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!
Monday, June 11, 2012
Filling the Deep Niche
No sooner had I learned about blogging than I knew exactly what I wanted to blog about! There is a deep niche, a really deep (Marianas Trench-deep) niche market that is being completely neglected, and I plan to fill the need.
The deep niche market is comprised of the Hippocrates-style raw foodists. Who are they, you ask? Raw foodists are people who only eat food that has not been heated above 112' F. The enzymes in food that has been heated to temperatures above that point are dead, and that food is not considered "raw". So raw foodists eat no food that has been processed, bottled, or canned, no meat, no dairy products, no bread or baked goods.
Hippocrates-style raw foodists take that a step further. They eat no fruit and no sweetener of any kind (such as raw honey); they drink wheatgrass juice and sunflower sprout juice every day, and the rest of their diet is supposed to be fifty-percent leafy green sprouts.
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| wheatgrass juice with a lemon chaser |
Why would anyone choose to live like that, you ask? A lot of people, like myself, do it to for health reasons. I had stage-four breast cancer, and I was dying. I was given a 2011 expiration date! Then I went to Hippocrates Health Institute and, through a series of radical therapies and radical nutrition, I got healed. But, if I want to remain healthy, I have to eat the Hippocrates way.
I have searched the internet, and there a very few raw food websites or blogs. And of the raw food sites that are there, the vast majority of the recipes and other information is not applicable to the Hippocrates-style raw foodists. And it's really hard! I would love to eat a slice of pizza or a bowl of ice cream or a piece of chocolate or even a banana! And when the rest of my family is eating cooked food and it smells so good . . . it's torture! Then, even when I go to a raw food website to browse for raw recipes, I find one recipe after another that I can't eat!
So I am going to start a blog called "Hippocrates at Home" that is going to be a support site for all the people who are living in accordance with the Hippocrates program with recipes and tips and encouragement for the difficult life situations in which we find ourselves. There are thousands of people who go to Hippocrates every year.
Once the word gets around that there is a website that specifically meets our needs, I'll bet a lot of Hippocrates alumni will follow it. Then I can get advertisers to pay me. And then I can pay for the rest of my college education!
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| a tray of wheatgrass |
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Blogging
If you'd asked me a week ago, I would have said that blogs were just for personal
journals, nothing more. But now I know that blogs can be so much more!
journals, nothing more. But now I know that blogs can be so much more!
While some people do have a blog just to record their daily activities, others blog about
their travels or some adventure they are having. This blog is about Alexander's adventures while traveling through Europe.
People also have blogs to connect with others who share their values or beliefs, be they
political, religious, or social. This blog is about the benefits of homeschooling children.
Some people or companies, such as M&M's have blogs to help grow their business or to promote their brand of product or service.
Performers also use blogs to connect with their fans and build their fan base. One of my
favorite singing groups, Jedward, has a blog to keep fans all over the world apprised of
their schedule of performances and release dates for their songs and albums.
I have discovered that there are a lot of different reasons to have a blog. And now I am
inspired to start one of my own!
So, now that I want to make my own blog, where do I start? Fortunately, the decision
has been made for me. (Thanks, Mark!) But if I were on my own I would start by
checking out two of the oldest and most popular blog hosts:
Wordpress.com
Blogger.com
Other popular sites include: Tumblr, Posterous, Xanga, and Weebly. But there are so
many more!
I found a list of over forty free blogs with descriptions. One example is: "Blogabond.com - a site dedicated to travel blogs with map integration and more."
One blog's graphic I really like (and have no idea how they made it) is the one for Arts
Beat. Very cool!
Some blogs I really like are:
Miss Yellow Shoes (this is done by my son Mike's fiance, Brittany)
Miss Yellow Shoes (this is done by my son Mike's fiance, Brittany)
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