Assignment #65

Screencasts

Screencasting is basically making a movie of what’s happening on your computer screen. It’s usually used for how-to videos on computing, etc.

Here’s a podcast on screencasting at SirsiDynix. It’s the 13^th one down.

http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/archive.php

Here’s a short little screencast on screencasting:

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

Here’s where you can get the program Wink that you need to do a screencast

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Or just get it from Download.com

The program is easy and quite intuitive (and free) so just get your copy and

Play!!

Assignment #64

My brother also gets my little emails and he had some interesting things about last Monday’s email and ALEXA:

I think alexa is a hijacker which may explain why it is so popular. It makes you an offer you can't refuse. Alexa collects information from users who have installed an "Alexa Toolbar," allowing them to provide statistics on web site traffic, as well as lists of related links.

The company offered a toolbar that gave Internet users guidance on where to go next, based on the traffic patterns of its user community. Gee, I wanted to go there but I came here. Thanks Alexa!!!!

Another concern is whether Alexa ratings are easily manipulated. Some webmasters claim that they can significantly improve the Alexa ranking of less popular sites by making them the default page, by exchanging web traffic with other webmasters, and by requiring their users to install the Alexa toolbar.

Hey alexa, thanks for changing my start up page, rerouting me to where you want me to go, and telling everyone what I am doing using the bandwidth that I am paying for.

For more see Wikipedia

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

And for your assignment

Goto http://worldatlas.com/

Click on it

Under the map of the world there’s a flag with a dragon on it--click on it.

Click on COUNTRY FLAGS

Goto –G- Guam click on it

Right click on Guam’s flag.

Save Picture as…

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Assignment #63

Here’s a couple of interesting websites if you’re home schooling. These are sites that teach lessons through movies. The first is

http://www.teachwithmovies.org

Lots of movies here with lesson plans but not much else. A few years ago I got a yearly membership for a few bucks and my name is still on their list. Use rameyerguam with a password of asiya.

Another site is

http://www.storyofmovies.org/

They have more activities for their 3 movies (that’s right—3 whole movies) but the site is sponsored by some Hollywood biggees and does do a good job with those 3. And even though they say more movies are coming they’ve had those same 3 for at least 4 years now.

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Assignment #62

Ok Star Trek lovers, here is Wikipedia for Trekkers.

Goto http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Portal:Main

and

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Assignment #61

This is a website that shows you the most popular web pages on the net.

Goto http://alexa.com/

Note the movers and shakers, click on TRAFFIC RANKINGS at the top.

Note the world rankings on the right.

Find the United States and click.

Check out something you’ve never heard about.

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Assignment #60

Here’s a cool site.

Goto http://www.cnettv.com/

Click on Tips and Tricks. Watch a video or two.

Now Click on Movies and Music. Watch June Carter sing “Keep on the

Sunny Side”

Great video.

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Assignment #59

You probably ought to check this place once every couple of days. I’m not sure how much of his stuff is strictly legal but he does have some cool stuff.

Goto http://www.floodle.net/

Go down to (16 Dec 06) - CIA Book of Dirty Tricks

Click on it to check it out.

Check out whatever.

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Assignment #58

Second Life

So I registered with Second Life last week.

http://secondlife.com/

I watched the podcast that Sirsi-Dynix has here:

http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com/archive.php

Read both PC Magazine and Information Week’s articles from their current issues.

Watched some cool videos on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxj8RTW4ev4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=synxFmQJ_0A

Realized that I’m going need a lot of learning curve but did see some interesting potential.

But a nagging thought, since I’m doing my Near Death, Reincarnation and Other Spooky Stuff Discussion Group here at the Andersen Library, was- I wonder if WE’RE somebody else’s Second Life.

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Assignment #57

MP3 Blogs

Here’s the wikipedia entry for MP3 blogs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3_blog

Here’s a cool example:

http://www.coverville.com/

Coverville plays covers (recordings of songs that were made popular by somebody else)

Search Coverville for covers of ABBA songs.

Here’s my favorite:

http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/

Put MP3 BLOGS into Google.

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Assignment #56

Every time I think the Internet can’t get any more fun I find some new website. Prepare to spend a couple hours exploring your favorite band on FoxyTunes Planet.

Goto http://www.foxytunes.com/planet and put in your band or artist.

Foxy Tunes is an addon to Firefox that I did download. It’s unobtrusive but I can’t really see a reason for it yet.

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Assignment #55

Here I just told you about mashups last week and I run across this today. It’s a great little tutorial on exactly how to make your own mashup with Google Maps. And it’s only 3 and a half minutes long.

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9705175-2.html?tag=nl.e415

Play!!

Find old assignments at http://rameyerguam.blogspot.com

Assignment #54

Here’s a useful little website if you’re writing a paper.

Goto http://ottobib.com/

Put in the ISBN number of some book and click the appropriate formatting.

Voila! You have the bibliography notation.

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Assignment #53

Goto Top Secret Recipes http://www.topsecretrecipes.com/

On the left click on RECIPES.

At the bottom of the page click on page 9

Click on KFC® Cole Slaw ^FREE

The two pay recipes I looked at were only $.79/ea

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Assignment #52

It was Helene Blowers who’s the Tech Director for the Charlotte NC Libraries that got me going on this little Web2.0 thingy. I heard her LEARNING 2.0 podcast on Sirsi-Dynix and thought “Hey, this could be fun.” Anyway Ms Blowers has this whole program done out for her staff that’s being copied by other groups. Here’s the variation for the California School Library Assn. http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/

Here’s Ms. Blowers Blog which I now subscribe to

http://www.librarybytes.com/index.html

And finally, since I’ll be stealing all kinds of stuff from the LEARNING 2.0 unit, let’s just start with something quick and fun.

Goto http://www.glassgiant.com/hollywood_sign/

and put something in.

Click Make Sign.

After goto the Home Page http://www.glassgiant.com/

and

Play!! These and called online image generators.

Assignment #51

The more I’m on line, the more blogs I subscribe to. The ones that change a lot and that are basically Internet newspapers, I have on my Netvibes virtual desktop. The more personal and professional blogs I link to through Bloglines. These blogs add new items only once in a while and Bloglines only shows me the new stuff. This way I can see if anything new is on a whole bunch of sites all in one place.

Stephen Abram from SirsiDynix said on one presentation that he daily checks 500 blogs for tech news using Bloglines and it takes him about a half an hour.

Now, it’s a little querky and the interface isn’t the greatest but you’ll eventually need this.

Goto http://www.bloglines.com/

And register. When you find something you like, get the RSS feed and add it to your page.

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Assignment #50

Mashups

OK! How many of you know what a MASHUP is? A mashup is a combination of 2 or more databases to come up with – whatever. For instance a real popular mashup is to take the Google Maps database and combine it locally with houses for sale. The result is cool if the area has hi def pictures. One agent uses Google Earth to show you how to find your house from 15,000 miles in space. You can zoom right in on the house see the neighborhood, etc. Here’s one for Reno

http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Reno-Nevada/

So now put

(your home town) real estate google

into http://www.google.com/

and see what you get.

Play!!

Assignment #49

Ok, I just learned this one. When you play a video from Youtube or someplace else, it streams the video to you. To play it a second time it doesn’t need to stream it again, it’s already on your hard drive. BUT! how do you find it?

Goto Search and look for all files that were created in the last day. Different versions of Windows have different ways of asking for your parameters.

Hit Search and you’ll get a list. Most of the files will be just a few Kb. Find the file that has about 2+ MB for every minute of video. It’ll probably be a bunch of numbers and letters. Now, if you have that Flash Video Player from Assignment #17 you’ll be able to use it by changing the file name to (something).flv (Right Click-Rename)

Go to Edit-Undo Rename if you need to later.

BUT, if you download this great media player called VLC Media Player

From http://www.download.com it’ll play it straight away.

Rename and save it if you want.

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Assignment #48

Goto http://learner.org/

After signing up go back to View Programs and click program

Click American Cinema

Watch 1. The Hollywood Style by clicking on the

These are all those great Annenberg videos that were the best thing on PBS. You can’t watch the videos in all the programs but most of them you can. There are hundreds of hours of excellent educational videos. A few years ago that American Cinema series on VHS went for over $100 on Ebay.

You can also view some of these same videos through the Free University Project http://www.freeuniv.com/

AND

You can also get a big bunch of educational videos at

http://best.online.docus.googlepages.com/

Assignment #47

Musicians!!

Of all the things you can find easily on the net, one thing that’s difficult

to find is sheet music. Here’s how to get some.

Goto the midi converters for Windows part of hitsquad.com

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/win95/MIDI_CONVERTERS/

and download MidiNotate Player v1.1.1

I’m sure there must be others but I found this one pretty easily.

Install it and pop in a midi file (see assignment #22 at my blog below) and

presto-printable sheet music.

I love midi files. If any of you are doing something cool with them, let me know.

Play!!

Assignment #46

Language Translation

Goto Google-more-even more

Under Communicate, show & share find translate.

Paste I want to go to the store into the translation box.

Set English to Spanish and translate.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Gives you the same.

Now goto http://www.freetranslation.com/

Translate it again. Take your pick.

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Assignment #45

Ok! So we’re not going to play today. If you’re a moderate computer user you’re probably blown away by all the files your computer has to load just to get going. And, you’ve probably got some things going that you’d just as soon not be there but you don’t know how to stop them. On top of that, you may even have a virus or two. Who knows? Anyway, here’s all the info you need in one place. Go through it. Take your time. You’ll learn a lot.

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php

Find old assignments at http://rameyerguam.blogspot.com

Assignment #44

Computer Maintenance Lessons today and tomorrow.

So Your computer is running kinda slow? Let’s see if we can help.

Hit the Control-Alt-Delete buttons all together. What should come up is a window that says Windows Security.

Click the button that says Task Manager.

The Applications button is handy when you have a program that has stopped working correctly but today we’re going to be looking at the Processes part.

When you click there you see all the programs that are running in the background and using memory. I have over 40.

Some of those programs may not be necessary and some may even be harmful. Clicking on MEM USAGE ranks them by size. You can check each one here:

http://www.processlibrary.com/

End appropriate processes.

You should now be able to tell a lot about your computer. Tomorrow we’ll look at starting up your computer to maybe avoid having to do this every time.

Assignment #43

Wondering what the “latest” is? It’s something called TWITTER.

http://twitter.com/

Now, like most big things I’ve missed by not understanding their significance, I’m looking at this and saying “What the heck do you use that for?” Twitter is an app where you broadcast short little “tweets” to your friends or to whoever chooses to get them. A tweet can be anything, stupid or profound. Here’s a tutorial:

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9697867-2.html

It’s kinda like stalking with the help of the stalkee.

Come to think about it, maybe the sum total of all our tweets would be significant. A list of all tweets about and during a presidential press conference could be interesting.

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Assignment #42

OK Are you ready to be a hacker? I’ve seen this running around the Web for awhile but I haven’t had time to try it until now and it’s pretty cool. Just take

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Kleptones"

and put it into Google. Substitute Kleptones with the name of a group or the name of a song. You should find lots of downloadable music.

And there’s actually a program that will download all those files on a page for you but you have to be using the Firefox Browser.

Goto http://www.downthemall.net/

For more hacks like this goto

http://www.googletutor.com/2005/04/15/voyeur-heaven/

Play!!

Assignment #41

iTunes for podcasts

If you haven’t got it already. goto http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html

And download the free QuickTime/iTunes. Install.

Many people think that iTunes is just for the ipod and just has songs to buy. Au Contraire, iTunes is the biggest distributor of podcasts and you ain’t nothing if your podcast isn’t on iTunes.

So, once it’s installed, click on iTunes Store, put Guam into the Search in the upper right and hit enter (don’t be looking for the button like I did.) Lots of interesting things come up. Click on the name to preview.

Always, check iTunes for media. Just a few minutes ago a lady came in looking for Greek language lessons. We had very little so I lined her up with Rosetta Stone Online and a Greek language learning podcast on iTunes.

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Assignment #40

Probably about once a month I get somebody in the library who needs information for a paper “but it can’t be from the Internet” because their instructor wants the info from a book or magazine. I send them to http://findarticles.com/

Yes, it’s still the Internet but the articles, both free and pay, are all right from popular magazines and even professional journals and what that instructor doesn’t know ain’t gonna hurt him.

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Assignment #39

My Space the Last

I haven’t had the time to explore MySpace as much as I would like to but I did find out a couple things.

1) Check out Goolge Videos and, of course Youtube for tutorials on just about anything myspace.

2) There are websites set up to do everything for you as far as pimping (I love that word) your Myspace page.

There’s http://www.myspaceaid.com/

And http://www.glitter-graphics.com/myspace/

And, of course, http://www.pimpmyspace.org/

Just put myspace (almost anything) into Google and the sites will come up. Lots of tutorials too.

Play!!

Find old assignments at http://rameyerguam.blogspot.com

Assignment #38

My Space Music

The easiest thing is to search My Space Music for a group. If you find the
group and they have the song you want click the “add”. The song will be on
your site.
Otherwise--
I’ve already mentioned Project Playlist to get music onto your My Space
page. It’s pretty straight forward.

However, their search isn’t near as good as what you can find at Dogpile-audio so
if you can’t find a song go on over to Dogpile and search there. You need
to come up with an MP3 file. After you already have a playlist. Go to “my account”.
Click on “delete / rearrange music on a playlist”
Click on your playlist.
Click on “Add URL/Link Direct to Playlist”
Paste the URL from Dogpile. It’ll be on you playlist.
Follow the instructions to put your playlist on your My Space site.

Lastly, to put your own songs on you’re My Space site, watch this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNDBLbrFXpE

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Assignment #37

My Space

(This is a continuation of last Friday’s email)

Goto your myspace page.

Yeh, I know, My Space has a bad reputation. Remember that wild bar back in college that you refused to go to until you were a junior? And then when you went you had a really good time? That’s My Space. Yeh, things can happen and it ain’t for kids but it is where things are happening.

OK

One thing you should know is you get a friend by being signed in and clicking the "add to friends" link at someone else’s page. You'll have to get an email verification and they have to accept you.

Probably one of the first things you should do is check out the GROUPS, Click on GROUPS on your myspace homepage. My Space has groups for everything. 172 groups came up when I put in Librarians. 2 Groups just on the movie Casablanca alone. Although it remains to be scene how active each group is.

That’s enough for today.

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Assignment #36

My Space http://myspace.com/ is one of the most popular sites on the web and with good reason. It’s an awesome site with over 163 million members. A couple weeks ago I used it to find local Guam music for a patron. It had the biggest collection. Next week I’m going to try to navigate through some of the harder to find options in My Space. So far I’ve registered, uploaded a picture and a video which were all pretty easy. I’ve also put a few favorite songs on by way of another site-Project Playlist: http://www.projectplaylist.com

So here’s my My Space site http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=164103927

And my Project Playlist site which is kind of a My Space wannabe but still in beta

http://www.projectplaylist.com/user/3770909/view

I’m going to rope my 11 year old and maybe even my daughter in Minnesota to help me with this and any of you who are part of those 163 million to send me your favorite My Space app. So if your not one of the millions yet- Register and

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