the trusted phone book. But I think I’ve finally found something better than the phonebook: toEat. When toEat gets more reviews (or simply links to reviews) it’ll be perfect.
Here’s a picture of Baltimore. On the right sidebar you can narrow by category (pizza, chinese, burgers, etc). That’s exactly why I always end up using the phonebook…it goes something like this, “Hmmm…I’m really in the mood for pizza. I want some pizza that is nearby.” I open the phonebook and try to figure out where I’m going to go. I think toEat will work much better.
You can also see in the picture that I’ve clicked on a street - and *voila* it shows me all the restaurants on that street! I love that!
I’m guessing there must be even cooler tools out there for finding restaurants (although I really do like this one, if only it included reviews). If you have a suggestion please let me know and I’ll test it out while I’m in Baltimore along with toEat.
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Many years ago, my husband and I used the Berkeley Travel Guides to plan our trips (I just read the publication will be revived this year). Since they discontinued the travel guides in 1997 we’ve been traveling without a clue. Honestly, we have not found a travel guide that fits our needs (cheap, interesting, organic food, young, etc.) TripUp might be the answer to our traveling woes, once they build up a user base.
This summer, we’re making a trip to Victoria, BC. On TripUp I was able to search for users with a connection to Victoria (hometown, current town, previous vacation, etc). Once I located the people with connections, which totaled a meager four people, I could view their profiles and email them (I emailed one person asking for restaurant recommendations, but I haven’t heard back). You can also search their database of reviews for restaurants, hotels, to dos, etc. However, when I looked up restaurants in Victoria, there were 0 results found. If you’re a little more daring than myself, you can also look for “trip buddies” on the website.
I think this will be a great tool, once it’s more fully developed and there are a few more users.
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Portrait Illustration Maker by AbiStudio’s AbiRing is something that showed up as a hot hit recently on del.icio.us. I immediately gave it a try, as we want to add our avatars to the infodoodads site. This little picture was made (in about 5 seconds) by the Portrait Illustration Maker <http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml> You can choose attributes like background, face shape, wrinkles (I chose them not), hair and eye color, and more. Or just hit Random and see what you get. Way fun. You can save or e-mail the results in .gif, .png or .jpg. As the site says - “DO NOT pretend as if you made the icons by yourself.” The time you save in making the avatar you can use to link to AbiRing, then have a long lunch.
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When I first checked in at SlideShare a couple of months ago, I thought this PowerPoint slide sharing frenzy was just a way to see some hilarious slide shows (I was partial to this cats presentation). But now that I’ve been reading about the mini-movement to hold UnConferences (my take is that they are agendaless gatherings to foster community and organic learning opportunities), I’ll throw in my two cents about another option SlideShare has made me think of - the Nonference. Evidently ethnomusicologists, nanotechnologists and some environmental groups have been tossing around the Nonference model as an alternative way to work in community. Whether it’s the time drain aspect, the financial burden aspect or the excessive use of fossil fuels aspect of jetting around to conferences that gets you, I think the social web community will be easily able to adapt to a Nonference structure, whether it’s through webinars, online discussion forums, or back around to my beginning point - sharing presentations through SlideShare. For example - through this series of slideshows about Unconferences!
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Perhaps this tool should never have been invented, frankly, it’s quite stalker-like. But, if you really want to know what’s out there about yourself, then you need to check out Pipl. I’m warning you, it’s more information than I thought I’d get about myself! Ack!!
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Published by Jane on March 17, 2007
Categories: Music
I’m a big fan of radio and in my small town we don’t get many stations, so I’ve started to switch to streaming radio. My current favorite is Pandora. It has become my steady source for discovering new music and how I learned about Tunde from the UK.
The creators describe Pandora as a “music discovery service designed to help you enjoy music you already know, and to help you discover new music you’ll love. It’s powered by the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken, the Music Genome Project: a crazy project started back in early 2000 to capture the complex musical DNA of songs using a large team of highly-trained musicians.”
It’s very easy to get started, create a channel based on a musician and Pandora will suggest other musicians with similar qualities. You get to give your thumbs up or down on their suggested songs. You can also skip to the next song. You can use either the free version, which I do, or opt for a paid version. The free version is ad supported and I think they do a good job of keeping the ads somewhat non-intrusive. At $36 annually the paid version seems very reasonable.
Another option Pandora gives for discovering new music is by viewing other listeners picks and by finding shared stations. Currently, this can only be done through a search box, but it might be helpful to be able to browse categories or view by what’s popular. I just started playing with this feature and have emailed a friend a song I thought she might like. I also saved another person’s channel to my profile because I think I’ll like what she picked.
One of the other ways I use Pandora is to quickly listen to artists I’ve been curious about and want to get a quick sense of their music. Kate Wolfe was my test case. The last feature I’ll touch on is the QuickMix option where you can mix up your channels. I mixed Norah Jones, Daniel Lanois and Neil Young. Fun. If I want I can share my mix with someone else, something I couldn’t do with analog radio!
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