The Wonders of Google

While back at class this week, a classmate of mine introduced me to iGoogle. Basically it allows you to create a customizable home page with all sorts of gadgets. This can range from news feeds about a wide range of topics, to a virtual fish bowl, to calendars, to gas price maps, to random quote generators. My personal favorites thus far include the Chuck Norris fact generator and the Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey generator. Ok, so both of those are terribly trivial, but they're worth a good laugh. You can also add these to web pages. Notice our fish bowl on the right side of the page - feed them if you like.

To keep up to date on all the wonders of Google they even have a blog. I've linked the Google Blog from our page. Also, here is a link to iGoogle.

Another very interesting program I found through the TED website is Trendalyzer. Hans Rosling and the folks at Gapminder (an organization that works to promote awareness and development of the third world, especially in Africa) demos this software and you can see it in action here. Google bought the software and is working on making it accessible to millions (or at least that's what I hear). In any case, you can check out a beta version here. It's certainly an interesting way to look at statistics about the world. If you want another eye opener of world living conditions, check out the program dollar street.

I hope everyone has a great 4th!

Erik