Things I learned this week – #6

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Doug Belshaw

On a personal note, I learned this week never to give people more information than they strictly need, and that spending time making an eBay listing look good does actually pay dividends. Oh, and that Creative-Commons licensing my photo of some famous local graffiti was very helpful… 😀

Top 3

Wow! We’re going to be multitouching everything fairly soon if this comes to market! (via @timekord)
It’s too long to post here, but check out this very long and very detailed State of the Internet 2009 infographic!
WWII imagery is now in Google Earth as an official layer. This rocks for History teachers! 😀

Tech.

Google Chrome is a great browser, but have too many tabs open and it gets a bit cramped. That’s where VerticalTabs becomes handy!
HTML 5 isn’t going to save the internet. Apparently.
You know the ‘lorem ipsum’ dummy text that people use for layouts? You can now do something similar with images. :-
A ‘census’ of files available on Bittorrent has been carried out. Guess what? Only 1% were non-copyright-infringing… (via BoingBoing)
Remember the humorous ‘iPhone vs. Stone’ comparison graphic from a couple of years back? Try this one comparing it to the Apple iPad… (viaTechXAV)

Siri is a virtual assistant for your iPhone. Useful if you live in a big city and spend your days at restaurants, hailing cabs and going to the cinema. I don’t.
‘Grant Theft Impairment’ is the term for the carry-over of violent habits from games like Grand Theft Auto.
Need to generate wall-size, high-res, Google Maps? You need this then! :-p
File this under ‘inevitable but cool’. Astronauts are now using Twitter to send TwitPics from space.
Tuenti is Spain’s #1 social network for teens and #1 for the iPhone(via @ewanmcintosh)
MultiURL is a (potentially) a better version of linkbun.ch for getting lots of URLs to people (via @dkuropatwa)
You can now preview iPhone apps in your browser. About. Freakin’. Time.
The BBC has a huge microsite (oxymoron?) to support their Virtual Revolution series (via @SwanseaITeC)
Phrasr grabs Flickr photos to illustrate any phrase you enter (via @planetadams)
Almost half of all UK mobile phone internet time is spent on Facebook. About half of mine is on HotUKDeals… (via @josiefraser)

Productivity & Inspiration

Distractivity. Or, how-to-create-a-new-word-to-describe-something-old.
6 ways to be a better presenter. Pay attention to number four! (via @hrheingold)
Here’s 10 tips to sleep better without spending longer in bed. I’m realising just how much of my life depends on the food I eat…
Want to become a minimalist? It’s not as easy as it sounds ! Here’s 10 steps to help you.
Chris Guillebeau and Zen Habits teamed up this week. Check out 9 steps to a thriving, very small business
Lifehacker shows you how to become a GMail master. Keyboard shortcuts FTW! 😉

Education & Academic

Check out this Education futures timeline. Nothing happened between 1657 and 1900?

Now that Prezi’s got education licensing, you may want to check out this guide to the advanced use of Prezi. It’s going to become the new Powerpoint, isn’t it? 😮
Seth Godin pigeon-holes us (and more importantly, our students) into Hunters and Farmers. But in a good, insightful way.
I don’t think there’s no such thing as a ‘digital native’. But if there were, this is what they’d be like. Apparently. (via @wfryer)
Spelling is important. Very important. See below… (via @mguhlin, form a presentation by @cburrell)

Here’s 17 ways to use Second Life in your classroom. This would have been useful in 2005. 😉
50 videos every educator should watch. Apparently. I haven’t seen them all, but definitely check out Ken Robinson on Creativity. (via @robingood)
The 4C initiative is an attempt to ‘increase digital content capacity for education on a global scale’. It won’t succeed. Why? It hasn’t got a cool logo. (via OLDaily)
I came across Penzu ages ago, but couldn’t see its utility. It’s good to see that people are now advocating is an online journal that can be used in schools (via OLDaily)
WWII imagery is now in Google Earth as an official layer. This rocks for History teachers! 😀

Here’s how to ‘Google-proof’ your questioning. I can’t believe teachers really need this guidance. For. Goodness’. Sake. (via @mwclarkson)
Incredible. DirectGov launches kids’ site with same name as gay porn site. You’d google it first, wouldn’t you? (via @josiefraser)
This is a legendary annotated bibliography, and something to which I aspire. 🙂 (via @oddhack)

Data, Design & Infographics

Seemingly aiming to surpass himself, Dan Meyer has posted his 2009 annual report (and, usefully, how he did it). Not only did he have the discipline to gather all this data, but just look at the quality of the finished article!

Amen to this. Some advice for people who make the news about statistics.
The Japanese like their crazy, crazy landing pages (via @presentationzen)

Clothing choices, 1941 (via @akipta)
Australians use social media more than anyone else, it would seem.
Wow. There’s a lot of satellites orbiting Earth. And spying on us (presumably).
Data.gov.uk is better than Data.gov – or so says FlowingData. Oh good.

Misc.

The Hourly Press is ‘news about news’ (via @hrheingold)
Seth Godin has some random rules for ideas worth spreading
We’re publicly disappointed all the time. True.
It’s possible to get pregnant even if you don’t have a vagina. Wow, bizarre!
Want to write an incendiary blog post to drive lots of traffic to your blog? Here’s how!
Here’s a nice idea: Spotify for Desert Island Discs.
Someone buy me this 8-bit tie. Please. (via Mashable)

Quotations

Any circumstance that has the power to hold you back also has the energy to push you forward. (Anon.)

Limited expectations yield only limited results. (Susan Laurson Willig)

At a distance from home a man is judged by what he means. (Anon.)

You’re stapling wings to a pig and hoping it will fly. It’s hard to see how you get from there to an F-16. (Art Stine)

Virtue is not left to stand alone. Those who practice it will have neighbours. (Confucius)