Jott

http://jott.com/Default.aspx

Jott is a service that translates your voice into text. You call up Jott from your telephone and create a message. It will then translate your voice into text. It also keeps the original recording, so you can listen to that later, too. You can have it send your message as an email to you, someone else, or a group of email addresses. It can also post to a number of services such a Blogs, Twitter and Yahoo Groups.

VuFind & Fish4info

http://www.vufind.org/
http://fish4info.org

Yesterday, we had a great demo from Chris Harris of Genessee Valley BOCES on their fish4info.org site.
Fish4info (still in the early stages of production, but soon to be open source) and VuFind (open source, released this summer) are products that will allow libraries to essentially replace an ILS's poor user interface OPAC by displaying catalog data in an easier format for patrons to use that also integrates Web 2.0 features. While Fish4Info is tailored more towards K-12 school libraries, VuFind is more of a broad spectrum product. Our library has also been working on a similar grant project and if everything goes right *fingers crossed* will start creating an open source product in the coming months. Exciting stuff!

Rainmaker

http://www.aaa-clouds.com/rainmaker/rm/?page_id=3

Use Rainmaker to create a tag cloud based on any URL you type in. You can create a cloud using multiple URL's, add words or phrases and exclude words to create your cloud. It also allows you to modify the appearance of your cloud.

Here's a tag cloud that I made for this blog.

Cool tools around the 'net

These are several utility type sites that have come in handy from time to time.

ConvertTube
http://converttube.com/
This site will take a URL of a video and convert it to a file (you choose which file format - .mpg, .mov, etc.), which you can then download to your desktop.

GuerrillaMail
http://www.guerrillamail.com/
Sometimes you go to a web site to download a driver, or to sign up for a service to test something out and in order to do so, you need to enter your email address and then confirm that you're a real person by replying to the email or clicking on a link within the email. Even if you have that "junk" email account that you use, it's still a pain to see it load up with SPAM over time. GuerrillaMail will give you a temporary email address for 15 minutes - long enough to put in your email address, and confim it at the email end so you can continue using a web site.

Zamzar
http://www.zamzar.com/
This site will allow you to convert a file type. Usually you need to download and install software on your PC to do this. Have a Word Doc and want to make it a PDF? Zamzar can help! It will convert image, document, audio and video formats.

MediaFire
http://www.mediafire.com/
Sometimes you need to share a file with people, but it's too large to email and you don't have any servers to host the file on. MediaFire allows you to upload and share a file with your friends via a URL link that you share with them. And you don't need to register with the site to use it.

Bubblr by Pim Pam Pum

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/

Pim Pam Pum is a company that's created several Flickr tools, one of which is Bubblr. With Bubblr, you take any flickr photo and make a comic strip by adding speech or thought bubbles. You can add additional photos if you want to.

This is the test I made: http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=9847


While it's very simplistic and doesn't do too much, the great thing is that it's so easy to use that you could make several comics in just a few minutes. Imagine having a weekly library comic strip....or introducing staff on your web site.....or sharing some captioned photos from a library event.

Twitterverse

http://www.twitterverse.com/

Check out Twitterverse -
It's a visual interface of tags from recent twitter updates.

Cool Tool of the day: StumbleUpon

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

StumbleUpon is a browser toolbar for Firefox or IE. It's almost like a cross between a social site, Digg, and Tivo. You specifiy what your interests are and click the StumbleUpon button and are presented with a random web site that it thinks you'll like. Like it? Click the thumbs up button. Hate it? Click the thumbs down button. It's that simple. Over time, you train the toolbar on what you like and don't like and it will gradually give you sites that you'll probably be interested in.
You can connect with friends, share sites with them, review sites, and recommend sites - and that's not all.
A time waster for sure, but a cool tool nonetheless.

Cool site of the day: Footnote.com

http://www.footnote.com/

Here's a neato site to share with our students - footnote.com. You'll find tons of original documents digitized as images. You can add notes to the image, scan and upload your own documents, add comments, etc. This could be another great resource for research!

Cool site of the day: Flashcards

http://www.proprofs.com/flashcards/

OK, so this is geared more towards students, but I thought it was just too cool. This site has flashcards for a ton of different subjects and can help everyone from midddle school to the IT professional studying for their MCSE certification. Don't see something you like? You can create your own.

Seeing sites like these make me wonder - should we be sharing these tools with our students? Maybe have a place where we have the "Cool tool of the day" or "Cool site of the day"?
On our website?
On our public PC screensavers?
On a bulettin board or rolling TV screen?
Teach an optional class, open to anyone?

Zoho.com

http://zoho.com/

Zoho has a whole suite of cool online apps for coloborative sharing, viewing and more! Most are free. Project and Polls look especially interesting.

Use Zoho Viewer to upload documents and share the URL.

Use Zoho Projects for your project management software.

Use Zoho Meeting for online meetings and desktop sharing.

They also have Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show - which are online, coloborabitve office products similar to google docs (Word, Spreadsheet and Presentation).

And several more!