Fun Friday Resources

Today we have a collection of internet widgets, ranging from silly to hard work.

Map Frappe is useful and interesting: draw an outline on the world map in the left frame, and the outline shows up in the frame on the right, allowing you to compare geographic areas with one another. (As a child of the 60s, it was drummed into me that Vietnam was a “small” country; imagine my surprise when I learned it was longer than California.)

The Hybridizer is just fabulous silly fun. No explanation — just click and be prepared to giggle a lot. Seriously, it is a really interesting use of archival images and gif animation.

BotWiki is a mass of resources on building your own ‘bot,’ and if you don’t know what that is, this website will teach you. A lot of info, and so far I have not gotten down to brass tacks; I include it in this post so I won’t forget about it — I’m interested in making a bot that will send Lichtenbergian quotes to Twitter on a regular basis.

And finally, a site that has been around for quite a while. I’ve used it quite a few times, and I always got students to use it: Future Me. Very simple: write an email to your future self. Talk about being your own AUDIENCE!