#58 Being green

Last month I blogged on the library ning about a list of green resources that I'd come across on the virtual hosting blog.

As I worked my way thru the (mainly American focused) list I came across one little gem of a program that I blogged about here.

One resource I really, really, did like - I've downloaded it and use it at home all the time - is greenprint.

When you click on print a document you get the normal print screen but with greenprint as the printer.

It then displays the document in a print preview format with what it thinks is unnecessary pages highlighted in red (you know when you're not paying attention and you print something and the last page is just an ad?)

If you want the page printed you just 'unhighlight' it and the document prints in the usual way. You can also remove logos, banner ads etc before printing.

If you don't need a hard copy of a document you can save it as a pdf.

There is a free version of greenprint or a pay version. I use the free version at home and find it quite useful.
It also keeps track of the money you've saved (in ink, paper, energy, terms) by using greenprint to stop printing the extra pages/logos.

If you're the type of person who always looks at print preview before printing then you may not need this but for the rest of us it is useful.

#57. Feeding my addiction - Tastespotting.

Sandy via Jamie warns us not to visit Tastespotting if we are hungry - so true.

Much as recipe sites/blogs/whatever are not my cup of tea (or should that be homemade biscuit), how can you not like a site where the first picture is of homemade marshmallows with 100s & 1000s on top?

I added the widget fairly easily to my blog, the hardest part was finding the widget to add.

I used my standard cookery search terms - corned silverside and chocolate mousse (separately, not together) and found several photographic recipes for each. (and as a result I am now seriously hungry).

I much preferred Tastespotting to I'm cooked (Thing 50) as I like to look at the pretty piccies of the food rather than the video. In fact I've already looked up several recipes that I plan to cook in the future.

I like that the site's not just about the recipes, there are blogs from people, some about food, some about recipes.

#56. Smilebox

I'd downloaded Smilebox a while ago, played around with it a little, and then went back to Picnik.

Whilst I quite liked Smilebox I didn't want to shell out US$5 per month for the added features. (the main added feature I wanted to use was to add my own itunes music to my photos)

It has a lot of useful feaures, especially in the 'paid' version but I think the main thing against using it in a work situation (apart from the $) is that you need to download it.

We are not really able to download stuff onto our computers at work so this limits Smilebox's usability and usefulness.

At home I'm happy with Animoto, picnik, etc for all my photo fancifying needs although some of the design templates in smilebox are really cute...

#55. Slideshare

I first encountered slideshare at the Beyond the Hype conference where one of the presenters mentioned that her presentation was freely available on slideshare.

I checked it out (both the presentation, and the site) and discovered a wealth of relevant (to me) presentations that I could view and/or download.

There are a lot of web 2.0, and library, presentations available there which means that you can almost see it as a sort of defacto way of tailoring a conference (or should that be unconference) to suit your own personal needs or interests.

I found it a useful creative commons site for storing and sharing online presentations.

#54. Bookjetty

I'd heard of Bookjetty but never looked at it until, at VALA, Polyxena went to a presentation by Schubert Foo and came away really interested in this application.

She told me about it and, like her, I could see the potential for public libraries.

So, of course, I checked it out and, of course, I joined up.

At the time there were only a few melbourne libraries on bookjetty - it has really come into its own since more libraries have added their catalogues to it.

From a library point of view the more libraries that are available to be searched the more valuable it will be as a tool. Being able to access multiple libraries with one search is a definite plus.

#53. LitLovers

It feels kind of weird posting this seeing as I submitted the 'thing'.

However I've completed the first lit course (which deals with formula romance fiction)

It consists of a 'lecture' (15 slides), readings, a study guide and a quiz.

once you've submitted your answers to the quiz (there are seven multiple choice, and a couple of free response questions), it is 'marked' instantaneously and then there is a link to print your certificate.

There doesn't seem to be a pass/fail type option so if you're serious about literature then you probably won't get a lot out of it.

However if you're getting back into lit. or have never read for discussion previously, you may find this a bit interesting.

#52. Clipmarks

Polyxena and Annabel have been singing the praises of Clipmarks for some time and I signed up a couple of weeks ago to see what all the fuss was about!

It's a little gem of a tool - instead of saving (as I am prone to do) the urls to thousands of blogposts in bloglines I can save the posts themselves, or parts of them, in clipmarks.

Depending on my mood the clips can be:

• private (only seen by me when logged in),
• my network (can be seen on my Facebook, myspace, blog, etc.) pages
• public (viewable by anyone)

I still like bloglines and use it a fair bit but I am gradually replacing the saving of posts with clipmarks.

I can see great potential for clipmarks if I could clip things directly to Zoho or Buzzword (that would be soooooo useful)