i don't know how many of you bickerfest readers have come across it
yet, but Google News has a cool new feature:

  http://news.google.com/?imv=1

it's a large grid of 40 or so pictures which you can quickly scan
visually for news of interest.

hovering over a picture highlights the the title and summary paragraph
of the story (nicely listed to the left of the pictures) enlarging and
expanding the info listed there.

IMO, it's much better organized than the regular Google News page
which requires too much scrolling (plus, among other flaws, i don't
like the way the normal Google News page is setup with the dual
columns, which makes it award to read -- for me, anyway).

here's my problem with the Google News Images, though.

the pictures generally suck and don't indicate very well what the
story is about.

it's like they came up with this great new visual way to quickly scan
the news and then they totally disregard the whole beauty and
fucntionality of it.

it appears that they don't even take the time to select a good and
unique picture to represent the larger story for this particular
feature.

anyway, a few days ago i added a bickerfest page with a few basic
website resource links:

  http://groups.google.com/group/bickerfest/web/links

which is clickable as one of the pages listed on the bickerfest Page
tab to your right.

if you have any suggestions for other link resources to put there, let
me know.

like IMDB.com, youtube.com, gutenburgproject.org (sp), or amazon.com,
for instance, or whatever.

anything that you often use to look up stuff (or to jog your writerly
mind during any kind of writers block).

...

perhpas give readers/users a toggle switch to dim them or turn them
off completely?

if i ever get writers block, which is mighty rare, all i need to do is
lay back in my swivel chair for a second and close my eyes, or quickly
scan all of the stuff the room, or look out the window, or take a
walk, or just about anything else, and voila!

the floodgates open yet again.

but sometimes, i'm not sure whether it's a blesing or fricken' curse.

i kid you.

it's a blessing.

...