You may have seen in a previous post my humorous PowerPoint presentation, "How to Become a Vampire". This is roughly the same presentation done in Prezi:
Monday, July 9, 2012
Podcast 101
Podcaasting is an emerging method of file distribution that has opened an array of marketing and communication opportunities to businesses. Podcasting can be used for talk shows, tutorials, music demos, educational training, stories, comedy clips, debates or even foreign language tutorials.
You can listen to MP3 files at any time. However, podcasts combine the ability to subscribe to a Web site and learn about any new additions immediately with the MP3 downloads. So, when you subscribe to a podcast, you can listen to either older editions of the podcast, or you can wait until the author creates and uploads a new one. You then set up your iPod to check periodically for updates. When a new podcast recording is available, iTunes downloads automatically.
What makes podcasting unique isn't the shows themselves necessarily, but the very special way that the shows are found and delivered to the audience.
This special delivery process is called RSS, or Real Simple Syndication. It's a system that lets you do three main things with a podcaster's show (or, "podcast"):
• locate a show and its unique channel, or RSS feed,
• open that feed and close it at will, and
• deliver each new episode to you as long as you have that feed open
• deliver each new episode to you as long as you have that feed open
All three items happen not because of any portable music player, but by software, like iTunes, that lets you locate the podcasts, and tell the podcaster you want to receive any new episodes. That's called "podcatching", by the way. You can do this on any computer with internet access.
There are many brands of podcasting software on the market. The Top Ten Reviews website has rated the top ten brands shown in the chart below:
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Editing Photos Online
This week I experimented with different photo editing websites. Some I liked better than others. Here is my take on the five websites I checked out. (I used the same photo on every website to make the tests more fair and easy to compare.)
First up was flickr.com. This was easy to use and the controls were fairly intuitive. The only thing I couldn't do with flickr was to patch or repair spots, such as the exit sign on the wall behind me.
First up was flickr.com. This was easy to use and the controls were fairly intuitive. The only thing I couldn't do with flickr was to patch or repair spots, such as the exit sign on the wall behind me.
Next up was photoshop.com. I liked this website a lot. It was also easy to use, and I could "erase" the distracting exit sign very easily.
Then I tried fotoflexer.com. It was not as easy to use, in my opinion, as flickr and photoshop. It did not have as many basic fixes, such as erasing, but it had a lot of fun tools such as adding borders or animations - none of which I can see myself ever using.
Next I tried pixlr.com. I didn't like this one at all! It was awkward to use and while I suppose it would be useful for someone who wanted to take the time to learn how to use all the complicated controls, it was not useful for someone like me who just wants to fix up a photo a little bit and move on.
The last websire I tried was picasa.google.com. It led me to download the program Picasa3, and I love it! This is by far my favorite. It uploads the photos from my computer automatically and organizes them. It is very easy to use - it even has instructions for each of the tools when you select them.
There you have it! the next time I edit my photos, I will be using Picasa3!
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
can be a very useful tool for businesses.
Business owners can connect with their customers on Twitter. They can give updates on their products or services to their customers, or give promotional discounts, or advertise specials. They can also see what their customers are saying about their products or services, whether complaining or complimenting.
Business owners can also use Twitter as a marketing tool. If they have a new product or service that they want to market to hundreds or even thousands of people for free, all they need to do is put the word out on Twitter.
The most useful thing about using Twitter for business, which makes it far superior to Facebook, is that it is viral in nature. So, for example, if one hundred people "like" a business on Facebook, then one hundred people can stay in touch with that business. But if one hundred people "follow" a business on Twitter, then those hundred people and the hundreds or thousands of people who "follow" them also stay in touch with that business.
Some useful features on Twitter include:
- hashtags, which are keywords for searches
- direct messages, which are exactly what they sound like--messages directly to a specific person
- retweets, which are a forwarding of a tweet
- and replies, which reply to a tweet and are viewed by everyone who is following the person to whom you replied
Now, I don't have a business, so all these great Twitter features don't really interest me. What I like to do with Twitter is follow my favorite art museums. They often have great pictures of masterpieces and interesting and informative articles to go with them. My favorite is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Blogger vs. Wordpress
When I first learned that we were going to do a blog in this class, I was eager to learn how to do it, and I went to the Blogger website and watched all of the tutorials they had. So, when it came time to actually make our blogs, I had at least seen how Blogger worked and was marginally familiar with that site. I may have been biased because I had already watched the tutorials, but Blogger seemed very user friendly to me.
When I played around with Wordpress I found it very frustrating. Everything was different! And the way it worked didn't seem at all intuitive to me. I hadn't worked with Wordpress for five minutes before I made up my mind that I would definitely be using Blogger!
This is mostly an emotional decision as opposed to rational, but I'm a girl, so I am entitled! ;D But let me try to back it up with some good hard evidence:
First of all, Blogger has these fabulous tutorials right on their dashboard (I love them!) and my blog is right there.
When I played around with Wordpress I found it very frustrating. Everything was different! And the way it worked didn't seem at all intuitive to me. I hadn't worked with Wordpress for five minutes before I made up my mind that I would definitely be using Blogger!
This is mostly an emotional decision as opposed to rational, but I'm a girl, so I am entitled! ;D But let me try to back it up with some good hard evidence:
First of all, Blogger has these fabulous tutorials right on their dashboard (I love them!) and my blog is right there.
Wordpress, on the other hand, comes up looking like this:
All this stuff that seems irrelevant to me comes up, and to get to my blog I have to go to another tab. That doesn't seem like a huge deal, but it is just indicative of Wordpress' non-user friendliness.
With Blogger, everything I want to do to customize my blog has a link right there on the left. Changing the template, for example, is easy!
With Wordpress, on the other hand, I have to navigate to the dashboard and go to the appearance tab and go from there.
All in all, I like everything about Blogger better than Wordpress. That is why you are reading this blog on Blogger!
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