This week’s website is a computational engine called Wolfram Alpha.  This is a site that just launched a few weeks ago and is still growing and getting better.  This isn’t your typical search engine like Google.  This is deisgned to do computations and calculations based on the data it knows.  It is designed not to search, but to answer questions.  So if you need to know “What is the population of Michigan?” it will tell you that as of 2006 it was 10.1 million people.  It also gives additional information about the population of Michigan.  If you just ask for “weather” it will give you the weather for your location, which it detects based on your IP address.  It is somewhat limited on what it can answer right now, but when it does understand what you are asking it is good.  To explore what it can do, try asking it for some of the following:

• Your first name
• Your date of birth
• The answer to life, the universe, and everything
• pint of ice cream with 2 chocolate chip cookies

You can view a tutorial of what it can do for you at http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html or see exmaples of what to ask at http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/

Ever look for an alternative to the Weather Channel’s website to get your weather?  Check out NOAA’s National Weather Service at www.weather.gov.  This site provides a lot more detailed information than seems to be available at the Weather Channel’s website.  It’s a little harder to navigate, but once you get used to the site you are bound to find something useful.  To get started, if you are looking for local weather, enter your city and state or ZIP Code in the box on the upper left.

I’ll point out a few features that I like to use and let you explore to find what else is useful to you.

1)  Detailed Point Forecast – allows you to select your exact location on the map to get the most specific forecast for your area – much finer level of selection than just a city or ZIP code.

2) Hourly Weather Graph – this is a link in the lower right corner of the local forecast area in the “Additional Forecasts and Information” area.  This provides a nice line graph of a variety of weather forecast data that makes it easy to see for the next several days what the weather is going to do.  Items like temperature, sky cover, precipitation potential, etc. are listed.  You can customize this graph to show only those items you are interested in.  I find it really useful when I want to ride my bike to work – so I can quickly check the forecast through the day to find what the weather is going to be like.

3) National Digital Forecast Database – click on the map in the lower left corner.  This brings up a map of your local region with a variety of different forecast data options.  Use the options at the top to select the time range you want to explore and then just hover your mouse pointer over the weather data you are interested in and the map updates to reflect that data.  This allows you to quickly scan a visual image of the forecast for the region over a period of time and for different forecast types without waiting for a new webpage to load.

So when you are ready to explore weather in a different format – check out weather.gov!

Now that I’ve entered into the Tweeting world – I’ve started using a downloaded application to manage my Twitter and Facebook accounts.  This application is TweetDeck.  Using this makes it easy to update my Twitter and/or Facebook status from one application and also view all my Tweets and Facebook status updates.  It checks every few minutes for updates and notifies you of an update via an onscreen message and a small sound.  You can define custom groups of your twitter follows to better organize your updates.  It has built in integration to shorten URL, using TwitPics, and more.  The application is still in Beta but works very well, and is being actively developed with new features being added and existing ones being fixed.  In fact a new version is due out this week or next week with even better Facebook integration.  You can also use Twitter searches directly and have them stay updated as new tweets come in that match the search.

So if you are looking for an application to help you manage your Twitter and Facebook updates – check out TweetDeck!

Ok – back again after a brief break.  Don’t you just love those random breaks I take?  Never know what’s happening – keeps you on your toes!

This week’s website is for one of the many video podcasts that I watch on a regular basis.  This week is Hak5 at www.hak5.org The Hak5 show comes out once a week and is about 30-45 mins long.  Their focus is on computers and other technology and the many other things you can do with them.  There is a wide range of topics covered from network security to gaming consoles to passwords to DIY to homeberw to who knows what.  Some of the items they cover could be illegal if used in the wrong way, but very informative so you can be more secure with your own computers.  A good show to help keep up with what is going on in the geek world.  I always enjoy watching it to see what else I could be doing with my techno skills and what crazy things they will try next.

Remember to Trust Your Technolust!

This week’s website will follow the geek theme of last week.  The website is Think Geek which has everything you could want to buy that’s geeky!  Their slogan is “Stuff for Smart Masses.”  They have everything from useful gadgets, to bizarre items, to completely wacky and useless – but absolutely needed – items!

Some of the items that I have from them and love include:

• Pop Quiz Math Clock
• Pi By Numbers t-shirt
• Duct Tape Wallet
• Geek Badge Holder
• Utili-Key

They have a little bit of everything – I can spend hours looking through what they have.  Also, if you ever need or want to buy me something – feel free to check out my wish-list!