Today is Friday, and it’s the 13th. So why not try your luck? StumbleUpon is a great way to explore the web for new and interesting things. Better than browsing, you can explore what other people find interesting. Sign up for an account and start finding people that have similar interests and you can refine what you find. A great way to take a quick break, a mental vacation, and maybe discover something new.
Category: Language
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Tool #54: StumbleUpon: Are you lucky?
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Tool #53: Twitter
140 characters Twitter is the Internet’s hottets mode of communication these days. Like all good ideas, this is crushingly simple. Type in a message of less than 140 characters. You have a group of people (your followers) who’s list of messages this is added to. Your list of messages is what everyone you follow has added in the last few hours. You leave this open in your browser (or, increasingly, on your smart phone) and read in real time what others are thinking or doing.
Originally people posted what they were doing at that moment, and you got a sense of what your acquaintances were all experiencing. More and more, people are posting interesting things they see, hear or find. It is an amazing resource when you need an answer about something you know nothing in a very short time. Ask a question, your twitter followers answer in minutes or seconds.
In class? Set up a titter account for everyone, and have your students follow you. A great way to get feedback during class (put your feed from twitter up on the class projector, your students can comment in real time on your class). If you want a more restricted audience, try Yammer (restricted by company address, like @swu.ac.jp, I have that account), Jaiku, Plurk (with an interesting graphical interface), FriendFeed (twitter in steroids, collects stuff from all your social network sites, the upcoming twitter killer).
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Tool #52: Evoticon: Japanese emoticons
Japanese emoticons Icons in your email, or SMS, or mobile mail, can indicate your emotions much more quickly than words. With programmable phones these days, you can set longer ones to memory and recall them with a few keystrokes. Here is a bunch of these emoticons, or kao-mohi (face-icons) with a quick English translation. These are not necessarily popular right now, but you can vote on them (thus tne name eVOTicon).
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Tool #51: Google Mobile Books
Amazon just came out with a new version of their eBook reader, the Kindle. It looks very nice. I wish they were available here in Japan (my guess, they will be here by the end of the year.
But another service, Google Mobile, allows you to get electronic versions of books on your cell phone. As screens on phones get easier to read, this may be something you could use to help your students maintain their reading, in places like bus stations and trains. Google just added 1.5 million new books.
Read here about why the paper book is pretty much doomed to a very small niche market in the very near future.
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Tool #50: TokyoMango: Blog
Lisa is bilingual Lisa Katayama is a successful young writer for tech magazines like Wired. In her blog she shows interesting sides of Japan with unusual products. If I ever need something interesting to discuss in class, I can usually find it here in a matter of seconds. She also has a book out.