In this week’s Tip, we start a discussion of some wonderfully useful websites.
Tip #289: Wonderful Websites #1
Thanks to friends, colleagues, and various newsletters that I receive, there are a number of very useful websites that have come to my attention. Here are two of them:
1. http://www.whitepages.com find people for free
This is a terrific resource if you need to find a person, a business, or know the phone number and need to do a reverse look up. You can also sign up on the site so that it is easier for people to find you. This site recommendation comes from Patrick Lee and was published in SpeakerNet News. He was able to find the address for an author when all he initially knew was the author’s name and state. He also used it to find an address for someone whose website only listed the phone number, not an address.
2. http://www.wordle.net for word clouds
Have you ever seen a word cloud? I didn’t even know what it was until Mary Hoddy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote to tell me about it: “You can go to http://www.wordle.net, copy in a bunch of words, and it makes a word cloud for you. The words that you’ve repeated the most will come out the biggest. It will tell you in an instant what you said that was most important.”
You can have the site reformat the words you have entered, using different fonts, color schemes, and perspectives. You can also have it focus in on a certain number of words. First of all, it can be very useful if you need to focus in on a title (for a book, for example). Second, it is a lot of fun. Third, it is very visually appealing!
Thank you, Patrick, Mary and Jeff!
Next week, we will continue our discussion of some wonderful sites. If you know of other sites that might be useful, please let us know!
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May your learning be sweet.
