Awesome Images

Have you heard? A new, free source of clipart is available from Dorling-Kindersley, publisher of the Eyewitness Books, among others, and known for the clarity of their illustration. Over 50 different categories--



Category: Images_

Truly Iconic

Free Icons!

Category: Web_, Images_

You Ought To Be in Pictures....

I recently used a free download for Windows XP -- Photo Story 3 -- to create a very nice slideshow of some scanned family pictures. I liked Photo Story -- very easy to use, arrange the order of photos, determine actions, annotate with captions, and lay a soundtrack. Your final product is a little .wmv file. Here's a tutorial from Lifehacker on how to do it, but it's very intuitive.

Related:
How to Create an Online Photo Gallery with CSS

Category: Images_

A Self-Repairing Hard Drive? Let Me At It!

A recent article on Lifehacker,
"Geek to Live: The self-repairing hard drive", provides step-by-step instructions to automatically schedule disk checks, repair, and defragmentation by running only one file--a standard DOS (remember that system?) batch file. I tried this one myself since my hard drive runs almost 24/7; so far it works like a charm.

Category: Utilities_

Forget to Back Up Your Photos? Worry Not!

A new utility from SnapFiles allows you to recover digital camera files.
Check out PC Inspector Smart Recovery at the site.

Category: Utilities_

Summer Travel on a Budget

While some of us will be jetting to Paris this summer, others need to travel on a budget. Here's a site that will help you take a "virtual vacation." It's EarthCam, a network of webcams around the world. The site categorizes the cams so those who have children can take a virtual vacation using the EarthCam for Kids section. On a more serious note, it's also useful for bringing landforms, architecture, culture, and more into classroom lessons.

By the way...I know you're ready to see Paris now...check it out.

Category: Other Cool Stuff_

Good for What Ails You

Suffering sluggish computer syndrome? Plagued by pop-ups and cursed by cookies? These applications from 101 Fabulous Freebies offer some surcease from your sorrow.

Eliminate Spyware and Adware:
Spybot Search & Destroy
Lavasoft
Microsoft Windows Defender
ZoneAlarm
Trend Micro HouseCall

Check your security with GRC Shields Up or AirDefense Personal Lite for wi-fi. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.

Category: Utilities_

Vlog It!

Here's a link to a very useful site for vlogging from FreeVLog 2.5, on video-blogging (their image to the left.) The step-by-step instructions guide you to a free and relatively painless vlogging experience. I can see how this would be very useful -- for instance, the library recently created some video help files for distance education users. Maybe you would like to have a video of some procedure permanently mounted on the web for student review. Maybe you have a clip from an author interview. Lots of possibilities for instruction!

Category: Video_

Citations Made Simple

For some time I've used on online service to encourage my students to cite their sources. The service I've used most frequently is Citation Machine. David Warlick, creator of CM, has recently made some changes to the program and changed the name to Son of Citation Machine. The URL has changed as well. It's now http://pinetlibrary.com/citationmachine.net/

My students alerted me to another online citation creator called Knight Cite. I haven't used it but it appears to be similar to CM.

While neither site is foolproof in the citations created, it helps to get my students one step closer to citing their sources in close to APA (or MLA) style.

Category: Utilities_, Other Cool Stuff_