14 Interesting Websites for your Holiday Surfing Pleasure!
These websites are being passed on to you with the holidays in mind. Perhaps you'll have a little time to do some websurfing. So, here are a variety of websites that I hope will be interesting, amusing, or mind-expanding for you. They are not specifically related to special education assistive technology. However, I hope that you will make some serendipitous discoveries.
This website offers ways to explore science, art, and human perception through online interactives, web features, and programs that feed your curiosity.
Mapjack
Mapjack is similar to Google Street view except that the images are better. You may want to check it out and see what you think. Mapjack is on Time's list of top 50 websites for 2008.
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Visuwords is a thesaurus reimagined as a toy. It asks you to think of a word and then turns that word into a universe of bouncing, rotating, vibrating meaning by pulling related words into orbit around it. The words careen off one another like balls on a billiard table until they settle down, at which point you can set them in motion again — or choose a new word. It's highly addictive, especially for English majors.
Visuwords was one of the top 50 website on Time magazines 2009 list
Wolfram is a computational knowledge engine. It is not a search engine. Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its computational power and storehouse of knowledge to
compute the answer.
Photosynth capitalizes on the shift from film to digital with a new way to look at pictures. Instead of arranging photos in an album, the site finds relationships among pictures and digitally composites them to create an immersive 3-D photo environment called a "synth." Photosynth takes your photos, mashes them together and recreates a 3D scene out of them that you can view and move around in. It's different from static photos and video in that it allows you to explore details of places, objects, and events. You can stop it, move around and zoom in to check out the smallest details. You can also look at a photo gallery and immediately see the spatial relation between the photos. Photosynth was one of the top 50 website on Time magazine's 2009 list.
Fonolo
"Press one for English." Fonolo is a website that offers a unique service. It makes the call to that large, impersonal corporation, presses the right buttons and stays on hold for you until a human comes on the line. Then your phone rings and you can talk to a live person about your account. Fonolo also gives you the option to record your conversation as an MP3, just in case your chat with customer support doesn't go that well. Fonolo shows you a visual map of the phone trees of various big companies and allows you to pick your point of entry. A computer does the rest. They offer a free trial. Fonolo is on Time's list of top 50 websites for 2009.
Bing is Microsoft's search engine. It has a very good video search engine. Check it out!
According to Time Magazine's description, "Etsy is the long-haired, Birkenstocked love child of Amazon and eBay. It's a crafts-only marketplace oozing with personality — imagine if Martha Stewart were reincarnated as Ani DiFranco and you get the gist. It's the go-to site for handmade fashion, furniture, toys and housewares." The site feels intimate because Etsy sells labors of love from actual people. Etsy is on Time's list of top 50 websites for 2009.
From the first recordings made on tinfoil in 1877 to the last produced on celluloid in 1929, cylinders spanned a half-century of technological development in sound recording. As documents of American cultural history and musical style, cylinders serve as an audible witness to the sounds and songs through which typical audiences first encountered the recorded human voice. Now they are available in digital format.
NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs, and more. Awesome!
This online magazine is for today's cool parents. They can find out how to pick a Facebook- and Google-friendly baby name, get tips on organizing for the school year and learn how to dress their little girls like the daughters on The Real Housewives of New Jersey. A little scary isn't it? This website is on Time's list of best websites for 2010.
The museum of online museums. This is a fascinating website featuring exhibits from many different museums.
For just $199 you can have a wearable camera . Looxcie is always on, continuously videoing – there's no record button. When you experience something you want to share, just click the Instant Clip button to save a clip of the last thirty seconds.
Live Mocha offers basic instructional tutorials and exercises in some 30 different languages, but the service's real value is in its community. Livemocha has assembled more than 6 million members, each listing fluency and linguistic skills. When submitting an exercise, you have the option to get someone in the community to grade your effort, correcting your pitfalls and helping you hone your skills through the careful lens of a native speaker. It's a social approach to learning a language, and one that's cheaper than pricey software like Rosetta Stone — basic courses are free, and utilizing the community costs a small monthly fee.
And, finally here's an interesting New York Times article about our young people who are wired for distractions.
New York Times Article About Technology
Also, one last note... I heard that these Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) dolls are hard to find if not completely sold out. And I so wanted one! So, if you want one for Christmas, you should order soon! They're about $80.00.
Happy Holidays and Thank you for visiting!
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