Google 411

I was watching David Pogue's TED talk recently and was reminded of a service I use frequently but have never mentioned here. Google-411. A free service that works like a regular information.

• Call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-44110).
• State what you are looking for: donuts
• State the city and state

You're given several choices and then the option to connect. It hasn't let me down yet.

It's great unless you are like me and often forget within seconds the address given on one of these calls. Pouge came to my rescue and also shared another trick. Google SMS.

• Text Google (46645)
• In the body of your text state something like Donuts 80241.
• Send your text

In a few seconds you will get a text back with several locations in that zip code. I love this as I don't have to fumble to find a piece of paper or write an address on the back of my hand.

Oh so handy!!

[Image captured from Google SMS website: http://www.google.com/mobile/default/sms.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=hussss&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20sms&dc=gh0sss]

Population Density Chart

We talked a lot about the effects of over population back in the seventies. There was a famous often quoted experiment with mice where the little ones were allowed to reproduce all willy-nilly (as mice are wont to do) within a confined space with a finite food supply. The results were always grim. The more crowded they got, the more violent and abhorrent their behavior. If this were true with humans, we should see more violence in countries where the population density is greater. Doesn't seem to hold true.

This chart by Charles Platt (Boing Boing) is a visual representation of population density. He was trying to answer the question:

To what extent do we feel overcrowded, as a species? I’m not talking about resources; just psychological factors.

He concluded that open space isn't really necessary for our mental health.

I wonder if it isn't more of a factor of where we are raised and how we spent our youth. I live in the Denver area. Grew up here. Much of my recreational time was spent going up into the mountains. My dad's idea of a good time was to go as deep into the woods as possible and fish for a week or two. If we ran into someone else, we didn't go far enough.

I lived on the east coast for a while in a rural area of Maryland. I was never able to find that "empty space" feeling I could get in Colorado except Christmas day on the beach. We could walk for an hour or two and never see another person. A woman out there once confided to me that she could never live out west because the towns were too far apart. It scared her when she and her husband were vacationing there. I yearned for what she feared.

I like cities. I like the wilderness. If you made me choose one over the other. Pick a place I would spend the rest of my life. I think it would have to be the wide open spaces. I could give up the city. I don't think I could give up the wilderness.

Think I'll show this to my students and see what they make of it.

[Image captured from Boing Boing: "Charts 3":http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/30/charts-3.html]

Word Cloud using Wordle

Wordle is one of those applications that creates a word cloud. That is, it will take all the text you give it and create a graphic where words that are repeated more often are printed larger. Words that are used less frequently are printed smaller. The cloud at the top of this post is made up of the lyrics from the Beatle's tune, "Let it Be".



The Gettysburg Address looks like this as a word cloud in Wordle.
















I know there are other applications that can do this so with that in mind I went to Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day and did a search for "word clouds". He had a post (Larry has a post on everything!) and discusses two such programs. Wordle is one and Tag Crowd the other. I looked at Tag Crowd and did the Gettysburg Address to compare the two. You can see the results using Tag Crowd below.




















I like Wordle better. It gives me more options than Tag Crowd including control over the color and some font selections. Do be aware that if you use Wordle, the content at the site isn't censored and kids can see some inappropriate words in the gallery. If this were a big issue, I might choose Tag Crowd.

I recently had a technical glitch with a lesson plan in my Multimedia class and needed a quick distraction for my class. I had the kids find the lyrics to a song they liked (with appropriate language) and then paste it into Wordle and experiment with the different parameters. They entertained themselves for a good twenty minutes trying different songs. I threw out the suggestion that they put in a political speech or two and the race was off to put in snippets from different candidates. My experience with this has got me to thinking about creating a design project using a word cloud as part of a collage.

Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free

Kevin Kelly has an interesting piece on The Technium called Better than Free. His premise is that anything that can be copied can be put on the internet. Once it is on the internet it becomes available to anyone for free. Money can't be made from the original item in this new electronic landscape. Money can only be made from things that can't be copied. Here was the interesting part of the article for me. He gives eight possible ways that marketable value can be added. Eight things that can't be copied that are valuable to the consumer. I won't explain what he says, read the article. It's worth it.

In these changing times as major studios are trying desperately to hang onto an outdated business model that doesn't work in this new digital world, we seem to hear from the two extreme camps. "Pay me cause it's mine" or "I can get it for free and you can't stop me." It is nice to read a thoughtful piece that looks at how things might work out.

Good discussion article for the tech classroom. Good debate topic for a social studies classroom. I've already seen this mentioned on three other blogs I follow. It is going to generate a lot of discussion.

[Image: Captured from The Technium: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php]

That will be .03 Cents Please!

Kevin Kelly did a nifty little bit of math and figured out the cost of a single Google search as approximately .03 cents. This means if I had to pay for my searches it would put me out almost 17 cents a month. That's figuring about 20 searches a day. Some day's I do more. Some days less. But, I don't think I ever sit down at the computer without using Google at least once.

Instant access to information has become so integrated into my life, I don't really think about it much anymore. After we set our house up for wireless, the answer to any question is only as far away as the laptop. How many of you now watch TV with the remote and Google. My household can't get through an evening of television with out pausing a show, with Tivo, and my wife or I asking:

"Where have we seen that actor before?"

"That statistic can't be right...let me check that out!"

"I loved that movie. What else has that (director/actor/writer) done?"

"Oooh that (toy/car/gadget/pizza) looks cool. Wonder if it's available near by?"

Did we ask fewer questions before search engines? Are we more curious now that this resource is available to us. Kevin Kelly says in his post:

"But what is most interesting to me, is that this huge "industry," this huge appetite, has materialized out of nowhere. If we ask 800 billion questions today and expect to get instant answers, where were those 800 billion questions 20 years ago?"

Good question. Good article at The Technium.

[Image: screenshot from www.google.com]