Ruminate

• MozBackup :: Indispensible. A utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup mail, favorites, contacts, etc.
• Snopes List of Unanswerables :: A log of the unanswerable questions received by the good folks at Snopes (urban legend site). “Does urinating on a lemon tree make it grow quicker/better? “
• Fantasy’s darkest arts make for a bestseller :: It’s always funny to watch an author whine when another makes it big and they feel left out.
• Free eXPert PDF Reader :: Another free pdf reader– lighter and faster than Acrobat.

• Teagames.com - Play Online Games :: Many flash games to waste away an afternoon
• CollaborativeRank — del.icio.us search engine :: Ranks del.icio.us users based on their helpfulness/timeliness of posting (as evidenced by others linking to the same items later)
• cursor-dodger :: A quick little flash game
• Dumbledore Is Not Dead! :: The extraordinary lengths people will go to in order to rationalize even a fictional death.

James Farmer has now posted his thoughts on how not to use blogs as an educational tool as well as how they should be used.

It’s all good stuff, a good portion of which boils down to using the right tool for the right job. I’m quibbling a bit about the use of group blogs. James says not to use them. I think they have a useful place based on my success using them. In order for a group blog to work, I believe a few things need to be true:

• Students should still be blogging individually to their own blogs. Whether through an automated process based on categories or by having them choose when to re-create/summarize/point on the group blog, it is valuable to help them contextualize the different audiences and approaches needed by the different publication spaces.

• The group blog should not be the place for “collaborative writing” as it is tradtionally understood. Most particularly, blogs are not suited for many of the kinds of activities a wiki or wiki-like space might be useful for. The reverse– as James points out– is also true.

• The group blog should not be replicating what might be better facilitated in a different tool, such as a discussion forum.

[ruminate edtech edblogging]

• Something Unpredictable » WP-Dash :: Dashboard replacement plugin– much sexier than the hack I’ve been using to kill the horridly slow RSS feeds.
• OWC Mercury Elite-AL RAID 800 PRO Solutions at OtherWorldComputing.com :: A terabyte of dual raid storage for under $1000
• Pocket Candy MP3 Player :: Basically the iRiver but cooler shape, cheaper, plug and play mass storage, and a little smaller.
• Wholemovement - The Work of Bradford Hansen-Smith :: Folding paper plates into amazing sculptures with no cutting and no pasting…
• Mozilla/PSP :: Mozilla running on a PSP!
• trendalicious! :: Real time view of popularity trends as reflectged by del.icio.us bookmarks

On the Media has an interesting interview with Clay Shirky on the power of wikis in the context of current events and the 7/7 London Bombings. Read the transcript or listen to the interview.

[ruminate wiki shirky]

• H2O Playlist: Home :: Shared, tagged, linked playlists of web resources

Thanks to a pointer from Brian Del Vecchio, I have just now discovered the H20 Playlist service [see some discussion at MetaFilter and Joho the Blog].

How did I miss this? Real answer: because I haven’t kept up with my regular blog roundup, which includes Brian and Joho the Blog.

At any rate, this is an amazing concept that combines a number of interesting ideas: the basic product is a tagged and folksonomized “playlist” of web links to resources (sites, books), along with comments and reviews/ratings. As lists become tangled together through references you can see how influential a list is, as well as maneuver through all the linked playlists. Perfect for educational enrichment. Now let’s get flickr to play too…

This is fascinating stuff that I will be making immediate use of both practically, and as an example of the direction services are going in integrating services and the ideas of social economy, folksonomy, etc.

[ruminate social software h2o h20 folksonomy edtech]

• KCRW Podcasting :: Includes many shows including “Morning Becomes Eclectic” and Harry Shearer’s “Le Show”– this is the best radio station in the country!

• CommonTimes :: a social bookmarking community for news readers
• Pro PHP:: The Podcast - Giving Voice to the Professional PHP Community ::

• The Tea Stick :: Why’d it take so long to make something this useful?
• Smoking Manners :: Japanese signs about smoking etiquette, from touching, to Haiku, to just odd
• Greasemonkeyed.com - Userscript Repository :: New repository for Greasemonkey scripts