Get Growing!

Plants Plus! & Surplus Tree Sale
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conservation District Cooler
1840 Table Street
Thursday :: May 21 :: 4 to 7 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trees & Shrubs from the Conservation District
Tomatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins & herbs plus
an assortment of annuals and perennials grown by the
Prairie Potter Master Gardeners.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Directions from Airport Road
Turn left on N. Airport Road; turn left on Plateau Street;
turn left on Table Street; last building on the left.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sponsered by
Prairie Potter Master Gardeners
and the Hughes/Stanley County Conservation District

The trouble with cell phones

Annoying calls - warranty, schmoranty

Federal action against bogus car warranties is ‘imminent’
from Consumer Reports Money & Shopping Blog by Consumer Reports Money & Shopping Blog

The Federal Trade Commission could be just days away from taking action against companies that use spam phone calls to pitch bogus extended car warranties.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) announced that they have received a letter from FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz saying that “law enforcement action in this area can be expected imminently.” Schumer earlier this week called on the federal agency to stop the practice, which has generated thousands of inquiries and complaints to the Better Business Bureau.
The companies use automatic dialing systems to call both cell and landline phones to pitch extended warranties. Federal law prohibits unsolicited “robo-call” marketing to cells phones generally. In some cases, the calls are being made to numbers that have been placed on the federal “Do Not Call” list,” the senators said. Both added that they too have received such calls in recent weeks.
“In addition to violating the ‘Do Not Call List’ law, these scammers are peddling phony car warranties that exploit consumers,” Warner said, in a statement.
The senators said the typical call from an unrecognized number features a computerized voice saying: “Out of warranty? You are still eligible to reactivate warranty coverage. This is the final call before we close the file.” They said consumers apparently are being called at random and that the company making the call has no idea whether someone’s warranty is about to expire. Although consumers are given the choice to “opt out” of future calls by pressing a key on their telephone, the calls continue, they said.
Even extended warranties sold by legitimate companies are generally not worth buying, especially if you purchase a car with a top reliability score.—Anthony Giorgianni

Looking for blogs to read?

Feedmil is a search engine for RSS and Atom feeds based on the concept of the "Long Tail" (basically, small, obscure feeds have an audience as long as the interested people have a way to find them via search technology).

"Feedmil is a feed search engine featuring a spam-free, topic-focused search for a variety of feed types including blogs, microblogs, public and social media feeds as well as podcasts."

It’s a feed search engine with little slide levers you move to change your search results. So, instead of just entering search terms into Feedmil, you also select a popularity range, anywhere from the obscure to the well-known. By filtering your results by popularity, you'll be able to pare down a bunch of results that are presumably all relevant into the top sites on your topic, or some surprising ones you might not have heard of.

Sounds like a pretty neat way to find new blogs...

Visual Vocabulary

I have previously mentioned various visual dictionaries/thesauruses. Here is an interesting addition to Visual Thesaurus. VocabGrabber analyzes any text you're interested in, generates a list vocabulary words and shows how those words are used in context.
All you have to do is copy & paste text into the box, and then click on the "Grab Vocabulary!" button. Then, a vocabulary list that you can sort, filter, and save is automatically created. If you select a word on the list you can see a snapshot of the Visual Thesaurus map and definitions for that word and examples of the word in your text. They also provide sample texts (including the US Bill of Rights) so you can see how it works.

Various Interesting Stuff

Fliis, All the music you can imagine! Type in any key term and all the songs available on YouTube will appear. The option not to have the video helps if you are in need of just the song!

This is a cool image…zoom in on it and it just keeps displaying more, user-submitted images. It’s an Infinite Photograph. From National Geographic: "What makes up our world? Dive into this photo-mosaic portrait of the Earth to see it through the eyes of users like you. It's made up of hundreds of photos of the natural world, each submitted by users to My Shot... Move the yellow square over an area you would like to explore, click, and go. Double-click on an image to see more information about it. Keep clicking—and diving deeper into the Infinite Photograph—to get a truly boundless picture of Earth."

Current and historical photos @ LIFE - Your World in Pictures.

BBC’s One Minute Wonders…quick bits of science and nature goodness.

Time Warp videoe clips from the Discovery Channel. Using high-speed photography, the hosts slow down events that normally occur in the blink of an eye…like the vibrations of a cymbal or a cat licking up milk. Now you can watch tons of their videos online.
There are even interactive clips. Control how slow or fast the dog drinks the water, popcorn pops, bulldog shakes, taking a water balloon to the face . . .

Creative Commons Media

Sean P Aune at SitePoint rounds up 30+ Places To Find Creative Commons Media for those seeking audio, video, images, and text files that can be re-used free of charge under a CC license.

Amazing jump roping!

Wow! Who knew jump roping could be so interesting.
Montage:

This is the King's Firecrackers performing at the US Navy Academy.
Performance:

You have to watch this whole thing! When you think it's finished, it isn't. Keep watching

You can read more about them at their blog King's Firecrackers

Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket,... (I almost said, "Oh, my!")

Do you like Flickr or Picasa? Check out Picasa vs. Flickr by David Israel. He compares the two from his point of view and then by others in the comments.

And, since I'm getting ready for Follow the Yellow Brick Road (I will be dancing as part of the rainbow and the tornado and will also be Aunt Em) Here is some info about Rainbows > http://eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/

see pictures from the performance

HOME

White House on Flickr

There is even an official White House Flickr Stream!

FW: Networked Learner's Bill of Rights

Sent to you by Sarah via Google Reader:

Networked Learner’s Bill of Rights

via Tame The Web by Michael on 4/30/09

Stephen Abram notes:

I think that this list from the Blue Skunk Blog is worth reading:

“Personal Network Member Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

1. I have the right not to be social 24/7 - either online or in person.
2. I have the right to time for reflection and responsibility for doing so.
3. I have the right to use only the tools that suit my learning style.
4. I have the right to stop using a tool when it is no longer useful.
5. I have the right to not be on the cutting edge all the time or feel I need to always know all there is to know.
6. I have the right to choose those with whom I learn in my personal learning network and responsibility to learn from those with whom I don’t always agree.
7. I have the right and responsibility to disagree and the responsibility to do it professionally.
8. I have the responsibility to become familiar with a tool before sharing it with others.
9, I have the responsibility to share my knowledge with others in my network.
10. I have the right and responsibility to not let online activities keep me from my friends, my family, my workplace, or my community.”

I’d add a list of responsibilties too:

1. I have a responsibility to keep up.
2. I have a responsibilty to learn new things.
3. I am responsible for my own learning, I am not a child of my employer.
4. I am responsible to learn when I need to and not to wit until it’s an emergency.
5. I have a responsibility to understand that technology evolves and evolves with my feedback.

I appreciate the original lists and Stephen’s additions. I’d add these:

1. I have a responsibility to respect all members of my network.
2. I have the responsibility to never stop learning.
3. I have the responsibility to understand and consider everyone’s POV.
4. I have the responsibility to interact, disagree and debate without making it personal.
5. I have the responsibility to present myself to my learning network - online and in the physical world - in a genuine, professional manner.

What would you add?

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to Tame The Web using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites