Technology Update for 2/22/2009
Astronomy.net helps you identify all celestial bodies in your pictures of the night sky. Their promise: “Input an image and we’ll give you back astrometric calibration meta-data, plus lists of known objects falling inside the field of view.” Also, a nice selection of photographs of space on the Flicker group.
Lexipedia.com is a free visual thesaurus, providing definitions, synonyms and antonyms in a visual way. This one’s free, so check it out!
100 Ways to Use Your IPod to Learn and Study Better. Did you know IPods are for more than just music?
Tinychat.com allows you to create a chat room on the fly. Just log in and it creates a web address for you. Then send it to everyone you want to join and then you can chat.
Gmail finally allows you to customize the colors anyway you wish. This is a real nice addition to the web interface. Click on Settings–>Themes–>Choose My Colors
Here’s a good blog post for students (and some teachers) prior to going online. “Behaving Well Online”
I’ve been messing around with embedding different objects into our school website. One useful tool is the ability to embed a RSS feed easily using WidgetBox. Any teacher can embed this by simple copying the embed code into Plain Text (or HTML code) of a page.
Also, Embedr allows you to embed video playlists (haven’t tried this one yet.)
Tech Enthusiasts:
Interested in building a computer from scratch, check out this overview of the process.
Need to create a favorite icon for your website? Here’s a website worth trying out: FavIcon Generator. The Fav Icon is the small graphic that appears to the left of a web address in your browser.
A two-part article and interview defining the term “cloud computing.” I tend to refer to cloud computing as simply: doing what you do on your computer without an Internet connection only on the Internet.
In the News:
Pennsylvania has a bill to ban all electronic devices in schools. Good luck on this.
If you are a Netflix user, Queued allows you to manage your Netflix cue from your desktop.
For Fun:
50 of the Most Insane Things Never Seen on Google Maps
Google Proves Humanity is Sick and Sad, and Absolutely Hilarious
Until next time,
Skramstad