Category: Internet

Just for fun

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Today is July 15th, 2009.  What’s the significance of that day?  According to Wolfram Alpha not much, but it is the 196th day of the year in the 29th week.  Is is trivia, possibly, and trivia is either interesting or meaningless, but there are some benefits to knowing about Wolfram.  It’s mostly for mathematics and numbers geeks, but it can calculate things very quickly and offers a bunch of related information based on any search.  Also there are numerous demonstrations and charts for all kinds of business functions.

A few things to try:

  • enter any date (e.g. a birth date) june 23, 1988
  • enter any town (e.g. a home town) new york
  • enter any two stocks IBM Apple
  • enter any calculation $250 + 15%
  • enter any math formula x^2 sin(x)

It’s a fun tool to play with and worth remembering when you’re looking for data and charts based on specific calculations. It doesn’t know everything though.  For example Wolfram doesn’t know that Susby.com was officially launched today.

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A Conversation Starter

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I often show this video in my classes as an introduction to how far we have come with the Internet and digital media. The movie is from 2007, so you could say it’s old news, but many of the concepts are still important to consider as you venture into “new” media.

As video producer, Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Kansas State University says, “This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.”

It’s a favorite of mine. Enjoy!

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