#9 Virtual Worlds

What can I say reader, about virtual worlds? Second life arguably the most prominent of the virtual world allows one to shop walk around, talk to others, much like real life except with whimsical graphics and the ability to fly. What I found most interesting was the rapidity with which the world has become commercialised, even to the extent of being able to convert U.S Dollars to the virtual "Linden Dollars" of second life and vice-versa. Institutions have also rapidly taken to second life with literal virtual classrooms. Mentioned in one of the YouTube videos was I think a somewhat unforeseen benefit of the site - learning another language by communicating with fellow learners and native speakers in 'everyday' situations. But be careful of the company you keep though, as you cannot practice pronunciation in a virtual world and the often short-handed abbreviated language of web speak may not be the best way to learn to write in any language.
C U L8r 4 Now. AJ25.

#8 iGoogle

Ah, iGoogle. Easy to learn, difficult to master. Create your own webpage in thirty seconds? Easy enough if you are not fussy. If on the other hand you are something of a perfectionist, are very discerning in terms of decor or simply don't care about american sports (College Basketball? Huh?), it may take some time to arrange things just so. Fortunately this is very easy to do with just a few clicks of the mouse. Colours, themes, clocks they're all there to be customised. They even have gadgets for the non-american if you look closely enough (Cricinfo - international cricket scores live! Much better).
I also had a look at some YouTube of how the employees of Google go about their business. It is different, but it works well for them. I certainly think my place of work would benefit from the google view on catering . . .

#5 Google Docs

Greetings once more readers, I have some splendid news for you. Not only is google docs an excellent way of avoiding complications with CDs, USBs or those pesky attachments. It allows you to create and store documents on-line and even better, upload files from whatever computer you happen to be on. But what I'm most happy about is that while I could not get the google docs 'Create new doc' page to load properly on a work computer, my ye olde PC managed it with ease! Ha!

#7 Google Book Search.

I must confess, usually I look for new books on Amazon if I wish to get them reserved for me at the library and I was unaware of the existance of google book search. Google has a number of advantages over amazon. Firstly, the screen is a lot less cluttered tham amazon and sticks to the basic info the average searcher is looking to extract - Basic publishing information, a 'blurb' and a few reviews (which may be more or less helpful, or contain spoilers, but I quibble because Amazon is the same). I particularly like the listing of all known different editions. Best of all though is the link "Find in a library" which will lead to the libraries australia site and list all libries, both public and university, which hold the item. There are drawbacks however. Firstly I could not discern any order in the results. Example I searched for one of my favourite authors Jose Saramago and was presented with a random collection of his works, which did not appear to be in any order, not chronological nor alphabetical. I also found no way of sorting the results a'la Amazon (I love to sort by publication date to find new and upcoming works). On the plus side I was able to track my favourite book from when I was in Prep, "William Tell" by Margaret Early, a retelling of the fable in 32 lavish pages illustrated in an illuminated manuscript style. Sadly I do not own the book, but now I know which libries do! In conclusion I will still be using Amazon to find new reading material, but if I know specifically what I am after, or an older title, Google Book Search is a useful resource which will give you most of what you need to know.