A Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Wow - who can remember these old days?

Schmap Guides - Online & Offline

Schmap is an interactive map and guide all in one. It also allows you to publish your own ‘schmaps’ - to share trip itineraries, local reviews etc. In their words:

Schmap’s series of digital travel guides integrates dynamic maps with useful background reading, suggested tours, photos from the traveling public and reviews by local correspondents (for sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums and more) to profile 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Schmap Guides can be browsed online, or downloaded for offline trip planning and when traveling with a laptop.

It interfaces with Google maps & so has the marker on the page that you can run your cursor over to read information or see a photo. I ran a Schmap on Sydney - have a look for yourself.

Website Translator

I’ve just added a translator to the sidebar - just below the list of ‘My Other Stuff’. It looks like this:

Try it out (the one in the sidebar) & let me know how accurate it is.

It comes from DennyHalim.com - specifically from this link. They say:

the only widget that translate your website into 30+ language. the power of Yahoo babelfish, Google, gts, and tranexp all combined into one.

Looking forward to some comments about this one - over to the world….

Is my favourite Web site working today?

Do you often wonder if your favourite website is down or is it just you? Well here’s the answer - go to downforeveryoneorjustme.com type in your website & it will tell you.

TokBox

I thought I’d written about TokBox - but alas I see only wrote a draft sometime last year. And it has evolved since then - now out of beta.

Tokbox is a free service that lets you talk with your friends over live video. You sign up and you’re given a link. When you want to talk with anyone, just give them the link - they click and you chat. When you click the ‘Make a video’ tab Tokbox asks to access your camera & microphone.

I haven’t used the live video, I’ve sent video emails. This is an easy process you click ‘Video Mail’ (left column) & the recording box pops up. Type in email/s you want to send to, record & press send. You can add a text message if you want.

The receiver gets an email message - XXX sent you a video mail. To view your video mail, follow this link. And it includes a very unflattering screen shot of you with your mouth in an odd position!!!

Try it out & send one to yourself. I’d share mine - but I didn’t brush my hair this morning ;->

You can also hold a conference video chat - you’re given a URL to send to participants. I’m not sure how many can be involved but the icon shows 4 so maybe that’s it. I haven’t tried this feature either.

You can put your TokBox on your social network profile, blog, or personal webpage. Anyone can come to your page and see a “Push to Talk” button. They click it and connect to you in real time using live video and audio.

Go to TokBox front page & you can watch a short video.

If you work in education, you’ll be interested in this post from Danny Maas about how you could use TokBox with students.

TweetStats

Sorry - more about Twitter - but you know I’ve joined the Twitter addict site.

Just found TweetStats - a site that will graph your Twitter habits.

Interesting to see one’s habits. But before I get into that, the site has a revealing graph - right - that shows the most popular Twitter Apps.

On this day, web was still way out in front. Twitterific (second on the list) is a Mac app. Does this say that there are lots of Mac Twitts? (I am one!)

My Tweet Timeline shows the creeping addiction:

My daily usage shows that I tweet mostly 8am - 11am - although there are a couple there at midnight - disturbing!!!

Other stats you can get are on the number of tweets per day, replies and the interfaces you use most. If you’re a Twitt I’m sure you’ll want to run your own stats.

New Look

I suddenly became tired of the old look so I’ve updated it - the blog not me! This one’s a bit cleaner & fresher I think. Hope you find it easy to read.

Twitter Life Cycle a la CogDog

I’ve added myself to Alan Levine’s (aka CogDog) wiki for those who can say about Twitter that they have gone from “This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard” to “I Cannot Stop”. I’m number 79 on a growing list.

This is an amusing collection of Twitter journeys & blog posts.

Alan has also put together a great Twitter Life Cycle Diagram - below & on the wiki:

LearnX video & slides

For those of you who were at my LearnX presentation (and those who weren’t) here are the slides & the opening video.

SLIDES:

VIDEO:

Even More Twitter Tools

I won’t go on about it - but Mashable have added even more Twitter tools to their list. (From 60 to 140+)

Check them out.