Squidoo

This has nothing to do with books and reading, but what a neat site:
http://www.squidoo.com/soundtoys/

It's all about music "Museum of Sound Toys - Online Virtual Instruments, Interactive Music Guides, and Digital Media Artworks". I was actually looking for a fun interactive music widget to add to my blog when I found this, and decided it is better to add the link itself because it leads to so many good things.

Alter Egos and Avatars

I had a lot of fun creating my avatar at www.Meez.com, I can see why every Playstation, Gamecube and computer game my youngest nephew has gives the option to make your own wrestler, car, action hero, etc. Especially when you get to be "lord of all things" and choose all the characters, like in the Sims. . . .Then I saw Her Mind Disturbed Her's talking avatar from Sitepal and was (momentarily) jealous. But I know I'll be creating yet another account soon.

Pondering whether the main difference between a blog and a MySpace or other social network account is the listing of the friends and the posting of comments w/picture. It seems to me that it's equally easy to add content and change the layout.

Don't harsh my mellow

Back from vacation and just had to add the new catch phrase I picked up from reality T.V., which I basically can't stand and virtually never watch. But I do like the phrase. Hoping to find time this week to check out some more tools I've been reading about in other blogs.

Not impressed. . .

Well, the niece and nephew (ages 19 and 20) are not impressed by text to speech, and wondered why I "chose" the male voice. They've been playing around with various versions of it on their computers for years, and it's old news to them to make the slightly robotic-sounding voice say funny things. I know it's not that new, but I think the ease with which it can be installed is a bit new, so I'm still a bit thrilled about it. And it sure wouldn't be the first time they've rolled their eyes and indicated I'm a little lame.

Wow! It worked!

and it also was pretty easy to install.

Text to Speech

I just signed up for a free account at odiogo.com that is supposed to convert my blog to speech. Any of you who know me personally know that I am interesed in accessibility issues, so I'm anxious to see if this works. I have played a bit with other text-to-speech tools, but this is the first one I've heard of where a blog can be converted. If you listen to this please post a comment so I'll know.

Open Library

Both Boing Boing and Slashdot have stroies this morning on Open Library http://demo.openlibrary.org/, a "giant books wiki" which may have half a million books eventually. Sounds like it would bring together online book content from anywhere, such as Project Gutenberg, Electronic Text Center, Digital Library SunSITE, etc. Will have to read more about it. . . .