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2008 September archive at infodoodads

Archive for September, 2008

Firefox 3 - What’s in it for me?

Published by Hannah on September 29, 2008
Categories: Web 0 Comments

I may just be having a grumpy Monday, but when I started my work computer this morning and saw that my Firefox browser was being updated again, I felt a case of the “what gives” coming on.  Okay, okay, so Firefox is mostly great, but ever since Firefox 3 was released in June, I have felt occasional twinges of annoyance.  Not all of my add-ons transferred over and Java doesn’t seem to play well with Firefox 3 all of the time (in other words I can’t always watch streaming TV through Firefox), and others complain of memory leak.

So if you are like me and you have been wondering, why the new version of Firefox, here is a brief overview.  In a nutshell, I believe the reason for the update was security.  As Firefox becomes more popular, more hackers will spend time attempting to hack it, so they’ve put in virus controls, anti-phishing software and more privacy/data clearing options.  There are also more parental control features.  In addition to security features, Firefox touts their new look, faster loading time and increased customizability.  It also uses less of your system’s resources.  CNet still ranks it as the best browser available.  Bottom line -I’ll keep using Firefox 3, but will be eagerly anticipating improvements once my computer decides to update me to Firefox 3.1!


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Unigo - what do students think of their colleges?

Published by Margaret on September 24, 2008
Categories: Academic, Reviews and Social 0 Comments

College students are never far from the mind of an academic librarian.  And this time of year, they are close to our parking spots as well,  as our campus gears up for fall term.  For an inside view of what it’s like to be on a college campus, there is a new review site called Unigo that features content contributed by students. According to a New York Times Magazine article, the site had collected over 30,000 contributions of content  for 260 plus schools at its August 2008 launch.   Students at colleges across the nation responded to a questionnaire and their responses were distilled into the Unigo review for each institution that includes quotes from students and links to their profiles.  But that’s just the beginning, as students continue to contribute their own reviews, rankings, writing samples, photos and videos.  You can do an advance search of the site by size, setting, tuition, geographic region and selectivity.

Jordan Goldman’s experience co-editing “The Students’ Guide to Colleges,” a print guide that solicits student contributions led him to the idea for Unigo.  He wanted high school students to get a more nuanced, rich and realistic picture of college life than most of the current guide books give.  If Goldman succeeds, we may be discarding our collections of Peterson’s guides and Princeton Reviews.

Unigo


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PolicyMap - The power of data

Published by Hannah on September 22, 2008
Categories: Data and Maps 2 Comments

Today I heard that some new census data has been recently released for my state, which put me in a data frame of mind.  And what better way to absorb some data than in a visual form?  Enter PolicyMap.  PolicyMap uses U.S. census data, FBI Data, and U.S. Postal Service info, to name a few sources, in order to allow users to map births, burglaries, homes vacant, private school enrollment, even 2008 election campaign contributions by candidate. Choose a region on their U.S. map, pick a data layer of interest and learn more than you wanted to about your neighborhood (I _think_ I’m in a relatively good area for car thefts, but how many car thefts is too many?).

While PolicyMap doesn’t always have a very fine level of data for every region, it can be useful for seeing data in broad strokes for an area.  PolicyMap has several subscriptions tiers, including a free one.  The drawback to the free tier is that you can’t upload your own data, manipulate it and pair it with the data already available in PolicyMap.  The free option still requires registration.

In addition to maps, PolicyMap also allows you to see data in table or report form, so for data geeks like me you can get your data fix in many forms.


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Wordia

Published by Sam on September 21, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized 2 Comments

Hearkening back to the Periodic Table of Videos post, and thinking about the ever expanding world of video on the Internet, I was overjoyed to come across Wordia today in my travels.  Wordia is a video dictionary, in the spirit of Wikipedia and the origin of dictionaries in general - Normal people talk about what words mean.  The videos are all very short - a few seconds to around a minute.  Some of them are very “dictionary-like” in that they have their word and a definition and that’s about it.  Others are more conversational, some are illustrative.

The video for “fermata” is illustrative,

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX37UoEgklg[/youtube]

whereas the video for “philosophy” is part definition, part history,

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCwUL-RZZJ4[/youtube]

and the definition of “plumber” is just, well, what it is.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXnCyq3fI3o[/youtube]


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Need a little fun in your Friday? Check out the games from Orisinal.

Published by Kate on September 19, 2008
Categories: Games 1 Comment

I’m sure you’ve had all the fun you can handle today, but just in case I thought I’d share these cool games from Orisinal. Created by artist Ferry Halim, the games are beautiful, intuitive, mellow, and addictive. Many of them are accompanied by original music. Most are controlled solely by the mouse; some involve clicking, others just work by moving the mouse around. Each game starts with a brief overview of game play.

(Yes, that is a shot of a pirate-esque game.)

Orisinal has been around for a long time, but I just discovered it via this Ask MetaFilter thread where someone was looking for computer games appropriate for her 84 year-old grandmother. Many of the games seem perfect for all ages, and could be useful for someone who would like to improve mouse dexterity. Or for someone who just, you know, would like to have a little fun!


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Your Comments in a Bubble

Published by Jane on September 18, 2008
Categories: Mash-ups and Web 4 Comments

bubblecommentLast year about this time, Laurie reviewed Trailfire which lets you make and share comments on web sites. bubblecomment does this with video. Yup, in 3 easy steps you can annotate a web site. Enter a url, record your comments using your or their internal camera and share bubblecomment’s unique url with others. Of course how many tries it takes to record a comment you like is up to you! ;)

The basic service is free you get 30 seconds to comment, it can be played 50 times and is active for 30 days. If you find that you really like the service you can commit to a paid service for $35.95/year. Paid “members” can record comments up to 90 seconds, can add and track thier comments in the bubblecomment system and their comments are available up to 6 months or 1000 pageviews. Not too bad!

Besides being fun, I think this could be used in lots of ways. Take a look at my test here. Forgive the poor lighting, etc. my first try!


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zenbe - be zen

Published by Michael on September 17, 2008
Categories: Communication, E-mail and Productivity 4 Comments

Short and sweet this week. This tool, Zenbe (Zen Be), does a lot of neat things, all in one handy package. I’m not yet convinced that this is something I’ll fully try out, but it’s fun to think about.

Zenbe’s primary feature is the ability to combine e-mail from multiple accounts. That’s right, you could compare it to aggregating news feeds, but now, it’s your e-mail. It also has a contact manager, a calendar (that can be shared/collaborated with other Zenbe and non-Zenbe users). There’s also a hybrid feature called Zen Pages–webpages that allow dynamic content pulled into one: calendar, e-mails, files, etc. for multiple people to collaborate. Sounds neat, will have to try it soon.

So far, the only feature that I’ve really explored and enjoy greatly is Zenbe Lists.  I *love* to-do lists. Usually I’ll e-mail a list to myself and then look at it on my iPhone throughout the day. That’s okay when lists are short, but sometimes they’re long. I was starting a grocery list a few days ago and it got a little crazy, so I searched around and found Zenbe. It has a native iPhone app for its list function and will sync lists between the iPhone and the web interface. I was able to “check off” my list items as I marched up and down the aisles, it worked perfectly. And best of all, it’s free.

Speaking of iPhone, any iPhone users out there interested in some iPhone-centric reviews? If there’s enough of an interest, it could be fun to share those. I know lately I try out a LOT more of those tools than regular web tools. :-)


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I’m back (and yes, Laurie survived labor too)

Published by Hannah on September 15, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized 1 Comment

Well, I’m cheating here on my first post after returning from maternity leave.  I’m sharing information that’s more of the personal variety than the help-you-out-with-your-information-needs variety.  I’ll get back to the more useful type soon (once I catch up with my feeds and adjust to new things around the office, such as Office 2007 - grrr), but for now I’ll just share that Laurie had her baby at the end of August and will be taking a hiatus from infodoodading for a couple of months as she enjoys/adjusts to her little one.  Thankfully Sam is still with us, so you’ll still get tons of new info tips (but maybe not as many about dealing with hypochondria).


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postcard.fm: email your audio card

Published by Jane on September 11, 2008
Categories: Music, Photo and Web 1 Comment

Here’s a fun way to send greetings. I found POSTCARD.FM over at Emily Chang and thought it was worth sharing. The gist is: create your own audio postcard and email it to your recipient. All you have to do is fill in the blanks by finding a photo and a song on your computer. Then, enter your friend’s email. After the files upload, enter your email, a note to your friend and send it off. Your friend receives a cute card.
postcardIt’s super easy-as long as you have an mp3. My mac didn’t like the mp3 format so I switched to a pc to create my card. As of this post I haven’t received my card yet so I can’t post it yet. In the meantime, hop on over and send someone a card!


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“couchsurfing” and “Airbed and Breakfast”

Published by Sam on September 8, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized 0 Comments

I was reading an article over at TechCrunch about AirBed and Breakfast - a site where you can find accommodations in people’s homes around the world for a price.  I was thinking it was interesting and part of me suddenly had ‘fears’ about ‘what could go wrong’ and I figure it’s only a matter of time before there’s a CSI episode about this, or someone tries to set up a network of brothels or something like that.  But that’s just the fear talking, and as we all know, most people are actually pretty OK.

Here’s the skinny on AirBed and Breakfast:  People register their accommodations with the site, and say when that space is available, and for how many travelers, etc.  Travelers look for openings in a city they are traveling to.  If they have an airbed (not sure if it’s required, or if one of those foam pads will do, or just a sleeping bag, or what) they can stay at the place for the stated price.  Some of the prices are low - 25 dollars for a place in Portland, for example.  Others are a bit steep - 3,000 dollars for a whole house in San Francisco.  If you read through the comments on the TechCrunch post, you’ll get a great range of both fearful reactions and defense of the program.

Now, apparently AirBed isn’t the first of this kind - Couchsurfing.com has been around for a while, and it’s free - couchsurfing.com seems more about meeting new people, making friends, and things like that.  Looking through their site, there are a lot of people worldwide who take part in the community, the experiences are almost all positive ones, and users seem very happy with the way it works.  You look for people in a place you’re going, and find out what kind of accommodations they have available - how many people can stay with them, for how long, what the environment is like, things like that.

Going beyond these two sites, it seems that people have been doing this on craigslist for quite some time - there are categories there for housing swaps, temporary housing, etc.  Lots of rooms for rent over the labor day weekend, for example.

Now, looking at this from a big picture perspective, is this the wave of the future - finding more ways to share our limited resources, for free or for a price? Will we see Ziphouse as the next evolution of Zipcar?  Will we start seeing boarding houses cropping up all over the place like during the Depression, with people traveling all over the place to get temporary work, then moving on when the job is done, like carnies in the summertime?

(“Like carnies in the summertime…”  I’ll have to remember that - maybe i can put it in my next play.  Or even better, that’ll be the title of my next play.  Yeah… a dystopian near-future epic about the collapse of some global system or other.)


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Fuelly helps you focus on your fuel economy

Published by Kate on September 5, 2008
Categories: Personal, Social and Travel 1 Comment

Gas mileage is one of those things I feel like I should give more of my attention than I do. Oh sure, when the day (finally!) comes for me to upgrade my vehicle, miles per gallon will play a starring role in the selection process, but as far as my day-to-day consumption goes I’ve been rather blissfully apathetic. Fuelly may be just the tool to change my ways.

The primary purpose of Fuelly is to help you keep track of your vehicles’ gas mileage. Sure you could do this with a spreadsheet, but Fuelly also lets you update from your mobile device, compare your mileage with others, share tips and participate in discussion fora about getting the most out of every gallon. For those who need a little extra incentive to avoid jackrabbit starts you can even earn a gold star for your “best tank.”

Fuelly is still new; the creators are already responding to requests for features and fixing the little things that need to be fixed. I learned about it from the folks over at Wesabe, a web-based personal finance program I reviewed last year that I still use regularly. The Wesabe folks are already talking about integrating the two and I can’t wait to see what they come up with!


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google chrome - tabs with a mind of their own

Published by Michael on September 3, 2008
Categories: Web 4 Comments

Google Chrome just came out and I was kind of excited to give it a shot. I particularly enjoy that in the planning of this browser they anticipate bugs and unsavory things to happen during a typical web experience.

The rundown. Chrome is a browser, similar in function and appearance to the popular tabbable browsers out there: Firefox, Safari, IE, etc. The first thing I enjoy is the lack of clutter, it is clear that the developers wanted to maximize useful screen space, it’s similar to viewing Firefox in “full screen” mode. Chrome treats each tab as its own independently processing application, this is particularly handy when you get a website with buggy scripting that causes the browser to stall. Instead of losing all of your other opened tabs and the entire program, you just lose that single tab. Neat, right? They even have a task manager for your tabs, so you can “end process” one if necessary. I like this feature. A lot.

Aside from the very basic differences (there are many more, but I’d need a lot more room to expand on them) there are functionally some neat things happening. When you open a new tab, a grid of website previews loads on the page, these websites are your most frequently visited sites. This is supposed to be a big time saver, though I don’t see it–if something is bookmarked, all I need to do is go to the bookmark, mouse-wheel click it, and it opens in a new tab, or in toolbar bookmarks, simply mouse-wheel click. Though, now that most of my bookmarks are all in del.icio.us (or should I say, delicious) this truly might be more efficient than logging in, searching, clicking.

Speed. I’ve noticed that most sites seem to load noticeably faster than in other browsers. When doing multi-tasking, this is especially nice since as I mentioned before, each tab is its own process and functions independently. Their nifty comic (I love the idea of using a comic to explain a process or technical something, it’s the perfect mode for non-video text/visual information) of the development process hints to when Windows ran asynchronously and each process would have to wait its turn. Things get ugly when any process fails, because the rest in line will continue to wait, forever.

A little more about the background of the project from the developers:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGmO7Oximw8[/youtube]

Privacy. A feature that would be handy for browsers used by multiple people is called incognito. This feature makes the browser record zero history and private information from content in the designated tab(s).

Let’s see, what else? Oh, right. You can drag a tab outside the window to create a new window of itself. You can drag tabs between windows too. I do a lot more tab dragging lately, this would definitely be handy. Also, the box where the URL usually goes also functions as your search box and history. Download status shows at the bottom of the window, no pop-up!

Currently, my only gripe with Chrome is my dependence on add-ons for Firefox, there are so many good ones and I like them a lot. This may just be the clincher for a permanent browser swap for me. However, it’s definitely my new backup browser! It appears that Google is working on an API for third-party add-ons to be released later on…promising.


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