Link: Sneak preview: Engadget RSS feed as seen via Tiger Quartz Extreme - Engadget - www.engadget.com.
Some one leaked a shot(movie) of Apple's OS X Tiger's new screensaver with RSS function. Looks pretty slick. Check it out.
Link: PodGuides.net
Here is a cool idea...PodGuides. I have heard of museum's using iPods for audio tours before but this is a site that has some samples and offer other ideas. It has incorprtated a pdf map of the locations and when the audio is playing a picture of the site/painting/or whatever the tour is about, is shown in the album art area.
This could have some cool applications in education. Perhaps having students make a PodGuide of their neighorhood, or battlefields, or atwork, or their school for newbies.
This site offers not only the free guides themselves but free software for multiplatforms that makes the guides. Here is a screenshot of the application.
Link: Free federal tax filing : Lifehacker.
I thought that getting a free tax return by using the online service at TurboTax was out of the question until I went to this blog site. In years past you needed to fall within a certain income bracket to get a free efile. BUT NOT NOW. Thank you Lifehacker for the tip! So this year I am doing my taxes online again through TurboTax but for free...federal that is...my state return will cost me. (thanks California, sheesh) Check it out. Why have we not heard of this in the news? Or did I just miss it? Hummm?
Link: On switching from PC to Mac : Lifehacker.
I have spend most of the day reading the blog of this guy named Michael Hyatt. He is contemplating switching from the PC platform to a Mac. It is very interesting to track his lust for efficiency and now love affair with his 15" Powerbook. The comments on his blog entries are a really good read. Many people have offered some great advise to him. Pros and cons have been honestly laid out before him. He is a pc power user so the switch is a big decision. I will enjoy continued reading of his first thoughts of his new found adventure in the Mac world. I see a switcher in the making. :-)
Link: Flickr Graph.
This site uses Flickr's API to generate a graph of your contacts. It's a socail visualization too that is pretty darn cool. Not only will it show you your contacts but click on a contact to see theirs and if any of them are connected to your other contacts. It's a big algorithm web of fun.
Link: MacFixIt - mac.column.ted: Pages vs. AppleWorks.
As I sit and dream of getting my hands on iWork, I stay informed by articles like this. This article is a nice comparsion of AppleWorks and Pages. I have used AppleWorks but use Word for most of my word processing needs. If it is something simple, I have been using TextEdit much more than before. I like that it is quick and simple. Once again, I think that students will be able to put together some really nice looking documents with Pages that they can be really proud of.
Link: LearningTimes Network.
I just finished listening to and watching a taped session about how RSS can help learners and educators. How the session itself was done was quite remarkable. It's a virtual classroom done through javascript that allows a full interaction of learners and presenters. I loved that I was learning beside people from literally all over the world...snycronously....and asyncronously. Go ahead and try it. Click on the above. You might have to register but it's free an worth it.
But anyway, back to my musing about what I learned. The presenter, Mary Harrsch, showed how she used Blogger for 7 different blogs. I was glad to see other educators using this weblog resource, as that is one that I am currently experimenting with myself. What I thought was interesting is how she uses a different blog for each of her various interests. By splitting them up into seperate blogs, her readers can have a focused gaze into which ever area intersts them in particular. This as opposed to reading through posts that, from a well educated woman like her, and quite unique and varied.
I was also impressed with the great idea of a web "zine" that was a common place to see her feeds in one place. Here is Mary's called Roman Times. I can see a teacher using this to pull together a classroom publication. Or for the teacher to be able to see all of the students work on one page as opposed to having to see them individually as feeds. I can see a great appeal for a "one stop shop", if you will. And then, of course, she had inbedded RSS feeds to the individual blogs list within the e-Zine. Currenly I am teacnhing biology and can see this easily incorparated into this discipline. I do need to find the html template for setting up a "Zine" like this. And what about server space too to host the site? Hummm, this is what I need to look into more to make this a reality.
Also one of the cool eye openners was how she used the API from Flickr to create a webpage of streams for particular tags. See hers here for the roman empire and ruins. Once again I would need to find an html template so that I could plug in my own terms. Then that same problem of getting it hosted somewhere.
But I like how this is all dynamic and ever changing. Change always gets my students to come back for more and varied information. In essence, the site is just a aggreagation of all of her blogs and of pictures that have to do with the same topic. (pictures tagged as such by other flickr users). Now off to see how I can make this happen in my own world.
Link: ((O)) Pet's Mobility.
Ok, so I don't have a cell phone but perhaps I'll get one for my dog?!?!?! You've gotta see this.