Stephen's Untold Stories

This is just one of those things that is incredibly cool. You can make a graph of any web site.

Here is what the colors mean:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Link to site

Gwinnett County is located in northeast metro Atlanta. They’ve had similar problems in the past.

Thieves have broken into portable classrooms at 20 Gwinnett County public schools over the past month and stolen 50 laptop computers and other electronic equipment, school officials said Friday.

Gwinnett school police officers are investigating the break-ins, district spokeswoman Sloan Roach said. The information has been shared with Gwinnett County police and other police agencies, Roach said.

“This is a greater-than-usual number of break-ins in a short amount of time,” Roach said. “It goes without saying that the loss of any public school property is a great concern. We are actively investigating this matter and hope to apprehend and prosecute the offenders to the greatest extent of the law.”

In addition to the computers, thieves also stole 16 graphing calculators, 15 printers, six projectors, three computer scanners, one digital camera and five other pieces of equipment, Roach said. There also was some property damage, she said.

Link to full article (requires free registration)

Cutting edge stuff.

PCWorld.com has a pretty good list. No surprise to me to see AOL at #1. Here are the top 10:

1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)
8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9. Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
10. dBASE IV (1988)

Here is the complete list

From the GA Department of Education

Georgia’s fourth-graders are showing significant improvement in science, according to the results of a national test released Wednesday.
The percentage of fourth-graders scoring at basic levels or above on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in science jumped six points from 2000, the last time the test was given.

State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox said the results are encouraging and show that a statewide focus on science is having an impact in our early grades.

“In Georgia, we are sending the message that science is important to the future of our students and the future of our state,” Superintendent Cox said. “That message is being heard and is showing results.”

Superintendent Cox said that the test results reinforce the need for Georgia — and the rest of the nation — to set higher standards for its students in science.

“The good news is that Georgia is doing something about it,” Superintendent Cox said. “We are raising the bar for our students in science.”

The test was given before the state’s new, more rigorous science curriculum was introduced, meaning future results should be even better.

She said the recently-released results of the Georgia High School Graduation Test in Science is another indication that Georgia’s focus on science is paying dividends (You can view those results here).

The science NAEP was given to a representative sampling of students in grades 4 and 8 between Jan. 24, 2005 and March 4, 2005. The test provides a snapshot for national comparison but is not comparable to the results of Georgia’s curriculum-based science exam — the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. The NAEP in science will be given again in 2009.

The 2005 test results for Georgia show:
- The average score for fourth-graders rose six points, from 142 to 148. The average score for eighth-graders rose two points to 144. The test is scored on a scale from 0 to 300.
- The percentage of fourth-graders scoring at basic levels or above jumped from 57 percent in 2000 to 63 percent in 2005.
- The percentage of black fourth-graders scoring at basic levels or above jumped 10 percentage points from 2000 to 2005.
- The percentage of eighth-graders scoring at or above basic levels rose one point from 2000 to 53 percent.
- The percentage of fourth-grade girls scoring at or above basic levels jumped 9 points to 63 percent, pulling even with the percentage of boys meeting the mark. The scale score for girls rose 8 points to 147

Link to complete article

Better be careful, kids!

High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com.

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of “illegal or inappropriate” behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

The rule will take effect at the start of the next school year, officials said.

District officials won’t regularly search students’ sites, but will monitor them if they get a worrisome tip from another student, a parent or a community member.

Link to article

Gosh, do I feel like a wimp now.

Fueled by several slices of pizza, a 7-year-old boy braved the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay on Monday and became one of the youngest swimmers to cross the channel from Alcatraz Island to the city.

Braxton Bilbrey, a second-grader from Glendale, Ariz., made the estimated 1.4-mile swim to Aquatic Park in 47 minutes, according to his coach.

No official records are kept for the feat, but Braxton could be the youngest ever to accomplish it.

Braxton, who said his next ambition is to swim the English Channel, swam freestyle, his favorite stroke, the whole way. He said he ate pizza for dinner Sunday and was helped along by shouts of encouragement from his coach, Joe Zemaitis and two other adults who swam alongside him the whole way. The toughest part, Braxton said, was the chilly water.

Link to article

I remember when MTV first started, so I know most of these. If you are a fan of the 80′s you must bookmark this site.

 Huge List of 1980′s Music Videos

Google celebrates his birthday. Great logo!

It just opened in November, and they were hoping to draw 2 million in the first year. It looks like they might just double that.

When the doors opened just six months ago on Nov. 21, Georgia Aquarium officials hoped to attract 2 million visitors the first year. They’re on the cusp of that goal (1.97 million) after just 180 days, and appear poised to see more than 3 million visitors wander the winding galleries of the world’s biggest indoor fish tank by the time it celebrates its first anniversary.

The downtown Atlanta aquarium has become a national media darling and a magnet for everything from high school proms to bar mitzvahs to celebrities. Musicians Travis Tritt, Usher and Ludacris have been spotted there, as well as magician David Copperfield.

Some days as many as 17,000 people visit the ship-shaped building near Centennial Olympic Park. That success — about 10,000 visitors on an average day — has spawned its own set of problems, everything from long lines in the food court to traffic congestion in the parking deck to people congestion inside some of the aquarium’s five galleries.

Link to article (requires free registration)

Clayton Wilcox, Superintendent of Pinellas County Schools had a blog that went on for a while, but he decided  to shut it down because of the vitriolic comments that were posted there. You can still see the comments, but posting any more of them has been shut off.

I will talk with the Times tomorrow about ending my blog – I think that talking face to face with teachers will be more productive going forward.

I imagine this will be my last post … I will try to achive the posts received up to this date … some will say that I wimped out … I will just say this … the lies, distortions and mean spiritedness of some – was not worth my time or worthy of this district … good night and good luck.

Clayton

Here is his blog

I found this at the Official Google Blog. Pretty cool, especially if you’re a fan of Pearl Jam.

Pearl Jam’s new music video “Life Wasted” is now on Google Video for free! Be sure to check it out now, as free streaming and download is available only until next Wednesday.

And in line with the band’s experimental personality, Pearl Jam released the “Life Wasted” video under a Creative Commons “some rights reserved” copyright license. What does all that legal gibberish mean to you? It means that you can download the video for free, share it with your friends, and even post it on your own site–provided you give the band credit and don’t use it for commercial purposes. It’s yet another example of Pearl Jam putting its fans first.

Georgia gets a B overall, which, along with Kentucky, is the highest among states in the southeast.

These interactive maps offer a quick way to examine State-by-State grades by categories. The grades break down into three groups: access to technology, use of technology and capacity of use.

Provides comprehensive data for individual states in the following categories: access to technology, use of technology, capacity of use, state data system, and data access and analysis tools. Also provides ways to compare multiple states’ data in all categories, as well as states’ overall grades.

Link to site

I only knew about four of them.

1. Google Blog – googleblog.blogspot.com
2. Google Talkabout – googletalk.blogspot.com
3. Google Base Blog – googlebase.blogspot.com
4. Google Video – googlevideo.blogspot.com
5. Inside Google Desktop – googledesktop.blogspot.com
6. Google Code – code.google.com
7. Inside AdWords – adwords.blogspot.com
8. Inside AdSense – adsense.blogspot.com
9. Google Reader Blog – googlereader.blogspot.com
10. Blogger Buzz – buzz.blogger.com
11. AdWords API Blog – adwordsapi.blogspot.com
12. Google Enterprise Blog – googleenterprise.blogspot.com
13. Google Research – googleresearch.blogspot.com
14. Google Maps API Blog – googlemapsapi.blogspot.com
15. Google Writely – writely.blogspot.com
16. Inside Google Book Search – booksearch.blogspot.com

Thanks Infothought

I still want to try this. Hopefullly I’ll have some time this weekend.

K-12 students and teachers are using SketchUp to do some pretty amazing things. From drafting assignments to geometry lessons, art classes to history projects, SketchUp seems to have found a place in almost every aspect of K-12 curriculum — all without any effort from us.

This looks incredibly cool.

Snap is a new search engine that offers a very different alternative to the Big Search, Text-In, Text-Out, method. Snap is visual. Snap is fast. Snap is Interactive.

The Snap Difference #1:    Fast Visual Display of Results Previews
We believe the visual display of data along with text is better than text alone. Users can better judge a result to be good for their search if they see it rather than read it. When Snap returns results, we show you a preview of the result. The Snap Results-Left/Preview-Right interface concept eliminates much of the guesswork of search, and thus greatly reduces the number of unproductive back and forth clicks to determine if a site is worth your time. We call this Fast Browsing.

Here is a collection of fascinating maps that are scaled in a unique way.

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

The maps presented on this website are cartograms, otherwise known as density-equalising maps. The maps of the world you are used to seeing attempt to represent countries according to their land area. A cartogram re-sizes each country (or other geographical unit) according to some other variable – for example population, GDP, number of people with AIDS, etc. In the population example, densely-populated country such as the UK will appear much larger than it does on a standard map, and sparsely populated countries will appear smaller.

For example, this map shows the relative proportion of the world’s population living there.

Thanks J-Walk

I’ve been using Skype for a while now, and I have been very pleased. If you haven’t tried it, this is a great chance to use it to call regualr phone lines for free. Give it a shot!

Skype, eBay Inc.’s Internet telephone subsidiary, has stopped charging users for dialing up people on traditional landline and mobile phones in the U.S. and Canada.

The Internet telephone service, which has always offered free PC-to-PC calls around the world, said Monday it will offer its SkypeOut service for free until the end of the year. Previously, Skype users paid about 2 cents a minute for calls to landline and mobile telephones.

Users who make outgoing calls to and within countries outside the U.S. and Canada will continue to incur per-minute charges. The company also said it will continue to charge for traditional phone numbers that can be dialed from any phone to reach Skype users.

Link to article

I’m lucky I got to see my mom today. Google gives us another nice logo to help celebrate.

Okay, I love RSS, but this might be a bit much.

RSSMore is an rss reader screensaver that lets you subscribe to any number of RSS/XML feeds and view them in your screensaver. You can also specify a folder (including its sub folders) to provide background images. The RSSMore screensaver loops through the list of feeds and shows the items and their contents in transparent text boxes over your background images. You can also click/browse any news headlines directly from the screensaver.

Link to RSSMore