Beijing Olympics Search Tools and Resources
The main resources for the Olympics this year are the official website and NBCOlympics.com. There are also a large number of Olympic blogs and Twitters.The search engines this year are also useful. Google is providing some useful one box results. If you search something like beach volleyball olympics you will see scores pulled in from the beijing2008.cn website. Google Maps has also added new feautures for the Beijing Olympics. There is also a downloadable Olympics Countdown Gadget.
Yahoo is also providing box scores if you type in searches like usa medal count and diving + Olympics. You can also quickly obtain athlete information. For example, if you type in Jingjing Guo Olympics you will get an athlete information box that looks like this:
Posted on August 7, 2008
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PBS Launches PBS Kids Play Website
PBS is opening the beta test for a new Internet-based educational service called PBS Kids Play. PBS says the website is designed to provide children ages 3 to 6 with a comprehensive early childhood curriculum. PBS Kids Play will be offered as a subscription service later this year. It uses interactive games and activities to provide a personalized learning experience at home.
The website's curriculum covers skill areas in math, science, language, literacy, creativity, healthy development, and social studies. Parents can read the learning objectives and instructions for each activity. The site also provides a progress chart that helps parents see how each child is advancing through the curriculum, including an indicator of how far the child has progressed in each skill area.
"A critical mass of families now has broadband Internet access and that creates an opportunity to take online learning to a whole new level for a new generation -- and that's exactly what PBS Kids Play is designed to do," said Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, PBS Kids. "PBS Kids Play is a natural extension of the PBS mission to advance children's learning with new, innovative media approaches."
Posted on January 16, 2008
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5 Million Using Geni Genealogy Website
Geni is a new genealogy website that uses Flash and has social networking features like profiles and photo sharing. You start by registering your name as well as the emails of your relatives -- this has allowed the site to grow very quickly and viraly. According to Geni only the people in your family tree can see your tree and your profile.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch blogged recently about how the number of people in his family tree has quickly grown.
When genealogy site Geni announced that it had raised a venture round from Charles River Ventures valuing the two month old startup at $100 million, more than a few eyebrows were raised. For the last couple of months, people have referred to "Pulling a Geni" when they try to raise money at a super-big valuation immediately after launch.Geni looks like a very useful geneaology website. It has already reached the 5 million profile mark according to a this statement and press release from Geni. However, genealogy websites like Genealogy.com and Ancestry.com probably aren't going to let Geni get all the traffic without a fight.
At launch, Geni appeared to be like many other "family tree" websites, just with a better looking and easier to use (Flash) interface. The site is extremely viral. When I first created my account I added my mother and father, along with their emails. They added more family members, who added yet others. Seven weeks after launch there were 126 people in my Geni family tree. Today, Today, after 15 weeks or so, there are 305 people in my family tree. All but three, myself included, were added by others.
Posted on July 3, 2007
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Homeowners Find Zillow Data Intriguing
A Fortune article on CNN/Money explains how many people are using the Zillow.com real estate data site to find out not only the value of their own home but the values of their neighbor's homes as well.
This is what usually happens the first time you visit Zillow.com: You type in your address to check out the Zestimate, an approximation of your home's market value. It appears in a little pop-up superimposed on a photographic map of your neighborhood. The number might make you smile; it could make you angry.The article says Zillow recently added a feature called "Make Me Move" that allows Zillow users to post the value for an offer on their own home that would "cause them to pack up and go." The article says the average Make Me Move figure tends to be about 17% above the Zestimate (Zillow's estimate price for a home).
Next, you realize that the information on your property is incomplete. What about the kitchen upgrade? Your new deck? The landscaping? All that work's gotta count for something. You've spared no effort to convince the assessor that your house is worth less than the official report, but now it's time to primp. So you tap in some modifications and watch your home's value rise.
Next, you check your neighbors' Zestimates. Then your childhood home, a best friend's place, your boss's house. Just as you open your address book in search of more targets, your spouse calls out from the bedroom, wanting to know what the hell you've been doing for the past two hours. "Nothing, honey," you say, shutting the laptop and trudging off to bed, caught red-handed in a loop of real estate yuppie porn.
Posted on February 8, 2007
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Wikipedia Founder to Launch Search Engine Called Wikiasari
The Times Online reports that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans to launch a search engine called Wikiasari.The project has been dubbed Wikiasari — a combination of wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, and asari, which is Japanese for "rummaging search."Wikiasari may have a difficult time catching the major search engines. Human power might produce better results in some areas but even the human powered web directory at dmoz.org is not as popular as it once was. A visit to Wikiasari.com takes you this Wikia page that says "Amazon has nothing to do with this project." The page also recommends the Exalead search engine.
Mr Wales told The Times that he was planning to develop a commercial version of the search engine through Wikia Inc, his for-profit company, with a provisional launch date in the first quarter of next year.
Earlier this year he secured multimillion-dollar funding from amazon.com and a separate cash injection from a group of Silicon Valley financiers to finance projects at Wikia.
However, it is understood that amazon has also collaborated with Mr Wales on the search engine project and is expected to lend its support to the venture in the future.
Posted on December 23, 2006
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Readers Read Launches Classic Literature Resource
ReadersRead.com has launched a Literary Classics Resource. The website provides the top links for over fifty authors of classic literary works. Some of the authors included are Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Alexandre Dumas, Herman Melville, George Orwell, Plato, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, H.G. Wells, Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf. The resource makes it easy to find high quality links that provide information about these well-known authors.Posted on July 31, 2006
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Da Vinci Code Resources
Our sister site, The Internet Writing Journal, has compiled some of the top Da Vinci Code resources on the Internet. The IWJ's Da Vinci Code Links Page includes links to resources as well as configured Da Vinci Code searches.
Denounced as heresy by the Catholic Church and hailed by feminists and others who believe that Mary Magdalene was never given her due as a co-founder of Christianity, the book was recently made into a feature film starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou which has broken box office records around the world. The book and the feature film release of The Da Vinci Code have raised questions about the history of religion and of the Catholic Church. The book also has made people curious about ancient symbols and mythology and inspired people to learn more about history and study art. In addition to all the controversy, The Da Vinci Code is great fun: it's a thriller that holds the readers' interest, as its protagonists jet around the world hoping to solve an ancient puzzle.In addition to Da Vinci Code resources the special section also includes links to resources about Leonardo Da Vinci, Mary Magdalene, the Knights Templar, ancient code and symbols. Resources to articles and websites critical of the Da Vinci Code are also provided. If you are interested in surfing the Web for more information about subjects covered in the Da Vinci Code the IWJ's resource is a great starting point.
Posted on July 10, 2006
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Web Users Flock to Volcano Site
Reuters reports that web users have flocked to a website set up by the Alaska Volcano Observatory that shows the Alaska's active Augustine Volcano.The site has received over 253 million hits since the start of the year, becoming a popular destination for everyone from scientists to amateur volcano buffs who want to keep tabs on the restless 4,134-foot (1,260-meter) volcano.The website includes webcams of the volcano as well as data, stats and information about the volcano.
"The Web has really revolutionized information dissemination and consequently the level of interest and knowledge of the public," said Shan de Silva, a volcanologist and professor at the University of North Dakota.
Augustine Volcano, on an uninhabited island about 175 miles southwest of Anchorage, roared to life on January 11 with an explosion that shot ash miles into the air. It sits under a major air travel route between Asia and North America.
The volcano has remained active since then with a series of ash-producing explosions but has settled into a period of less-dramatic lava burbling, dome building and occasional small ash puffs.
Posted on April 4, 2006
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Discovery Launches Online Homework Help Resource
The Discovery Channel has launched Cosmeo, an interactive online homework help tool. The site contains over 30,000 educational videos, interactive games and learning tools. The site is designed to help kids with schoolwork, research projects and mastering complex concepts. Parents can also help kids check to see how they have done on quizzes and tests. The site has material for K-12 grade levels. Cosmeo also offers interactive educational games, home learning tools, 15,000+ images, and a library of teacher selected websites. Discovery is currently offering a 30-day free trial to Cosmeo.Posted on March 17, 2006
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2006 Olympic Coverage
NBC has the televised Olympic coverage this year. They also have a large website at NBCOlympics.com that provides continuous coverage of events and medals. The official website for the 2006 Winter Olympics is located at: Torino2006.org. Other good resources include Olympics.org, NPR, AOL Sports and Yahoo. The U.S. Olympic Team also has its own website with information about the athletes located at usolympicteam.com. The blogs are also covering the Olympics and a list of blogs as well as highlights of blog coverage can be found on BloggersBlog.com's 2006 Olympics section.Posted on February 13, 2006
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User Maintained Lexicon Website Launches
Whatdoesthatmean.com is a new wikipedia-styled website that focuses on helping different English speaking cultures understand each other. The site includes listings for different words that can be edited by the site's users. Each word entry includes the meaning, usage, definition, explanation and trivia. For example, the entry for the Australian stickybeak term says "someone who is more than usually interested in someone else's business, a busybody." Posted on November 11, 2005
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Surfers Love Research Resources
A recent Nielsen//NetRatings report found that use of online education and reference sites is booming -- a 22% spike this year. The report mentioned the following websites:WWW Virtual Library, RefDesk.com and the Librarians' Internet Index are also great research-related sites. More research links can be found here. Also, library websites tend to be excellent starting points for online research.
Posted on November 7, 2005
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Surfing for Hurricane Wilma Links
Hurricane Wilma is strengthening in the Caribbean and looks poised to threaten Florida and possibly the east coast of the U.S. We have set up coverage and a links section on our BloggersBlog.com website to make it easy for websurfers to find Wilma's links and news coverage. Links to blogs, charts, graphics and news resources can be found in our special coverage Hurricane Wilma section on BloggersBlog.com.Posted on October 18, 2005
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Hurricane Rita Blogs and Links
Our BloggersBlog.com website has a special Hurricane Rita section offering links to blogs and coverage about the storm and what bloggers are saying about it. It is similar to the ongoing blog coverage we have been providing for Hurricane Katrina.Posted on September 22, 2005
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Web Surfers Are Building the New Web
BusinessWeek has an interesting article that says the new web is being built by you -- the web surfer. The article talks about websites that are powered by users like MySpace.com, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Meetup and Wikipedia.And this time, it's Your Web. No longer content to be merely viewers and consumers, people increasingly are taking an active part in creating their online lives. With its longtime tagline, "The network is the computer," Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW ) made the case that computing transcended hardware. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz thinks another crucial shift is under way: "The network is now your computer."The article also says that the web will continue to develop more services like the ones mentioned above and new programming tools will make the web even more user-friendly and customizable.
At many new Web sites and services, the creative energy of countless souls virtually crackles off the screen. They're cobbling together their own services from customizable Web sites and Lego-style pieces of Web software. By the millions, they're gathering and disseminating their own news with blogs and podcasts, creating customized article and photo feeds from their favorite sites and even annotating them with helpful text tags that others can search for on the Web site del.icio.us. They're producing their own entertainment on video, social-networking, game, and photo-sharing sites such as Yahoo's Flickr. At MySpace.com, some 21 million monthly visitors spend up to several hours a day sharing their thoughts, photos, and music with friends on personalized home pages. Ditto at Cyworld, which claims almost a third of South Korea's 48 million people as members.
"The Web isn't so much a place anymore," explains Ross Mayfield, CEO of Palo Alto (Calif.)-based startup Socialtext Inc., which offers services to create collaborative Web sites called wikis. It's more of a doorway into services, from the user-written reference site Wikipedia to the community organizing service Meetup to the folksy classifieds site Craigslist. As Mayfield noted in a recent blog post, "They Google (GOOG ), Flickr, blog, contribute to Wikipedia, Socialtext it, Meetup, post, subscribe, feed, annotate, and above all share. In other words, the Web is increasingly less about places and other nouns, but verbs."
Posted on September 19, 2005
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Hurricane Katrina Resources
We have set up a large collection of Hurricane Katrina resources on our BloggersBlog.com website at http://www.bloggersblog.com/hurricanekatrina/. The Hurricane Katrina resource includes blogs, citizen journalism, media websites and search tools. We will also post updates with new links and information on that site.Posted on September 1, 2005
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Urban Dictionary is a Slang Goldmine
The Urban Dictionary is a user-edited dictionary that allows people to research, add and edit the words listed in the dictionary. It is best used as a slang dictionary and some of the entries are quite funny like this entry for "I am sparticus."
This is something that is good to use in either a crowded room full of geeks or in an IRC chat.Anil Dash lays on the praise for this user-edited slang dictionary and refers to the Urban Dictionary as The Other Wikipedia in a recent post.
Originated from sparticus...
You: "I am sparticus!!!!"
Everyone else: "No, I am sparticus!","I am sparticus", "He lies. I am sparticus" and so forth.
Whenever I hear about what a great community-edited, user-contributed site Wikipedia is, I think about the unsung site that's just as much of a success: Urban Dictionary. Where else can you find definitions for meh and cool beans and thousands of obscure sexual practices of varying degrees of debauchery?
Posted on July 18, 2005
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