Not a Jott!

As this tool is only available to folks in the US of A, the Wolf is not too fussed by its absence here. Jott.com is a combined alerting service where you can use voicemail to the service to generate 'notes to self', calls/notes to others, etc - eg. one can phone jott, record a voicemail which can then generate a text/email that is sent to one or several. I'd have to admit that this broadcast function could be useful - if you didn't have a chance to text/email a message yourself (which would probably take the same - or less - time!) It has a variety of other features to play with, but if you need to phone a service, record a voicemail, receive a text and email to remind yourself to buy milk on the way home... you really need to take a break from technology !

Animoto sample

For your viewing pleasure !

Getting Animoto-ed

Another in the range of cool tools selected by the Wolf!
Be your own director, producer, sound editor & cinematographer all in one. There's a free acount option so you can add your images, choose or add the music and let Animoto mix you up a video clip. The Wolf made a (not really) quick sample, as you can see here. (Took a bit of time to sort, find, upload photos, edit plus the 3 steps saving the video-as-you-go were a bit slow - but likely that was the computer and the traffic in the ether!) Did highlight one good tip - prepare a dedicated folder with your selected pics in your photohost for each video you plan to make - only need about 10 pics for the 30 sec video, though it won't necessarily use them all. Liked the 'remix' option - where you can change the way the graphics morph to have a new video - without losing the original.
You can then send your creation to a blog, by email to friends, to YouTube, etc.
Certainly fun and a great new twist on a slide night!

Feeling nostalgic?

So much out on the web revolves around the 'new' - it's a nice change to play around looking at the 'old'.
One site the Wolf's been told about is Retroland, lots of interesting stuff and wiki-ish in design and content, but too US centric for my taste. Another one I found while cruisin for old stuff is Nostalgiacentral - I found I like this site alot more, including the look and layout. It covers 1950s-1980s news/events, music, television and other popular culture. Better still, it includes a not-small amount of Australian material.
More place to trawl around for memories of delights (and perhaps horrors) past include: the Internet Movie Database, the Big Cartoon Database, British TV History incl its links page, the British Film Institute's film & tv database and televisionau.com for Australian stuff on the small screen.

Some classics of the Wolf's past - Kimba the White Lion (1960s amime/manga; and the original Lion King!) ; cereal toys (yes... you do remember them!) ; Astro Boy (more 60s anime).

Want to be fit? get away from the computer ! :)

We all know there's sooooo much out there on everything you could imagine - and alot you wouldn't want to. So, asks the Wolf, if you want to improve your health and fitness - why do it all on the web? (unless you're a spider - tee hee). A huge number of websites offer any amount of good (and bad) information of diet, food choices, exercise, etc etc etc. Though you'll get more exercise going for a walk and using a pad & pencil than recording all your health info via computer - there are a couple of websites you may want to look at.
(NB The Wolf does not endorse any opinions or information on any such websites - they are just discussed as interesting websites.)
Nutridiary and fitday are two websites that, after registration, allow you to record food and exercise in diaries, calorie and carb counters and all manner of other info you may want to look at if you're after ideas and advice.
Some authoritative health information websites include: smartraveller.gov.au's page on travel health; healthinsite.gov.au on all sorts of health topics; and the US's pubmed for medical and other journals articles on health/medicine.

So. You want more web 2.0 ?...

Apart from the various websites out there that list and comment on web 2.0 (2.1...3.0...) goodies, a nice little real world paper item was produced recently...
A set of articles in the Australian business magazine Business Review Weekly (aka BRW) (ISSN 0727-7458), issue date June 19-25 2008.
Sorry e-people but the articles are currently subscriber access only online.
The first one is entitled 'The new web revolution' and a few pages on is a list (compiled the the firm Future Exploration Network) of 100 "significantly Australian" (some of them not for much longer!) web 2.0 applications.
A wide range of apps are included in this list - some that sound interesting include:
factbites - a search engine that displays results with full sentences - nice one for young and new net surfers; streetadvisor - rate the amenities in your street/locality, mostly Australia, UK, US and Canada plus other countries; plugger - Australian news monitoring site; and a favourite of the Wolf's: Powerhouse Museum collection search - search the many thousands of items using taxonomy or folksonomy tags.