Helen Thornber » Blog Archive » Five… things I learned from the internet in 2009

Five… things I learned from the internet in 2009

19 December 2009 One Comment

Between now and the new year I’ve decided to do a daily blog of five things I’d like to share with you, alternating between my favourite links of the past few months and bite sized chunks of my usual style of blogging.

I’ll start with ‘Five… things I learned from the internet’. Back in August I finally discovered Google Reader as a way to keep up with all the blogs and websites in the past I’ve wanted to follow but always forgot to check. Most of these links have come via ‘What’s Hot in Google Reader‘ and ‘This Isn’t Happiness‘* which between them keep me up to date with things that make me smile, laugh and go “wow!” I’ve picked five things that I liked so much they got passed on to other people, and that I keep going back to myself.

1. Visual Aids
Do you remember those wall charts for facts you had at school. Well Visual Aids are like those but 100 times cooler! Buy their books from Amazon or posters of the charts from their own online shop.

2. The Deadliest Place on Earth?
This possibly got one of the biggest “WOW“s of the year! I’ll be tuning into ‘How earth made us‘ on BBC2 in the new year to find out more.

“It’s 50 oC and has a humidity of 100%, less than a hundred people have been inside and it’s so deadly that even with respirators and suits of ice you can only survive for 20 minutes before your body starts to fail. It’s the nearest thing to visiting another planet – it’s going deep inside our own.”

3. Did you know? 3.0
I saw this a few months ago, but it was also shown at a conference I attended in November. It’s enough to make your head explode. There is no a Did you know? 4.0 but I prefer the 2008 version.

4. Internet Speeds & Costs around the World
Maybe it’s just because this year I have the worst broadband I’ve ever had that this caught my eye. I do find this fascinating to see how the UK compares to the world in different ways, and this is a very pretty visual comparison. (On the Gizmodo site click the image to see a bigger version)

5. Who is getting rich off the iPhone?
I’m a mac geek and an iPhone fan. And unlike recent suggestions in the media I’m pretty sure I’m not suffering from iPhone Syndrome. Using pretty graphics to explain something fairly complex to me is always going to be a winner!