More Fun Websites

Am I Annoying
At this fun site you can vote on how annoying people and organizations are. After you read some background information you vote by choosing annoying, not annoying or undecided. You can also search for a variety of categories of celebrities. Here are a few of the A’s —A.C.L.U., Hank Aaron, Alexander the Great, Gene Autry. There are also lists of the most annoying of the year. For 2005 celebrities, Tom Cruise was most annoying and Gene Hackman least annoying.

Love Marmite
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, defines marmite as “a British savoury spread made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer brewing. It is a sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, powerful taste that polarises consumer opinion and prompts its advertising slogan that you either love it or hate it.” Unilever Bestfoods, a major UK supplier of Marmite, maintains two websites: Love Marmite and Hate Marmite; check them out for lots of laughs.

City Museum
Even if you aren’t planning a trip to Saint Louis (MO) anytime soon, you will find the descriptions and photos of the attractions at this unusual museum interesting. There are caves built within a historic shoe factory's spiral conveyor tunnel system, a circus cabaret show, and The Museum of Mirth, Mystery and Mayhem. Don't miss the photo of the world's largest pair of men's briefs.

FOUND Magazine
This website showcases photos of “found stuff” from FOUND Magazine. It all started when “one snowy winter night in Chicago a few years back, Davy went out to his car and found a note on his windshield—a note meant for someone else, a guy named Mario.” That first find has developed into “the witty, inexhaustible, much-lauded periodical featuring an edited array of things formerly misplaced, dropped, or otherwise left behind by others.” Examples of the items are “love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles—anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life.”

Dashboard Of Best Webcams On Net
This site lets you search through the best webcams of the world in real time and set up your own “dashboard” to view up to 15 webcams simultaneously. You can select the speed refresh of the images in the monitor and watch it using your customized dashboard or with one click go to the official website to view just one webcam.

Websites That Will Make You Laugh

Darwin Awards
The Darwin Awards "salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways." If you don't find black humor entertaining, skip this site. Founder, Wendy Northcutt, a graduate of University of California at Berkeley with a degree in molecular biology, began collecting the real stories in 1993. Besides her award-winning website, she has published two books of examples. One example is "the legend of the terrorist who sent a mail bomb with insufficient postage. The package was returned, and the absentminded terrorist opened the package and blew himself up."

Simply Fired
Online job search engine SimplyHired.com, collects stories from those who have been fired. The day I visited, the featured story was about a woman who worked for a local natural bread baking company in Wisconsin as the President's secretary. She created and wore a "cheese-bra" to a Packer's game in the hopes that she would be featured on television during the game and her brothers on the West coast would see her. She was fired because her "display of dairy product was unbecoming."

Blending Mystery and Technology

If you like both mystery books and technology, check out You've Got Murder by Donna Andrews. Her main character is Turing Hopperan artificial intelligence personality (AIP).

Another must for mystery lovers is Stop You're Killing Me, a "site to die for" with hundreds of authors, chronological lists of their books and even a character index.

Interpreting Statistics

Malcolm Gladwell, author of two of my favorite books, The Tipping Point and Blink began blogging in February. While all of his posts are interesting, The PitBull Paradox is great food for thought especially since statistics have such an impact on our lives.

Revisit Your Childhood

Take a look at Kidzworld's list of kids' favorite pranks and practical jokes for April Fool's Day and see if it brings back memories.

Did you ever do these?
• put plastic wrap over toilet seats
• set hidden alarm clocks to go off at very early times
• put sugar in salt shakers
• stick chalk in the blackboard erasers

Word of the Day

There are a variety of ways to keep up with teen lingo offered by Aaron Peckham at his Urban Dictionary website.

You can subscribe to the Word of the Day, use your cell phone if it can send email or has a WAP browser, add a feed to your RSS reader, or put an auto-updating Urban Word of the Day on your website. See info on all of the cool tools.

Unusual Personalized Gifts

If you need something really different for that special gift, try a custom bobblehead doll from Headbobble.

The custom dolls are created from your photo. Prices range from $69 for an individual to $179 for a wedding couple. If you want dolls seated on the motorcycle of your choice, the bike will cost an additional $40.

Here's the description, "Each one is specially made and goes through 3 full days of creation. Including 3D modeling of the face and head, fine tune sculpting, molding, and finally painting by the professional artist to match you skin, eyes and hair color. The custom made head is then attached onto the bobblehead body of your choice with a spring in between."

Another idea is custom printed M&M's. You can choose two colors and have 2 lines of 8 characters per line on each.

For iPod Lovers

If you own an iPod, don't miss Techeblog's Top 10 Strangest iPod Accessories.

Are You Podcasting?

If you are doing podcasts, check out the excellent tips Carson McComas, Internet marketing consultant, entrepreneur, search engine marketer, and web developer provides in his 20 Ideas for a Great Podcast blog entry.

Cute iPod Protector

I just discovered another wonderful Japanese character, a domo-kun—a small brown open-mouthed monster hatched from an egg who lives with a wise old rabbit underground. You can learn how to make a domo-kun ipod protector using this tutorial.

LEGO Robot

I mentioned the MAKE Magazine blog in my last post. In case you haven't checked it out yet, you may be intrigued by a recent entry—a LEGO Mindstorms robot—that detects the direction of sound and follows it!

Two New Blogs

Check out these two blogs I've added to my RSS newsreader:

MAKE magazine's blog - way cool info on do-it-yourself technology

Guy Kawasaki's Let the Good Times Roll - an eclectic mix of thoughts about innovation, technology, entrepreneurs and more

Parodies

Since it is the holiday season, I thought it fitting to check out a parody of the treasured film, It's a Wonderful Life—It's a Wonderful Internet.

Serendipitous searching led me to a parody of the dreaded website 404 error—I have terrible news..


I finally stopped with Chronicles of NANA - The Llama, The Gypsy & The Drawer.

The Best of San Francisco

Yesterday Gail Griffith, instructor for the Infopeople Tips and Tricks for Effective Library Supervision course, and I shared a few of the wonderful experiences one can have in downtown San Francisco.

We decided that our first stop would be the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at the Yerba Buena Gardens. Located behind a majestic waterfall fifty feet high and twenty feet wide which cascades over Sierra granite, the memorial includes back-lit photos from the civil rights movement and twelve shimmering glass panels set in granite and inscribed with Dr. King’s inspiring words.

In addition, we toured the Sony Metreon PlayStation store in the context of how gaming fits into library services, ate at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) café, shopped at the MOMA store and attended/participated in the 20th anniversary production of the Dance-Along Nutcracker. Presented by the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the performance is billed as "the wackiest Nutcracker on earth." To get a feeling of this unique event, see the video preview.

THE Ultimate Solitaire

Hooray, I just got the Mac OSX 3.0.1 version of Eric's Ultimate Solitaire! I had been using the free beta version for months and was thrilled to upgrade from version 1.0 for only $24.95.

The regular price is only $29.95.

If you haven't tried it, read the review from Inside Macintosh Shareware.

Magical Browser Home Page

Why not surprise someone with their own name or special message on a browser home page?

See my samples—Google and Yahoo

Make your own at Logo Maker.

Serendipitous Searching

Serendipitous searching happens when your quest for information on a particular topic leads you unexpectedly to find something interesting — whether or not the result is connected to your original query.

The Internet makes it much easier to experience this type of searching.

I decided to search for the phrase "serendipitous searching" to find out more about the topic and not only did I find definitions and examples, but also I found Banana Slug, a wonderful tool that promotes serendipitous surfing by adding a random word along with your search topic or phrase. I found the site mentioned in a boingboing entry. Boingboing bills itself as "a directory of wonderful things."

Cool Tool to Keep Track of Library Books

Mac OS X users can keep track of library books using Library Books by Harold Chu. Not only does the program connect to multiple library catalogues, download lists of books you have checked out at each and display them in your menu bar, but also can automatically add entries to iCal to remind you to return or renew them. You can also sync your Palm handheld or mobile and be reminded while on the move.

Some of My Favorite RSS Feeds

Here are some of my favorite RSS feeds:

43 Folders provides a wealth of tips in four areas: 1) productivity and time management, 2) Mac OS X programs and technologies, 3) ideas about modest ways to improve your life and reduce stress, and
4) cool or helpful shortcuts that makes life a bit easier

Ehow provides clear instructions on how to do (just about) everything

IT Conversations is a listener- and underwriter-supported network of high-end tech talk-radio interviews, discussions and presentations from major conferences delivered live and on-demand via the Internet.

Learning 2005 University provides video, audio and text segments to trigger conversations and dialogues in the learning field.

Songs of Love: a Wonderful Charity

Take a look at this wonderful video from a segment on 60 Minutes with Dan Rather.
I first heard about Songs of Love when it was featured on the Today Show in 1998 and have donated funds every year since.