2007 is one of the warmest years on record

Another warm one.

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2007) — The year 2007 is on pace to become one of the 10 warmest years for the contiguous U.S., since national records began in 1895, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The year was marked by exceptional drought in the U.S. Southeast and the West, which helped fuel another extremely active wildfire season. The year also brought outbreaks of cold air, and killer heat waves and floods. Meanwhile, the global surface temperature for 2007 is expected to be fifth warmest since records began in 1880. Preliminary data will be updated in early January to reflect the final three weeks of December and is not considered final until a full analysis is complete next spring.

Thing 29 Scrapblog and my first attempt as a director

Thing 27 Photobucket

Photobucket is very cool. I really like the ability to put together a slide show. It looks pretty easy and I would definitely like to play with this.

I created a subalbum based on the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. There was a lot out there (due to the creativity of the many fans). I would like to do a Twilight program this summer so this may present some ideas for it.

Thing 26 Yourminis

I am continuing Libraries 2.1 to see what other wonders are out there. Thing 26, a site called Yourminis allows you to add widgets to your website. A widget is a little program, an applet, that does something. Apparently, if you have the know how, you can create these widgets for anyone to use.

Many of the widgets on Yourminis were fairly silly. There are a variety of clocks, calendars, feeds from videos, mp3 players and the like. I liked the phases of the moon and added that. So I guess if I'm too busy to look at the moon (or it is cloudy), I'll know what it looks like.

My favorite widget is actually from Meebo (a site that consolidates all the Instant Messaging services so you can talk to everyone from one log in). You can place the widget on any web page or blog and folks can talk to you from your website or blog, even if they do not have an IM account themselves. You can see this widget on my blog as well. I also put it on our Teen Advisory Group Wiki so the kids can ask me questions if I am on line.

So, I think the concept of widgets is pretty cool but I am interested in seeing some other applications. Websites are busy enough and computers are too slow to clog them up with meaningless things.