Laurel Tip #289: Wonderful Websites #1

In this week’s Tip, we start a discussion of some wonderfully useful websites.

Tip #289: Wonderful Websites #1

Thanks to friends, colleagues, and various newsletters that I receive, there are a number of very useful websites that have come to my attention. Here are three of them:

1. <http://www.whitepages.com> find people for free

This is a terrific resource if you need to find a person, a business, or know the phone number and need to do a reverse look up. You can also sign up on the site so that it is easier for people to find you. This site recommendation comes from Patrick Lee and was published in SpeakerNet News. He was able to find the address for an author when all he initially knew was the author’s name and state. He also used it to find an address for someone whose website only listed the phone number, not an address.

2. <http://www.wordle.net> for word clouds

Have you ever seen a word cloud? I didn’t even know what it was until Mary Hoddy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote to tell me about it: “You can go to <http:/www.wordle.net>, copy in a bunch of words, and it makes a word cloud for you. The words that you've repeated the most will come out the biggest. It will tell you in an instant what you said that was most important.“

You can have the site reformat the words you have entered, using different fonts, color schemes, and perspectives. You can also have it focus in on a certain number of words. First of all, it can be very useful if you need to focus in on a title (for a book, for example). Second, it is a lot of fun. Third, it is very visually appealing!

3. <http://www.teainc.org/glossary_a.html> for a glossary of terms

Actually, this website will give you a glossary of terms used in the energy industry, which may or may not be of interest to you. However, it wasn’t until Jeff Anthony of Commonwealth Metrics sent me this site that I realized that there are all sorts of glossary sites dedicated to different industries! So, if you want to make sure that you are using terminology that is familiar and appropriate to your specific audience, just Google a glossary for that industry!

Thank you, Patrick, Mary and Jeff!

Next week, we will continue our discussion of some wonderful sites. If you know of other sites that might be useful, please let us know!

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May your learning be sweet.