this one seems to be accuratye even with subdomains so use it a lot.
it use a little too large widget, but make very smart on homepage.
A second one very accurate, you can feel it by the long search time and the 5 steps testing system.
is Yourwebsite Valuel is not subdomain level accurate, a lack!
the third one is Glurk witch unfortunately unaccurate with my subdomains, but quite accurate for simples domains

have a nice estimate

My (New) Blogging Pattern

I used to try and blog once or twice a week - and felt badly if I failed to keep my blog current. My earliest blogs were long ruminations, almost essays, using academically correct formatting and referencing. I actually kept two, sometimes three blogs, trying to keep my professional, academic, and personal interests separate. At that time, I got many of my inspirations for what to write about from reading the blog posts I collected, using RSS, through Bloglines.

Too much! It turned a pleasure into a "should" and felt prison-like. Over a period of time I moved to one dominant blog, leaving behind a few orphans. I created a Wordpress blog, because I could add niftly little widgets and make my blog both look attractive and work as a repository for much of my life on the web.

This setup was more comfortable, but when I got busy, I still neglected both my Bloglines and my blog.

I joined Facebook, because I read about it on blogs and in newspapers, and my daughter told me to;-> I found aspects of it interesting and handy, but wasn't all that keen on some parts of it so I took (take) a conservative approach. However, through Facebook I discovered Twitter. And I'm hooked. I love eavesdropping on the partial conversations and I scavenge news and info through the links. If someone seems to be using Twitter without contributing, or is just boring, I stop following them. It's easy, like sliding away from the bores at a large, noisy party. Then I followed the web metaphor, and I linked my Twitter stream onto my blog. And, copying something I'd seen on other blogs, added my del.icio.us saves to my blog.

The tipping point that I recognized this week was that, although I am continuing to semi-neglect my Bloglines and its inspirations, I now collect the stuff that intrigues and feeds me through Twitter. Then, using my online bookmarking tool, del.icio.us (and diigo, too) I share it. The items I save to del.icio.us now automatically create posts on my blog even when I don't compose and write one up. I write less, but share as much, I think, but in a briefer, more discontinuous manner. I am, however, increasingly taking the (brief) time to annotate the links I save and share, to create more context.

Maybe my attention span has shortened, or maybe I've moved to the efficiencies (Twitter and automatic posting of saved items) that the web creates and encourages. Whatever the rationale I use, I have definitely tipped over into a new pattern of keeping up and sharing.

I think, (I'd appreciate feedback here) that my blog is still useful to others, at least to those who share some of my interests, because what I collect from Twitter (and from time-to-time from my Bloglines account) winds up on my blog through the del.icio.us posts.

It's what I do now, and I enjoy this pattern.

If you have 2 or 3 minutes available, help out a researcher, Dan Zarrella, by answering his survey - http://www.polldaddy.com/survey.aspx?id=edd7004ad2c1de47 When he reports the results, I'll link to them from this blog.

A small additional suggestion, the image above was created using Skitch - http://skitch.com/ . I really recommend it for ease of grabbing and sharing images.

Gcast and Gabcast each offer FREE tools for managing podcasting. You create an account and manage your account online but you do not need equipment or software to create the podcast! Try it you will LOVE IT!

"RSS is a big deal, as anyone who's subscribed to even a few feeds probably knows. Once you get past just a few feeds, though, it can quickly get overwhelming. RSS can leave you feeling inadequate, brain-dead and uninspired."

"Here's a great list of some file sharing websites for free online storage and file management: If you work primarily from your computer you’ve no doubt got a huge number of papers, files, notes, and various pieces of information that you need to store. If you collaborate with others on projects, the problem of file
storage gets even more complicated. Everyone working on the project needs real-time access to the files."

Enjoy!

]]> http://seeingblue.wordpress.com/?p=5 Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:28:10 +0000 SeeingBlue http://seeingblue.wordpress.com/?p=5 I found this neat little tool awhile back. Actually I don't even know why I started to tell you when I know that I don't have a clue as to when I found it, but nevertheless here you are: Online Icon Maker!

Online Icon Maker is exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to draw an icon or favicon right on their website and then give you the ability to download it to your computer, obviously.

I haven't used this in sometime. I just had it stored back in some bookmarks and I thought it would be good to share. There isn't much to using it. It's pretty self explanitory.  Enjoy!

wikispacesicons

BTW, if you read this blog regularly, you will have noticed that the links I bookmark are now being added as a post on a daily basis. I have found many interesting and helpful links on the blogs of others who also do this, so I figured out how to for mine. Hope some of them are helpful or interesting for you.

Try iGoogle and enjoy the power of your own personalized homepage!!

(this is a repost from 3/28/3007 on infolibrarian.weebly.com)

(This segment's gushing over gadgetry and techno-services is now concluded.)

You know what they say about always having backups in casse of tech problems? They are right. My paper handout and the explanatory wiki made a big difference! But they were peripheral to what actually made the workshop work. The people there, whenever I would pause, asked each other questions, or me, and figured it out themselves rather than being stuck watching my presentation. They got further along than I had planned/expected. They all joined the board wiki and many made new pages for their particular committees.

So I failed, but they (and the workshop) succeeded! Now for part 2, do I get a new dongle?

According to eBiz, the Top 10 social bookmarking sites are:
Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Propellor, StumpleUpon, Reddit,
Fark, MyBlogLog, Slashdot, and Kaboodle.

The complete eBiz list covers 30 sites with basic stats and page rankings. For a more extensive list, check into Mashable
which covers 50 sites, and has useful descriptions of each one.

The helpful team at Common Craft have a non-nonsense demo on social bookmarking which is worth checking into if you’re a novice. And Wiki has a straight foward guide to the various sites.

If you want to sample StumbleUpon, drop into snezanabr’s amazing photography collection. It's where I found the stunning image below.

One place to go to find out if something is real or not is Snopes.com, a site that tracks rumors and scams. If you suspect an email or a site is a virus, a fraud, or an urban legend, http://www.snopes.com/ is a reputable site where you can find answers.

One additional warning; I have seen emails that assure me that Snopes agrees that whatever this email says is true. Don't just beleive them and don't just click on the (supposed) Snopes link they give you. Find Snopes using Google and check out the claim there.

My daughter, who swims in a very different web stream than I do, offers this advice, especially relevant for parents and teachers, IMHO. Apparently some questionable sites have managed to get web addresses very similar to highly popular sites, with only a small typo difference. Make the typo, and you can find yourself in a toxic swamp. Being very careful about web addresses, and/or bookmarking (making them a "favorite") so you just click is the easiest way to deal with that.

Most importantly is educate yourself on what's happening on the web on a regular basis. Virtual University - http://vu.org/ is offering a free course on Internet Security. To access it, click on http://vu.org/ and find the box on the right, (three pink arrows point to it in the image below.)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

I've taken courses from the Virtual University before and found them to have good information although perhaps a little ordinary in presentation. I'm going to take the course; you might want to update your web dangers knowledge too.

Powered by Jott

**********************************

I called in the above to Jott from my cellphone while driving home. So essentially I called my blog. I also called in a tweet to my twitter page, and an appt. to my google calendar. It all worked flawlessly. I have learned since that you can even Jott entire groups in your contact list. Jott enables us to communicate in a variety of ways without being near a computer.  

Too bad I can't call Jott to clean my house, cook dinner, or walk the dog. Then I could transact my entire life through one 800 number. Still pretty cool though.

I have set up a wiki explaining what a wiki is, and why they are so useful: http://wikiwhy.wikispaces.com/ I will be adding more to it over the next few weeks.

For more specific information on what kind of wikis, that is, what brand of wiki application you might want to try out, here's a slide show I have posted on SlideShare.
[slideshare id=307192&doc=why-wiki-1205542920357306-2&w=425]

I saw Richardson's post a few days after my own post on the subject - http://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/educating-for-the-21st-century/ which links to other posts with the same urgent call. Steve Hargadon has posted a well argued essay on the same subject with the same sense of urgency - http://www.stevehargadon.com/2008/03/web-20-is-future-of-education.html - and gone even further and created Classroom 2.0 a "social networking site for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education". One of the three hosts who will respond to any questions asked is Canadian edublogger, Konrad Glogowski, who is studying the use of blogging in education.

If you spend any time on the web, even minimal searches will lead you to a very active edublogsphere (strange word, I know, but based on blogsphere as defined in Wikipedia). And, you will see there many very very passionate advocates for using what Will Richardson calls "the read/write web", what is also called "Web 2.0", and, increasingly, "Social Media". Many of these passionate advocates are trying to figure out how to get more of their colleagues to join them in learning about the web and how to use it in teaching and learning. That's one of the solitudes.

There's another, larger, solitude. One of my closest friends hates the computer and the web. She reluctantly uses computers for writing, for email, and in her teaching, where one of her courses is on a CMS (Course Management System), but she is very clear about really disliking the whole experience. She's very bright, very knowledgeable about pedagogy, and very passionate about teaching well. We have lots of great conversation, and she's very tolerant of my web evangelism. She acknowledges my passion for the web as a teaching/learning tool, but it's clear her aversion is deeply rooted. We've been talking about why she feels this way, because I want to persuade her that the web can make her life and her teaching easier and richer, as it has mine.

I didn't start out a lover of the computer. In fact I feared and resented it initially. My credibility and my lack of credibility in this debate come from the same reality: my background. I am a writer and a former English/Communications teacher, and know little about HTML coding and many of the more arcane technical aspects of computers. If it isn't easy, I don't want to know about it. That's why I love Web 2.0, social media, the read/write web - because you can create content, text and images, almost as easily as you can read on it.

I initially felt blackmailed into using a computer; word-processing made putting my thoughts down on paper, writing, much easier than typing or hand-writing. So even though I had to get my husband to navigate through DOS every single time I wanted to write, I couldn't give up writing using word-processing. Eventually Windows was developed and I learned to turn on the computer by myself. (And eventually I got a Mac and computer life got even better, but that's another story!) Then the Communications Department at my college was cut and teachers with up to 15 years seniority were laid off, almost half the department. I was traumatized, and when a coordinator whose program I had been assigned to, wanted me to include writing using word-processing and how to file using Windows and other web stuff, I said I'd do it. I was terrified, but I knew some computer experts and made them my mentors. So I understand my friend's reluctance to use web applications for herself and her students; I've been there.

One of my friend's explanations of why she hates using the web is that she gets frustrated and hates asking for help. Hating to ask for help is, I believe, an occupational overuse syndrome commonly found in teachers. We're used to being the one in the room who knows the answers. We're the fount of knowledge, and if somebody else knows more than us, that can feel disorienting, or even threatening. I believe that if I hadn't been traumatized by the fear of losing my job, I might not have found the flexibility to learn from my mentors and (even scarier) my students. So I understand where my friend's, and many other teachers' (and administrators') reluctance is coming from.

But (and this is central to the issue of teachers in all subjects needing to learn more about the web and infuse their new knowledge into their teaching) there are three realities:

1. The web is, and I can argue this both theoretically and practically, the most profound change in human communication ever, more profound, even, than the changes coming from the printing press;
2. Our students are naive wanderers in this new communication wilderness and need to learn how to protect themselves on it, not by hiding from it, but by knowing how to think critically about it and act sensibly on it; and
3. Our students are unaware of many web possibilities and need to learn how to use the web for their learning and for their future work.

So, what's the answer? How do I persuade my friend to explore the web more? How do we, the passionate evangelists of the edublogsphere, persuade our colleagues to start exploring the web's pedagogical possibilities? Of course there is no one answer, but there are some paths:

• Keep on offering workshops to our colleagues and administrators;
• Find out the interests of our colleagues (as we would of our students) and show them the web uses they are most likely to find attractive;
• Explain that although the web was difficult to use initially, it has become much easier to learn about; (nobody needs to use DOS or HTML any more);
• Show our colleagues and friends that much of their learning about useful web applications can be learned in private, using the web itself - by searching, by reading edublogs, by using the so-called "Tours" that many applications provide to help you learn how to use them;
• Put up information on the web for those who are interested but wary; and
• ... Any suggestions?

Will Richardson writes a blog and has published a book for teachers - called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

Steve Hargadon has created Classroom 2.0 a "social networking site for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education", especially those in elementary education.

I have a wiki on ways to use the web in teaching and in business - http://jnthweb.pbwiki.com/ - useful for those in secondary and post-secondary education.

And I'm going to continue to use my blog space here to suggest web applications, both long-term and new, that teachers and others might want to use. Please feel free to bookmark this site, until you learn how to RSS to save web site addresses.

(Coming soon;->)

First, my response to another snowy day, made using photos from my Flickr account, which I directly linked to from within Comiqs:

• Here's what the first page looks like -

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

• Here's the link to my snow story -  http://comiqs.com/comics/Khpn55v7x0d
• Here's a link to a brief tutorial I created on how to use Comics - http://comiqs.com/comics/LdZrocDlRt1

I can picture teachers using Comiqs to create attractive instructions, and I can picture students using Comiqs to create assignments requiring images and text.

I can see similar uses for small business tasks.

Can use imagine other possible uses?

It's easy to use and fun to play with; give it a try!

My blog - I moved my personal blog to Wordpress from Edublogs a couple years back, but I still use Edublogs for all my classroom sites.

Wikispaces - My classroom website is actually a Wikispace wiki, though I use a state hosted space as a type of false-front to it. Whenever students click on a unit from the state hosted site, it takes them to the wiki. I love Wikispaces - they are astoundingly reliable, and the tools are overwhelmingly powerful. Consider this a virtual hug to all the developers and support specialists at Wikispaces. I love you guys!

Del.icio.us - If I could figure out how to tag my keys and coffee cup in del.icio.us, my life would change so dramatically I would barely recognize myself. This is how I share with students, how I archive great things, how I function when the web is as big and as great as it is.

ccMixter - I have been making videos and tutorials and podcasts and such, and the ol' radio dj in me likes having a sweet music bed underneath it. I find them here in the ccMixter community. May this little venture thrive and teach the music world a thing or two about the power of creative commons.

Flickr - We use it for family photos and can keep them private; I use it for school pictures, students' work, and grabbing and sharing other folks' pictures. Sites like this are why I became a computer geek. (I usually, by the way, use the FlickrCC search engine.)

Vimeo - Heather Armstrong started using Vimeo on her blog, and when I checked it out I dropped every other video site I had ever used and went exclusively with them. You can make videos private, and you can make videos full screen from the embedded site. It's reliable and fast, and when you play it in the embedded spot, it makes the controls disappear so all you see is the movie.

Slideshare - This "YouTube of the Presentation world" gets better and better. I use it often and especially like how powerful it can be when you synch up a slideshow with a music track.

Zotero - I use this one for grad school, and while I am sure I'll use it little once I finish, I still like it.

Here's the late addition, added two days after declaring my eight tools: While it's not a web tool, I feel I should add that I use Camtasia quite a bit, since it's such a slick way to explain software to students and colleagues. There is a web tool for this kind of thing, however, called Jing, and it has wowed me. It is astoundingly powerful for showing people how to do something with your computer. I can tell I'll be using it a ton, since I'm not always on that one computer that is licensed for Camtasia.

In the category of tools I like but admittedly don't use that much or nearly to their potential - Twitter, my iGoogle start page (aside from the Reader widget), Google Docs, and Google Maps.

The greatest part about so many of these tools is that they continue to improve, and I don't have to do anything to make them improve. Just hang around and keep your eyes open, and suddenly Wikispaces or Slideshare or Flickr will have added some fantastic function that wasn't there a week ago. I add, by the way, that these are tools I use, not necessarily tools I ask my students to use. Too often the communities around such sites uphold garbage and inappropriate content, and I am careful about how I share them.