Recomendo

December 19 · Issue #284 · View online

A weekly newsletter that gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff. Check out our new book Recomendo: The Expanded Edition @ https://geni.us/recomendo

Explore the Tree of Life

OneZoom is an interactive tree of life that allows you to zoom in and out and explore the connections between 2.2 million living species. It’s a lot to visualize and process, but fun to explore. I felt really small and grateful realizing what a tiny little branch of life we are as humans. — CD

Test yourself on African countries

Africa has over 50 countries. Test your geography knowledge with a quiz, You Don’t Know Africa, that presents you with a blank map of Africa. It then displays a country name, and you have to click on the right country to increase your score by one. You can also test your knowledge of the flags of Africa. — MF

The remembering place

There is a movie you saw, a song you remember, a book you once read but now you can’t recall the title. You can hold it in your mind’s eye, but it’s name escapes you. A long online search turns up nothing. For an answer turn to the crowd-sourced answer machine that is Reddit. On the subreddit r/Tip of my Tongue over 1.8 million redditors might be able to identify your target from your written description. They succeed about 1 out of four times. — KK

Improved Bluetooth trackers

Tile’s new line of Bluetooth trackers includes the Pro, which has a 400-foot range and a replaceable battery. Tiles are currently on my car key fob, wallet, and AirPod case, and I just bought a couple more to put on my water bottle and Nintendo Switch case, which I misplace all the time. Tiles now work with Alexa and Hey Google, too. — MF

Cheap foam core boards

Foam core is super versatile making stuff. Together with hot glue you can make almost anything – doll houses, organizers, quick prototypes, kid’s constructions, models, displays, etc. The boards can be expensive at stationary stores. The cheapest source of foam board I know about are 20 x 30 x 3/16 inch sheets from the Dollar Tree store, at $1.25 per board. They are thin but sufficient and cheap. — KK

AI art machine

Dream by WOMBO is an AI art machine that is fun to play with. All you have to do is enter a text prompt and pick an art style to create something weird. This is great for bringing to life imagery from dreams and or designing your own oracle deck. Here are a few I made: Dimension of Play, Guardian Tree Spirits and Frog Shaman. — CD

— Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson

Recomendo is copyrighted by Cool Tools Lab, LLC. Commissions may be earned from the links above.

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Tree of Life/You Don’t Know Africa/Tip of my Tongue

Recomendo

Older messages

The Rescue/Knife sharpener/The Wisdom Index

12ft.io/Life Pie/Productive meetings

Typatone/Quiet your mind chatter/Kevin's Golden Oldies

Neeva/Timeline of food/Tile Slim

MarineTraffic/Writing advice/Anker Nano II

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