On looking at the list of (free) download sites I decided to try spiralfrog - solely because I liked the name. Unfortunately spiralfrog doesn't download outside the US. I then tried Amazon which also doesn't download outside the US.
Hmmm. Next it was off to Stereogum where I was able to download a 'premature evaluation' copy of Franz Ferdinand's Tonight. Stereogum had a pretty good range (some bands even I'd heard of!) There was some Radiohead but I figured that was a gimme as Radiohead are known for releasing their music online. There was a Springsteen track, some Dandy warhols, and a few others that i'd heard, and heard of.
I initially had some problems downloading - I seemed to get caught in a loop that allowed me to play the tracks only - but it turned out that it was Quicktime causing the problems. Once I'd downloaded a newer version things went smoothly.
Stereogum was easy to use but I doubt that I would find much music there that I would want to download (my musical tastes run from show tunes to the 70s & 80s - with the occasional hi-fidelity or radiohead thrown in for street cred)
I generally use a combination of Limewire & Youtube for my *free* music downloads but for this exercise Franz Ferdinand's Tonight slots neatly into my ipod between West Side Story & Rod Stewart!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thing #69: Feed my Inbox
I'm currently following 439 blogs using bloglines and receive between 200 & 300 updates a day.
With those statistics in mind I wasn't too sure about feed my inbox, but what the hey it is explore, discover, play, after all so I gave it a try.
On the feed my inbox home page you are asked to enter a website url and your email address.
Luckily HCPL Techincal Trainer had warned us in his post to enter the url of the rss feed and not the plain old home page url.
Once that is done you get a confirmation email from feed my inbox, and then updates from the website are emailed to you.
The feed arrives in your inbox as a standard email - with links as needed - (think email message version of usual bloglines update)
Given the number of updates I get each day I think I would prefer to have them sitting in bloglines waiting to be read rather than clogging up my inbox.
I could conceivably use it for sites that update only rarely - an email update would make sure I saw it and it wouldn't get lost among the bloglines.
However for the time being I'll stick with bloglines.
With those statistics in mind I wasn't too sure about feed my inbox, but what the hey it is explore, discover, play, after all so I gave it a try.
On the feed my inbox home page you are asked to enter a website url and your email address.
Luckily HCPL Techincal Trainer had warned us in his post to enter the url of the rss feed and not the plain old home page url.
Once that is done you get a confirmation email from feed my inbox, and then updates from the website are emailed to you.
The feed arrives in your inbox as a standard email - with links as needed - (think email message version of usual bloglines update)
Given the number of updates I get each day I think I would prefer to have them sitting in bloglines waiting to be read rather than clogging up my inbox.
I could conceivably use it for sites that update only rarely - an email update would make sure I saw it and it wouldn't get lost among the bloglines.
However for the time being I'll stick with bloglines.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Thing #68: Filtering Flickr
1. FlickrCC
Keyword searches Flickr to bring up a patchwork window of pictures tagged with the search term. I searched for the term chocolate and this is what I ended up with...
2. Tag Galaxy
Now this one is a lot of fun though the documentation, as the author points out, is very basic. I started by searching for chocolate and when it brought up the matches I also got the option of refining my search by cakes, desserts, cream, cookies, etc...
This would be an awesome tool if it had the option of searching by creative commons attribution.
Here is my result for chocolate...
I also found tag galaxy more to my liking search wise although flickrcc had the major advantage of the creative commons search. I would probably use both of these again - as I can see work related potential in both of them.
Uploading the results to the blog
Basically I did a screen dump and then cropped them in paint (and one in picnik), saved them as jpgs and uploaded them that way.
There may well be an easier way - however this one worked for me...
Keyword searches Flickr to bring up a patchwork window of pictures tagged with the search term. I searched for the term chocolate and this is what I ended up with...
2. Tag Galaxy
Now this one is a lot of fun though the documentation, as the author points out, is very basic. I started by searching for chocolate and when it brought up the matches I also got the option of refining my search by cakes, desserts, cream, cookies, etc...
This would be an awesome tool if it had the option of searching by creative commons attribution.
Here is my result for chocolate...
I also found tag galaxy more to my liking search wise although flickrcc had the major advantage of the creative commons search. I would probably use both of these again - as I can see work related potential in both of them.
Uploading the results to the blog
Basically I did a screen dump and then cropped them in paint (and one in picnik), saved them as jpgs and uploaded them that way.
There may well be an easier way - however this one worked for me...
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Thing # 67 Stress savers
1. Dial a human. It's American (which is a shame as it would be good to know which buttons to push quickly to get a real person at the other end of the phone instead of a menu of numbers to select from.)
2. Custom Guide. This one's a keeper. It's a series of pdf quick (cheat sheet type) guides for Microsoft products for PC, and for Mac products. The sheets are not designed to be manuals but rather a reminder type (what does F4 do again - that sort of thing). If you work @ Boroondara think the 2 page tips & tricks guide we got when we changed to Outlook. I've already printed off the one for Evernote.
Suspect I'll be using this site again.
3. Where is your username registered? This had potential as I have *several* different user names on many different sites. You enter your user name and click cjeck and the site goes through and checks that user name on about 70 sites. I guess if your user name is truly unique then it would be more useful but I would use this more for fun than for anything else. I tried my most unique login name (which I have at gmail, yahoo, hotmail) and it was already taken on 51 of the 69 sites (and most of them were not me - so I guess it's not as unique as I thought!). I doubt I'll use this one again.
Of the three custom guide is certainly the most useful on a personal level and on a professional level. It's a site I'll certainly be recommending to our pc users (especially the novice users) as I think many of them would find it extrememly useful.
Definitely a site for the borrower toolkit.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Thing #66 Directory 2.0
I like the idea of customisable start pages which is basically what allmyfaves and 43marks are.
Previously I'd toyed with allmyfaves, netvibes, pageflakes, clutterme, and mysurfpad before deciding on mysurfpad.
What I liked about mysurfpad was the clean lines and the way I could customise to suit me. Having said that though I tend to have my 'must check' sites as home pages (tabs) in my browsers.
I've blogged previously about my own version of browser wars - when I log onto the web I open:
IE7: (home tabs - gmail, my website, yahoomail, hotmail, blog 1)
Firefox: (home tabs - bloglines, twitter, facebook, gmail, my website blog 2,)
Flock: (home tabs - my surfpad, gmail, blog 3, blog 4, webmail)
These are the websites I use regularly - and I have other favourite websites set up in mysurfpad so that I have minimal clicking to get to where I want to go.
I'd looked at allmyfaves previously - I didn't really like it as it didn't suit my style of working. It seemed way too cluttered to my eye and I found it quite busy & distracting. I would/could use it for one-off search categories although it is very US based (which could be good or bad depending). I'm sure it did everything I would want it too but I just didn't take to it (personal taste I guess).
43marks was new to me but after looking at it for this exercise I think I will stick with mysurfpad.
43marks is basically lists of bookmarks that you can customise - I didn't mind the look and feel of it and might have been tempted to use it had I not already found mysurfpad.
Sites I haven't used before.
Under shopping I had a look at shopzilla which is a US based shopping comparison site - having seen a Halloween party today I looked at Halloween costumes - couldn't decide between wonder woman or catwoman.
Under dating I looked at plenty of fish - before I even needed to register it had produced a list of men (and women) either in Australia or looking for Australians to meet.
I think maybe a novice user might find this extremely useful mainly because of the exisiting categories which give a very good indication of the sorts of lists you can create/personalise.
Once again I have nothing against 43marks - I just didn't like it enough to switch to it instead of mysurfpad.
Previously I'd toyed with allmyfaves, netvibes, pageflakes, clutterme, and mysurfpad before deciding on mysurfpad.
What I liked about mysurfpad was the clean lines and the way I could customise to suit me. Having said that though I tend to have my 'must check' sites as home pages (tabs) in my browsers.
I've blogged previously about my own version of browser wars - when I log onto the web I open:
IE7: (home tabs - gmail, my website, yahoomail, hotmail, blog 1)
Firefox: (home tabs - bloglines, twitter, facebook, gmail, my website blog 2,)
Flock: (home tabs - my surfpad, gmail, blog 3, blog 4, webmail)
These are the websites I use regularly - and I have other favourite websites set up in mysurfpad so that I have minimal clicking to get to where I want to go.
I'd looked at allmyfaves previously - I didn't really like it as it didn't suit my style of working. It seemed way too cluttered to my eye and I found it quite busy & distracting. I would/could use it for one-off search categories although it is very US based (which could be good or bad depending). I'm sure it did everything I would want it too but I just didn't take to it (personal taste I guess).
43marks was new to me but after looking at it for this exercise I think I will stick with mysurfpad.
43marks is basically lists of bookmarks that you can customise - I didn't mind the look and feel of it and might have been tempted to use it had I not already found mysurfpad.
Sites I haven't used before.
Under shopping I had a look at shopzilla which is a US based shopping comparison site - having seen a Halloween party today I looked at Halloween costumes - couldn't decide between wonder woman or catwoman.
Under dating I looked at plenty of fish - before I even needed to register it had produced a list of men (and women) either in Australia or looking for Australians to meet.
I think maybe a novice user might find this extremely useful mainly because of the exisiting categories which give a very good indication of the sorts of lists you can create/personalise.
Once again I have nothing against 43marks - I just didn't like it enough to switch to it instead of mysurfpad.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thing 65 - It's hard to think about anything else
I was curious about exactly why the US was teetering on the brink of depression and why (or how) the US economy had got itself into this position.
I started with the msnbc timeline - reasonably good but it did seem to assume some knowledge that i didn't have.
I then moved onto how stuff works - this was an excellent explanation of mortgage backed securities - how they work and what happens when home loans are defaulted on in record numbers. It also helped me understand the msnbc timeline a little better.
I finished up with kiplinger.com's 15 things you need to know about the panic of 2008.
Of the three - I found how stuff works to be the most useful for a non-us reader - I understood it all a lot better after that. (and some of the stuff I heard on the business news this morning suddenly makes a lot more sense.)
I started with the msnbc timeline - reasonably good but it did seem to assume some knowledge that i didn't have.
I then moved onto how stuff works - this was an excellent explanation of mortgage backed securities - how they work and what happens when home loans are defaulted on in record numbers. It also helped me understand the msnbc timeline a little better.
I finished up with kiplinger.com's 15 things you need to know about the panic of 2008.
Of the three - I found how stuff works to be the most useful for a non-us reader - I understood it all a lot better after that. (and some of the stuff I heard on the business news this morning suddenly makes a lot more sense.)
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Thing 64. One Hit Wonders
Site:CopyPasteCharacter.com
What I thought: Could be useful as it's basically a stencil like sheet of characters (think wingdings or webdings) that you can copy and paste into a document. I can't think of a time in the recent that I would have used it if I'd known it existed (except perhaps the £ symbol for the requests module at work?)
What I thought: Could be useful as it's basically a stencil like sheet of characters (think wingdings or webdings) that you can copy and paste into a document. I can't think of a time in the recent that I would have used it if I'd known it existed (except perhaps the £ symbol for the requests module at work?)
Site:Kuku Klok
What I thought: I probably wouldn't use this one - my pc is in a different room and I suspect that I would sleep thru kuku klok as the alarm I chose (slayer guitar) was loud but probably not loud enough. I'll stick with talking clock and mobile phone alarm!
What I thought: I probably wouldn't use this one - my pc is in a different room and I suspect that I would sleep thru kuku klok as the alarm I chose (slayer guitar) was loud but probably not loud enough. I'll stick with talking clock and mobile phone alarm!
Site:Stormpulse
What I thought: Not being in a hurricane threat area I probably wouldn't use this although it was interesting to track the progress of hurricane Ike (the only active one at this particular moment). It gives you details such as the current location of Ike's centre, wind speed, pressure, & movememt. Like I said - interesting but probably not useful for me.
What I thought: Gotta admit this one was fun! I entered a name set of American and country Australia asnd this was what I got. (When I changed the name set to England/Wales I was Sienna L Patel!). can't imagine why I would use it (especially while I am not being evil) but it was fun to play with.
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These name sets apply to this country: American
What I thought: Okay this one I liked (and actually signed up for) - it searches photos such as Getty Images (eg editorial or creative). i searched for gymnastics beijing olympics and found some awesome photos that i hadn't seen anywhere else. I expect to make a lot of use of this one.
Two blogs that I read religiously (for web & library stuff)
What i learned today
Nicole Engard's blog about "Web 2.0 and programming tips from a library technology enthusiast, What I Learned Today… covers blogs, rss, wikis and more as they relate to libraries."
I find lots of interesting sites via her blog and it keeps me learning, and thinking about some of these sites could be useful to me both at home and at work.
Swiss Army Librarian
Brian Herzog's blog about 'the hitchhikers guide to fear and loathing at a public library reference desk' is another that leads me to all sorts of interesting sites and ideas - his post about using firefox on public library pcs is almost a' bible' to me - I so want to do this where I work.
There are a lot of other blogs that I more than skim read ( I'm following 380-something blogs on a wide range of topics) but these 2 are 2 of the best imho (and for my purposes) as they frequently inspire and seldom disappoint.
What I thought: Not being in a hurricane threat area I probably wouldn't use this although it was interesting to track the progress of hurricane Ike (the only active one at this particular moment). It gives you details such as the current location of Ike's centre, wind speed, pressure, & movememt. Like I said - interesting but probably not useful for me.
Site:Pixadus
What I thought: I was interested in this one as Gitte & I are currently 'working' on an online photos demo for early October. Pixadus is basically social rankings for photos - you opt for + or - for photos and they move up and down the rankings accordingly. I searched for Paris and found some ace photos (I voted for one fo them just to see what would happen). I think I'd use this site to search for photos but probably wouldn't get around to posting any of mine to it.
What I thought: I was interested in this one as Gitte & I are currently 'working' on an online photos demo for early October. Pixadus is basically social rankings for photos - you opt for + or - for photos and they move up and down the rankings accordingly. I searched for Paris and found some ace photos (I voted for one fo them just to see what would happen). I think I'd use this site to search for photos but probably wouldn't get around to posting any of mine to it.
What I thought: Gotta admit this one was fun! I entered a name set of American and country Australia asnd this was what I got. (When I changed the name set to England/Wales I was Sienna L Patel!). can't imagine why I would use it (especially while I am not being evil) but it was fun to play with.
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Your Randomly Generated Identity
| Gender: | Name set: | |||
| Save: | ![Firefox FireForm Profile [http://fireform.free.fr/]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sL3MCbaYdxD521wnzmXjCG1avtqFfh_awi7rZMgFumCpFxg19xtjw6xx885x7JatA6N2BNxKcRIS4vzEB5N2RwZ_ZIgz5VQT_wlEi5fKu59w=s0-d)  | Country: |
Janet T. Laney
89 Creedon Street
Gowanbrae VIC 3043
Website: Babblevee.com
It looks like Babblevee.com is available! Click here to register it!
Email Address: JanetTLaney@mormoncoffee.com
This is a real email address. Click here to use it!
Phone: (03) 9605 2415
Mother's maiden name: Smith
Birthday: March 10, 1950
Visa: 4916 7608 6275 8186
Expires: 2/2010
UPS Tracking Number: 1Z V69 W36 43 5845 674 4
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What I thought: Okay this one I liked (and actually signed up for) - it searches photos such as Getty Images (eg editorial or creative). i searched for gymnastics beijing olympics and found some awesome photos that i hadn't seen anywhere else. I expect to make a lot of use of this one.
Two blogs that I read religiously (for web & library stuff)
What i learned today
Nicole Engard's blog about "Web 2.0 and programming tips from a library technology enthusiast, What I Learned Today… covers blogs, rss, wikis and more as they relate to libraries."
I find lots of interesting sites via her blog and it keeps me learning, and thinking about some of these sites could be useful to me both at home and at work.
Swiss Army Librarian
Brian Herzog's blog about 'the hitchhikers guide to fear and loathing at a public library reference desk' is another that leads me to all sorts of interesting sites and ideas - his post about using firefox on public library pcs is almost a' bible' to me - I so want to do this where I work.
There are a lot of other blogs that I more than skim read ( I'm following 380-something blogs on a wide range of topics) but these 2 are 2 of the best imho (and for my purposes) as they frequently inspire and seldom disappoint.
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