Podcasts

I would recommend all three of the podcasts I subscribed to.

Library Loft - Author Brent Hartinger talked about his new book, "Dream Quest" which is Book 1 of the "Tales of Slumberia" series.

National Library of Medicine - I chose this because of our patrons with visual disabilities. I found a podcast on Macular Degeneration and Stroke that was very informative.

Book Talks Quick and Simple - Just as it implies, this podcast by Nancy Keane gives a quick review of new children's books. The one I listened to was less than a minute and was about Jessica Day George's book "Princess of the Midnight Ball.

Bonus Video and Ex. 4

I watched the Wolfram Alpha video. What an incredible resource.

I searched Erlanger, KY, Bangkok, Thailand, and Sri Lanka and got every statistic I would ever need to know about those places. It was amazing. I then moved on to Guitar Manufacturers and was told they hadn't done that one yet. I tried Halloween Candy Sales and came up empty on that one. I then asked about the Solar System and hit the mother lode. Every stat and comparison you can think of was immediately available to me with charts and tables.

After several minutes of playing with the solar system I put in Solar Flare and just got a definition.

Wolfram Alpha is a very useful tool and I hope it continues to grow.

My String Bass professor's name was Dr. Lyle Wolfram. I don't think he's related.

EX. 3 Explore Google Search

This was fun. I tried almost every option but was impressed with these:

Earthquakes. When I checked the world, there had been a 7.2 quake in Chile in the last 2 hours.
Time. I found out that Bangkok, Thailand is 12 hours ahead of us. 10:00am here = 10:00pm there.
Currency Conversion. 2000USD = 181372.994 YEN
Food. Northern Kentucky Indian food gave 2 results. One in Florence (Taj) and one off of Buttermilk Pike (Guru).

Definitely a great place to go for this kind of info fast.

EX. 2 Video

I never realized that Google was more general than Yahoo.
I didn't know you could email from the searchbox in Yahoo or that there was a local or facts option.
I didn't know that you could get video samples during your search on Bing.

Blindsearch

I did three searches for this exercise.

1. Guitar Parts, 2. Electric Mandolin Pickups, 3. PBass Expert

Google won each time with Yahoo a close second. Bing kept giving me things on the first page that weren't even in the ballpark. For # 3 I only got hits for Bass Fishing on Bing.

It's Fotoflexer by a Nudge

I compared Picnik and Fotoflexer for my assignment. Both were very easy to use but I found that Fotoflexer was more user friendly for me. I was able to upload my photo, crop, resize, and play around quickly because the menu tabs were big and gave you a pictorial idea of what it would do. I was able to send my photos to my desktop and Flikr. I could have also sent them to FaceBook or Twitter and several othe social sites.

Flickr Link

Here's a link to my new JBovier Electric Mandolins slideshow.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/clifmayhugh/show/