Omnivorous Surfer

Youblisher is an interesting site. It takes your PDF document and makes it into a flippable online document. The site requires registration, but it is 100% free.

I tried it out on a simple Word document I've been working on to see how it works. After saving it as a PDF document and uploading it, I was given a link to the publication, code to copy and paste a link to the publication, and code to embed either a small or large cover to serve as a link to the publication. Click on the embedded cover at right to view my document. When on that site, click and drag on a page to turn it.

How cool for students to be able to "publish" their creations in this way!

Spell with Flickr is a very simple website that lets you enter a word or words and then spells out your entry using images from Flickr.

Taking advantage of the fact that today is election day, I created this image:

Make Beliefs Comix is a fun site, even for people like me who are not very creative. I have friends who could do wonderful things there!


This site provides the panels, characters (with a variety of expressions), objects, and word and thought bubbles to create a comic strip in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Latin. It includes links to help you create special characters for those languages. The finished product can be printed or emailed.

Following is a comic I created illustrating a beginning Spanish conversation. Remember I said I'm not creative...

I'm sure teachers can think of lots of ways to incorporate this into the classroom for either their own or students' use: to create conversation or story starters, to practice with dialogue in English or a foreign language, to demonstrate appropriate/inappropriate or desirable/undesirable behavior, and, I'm sure, many others.

You can click on "How to Play" on the website for help, but if you'd like step-by-step instructions check out Russel Stannard's  video tutorial.

I always like science and thought it would be cool to be a chemistry or physics teacher so we could do neat experiments in class. I still like to experiment and am still fascinated by experiments. When I ran across the Scientific Tuesdays ferrofluids and magnets video on YouTube, I figured I'd found a goldmine to fuel my curiosity.

I'll let you look for yourself while I go to the kitchen to try out the "Awesome milk trick!" Oops...it alway pays to look around (at least I can't keep myself from doing so). I found a Steve Spangelr Science "Color Changing Milk" video that has a little different take that I'll have to try while I'm at it.

Hope you can find some fun things to try for yourself or with children (or other adults) or perhaps for a science fair project simply by exploring YouTube!

UNFORTUNATELY, eTRADE HAS ENDED THEIR "BABY" CAMPAIGN AND NO LONGER MAKES THE BABYMAIL APP AVAILABLE. (added August 2013)

My last several posts have been way too serious, so I think it's time for some fun. Who doesn't like the eTrade babies ads? Well, I'm sure there are some, and if you're one who doesn't, you won't be interested in this post. For the rest of you, eTrade has posted a little app, BabyMail, that will let you create your own short message to be delivered by one of their little cuties (or your own, though I haven't tried that one out). You can create your own BabyMail below!



Leslie Edwards shared this on her The WebFooted Book Lady blog after finding it on the Techno Constructivist blog, where Carl Anderson used it to share six reasons for using social networking in schools. You can learn about all kinds of things by reading blogs!

These sites utilizing flickr photos are just fun!

After you have entered a phrase, phrasr will pull a photo from flickr for each word in the phrase. For each word, you can change the photo, selecting from among the suggestions they provide, or choose to have no photo for that word. When you are finished, phrasr puts together a flash slideshow of the photos you have chosen with the phrase, which you can view again or email to someone (perhaps yourself) if you wish. I don't know how long it will be available, but here is an example using a Mahatma Gandhi quote.

bookr uses photos to create a flash book. You can place text on each page and then do a flicker tag search for photos to illustrate the text. This is easy enough kids could do it, younger ones with help spelling the tags/search terms. Here's a sample book I created about clouds; to turn a page, click on its bottom corner.


If you'd like to see other Pimpampum toys, check out the Pimpampum Labs. The 4 x 4 memory game would be fun for kids.

While cheking out woot's deal-of-the-day, I decided to see what was on the blog there. One of the posts led me to One Button Bob. As this post will prove, I am definitely not a gamer. I occasionally play solitaire of one form or another, but I just don't spend time on the computer playing games. This one, though, might provide an occasional diversion from more productive activities.

There are none of the complexities inherent in the types of games enjoyed by true aficionados of such computer pursuits. All you need for One Button Bob is the left mouse button to control his movements--make him jump, speed him up, slow him down, or stop him--to get him past the dangers as he travels through the depths of an ancient castle. However, your control over Bob changes with each screen, and you have to use some problem solving to figure out how to get him to the next screen. This flash game keeps track of your clicks in the upper righthand corner of the screen, so you can compete with yourself or others to see who can get him through to the end in the fewest number of clicks.

Perhaps one of the things I like about this is that it reminds me of the graphics of games for my old Commodore 64.

I'm one of those people who works better (at least I think I do) with some background sound. I usually have some kind of music playing. I think, though the site is designed to provide "sounds to promote sleep and relaxation, there will be times when I prefer the sounds from Sound Sleeping's Drum Sleep Aid/Relaxation Tool. You can choose a music type (drums, flute, or vibes) and up to three sounds (bird song, bonfire, creek, crickets, gulls, ocean, rain, thunder, and wind chimes). Volume can be set for each one to give just the right blend, and each can be set to the left or right speaker for a stereo effect. I haven't tried it yet, but the site indicates that rain produces a white noise that will mask ambient noises. Right now I have wind chimes (which I love) and ocean; I feel like I'm working oceanside, so it's kind of like a vacation. it's very relaxing.

One way to "explore" the world, available from this site, is to view an "organized sampling" of photos. The goal of the Degree Confluence Project is to collect photos taken from each of the 10,538 latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world (39,804 confluences in the oceans and some near the poles are excluded from the project).

On the home page are photos from the 18 newest confluence visits. Those posted today are from such countries as Scotland, Colombia, Libya, Oman, Zambia, Germany, Australia, Mongolia, and the United States of America. Some confluence photos are beautiful, but many are of very ordinary views.

The site indicates that wherever you are, you are at this moment within 49 miles, or 79 kilometers, of a confluence. Anyone could participate in this project. The instructions provided include not only the items need and how to locate a confluence, but also a letter to landowners to aid in obtaining permission to venture onto private property in the process of reaching the confluence.

It's fun to visit the site and see the photos, which are organized by country. It's interesting and, in some cases quite enlightening,  to read some of the "How To..." and "Information" pages.

If you ever order a decorated cake, be sure to pick it up in time to have it redone if necessary. Don't understand why? Check out the Cake Wrecks blog. Amazing what can happen to a cake. Prepare yourself for lots of laughs on this one!

If I didn't have an alarm gadget on my desktop, I'd use Kuku Klok (why do tech people keep missspelling words on purpose??) to help me limit my time on the Internet! All you have to do is set the time. Clean interface. "Swiss made"!

A friend had the coolest wall photo on Facebook, and I found she had created it at photofunia.com. Fun!

Okay, this one is just for fun. Upload your picture to pikipimp and add some bling! It was fun, too, to see myself with long hair...talk about a change!

Wonder how I had managed to lose this one! Among the many printouts I had kept for later use which I found while cleaning out papers was one of insults from Use Wisdom. The site has all kinds of fun things like tongue twisters and computer jokes, some categorized quotes, and some useful things like links to portals and to computer-related information and tutorials. Worth a look...and fun to browse through when you have nothing else to do (in case that ever happens!).
Examples of insults:
"A four-hundred-dollar suit on him would look like socks on a rooster" by Earl Long
"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome" by Oscar Levant
"If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me" by Alice Roosevelt Longworth
"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends" by Oscar Wilde
"He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." by T.S. Eliot (about Henry James)
Okay... I have to quit!

I want one!  http://www.seriouswheels.com/cars/top-vw-1-liter-car.htm

This video is too cool...I want to be able to do this! According to what I've researched, it is NOT fake!