Webscape

By Kate Russell Click Webscape-r

Kate Russell gives us her latest selection of the best sites on the World Wide Web.

MINDMEISTER (www.mindmeister.com)

MindMeister

Anyone who works in the creative industries will recognise a mind map when they see one.

It is a great way to map out thoughts, and when used collaboratively, can really help to speed up the process of understanding each others' ideas.

Mindmeister.com is the home of a beautifully simple mind-mapping tool. After signing up, start adding nodes and branches as you expand the possibilities.

Using the application is totally intuitive, as it has no mess or clutter from fancy frills.

You can share you map with collaborators, or just people you want to be able to view it.

You can also export your mind map in a number of formats for easy distribution, or simply print it if you want to take it to a meeting as a hard copy.

FREEWEBS (www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm)

Freewebs

Taskbar Shuffle is a tool that will appeal to the desktop modder, but it is only available for Windows users.

You can download this application to organise your desktop from a number of places, such as snapfiles.com or download.com.

I used Freewebs.com - just do a search for Taskbar Shuffle and you will be linked to the download page.

After installation, the programme will sit in your system tray and simply allow you to manipulate the position of the buttons. You can do this both on your taskbar and in the system tray itself, by dragging and dropping.

Double-click the icon in the system tray and you can change a few additional options.

For the limited memory footprint this programme uses, it really is a great help to me and well worth the investment of the three minutes it took to download and install.

BREATHING EARTH (www.breathingearth.net)

Breathing Earth

At breathingearth.net you will find a lovely simulation of the aspects of the life-cycle on Earth, including global birth and death rates, as well as CO2 emissions.

I love the organic sound effect that accompanies the visuals. And having the birth and death rates pointed out in such an obvious way really was quite shocking to me.

It indicates an exploding population, with the continuous counter on the site showing births going up at twice the rate of deaths. Given global concerns about CO2 emissions, the figure underneath those is somewhat worrying too.

You can find out the details for individual countries by hovering the mouse over them.

The aim of this site is to raise awareness of environmental issues. You can find out at the bottom of the site about the data's origin and how you can make a difference to the planet.