Sophia – Classrooms in the Web 2.0 era have radically changed and now, not only does technology serve as a didactic aid, but also high connectivity and information accessibility of the digital age make traditional teaching and learning methods virtually obsolete. Sophia is a godsend resource for both teachers and learners seeking not only to spice up conventional education, but also to enhance educational success of each and every learner.
As the site’s About Us explains, “Sophia is a social teaching and learning platform that taps the teacher in all of us and enhances the learning process by providing access to a wealth of knowledge, help, instruction, standards-aligned content, and expertise available to learners everywhere.” Find teaching aids and learning material in an abundance of fields, from applied sciences and mathematics to humanities, English and literature and visual arts, just to name a few.
To give you an example, here’s the learning packet (highly rated of course) in biology, explaining the topic of enzymes.
Formspring.me – Don’t let the simple design of this site fool you. Formspring.me is a useful tool that helps people find out more about each other through sharing interesting & personal responses. Direct Q & A is the key concept of Formspring.me and results can be both surprising and insightful. Use this tool to find out more about the university or college you applied to, maybe even a restaurant you thought about trying, or a company you would like to work at.
Anyclip – I can’t even remember the number of times I searched the Web for a certain moment in a film I’ve seen, in an effort to recapture that memorable script line or background song. It’s not impossible to do, but let’s face it, it’s not easy and you’d have to dedicate much time and effort to find exactly that particular moment in the film. Anyclip is here to make our lives much easier, offering high quality clips that play back smoothly. Above all, Anyclip allows you to search for any moment in the film.
Anyclip is not just another scene finder -you can use YouTube for that even though you will have rather limited scene selection. Anyclip also offers music identification for that specific moment in the movie you’re after, in addition to the clothes brands characters wore at that moment. These two features alone make Anyclip absolutely amazing in my opinion. In addition, the platform labels every conversation in its movie database to make it simple for you to find lines you found inspiring, even if these aren’t the signature quotes everyone else associates with the film.
Search for your favorite movie moment by providing the title, names of actors or the film’s director. And now, please give a big round of applause to my favorite moment in The Big Lebowski (directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen 1998), of the bowler Jesus. I apologize for not embedding the video right here – Anyclip had some issues with their embed option for this particular segment.
BookDaily – Where do you go to learn about new interesting books? NY Times’ bestsellers list? That’s a good start. But there’s now an even better way to tap into book discovery via BookDaily.
BookDaily lets you find great reads by giving you access to the entire first chapter of each featured book (over 80,000 titles!) via email. The obvious added value is that you can actually ‘taste’ the book before deciding to buy it. Sign up to start exploring the books on 1st chapter-basis, and get regular updates on your preferred genres and publishers. The BookDaily platform also offers book reviews by other readers like you, and weekly columns from credible sources.
When it comes to books, I’m more of a sci-fi fan, and I gave BookDaily a try to see if they have my personal must read for August, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Sure enough, I found it and was immediately offered to read the first chapter. Why, thank you very much!
Google Advisor – The search giant is now on yet another do-gooder mission: To help us better manage information online, and this time, in the personal finance arena. Google Advisor seeks to facilitate finding financial offers from multiple providers, comparing them side by side, and applying online. You can use Google advisor to compare recent offers of mortgages, credit cards, Certificates of Deposit as well as checking and savings accounts.
Once again, we see the magic of Google in simplifying otherwise complex processes to help us make better decisions. In today’s shaky economy Google Advisor is a financial bliss you should take advantage of.
Runtastic – Here’s a powerful fitness app that offers a bundle of sweet features. Runtastic offers the GPS-via-mobile, exercise logs and stats features, but so do most fitness apps these days. Where Runtastic really shines is in its real-time cheers from Facebook friends joggers, cyclists and hikers receive while out, pushing their bodies to the fitness limit.
Added Runtastic perks include finding tracks and routes in your area, tracking your weight, and sharing your progress on Facebook and Twitter, among others. Many will also be happy to learn Runtastic offers apps that work with Garmin sport watches. Runtastic is available on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows 7. So next time you go out for a run or a ride, rethink your app usage. Runtastic is a personally rewarding app that really pays off to use.
iPhone screenshots
WOW!collector – Here’s a nice Web spot that’s filled with enticing wonder and thought. The WOW!collector blog features fascinating posts in different categories including So Nice, Very Informative, Quite Funny and Wonderfully Weird. It’s a special venue where you will be spending long moments, and probably find yourself emailing and sharing on Facebook some of the entries here. To give you a taste of WOW!collector, here’s an interesting poster series by Viktor Hertz (the man who created Honest Logos), his own representation of various jackpot films.
Punchfork – Another look & click recipe site, Punchfork collects the Web’s best recipes in virtually any category you can think of, and showcases them elegantly on the homepage. Moreover, Punchfork uses social media channels to find out what’s hot in the cooking world right now, and shares that on their site. Punchfork’s visual approach is, as I’m sure you would agree, much more rewarding and helpful in recipe search online.
Search recipes by ingredients, or by user ratings, and Punchfork’s browsing filters can adjust your search to include blogs, trends, recently added recipes and more. To see what a chosen recipe page looks like, here’s one that is perfect for these hot summer days: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream by Serious Eats. Each recipe page allows you to go to the original site or blog’s recipe post.
Healthline Body Maps – There’s no way around it. When you see something with your own two eyes, you understand it better than by just reading about it. Healthline, the medical information provider, has partnered with GE Healthymagination to create a software of 3D anatomy maps of the human body so laypersons like you and me could better understand health by literally looking into ourselves.
When exploring a certain part or system of the human body, Healthline will offer interesting articles and tips relevant to that part of the body. So if, for example, I’m exploring the anatomy of women’s abdomen, Healthline recommends reads on digestive health, among other articles.
The 3D Body Maps constitute an appreciated added value to Healthline’s medical info center. Besides, I’ve always found the human body a most extraordinary machine. Healthline’s Body Maps adds a visual navigation tool to further enhance the human anatomy experience. Thanks, Healthline!
CardMunch – Networking is an absolute must these days, but it comes with an inevitable nuisance: storing all those business cards we are constantly accumulating can be a hassle, not to mention the time wasted when searching for a specific contact from the stack. CardMunch is a time and tree-saving app that makes business card management a breeze. Using your mobile phone’s camera, CardMunch -powered by LinkedIn- takes a snapshot of the business card, and automatically extracts and stores the person’s contact info right into your mobile device. It doesn’t get any easier than this.
In addition to its business card storage functionality, CardMunch automatically saves the business card image, and offers instant invite to that CEO or important gatekeeper you just met and exchanged cards with to maximize the networking opportunity. And if you’re worried about accidentally deleting an important contact, don’t worry. CardMunch backs up all the contacts you’ve added with the app on your Web account. Simply log in and recover all of your contacts.
Card Munch is currently available for the iPhone for free, and will be offered to Blackberry users soon.
Memrise – This vocabulary builder is unlike anything I’ve seen online thus far. I visited Memrise thinking I will use it to freshen up the advanced French vocabulary I learned back in college, but I soon found myself learning Mandarin. Memrise is a fast, easy and above all, enjoyable way to learn a new language and to enhance the ones you already speak.
What’s so special about Memrise? The team behind this innovative tool has mastered the science of new knowledge acquisition (especially the kind that’s involved in learning new words) to ensure long-term retention stays above 90%. How? Contributing users fluent enough in a given language give word association tips, and share their way of remembering what words mean. Association, according to science, is the best knowledge and memory retention method. Here’s a solid example of Memrise’s magic, showing how to remember the Mandarin word for Man.
The Memrise magic doesn’t stop there. By using a Farmville-like seed planting and greenhouse growing bait, the system gives you incentives to come back later and practice what you’ve learned. Even the quiz questions are built in a way that helps you remember the new vocab words better. I seriously believe Memrise is a must in every classroom across the country. Well done, Memrise team!
Visual.ly – Focused on the field of data visualizations, Visual.ly collects “the best examples on the web and gathered them for you to reference, share, and enjoy.” You will find here insightful multi-colored infographics and visualized maps. The site also welcomes visual arts professionals seeking to showcase their own designed inforgraphics.
To explore the visual wonders on this site, go to View the Showcase, and if you’d like to share your own designs then sign in, and hit Submit Infographics. Another special perk that will soon be available on Visual.ly is their labs, the place where infographic magic happens (and created) by site visitors. And since infographics is the topic in question, why not share one with you? There you go.
The Most Dangerous Species in the Mediterranean, published by Agencia Catalana.
