THE INTERNET CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

2007-10-17T23:29:00.000-07:00

NOTE--Personnel problems have prevented me from getting out my emails and will probably continue for awhile. I look forward to things getting back to normal sometime in the near future.--RA

2007-10-16T05:01:00.000-07:00

Assignment #181

Languages Again

Yeh yeh I’ve done this before and not that long ago but I just got some new sites. First, Mashable had one of their famous listings 70+ Online Language Communities and Resources and then I found this interesting little site called Lost in Translation. All this seems a little redundant since we’ll probably have Star Trek like language translators in 5 years or sooner but go ahead and

Play!!

2007-10-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

Assignment #180

Web Stats

Now I’m not sure what a whole bunch of statistics about one’s website are really good for but one day I showed my reference class how I knew they were really only doing the assignments during our class times and not out of class, which got a lot of laughs. Anyway, there are a bunch of sites and programs dealing with website stats. Here’s a good article on 10 of them including Google Analytics.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_web_analytics_tools_free_innovative.php

Now add to this Alexa and then one I have on my blog which is called StatCounter and you have an even dozen.

Play!!

2007-10-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

Assignment #179

Intrade

I heard about this site from Chris Mathews when he was on the Martha Stewart Show. It’s a Web2.0 site that lets you bet on just about anything but it does it as a zero sum market (minus a tiny commission). What’s interesting is that as a free market, the price of the “bet” represents the real time feeling or intuition by the market as to the possibilities of that bet. Confused? Sorry! Ok, go to Intrade. On the left click on POLITICS-2008 US ELECTION. Slide down until you see 2008 Presidential Election Winner. When I was here, Hillary’s contracts were going for about 44 or $4.40. If you buy one and she wins you get $10. If she doesn’t become president you get zero and lose your $4.40. If more people think she’s going to win, the price will go up. You can sell anytime.

Now some things I’m still foggy on like how things get started but it is an interesting site.

Play!!

2007-10-11T05:02:00.001-07:00

Assignment #178

Jimmy Ruska

Sometimes you just stumble on to something and you think “Boy where have you been hiding?” Today I found Jimmy Ruska’s various websites. He seems to have all my interests and none of my laziness. Especially check out his Massive Free Education List and his video blog. Also notice the search tool at the top of his main page. He’s got a bunch of those Google hacking tricks built right in. I’m sure there’s a bunch more things I just haven’t found yet.

Play!!

2007-10-10T04:26:00.001-07:00

Assignment #177

Wetpaint Wikis

Common Craft has a new video out on their website. I tried to go to their webpage but it seemed everybody else was trying to watch the new video too. Watch it at Youtube.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=F7BAU2XX5Ws

Play!!

2007-10-09T03:33:00.001-07:00

As part of a grade in a class toward a library certification, I had students compose Web2.0 assignments. This assignment was done by Julie Lord

Assignment #176

Video Game Emulators

I'm sure you remember the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the SNES. It was quite popular in the 90's after the Nintendo Entertainment System (Also known as NES) became out-of-date.

You can download the "System" itself onto your computer. This System is called an "Emulator". There are different types of Emulators for the
SNES, but I've found that the program ZSNES works best. You can download this emulator at http://www.zsnes.com . When you are at the ZSNES
website, you will notice on the left, a box with the title ZSNES Blip. Within the box, you will see the "Latest Version", which should be 1.51.
Now download the appropriate operating system you are using, from Windows, to Linux, or even DOS. When the file is done downloading, it'll
be in a Zip file, located wherever you saved the destination to.

Now you can simply Unzip the file titled "zsnesw151.zip". Unzip the file to whatever folder you'd like to place it into. I made my own subfolder
within my "My Documents" folder. If you run the program right now (zsnesw.exe), you won't be able to play any games just yet, however, you
can customize the window size to fit your screen by setting its resolution in the "Config" tab, then choose "Video". A list of
resolutions will pop up and you have to choose the appropriate one. Now, to configue buttons for the emulator, you can locate it at "Config" tab,
again, and click on "Input". From here, you can see what the buttons are to press, or even reassign them to new buttons.

Now, to download games for the ZSNES program, you can go to http://www.coolrom.com . "ROM's" are what the "Games" are called for all
Emulators. There are many types of emulators. You can find emulators for SNES, NES, Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Playstation, Gameboy, and
many, MANY more. For my project, however, I'm showing you the SNES emulator and it's games (ROMs). Now, at the http://www.coolrom.com
website, to find ROM's for the ZSNES, click on the "ROM Files" tab on top. It'll take you to a list of Emulators. The emulator we're looking
for is "Super Nintendo", so find it in the list provided, and click the link.

From here, it'll take you to a whole list, categorized Alphabetically. If you've played the SNES before, you can look for your favorite game
you remember, and simply click on it. If you are not familiar with the Super Nintendo, then I would suggest clicking on the "F" tab and then to
scroll down and look for "Final Fantasy III". When you find the link, click on it. It will take you to a new page, where you will have to wait
for about 15 seconds for the site to get the ROM ready for download. When the 15 seconds have passed, there should appear a button that says
"Download Your File". Click on the button and save the file to wherever you'd like it to go. Again, this file also comes as a ZIP file, just as
the Emulator did.

When the file is downloaded and complete, find it on your computer wherever you saved it to. Unzip the Final Fantasy III.zip file and place
the "Final Fantasy III.smc" file into your ZSNES folder. When this is done, you can turn on the ZSNES program. Go to the "Game" tab and click
on "Load". It'll open a new window within the emulator, where you can search for the Final Fantasy III.smc; However, the ZSNES should be able
to detect any ROM's you've downloaded and placed into the ZSNES folder. Find the ROM you would like to play, click on it and highlight it. On
the lower right side should be a "Load" button. Click it and enjoy the game.

Play!!

2007-10-04T23:05:00.000-07:00

Assignment #175

Next Generation Disks-Already

So most of you know that we have a format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD for this generation but check out what’s on the horizon. Disks that hold 1 Terabyte of stuff. That a lot of stuff.

http://www.gamestooge.com/2007/08/27/tera-discs-to-blow-away-blu-ray-and-hd-dvd/

And after yesterday’s email Jim Rhodes sent me a note:

Hey RA! Cool font site! I thought I'd share one that I LOVE,
www.acidfonts.com they have a HUGE collection of Free Fonts!
jim

Play!!

2007-10-04T03:22:00.000-07:00

As part of a grade in a class toward a library certification, I had students compose Web2.0 assignments. This assignment was done by Carmen Santos

Assignment #174

STOCK PHOTOS

Do you need that special photo for a certificate, or something to add to your inspirational power point, or a graphic description of your lesson plans?

Go tohttp://www.sxc.hu/index.phtml

A GOOD FONT SITE

Are you tired of the same fonts that Windows provides? Try out this site:http://www.dafont.com/

Gothic seems to be what students like as they use it all over their binders. Go to new, choose the font that you prefer, click on download button to the right of the screen.

Play!!

2007-10-03T04:07:00.000-07:00

Assignment #173

Tubes

Youtube was the first and obviously the most with the $1.6 billion price tag but have you heard about some other tubes? TeacherTube is just what it sounds like-a place to put your class/educational videos. GodTube is for your Christian videos. BuscaTube is for your Spanish videos. TubeDesi is Indian videos. JewTube, a great name, is Jewish videos. FootballTube, The Daily Tube, ToxicTube, 80’sTube, and the list goes on. And I won’t even mention the Tubes your mother doesn’t want you to visit. Seriously, I’m not going to mention them.

Play!!

2007-10-02T04:28:00.000-07:00

As part of a grade in a class toward a library certification, I had students compose Web2.0 assignments. This assignment was done by Joe Diego.

Assignment #172

Colleges

Go to http://www.collegeview.com .

Do a search for Hawaii and law and get information about the University

Go to http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingsBest.asp .

Click on the name of any of the best colleges or universities anywhere in the United States.

Play!!

2007-10-01T03:42:00.001-07:00

Assignment #171

Google Docs and PRWeb

in Plain English

Common Craft is back with two new videos in their IN PLAIN ENGLISH series. Their RSS, WIKIS, and SOCIAL BOOKMARKING IN PLAIN ENGLISH were all quick, cute and excellent. Now along come Google DOCS and PRWEB. Find links to all their products here.

Play!!

2007-09-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

Assignment #170

Serena Miller is the Learning guide for September over at Learning2.1. Here’s her latest.

Thing 40: Retroland

Reminisce about the good old days.

I have a new favorite site and it's Retroland.com. Retroland is a social networking site where members can reconnect with the things they loved "back in the days" and interact with people who share the same fond memories. One of the features I like the most on Retroland is it's Retropedia. From the 1990s all the way back to the 1900s you can see a time line of things like music, fashion and school memories that defined (and embarrassed) the decades. If you see something that you remember fondly you can simply add it to your favorites and also add a memory post. When you add a memory post you can upload a picture to go with what you are talking about and what you remember about the subject. If someone likes your memory post they can give you a gold star (just like in grade school) and your posts ratings will increase. Check out the memories users had of the Slinky. You can also get to know other members by clicking on Retrotalk and posting on their forums which are all pretty active. My favorite would have to be the food forum.

Discovery Exercise

1. Create an account on Retroland.

2. Explore the Retropedia.

3. Did you see a tv show, toy, or fashion accessory that you had long forgotten about? Blog about your experience.

Play!!

2007-09-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

As part of a grade in a class toward a library certification, I had students compose Web2.0 assignments. This assignment was done by Rose Sizemore.

Assignment #169

Typhoon/Hurricane/Cyclone Formation Forecast

Living on Guam, one must be prepared for possible natural disasters.

It is helpful to know what Internet site is available and helpful to

you if you would like to monitor the progress of an impending storm--

while you still have power. Go to http://www.prh.noaa.gov/guam/cyclone.php

--And once you know a typhoon is out there you’d better get some instructions. We posted an Andersen typhoon preparedness video on Youtube.—RA

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FggxuACJBv8

Play!!

2007-09-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

Assignment #168

For Seniors

I found this great column over the weekend from Wayne State University and Jim Miller. It’s called The Savvy Senior and offers advice for us senior citizens on Web resources on a particular topic. This column had to do with my original question about a program called the Senior Home Exchange. And then this one dealt with educational opportunities for seniors. Hold on to your hat mama, life ain’t over yet!

Play!!

2007-09-25T05:02:00.001-07:00

As part of a grade in a class toward a library certification, I had students compose Web2.0 assignments. This assignment was done by Joe Diego.

Assignment #167

Financial Aid

This website provides the steps to get federal student aid.

Go to http://www.fafsa.ed.gov

Click on #1 to get an overview of the information you'll need to start the process.

Go to eligibility and check whether you can qualify for federal student aid.

Click on documents and print a checklist of documents needed.

Go to FAFSA on the Web Worksheet and print it out.

Apply for a Personal Identification Number.

Go to deadlines to submit items on time

Play!!

2007-09-24T03:25:00.001-07:00

Assignment #166

Rule the Web Widget and Bug Me Not

Those of you who use my blog will notice that I have a new widget at the top of my right side column. Through this widget you can get the latest 60 second podcast from Rule the Web one of favorite sites. #17 tells everybody about a cool little Firefox add-on and website called BugMeNot. After installing the add-on, whenever you come to a site that wants you to register to use the site, you just right-click, click “log in with Bug Me Not” and bingo your in. No more tedious registering for each individual site. I used it at learner.org and it worked like a charm.

Oh! And if you want the little Rule the Web widget for your blog, just click on the GET THIS WIDGET.

Play!!

2007-09-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

Assignment #165

Languages

We’ve got both Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone language programs in our library and I’ve also shown people how to get free language lessons from, among others, videos at YouTube, podcasts at Itunes, and the videos over at learner.org. Now comes a new service called Mango. I played with it for awhile and it’s pretty cool. You get Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Greek for English speakers and English for speakers of Polish and Spanish. It’s fun and the pronunciation is very good.

Play!!

2007-09-20T02:06:00.000-07:00

Assignment #164

From Whence Cometh?

The other day my son, Reed, asked me where I get all the ideas for these emails. “Steal ‘em” I told him. “otherwise known as research.”

Seriously, there are some good sites to get information like I give you, they just don’t do it in the same wonderful way. Obviously, I’ve mentioned the Learning 2.1 site as a place to go. Then there’s the Download Squad, Rule The Web, Kim Komando’s emails and the podcast Net@nite and then there’s my new favorite Mashable. And that’s just the main ones. But yes, I know, most of us are too busy (or too lazy) to visit these sites for ourselves so we’ll just have to be content with getting our little piece of technology education through this email.

Play!!

2007-09-19T02:26:00.001-07:00

Assignment #163

More Music

Back in March I told you about rhapsody.com that WAS offering free streams at which time they started to refuse the service to anyplace outside the fifty states. Anyway, along comes another service called Deezer that will give you all the free streams you want. It’s just the service to use with your Audacity recorder which, FYI, is called streamripping. The down side is that their library isn’t as big as Rhapsody’s but beggers…

Play!!

2007-09-18T04:20:00.001-07:00

Assignment #162

Picasa on the Web

Even though I’m a big Flickr fan, I’m a bigger Google fan, so I thought I should take a good look at Google-owned Picasa on the Web. Now, I already use Picasa at home to organize my photos so I figured Google would make it easy to upload my albums and I was right. One click and a whole album was started on its way. Once the pictures got on the web it got a bit more awkward but still fine. Everything I could do on Flickr I could do on Picasa including the mapping. However, the first thing you have to do is get Picasa on your computer. Get it here. Then let it organize your pics and away you go. No more sending photos to family and friends. You’ll just send them the URL to your Picasa account for 100’s of pics. It couldn’t be easier and you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. Here’s ours: http://picasaweb.google.com/rameyerguam

Oh! Oh! And speaking of pictures, try this image search engine. It’s pretty cool.

Play!!

2007-09-17T04:57:00.000-07:00

Assignment #161

Uncle Jay

Now, I don’t often recommend just a website and except for assignment #4, in which I tried to be even handed, I stay away from politics. But a friend of mine recommended it. This is a great site. Uncle Jay Explains the News

http://unclejayexplains.com/

2007-09-14T00:04:00.001-07:00

Assignment #160

Comic Relief

There was an interesting posting on Learning 2.1 last week but it didn’t transfer to this email so well so I’m just going to give you the URL:

http://explorediscoverplay.blogspot.com/search?q=38

Play!!

2007-09-13T02:42:00.001-07:00

Assignment #159

PowerPoint

So I mentioned the Reference class yesterday. What I didn't mention was that for an "A" students have to come up with 2 or 3 things that I can use in this email. Ed Lamb wants us to know that even if you're not in position to have a copy of Microsoft Office and PowerPoint, you can still view ppt files using Microsoft's free PowerPoint Viewer available here. And if you're not that great on PowerPoint you can watch a bunch of tutorials here. The tutorials are OK but nothing special. You'd think Bill could invest a couple extra bucks to give us some entertaining "How to's" on his products. And finally, here is an interesting ppt blog with lots of good links.

Play!!

2007-09-12T04:06:00.000-07:00

Assignment #158

Blog Widgets

So they've got me teaching this Reference class for Guam School Library Certification. And, of course, I'm using this email/blog as the main class assignment, numbers 1 - 100 actually, which probably won't hurt my reputation as the Island's premier sloth. Anyway everyone's hard at work learning about blogs and doing there own blog that I thought I'd throw in this great link:
http://mashable.com/2007/09/06/widgets-2/
called 50 Great Widgets For Your Blog. I put the clock on my blog because people off island can never seem to figure out the time here. Al least that's what they're telling me on the phone at 3 in the morning.

Play!!

2007-09-11T03:20:00.001-07:00

Assignment #157

Animoto

Serena Morrow is this month’s Learning Guide over at Learning 2.1 and this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Make video clips like the pros!

You don't have to be Steven Spielburg to create professional video clips online. Animoto is a web application that produces professional videos using their own patent-pending technology. Animoto is the brain child of producers from ABC, Comedy Central and MTV who definitely know their stuff. Animoto analyzes your images and the music you use and pieces everything together to where it all flows perfectly in sync. If you don't like how your video turns out you can click the Remix this Video button and have Animoto automatically change it up for you or tweak it yourself. No two video clips come out the same which makes for hours of fun, as I found out today. (You can check out Serena’s video here or see mine at my blog —RA)
Animoto is still in beta mode which means they are still testing things out and adding new features. One feature it doesn't offer yet is the option to link to your Photobucket account. But rest assured, I contacted the Animoto guys and it should be available in the upcoming weeks. Also, if you want a clip longer than 30 seconds it will cost. But, you can make as many 30 second clips as you want for free.

Discovery Exercise:

Create an account on Animoto.
Create a 30 second clip or Animoto Short, by uploading at least ten pictures. Still got the Flickr account from Learning 2.0? Animoto can link directly to it.
Choose from one of the songs in Animoto's music library or upload your own music file to go with your clip.
Embed your new 30 second clip onto your blog. There is a special code just for Blogger that you can use.
Blog about your experience using Animoto.

Note: I’ve been playing with this since yesterday. It’s fast, easy and the family agreed it’s really cool. Thanks Serena!!

Play!!

Family Video

2007-09-10T14:29:00.001-07:00

2007-09-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

Assignment #156

Art

One thing we’re getting better at is getting interesting pictures around so everybody can see. Now Digg does pictures within the context of their regular news stories and people have been begging for months to separate them out to their own category. No luck from them yet but some other guy has started digpicz.com and we’ve also got reddit media. Now on these sites you can see just about anything so grab their RSS feed and try to keep up. For instance, here’s some great artwork:

http://www.animationnation.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=002071;p=

and

http://www.oddee.com/item_89236.aspx

and this one is cool.

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/09/women_in_art.html

Play!!

2007-09-06T22:22:00.001-07:00

Assignment #155

Google Earth Easter Egg

I told you about Google Earth and Sky in Assignment #148 but one of my favorite Blogs Download Squad had news of an Easter Egg in the New Google Earth. Evidently Ctrl-Alt-A gives you a flight simulator that’s great fun. Here’s the article.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/09/02/latest-google-earth-has-flight-sim-easter-egg/

Play!!

2007-09-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

Assignment #154

Top Sites

This comes from PC Magazine. Here are their top classics websites:

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=213025&s=25234&a=212961,00.asp

Here are their top “undiscovered” sites though I’d already discovered a few of them.

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=213934&s=25234&a=213919,00.asp

Every time I go through groups like these I marvel at what I don’t know.

Play!!

2007-09-05T00:09:00.001-07:00

Assignment #153

Speed Up Adobe Reader

This is a problem I think everybody has. Adobe Reader just takes so long to start up. Here’s a video to help you solve it along with links to the appropriate program.

Play!!

2007-09-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

Assignment #152

Today’s assignment I’m going to steal from the How-To Geek. I immediately went and got this add-on.

Using Secure Login in Firefox

If you allow Firefox to store your passwords you might be worried about the recent security holes found in the password manager. The solution to these problems is to use the Secure Login extension to prevent Firefox from automatically filling in password fields, but at the same time giving you the automation that saves you time. In fact, using the hotkey means that this method is probably even quicker.

The regular Firefox password manager will automatically fill in the password fields for you, which gives malicious sites and hackers the chance to use javascript to read the password. Granted, this isn't a common occurrence, but it's still wise to be wary.

Using the Secure Login extension, you'll see these gold bars around the login credentials instead, but it won't fill in the fields automatically.

Here's where the magic happens…. just click the Secure Login button and the form will be filled and automatically submitted.

You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+N (customizable) to login even faster.

The button isn't automatically added to your toolbar after installing the extension, but it's easy to add: just right-click over the back/forward buttons and choose Customize Toolbar. You'll find the Secure Login button in the list.

The preferences have a lot of other options as well, like not automatically submitting the form when you click the button if you don't like that behavior. You can even customize the highlight color around the login elements.

Download Secure Login from Mozilla Add-ons

Play!!

2007-08-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

Assignment #151

Real Player 11

Now I know I’ve just about beat this to death but I have to admit it works pretty slick. The new Real Player 11 has a feature that when your watching any video a little button pops up in the upper right corner of the video and asks you if you want to download the video. And it works. Not the huge files of Jing and not the .exe files of Screen2exe, just the file. I downloaded 2. The Youtube video came in Flash format but the other one came in IVR format which is some proprietary Real Player format. Neither VLC Media nor Gom Player could play the IVR format. But the IVR was plenty small--60 mgs for half an hour and it even took out the buffering gaps. Here’s the CNET Quick Tip with a little more insight. http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-28974.html

Play!!

2007-08-30T04:08:00.000-07:00

Assignment #150

Snap Shots

I can’t really make up my mind if this application is either really cool or really annoying. I added it to my blog and the gist of it is when you point at a link, a thumbnail of the link comes up. Go to my blog and see it and after we’ll have a show of hands. Keep it or nay. If you want one yourself just go to http://www.snap.com/about/shots.php

And fill in the stuff. Couldn’t be easier. Then the decision will be yours too.

Play!!

2007-08-29T03:17:00.000-07:00

Assignment #149

Time Wasters

I found this article thanks to Download Squad

http://freelanceswitch.com/humour/15-web-addresses-for-wasting-time-view-at-your-own-risk/

No 14 was this one

http://veryfunnyads.com/

Save it for home but not in front of the kids.

Play!!

2007-08-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Assignment #148

Google Sky

The hot topic in Geek World last week was Google Sky. The latest version of Google earth included some pretty cool looks at outer space. CNET had directions:

To navigate to Sky, one must first download the latest version of Google Earth. A tiny round black icon with a planet resembling Saturn will then appear in the toolbar. Click on this to switch from Google Earth's Earth mode to Sky mode. Alternatively, one can also choose "Switch to Sky" from Google Earth's View menu.

The whole article is here:

http://news.com.com/Google+Earth+gazes+into+deep+space/2100-11397_3-6203885.html?tag=nefd.top&tag=nl.e777

Play!!

2007-08-26T23:04:00.001-07:00

Assignment #147

Virtual Worlds

One thing I haven’t touched much in this email is virtual worlds. We hit Second Life a little back in Assignment #58, my kid plays with Runescape, and one of our techs and her husband do World of Warcraft which I guess is very popular. Second Life has evidently been losing its popularity since they won’t let people gamble any more. Anyway, here’s an article on what the author calls “casual” virtual worlds.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/05/virtual-world-hangouts-so-many-to-choose-from/

Here’s the Wikipedia article on the whole idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_game

And this guy’s blog is devoted to rating bars in the UK with rating the virtual bars as well.

http://barblog.lastminuteliving.com/my_weblog/virtual_bars/index.html

I’m not sure I can handle a virtual world. I can barely handle the real one.

Play!!

2007-08-24T22:53:00.001-07:00

Assignment #146

Here’s another Assignment from Mary Kyle at Learning 2.1

Dressing up your photos

It seems that everyone has a digital camera, if not a high resolution one, then at least one on their cell phone. Everyday library computer labs have more people coming in wanting to edit their masterpiece images. If we don't have Photoshop or at least Picasa, what can we do? Last year we played with Flickr and it's a great online photo album and even has some toys to play around with the photos but what if you want to fix red eye or crop the photos before you post? After this exercise you can fix them online with just a computer with an internet connection.

I use Picnik the most but I discovered it first and I like it's flexibility. There are others but let's start here. You do need to register but your photos can come from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook; or you can upload from your computer. Fixes the most common issues, cropping, image size, exposure, red eye, and many more. You can also apply a few creative filters using the Create tab. When you are done save it back where you got it or someplace new. You will need to login to Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa to open from or save to there. The interface is fairly clean and they add a few cute bits to entertain you if a process is a bit slow to load.

Here are a few more to try:

Fauxto - No registration, upload, edit, and save. Mostly I'll say, I'm impressed. I'm used to Photoshop and wow, this one gives them some free, to the user, competition. Layers, Filters, even looks like a software window on the screen. Some effects are a bit slow to happen but they do eventually.

I suspect Fauxto is why Adobe has announced the launch of a free online version of their popular Photoshop software. Rumor says to look for it in November.

Pixenate - reads from and to Flickr or disk. No registration. Simple tools, can't handle high resolutions but if you don't have a high resolution camera this is fine. Window isn't as clear as I'd like though.

Snapfish - product of HP and there are strings attached. You do have to register and editing is limited. Free unlimited online storage! Well, not so free if you want to download or print your images. I only mention it as someone may ask you about it.

I found a few more but had issues with uploading images, may be a browser or flash version conflict.

Pixer.us - cute name, wish it worked
CellSea - Created for Cell Camera Phone users.
ImageEditor - Associated with Google Photo Organizer, which is confusing since they also own Picasa another online photo storage and organizer site.

Discovery exercise:
1. Pick one of the above mentioned Photo editors, or locate one of your own.
2. Edit a few pictures and save them.
3. Write about your experience in your blog and include either a link to or embed one of the pictures you edited. Maybe even a before and after images?

Enjoy!

Play!!

2007-08-23T04:13:00.000-07:00

Assignment #145

5min.com a Videopedia

In my sojourns though the Internet the other day I ran across this site.

http://www.5min.com/

Prepare to spend at least an hour or so.

For example, here’s a computer trick you can play on your friends that’s fun, relatively harmless, and teaches you a little about your computer.

http://www.5min.com/Video/Learn-a-computer-trick-to-prank-your-friends-4021

Play!!

2007-08-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Assignment #144

More Video Capture

OK so you know how I was griping in assignment #137 that Jing and Screen2Exe didn’t capture the videos for learner.org. I got an email from the guys at Jing and they told me why.

It’s probably that you are capturing Windows Media or Real Player or
something. Jing needs hardware acceleration turned off to do that.
More about that here:
http://techsmith.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/techsmith.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.
php?p_faqid=27
Hope that helps.
have a good day,
bill scanlon
TechSmith developer

And it worked-- Right click on your desktop-Properties-Settings-Advanced-Troubleshoot-Move Hardware Acceleration Plunger to None.

Now I don’t know what that Hardware Acceleration thingy does normally so you are on your own after that.

Play!!

2007-08-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

Assignment #143

Here’s Mary Kyle over at Learning 2.1

Mini or Micro Blogging

What is Mini Blogging? Where can I set one up? Why would I?

Mini blogs are limited to short messages (frequently 140 characters), they began as cell phone text messages limited to a geographic region that could be used to find your friends, find out what's going on in the area that night, or to invite your friends to all go to the latest Harry Potter movie on opening night together. The original miniblog, Dodgeball, has all but disappeared and isn't available in Charlotte. However, several others have appeared and brought it to the web, though they still have the option to send and receive the messages on your cell phone. I don't advise getting that unless you have unlimited text messages in your phone plan though.

The new mini-blogs are:
Twitter - your posts are called Tweets
Jaiku - allows you to set up groups and has easy search
Hictu - mostly popular in France, Italy, and England
Frazr - French and German
Pownce - allows the biggest posts and also can be used for file transfer (up to 10MB in the free version, sounds more like email) since an invite is required I can't find out much more about it.

Play!!

2007-08-20T05:06:00.000-07:00

Assignment #142

Lyrics and Cheaters

One of the best Internet skills that you can have is the expeditious use of quotation marks. Sure, you can go to Lyrics.com to get words to a song but why not put 4 or 5 consecutive words of the song between quotation marks and into Google and watch those lyrics pop up.

One of my teachers wanted to know if an assignment paper she’d been given had been copied from the Net. Putting a few words in quotation marks and then into Google showed that it had.

Quotation marks make Google and other search engines treat the phrase as one big word and a significant 4 or 5 word phrase is usually specific to a given literary work. Ah, the power of knowledge!!

Play!!

2007-08-16T23:17:00.001-07:00

Assignment #141

RaimaRadio

Something new to play with. It’s called RaimaRadio. Now I know I got into this other Internet Radio Station program called Songbird back in Assignment #11, but that one couldn’t record. This one can and to MP3s and you can set it to record when you’re not around like recording Coast to Coast AM in the middle of the night. It’ll also takes out any empty spots caused by buffering and it’s supposed to break up the recording session into individual songs but I haven’t had much luck with that feature yet. It’s pretty straight forward and the learning curve is low so have fun.

http://www.raimasoftware.com/

Play!!

2007-08-16T12:14:00.001-07:00

Assignment #140

Trulia

I did a Real Estate assignment on Zillow back at Assignment #18. Rule the Web just had a blog entry on the web site Trulia. http://www.trulia.com/

It’s a Google Maps/Local Real Estate mashup but works well and fun to play with.

And Derek just left me a comment on Assignment #119-Craigslist

--have you seen allurstuff instead?

http://allurstuff.com/

it's also a classifieds site, but with more emphasis on searching, and with a pretty slick google maps integration. (i think it’s the best out there so far)--

Play!!

2007-08-15T03:21:00.000-07:00

Assignment #139

Free Stuff

Raise your hand if you like good free programs. The King of GFPs is Gizmo Richards. You can spend days at his main site. He has a good monthly newsletter that I actually spent $10 to subscribe to and it had an excellent site in its latest edition. It’s got a list of the best open source programs and their pay counterparts. It’s here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ListOfOpenSourcePrograms

Play!!

2007-08-14T03:15:00.000-07:00

Assignment #138

Zabasearch

Just a quicky today. Here’s a search engine that’s supposed to find unlisted phone numbers from all 50 states (but not Guam, sorry to say).

It comes very highly recommended.

http://zabasearch.com/

Play!!

2007-08-13T03:40:00.000-07:00

Assignment #137

Jing Project

This is a neat idea. Jing is a little program that sets on your desktop and, when you want it to, captures what’s on your screen. It can capture videos, or individual pictures or even do a screencast. The downside is that you need XP or Vista or Mac OS X and it captures to .swf shockwave flash and you may not have that on your computer. And the files are huge. Over 2Mgs for every second of captured video.

But it works, although it didn’t work with those Annenberg videos at learner.org. I just got the audio with those.

Keep trying guys. When you can capture everything and give it to me in a reasonable size, I’ll be your first customer—if it’s free.

Update: Gizmo Richards had a link to a better program. It’s called Screen2exe and it does things a little differently (it records to an exe file) but it’s super simple and the files are tiny compared to Jing. Still doesn’t do those Annenberg videos though.

Play!!

2007-08-10T04:04:00.001-07:00

Assignment #136

Meez/Avatars

OK so the new Learning Guide over at Learning 2.1, Mary Kyle, had her own avatar and it looked interesting so I went over to http://www.meez.com/ and made one for me. It’s easy and fun and when I was done the thing actually looked quite a bit like me in a glorified self concept avatarish way. Since I’ve already got enough stuff on my blog I’ll see if I can put this on the blog demo. Your turn.

Play!!

2007-08-08T19:36:00.001-07:00

Assignment #135

Wikiyou

OK, I think I may have found the next big thing. Wikiyou.

http://www.wikiyou.com/

It wants to be the place for biographies for the rest of us. Now, you can get bios for biggees on wikipedia. And bios for other biggees at http://www.biography.com/

but a place where everybody can put their own bio for posterity or just for fun might just be the next big thing. So go and be there. Put your (auto)biography on Wikiyou.

Play!!

2007-08-08T03:43:00.001-07:00

Assignment #134

Cached-Another Homer Moment

Assignment #107 was a Homer Moment. I showed you how to do something that I had just learned that was so elemental as to be, sadly, funny. Here’s another.

A number of times I’ve Googled something and clicked on a promising result that was already gone or updated. “#*$@,” I said. All I had to do was click on the word CACHED to see the original page that Google had, duh!!, cached. It also works if your system blocks your access to a particular domain, but maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.

Play!!

2007-08-07T03:19:00.000-07:00

Assignment #133

Google Hacks Galore

Now some of these we’ve gone over before but different articles have come out and these are fun so—

Phil Bradley’s blog has Google Easter Eggs here:

http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2007/07/google-easter-e.html

Here are some great tricks:

http://www.marcandangel.com/2007/07/25/7-clever-google-tricks-worth-knowing/

Here are some not so great ones but the last one is infamous:

http://www.marcandangel.com/2007/05/30/7-google-searches-i-wish-i-could-take-back/

This is a more general article but item #3 is very interesting for Googlephiles:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118539543272477927.html?mod=fpa_mostpop

And finally, PC Magazine had a cute little article that was interesting.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2155901,00.asp

You are now qualified to wow! your friends.

Play!!

2007-08-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

Assignment #132

Julia was quite prolific this last month over at Learning 2.1 It made life easier for me. In case you’re questioning my work ethic with all this plagiarism, I am slotted to be the learning guide for this blog for the month of October.

Better Health

For some of us losing weight is never easy. Fortunately, there are nifty online tools available to help you along the way. I've found two that I recommend - FitDay and Nutridiary. They have similar features, and both are helpful. Set a target weight and track the calories consumed and calories burned. You can do this daily or, if that's too much of a time commitment, use these tools to occasionally look up the nutritional content of last night's dinner or find the approximate number of calories you burned working in the yard.

Here's how it works. You enter basic information about yourself (height, weight, age, lifestyle level). Using this information, the website calculates an approximate value for daily basal (metabolic) calories burned and lifestyle calories burned. For any given day, you can enter calories burned from activity, which ranges from biking to household chores to yard work. The sum of these three categories equals the total calories burned per day. Then you can enter the foods consumed on any given day. From this information, the website calculates total calories consumed, as well as where these calories come from and how they are distributed. It also creates a chart of all of the necessary vitamins and minerals and records how much of each you are getting, highlighting any that you are not getting enough of.

The only significant difference that I can find between the two services is that Nutridiary is also a social network. If you diet better with "community" support, perhaps Nutridiary would be a better choice for you.

Discovery Exercise

Create an account at Nutridiary or FitDay
Fill in the food chart and the activity chart for a typical day. Find out how the number of calories consumed compares to the number of calories burned.
Find out whether you are meeting recommended nutrient requirements. Are there any nutrients for which you aren't getting the recommended amount?
Evaluate the site in your Learning 2.1 blog.

Play!!

2007-08-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

Assignment #131
Here’s another lesson from Julia over at Learning 2.1
Express Yourself Through Online Art
Since the previous two entries were so darned useful, it seemed entirely appropriate to make this one equally useless. Indeed, the Internet provides endless opportunities to waste time. Here are a few sites where you can be creative, have fun, and, yes, waste time - but hopefully not too much time.
Have an urge to express yourself artistically? Try Mr. Picassohead. It's a drawing program with Picasso-like pieces that you can drag and drop onto a “canvass.” Each piece can be enlarged or reduced, rotated, or colored. When finished, you can add your work of art to their gallery or send the link to family and friends.
More time to kill? Then click over to String Spin to create string art or try your hand at snowflake making.Then for more fun and fascination, try one of the Falling Sand games. Is this art or is it a game? You decide. Here's the general idea. You are given materials (sand, oil, salt, water, seeds, etc.). You can use these materials to draw on a board (game field?). These elements interact with each other. For example, you draw a plant. You also have the option of drawing fire which will burn the plant. Or you can draw water which will put out the fire and also make the plant grow. There's absolutely no purpose to any of these sites except just idle fun. So if you’re feeling a little creative and would like to kill some time, check one or more of them out.
Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore one of the following:
· Falling Sand
· Mr. Picassohead
· Snowflake Maker
· Sting Spin
2. Blog about your experience.

Play!!

2007-08-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Assignment #130

Net Poster

Some things are cool and some things transcend cool. Here’s a poster with the top 200 sites of the Net.

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/slash/ia_trendmap_start.html

Now, it’s actually a augmented copy of the Tokyo Subway

http://www.tokyometro.jp/rosen/rosenzu/pdf/rosen_eng.pdf

but that doesn’t make it any less cool.

Play!!

2007-07-31T04:46:00.000-07:00

Assignment #129

Let me steal another lesson from Learning 2.1

Online File Storage with Omnidrive

Online file storage sites are not new. However, some of the services have added features that make them hard to resist. I've discovered two that I particularly like: Box.net and Omnidrive. Both allow you 1 gigabyte of storage space, and both are absolutely free (and I REALLY like free). In addition, they both allow you to share your files with others which makes for an optimum opportunity for people to collaborate from different locations. Hmmm ... I can think of a lot of PLCMC teams that might need to collaborate from different locations.

I really love Omnidrive. They have combined forces with Zoho so that you can create new documents or edit ones you've uploaded using Zoho Writer or Zoho Sheet - all right from inside your account. In fact, I created this blog from inside Omnidrive using Zoho Writer.

Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I'm impressed. In the first place, I really like the idea of having a web-based storage site. I often find that I'm at home and want to see a file stored on my computer at work. I can just upload those files, then whether I'm at home or on my next trip to Paris, Rome or London (oh, how I wish), I can view them wherever and whenever I choose.

Then there's the sharing feature of Omnidrive. Want to collaborate on a file? If so Omnidrive sends an email to the people you want to share the file with. You determine the level of access. Files can be read-only or editable by the people you share them with.

Photos are another reason to use Omnidrive. SnipShot is another one of their affiliates. You can upload images, then edit them in SnipShot. You can crop, resize, adjust for brightness/contrast and rotate - in short do most of the things you'd ever want to do to an image and all from inside. There's even a option to view your images as a slideshow. Clever.

Another nice feature of Omnidrive is that they let you create a 'Live Folder' that will fill up with files from an RSS feed of your choice.

I've found lots of reasons to like Omnidrive. I'd like to hear what you think.

Discovery Exercise

Open an account at Omnidrive.
Upload a text document, then edit it online using Zoho Writer.
Upload an image, then edit it online using SnipShot
Blog about your experiences using Omnidrive.

Play!!

2007-07-30T04:03:00.001-07:00

Assignment #128

Favicons

OK, I finally figured this all out (I'm not the sharpest...). If you go to my blog, you should see me on the blog and a mini-me in the address bar. That mini-me is called a favicon. Here’s how to do it.

1) Goto http://www.myfavatar.com/ and register. Verify the email.

2) Whatever picture or thing you want to be your favicon should be a square-96x96 pixels is best. Use your Irfanview to fix it. Make it a gif or jpg.

3) At Myfavatar click CHANGE FAVATAR and upload it.

4) Goto EDIT BLOG and put in the info for your blog-where you want the favicon to go. Don’t forget the forward slash at the end of the URL.

5) Click FAVATAR CODES and go to the fourth one down Favicon Code.

6) COPY the code and follow the instructions-essentially paste the code after the <"head"> in your html code for your blog. For Blogger it’s at SIGN IN-LAYOUT-EDIT HTML or at CUSTOMIZE-EDIT HTML.

Play!!

2007-07-27T00:38:00.001-07:00

Assignment #127

Changing Your Look at Blogger

The email I did on Word Press yesterday got me thinking about my blog a bit. I found that I could change the whole template and make it look real pretty and professional. Here’s one I did as a demo. Anyway, put BLOOGER TEMPLATES into Google and you’ll get lots of sites and templates. You’ll have to download one. Next, go to your blog and sign in, click LAYOUT and then EDIT HTML on the tab. Browse to and upload that template you downloaded, save it and say “boy, was that easy.”

Play!!

2007-07-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

Assignment #126

Word Press

Now, of course, it’s obvious that my archive blog for this email is at Blogger (see below) but there is a blog that seems to be making a lot of waves. It’s called Word Press and evidently you can do a lot more with it that you can with Blogger or some of the other sites. Smashing Magazine had an extensive tutorial for it at

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/06/29/wordpress-plugins-tutorials-your-pick/

It’s pretty cool.

Play!!

2007-07-25T03:51:00.000-07:00

Assignment #125

Icons Again

So Monday we did some icons. Did you know that there’s actually a search engine for icons? http://www.iconfinder.net/

Unfortunately, it’s not all that good. But, there are lots of places to get icons on the net. Try http://www.iconarchive.com/

Play!!

2007-07-24T03:46:00.000-07:00

Assignment #124

Online Image Generators Again

Those of you who appreciated the online image generators of assignments #110 and #52 should have a great time with this site. It's a blog dedicated to collecting image generators and he's got a bunch of them. The latest one changes your picture into a Simpsons character. http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/

Unfortunately with many of the sites, they allow you to save the
resulting picture at their site but not on your computer. Here's how
to get by this.

With the picture you want to save on you monitor, punch the PRINT SCREEN key. This puts your screen on your clipboard. Now open Irfanview (which you should have downloaded from the assignment yesterday) and EDIT-PASTE. Now, left click your mouse and drag so that you select just the picture and EDIT-LEAVE SELECTION or EDIT-CROP SELECTION either way. Resize if you want and FILE-SAVE AS.

Play!!

2007-07-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

Assignment #123

Icons-Irfanview

On my computer at home I have directories for me, my wife and our son, Reed. They contain our stuff. The icons for these directories are pictures of each of us. Here's how to do that.

1) Download and install Irfanview from download.com It's a great little picture editor and viewer and we’ll use it again tomorrow.

2) Open the picture you want to use with Irfanview.

3) FILE-SAVE AS the picture as a Windows icon (ICO) file.

4) Now go to the directory you want the new icon for and RT CLICK - CREATE SHORTCUT (You can't change the icon here).

5) Now on the shortcut RT CLICK - PROPERTIES - SHORTCUT - CHANGE ICON

6) Browse for the icon you made and click OK - OK

Play!!

2007-07-20T02:46:00.000-07:00

Assignment #122

Torrents Again

I went over torrents in Assignment #32 but I thought it might be time to revisit them, especially since Instructables has this cool posting on torrents and how to download them.

http://www.instructables.com/id/ECBXJQMF3SYTKSQ/

Also, here’s an interesting comparison on the best torrent sights though it might be somewhat dated.

http://comparebt.blogspot.com/

Play!!

2007-07-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

Assignment #121

Google Search Trick

Here’s a cute trick I just used the other day. I wanted to search for some stuff on the movie/book The Maltese Falcon but I didn’t want everything, just the sites that had a lot of stuff and not just a mention. So…I reasoned that Maltese Falcon would be in the title of the pages that I wanted and I searched for Intitle:”Maltese Falcon”

Worked like a charm.

Play!!

2007-07-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

Assignment #120

Homepages/Desktops

Whether you call them Personalized Homepages or Virtual Desktops, you can really up your productivity as far as keeping track of news and information. Now, even though these work with RSS feeds the way Bloglines does, there is a fundamental difference as their widgets don’t keep track of what you’ve looked at and what you haven’t. They just show you the present feed from the site. They’re great for news sites like CNN or magazine sites like New Scientist. And don’t forget Digg for both news and videos. It’s the best. Here’s a good article comparing the top PH/VD’s.

http://mashable.com/2007/06/29/personalized-homepages/

AND there’s a new one coming and it might be the best yet. It’s called Streamy and you can see a cool video here. It combines the news gathering abilities of the virtual desktop with the ability to share said news with a social network. They’re only in Beta so you have to get an invite but it looks great.

Play!!

2007-07-17T03:27:00.001-07:00

Assignment #119

Craigslist

Time Magazine just did this article on the 25 Websites that we can’t live without. http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1638266_1638253,00.html

There were a few sites that I’ve been living without but not many. One of them was Craigslist. This site is basically a newspaper-like classified section for the whole world and theoretically you should never have to pay for a classified ad again, at least, if you only want to reach the geek community.

So now go to Craigslist

http://craigslist.org/

Click Guam in the US STATES column.

Note the number of ads next to each heading.

See what’s there. And don’t forget to

Play!!

2007-07-16T04:55:00.001-07:00

Assignment #118

Counting Coup

OK so I finally put a counting tool on my blog. It’s a nice little counting tool. Won’t hurt anybody. I went to

http://www.statcounter.com/

just like Mark Frauenfelder said in his book Rule The Web. I registered and configured what kind of counter I wanted and it was easy enough. It’s pretty too – pale blue against the black background. Maybe you should get one.

Play!!

2007-07-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

Assignment #117

Google Groups/Usenet

Back when the Internet was just getting going, access to the WWW was $8/hour, at least around here. But for $10/month you could get email and something many of us thought was pretty cool called Newsgroups or the Usenet. These electronic bulletin boards on virtually anything were great for getting expert information or finding people of like interests. I set up a job exchange to England using the Usenet and it’s had a soft place in my heart ever since. Here’s the Wikipedia article on Usenet.

Anyway, I thought the Usenet had gone the way of the Dodo but no, it’s alive and well and accessible through Google Groups. Google bought the archive resource for the Usenet brilliantly named DejaNews back in 2001 and has expanded the whole operation.

Now you don’t have to use Google to get to the Usenet. In fact it’s more fun if you don’t. Here’s a complete tutorial and almost everything you’ll want to know.

http://www.harley.com/usenet/intro.html

One thing’s for sure, if you’re going for a merit badge in Geekology, using the Usenet is one way to help you get it. Oh! and Librarians, here’s a good newsgroup just for you:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.libraries.talk/topics?lnk=srg

Play!!

2007-07-12T01:17:00.000-07:00

Assignment #116

Get Organized with Plaxo

Let’s steal another lesson from Library 2.1 –Thanks Julia!

There are a number of websites that allow users to set up organizational calendars and task lists for free. Among these are Remember the Milk, Jotlet, and Plaxo.

My personal favorite is Plaxo, which seems to have all of the best components of the others with its own special features. For starters, it can sync data with other programs such as Outlook, AOL, and various Web based email services including Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. It will automatically pull your contacts and events from any of the programs that you choose, which definitely saves a lot of time and trouble. You can add feeds from Flickr, blogs, and Amazon, which automatically update. You can also subscribe to schedules for sports teams, bands, television shows, etc. using iCal. A great thing about Plaxo is that you can share all or part of your calendar with your contacts, or you can publish it and make it public. Then, of course, there's always the option of just leaving it private and allowing no one else access.

Discovery Exercise

Sign up for Plaxo Basic (or if you're willing to spend the money, Plaxo Premium).
Add a couple of events to your calendar and be sure to mark recurring events.
Try creating separate categories for your calendar (such as home and work), and edit your events into these categories. Make sure you're able to view calendars for each category separately and that you can overlay them onto one another.
Make a countdown of important birthdates and anniversaries.
Create a task list, and be sure to check things off as you complete them.
Pick a band, tv show, or sport of interest and, using icalshare.com, subscribe to it on Plaxo.
And finally, be sure to create a blog post about your discovery experience. While you're at it, think of ways you and your coworkers could use Plaxo (or Jotlet or Remember the Milk) during library hours.

Play!!

2007-07-11T03:24:00.000-07:00

Assignment #115

Wikipedia

The last time I checked, Wikipedia had close to 2 million articles and was still climbing. Contrast that with my favorite book encyclopedia, the Americana, which has roughly 100 thousand articles. Anyway, you get my point, Wikipedia will eventually hold all factual information.

So now check out

http://www.neomeme.net/2007/02/07/nine-cool-things-you-didnt-know-you-could-do-with-wikipedia

And on top of those nine things you can add biographies and information on movies, plays, and even individual songs.

Play!!

2007-07-10T05:14:00.001-07:00

Assignment #114

Movies

Movies have to be THE art form of the 20^th and probably the 21^st Century. Like we used to (and still do) share our literary experiences with each other (Harry Potter). It’s more common to talk about Star Wars or the latest Spiderman movie.

Here are four websites that between them give all the info you could want to know about movies.

The Internet Movie Database.

http://imdb.com/

Huge resource, though don’t take everything they say as Gospel. I’ve run across a number of mistakes.

Rotten Tomatoes

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

The place to go for reviews and when and where.

Chasing The Frog

http://chasingthefrog.com/

The real facts behind movies based on real stories.

Teach With Movies

http://www.teachwithmovies.org/index.html

Lesson plans and good facts behind “teachable” movies.

Play!!

2007-07-09T05:07:00.000-07:00

Assignment #113

Instructables

Here's a great Web2.0 site. It's called Instructables.

http://www.instructables.com/

Step by step instructions on how to do stuff. Great idea. Wish I'd

thought of it.

Anyway, when Stephen Colbert did his challenge thing with the light

saber, I was awed with the stuff he got and wondered how it was done. Instructables has how to do it and the program to do it with.

http://www.instructables.com/id/ECLY2XRF1B3R711/?ALLSTEPS

Play!!

2007-07-05T15:25:00.001-07:00

Assignment #112

Social Networking in Plain English

From Common Craft, the people who brought you

RSS IN PLAIN ENGLISH

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

And

WIKIS IN PLAIN ENGLISH

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

comes their latest

SOCIAL NETWORKING IN PLAIN ENGLISH

http://www.commoncraft.com/show

for a guy like me who can’t quite seem to see the need for MySpace I kind of went ooooooh! I still can’t quite see it but it is less muddy. But seriously folks, I do enjoy their videos and I always learn something.

Play!!

2007-07-04T22:28:00.001-07:00

Assignment #111

Glubble

You parents who are worried about what stuff you kids are looking at on the Net have gotten a new buddy. It's called Glubble.

http://glubble.com/

Glubble restricts your kids to a white list of pre-approved websites.

Here's a more involved explanation.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/18/glubble-makes-firefox-family-friendly/

Play!!

2007-07-03T01:37:00.001-07:00

Assignment #110

I’m going to steal today’s assignment from Helene Blowers at Learning 2.1

http://explorediscoverplay.blogspot.com/

Well we're big rock singers…

"…we've got golden fingers
And we're loved everywhere we go
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth
At ten thousand dollars a show
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills
But the thrill we've never known
Is the thrill that'll get you when you get your picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone."

I don’t know how many of you recognize these lyrics from Dr. Hook’s 1973 hit, On the Cover of the Rolling Stone. But if you've ever dreamed about being featured on a magazine cover, these image generators will give you that chance. (Note: Some magazine image generators may not adhere to library collection management.)

Discovery Exercise: (This one is purely for fun)

Select an image generator of your choice, upload a photo and create your magazine cover.
Save your creation by using your mouse’s right click and select “save image as”
Create a blog post and upload your cover to either your blog or ning profile.

Optional: Upload your magazine cover image to Flickr and tag it “LibMagCovers”

Think about how you could use these image generators to create unique signs for your library? Or offer a creative class for library users on magazine cover fun?

In the meantime, why not join me and put yourself “on the cover of the Rolling Stone.” :)

Play!!

2007-07-02T05:06:00.000-07:00

Assignment #109

What are We Thinking/Talking About?

OK, so I found this cool site thanks to Mark Frauenfelder over at Rule The Web

http://www.ruletheweb.net/my_weblog/

Mark’s also got a book out with the same name and I just got it this last weekend. Great book for learning the Web and I’ll probably steal a bunch of his stuff. ANYWAY, The site he features is called popurls and puts together a bunch of the most popular stuff on the bigger sites

http://popurls.com/

It’s pretty cool.

And it got to thinking-What are we all thinking about right now?

Here’re 3 sites that can help answer that question.

Email me some more.

http://www.google.com/trends

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=pd_ts_b_nav/104-0160586-7674366

http://www.talkers.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=31

Ok so the last one is kind of dated but you get the idea.

Play!!

2007-06-29T01:07:00.000-07:00

Assignment #108

Listen to Podcasts Faster

This is a slick trick. So there’s this hour podcast you’ve downloaded but you haven’t got an hour to listen. Open it with the Quick Time Player (Right click – OPEN WITH…) In Quick Time go to WINDOW – SHOW A/V CONTROLS and then play with the playback speed. You’ll notice that you can speed up the podcast (or song for that matter) and the pitch doesn’t change – cool.

Also Amber sends her love from Aviano with a comment on Monday’s Assignment:

Ciao R.A.

Another of my favorite photo share sites is Orfay.com -- Great for
picture blogging. Limited to 75 uploads a week with the free account,
and I don't know the exact size of the per file as I still have dial up
at home and tend to shrink my photos to a 50K or less for uploading
purposes. However it's not accessible from a .mil computer or at least
USAFE's firewall doesn't let it though.

Amber

Play!!

2007-06-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

Assignment #107

Hyperlinking Words and Other Right Clicks

Don’t laugh – I just learned how to do this.

Now all this time I have been putting the full URL in this email whenever I wanted you to go somewhere. Instead, I could have just said something like go to my blog here and have the word linked to a URL.

To do this in WORD, highlight the word “here” and then right click-HYPERLINK and put the URL in the address line.

Feeling stupid, I looked at the other Right Click menu items and found out I could highlight a word and LOOK UP, TRANSLATE, FIND A SYNONYM FOR as well as CUT, COPY, PASTE, and the formatting stuff which is what I used the Right Click for previously. Boy, is my face red!

Play!!

2007-06-27T05:11:00.001-07:00

Assignment #106

The Best Websites

If you had some trouble getting through all those sites at http://www.go2web20.net/

Then how about just exploring the award winners.

Here’s a bunch

http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0

Here’s some more

http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100.html?tag=nl.e415

Here’s a third group

http://www.100bestwebsites.org/

and a fourth

http://www.worldbestwebsites.com/

Play!!

2007-06-26T04:19:00.001-07:00

Assignment #105

Definitions in Spanish

This was cool! A patron came in and wanted a Spanish dictionary. Not an English-Spanish dictionary as his Spanish accent told me he already spoke Spanish. Not having one, I tried Google and even told it in English “define accessión”. Bingo! The first thing up was the meaning in Spanish. How that computer always reads my mind is the magic of Google.

Oh! And do you want to give Google a very nice blue (or grey) hue? You’ll be the envy of everyone.

Firefoxers get Stylish 0.5.1 in your Tools-Addons. Then go to http://userstyles.org/

And get the

Google Web Search - dark blue redesign (vC)

I also got the Youtube dark grey redesign. It goes better with the black and white movies I put up.

Play!!

2007-06-25T04:04:00.000-07:00

Assignment #104

Photo Sharing Sites

Kim Komando had an interesting email the other day on these sites:

Flickr: You can upload up to 100 megabytes of photos each month. This refers to bandwidth, not storage; deleting photos won’t increase the amount you can upload.File size is limited to five megabytes. Only small images are accessible. However, the originals are saved in case you upgrade to Flickr Pro. Also, you’ll only see your 200 most recent photos; if you upgrade your account, you’ll see the rest. Your free account will be deleted after 90 days of inactivity. Flickr has a strong sense of community. Its users like to comment on others’ work. The photos also have more of an artistic bent.

http://www.flickr.com/

Shutterfly gives you unlimited storage and no file size limit. It says that it has never deleted a photo. You can create slide shows and add captions to your photos. Of course, Shutterfly promotes products such as prints and calendars.

http://www.shutterfly.com/

Snapfish also gives you unlimited storage. High-resolution images are kept for three months so you can make large prints. Then the photos are converted to a lower resolution, suitable for small prints. Snapfish sells prints and other photo-related products. If you don’t make at least one purchase a year, your account is deleted.

http://www.snapfish.com/

Kodak EasyShare Gallery gives you unlimited storage. It does not specify a limit on file size. Like Snapfish, it deletes your account if you don’t make a purchase once every 12 months.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/

Photobucket is different from the other photo-sharing sites. It is designed to host images for blogs and auction sites. Photobucket gives you one gigabyte of storage. You also get 25 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. If your photos are viewed a lot, they may not be available for others to view. Your photos are limited to one megabyte in size.

http://photobucket.com/

Photobucket has a nice Learning 2.1 lesson here

http://explorediscoverplay.blogspot.com/

Play!!

2007-06-22T04:05:00.000-07:00

Assignment #103

Cool!

Surfing around the other day I found Seimoz's 2007 Web 2.0 awards.

http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0#cat_62

Under SEARCH I found PIPL - a people search engine.

http://pipl.com/

Wanting to objectively check this resource, I looked for (who else?)

Me - rameyerguam

It brought me to a presentation Jane Desart and Stephen Abram made to the Canadian Library Association.

http://www.sirsidynix.com/Resources/Pdfs/Company/Abram/200706_CLA_Learning_2.0_2007.pdf

And there on slide 53 was - me - or at least my blog. Cool!

My wife was not impressed. Something about time vs money.

Play!!

2007-06-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

Assignment #102

Yourminis-Widgets-iGoogle-Tabs

The new Learning2.1 Blog has lessons on various Internet things that I can use in this email so I’ve decided to steal their stuff today. The full lesson is here: http://explorediscoverplay.blogspot.com/

Yourminis is a virtual desktop like Netvibes or iGoogle only cooler and more colorful. http://www.yourminis.com/

Here’s the Discovery Exercise from Learning2.1

# Go to YourMinis and click Open Startpage.

# Click one of the "templates" at the bottom of the right-hand pane to add a tab full of widgets to your pages.

# Create a new tab by clicking Add Tab at the top of the page, and use the gray bar on the left to add some widgets to your page. (If you don't see the bar, click Add Content in the upper left corner.) It's easy to drag them around on the page. Mouse over each widget and click the buttons that appear in its top right corner to set options and change widget color, etc. You can also use the small drop-down arrows beside each tab's name to change the tab background color, delete the tab or perform other "maintenance" tasks.

Also I found this little hack a few days ago to add more tabs to your iGoogle page (Only 6 is so passé). On your iGoogle homepage just add

javascript:_renameTab(); _dlsetp('at=')

to the address bar and hit enter.

Play!!

2007-06-20T03:50:00.000-07:00

Assignment #101

These sites supposedly give you the keys to unlock the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system at major companies. This is the maze of “punch one for advertising” etc that you get when you call. They tell you how to easily reach a real person.

http://ivrhacks.com/

www.gethuman.com

Also- Lt Hubbard emailed my about Alt-Key codes (Assignment #95) You can also get to a full character map under the start menu -> all programs -> accessories -> system tools -> character map

Thanks

Play!!

2007-06-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

Assignment #100

Icons

Don’t you just love all these colorful Web2.0 icons? Even if we don’t have the slightest idea as to what a site does or whatever, the icons are cool. Today’s first site gets my SO DAMN CUTE award. It’s http://www.sputtr.com/

Now I know we probably do too much Search stuff in this email but I couldn’t resist this site. It appeals to the 5 year old in me.

The second site says it’s a complete Web2.0 Directory with first a one line description and then a blurb. It’d take you a while to get through them all but then, what else do you have to do this week?

http://www.go2web20.net/

Play!!

2007-06-18T05:25:00.000-07:00

Assignment #99

Awesome

This was just on Phil Bradley’s blog.

http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2007/06/photosynth_demo.html

and I was blown away.

Prepare to be impressed:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

About the closest thing we have right now is Flickr’s World Map with its geotagged pictures.

Goto Flickr (assignment #2) and sign in. In the upper left corner click ORGANIZE. On top click MAP. On the left click EXPLORE THIS MAP. On the right side click SATELLITE. Use your mouse to move the map. Use the slider to go closer. Click on the red dots for pics.

Play!!

2007-06-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

Assignment #98

Putting videos on your IPOD

According to our Base Historian this is a cinch using the video reformatting service at ZamZar.com but he did have a little trouble with a Japanese video in letterbox. It got squeezed a little too much.

http://zamzar.com/

It’s a little bit more work to go from a DVD to your IPOD but here are two different ways compliments of everybody at YOUTUBE. The first has the Stones as a bonus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4EFNHpj_Ho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HduME9L1HV8

Play!!

2007-06-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

Assignment #97

Old Reference Librarian Tricks with Google Images

I have found Google Images good for 3 things other than just pictures.

One) Put the name of a country into the Search Bar and you'll get excellent maps - lots of them.

Two) Put the word chart or poster after something like Music or Basketball or Guitar and get really cool stuff.

Three) Put a body part into the Search Bar and you can get photos that might otherwise be interdicted by your particular circumstance. An exception to this is Net Nanny which doesn't like Google Images but doesn't know about http://zuula.com/ Images.

(I once told my Capt. that despite the best efforts of the Air Force I could have a pornographic picture on his computer within 30 seconds.)

Play!!

2007-06-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Assignment #96

Google released a study that said that 10% of Internet sites contain virus and-or malware that can be downloaded to your computer. The article is here.

http://www.usenix.org/events/hotbots07/tech/full_papers/provos/provos.pdf

At the same time, one of my friends wanted to know how to avoid malware when downloading programs like we do here sometimes.

Probably the easiest thing to do is get your downloads from CNET.

http://www.download.com/

CNET does a good job of guarding the integrity of the programs accessible from their site.

So, if there’s some program you want, and you’re not sure about the site, take note of what the file is called and go on over to CNET to download it.

Play!!

2007-06-12T03:28:00.001-07:00

Assignment #95

Alt-Key Codes

Ever wonder how they get those odd foreign letters and things like currency symbols into Windows documents? Well, you hold down the Alt Key and punch a four digit code on the keypad and voilà (0224). Here’s a list of key codes

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html#accent

or,if you’re in Word, just do INSERT-SYMBOL.

Play!!

2007-06-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

Assignment #94

Audio and Video Formats

Kim Komando had a post last week on audio formats:

MP3--This is an old standard, but still very usable. Almost all music players can handle it. You won't go wrong with MP3.

WMA--This stands for Windows Media Audio. Its files are much smaller than MP3s, but they deliver comparable music quality. Because WMAs are smaller, you can get more of them on the player. Many MP3 music players can also handle WMAs.

AAC--This is Advanced Audio Coding. It is used to format the music sold by Apple and RealNetworks. It is difficult to convert to more open standards such as MP3. Therefore, it is generally restricted to just a few music players.

WAV--This is an uncompressed format. It is sometimes used on recordable CDs. But it is not suited for storage on a computer. It's just too big.

How do you convert WAV to MP3, or MP3 to WMA? There are a number of conversion programs. My favorite is dBpowerAMP. It's free at: www.dbpoweramp.com

The only thing I’d add is Red Book Audio which is kind of like a WAV file and is the format on your audio CD’s.

Video formats are really complicated and probably the only things you need to know are these main formats that are also streamed.

WMV Windows Media Video from Microsoft

MOV Quick Time Movies from Apple and

FLV Flash Video from Adobe

Play!!

2007-06-08T00:12:00.001-07:00

Assignment #93

Firefox Addons

Last weekend my Firefox browser was acting funny. Youtube came up fine but the video was taking forever. I had just put on this new addon called BetterSearch which puts thumbnails on your Google Search. I tried taking off the BetterSearch and it did run a little faster but not much. So I took off the Greasemonkey, the Search Term Highlighter and something else I can’t remember and the flash video was back to normal. I put BetterSearch back on because it looks cool and – no problem. I guess what I’m trying to say is be careful with those Firefox addons. They’re fun but they can bite you in the butt.

They’re at Tools-Addons in your Firefox Browser.

Play!!

2007-06-07T02:04:00.000-07:00

Assignment #92

Add a little code to google.

One of the library blogs I look at every day is called Librarian in Black

http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/

by a Goth Librarian (there’re two words I never thought I’d see together) named Sara Houghton from San Mateo. She posted a trick with Google Images.

After you search for an image, add &imgtype=face to the URL in the address bar and you get only faces. Pretty cool. Add &imgtype=news and you get only images that relate to news stories.

Play!!

2007-06-06T03:32:00.000-07:00

Assignment #91

From the folks that brought us RSS in Plain English

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

comes Wikis in Plain English

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

and I finally can add myself to Helene Blowers Learning 2.1 Wiki.

http://learning21.pbwiki.com/

Play!!

2007-06-05T05:04:00.000-07:00

Assignment #90

Lesson # 1

Yes, It’s a little late for #1 but I’m willing to bet not many of you have gone through this little exercise. I’m going to assume that we are all going to use IE and a newer version of Word for this.

Goto http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=pd_ts_b_nav/104-0160586-7674366

And Highlight and Copy the Potter kid entry.

Goto Word and Right Click and Paste

Goto EDIT-UNDO PASTE

Goto EDIT-PASTE SPECIAL (If it’s not there wait 5 seconds) FORMATTED TEXT

Repeat using Unformatted Text, HTML, and Unformatted Unicode Text.

I usually only use the Paste itself and the Unformatted Text myself depending on the situation.

On my daily emails I have a template with the formatting already there. Then I paste the Unformatted Text.

Play!!

2007-06-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

Assignment #89

The Paranormal

I’ve got a program here on Monday evenings I call the Near Death, Reincarnation and Other Spooky Stuff Discussion Group. I’ve got a few people interested in it and gives me an excuse to look at these things, and religion itself, objectively and informally.

Anyway, I’ve found lots of good supporting materials on the Web.

Google Videos and YouTube have stuff. Especially good are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5cGSUBU8-w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9sjf-Y2Njo

which is the first of five parts.

There’s also a torrent with lots of excellent media files here

http://search.utorrent.com/search.php?q=reincarnation%20-breeg&e=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2emininova%2eorg%2fsearch%2f%3futorrent%26search%3d&u=1 It’s the big one.

Of course, you can always get good stuff from our favorite late night radio show if you have a subscription

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

and here’s a good program from public radio station WHRO

http://www.whro.org/home/publicradio/whrv/localprogramming/hearsay/2006/January/010906-011206.htm

and I love this site

http://near-death.com/

just because it’s so well organized.

Librarians, email me if you’re interested in this stuff or want to start your own program.

Play!!

2007-06-01T03:15:00.000-07:00

Assignment #88

Google’s Book Search tries hard to be an index for all books, or at least all the books it has scanned. It used to be better before their legal problems but they’re trying to make a comeback. I’ve no doubt that at some time in the future, copyright holders will realize what a tremendous benefit it is to have somebody index your book along with the surrounding text for the search term. Right now Google’s snippet thing is somewhat painful but they are trying and they are getting better. Here’s an interesting video presentation on Google Book Search and Google Scholar:

http://www.google.com/librariancenter/librarian_movies.html

Here’s their Book Search Blog:

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/

Get some handouts and posters here:

http://www.google.com/librariancenter/librarian_tools.html

A couple of years ago I researched the movie/book Don’t Go Near the Water (1956-57) and it’s relationship to Guam. Wasn’t much on the Web but Book Search was invaluable.

Play!!

2007-05-31T05:03:00.001-07:00

Assignment #87

A really good place to get caught up on the latest in Web apps is the netcast Net@Nite from Leo Laport and Twit. Here’s their website:

http://www.twit.tv/ITN

or you can just subscribe to the podcast from iTunes.

Anyway, episode 21 talked about Tumblr

http://www.tumblr.com/

It’s kind of a combination blog and scrapbook. You can add things to it really easily but there’re no comments allowed. It’s just the thing to keep stuff that you find on your wanderings around the Net.

Play!!

2007-05-29T22:29:00.001-07:00

Assignment #86

After my email and blog post about OpenOffice the other day, I got this note from Kaj Kandler

“May I mention, that our Plan-B for OpenOffice.org

http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/index

is becoming increasingly popular with librarians. And for the time being it is in free beta test as well. Forgive me the plug, somehow I need to get the word out. K

(We are) busy, creating screencasts for non technical users of OpenOffice”

Plan B’s Screencasts are free so check them out.

But also, don’t forget Youtube and Google videos for free instruction.

However, if you’re willing to spend some money ($25/mo) for instruction, try

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/index.asp

High quality screencasts and 1000’s of them. A lot of them are free. They’ll teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about things computer.

And don’t forget the Video Professor

http://www.videoprofessor.com/

He’s got lessons on all the most popular applications. He’ll let you go through about a third of each lesson for free THEN for $.99 you can get unlimited access to all his products for the next 99 hours. After that it’s $30/mo. Such a deal!!

Play!!

2007-05-29T05:45:00.000-07:00

Assignment #85

Putting Your Bookmarks on the Web

OK I’ll admit that I’ve never gotten into Delicious http://del.icio.us/

I did register a couple of months ago but I couldn’t really get into the shared bookmark thing. However, I did use it over the weekend as I am tired of getting on a strange computer and having to type in all my destinations.

So… goto your browser and click on

File-Import and Export-Export Favorites if you’re using IE or

Bookmarks-Organize Bookmarks-File-Export if you’re using Firefox.

Put your Bookmarks-Favorites on your desktop.

Then go to Delicious and register if you haven’t done so. On you main page click on Settings and look for Bookmarks-Import/Upload. Upload that Bookmarks File you just saved on your desktop. It’ll take a few minutes to show up but you’ll then have all your bookmarks in one place ready and waiting.

Play!!

2007-05-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

Assignment #84

So a patron came in the other day and wanted to know if there was anything that he could get for free that was a good word processor. I told him about OpenOffice. http://www.openoffice.org/ which is a free…clone(??) of Microsoft’s Office Suite. Our Base Historian swears by it.

I also showed him Google’s web based word processor and spreadsheet that more and more people are starting to use. Just goto Google-More-Documents.

And finally don’t forget you have a word processor with your Windows operating system already. It’s called Wordpad and you get to it through Start-Programs-Accessories. No, it doesn’t have Spell Check but you can’t have everything.

Play!!