2008 January archive at infodoodads

Archive for January, 2008

Visible Body: Making the World Book Come Alive

Published by Jane on January 31, 2008
Categories: Science and Visual 6 Comments

Remember paging through the World Book Encyclopedia’s human anatomy section where each turn of the plastic pages adds a layer of the human system: circulatory, musculoskeletal, endocrine?

Visible Body offers that same experience virtually. You do have to sign up, you can only use Internet Explorer 7, and, the different body systems do have to download the first time you use it. Note that the download does take some time, but after that you’re ready to go.

The content is presented at an undergraduate level and billed as the most comprehensive, anatomically accurate, 3D model. The providers, Argosy Publishing, plan a g-rated version.

It’s a great way to learn terminology, location of parts and components of systems. When I searched on stomach, it was added to the body and I was shown a close up. It takes a few tries to learn the difference between the options to show, hide, hide others and transparent, but adding systems and even adding individual components is quite easy.

One of the features is a button that lets you turn the model 360 degrees-you can also do this with a click of the mouse. You can almost make it flip, too! That was fun. Now if I could just get the arms and legs to move. Good thing I wasn’t a bio or anatomy major-I’d just want to make fake scary sounds with the models.

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Flock - fun with facebook, flickr and feeds

Published by Margaret on January 29, 2008
Categories: Media, Social, Visual and Web 1 Comment

I’ve been playing around with the Flock browser this week after seeing that it won an open web award. Flock is billed as a “social web browser,” because it downloads with social web applications like Facebook, Flickr, and del.icio.us already integrated in the browser interface.

To turn on the social pieces, I just logged into my accounts. Presto, Facebook friends displayed artfully in the sidebar. I can just scan down the list and see what everyone is doing. I can also show their photo albums as a media stream across the top of my page. Or I can use other media streams - top videos on YouTube, or the “interestingness” set on Flickr.

I pulled all my Bloglines feeds into Flock by importing the opml file. I like the reader interface better than NetVibes, it’s a bit more bold and graphic. The whole look and feel seems really elegant to me, and there are several easy ways to show less or more content.

Flock makes great use of the sidebars, tabs, columns and color. There is a nice photo uploader with some basic editing functions. You can toggle the sidebar to show people, media, rss feeds, favorites or a web clipboard where you can drag and drop things you want to save. Also, when you are reading feeds, you can switch between a one- or two-column layout.

When you do a web search on Flock, the results appear in the center of the page, and new searches open up in separate tabs as you go along. If you want more space for searches and results you can close the sidebar and media stream window. I’ll definitely use Flock to track feeds and facebook, but there are also some extensions for Flock, in case the “baked in” features aren’t enough - there is a Zotero extension, and something called Me.dium that I’ll take a look at for next week.

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Hubdub - Bettin’ on the News

Published by Hannah on January 28, 2008
Categories: News and Web 0 Comments

Have you been feeling the post-Fantasy Football blues? Want something besides American Idol to bet on? Well, head on over to Hubdub where you can bet on the news - with play money of course. Hubdub allows participants to post news items from any news genre of interest to them, then pose a yes/no type question about the news topic for other participants to vote on. For example, “Will Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez be removed from office by March 6, 2008?” (consensus is tending towards “no”). Other users can comment on your question and suggest better news articles to accompany your question. You can also observe how the voting trends have changed over time, as in this bet about the upcoming Super Bowl.

While Hubdub doesn’t exactly give users the ability to change the outcome of the news, it can certainly make you feel more engaged with happenings around the world and give you insights into perspectives you may not have considered before (”Will Jesus return by the end of 2008?”). Oh, and with every question you submit, your Hubdub dollars go up (or down), and if you keep at it, you may find yourself at the top of the Hubdub leaderboard!

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Libraries411 - Find Your Local Public Library

Published by Laurie on January 27, 2008
Categories: Maps, Mash-ups and Visual 0 Comments

I love map mashups. How did I find anything before them? Just this morning I was thinking, “I wonder if there is a library map mashup?” I did a little searching and here is what I found: Libraries411.

This map identifies the public libraries (central, branch, and bookmobile) in my area. I’m not sure what the bookmobile marker means, but it would be cool if it showed the current location of the bookmobile (as far as I can tell this is not how it works).

Library411 maintains a list of libraries in the U.S. and Canada. They encourage public libraries to update their information, “Public Libraries should follow the for public libraries link…to find out more about using and updating the information about their public library.”

I wonder why Libraries411 decided not to include university libraries? Our university library is open to the public. What about us?

The more I think about it, the more I love the idea of a map that shows bookmobiles in motion! Someone needs to create that mashup…

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Can Cookthink read your mind?

Published by Kate on January 25, 2008
Categories: Food 0 Comments

Sometimes, even when I’m really hungry (or maybe especially when I’m really hungry), I have a hard time figuring out what I want to eat. Also, since I cook a lot, there are times when recipes all start to look the same. When I saw cookthink, a tool that tries to match recipes to your cravings, mentioned over at Lifehacker I thought it looked like a good addition to my menu-planning toolkit.

Though the site has lots of features, like a food-related reference section with good definitions and explanations of tools, techniques, and ingredients, the most unique feature is a search by “craving”. Just type in up to eight cravings (be they ingredients, types of cuisine, types of dish, or “moods”) and then “cookthink it” to see a recipe suggestion based on your choices. It’s fun to see the suggested recipe that pops up, and if it’s not what you’re looking for there’s an option to see more. Also, recipes are accompanied by related tips and other recipes which will help me put together an entire meal based on my recent obsession with broccoli raab.

I did find the interface a little confusing at first; the tag cloud that pops up isn’t really related to the words you enter in any way (though it seems to give you words from the same category, i.e. “ingredients”.) The craving identification system doesn’t always know quite what you mean–when I entered “peanut sauce,” “pesto sauce” popped up on the list, and caramel somehow morphed into corn meal (no!)–but cravings are a fairly inexact science, and cookthink is still in beta. I expect that peanut sauce and caramel will both be on the list soon. Overall, the recipes suggested seemed like things I would enjoy cooking and eating, so I think I’ll be back. I may even sign up for a (free) account to explore some of the personalization options further.

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Kongregate around Fancy Pants

Published by Jane on January 24, 2008
Categories: Games 0 Comments

Recently I got a new cell phone and it has a cute game on it called Bubble Breaker. For awhile me, my gf and my mom were competing for my phone to see who could score the highest points. Great fun-especially when my mom says, Jane-hand me your phone. You know she’s hooked. Well, gf & I have tried to find Bubble Breaker online to download it for my mom and no luck. But I might be able to find a substitute on Kongregate.

You might have seen that Kongregate won a Crunchie for Best Time Sink Site. Very fitting award! Besides trying to find the Bubble game for my mom, I like to occasionally relax by playing a computer game but I’m not so much into it that I want to buy an Xbox. So this is a great option. It’s free, the games are online and there are plenty to choose from!

For those looking for a community of gamers this is one option. Kongregate has several ways people can connect. Of course there are multiplayer games; developers can upload games; there’s a chat area next to each game so you can chat with others on Kongregate and, newly added, you can find your friends.

You probably won’t see my name on the leaderboard or under the contest leaders, but if you come across my profile suggest a game. Tonight I’m having fun with Fancy Pants.

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fancast beta - tv 2.0

Published by Michael on January 23, 2008
Categories: Video and Web 2 Comments

I’m still a little confused by the new Fancast online service–free online tv?? It was developed by Comcast and is still in beta test. A combination of Joost, Hulu, IMDb, and more, Fancast looks to be emerging as a one-stop place for entertainment needs. The goal of Fancast is to deliver to the user a method to obtain the television or movie they want to see. It might be available to view online for free, and if not, they will find it for you: on cable television, at the movies, rentable from Netflix or Blockbuster, etc. It seems a pretty slick way to gain loyalty for their other products.

My favorite part of the site is the section on free television show episodes. There is a very large list to look through. I believe that part of the deal here is offering a few random episodes to “preview” to hook you in so you then need to use their cable service to see the new episodes. However, some older shows, Star Trek, Lost in Space, MacGyver, and others, have several episodes available, possibly even full seasons. I did notice that these episodes have expiration dates, I wonder if content may be swapped with other episodes of the same series or just removed.

Much of the information when looking at any of these shows is clickable: actor, producer, etc. You get information on other shows they have been in, movies, biographical sketches, and pictures. This is the IMDb part.

Shows are tagged with keywords so if you aren’t sure what you want to watch, you can plug in some descriptive keywords and see what happens. It is kind of interesting to look at the tag cloud. MacGyver, for example, has TV Series, Color, Rousing, Tense, Slick, and Adventure as some of its top tags.

Fancast will also recommend shows to you based on your set preferences and ratings you give to shows. Recommendations are also given for similar shows in a sidebar to the one you are viewing. You can also view TV listings for systems outside of Comcast, it does not discriminate.

All in all, it seems like an interesting, though developing service. I can say that I have definitely watched my share of off-air TV shows over the past few weeks. Stay tuned for more developments and features.

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ChaCha SMS - is this our dance?

Published by Margaret on January 22, 2008
Categories: Mobile, Reference, Searching and Services 0 Comments

An AP headline in our local Sunday paper caught my attention this week: “Human help fuels ChaCha” (your headline may vary). On January 3rd, the ChaCha search engine added a text-message search service where human “guides” answer questions via SMS. Sound familiar? All you have to do is send your text message to 242242 (CHACHA), and in an average of 3 minutes your question will be answered via text by one of 500 people online fielding the ChaCha text queries. For now the service is free; later the company plans to charge $5 - $10 a month after the first 10 questions. The AP review and others report that humans do a much better job of answering questions like finding recipes or the best thin-crust pizza within a 10 block radius. Follow-up questions now include the previous thread, so context can be continued from one question to the next. On the other hand, a couple of TechCrunch reviews are less favorable, pointing out issues of scalability, ChaChaSpam, and the costs of text messaging.

L ibraries have been using SMS reference services for quite a few years, and although the technology isn’t new, text messaging continues to grow. Almost 2 years ago, Amanda said … “as long as usage grows and as long we we can see it sticking around for the forseeable future, we should be offering the service. In closing: 500 billion messages a year, why aren’t we there? ” We still aren’t there, but I’m curious about how SMS growth has impacted existing library text services, and whether text messaging is working up to a critical mass. I have some other questions… Do library users really want to text message librarians and how much they would be willing to pay on their mobile phone plan to do so? What kinds of information make the most sense over SMS - quick facts, directions, what else? Is setting up SMS reference still just a bit trickier than figuring out how to use Meebo? If barriers like cost and set-up are lowered, would SMS take off as IM reference service has? If you’ve experimented with SMS reference services, would you share your experiences and thoughts?

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Mozy, where backing up isn’t hard to do

Published by Kate on January 19, 2008
Categories: Data and Productivity 1 Comment

They say it’s not if your hard drive dies, but when.

While there’s not a lot on my hard drive that I couldn’t live without, I am accumulating a short history of writing, photos, and other sorts of files that I’d rather not lose. While I’d probably have copies of most of my stuff “out there” somewhere (photos on flickr, writing in Google documents or on my thumb drive) until last night I hadn’t made any sort of intentional effort to ensure my files are available if my hard drive meets its demise. Thanks to Mozy, I performed my first data backup.

Mozy offers a free account for home use that allows you to back up as much as 2G of data. It’s not designed to back up your system or application files, but rather your photos, music, Word documents, spreadsheets, etc.. Once you decide which files you want to back up (something the Mozy wizard will help you with, if you want) you can decide how frequently you will back them up. After you have everything set up the way you want it, you don’t have to think about it again–your selected files will be backed up automatically.

Once you start selecting larger files like music or photos, it doesn’t take very long to get to your 2G quota. For some, it might be worth the $4.95 per month for unlimited (home) backup. Mozy is also offering additional space on free accounts for referring others–if you’re interested in your own MozyHome Free account and you set it up using the referral URL they gave me we’ll both get an additional 256K of free storage space. Even if you don’t use the referral link, give Mozy a try. You might not ever need it, but you might be glad you did.

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ask500people - opinions from around the world

Published by Laurie on January 18, 2008
Categories: Data, Maps and Visual 1 Comment

ask500people is exactly what it sounds like: you come up with a question, put it in the website’s question queue and hope your question rises to the top–when it does, sit back and watch as people from around the world answer your question (please note, the name is mildly misleading because ask500people is still in beta, and would more aptly be called ask100people). I’ve wasted several hours of my life on ask500people and it’s a great way to spend time if you have insomnia!

Of course, if you don’t have any questions to ask, you can spend your time on ask500people answering questions (called “voting”). You can create an account and cast your vote or you can vote anonymously. It’s fun to watch the map whiz around the globe and track real-time responses.

A couple months ago I asked the question, “Is George W. Bush evil?” It was entertaining to watch the results. In the U.S. the votes were fairly evenly split between yes and no, while in Europe almost everyone answered yes. Only a few responses were received from Asia (I think they were all in bed sleeping).

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style.com - a little couture for everyone

Published by Michael on January 16, 2008
Categories: Searching and Shopping 0 Comments

One of my student employees recently recommended a designer to me. I immediately asked “then where do I look to see pictures of their work?” She quickly replied “Style.com!” Initially I thought this was another website completely inundated with splashed advertising, preying on naive surfers to fund their vicious cycle of viewership. Entirely wrong. Wrong. Yes, it is a commercial site, and substantial advertising does exist. However, there is a lot of valuable content with some pretty nifty search tools. One slight annoyance, navigation is a little unclear. Clicking on Power Search gave me the search, plus lots of category options that may have been nice on the main page.

Over the past year, I have had reference questions like “I need to find shoes!” or “What are the differences between Dolce & Gabbana’s 2006 and 2007 seasons?” Which I typically respond to with a very blank look, then attempt to find news articles or criticism discussing both seasons, and if I’m really lucky, some websites with photos. The viewable seasons on Style.com go back to 2000 with galleries of runway and detail shots. My institution has a strong apparel design and merchandising department and questions do occasionally come up that at first glance appear outside the academic realm.

The power search leads you through an intuitive series of refinements, from the primary branches: Season, Designer, Trend. Once you have chosen as many as you’d like, hit Go and view the results. Once viewing the results, some of the refinement tools still exist, so if you started broad, the ability to drill down is still open.

There are other sections of the website, devoted to news and social aspects of fashion that may also be useful for information seekers of the fashionable kind. Not something I will use every day, but another tool in hand for when I encounter another apparel design major in information need.

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Babbel - Making the World a Little Smaller

Published by Hannah on January 15, 2008
Categories: Communication, Language and Social 1 Comment

I just visited the east coast, and while I didn’t need to learn a different language to travel there (although some of the east coast accents can take a little while for my brain to process), I did see a Rosetta Stone kiosk in every airport I transferred through. Rosetta Stone is a great language-learning program, but it is hardly free (my public library does have online access for its patrons - but I’m assuming we’re in the lucky minority on that front). For those looking to get their feet wet in another language without ponying up a bunch of cash, quick! jump in on the Babbel bandwagon while it’s still in beta (and therefore free!).

Babbel is an interactive language-learning online community. You register and create a profile; state which language you wish to learn (you can choose from English, Spanish, German, French and Italian); and then voila - you’re off to learn vocab words in your new language. The vocab words are spoken aloud, a picture of the word is displayed, and the word is displayed (in English first for me, and then in the language I’m trying to learn) - go multiple learning styles! Vocabulary words are grouped together by type, for example - movements, numbers, eating, etc… Once you learn a word, it goes into your vocabulary portfolio.

An especially nifty thing about Babbel is that you can choose to join up with an online learning buddy. Everyone’s profiles are listed online - so at this point you can choose from over 3000 other people who are choosing to learn a language, so you could potentially hook up with a native speaker of the language you were trying to learn or just another person trying to learn the language of your choice. You can use microphones to communicate (and chat or whatever other text-based option of your choice). In my experience, having a study partner is a great learning motivator (i.e. guilt creator), so having an online community in this context makes a lot of sense to me.

Give Babbel a try, it has a fun interface, and will hopefully have more of us moving outside our language comfort zone in no time.

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Archive for January, 2008

Visible Body: Making the World Book Come Alive

Hubdub - Bettin’ on the News

Libraries411 - Find Your Local Public Library

Can Cookthink read your mind?

Kongregate around Fancy Pants

fancast beta - tv 2.0

ChaCha SMS - is this our dance?

Mozy, where backing up isn’t hard to do

ask500people - opinions from around the world

style.com - a little couture for everyone

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