New & not so new stuff: #1

Every week I play with lots of different tools and resources that are either new or more likely,  just new to me.  I often intend to write blog posts about them, but usually don’t get around to it! So I’m going to try to do an occasional blog post with short entries about various tools & services. That way I won’t lose track of interesting new stuff that often ends up buried in my bookmarks. Good intentions… we’ll see. If you find this useful, let me know so I’ll have incentive to keep doing it!

• Netted by the Webbys: Better Living through the Internet – I’m not sure where I heard about this one, but I love it. Every day, one great web site is delivered to my email. One great site a day, that I can handle!  Check out their archive to get a sense of what they send.
• Voxopop – An interesting new audio tool. Essentially a message board where you can discuss a topic, but you record your messages and share the audio. Sign up and try it out by sharing an audio note on my ‘talkgroup‘ (via: Phil Bradley’s “I Want To”)
• Vocaroo – While we’re on audio, check out this incredibly simple to use tool. Just click on record, save your audio and get an embed code to put the audio on your web/wiki/blog. I saw this used with a fun Google Earth Lit Trip,  each stop on the lit Trip had a short audio of the kids describing a bit of the story.
  
• Timetoast – I’ve tested a couple of tools to create timelines and this one seems like the easiest one so far. It’s intuitive and has quite a few features. Add photos, links and text to each point on the timeline. Publish the timeline to share it and embed it on other pages. Content can be viewed as an interactive timeline or a table. Handy as a presentation tool for student research projects,  history of your library or even a family history tool. All sorts of interesting uses.
• Google Public Data Explorer – For the data geek in all of us (well, me at least).  This service makes some very large, world-wide sets of economic and demographic data easily accessible. Choose from a variety of data views, make your own comparisons and animate the data over time. The “bubbles” views are amazing. Pick two data set to compare and bubbles move across the graph, growing and shrinking, representing the changes in the data over time. This graphic links to a live chart. Have fun!