I don’t think I’ve written a post about a news-oriented site before. This is likely because I try to veer away from news because a bit of an addiction I have with news, in particular, print-based news. I get sucked in, and then before you know it the whole day has gone by and I’ve just made it to the “local” section of the paper. So I try to practice a certain level of media avoidance in order to remain a productive, employable person. Silobreaker could be a dangerous new site in my arsenal because it both contains interesting news and displays the news in an interesting visual way as Anne-Marie has noted.
Silobreaker is a news aggregator that aims to provide relational and contextual background for its readers. It uses several visual mapping tools to do this (all of which you can manipulate to see what other connections you can make with the news). There is a Trends Map that shows a comparison of how a set of topics have fluctuated in their newsiness over time; Hotspots which shows the geographical location of news events and how newsy that event is; and Network that shows the connections between the big players (e.g. in four steps we get from Robert Gates to Condy Rice to Sean McCormack to Hillary Clinton - and the articles that connect them).
Silobreaker is not only a cool way to read the news, but also a good idea-generator for thinking about ways you (or I) may want to include visual relationships in presentations, library websites, or classroom discussions.
Email This Post to a Friend
Yes, I’m pregnant. So is another infodoodader (can you guess who?).
While trying to conceive, and now that I’m pregnant, I’ve relied primarily on two resources: FertilityFriend.com (free 30 trial then $45 for a year) and babycenter.com (free).
Initially I tried FertilityFriend thinking that I’d only use the 30 day trial, I rarely subscribe to internet services. However, the monthly charting software along with forums to discuss the process was extremely useful and I actually paid the $45 fee. Once I became pregnant, I was able to switch my focus to the pregnancy tracker service, which tracks my pregnancy week-by-week and gives updates on the baby’s growth and my growth. In addition, the forums are very active and I have joined a small community of about 10 other women who are over 35 and expecting their new arrivals within weeks of mine.
I have also consulted babycenter because they have some great graphic images that detail the baby’s growth week-by-week. In addition, their search engine works very effectively when you have a question. They actually have a lot of useful information, you should check it out!
Email This Post to a Friend
Whether you’re ready to be in front of the camera or not, there’s a decent chance you may find yourself needing to deliver information via video. While there’s nothing like a video camera in your face to make you feel self-conscious, having what you need to say on the screen in front of you can make a big difference. Luckily, there’s CuePrompter, a free browser-based teleprompter that will have you making coherent little videos in no time.
I say “little” not to diminish the importance of the videos you might be making, but because the prompter itself only allows 2000 characters so it probably won’t work for you if you’re producing the next great (insert your favorite country here) documentary. For instruction or marketing videos, or even for video blogging, it might be just the thing.
Email This Post to a Friend
Options abound! Well, options for web based software are plentiful. With so many desktop applications, it won’t surprise you to learn that you can peruse many in one place, the Office 2.0 Database. The database brings together applications that can be used for much of our day to day work and play worlds. Many you may already know and use, others are new additions.
Browsing the categories, almost everything is offered, from word processing, spreadsheet and database to feed readers, drawing, polls, and sound mixers. Other categories with office applications that surprised me are voicemail, printer, fax and command prompt. The last are surprising because their internet aspects are new to me (outside of voip/skype).
With such a great range of applications to choose from, the possibility of moving away from expensive office software increases for individuals and institutions. Many institutions might choose to drop their proprietary desktop software in favor of open software for the cost benefits. Others may focus on the benefits of easily collaborating. This Educause article on 7 things you should know about Google Applications does a good job of explaining how these applications can impact teaching and learning (thanks to ilibrarian).
I really like that these are pulled into one place so I can come back to see what’s new and for when I’m ready to switch over.
Email This Post to a Friend
I don’t think I’ve reviewed a news tool before, but this one caught my attention since it reminded me of my coveted Nintendo Wii. MetaCarta GeoSearch News allows you to browse (or search) news by geographic location. It’s a mash-up that blends Google Maps with news indexed from over 1,400 sources. There are a few nice features, such as filtering by date range or category of news. One article can be assigned to multiple locations which definitely adds value.
More on the Wii next week.
Email This Post to a Friend
IXL comes to us from the makers of Quia (a site that allows you to put together quizzes and surveys) and is an interactive, visual math learning website geared towards students third-grade and younger (although they appear to have plans to expand their services to older students eventually). IXL allows students to choose from different grade-appropriate quizzing areas, such as Roman Numerals or size, and answer a series of questions about that topic. The questions are timed (if you want your child/student to be a fast mathematician), a running score is tabulated, and number of attempts of the question are shown.
I admit that I stopped playing around with IXL once I failed a second-grader question <sigh>. (This is not a screenshot of the question I got wrong).
IXL’s real niche is in the visualization of numbers and in the kid-friendly design the site uses. IXL is not actually free, but anyone can answer 20 questions a day for free. So if you want to try it out, or just have your (smarter than me) second-grader try out 20 or fewer questions a couple of evenings a week, IXL could provide a fun, informal way to expand their (or your) math skills.
Email This Post to a Friend
In early March the United Nations unveiled UNdata, a single entry point for a vast amount of international data including FAO statistics, UNESCO statistics, ILO statistics, energy statistics, UNFCCC statistics, WHO statistics, UNDP statistics, industry Statistics, ITU statistics, country data, demographics, projections, UNHCR statistics, trade statistics, and UNWTO statistics. What do all those acronyms stand for? I have no idea, it just means they have A LOT of data from all over. And, they’re not done adding data, according to the website they’ll be adding more databases “in due course”.
You can search the site by typing in keywords or by browsing the different databases. I did a keyword searche for women and found statistics about unemployment, literacy, and governance.
Email This Post to a Friend
Depending on where you and your grandmas are from, of course. Brought to you by Applewood Books, a publishing company dedicated to “build[ing] a picture of America through its primary source materials,” Foodsville is a food-focused virtual community with one feature that really stands out: the “Free Library” of digitized copies of public domain cookbooks.
Because these books are public domain, you’re likely to find most of them in other places as well, but Foodsville is useful because it brings them all together in a browsable collection. Also, if you sign up for a (free) account, you can review the books and discuss them with other food-minded individuals.
A few of the freely-available cookbooks are well-known, like Fannie Farmer’s A New Book of Cookery, but there are also less-familiar gems like A Treatise on the Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons. Yikes.
There’s more to Foodsville than just cookbooks; I found myself sucked in several times by the “Daily Feed” a collection of about five links on topics ranging from Dumpster Diving to Tamil Cuisine to Popcorn. There are recipes to try, books available for purchase, and groups to join. Even if you’re not looking for another social network, it’s worth taking a little tour of what Foodsville has to offer.
Email This Post to a Friend
Ever wonder how people get the cute RSS, Share and OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) icons? Ok, so I haven’t wondered about the last one, but the mystery for all three is solved because, thanks to the Share Icon Project, now we can all get and use these icons. I’m sure you recognize the orange RSS feed icon and you’ve probably seen the green share one or even the blue OPML.
Since the share icon is becoming “the de facto standard visual representation for sharing content from any source to multiple destinations” the Share Project is making it freely available for anyone to download & use. The Project has suggested guidelines for use and gives instructions for using the share button with users, for bloggers, and for developers who want greater ability to customize the button. All this for the good of icon overload reduction!
Look for it to be added here soon!
Email This Post to a Friend
Jonathan Coulton (Code Monkey), has new t-shirt designs that originated from a new site called Pixish.
Pixish is a community connecting artists with publishers or others who want to commission art. People who want art submit “assignments” that are reviewed by the Pixish crew and published on the site. Then artists browse the assignments and choose to submit photographs or illustrations that meet the requirements. People in the Pixish community can vote on their favorite artwork, and the artists that win the votes receive the reward set up by the maker of the assignment. Some of the assignments that are out there right now are for t-shirt designs, magazine illustrations, photographs of particular places and personal tattoo designs. Browse the assignments by categories of “biggest reward,” “ending soon,” “newly posted,” and “just for fun.” Or take a look at the “hot tags” to see what kinds of assignments people are submitting.
The site design is really beautiful, very engaging and clean looking, as you might expect from a site for an artistic audience. It’s also interesting to see how Pixish has already evolved.
Email This Post to a Friend
Have you ever wanted to know how to make Challah bread the old fashioned way? Try out Videojug, voted best online video site of 2007 by OVGuide. They call themselves “the world’s most comprehensive library of free factual video content online.” The video quality is much better than what you find on YouTube and is generally edited decently well. They have offices in the UK and the US so you get a fair amount of videos with those fantastic British accents.
There are two basic formats for their videos: “ask the expert” and “how-to.” The how-to’s are step-by-step videos on how to do things from bake bread to change a tire to apply make-up like a drag queen. On-screen graphics are used to demonstrate measurements and step # throughout the video. Below the video is a sort of transcript of the steps with all of the necessary information. Recipes even include a unit converter. The expert videos are informational videos by professionals or celebrities with “expert” experience in the topic of the video.
You can use the drill-down technique to browse the videos by topic, or just do a keyword search. Below is an embedded sample video that demonstrates the light-hearted tone conveyed in many of the videos. Enjoy!
[swf]http://www.videojug.com/film/player?id=4ddc3bdc-3329-00df-c8e3-ff0008c9047f[/swf]
Direct link to this video.
Email This Post to a Friend
This is one of those posts even my husband can get excited about. You got it - free tv (and movies and SNL clips and Buffy reruns and…). Hulu has been in beta since last fall, and they just went live to the public last week, so this past weekend I checked it out. Now you can get your Big Lebowski fix anytime, anywhere (that you have your computer with a high speed internet connection set up). You can also watch shows from Fox, NBC and selected other stations. Evidently, you can also embed Hulu shows (or clips of shows) in other websites. There are ads, but from my sampling period, not as many as watching regular TV.
You can set up an account in Hulu to manage shows you want to watch. So you can surf through, select shows that are interesting and save them to watch later, or let Hulu know that you want to watch certain issues regularly, like The Simpsons, and then that show will automatically go to your queue each week.
Thus continues the merger of TV with the internet and the disconnect between watching shows at a pre-specified time. It all sounds good to me.
Email This Post to a Friend
Latest Comments