Miles Mendoza's Website of the Day ... and more!

Friday Quick Links

>> National Flea week
Improve your flea awareness with extensive flea factoids, or sign up for free email or SMS reminders to de-flea your pets

>> Change Your World
Pledge to make one less car journey next week … If all UK drivers do the same car traffic will be reduced by 10%. The aim is to show that even small changes in behaviour can make a big difference

>> Shrek the Third: Shrek Sudoko
Why play with numbers when you can play with ogres, donkeys and pusses-in-bootses?

>> YouTube Clip of the Week: Fainting Goats
According to Wikipedia, a fainting goat is a breed of domestic goat whose external muscles freeze for roughly 10 seconds when the goat is startled. See them in action here.

Dave Stewart: There Must Be An Angel competition

>> Dave Stewart: There Must Be An Angel competition
Here's another online talent quest similar to the Fame Karaoke contest organised by the producers of the current West End production of Fame.
On 14th July Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart is performing at the Tower of London, and he’s looking for an unsigned singer to join him on stage to sing the lead vocal on There Must Be An Angel.
Prospective entrants can download the lyrics and an mp3 of the backing track. Then just get a friend to film your performance and upload it to the site. Other fans can leave comments and rate each performance, but the final word goes to Dave and producer Glenn Ballard.
The winner will also be flown to LA to record the track of their choice in Dave Stewart’s Hollywood studio.

Act On CO2: Carbon Footprint calculator now working!

>> Act On CO2
The government's new CO2 emission calculator has now overcome its teething problems and is available to all users. It surpasses expectations with a beautifully designed site that shows you exactly how much CO2 you produce as an individual or a household. You can see your results in relation to the national average, and the site produces a detailed personal action plan to help you reduce your emissions.

Act on CO2 Calculator

>> BBC News: UK 'must act first to cut carbon
>> Defra: David Miliband's blog on the launch of the Goverment's CO2 Calculator
Talking about the Goverment's new Act on C02 Calculator on his blog, Environment secretary David Miliband has that 'we had teething problems with the calculator due to the frankly huge demand.' In practice this means that in spite of continued attempts to improve capacity, most users are currently unable to access the calculator. I'll hold off from posting the direct link to the calculator now, to avoid disappointing more listeners, but watch this space - we'll add the link as soon as we know that the site is fully opeational for all users.

Weatherbonk (Google Weather Maps, plus webcams and meteorological route planning)

>> WeatherBonk
Weather Bonk is a so-called mash-up – that’s a site which pulls together features from several different sites so that you can access useful services on one site without having to go elsewhere.
In this case, the one site combines weather forecasts with Google’s trusty zoomable maps, plus webcam views of locations currently shown on each map, and (best-of-all) a meteorological route-planning service, so you can find out when weather conditions will be most suitable for a particular planned road journey.

Jock n Roll : Vote for the Top 10 Scottish Albums of all time-time

>> Jock n Roll : Vote for the Top 10 Scottish Albums of all time-time
Back in February we drew your attention to Jock n Roll – which (at the time) was seeking to compile a list of the top Scottish singles of all time. Now the same site has turned its attention to Scottish albums.
The rules are stringent: No Rod Stewart (‘as Scottish as Jimmy Hill’), no Snow Patrol (‘they couldn't be any more Irish if they were Guinness’) but Franz Ferdinand are allowed (‘only one of them was born in Scotland but, like Big Country, they're Scottish in every other way’)
Submit your vote at Jock n Roll.

BBC New Music / The Silver Surfer

>> BBC Introducing
This new BBC site is the Beeb's 'biggest-ever initiative for unsigned British artists' pulling together Listen Again links and podcasts for new music shows across all BBC radio - whether national or local. There's also advice for unsigned bands about how to submit your music to BBC shows

>> Fantastic Four: Flame On! Webcam

>> Who is the Silver Surfer: Official wiki

>> Fantastic Four – Rise of the Silver Surfer: Official site

Nice to see the official site for a big blockbuster film do something a bit different: If you have a webcam you can film yourself and the Flame On site will turn you into a virtual Human Torch. Who Is The Silver Surfer is a wiki, meaning anyone can add to or edit the text to create a definitive guide to Marvel's super heroes whether in comics or on film.

Flickrvision

>> Flickrvision
We’ve talked about hugely popular photo-sharing site Flickr before on the programme. Flickrvision takes advantage of Flickr’s mapping features to display the site’s most recently uploaded photos on a zoomable world map or 3D spinning globe.
If you want to search for a photo of a specific thing in an equally specific location, it’s worth watching this simple video tutorial to work out how to track down pictures of Brie in Brussels
See also:
>> Miles’ original review of Flickr

Cracking Ideas

>> Cracking Ideas
Wallace and Gromit front this excellent new educational site which aims to get primary school children enthused about inventing. There are school lesson plans, a UK-wide competition for kids to submit their best inventions, and a good series of interactive top 10 lists including Cracking Ideas, Idea Crackers, Crackpot ideas and Current Innovations
See also:
>> BBC News: Inventors in the frame
>> Wallace & Gromit Foundation: Wrong Trousers Day

Weird Converter

>> Weird Converter
There are many useful sites which will automatically convert currencies or units of weight, height, speed or temperature. For those standard conversions, Online Conversion.com is pretty impressive. However many people relate better to less conventional units of measurement – for example mars bars and loaves of bread are often used as measures of inflation.
And that’s where Weird Converter comes in. Here you can convert not only from from inches to feet or metres, but from inches to cockroach, small intestine, giraffe’s neck or Great Wall of China or from kilogram to chicken, spider monkey or Jennifer Anniston.