Thunder

After reading through Mike Temple’s Open Resource Centre I came across a link to the Juice Analytics blog that contains several postings about Excel.

I particularly like the idea of the in-cell bar charts and the follow up post, that takes the original post further based on ideas left in the comments to the first post. The example below shows a quick illustration of this.

What a simple but effective idea of using the ‘REPT’ function and a little change to the font.

Time have just released their 50 coolest websites, I really liked several on the list including ‘The Human Clock‘ and old favourites Digg, YouTube and Google Spreadsheets.

How do we select our finalists? We evaluate hundreds of candidates—some suggested by readers, colleagues and friends, others discovered during countless hours of surfing. Many of this year’s choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips.

I also found on the page a link to ‘25 Sites We Can’t Live Without‘ - this list includes so many websites that I use on a weekly basis.

Can you think of any sites that they have missed off the list, apart from this blog of course

Mike Temple has just emailed me to comment on my blog, I am not sure whether he was talking about this one or my work blog, it is nice to get positive comments about your blog and I welcome anymore than anyone would like to send

In the email he pointed me to his blog, which contains lots of useful information and tips, I do find the font and colour a bit hard to read though but apart from that it appears to be a very informative blog.

That is the one problem with blogging, you keep finding or get directed to more and more useful blogs all the time, I am glad I use Newsgator to aggregate all my feeds but they still take a huge chunk of time out of my day to read through and comment when appropriate.

Yet again Ewan manages to assist me in wasting some more time, after visiting his blog earlier today I was interested in his post about MyBlogLog. So I have now spent some considerable time setting up my own account, browsing the various communities listed already, and then installing the widgets on my sidebar.

As Ewan said, ‘I hope that some of my readers will have the time to add themselves so I can get to know them better (it helps enlargen the scope of blogs I have to read, too, if I know who reads me).’ - I couldn’t agree more.

If you are looking for ways to integrate ICT into the MFL classroom then can I recommend you have a read of Joe Dale’s blog at: http://www.joedale.typepad.com/.

Joe’s blog is regularly updated with practical tips and advice on using ICT to enhance the teaching of modern foreign languages.

I have just read on the BBC News site that:

Microsoft is to offer a consumer version of professional tools used to develop videogames for the Xbox 360.

The tools will be available in trial form from 20 August and there is a £55 annual subscription.

How cool is that, it will be very interested to see how it compares to the software we are using in Shropshire schools (GameMaker and MissionMaker).  I will download it on August 20th and keep you informed of my progress.

Micro$oft have just released Windows Live Writer that allows you to write your blog posts offline and then upload them to your blog.

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts using Windows Live Spaces or your current blog service.

Its main features include:

• WYSIWYG Authoring
• Photo Publishing
• Map Publishing
• Writer SDK

You can find out more details and download the application from: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

At present I have been unable to get the application to post to this blog, even though it created a draft posting but it was blank The application is still in beta and I am not sure if it has been configured yet to work with wordpress mu. If anyone else has given it a go on a wordpress mu account it would be great to discuss how you did it

I have just found the Bikely website, put very simply, Bikely helps cyclists share knowledge of good bicycle routes.  At present the site is very young therefore there is not complete coverage, but I can see this site growing rapidly.

As a user you can either submit a route or search for a route.  Once you have found a route you are interested in, Bikely uses Google Maps to display the route.  Those posting routes can include waypoints and/or further information, for example details about places to eat or drink.  The routes can be downloaded as a gpx file for use with your gps device.
So if you are off on holiday or just fancy getting out on your bike give the site a try, when I get some time I will post a couple of routes I have riden along in Shropshire.

I have just checked out how technologically enabled the area in which I live is, this can be done by visiting Spacial Literacy.org.  My area, according to the site, is categorised in the E-Society classification as being in group A : E-unengaged and type A03 : Technology as fantasy. Full descriptions can be found here.

The site also lists other areas that have a similar categorisation two of which are also in Shropshire, namely Shrewsbury and Ellesmere.  From looking down the list many of the areas were rural areas.

This got me thinking, according to the site people in my area are “too old, too poor or too poorly educated”.  I think the biggest problem we have is access to the technology not the desire to have it or our age, income or education.

It appears that the findings have come about following a great array of research but I wonder where they got their data from, I know that three of my four neighbours have got broadband access and use the internet to shop on a regular basis.  I would have to class my neighbours as Group F : Instrumental E-users.

I would be keen to hear what other people think of the results for their postcode and any other thoughts they have on the ‘E-Society’.

Thanks to a new bookmarklet from Sumaato the geotagging of your flickr photos just became a lot easier.

First things first, if you don’t know what I mean by geotagging check my earlier posting.

After you have figured out what goetagging is and you have your photos uploaded to flickr then visit http://labs.sumaato.net/tools/flickr_geocode_bookmarklet/ and drag the bookmarklet onto your browsers toolbar.

The next step is to view the photo in flickr that you wish to geotag, once loaded click on the bookmarklet.  A google map appears alongside your photo, navigate and zoom into the place the photo was taken, once you have pinpointed the location click on the correct part of the map and then select SAVE LOCATION.

The bookmarklet now automatically tags your photo with the lon & lat co-ords as well as adding a link to the location in google maps within the photo description.

Give it a go and let me know what you think.