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!
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