Technically Speaking

Today’s quick update includes two sites I recently found while Stumbling.

World Clock

I stumbled upon a site that uses statistics from various government and non-profit entities to show a world clock that displays the population growth, death rates and causes, and other information for a specific period of time. For example, you can see (based on statistical averages) how many people in the world have died of AIDS this year, this month, this week, or today. (As of right now, 3,930 people have died from AIDS today.) Today there have already been 58,000 abortions, and 14,000 people have been diagnosed with cancer. Its really quite sobering.

Pandora Radio

Another site I stumbled across last week was Pandora Radio. This is a site that allows you to pick an artist, then Pandora creates a radio station for you based on that artist. You can customize the station by adding new artists/songs, and by rating songs that Pandora plays. The service is free at the basic level. You can create a membership (also free) to remember your station across computers or sessions. There is even an pay-option that removes advertisements from the radio stream. It’s pretty darn cool for free. I’ve been using Yahoo!’s Launchcast Plus player for a couple of years, but I found Pandora to be a great free alternative that was easier to configure in order to get songs I liked. I also like that with Pandora, if I give a song a thumbs down, the song immediately stops and a new song plays in its place.

One negative of Pandora compared to Launchcast Plus is that Pandora seems to be choppier on occasion, especially if I open a webpage that is graphic intensive, where Launchast Plus was generally pretty impervious to other things happening in my web browser. But again, Pandora is free. And for free, it’s pretty darn impressive.

I Stumbled across the following image today, which I thought was pretty funny. Enjoy!

Source: http://i.thefairest.info/funniest_thumbs/QaDdYu.jpeg

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a while now. It is a tool that takes the concept of “surfing” to a whole new level. When you first join, you tell StumbleUpon (SU) areas that interest you. Then you click the Stumble button (I use a Firefox extension, so the stumble button is always visible on my tool bar). Based on the areas that interest you, SU takes you to a site. Once there, you evaluate the site. If you like it, you give it a thumbs up. If you don’t, a thumbs down. Then you Stumble again. SU builds a profile based on sites you’ve marked that you’ve liked, so it gets better at finding new websites you should like.

Today I Stumbled across a blog entry that points to fifty tools which can help you in writing. The blog originally (2005) pointed to Poynter.org, where the articles were published. In 2006, the articles were removed from the Poynter website, and now the blog entry in question points to the Internet Archive at archive.org.

The list of tools is fascinating, and the tips in the tools are great. I’m hoping that the book “Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer” (by the same author) gives the same info, because I’d love to have a physical copy of the rules.

While at poynter.org, I subscribed to a writing tips podcast, as well as for a writing tips newsletter. I’ll haven’t heard the podcast yet, nor have I received a newsletter yet, so I’ll let you know how I like those after I’ve had a chance to evaluate them.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a great writing tools website that I found while stumbling, in the hopes you might find it interesting too.

Now I’m off to my next Stumble…