From a songwriter who has a new Josh Grobin song...and it's not called "Goggle!" but "Thankful."
Yes, there is a little self-promotion in there, but sometimes I actually do leave the computer to write a song. And when that song finds it's way to a record I actually love I think I should share that with friends. Now that I have an extended family, I want to say that I am thrilled with all of Josh Grobin's Holiday record called "Noel." For me, it's right up there with Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis when it comes to Christmas.
I co-wrote the song "Thankful" with my good friend David Foster who produced much of Josh's record.
Okay, let me shamelessly move on.
Wait, I knew there was a connection. When I am writing a song, I do often use the site Rhymezone.com, which has not only rhymes but quotes on Shakespeare, children's nursery rhymes, quizzes and more.
Last week there were a few really worthwhile websites mentioned by you.
Theblogpound.com: A fun pet site
Televisionwithoutpity.com: A television site with edge
Candyaddict.com: A candy lovers paradise
Icanhascheezburger.com: For fun
Atireugram.blogspot.com: The fragebogen - this site seemed not to be in English.
And since I only bookmark what I love, here are mine for this week.
For fun and information, I particularly like Buzzdash.com.
It reminds me of the Drew Carey game show, "Power of Ten," where you win money, by answering questions that test contestants on how they think fellow Americans responded to questions on culture and politics. A winner can take home a cool $10 million.
"BuzzDash is a site and tool for gauging popular opinion on a wide range of topics - from sports, movies and politics to relationships and philosophy. Built upon individual polling modules called buzzbites™, BuzzDash provides a real-time forum where people can solicit, measure and share opinions on nearly any issue. With BuzzDash, people can view real-time popular opinion on a range of timely issues, express opinions by voting or commenting on individual issues, post individual buzzbites to personal web pages, blogs or emails, create buzzbites for personal use, for submission to BuzzDash, or both."
Please check it out. It's fascinating. It will also make you a better play-along-at-home contestant on "Power of One."
For Giving Back this week, my stepdaughter, Linda Daly, turned me on to a great site. Linda works with foundations, and makes recommendations to them on what charities are most worthy of their donations, in whatever fields of giving back they are most interested in. She loves this one: Conservation.org
I am very impressed with this site. It is very interactive, which is one of things I look for in a website, and it allows all of us, children and adults alike to participate in many different ways in saving our planet.
An endangered species clock is running on the site all the time, telling us how much time we have left to save so many species that we are about to lose.
Here is how they describe themselves: "Conservation International believes that Earth's natural heritage must be maintained if future generations are to thrive spiritually, culturally and economically. Our mission is to conserve the Earth's living heritage, our global biodiversity, and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature. CI applies innovations in science, economics, policy and community participation to protect the Earth's richest regions of plant and animal diversity in the biodiversity hotspots, high-biodiversity wilderness areas as well as important marine regions around the globe. With headquarters near Washington, D.C., CI works in more than 40 countries on four continents"
And finally here's a bonus site that I just finished reading about in Time Magazine 50 best new sites of 2007 that should not go unnoticed. I am planning to try it very soon, so if anyone wants to try it with me I would welcome your comments. Stumbleupon.com "lets you tag sites you think friends should check out, and will recommend sites to you based on what other users have tagged in your areas' interests. When you register to download the StumbleUpon program, you get a handy toolbar for your Web browser. It includes Thumbs Up/Thumbs down buttons, and a 'Send To' button you can click to email a link to a friend. When you're in the mood for something new, click the "Channel" button; like a channel-changer, it immediately takes you to a new site, one it figures you might like. When we tried it, many of the sites it pushed to us were pleasant surprises, and made sense based on the topics we selected at sign-up: photography, music and movies, to name a few. With nearly 2.5 million Stumblers already feeding the network, the fun, we suspect, never ends. Google also offers its own website recommendation tool, represented by a dice icon that, when clicked, takes you to a site Google thinks you'll like based on your past searches. You'll need the Google Toolbar.
Once again I ask that you let me know what you think of these, and send me the sites you love. I'm thinking about a site of the week, chosen by you, to write with the same detail I write up my own.
Thanks again for checking out these sites.
TTYL,
Carole
P.S. I might as well bookend this neatly and end by letting you know I just launched my own website, Carolebayersager.com, so if you feel like checking it out, well, I wouldn't try and dissuade you.