Britannica Widgets

Encyclopaedia Britannica has recently made a series of widgets available which can be embedded into a blog or website. They come in a variety of "flavors," e.g. U.S. Presidents, brain, dogs, philosophy, with more to come.

The widgets are dynamic and show a snippet of information about one of several topics under that particular heading. There is also a link to the article in Britannica itself. One caveat is that the version of Britannica used is the commercial version which is different from the version many schools and colleges use. But it's still a pretty nifty little series of tools.

I've embedded several into the library web pages. See, for example, the page on U.S. history which uses the U.S. Presidents widget.

For more info on the widgets and to watch a video about how easy it is to embed them in your site go to Brtiannica's Assets & Widgets page.

Try Bit.ly

Bit.ly is becoming the new standard for link shortening.

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting posting about it here. "A little startup called Bit.ly has unseated TinyURL as the default link shortening service on Twitter. This isn't just about shortening links, though. "The truth about Bit.ly," enterprise software analyst James Governor said today, "is that it's not a URL shortener, it's a trend management and metrics platform."

This is Bit.ly's link to the California School Libraries Work! wiki .

Embedding Video in a Blog

Well, I finally embedded a video in the library news blog, Library Leaves.

I took a one-minute clip at the Mock Senate yesterday with my little Panasonic library camera. It shows a student, Ian Kaufman, speaking about lowering the drinking age.

I use Picasa at home to manage my pictures and was able to save it there and then insert it using the video insertion tool on Blogger. It worked just fine.

Take a look. Now that I've done it once I may just do it again!

AL Direct, the online journal of the American Library Association, recently (Mar. 25) had a link to a Google Blogoscoped posting about an experiment Google is running which gives more search options using regular Google search "Tony Ruscoe and Philipp Lenssen write: “Google is running an experiment in their search results, apparently shown to a portion of their users. On search results, say for the query comic books, a link in the top blue bar will read ‘Show options.’ Click it, and a side bar full of options expands to the left. One of the most interesting experiments is the ‘wonder wheel’. This will show a Flash-based interactive mini app which starts with your keyword in the center, and related terms around it.”..."

The technology involves downloading a cookie to the specific computer so the blog posting gives the code that needs to be sent to Google to put the "Show options..." into effect.

For a long time I've been waiting for Google to become more graphical and this is an admittedly baby step in that direction.

Some of the other options allow the searcher to limit the search by media type and date range. There is also a tool which give a time line of the search terms.

How useful all this is waits to be seen but it's always good to see what Google engineers are working on.

BTW, there doesn't seem to be anything at Google Labs on this topic/tool yet.

HOW TO: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar

HOW TO: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar

This is great intro to Google Reader and related tools.
Google Reader is a tool which allows the user to read RSS feeds easily.
It was not one of the first readers but has certainly become a very popular one over time.

I use Google Reader extensively. The only challenge is keeping up with all the feeds I want to follow.

This link comes from the folks at Mashable.com and was posted by Matt Singley

eSchool News Adds Widgets

I've added a new widget to the blog (see under Technorati widget) which provides an easy link to eSchool News, a well-known print and online newsletter for the educational community.

I chose to add the Technology News widget since this blog is mostly about tech, but there are two other options--one lists Headlines from eSchool News and the other offers Funding resources. Go to eSchool News to explore the options.

It was very easy to add to Blogger because they offer a direct upload feature from Widgetbox which immediately opens the Blogger edit layout mode from which you can place the widget where you desire on the blog page. Code for Facebook, TypePad, MySpace, and other social networking sites are also available.

Give it a look and you may want to add one of the widgets to your blog or web page.

Cloud Computing

Liz Dodds earlier today sent out a message announcing a website which follows the phenomenon of cloud computing. The site, which is definitely worth a look, is maintained by Brian Dvorak, a teacher in her district, and describes itself this way:

"Cloud computing is a term used to express the process of using web-based applications to accomplish tasks that were traditionally done with desktop applications. Why buy expensive software when you can used web-based applications, many of which are free, to accomplish your computing needs. And all you need is a web browser and a an Internet connection. But how can one find the web application they need without searching for hours on the web? Ah, that is were Cloud Trip comes into play.

Cloud Trip is a free to use directory of cloud computing web sites. In addition, if you have a useful web application you would like to share, sign up with Cloud Trip and post it in our directory. As a registered user, you will also have the ability to rate the posted websites and help promote the best web apps out in the cloud."

The site looks very useful especially because of the rating system for applications which registered users can add to. I had some difficulty registering today but as soon as I'm able I will be exploring the site and adding my own ratings of apps I use. It seems to me that this would be a great site to share with students and teachers to allow them to explore this ever expanding world of web-based applications.