Works Cited

I'm not sure if we need this for our blogs, but I did it anyways. The following are the cites for any quotes used and general overview of the Lynda.com tutorials for web 2.0

Molly E. Holzschlag. Blogger Essential Training. http://www.lynda.com. November, 2009

David Rivers. Google Docs CSS Essential Training. http://www.lynda.com. November, 2009

Garrick Chow. Podcast + Videocast Essential Training. http://www.lynda.com. November, 2009

My personal blog site

I have started up my personal blog site that is part of my final project for Web 2.0. Click here to link to it. There is not much on there, its a work in progress. I have set up feed burner with it and added some widgets.

I'm on flickr!

I signed up with a flickr account last week which is my main objective of the class. I never have the time to do it on my own and figured this would be good to do as part of my final project. I only have one photo on there, but its a start. Time to start sorting through my favorite photos I have taken over the past few years. I love photography and practice it as an amateur.

My first photo is of my in-laws dog taken in Bulgaria. For those of you who don't know a little about me, I am married to a Brit. About 6 years ago my husbands parents went to Bulgaria to a Black Sea resort and fell in love. They ended up moving there from England. Although Ozzy (the dogs name) is out of focus, I love the composition of the photo and the motion of her.

Click here to follow me on Flickr.

Google Docs-Lessons 12-15

Tonight's the night, going to finish up the remainder of the my Web 2.0 tutorials. Feels great to be at this stage. The next thing required I have to do is explore the Second Life world. I went to the site the other day, looks interesting. Okay, the last tutorial to finish is Google Docs. I have chapters 12 through 15 left. 


Chapter 12
Chapter 12 starts off with creating a presentation in Google Docs. It's not rocket science to create a slide show presentation, I have done these for years in powerpoint. One big difference in google docs is saving. If you hit save, it just saves your document and keeps it open. Save and close, does exactly what it says. When you create a presentation, like Powerpoint there are generic text boxes with a title bar and a supporting text bar. To add a new slide, you must click on the edit tab then hit the add slide button. When adding a slide you have numerous options for a slide: Title, text, two columns, caption and a blank slide. When working with slides, you have all the same text editing attributes that google docs has such as font, font color, font size, and justification.


A nice feature with google docs, is being able to upload powerpoint presentations. You can open that file from your computer or from a URL. One thing google docs does not support is the newest version of powerpoint which saves the extension as .pptx. Google docs lets you work with the imported graphics from power point and make any needed adjustments. Google docs lets you also import slides from other presentations to incorporate into another slideshow. Like powerpoint, google docs comes with various themes. When selecting a theme your fonts will change to that preset theme's fonts. Once a theme is established, any slides inserted will use the them applied. When using themes, best to keep it simple and not mix and match and have too many crazy graphics. If you wanted a slide to have different background from the others, its an easy process. To change the background, you right click on the slide and select the option. 




Chapter 13
The next chapter continues in depth with using the slide presentation feature of google docs. The features include how to add text, lists, images, video, notes and shapes. To add a text box, select the edit tab and then the insert text button. Once text is inserted, you can modify it even further with size, font, color, etc. Covered next in the chapter is how to insert a list. The author recommends to start the list first rather then insert the option later. Once you select the list button, to start a second list item in the list, you just hit enter or return. Backspace takes out the bullet and returns you to the previous line. With lists you can change the alignment, color, font, etc. 


To keep your slides interesting, its great to insert images such as logos. To add this feature to a slide, go to the edit tab and select insert image. Options when inserting images is from your computer or as a URL. You can also try dragging other web images to your slide. Once the image is added, it can be moved around the page by clicking and dragging. If you need to resize, as with any office style program from my experience, its best to hold down the shift key to keep its proportions. Often, I see images stretched and distorted which really annoys me as a Designer! 


Other graphics google docs allows in presentations are shapes. Shapes that can be placed include: circles, rectangles, arrows, speech bubbles and more. The author shows how to copy and  past the shape created and also moving the shape with your arrow keys on the keyboard. 


To take your presentation up a notch, you can add video. To add video, go to the edit table and select insert video. This command takes you directly to Youtube with a search option in the dialogue box. Thats a nice feature as many people rely on the site for video footage. Videos can be sized like images and shapes in Google Docs. One thing to keep in mind is resolution when increasing the size of your video. On your video, there are controls to play and stop your video. 


Lastly explored in Chapter 13 are speaker notes. These notes can be used as a tool to help when going over slides in a presentation. To add notes, there is a button with a face and + which adds a column to add speaker notes. To add notes to the new column, just click in it and start typing away. 


Chapter 14
The final chapter in presentations reviews how to share your presentation with others wether its exporting as a different format, print, online or on a projector. The share tab allows you to invite others to be collaborators or viewers to your slide. In this tab, you also have the option to send emails to your designated collaborators or create and online event/meeting. When saving your slide show you have numerous options such as saving it as a text file stripping it of its graphics, saving as powerpoint, or as a PDF.


Your presentation can be viewed and shared in different methods using google docs. To start your presentation you can click the start presentation button on the top right or select the option under file. What is nice with google docs is that you can share your presentation with anyone on the internet by providing the other viewers with the URL. When sharing a slideshow, a presenter can be selected by a simple click of a button. Your can interchange who is presenting by clicking the button on and off. A chat feature is also incorporated for you to converse with your audience. 


Printing is another way to share your slideshow. To print, make sure to select the print option from the file drop down in google docs. Options are given to print background and speaker notes. The author saves the files as PDFs and then prints. I have done this with powerpoint in the past as the graphics can take up a lot of memory and take forever to print. By saving as a PDF you compress the info and can making printing the slides a speedier process. 


The final method to share your slideshow is online. This can be done by publishing your website and get its own URL. The URL can be passed along to other viewers. To publish your document, the publish tab should be selected. Options for size and the URL are given. 


Woohoo, thats a wrap! Feels great to be done with the tutorial!!! :o)

Article Reviews for Web 2.0 – #2

I figured I would separate this post from my last to review the articles that my instructor Ken Ferree emailed over to us.

Article #1
The first article I would like to go over is "His Facebook Status Now? 'Charges Dropped'" by Damiano Beltrami. The article is a review of how social networking can be both our friend and foe. In the case of Rodney Bradford, it proved to be his saviour in an arrest made over a suspected robbery. At the time of the robbery, Rodney had posted a message on Facebook. This message became his albi. Facebook was subpoenaed and proved his message was legit and the charges were dropped.

In this case it proved good, but often we must think about when and what we wish to post. For one individual social networking did him damage in that he called in sick for several days, but during this time, he managed to find time to post online and was caught by his employer. I remember when myspace first came out, there was a big issue about employers not hiring potential candidates just because they had created their own account. I wonder if this is still true as social networking has progressed? Pretty much, think before you type!


Article #2
"Companies race to offer instant Web search, including Twitter" by Jon Swartz of USA Today, discusses how the "new race in Internet search business" is "about speed." The key point of the article is how older search engines don't have the capabilities to incorporate searches which include the "real-time web world" such as Tweets. Google and now Microsoft's Bing both allow access to Twitter's public postings. These two browsers have the capabilities for real-time searches. With breaking news on big stories, there is a race to who can get the information out first. Some stories are leaked even before the news stations announce them. Could this mean the end to some news stations or newspapers with your average person tweeting about a situation?

Article Reviews for Web 2.0

Its been a little bit since i have posted, but during this time I have found a few articles related to our class I would like to briefly review. I'll post these on our digg account as well.

Article #1
The first article I am reviewing, is titled "Web 2.0 Expo: The Power of Less" written by Thomas Claburn from InformationWeek. The article goes over an expo that is currently taking place (Nov. 16-19) in New York. The theme of the expo is "Power of Less" focusing on companies that have small budgets and getting hit hard by the economy. Twitter, is an example of the expo's theme in that it was built with one central "narrow idea" — simply put, it allows you to do just one thing, post messages.

When you really think about the many tools we use, they are fairly simple and I do think that is their strong point. Perhaps we like to overcomplicate things and need to keep things minimal and to the point. These minimal tools are so powerful to developing a business in so many different fields. With smaller budgets, businesses have gotten creative and challenged themselves with ways to enhance their brands. At the expo they review these minimal use issues; how people are utilizing these tools such as social media programs like Twitter; and how these web 2.0 have evolved.

Its amazing to think how much web 2.0 tools have progressed in the matter of a couple years. This leads me to my next article I found going over the history of the internet.

Article #2
"The History of the Internet in a Nutshell" by Cameron Chapman is a summary of when the internet got started and how its evolved to present time. Can you remember your first experience with the internet? I remember way back in the early 90's when my older brother was using the earliest versions of the social networking program AOL. He was showing me how he could talk to other people around the country and I was deeply fascinated by this technology at the time (I was a kid).

The first date listed is, 1969: the birth of the first network to run on packet switch technology, called Arpanet. The article points out that "they were the first hosts on what would one day become the Internet." To think how old this technology actually is. Did you know that email was firs developed in 1971? Prior to World of Warcraft and Second Life, a text-based role-playing world was created in 1979, called MUD. The first worm attack occurred in 1988...there is always someone trying to do something! 1990 marked the coding for the World Wide Web and its protocol. In 1993, the first easily accessible public web browser was launched called, Mosaic.

It is in 1995 where commercialization meets the web. Within in the next few years, the first we-based mail service (Hotmail) is launched as well as the ever-popular Google to online file sharing with Napster. Finally we read about everything that leads up to the highly interactive and user drive Web 2.0 applications we are using today.  To think how much technology has evolved and how much earlier then I thought a lot of the technology was created such as the first e-mail. What do you think the future holds to the internet?

Article #3
My next article I would like to review is analyst Tamara Barber's opinion on why online communities should be accepted as a research tool. "Market research catches up with Web 2.0" begins by discussing the term Web 2.0 and its meaning. When I first learned about the term about 5-6 years ago, I thought it was more a graphical thing as the articles I was reading online were about how to create the Web 2.0 look. Once I delved deeper into it, I soon discovered it was a term used to coin interactive user driven sites or applications found on the web. Unfamiliar with the web 2.0 look? Take a look at the 2009 web design trends from my favorite online magazine, Smashing Magazine. These trends are carried out through many of the web 2.0 sites, apps, etc we see online. I think its important when putting out a design that you are aware of trends.

Getting back to the article, Barber gets into depth on how Market Research Online Communities should use social outlets to review the feedback of people's opinions on brands and companies. By research companies utilizing these outlets, in my mind, I think they would save themselves a lot of money but not having to make cold calls with surveys or creating them. The information is right there and easily accessible. How often do you find yourself reading reviews for a product? I know I like to, as you get a sense of real world users of the product and their experience with not only the product but often good reviews of the company you are buying from.

Google Docs-Lessons 2-11

Seeing I am sick and not going to class, figured I would get some work done still by getting as much done on the last set of tutorials - googledocs.

Documents 
From what was reviewed in the docs chapters, I had no troubles following along as the interface is similar to any other word processing software I have used over the years. There are some minor differences. I like how googledocs automatically saves your title after some time period. One big difference when working on a doc file is that you can't open a file unless you go back to googledocs home. When printing don't hit print from your browser menu rather, use print under File in the googledocs menu. In a long document, there is no page separation and you must insert a page break. I like the fly-over feature when adding links in your doc. I like the ease of sending an email with attachments rather then opening up a separate mail program then looking and attaching, a couple less steps. Also a nice feature is that you share the document as collaborators or as viewers, could be great if several people are working on the project. The revisions feature for collaborative docs is very handy. Googledocs shows the full list of revisions and allows you to compare them.

As I was following the document section of the tutorials, it reminded me of a free word processing software for the mac (not sure if on pc) called Bean. I use this a lot as I hate using Microsoft word.

Spreadsheets 
The main difference with the spreadsheet feature in GoogleDocs is there is no menu bar, rather it uses tabs with buttons. In spreadsheets you have to save your doc as the automatic name save is not feature in spreadsheets. One difference in this application is that there is no overrun feature when typing text in a cell.I must say that the interface is rather user-friendly with the drop downs. Seems like in Word in you have to dig around for needed features or formatting. I do agree with the author that the fill-handle is a great tool with any spreadsheet application. This feature allows you to replicate data in column or row that follows a pattern or just to duplicate that same info in the highlighted designated area. One new thing I have learned is the ability to freeze rows so you can always see certain rows or columns as your spreadsheet grows.

It's been a long time since I have worked with formulas in spreadsheets. Chapter 9 covered these features were a great refresher. To add a total of a row you would use a formula that starts with an "=" then you type each row and title that needs adding such as "b4+c4+d4". To create an avg total of the one just listed you would go to the next row and hit "=G4/5".

To streamline long formulas, functions come into play. To sum a range of cells you would go to the formulas tab and you can find a range of different functions to suite your needs. The example given using the Sum function would go like this "=Sum(b4:b15)". A colon must be used to separate the range. You can also click and drag the range to select it after you started the function. Wish I knew about some of the extra functions when I took math last semester! But then again we had to write everything out. The chat feature is a cool touch to googledocs. Another interesting feature is that you can publish your spreadsheet to the web and get an actual url.

Be back soon to finish up the rest of the tutorial!

Podcasting - Lessons 2-8

Chapter 2 review:
When creating a podcast there are numerous things you must consider. Its best to listen to several shows to determine what you want to do and ways to keep your podcasting interesting and listeners to follow in. Typically podcasts have been for radio shows but you can do much more then that. Things to consider in your show is entrance music, exit music, equipment, hardware, software, quick tips, listener email, wrap up and preview to next show. When you begin your podcast start strong and go software. You want to be enthusiastic! Its best to have a script or some notes of what you are going to review. Also, don't use other people's music unless you have written consent to do so by the artist and owner of the music. There is numerous places you can get royalty free music or just simply make your own to stay out of trouble. There is a website you can use called music.podshow.com that has a bunch of music you can use for your podcasts as long as you are not making money off of it. A program you can create your own music in, is something like garage band. Garage band uses loops you can mix together to create a song.

Chapter 3:
This chapter reviews the type of gear needed to get your podcast up and running.  You need a computer that has sufficient ram and good mic and camera for video (if needed). There are different mic types:

• Dynamic: Wire & coil magnet
• Condenser: Two plates & capacitor

When purchasing a mic, best to get a dynamic mic for traveling and a condenser mic for higher quality home use. Condenser mics are expensive and are what radio dj's use. An example condenser mic given by the author is an Audio Technica AT4040 which comes with a shock mount. Also recommended is to by a pop filter to stop the sharpness of pronunciation. To further enhance the best sound of your mic, its recommended to buy a pre-amp to fix the weak signal of your mic. Headphones are good to buy to listen to your pod cast prior to uploading as most users will listen by headphones on their mp3 player.

When recording your home or office, best to sound proof your space with stuffing towels under the door and putting quilts or tapestries on your walls. You can purchase acoustical foam. Listen to your surroundings to find the best time to record. Next to consider which software you want to use. A good free recording software is Audacity. Garageband also has recording capabilities. A sample recording of a recording was provided and good key pronunciation. Although some mistakes were made,they can be edited.

Chapter 4:

Chapter 4 goes over enhanced podcasts and the features in itunes. Enhanced podcasts can only be created on a mac. What to use is a program called Chapter Tool which uses the language of UNIX or a non command program such as Cast Easy or Podcast Maker (potionfactory.com). With enhanced podcasts you can place images for chapters (jpegs or png web quality), chapter titles and links. Podcast Maker creates and audio file and xml file.

Chapter 5:

Now its time to publish your podcast. This chapter gives an overview of the elements needed to publish a podcast. Elements needed are:

• Your Media File (mp3, m4a, mov, PDF)
• Hosting Service: place to store files
• RSS Feed: this allows users to subscribe to websites that allows feeds to catch text files about your podcast

To publish the file you have to create your media file first. Then upload that your hosting service, create your RSS feed, and publicize the feed.

There are free hosting providers for your podcast. There are limits by these providers on bandwidth. The author doesn't suggest using a free hosting service. Two services recommended geared toward podcasters are: Blogmatrix.com and Libsyn.com. The author suggests using a dedicated ftp program such as Panic Transmit or a free program called CyberDuck.ch. This ftp program is used to connect to your web server and transfer your media files to your server. Next the author creates a blogger.com page for his podcast. He recommends a site called feedburner.com to create feeds for his blog.

Finally we learn about places to publicize you podcast such as Podcastalley.com or even the iTunes Music Store. All you need for this is your feed address and any info you want to publish with it. Its best to be detailed as you want people to find your show. There are other ways to promote your podcast off the internet as well by flyers, tshirts, etc.

Chapter 6 & 7:

Another way you can podcast is by Video podcasting. The process to get a video podcast is the same as an audio file, its just a matter of a different media file format. Similar equipment is needed as audio podcasts, the only new item needed will be a video camera. Options are a cheap web cam or a dv camera which allows better quality and flexibility. A tripod will also be needed for stability. If shooting indoors, pickup some extra lights and umbrellas to make light less harsh. You can also buy workshop lights that are inexpensive. Always best to to place the lights at a 45º angle (hence 3-point lighting).

As with audio, you should plan out your shots to create a good video cast along with a script. Always leave enough space before and after the shot to leave enough room for editing and transitions. Always nice to get extra shots of your background and surroundings. These shots can be helpful for when you mess up a line you in which you edit in a corrected line with this extra shot. Keep movement down to a minimum.

Software you can use is iMovie or Final Cut Express HD or even Adobe Premier. Next shown is how to use iMovie and ways to export. iMovie has a nice feature to save for an ipod.

There are ways you can make money with your podcasts. In order to make money you need listeners and a large audience which helps bring in sponsors. Best to get feedback from your listeners by a variety of ways, the best being comments.

Another way to make money with your podcast is to become and Amazon Associate. As an associate you can list products such as books on your site and you get a link with html you copy and paste onto your web page or blog page. You can mention these products on your show and make around 4-6% of the sales once someone has clicked on that link on your page. Google also has a similar program called google ad sense. These are all free.

Asking your listeners for donations is way to make money as well. To do this, you would put a donate now button to help create and improve your show. A popular way to receive money is by using paypal. You could also sell items from your show featuring your logo on tshirts, hats, pens, etc. Cafepress.com  is a company you can put your logo onto tshirts. From there you would up the cost on your product so you can make some money. There are free accounts and premium accounts on this store.

With your podcast you can put ads on your show. This gives listeners the illusion of a quality show. Fruitcast.com is a site to add advertisments to your show at the beginning or end.

This covers the podcast tutorial. I learned more about making podcasts from this and can see the benefits of podcasting if you have a good show to put on.