Next YouTube Star?

How much do you want to make a bet that this kid is from Minnesota?



Too cute!

Polyvore Galore!

Last night I was fortunate to meet some really cool women. We were involved in a focus group for ARC's Value Village and how they can best utilize social media. One of the women I met is the author of a great blog, Already Pretty.

This morning I checked out her blog and fell in love! Recently, she posted about Polyvore. This site allows you to create outfits and/or gain inspiration from others' creations. Of course, there are links to most of the fashions so you can purchase the outfits that you create. This weekend I will be traveling to Wisconsin to attend a bridal shower and have been stressing about what to wear. This site was fun to explore. Here is my first creation. Now I need to explore my closet...the quest for bridal shower attire continues.

Bridal Shower by SZSRocks featuring Miss Selfridge

Travel 2.0 - Thing 33

I must confess that this "Thing" was the one I was most excited about. I love to travel and was anxious to learn about sites that I could find useful. Unfortunately, I didn't find any sites that "wowed" me.

As far as travel 2.0 sites, I already use Northwest Airlines' site to check flight status of departures and arrivals and have been using Orbitz for many years now.

Several of the travel blogs were interesting and I did subscribe to My Kugelhopf. This blog combines two of my loves...travel and food, so it seemed like a good fit for me.

I browsed all of the travel review sites. We do a lot of road-tripping, and go to hot travel destinations such as Glendive, Montana; Keokuk, Iowa and Delta, Utah. Our travels have taken us through, and to, incredible locations. Unfortunately none of the travel review sites tended to have any insight into these locations. I also think that the travel review sites are only as good as the number of people who contribute to them and the content that is provided. I did get some good information for our summer trip to the Pacific coast on TripAdvisor.

As far as travel journals go, I prefer the 1.0 kind, which is scrapbooking/ journaling. Since the original "23 Things," I now also use Flickr and my blog as a type of personal travel journal and have set up a field trip wiki for the Minnesota Mineral Club which has an area for journaling. I probably won't use any of the travel journal sites listed, however, I was intrigued by Mapness, which is now called MapVivo and may try it to journal our trip to the West coast, just to see how it works.

Two sites listed under travel mashups caught my eye. I used Cost2Drive on our trip to Glendive, Montana over Memorial Day weekend and was surprised at how close to being accurate it was. I have used Wayfaring before and revisited the site for this "Thing." I created the map featured at the top of this post for our trip to the West coast and plan on adding photos, videos and notes after the trip. It will then be easy to share with the friends we are traveling with.

As for usefulness of travel 2.0 sites in our library, we do have foreign language and social studies classes that have to research countries and then they create travel brochures, plan trip itineraries and make travel budgets. I can see that some of these sites could be useful for this type of project.

Tag Cloud

Scott, my boss, just discovered a cool tag cloud generator. You simply enter the URL of the site that you want to generate a tag cloud for and it does the rest! The site allows you to tweak the design elements. Here is the tag cloud for my blog.

CBS Early Show
You Go Girl!
archive.org
Family and Friends
Twitter/SZSRocks
I am a GEEK (geekadvancement) on Twitter
Tiny Geocoder
Videos
YouTube
Susan Boyle YouTube Video
Hindenberg Explodes
Wikipedia
1937 Hindenburg Disaster Anniversary
design
Purple Cow
Last.fm/SZSRocks
Twitter
Del.icio.us/SZSRocks
Minnesota Mineral Club
Skype/SZSRocks
Flickr/SZSRocks
Fun Facts
YouTube/SZSRocks
Poetry
Widgetbox
Geocaching
AIM/SZSRocks5
Travels
Hunting Geodes Near Keokuk, Iowa
318 Cafe
Blog/SZSRocks
Britain's Got Talent
Facebook/SZSRocks
Geo-Coder
CBS Early Show Interview with Susan Boyle

This is very similar to Wordle, which our students use quite frequently. I'm not sure how often I will use or recommend this site, but it is nice to know it is available.

1937 Hindenburg Disaster Anniversary

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the crash of the Hindenburg. I have always been fascinated by zeppelins...maybe because we share a first initial. Zeppelins were created by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century, based on designs he had outlined as early as 1874.

According to Wikipedia: "The Hindenburg was a large German commercial passenger-carrying airship (commonly referred to as a zeppelin). It was the largest flying machine of any kind (by dimension) ever built. The airship flew from March 1936 until it crashed and was destroyed by fire fourteen months later on May 6, 1937, at the end of it's first North American transatlantic journey. Thirty-six people died in the accident, which occurred while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The Hindenburg was named after the late Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934), President of Germany (1925–1934)."

Below is a new sound composite, produced by C. E. Price, of news footage of the Hindenburg explosion and Herb Morrison's reporting of the event. Both video and audio are in the public domain, as well as this particular composite.

The entire film can be downloaded here: Hindenberg Explodes

Video courtesy of archive.org