May 10, 2007
Cool web tools: part 3
[Part three in a series of entries on cool web tools]
I haven't contibuted to the "cool web tools" continuing series in a couple of weeks. It's not for a lack of material, though.... I have my own perosnal favorites and also enjoy reading others' top lists. For instance, Read/Write Web recently published their "Top 17 innovations outside of Google". And Information Week Magazine included in their May 7 issue an article on the greatest web software ever written. Fun stuff!
Here are the latest entries to my growing list:
- YourDraft.com : You don't even need to register for this service. Simply create your document in the WYSIWYG editor, enter your email address, and save the document. YourDraft will email two links to you; one is a link to a "read only" copy of your doc, and the other links to a "read / write" copy of the doc.
- PDF Filler : PDF Filler allows you to upload from a file or URL any PDF-based form so that you can fill it out online and then print it. Perfect for those of us with sloppy penmanship.
- WorldCat Identities : Here's OCLC's latest cool release... WorldCat Identities draws upon information in OCLC's WorldCat database (the same service Reeves uses to full interlibrary loans) to compile interesting profiles of authors. Here's a link to the page for Larry McMurtry. I'm particularly drawn to the Publication Timeline graph.
- NameVoyager : This is fun. Simply enter a name, and NameVoyager will create a graphical display of that name's popularity over time [see graphic at top of this entry].
That's all for now.
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2007
Cool web tools: part 2
[Part two in a series of entries on cool web tools]
Here are some more interesting web-based resources that push the envelope in terms of what I'd call business-as-usual functionality.
- Scribd: Ever wish you could painlessly convert a document to PDF without having access to Adobe Acrobat? You can with Scribd! This is is one of the more interesting resources I've run across in recent days. It'll handle multiple formats -- .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .html, .txt to name a few -- and enables you to share your document in an embedded environment. You've got to see this in action to really apreciate the coolness of Scribd
- ObjectGraph: AJAX ("Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) is one of the more stupid acronyms I've run across, but the technology is very useful. It drives many of the "type ahead" features that we see on the web these days, such as the value-added search on Google Suggest. ObjectGraph uses AJAX-like technology to take the usual online dictionary & thesaurus lookups to a new level.
- Pandora: Like to listen to music? If so, you may want to check out Pandora Internet Radio. This service allows you to input an artist or a song title and uses this information to return to you other songs or artists that are along the same vein. Brought to you by the makers of the Music Genome Project
- FlickStorm: enter a keyword into the search box and FlickStorm grabs a bunch of relevant images from the flickr website and presents them to you as thumbnails. A click on a thubnail loads the larger image to your web browser.
- Similicio.us: uses data from the del.icio.us social bookmarking website to provide a "users who like this website also like this one" listing.
- KwMap: pitches itself as "a keyword map for the whole internet". Enter a search term and KwMap returns a visual display of logically related terms across two intersecting axes.
- Ujiko: search engine that looks more like a game console or a component to a 747 instrument panel. Claims to search 6,000,000,000 web pages.
- Kartoo: Flash-based search interface displays results visually in groups of related clusters. Brought to you by the makers of Ujiko.
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)
March 30, 2007
Cool web tools: part 1
This is the first entry in a series of posts I plan to make over the course of the next few weeks. My plan is not to rate, endorse, or otherwise evaluate the included resources (perhaps I have evaluated by assigning the "cool" moniker), but rather to bring attention to these web applications that push the envelope on conventional methods of information search and retrieval.
Enough said -- on to the cool web tools:
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)