Visual logo directory that specializes in the top 10 faves of each category. Making the internet an easier place.

All My Faves | Why Search?

Twitter and Summize now together for eternity, well at least for now. Twitter’s search feature has never been too spiffy. But now, with the addition of what used to be Summize, Twitter has a robust search tool.

For details, see the Twitter blog article Finding A Perfect Match

Related Reading:
Lounging at Lively (from Doug)
Lively Google (second) life … don’t miss this! (from Hey Jude)

If you decide to join Plurk, can you do me a huge favor and join by clicking here (then directly click on the “Plurk” button)? This will make you my Plurk pal, and that will make me very happy. Plus I get some extra Plurk karma and other goodies if you join via my account. Thanks!

The more I plurk around the more I “get” it. Plurk is a microblogging Web 2.0 tool that let’s you create discussion threads in 140-character bites. But, unlike Twitter, it holds a discrete conversation together. Ginger Lewman has been live blogging Ian Jukes’ presentation today at the NECC 2008 Conference in San Antonio, Texas (NECC also has a Ning Community). Here is a live feed to the session, proving that Plurk keep’s a single discussion intact:

Full feed here: http://www.plurk.com/p/utg6

Liz Davis has a nice video tutorial on Plurk Basics.

You can save Plurk threads for future reference by clicking on “plurk page” link at bottom right of each discussion (see image above), then click on the RSS feed on the following page … subscribe to your favorite RSS reader or simply tuck it away into your bookmarks. I am hoping that they will eventually add a “favorites” feature for Plurk posts. Plurk, like almost any Web tool, takes a little playing around with before you get the hang of the interface and its capabilities. Give it a go, you’ll be glad you got plucked by Plurk.

Related Reading:
Why I *heart* Plurk by Steve Dembo
FAQ: What is Plurk?
From Blip.tv and Liz Davis: Plurk Basics
Liz’s Plurk blog coverage: Seeing the World through Blog Colored Glasses.
The NJ Tech Teacher’s blog post NECC Remote (via her Plurk post of course)
Plurk in a Twitter World

Send messages to twitter using voice!

Not available here in Mexico …. DRATS!

Related Resources:

• Want to make  your very own voicethread with your students or for professional development? Then see this helpful online Voicethread guide from Silvia of Langwitches fame.
• Looking for great resources on digital storytelling?
• EFL Voicethread forum community, Voicethreads for Learning English.

(Note: I have installed FF3 into a separate directory so that I may continue to use FF2, as many of the FF add-ons are not yet updated for this new release.)

Update: Mozilla is claiming a download record for the release of Firefox 3.0. In the first 24 hours the web browser was available the software was downloaded more than eight million times, says its creator Mozilla.

Firefox 3 available today at 17:00 UTC (10am PDT)

From the fine Mozilla developer people:

“This morning at 10:00am UTC we began the process of sending the final version of Firefox 3 to our mirror network to prepare for Download Day. We’re just as excited as you are for our upcoming release, but we’re still putting the finishing touches on Firefox 3: preparing the new mozilla.com website, getting our severs ready for downloads, and doing our final pre-launch checks. We expect to be done at 17:00 UTC – find out what time that is where you are. You can even follow our progress if you’d like!

The files in the FTP directories of our mirrors are – for now – only meant to be used by our testers. We would appreciate it if our fans didn’t follow direct links there that they might see on sites like Digg, Reddit, or Neowin. Downloading them directly can harm our ability to distribute Firefox efficiently, and will also not be counted as part of our attempt to set a Guiness World Record for the most software downloads in a day.

If you’d like to be notifed the minute that we launch, please go to sign up for Download Day. Or just head over to getfirefox.com on Tuesday, June 17th at 17:00 UTC.”

This newest Twitter search tool is cool and pretty … and it delivers the goods. It is complete with RSS, twittable results, popular searches, twhirl-style picture/picture graphics, multiple pages of search results, and a cool converstion “drill down” capability to follow threads.

Related Resources:
Quotably.com – Follow the Conversation. Powered by Summize.
Tweetscan.com – Real-time twitter search with search clouds.

With its sleek interface and social Web features, Flock just may become the browser of choice for edubloggers and others. Why? Because Flock’s feature set focuses on the social aspects of Web 2.0. Edubloggers are also keen on the Web’s social offerings, professional learning networks, blogging, and getting connected. So, let’s take a closer look now that I have been testing the post-beta release, Flock 1.1, for a few days.

Flock offers seamless integration with Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and more. In the screenshot above, I am microblogging with Twitter in the sidebar under the “People” tab, perusing my YouTube favorites in the media streams view strip at the top of the browser, and all that while managing my Flickr account at the same time. The integration between these components is fascinating and timesaving. I can, for example, post the current page URL into a Twitter message with just the click of a link. I can do the same with photos by dragging and dropping them on top of a twitter friend’s tweet. That is cool! Or perhaps I will decide to drop a Youtube video onto my Twitter sidebar to share a video that I just found that my twitterverse might enjoy, too. Flock is one big social frenzy that lets me share as I need to, quickly with no fuss! And, it is pretty to boot. While Firefox is a fantastic workhorse, I have never been fond of its visual layout and design.

At first I was a little disappointed that Flock doesn’t offer a Foxmarks-like equivalent for syncing my bookmarks between computers and for safekeeping should something go wrong. On further inspection, I discovered that Flock has native support for sharing bookmarked favorites with del.icio.us. Isn’t that better? Foxmarks isn’t all that social at all. I want to both safeguard my bookmarks and share them. Flock does this and quite well. Goodbye Foxmarks, one less thing to worry about. I like streamlining and working smarter. I am a very busy person. I can also say goodbye to twhirl, Snitter, TwitBin, TwitterFox, etc. All those extra gadgets, gone!

Bloggers get ready! Flock has a basic bare bones built in blog editor and publisher. In just a few clicks, my edublogs.org blog was linked to my browser. One more streamlining advancement. I am getting happier by the moment. Goodbye Windows Live Writer (well, I may keep WLW since I really like it .. but I don’t really need it now, guess just a matter of weaning).

There are many many more features in Flock that allow me to connect and integrate faster and smarter with an increasingly social Web. Tools like a photo uploader, media bar, a drag and drop sidebar clipboard (links, text, images, etc.), feeds aggregator/reader with folder management, and more.

What could make this even better? Since Flock is built on Firefox architecture, most of the Firefox addons work with Flock, too. Simply navigate to the Firefox addon page and install as usual. P.S. The Foxmarks addon is not compatible, but as already noted, not really all that relative now.

As you can see in the people sidebar screenshot to the right, all my social sites’ activity appears in chronological order in the same timeline. No more bouncing around between Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to keep tabs on what my friends are up to.

Ready to get Flocked? I did, and it feels nice!

Related reading/viewing:
Flock Wins Web Award at SXSW Conference
Edit: My twitter pal Liz Davis’ Flock Introduction video (March 28, 2008)

This would be fun for making different things (print or Web) … plus you could project on classroom screen but scramble the letter order … and play unscramble games (sentences too) .. or place an “x” for wildcards, etc. Or, just to put headers on your (or students) blog posts from time to time!

Also see Tagnautica – Explore the Flickr Tag Space: Really nifty visual word association tool. Just keep following words. Lovin’ all these Flickr API tools!

The floating menu bar magically appears when you hover a second near whichever edge you dock it to. I like the top. You can add programs as you like, change the size of icons, even how much they zoom when selected. Deleting buttons is fun too, just drag to your desktop and they visually explode. Gone!

I only use the XP taskbar to shutdown now .. although you can add a shutdown button to the ObjectDock as well (at the site you can download additional “docklets” that you copy into the program’s docklet folder). Give it a whirl, I think you’ll fall in love with it! It makes using my PC a little more fun and stimulating. And, that makes me happy!

Teaching with Twitter

David Parry (twitter: @academicdave), a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, talks about using Twitter, a microblogging service, for his courses.

Related reading:
How to use twitter in the classroom