Fuelfrog is a web service for tracking your gas mileage and cost-per-gallon trends which can provide insight into your empty wallet. By adding simple information each time you fill up your car, Fuelfrog will chart that data to provide a gas history.
Fuelfrog accepts updates via its website, but it also can accept data via Twitter direct message. Simply add your Twitter account to your Fuelfrog profile and Twitter the miles since your last fill up, price per gallon, and number of gallons purchased to @fuelfrog.
Someday you'll be able to log in to Fuelfrog and tell your children, "See, back in my day I only paid $4.00 for a gallon of gas!"
Vidnik is a new Mac application that lets you quickly record video from your Mac's iSight camera and then upload it to YouTube. Simply run Vidnik, set your YouTube account username and password, record some video, crop it, add some tags and a description, choose the video category, and then click "Upload."
The movies you record are saved as .mov files in ~/Movies/Vidnik so that you can use them for other things as well. You can also drag other movies onto Vidnik for easy upload to YouTube.
Vidnik is a good tool for video bloggers (who want to use YouTube's bandwidth instead of their own), video responses to other YouTube videos, and solo musicians who want to be able to quickly upload performance video.
Chronotron is a trippy puzzle-solving game where your player's movements are recorded and then repeated when you warp back in time. It may sound confusing, but play a level or two and you'll quickly understand.
Basically you move around the level and carry out a set of actions that should ultimately help you collect the circuit board required to "skip" to the next level. The problem is, those actions won't be enough on their own, so you'll have to warp back in time. When you go back in time, your previous movements are replayed, but you can also move independently of those movements to work in tandem with yourself (or multiples of yourself).
Google for educators is a landing spot for classroom resources that incorporate Google products like Google Earth, SketchUp, Maps, and Sky. The site offers everything from simple links to the aforementioned products, to classroom activities for various K-12 grade levels.
There are downloadable PDF posters covering Google search tips for kids, Google Scholar, Book Search, and Google Earth, and there are activities that utilize various media like PDFs, wikis, podcasts, and websites. These activities are organized by grade level: K-5, 6-12, and "all levels."
The Google for educators site also links to their "teacher community" which is a Google group filled with threads about using the many Google offerings in a school classroom.
Logoease is a simple, web-based logo-creation tool that offers basic stock clip-art and fonts. You start by choosing a logo image from a general set of categories, and then you're taken to the main editing screen where you can add text and arrange your logo.
You can add up to five lines of text of various fonts and colors, and you can change options like bold, italics, and font size. Your logo picture can be colored, and objects can be layered with "send to front" or "send to back" functions.
When your logo is finished, you can download a zip file containing a .jpg, .eps, .tiff, and .png of your logo. You'll need to signup for a free account (surprise) to be able to download the logo. When we first tested the site, we got errors when attempting to save our logos; however, the site appears to work properly now.
Posted Apr 29th 2008 12:00PM by Todd Ritter Filed under: Fun
If you're tired of cheery, politically-correct e-cards and want to say it like you mean it, check out Wrongcards' offerings. Their e-cards don't have animated fluffy bunnies or smiling sunflowers, but they do have direct, honest quotes and illustrations covering the obvious topics like birthdays and anniversaries.
For example, send a "get well" card that says what you're really thinking: "Get Well, but if you don't, I'd find it very consoling if you left me your Wii." Or for the confident romantic, try this one: "Obviously this anniversary comes as a surprise...because you should totally have dumped me by now...but whatever..."
Wrongcards has the standard featureset of other e-card sites: send the card to multiple e-mail addresses, add your own custom message to the card, and get notified when someone reads your card.
Launchball is a fun, smart, and polished game courtesy of the Science Museum in London. The game uses a common premise: coax a ball into a goal. The objects you can use to accomplish this task though are based generally on electricity, magnetism, and mechanics.
There are basic shapes like "ski jumps" and ramps, but there are also batteries and steam generators (which also require a water tank and fire) to power magnets and fans. There are switches, springs, cushions, and rubber blocks. Each level provides you with a certain set and quantity of objects to help you get the ball in the goal (not all objects need to be used though).
If you take a few seconds to create a free account, you'll be emailed a code so that you can login at a later time and resume where you left off. Otherwise you have to play through all of the levels each time. There are three main categories of levels: tricky, sneaky, and crafty.
You can even create your own levels and share them. In the "Extras" section, you can play levels that were created by players.
Using an interesting blend of real-world video and cartoon-enemy overlays, ToonCrisis is a fun Flash shooter with an original soundtrack of punk-ish/ska songs to keep you motivated.
The objective is simply to kill the monsters by aiming your laser-shooting hand (which is, of course, in the shape of a gun) at them and clicking the left mouse button. There are different types of enemies including some that don't move but shoot things at you, some that move and take a bunch of shots to kill, and bosses (complete with separate energy meter) that must be beat before moving to the next stage.
The game flow is similar to arcade games like Area 51, Time Crisis, and Virtua Cop in that you walk a bit, kill all the enemies, walk more, kill enemies, defeat boss, repeat.
The NPR Intelligence Squared US (IQ2US) audio podcast is a series of recordings of public debates held in New York focusing on hot-button issues (most specific to the U.S.) like immigration, affirmative action, and global warming. The debates are held in the Oxford-style meaning there are one motion (topic), one moderator, three speakers for the motion, and three speakers against the motion.
Prior to the start of the debate, visitors cast their votes for or against the motion. During the debate, the results of the initial vote are shown, and the visitors vote again at the end of the debate to decide which side "won."
The debates move quickly, and it's nice to learn things in the car on the way to work instead of listening to drunk 30-somethings talk about "news."
The IQ2US series holds five debates in the spring, and five debates in the fall, and is available from the iTunes Store or the NPR website.
Today we bring you two quick flash games to waste time. Fulfillment is a tangram-style game where you must fill a square area with shapes so that none of the background is exposed. The target area gets progressively larger (starting at a 3x3 grid), and each level is timed. Points are awarded for level completion, with extra points for completing a level quickly.
There are currently two great software bundles now available for Mac OS X: the MacHeist Bundle and MacUpdate's Promo bundle. Both offer a collection of commercial Mac apps, and both offer great savings by purchasing the apps bundled instead of separately. Here is a quick breakdown of both bundles and our recommendation if you can have only one.
MacUpdate Promo The initial bundle costs $64.99 (USD) and includes the following:
DarkCopy is a web-based alternative to programs like WriteRoom and DarkRoom that lets you compose text files in full (or almost full) screen to eliminate distractions like instant messages, Flash games, LOLcats, etc.
You can type in a regular browser window, or go full screen to make most of your screen (except for the browser's toolbar) black with greenish text. When you're done writing, you can save the file to your computer as a plain ole' .txt file.
This is handy if you want to work on a blog post, business idea, school paper, or love note without your attention being lost to something less significant.
Posted Apr 9th 2008 9:00AM by Todd Ritter Filed under: Fun
Get Yourself Fired is a site that lets you upload a picture of your face and insert it into one of about 25 various compromising pictures (that would theoretically get you fired if your boss found them). The site was created by itzbig, a company that specializes in letting job candidates anonymously search for jobs at technology firms.
Like FaceinHole, Get Yourself Fired accepts JPEGs which you then align to a face sketch so that your face can be properly matched to whichever picture you choose. However, Get Yourself Fired doesn't let you use a webcam to cut out the uploading step.
When your picture is created, you can email it to your boss (or yourself), and then you can peruse some time wasters while you wait to be fired.
Boomstick is a Flash game where you move a stick-figure person left and right, and aim/fire a boomstick (gun). The object is to shoot the "bad guys," which are really just basic shapes that fly through the screen at varying paces.
When you hit the bad guys, debris falls like a candy from a piñata, and collecting this debris gives you more ammo to continue the cycle. There are two powerups as well: a nuclear blast that clears the screen of bad guys, and a speed boost that, you guessed it, increases your lateral movement.
The background music and sounds can be turned off, though the music is sort of like techno/house and made us want to shoot more bad guys.
Desktoptopia is a utility that changes your desktop background automatically with well-designed pictures that are chosen by the Desktoptopia team. Originally created for Mac OS X, a PC version is now available in beta.
On OS X, the app installs as a preference pane where you can change the rotation time (hours, days, etc.) and select feeds from which to pull pictures. Desktoptopia offers categories like abstract, film, photography, and typography. You can also add your own feed, which greatly increases the functionality of the program.
Fuelfrog is a web service for tracking your gas mileage and cost-per-gallon trends which can provide insight into your empty wallet. By adding simple information each time you fill up your car, Fuelfrog will chart that data to provide a gas history.
Vidnik
Google for educators
DarkCopy
Get Yourself Fired
