23 Things, Week 13

I had a great time with this assignment! My subject is one of my favorite "people" and I wanted to illustrate her favorite leisure activity. I used Animoto to create this slide show. It was extremely easy to use and produces some very cool effects. I did use Adobe Photoshop Elements to reduce the size of the images to the 1024 x 768 size recommended, but otherwise it was easy easy easy, like falling off a log easy. Hope you have as much fun watching as I did making!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

23 Things, Week 12

This screencasting assignment took me almost as long to complete as the Week 10 video project and was almost as nerve-wracking. Writing the screencast script was a lot like doing technical writing-- clarity, brevity, de-jargoning, and not assuming the viewer has any existing knowledge about the topic are all important. My script kept taking tangents I hadn't counted on and I had to keep pulling it back or my screencast would have been very long! After a few rehearsals, I was ready to record. Or thought I was. First I noticed my voice got funny. Then I found I couldn't see as much of the screen on my Acer netbook as I'd like, so I ditched the browser toolbars (F11) to expand the browser window. Several recording attempts later, I realized I was so nervous I couldn't make the glide pad work right, so I attached a mouse to my Acer. One annoying thing I couldn't fix was my mouse pointer: it kept jumping/flashing/pulsing while I was recording. Happily, it did not come through on the finished product:

I can think of all kinds of uses for screencasting for staff and public: tutorials, procedural docu-casting, reader's advisory tips, "ads" for upcoming programs that could be embedded on the library's Facebook page. It's great that the tools for making screencasts keep getting easier to use, and the price is certainly right.

23 Things, Week 11

Break! Whew! Only not really, since I'm so far behind! ACK!!

23 Things, Week 10, Part Dos

I am experiencing technical difficulties-- if/when I can find a video cam that works with Windows Movie Maker, I'll fill in the rest of this blog entry.
(tempus fugit...)
OK, I'm back. It took me a really long time to get this video together. I'll probably think it was fun in a week or two, but right now I'm feeling lingering frustration. I had this really neat idea that almost did me in because nothing seemed to work right. Initially I thought I'd use my Acer webcam to shoot the video and edit it in Windows Movie Maker. It quickly became apparent I wasn't going to be able to hold the Acer still enough and aim it accurately. So I checked my Sony Power Shot digital camera, and hooray! it had the capability to make movie clips! I made several, then tried to load them to Movie Maker. No dice. Sony is sooooooo proprietary and Movie Maker hated the file format. Scratch Sony. The library owns a Flipcam and I borrowed it. It was very simple to use and has reasonable sound and picture quality. I filmed all my clips, then tried to import those to Movie Maker. Ooops, I didn't have the right codec. Sigh. Tried downloading the magic codec to no avail. Finally had to install the software included on the Flipcam to my laptop to make Movie Maker "see" the files in all their glory. Did some editing and adding of titles and credits, et viola:

23 Things, Week 10, Part Uno

This is one of the funniest library videos I've ever seen, but then I'm a big Mr. Bean fan, right down to owning a yellow Mini. Look! A Card catalog! Books! and White-Out!!

23 Things, Week 9

I have mixed feelings about IM. It can be a very efficient way to keep in touch and a quick and dirty way to conduct business. Or it can reduce conversations to truncated silliness with too many LOLs and OMGs. My chat experience to date is with Facebook, Google Talk, various webcasts, and all those "live help" windows on websites that I order from. I believe IM is most effective if a person takes time to learn a little of the standard texting lingo and then keeps comments concise. I sometimes feel like I'm interrupting people in their work when I knock on their chat door. And when the IM gets fast and furious, the conversation can get a little chopped up and confusing. However, if I become more conversant with the technology, and assume that others will make use of their status indicators, my comfort level should increase.

I set up a Meebo account and imported my Facebook friends as buddies. I've also tried adding a few buddies who have Google accounts, but they keep disappearing from my buddy list for some reason. I have sent several Meebo IMs and am awating replies. I did visit the #23thingsks IRC channel and had a fun short "talk" with wizzyrea et al. IM hasn't changed my life or the way I work yet, but I'll give it some time and see what happens.

23 Things, Week 8

Cloud computing-- how cool is that? As stated in the 23 Things: Cloud Computing blog, we've all been cloud hopping to some extent. Recently I set up web based credit card processing for our family business: updates are automatic and statements and customer information are stored on the service provider's servers. Nothing physically "lives" onsite, so I don't have to worry about server maintenance or security issues (unless the provider gets hacked!). I can access all that information no matter where I am.

For this assignment I chose to work with Google docs because my work email is Google based. I've never created a Google doc, but I have used a form someone else created. I decided to try out presentations-- found the interface straightforward if somewhat stripped down compared to PowerPoint, but it does have the basics. So I created a very short presentation and sent out invites to several people to collaborate on my Google docs presentation about "What I've Learned From 23 Things." That didn't go as smoothly as I'd expected. It seems that Google docs disputed my right to share my presentation with others who were not of the @lawrence.lib.ks.us domain. So I shared with a couple of LPL staff and copied to myself, then forwarded that email to 2 other 23 Things participants. Let's see if I get any nibbles. Back in a few ... (tempus fugit) ... Discovery? I believe that even though my work email @lawrence.lib.ks.us is Google based mail, it is not "pure" Google (i.e., not @gmail.com) and therefore won't let me share docs with outsiders. Or maybe it's a firewall issue. I downloaded my presentation to my desktop, then uploaded to my personal gmail account, and am resharing with the people who couldn't share previously. I was allowed to share directly from Google docs this time. On the plus side, 3 co-workers have collaboratively edited my presentation. Woooohoooo!