The Daring Librarian

There's a new tablet & smart phone browser in town, it's for both Apple & Android, it's wicked fast, and it's FREE! (But honestly, I paid for it, keep reading to find out why!)  Puffin is a Beta cloud accelerated web browser for mobile devices.  With the free version you get the FLASH cloud enabled player for 14 days only....UNLESS you use this link and you gotta enter this secret code jembifpahhkka then you get DOUBLE! Or you could scan this QR code! It's Worth the Money, Honey! But I went ahead and splurged and bought the $2.99 version (search the App store for Puffin Browser) so I'll have cloud enabled FLASH  all the time and Nom nom is it ever SWEET! If you don't believe me, download the FREE version first, use my secret code to get double the days of FLASH, and try it for yourself. Then let me know what you think via Twitter or comments below: I think you'll like it, too! How Fast is Wicked Fast? The promotional verbage for thi...

Brøderbund's Living Books Are Back for  the iPad & iPhone Thanks to Wanderful Books ! On Friday I was looking pensively at my boxed sets of the Living Books CD-ROM collection in my school library. I have resisted for YEARS (ok, like 10+) to weed them knowing how AMAZING & special these interactive stories can be for ESOL or special ed kiddos but alas - the sad weeding day has finally come.  Year after year when weeding time came around my sainted and patient assistant Robin Black (this is our 21st year together!) would take them off the shelf & and add them to the weeding book cart.  I then would go behind her with a furtive grin & and put them back on the shelf. But this year I tested them and they do NOT work on ANY of my computers. Not any of our iBooks, MacBook Pros, eMacs (2003), or brand spanking new iMacs.  We run an OSX school & these old CD-ROM's only run on classic. Noooooo! [shakes fist in air in mock fury] So, sniffing ...

As much of a Mac fangrrl as I am, I've never been a Safari fan. I dunno why, it just never *felt* right. So it was Netscape...and then Firefox & Chrome. Of course the iPad only came with Safari so when I heard that Google Diigo came out with a FREE new browser app called iChromy which offers an identical browsing experience on your iPad with a smooth user interface, free apps, and some rather nice features - I was excited! When researching this I came across a great article on Cult of Mac : (link below) " iChromy’s attempt to mimic Google Chrome on the iPad makes it one of the nicest third-party browsers for the iPad I’ve used. One of its best features is its tabbed browsing: just like Chrome all of your tabs sit at the very top of the browser and it’s simple to switch between them and open & close individual tabs." SWEET! (Correction: In my excited reporting of this new APP I jumped to the conclusion that Google came out with this but it was the AWE...

I can't help myself. I love me some JT. He brings my Sexy Back! (not that it ever left! ;-) ...But almost as much I love Justin Timberlake, I adore this new app that "plays" the vinyl records of my youth AND let's you "scratch" as if you had 2 turn tables and a microphone (Beck knows where it's at!) And...it's only $1.99! Thanks to my dear friends Joquetta Johnson & Donna Anderson - my Appolicious Queens of the i Pad I learned about this at the MSET spring board meeting last week! The pic on the right shows another cool feature! When choosing an LP you can "flip" through the albums in a milk crate of all your iTunes music! No need to import the App finds it and puts it right there for you! How cool! Another great new app is from my longtime software love, Comic Life. At a more hefty price of $7.99 this gorgeous app promises to feed my comic desires on the go! Haven't played much with this but I'll report back to you dear ...

It came as no surprise to me to see that the CNN headline: Mac vs. PC: The stereotypes may be true that Mac computer ad campaigns have been spot on! Then dear Mashable of course picked up on that and gave us this brilliant infographic from Hunch , You see, I've been a MacGrrl since the beginning of the Interwebs....my first foray into teaching with the web was when I brought into my school library a 14.4k modem and a 100 foot phone line - I dialed up to the University of Maryland's server because my district didn't have the Internet yet and Uof M gave teachers FREE dial up! Wheee! My MacLCIII was smokin hon! C'mon kids let's huddle round this puter & look up state information for our unit Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego! Then, when we opened our middle school school in 1997 we bought 200 PowerMac all in one 5200's that had the S-Video out so we could hook them up to a .....wait for it.....yeah 27" mounted TV! AND because it was a NEW school we pl...