I don't know how he does it, but in Free Technology for Teachers Richard Byrne manages to find something new and interesting to blog about every single day. I try to make a point of checking out most of his posts because they are endlessly inspiring. I will never have the time to incorporate all potentially useful ideas into my work, but I love to try out new applications.
One of today's postings concerned the new WolframAlpha Widget Builder. WolframAlpha is a computational search engine, through which one can find the answer to infinitely many numerically-based queries. For example, if I type "Cleveland, Ohio" and "Miami, Florida" into the search box, WolframAlpha responds with statistics related to population, geography, crime, housing costs, and more. I learn that - perhaps surprisingly - the unemployment rate as of May 2010 was higher in Miami (12.9%) than in Cleveland (11.3%). Both cities have a higher than average rate of personal crimes, Cleveland 3.1 times the national average, and Miami 2.9 times.
Just released is a Beta version of WolframAlpha Widget Builder. I spent a few minutes trying it out and created an extremely simple widget, Seeing the World From Seattle, which calculates distance and travel info from Seattle to other world cities. I've embedded it at the bottom of this blog. Check it out!
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