T N.

I use Shu Uemura depsea products (which are lightweight and excellent) from time to time and have purchased them from shuuemura-usa.com. The products are really affordable; there were no issues with ordering and shipping. When my things came, they were always nicely packaged in cute containers that I could reuse for gifts to friends.

Shadow G. Beat me to reviewing this site, but I thought I should give it some props. Brainpop, though it comes with a heavy pricetag, is a jewel for any teacher. Brainpop has an immense collection of short educational videos (cartoon style, narrated by Tim and Moby (a robot)) ranging from science to math to social studies to language. I've been able to find more than 1 video on any topic in which I'm focusing in my classroom. The videos come with a pre-tests/practice quizzes and final quizzes, in order to evaluate what the students have been able to get from the videos. I always supplement these videos with interactive / hands-on lessons. The only downside to Brainpop is that it's fairly expensive, though there are lots of free videos available. If purchased for a school, it's a drop in the bucket. Brainpop is also available in Spanish!

A few months ago I ordered for my parents a Nespresso Citiz machine from Williams Sonoma. It was all easy, and when I had a question about the machine, the customer service folks were great in responding. I do enjoy perusing the website for slick-looking kitchen gadgets that I'll never be able to afford.

There was a time when I was interested in Red Envelope gifts for people, and I actually went through with a couple of purchases. However, the products can look / feel cheaper than what you expect so it's somewhat disappointing. On top of that, they're kind of frivolous items...

I'll admit it - I use Ebay to buy strawberry shortcake figurines, my collector's item of choice. It's my little secret that's not so much a secret anymore. Anyway, I can't find a better place, other than a little store I used to frequent in Austin called Kids & Cats, than Ebay to get these items. And I think because not a lot of people are into Strawberry Shortcake, I get the good deals.

Okay, I'll admit - a mall salesperson managed to weasel her way into a conversation with me about my make-up preferences. At the time I was going au natural with an Origins cream. It was decent but didn't provide the best foundation (not make-upy enough). Before that was another Origins foundation that was a bit too make-upy. The Bella Terra Cosmetics associate, in a matter of minutes, managed to convince me that their mineral foundation would be the Goldilocks just-right of make-up for me. I'm kind of an impulse buyer, for sure, but even my sister, a make-up and beauty guru, admitted that the foundation and blush looked great on my skin. It's a bit pricy, especially as compared to Bare Minerals (twice as expensive), but I've also tried Bare Minerals and didn't think it felt as good as Bella Terra. I might go back and see how I feel about it though, just to save that extra $35.

It's supposed to be 98 degrees in NYC, and the apartment in which I'm staying for the month has no air conditioner. Rather than stay inside and pass out from heat exhaustion, I've taken my studies to the streets. But I couldn't possibly read without wifi - how else would I be able to distract myself from the riveting text related to social justice and educational access? Finding a place that allows me to sit all day while spending little money is difficult. OpenWifiNYC lists places around the city with wifi, the strength of it and power outlets that are available. Unfortunately it's just a list without any ability for me to find a place by neighborhood. It doesn't actually have a very long list either, and this couldn't be a comprehensive directory of all the wifi hotspots in the city. However, kudos to them for the attempt.

This site is supposed to be a place for everyone to vote on 'things' - doesn't matter what it is. It's way too broad, and the site is poorly designed... not to mention that when I visited it, some terrible looking pop-up appeared that scared the buhjeebers out of me, making me run for dear life to scan my computer for nasty viruses.

Shop Style is a site that pools together clothes from a ton of other sites so that you can more easily find what you're looking for by the style or type of clothing item. Recently I've had rompers on my mind (though I've been asked by several folks why I would want to wear a onesie in public - I think it's pretty cute, if I do say so myself!). So I hopped onto Shop Style just to see what kinds of rompers are available across stores, and sure enough, plenty came up. More than I could deal with, but at least I know now where to go to obtain one should I choose to becoming an infant again.

A few years back, in one of my classrooms, I had students ranging in ability from doing math at the 2nd grade level to math at the 10th grade level. I had an hour a day to do math with all 4 groups (and these are guys with neurobehavioral disabilities so the one-on-one, immediate feedback time is important) so I needed to be creative and differentiate instruction using what websites were available back then in addition to a high school teacher's videos that I'd obtained somehow.

I WISH I had a website like Khan Academy available to me when I was teaching. Khan has tons of engaging lessons that I'm sure my boys with Aspergers would LOVE - much more so than hearing me everyday. The man behind this is pretty darn smart, and I think I'll watch some of his videos now rather than finishing an awful little history of the world book I have on my Kindle.

Forget tutoring websites, it's all here for free.

Here Salman Khan is on TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

I heard about this website on an episode of This American Life called The Enforcers: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/363/enforcers

The purpose of the website is, I think, to empower people and for folks to share their scambaiting stories. There are letters, FAQs, a hall of shame, tips, a trophy room, a pretty active forum, etc. Some of the stories make me actually feel bad for the scammers (such as the one told on This American Life) so I'm not terribly keen on spending too much time on 419eater, but it's interesting that it exists.

I'm allergic to scents, so why am I reviewing Bathandbodyworks.com? There is no B&BW in Guatemala, so when I returned to the states I needed to get some for some Guatemalan friends who asked for me to bring it back. Gladly, but only using the online store. Walking into an actual B&BW leads to an assault on my olfactory sensory system. Can't. Handle. That. Also, fortunately the girl who wanted the most scents could pick them out online first (since they sometimes stop carrying certain scents) and then I could just run the information through and get it on time to bring back to her.

I just read about this on the New York Times and decided to give it a go. I'm still figuring it out, but it seems like a pretty promising way to go about learning languages - by interacting with native speakers and getting feedback from them through written and oral submissions (that are provided as practice through free or fairly cheap courses) or simply by chatting. On the flipside, you can also act as a teacher by reviewing submissions by those wanting to learn your language. All interactions result in Mochapoints, and I believe even a chosen few who have earned enough points can be employed by Mocha as online teachers.

The only concern I have about this is that some folks may be thinking of it as a singles / dating site. Of course you can submit your photo, age, relationship status, etc. So just look out for those without the real intention of learning / teaching.

The site is somewhat tricky to navigate at first, but with a few minutes, you get the hang of it. I submitted some feedback this morning and found it quite easy. As well, it seems that the community in general is there for the right reasons.

Something weird is happening. All of a sudden the educator and psychologist in me wants to be in marketing, business, advertising, etc. instead. Why? Because of Harvard Business Review. HBR is supposedly for serious business folk, but I find, as a non-business person, most of the articles accessible, engaging and insightful. Not all articles can be read in full online, but enough of them can. At a whopping $89 for a subscription, and even more to subscribe while living abroad, the website is a great substitute.

What a great find, thanks to Stacy T! I bought some Zoobies for my little nieces at a great price. I signed up for the alerts, which I wish Woot would have, and soon there will be kidsteals.com too. Can't wait...

This is a pretty neat site that will allow you to see if the name of a domain is still up for grabs with a. Com,. Net,. Biz,. Org, or. Us. When you start typing in the name, the results start to appear, and blue means the site is up for grabs. When you mouse over the extension, you're given various choices of hosts and prices. Really nicely done!

Ever since I was young I spent much time making lists - qualities I want in a man, magazines I want to subscribe to, types of oatmeal I'll eat, animals that should fly, annoying things (my longest, still running list), etc. These lists were often written and then discarded - they served no purpose whatsoever. But I enjoyed making them, and to this day it excites me to meet people who share the same interest in making useless lists of things that are of no importance at all.

Well now someone has gone and made a whole website out of this idea. ListGeeks brings together like-minded individuals, what seems like a whole lotta hipsters, who are wasting a whole lotta time making lists. While the idea interests me, I'm curious to see where this website will go and how the developers will continue to engage me.

Amazon.com - what more can I say about it that hasn't been said already? I've been buying items from Amazon since 2003 and have never, not once, had a negative experience. I realize that now, with the various sellers, there's some more risk, but I tend to avoid those and go straight for the items sold by Amazon. And now that I own a Kindle.

Car Talk is more than just talk about cars. The title in no way captures the warm hilarity that is the nature of this show, which has been airing for many years now. On Car Talk, Tom and Ray, brothers from Boston, talk about cars, turning what is, to me, an uninteresting topic to something absolutely delightful. It makes no difference if you're into cars or not: Car Talk will make you listen to cars in a way you never have.

Chartporn is a website devoted to people who love infographics, an ever-popular growing trend of the 2010s, it looks like. No organization or institute is respectable if it doesn't include an infographic in its repertoire once in a while. And no infographic is respectable if Chartporn doesn't sit up and take notice.

For the economically serious:
http://chartporn.org/category/source-ft/

For the jocular:
http://chartporn.org/category/humor/