Tired of the plain old boring photo slideshows?  Try Animoto.com.

From Animoto’s Website …

“Animoto is a web application that produces MTV-style videos using the images and music you choose. Produced in a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer. Best of all, no two videos are ever the same. Ever.”

I have created several slideshows using Animoto.  Their website does 98% of the work for you.  All you have to do is:

1. Gather your images
2. Upload your images
3. Arrange the images
4. Add music (your own or use music provided on their site)
5. Compile
6. Download the slideshow, email it to someone, or embed on your site.

Animoto does the rest by analyzing the music and images to put together a very unique slideshow.

Google is branching out again.  This time, they have launched a competitor to Wikipedia.  Google has launched Google Knol.  Google opened the service to a “public beta” in July 2009 with a few hundred articles.  Since then, their database of articles has gradually grown.  Its hard to say whether this will be a Wikipedia-killer or not.  However, Google will supposedly be verifying that individual accounts are legitimate before allowing permission to create new articles.