More Waycool Websites

Here's the next installment of way cool websites compiled for Interface, the monthly newsletter of MacNexus, the Sacramento Macintosh User Group. This list covers September through November 2008.

AnnualCreditReport.com
This site is the ONLY centralized service authorized by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). You can request and obtain a free credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) in accordance with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. The three companies have set up one central website, toll-free telephone number, and mailing address through which you can order your free credit report.

Center for Environmental Oncology
Have you ever wondered if cell phones really can be pose health risks? Check out the latest advice from an international expert panel about cell and wireless phones electromagnetic radiation emission. A diagram dramatically shows how risk increases for young children who are more susceptible to electromagnetic fields.

Federal Citizen Information Center (FCIC)
This service began in 1970 as the distribution outlet for free and low cost Federal consumer publications sent out from the Government Printing Office (GPO) facility in Pueblo, Colorado. Info is available by toll-free telephone as well as electronically.
The most popular publication is the free Consumer Action Handbook, an annual guide to making the best deals and protecting yourself. Order by phone at 1-800-333-4636 or download from the website.

Federal Trade Commission Identity Theft
I’ve mentioned this site in my articles on identity theft. It’s still a key source both to help you guard against the theft of your personal information or find help to deal with the loss.

Geekipedia
Find out definitions for what’s hot in the geek world by using Wired Magazine’s Geekipedia, “people, places, ideas and trends you need to know now.” The only entry for J so far is Steve Jobs. Other items of interest at wired.com are articles from current issues of Wired Magazine and 12 blogs on topics such as new gadgets and gaming.

Government Information Online
If you need help finding something, you can even chat online with a government information librarian (the hours are Central Standard Time Monday through Thursday, 8am to 6pm, Friday 8am to 5pm) or fill out an online form to request an email response.

HeroBuilders
If you are into election collectibles, order plastic action figures, plush dolls and pez toppers of Barack Obama and John McCain at this site. There are also three Sarah Palin action figures. If you are looking for a gift for someone who has everything, why not buy a custom pez or action figure?

JibJab
JibJab, a digital entertainment studio based in Los Angeles, became well known during the 2004 US presidential election when their video of George W. Bush and John Kerry singing This Land is Your Land became a viral video hit. The site offers humorous sendable eCards and videos. If you like Mr. Bill humor, check out this video.

Money Magazine Best Places to Live 2008
If you are thinking about relocating or just want to know how your city or town rates, check out this site from Money Magazine. Under quality of life, you can look at categories including fast commutes, most singles and clean air.

Museum of the Moving Image
The Museum of the Moving Image offers wonderful exhibitions online in addition to those in its Astoria, NY facility. My favorite exhibition is The Living Room Candidate; it features more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952. You will also find articles by leading critics and scholars, an international Calendar, and a Research Guide to online resources.

National Geographic Videos
This site provides incredible videos of all types of natural disasters. You can watch videos that show wildfires in hot, dry regions and avalanches in cold, moist ones. Also featured are earthquakes, lightning, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanoes.

New York Times Movie Reviews
Browse or search 28,000 New York Times movie reviews. Included in the FREE review archive are all films reviewed since 1960, reviews of all Best Picture Academy Award winners, as well as The New York Times guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made. You can browse by title, year, genre, critic and country of origin.

Office of Women’s Health
You will find a wealth of downloadable fact sheets and brochures at this site, a service provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One item I thought would be helpful for all of us to use is the “gender neutral” My Medicines brochure.

Urban Dictionary
There are lots of reasons to bookmark this online dictionary of contemporary American slang. Of course it will help you to stay on top of new words and new meanings for old words, but also provides a wonderful way to see the effect of cultural happenings on the American language. However, personally I think the most fun reason, especially for MacNexus members, is to celebrate the success of Urban Dictionary’s founder, Aaron Peckham. Aaron was an active member of MacNexus throughout his high school years before leaving Sacramento to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is the son of long-time MacNexus member, Doug Peckham.

U.S. Social Security Administration
Check out your full retirement age based on the year you were born, use any of the variety of benefit calculators or read the FAQs (frequently asked questions) to give you a good overview of the information you need to know to prepare for your future.

USA.gov
If you are not sure where to find specific topics, start here. There is an alphabetical listing of broad topics ranging from benefits and grants to voting and elections. In addition, there are links to an A-Z agency index and information aimed at specific audiences (e.g. kids, teens, parents, seniors, military/veterans and Americans abroad.

WebExhibits
This interactive, online museum “challenges visitors to think and explore scientific and cultural phenomena in new ways.” My favorites are Daylight Savings, Causes of Color and Calendars through the Ages. In addition, you can compare the regular page layout and the SpicyNodes view that uses sophisticated radial mapping technology.

Wordie
Since I’m playing online Scrabble frequently, I’m even more interested in learning unusual words. This site lets you make lists of words and phrases and easily share them. Your lists are visible to everyone but can be added to by just you, a group of friends, etc. You can add citations and comments to words and lists, or make private notes for yourself.

Great Tips from AARP online

These three articles from AARP provide really useful and easy-to-understand information.

Cash Flow Control: Ten Easy Tips to Help You Make the Most of Your Money includes info about the unique risks of debit cards, and how they differ from credit cards.

Watch Your Documents Overseas includes a variety of info, e.g. guarding against theft and how to avoid excessive cell phone charges.

Can’t Afford to Travel? How to Keep Your Family in High-Tech Touch includes info about videochatting using iChat or Skype, uploading photos to Flickr and blogging.

Way Cool Websites

I write a monthly column of way cool websites for the MacNexus, the Sacramento Macintosh User Group. I have decided to post them here instead of emailing them to a select group. Here is a compilation of those I have included in July and August 2008 lists.

Bad Fads
This site “was created to take a fun and nostalgic look at fashions, collectibles, activities and events which are cherished by some and ridiculed by others.” Feed your thirst for nostalgia with fashion entries such as bellbottoms, Farrah Fawcett hair and Nehru jackets. Another favorite category of mine is events where you will see photos of flagpole sitting in 1924 and telephone booth stuffing in 1959.

BenefitsCheckUp
BenefitsCheckUp, developed and maintained by The National Council on Aging (NCOA), is “the nation's most comprehensive Web-based service to screen for benefits programs for seniors with limited income and resources.” Examples of topics covered are tax relief, prescription drugs, social security, in-home services and transportation.

Coolsig
If you've ever wanted to add way cool signatures to your email message, check out Coolsig and choose your favorites from over 4,000. Examples of categories you will find are: Battle of the Sexes, Life's Questions and Pick-up Lines. If you have never added a signature in Apple's Mail software, just open the preferences and click on Signatures, then add away - I have 10 currently).

Geekologie
This site is “a geek blog dedicated to the scientific study of gadgets, gizmos, and awesome.” The day I visited two items caught my eye: the 3G iPhone and the Mask of Emotion. My interest in the new iPhone needs no explanation; the mask, “a project from the Digital Media Design Dept at Hongik University in Korea, trades facial expressions for LED emoticons. The default setting is no expression, but if people shake hands with the wearer, the mask smiles.”

Google Zeitgeist
This Google website pulls together interesting search trends and patterns. The search statistics are automatically generated based on the billions of searches conducted on Google and provide “a cumulative snapshot of interesting queries people are asking – over time, within country domains, and some on Google.com – that perhaps reveal a bit of the human condition.” For 2007, iphone topped the list of fastest rising.

How Stuff Works
I included this award-winning site in 2004 because I had found its information on gas pricing really helpful. I felt it was worth another mention because besides its compendium of easy-to-read and understand articles on how things work, there is a wide variety of videos as well as. You can search by keyword or in categories from animals to travel.

Morse Code Translator
This fun site lets you type letters, numbers and punctuation into the top box and press the Translate button. You will see the Morse code in the bottom box or if you want to hear how your entry sounds, you just press play.

Ninjawords
Web hacker Phil Crosby created this very fast online dictionary ninjawords because ninjas are smart, fast and accurate. You can even compare definitions by looking up many words on the same page. If you wish, you can see your word lookup history too.

Our Documents
This website is a cooperative effort among National History Day, The National Archives and Records Administration, and USA Freedom Corps. A special feature is “a list of 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.”

Rulers
You will find lists of heads of state and heads of government (and, in certain cases, de facto leaders not occupying either of those formal positions) of all countries and territories, going back to about 1700 in most cases. Also included are the subdivisions of various countries (the links are at the bottom of the respective country entries), as well as a selection of international organizations. The screen shot shows an excerpt from the May 2008 listing.

Sidestep
Named as the top 2007 travel website by CNN.com/travel, this site is lets you compare top aggregators. “A handy matrix at the top of the results page gives an overview of the lowest prices pulled from 600 airlines across 200 sites. And refining the search by departure time or airport is a breeze.”

Snopes
Snopes, also known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is the most widely known site for validating or debunking urban legends, Internet rumors, email forwards, and other such stories of uncertain or questionable origin. Whenever you get an email offer that seems too good to be true, check Snopes.

Where Has the Time Gone

Since my last entry, my life has been a whirlwind of activity. Looking at the life map I did for my Infopeople online course, Effective Time Management for Library Staff gives a quick overview of my commitments. I made this life map using Inspiration mindmapping software (available for both Macintosh and Windows). Check it out by downloading a free 30 day trial.

FREE Fun Custom Images

This cool example of visual poetry is really simple to create. Register for a free Image Chef account and then use the poem feature. You can write a comment or poem in the shape of hearts or other symbols and easily post it to MySpace or your blog.

At the 2007 California Library Association

What a whirlwind four days I spent at the 2007 California Library Association! Here I am in the Maze of Technology showing the differences between an iPhone and an iPod Touch. I'm the one with the orange apron.

One of my roles for Infopeople involved coordinating presentations by master speakers; after months of communicating with Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder, futurist Bob Treadway, Shawn Gold,head of marketing and content development for MySpace and Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With Customer everything finally culminated in great programs.

You can share more of my experience by viewing Infopeople techie Eileen O'Shea's Flickr collection. The photos take you behind the scenes during booth set up as well as providing closeups of many of the mesmerizing offerings.

Halloween Necessity

You can order this Halloween necessity from one of my favorite online gift sources, Archie McPhee. Yes for only $17.95, you can have your own Creepy Hand Bowl.

Pot-Shots from Ashleigh Brilliant

I have been an Ashleigh Brilliant fan since I first saw his pot-shot postcards and books in the 80's.

If you aren't familiar with his work, brilliant thoughts in 17 words or less, be sure to visit his website.

I'm writing about him now because his creations are now available on t-shirts. The one I bought would be a great gift for baby boomers or anyone who feels like an older person!

Yahoo's Easy Avatar Design

If you haven't designed an avatar yet,
check out Yahoo Avatars.
Then use your creation with Yahoo! Messenger.
I designed mine as a reminder of my disco days.

Teaching Classes for Macintosh Users

I teach classes at monthy workshops sponsored by MacNexus, the Sacramento Macintosh computer user group. I used my iPhone to take this photo of some of the attendees looking at websites during a class on how to search the Internet.

Preventing Computer Stress Injuries

If you find yourself getting stiff or just concerned about the number of hours you sit at a computer, think about looking at advice from a few sources as well as trying software. The software I am testing out is MacBreakZ Macintosh software (by the same company, Ergonomix is available for Windows). It reminds you it's time to take a break and provides exercises on a timed schedule that you can preset.

Here are a few sources of information online that I have found especially helpful:

• Ergoblog, a blog that provides lots of great information about office ergonomics and how to deal with repetitive strain injuries.
• Office Space Ergonomics, an online slide show provided by the Mayo Clinic.
  

My Personalized Logo Items

I have become a fan of t-shirts and baseball caps, so I decided to see what my logo would look like. I wore the outfit shown here at the American Library Association 2007 annual conference held in Washington, D.C.

My earrings are also part of my wizard identity. Since I don't want to have my ears pierced, I am always on the look out for interesting clip-on earrings. For this look, I found what are known as adhesive embellishments, and glued them to earring backs.

I liked these logo items so much, I also had a long sleeve t-shirt, sweat shirt, hoodie and mousepads made for me.

This photo was taken at a board meeting of the Continuing Library Education Network and Exchange (CLENE) Round Table. I am the editor of the CLENE quarterly newsletter, the CLENExchange.
I am also a blogger for the CLENE blog, CE Buzz.

Exploring Web 2.0 Tools

Another milestone along my Web 2.0 learning curve happening today!

I've had this blog since 2004 and have tried out lots of new online tools over the years, however, I've not learned much about html.

I'm a "template kind of person" who likes to find easy to understand examples and just customize them with my specifics.

I'm a Mac user and for blog entries, I use MarsEdit, a shareware program that costs $24.95. MarsEdit is described as a powerful blog authoring made simple with an email-like interface for editing and publishing.

My newest aha today was to figure out how to add a Twitter badge to this blog. Scroll down to the bottom to see the lines at the very bottom of this page. As you can see today I was reading about iPhones.

What I'm doing - Twitter
* Reading mail from Twitter saying the company bought iPhones for all of its employees! 16 minutes ago
follow me on Twitter

Twitter describes badges as "widgets that display your latest twitter
updates on your myspace, blogger, facebook, typepad, or other web
page. They're great for letting your visitors know what you're
doing right now and keeping your page up-to-date via SMS, IM, or
other Twitter device."

I tried it with great success because I got an email from Twitter saying they "recently made it much easier to grab, customize, and install the badge that's right for you." Even though I still consider myself using training wheels, at least I'm able to be creative!

On Blogging

Why are blogs so captivating both to read and to write?

Flash back to 2002 by reading these two articles...

• The Blog Phenomenon by John D. Dvorak in PC Magazine online in February 2002

• The Blogging Revolution by Andrew Sullivan in the May 2002 issue of Wired Magazine

Dvorak, a technology columnist provided a list of reasons why people blog (i.e. write personal diaries online):
• ego gratification
• antidepersonalization
• elimination of frustration
• societal need to share
• wanna-be writers

Sullivan, a libertarian conservative author and political commentator included the following thoughts in his article...

"Blogging is changing the media world and could, I think, foment a revolution in how journalism functions in our culture."

"Blogs do two things that Web magazines like Slate and Salon simply cannot. First off, blogs are personal. Almost all of them are imbued with the temper of their writer. This personal touch is much more in tune with our current sensibility than were the opinionated magazines and newspapers of old."

"The second thing blogs do is - to invoke Marx - seize the means of production. It's hard to underestimate what a huge deal this is. For as long as journalism has existed, writers of whatever kind have had one route to readers: They needed an editor and a publisher. Even in the most benign scenario, this process subtly distorts journalism. You find yourself almost unconsciously writing to please a handful of people - the editors looking for a certain kind of story, the publishers seeking to push a particular venture, or the advertisers who influence the editors and owners. Blogging simply bypasses this ancient ritual."

He ended his column by saying, "Check back in a couple of years to see whether this is yet another concept that online reality has had the temerity to destroy."

I checked Andrew's current blog, The Daily Dish today; it is one of five Atlantic Voices offered by The Atlantic Monthly online.

I love reading and contributing to blogs for two main reasons:
1. As a reader, I learn new things from those who blog
2. As a contributor, I am stimulated to generate my own ideas or search out interesting pieces of information to share with others

I write for two others besides this one:

Infoblog, started by Infopeople in 2004 as "a resource for keeping libraries up to date with new information and technologies."

CE Buzz, started by the Continuing Library Education and Networking (CLENE) Round Table of the American Library Association (ALA) in 2007 "to provide a thought-provoking resource for those interested in and responsible for Continuing Education (CE) and staff development in libraries."

Magical Serendipitous Searching

I've mentioned serendipitous searching in past entries and today my latest encounter really was magical!

I listened to a segment on NPR during which synesthesia was mentioned. I wondered if my experiences in seeing colors while my eyes are closed were related. My experiences didn't seem connected, so I decided to do a Google search to return sites with all of the following words: seeing color eyes closed

That search brought me to When Our Eyes Are Closed, What Do We See?, a fascinating entry in a blog titled, The Splintered Mind. The blog is written by Eric Schwitzgebel, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Riverside.

Not only did I find lots of information about the topic, but also I was moved to add a comment providing details about my own experiences. This opportunity to share was truly magical.

Pacific Rim Street Festival

At Sacramento's 15th annual Pacific Rim Street Festival this weekend, I posed with one of the Lee–Jet-Don Lion Dancers, a Sacramento-based group that puts on traditional Chinese lion dance performances at local events. How magical is that?

On Magical Things

I've decided to add a new element to this blog — to keep a weekly log of experiences I've had or things I've read that made a "magical impact" on me.

This week I had a wonderful evening with Carole, a friend I've known for over forty years. We met during college and both live in the same city, but don't usually see each other more than a few times a year. We caught up on what had been happening in our lives and watched a Netflix DVD, Keeping Mum, with Maggie Smith that wouldn't have had a magical impact on me if we hadn't been together.

It was a wonderful reminder of the value added effect of friendship on enjoyment.

Vintage Library Catalog Cards

For those days when you find keeping up with new technology wearing and miss the old days, mix technology with nostalgia by using John Blyberg's Catalog Card Generator to create virtual library catalog cards for your books or other possessions.

Podcast Potpourri

If you haven't checked what you can either listen to or watch online or even download to your iPod recently, take another look.

Here are some of my favorites:
Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg
Coffee Break Spanish
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks
Real Time with Bill Maher
NPR programs
Nolo Press Legal Podcasts

My First Frappr Map

Check out this neat new social networking site, Frappr, http://www.frappr.com/
Make a map where others who share your interests can join you. This one is for Macintosh enthusiasts.