Testing
July 26th, 2008
I have an iphone so I’m trying the wordpress app.
**Edit**
Interesting that it had no problems posting here yet I haven’t been able to post to my personal blog. Something about an invalid id. I also find posting a little unintuitive. Instead of a publish button, you change the status to published and then save. I know that’s how the software works but I was still looking for the “Post” link.
Update
May 4th, 2008
I didn’t mean to be gone this long but moving is taking more time than I thought it would. The good news is I’m stockpiling ideas for posts once I can get back to work.
40 Free and Cheap Stock Photo Sites to Punch Up Your Blog Posts
February 29th, 2008
It’s a common rule of thumb that using images as part of your blog posts helps draw attention to them and illustrate what you’re saying. Finding and creating these pictures can be difficult if you aren’t a photographer but there are plenty of places on the Internet where people are sharing their own photos for free or low prices. You have to watch the Terms of Use though, particularly if you are selling the article.
- http://istockphoto.com
- http://sxc.hu/
- http://www.stockxpert.com/
- http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
- http://www.imagecatalog.com/
- http://www.photostockplus.com/
- http://us.fotolia.com/
- http://www.openphoto.net/
- http://powstock.com/
- http://www.freerangestock.com/
- http://www.unprofound.com
- http://www.freemediagoo.com/
- http://www.stockvault.net/
- http://www.luckyoliver.com/
- http://www.everystockphoto.com/
- http://www.burningwell.org/
- http://yotophoto.com/
- http://canstockphoto.com/
- http://www.pixelperfectdigital.com/free_stock_photos/
- http://dreamstime.com/
- http://bluevertigo.com.ar
- http://www.imageafter.com/
- http://www.cwd.dk
- http://www.designersdepot.com
- http://www.linkdup.com
- http://freefoto.com
- http://www.freephotosbank.com/
- http://www.photocase.com/en/
- http://majesticimagery.com/
- http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
- http://davidniblack.com/imagebase/
- http://www.nationsillustrated.com/
- http://freelargephotos.com
- http://www.creatingonline.com/stock_photos/
- http://free-stockphotos.com/
- http://aarinfreephoto.com/
- http://www.freephotos.com/
- http://www.freeimages.co.uk/
- http://freestockphotos.com/
- http://nypl.org/digital/collections_images.html
Second Life as a design outlet
February 27th, 2008
A number of graphic designers have successfully converted their expertise into Second Life businesses. Everything made in Second Life relies on textures… pictures made in an image program like Photoshop… to not only make it look like what the creator wants it to be but to give it depth and reality. So an orb becomes a basketball and an undershirt becomes a tattoo.
Because of the ease of entry (software-Gimp is free, upload fees-10L each, 400L for $1, and time), Second Life has a thriving home-grown fashion market. There are people making a living just making virtual doll-clothes and accessories.
Real world fashion businesses are taking notice of the money and interest being spent by this circle of fans and are coming into Second Life to create a presence for advertising purposes- and are not doing well.
The most memorable of these is none other than Armani. When Armani announced that they were building an in world store there was great deal of anticipation. They hired a good, experienced builder and got a nice store but apparently left the creation of their items (only 10) to their regular designers who presumably didn’t have the time to really learn the built-in Second Life tools. The result is a too small collection that the very people Armani was hoping to attract took one look at and said I can get twice the quality at a third of the price.
They aren’t the only ones though. A famous athletic shoe retailer created a “build your own” factory that doesn’t see much use because the resulting shoes take up too much computer and server resources to render.
American Apparel has a store as well. They at least have more than 10 items and what they have is ok but when you’re options include a leather trench coat and being a dalek, very plain colored t-shirts and khakis don’t have much appeal. It’s also a well-documented effect that you have to release new items regularly to keep traffic (and sales) up, which American Apparel has never done.
Doing it Right
There have been successful transitions. Most notable is a canadian couture designer named Nyla who has a set of shops where she has taken her real creations and remade them in Second Life. Because she took the time to learn the tools and the customer base her products are excellent quality and well-priced while still remaining in her style.
The japanese also have good ideas about in-world advertising. Treasure hunts for freebies are always popular and the word of mouth affect is very strong in Second Life.
Now that IBM has given a demonstration at the National Retail Federation on using Second Life for prototyping, there may be more mainstream fashion companies coming into Second Life but independents who can devote the time to learning the environment will still have the advantage for quite a while.
Help on learning to use the Second Life templates, scripting language and building blocks can be found on the forums. Marketing guidance can be found here.
www.searchpigeon.org/ is a col…
February 25th, 2008
www.searchpigeon.org/ is a collection of custom Google search engines in the humanities. See infoadept.com/19/research-on-the-web/#comments
Just finished correcting embar…
February 21st, 2008
Just finished correcting embarrassing html errors introduced by ecto when I publish articles. If I have to recode it every time I post, …
Cheat Sheets
February 21st, 2008
Scott Klarr >> Programming + Linux + Computers
A directory of links to cheat sheets on a variety of topics
Research on the Web
February 20th, 2008
The Internet is a decent place to do research these days. The idea that “everything is online” is still not true but it becomes more so every day. The problem for everyone is that much of this information costs a lot of money to access for large institutions much less small organizations. Help is often available in the form of the public library. Tennessee has a project called the Tennessee Electronic Library, which provides access to a number of databases for any Tennessee resident through their school or public library.
There is plenty online for free though.
- For instance many government departments have websites ending in the .gov domain. Useful at this time of year is IRS.gov where you can download the forms or fill out a free electronic submission form (you can’t have made more than $54,000 to use Free File though). They also have information meant to make filing your taxes easier and a “Where’s my Refund?” system.
- The first and fastest growing area of free information is medical. Pubmed.gov is the government’s free portal to its database of medical journal articles (Medline). Medline is the foremost database of medical citations in the world. These are the articles written by scientists and doctors for other scientists and doctors, where they publish drug trial data you hear about in commercials. Doctors like PubMed because they can get into it anywhere. It can be difficult to understand for those without a medical degree though. MedlinePlus.gov is produced by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine. Searching it gives results in journals, medical dictionaries, encyclopedias and selected websites.
- The New York Public Library has posted an extensive Digital Gallery of scanned images that are free for noncommercial use.
- The American Kennel Club (AKC)’s website is a font of information for prospective and current dog owners including a directory of breeds and a list of registered breeders.
- Open Vault: WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) provides online access to materials produced by WGBH public television station. The database currently houses more than 50,000 audio, video, and film masters.
- TRIS (Transportation Research Information Services) is a comprehensive source for published transportation research on the Web from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Transportation Research Board.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
- Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote OAI. Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online.
- In 2003, PLoS (Public Library of Science) launched a nonprofit scientific and medical publishing venture that provides scientists and physicians with high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their most important work, while making the full contents freely available for anyone to read, distribute, or use for their own research. The PLoS journals are run by professional editors, trained scientists, and physicians, in close collaboration with editorial boards. Papers published in these journals are peer reviewed using a uniquely consultative process between editors and experts in their field, and are produced to the highest editorial and production standards. Under the open access model, PLoS makes all published works immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
- AGRICOLA is like Medline but for all aspects of agriculture, including nutrition and veterinary science. Unfortunately, it’s also the National Agriculture Library’s catalog so you have to be aware of whether you’re searching the books or the journal articles.
There are free sources for pretty much any subject, you just have to be careful that they are reliable sources. .edu and .gov domains tend to be good indicators
Listening to Stephen Fry’s Podcast
February 20th, 2008
A NewsGator System Review
February 13th, 2008
Newsgator has released all of it’s individual products for free. This was quite a surprise as they were/are among the leading desktop applications for reading RSS feeds for both Macs and Windows computers. However, they explained clearly that most of their money is being made from business licenses, so the more individual desktops they can control, the likelier their products will be chosen when the corporation starts looking for an overall solution. Also, they’ll be collecting “attention data.”
If there is a specific feed you love, and you’re constantly emailing its articles to friends or saving articles in your clippings, that’s interesting…and if there are a lot of people doing this, it’s probably a good indicator about the “relevancy” of that content for other users. Similar with individual articles that are getting a lot of attention from users. Basically, by using your data, in combination with aggregate data from other users, we can deliver a better experience for everyone. And that’s a good thing - both for us and for you.
Greg Reinacker
Sounds like Google’s relevancy algorithm.
In addition to the desktop software, they’ve also given free access to the web-based service (NewsGator Online) and the mobile service (NewsGator Go! & HTML mobile reader), all of which sync to each other so that a feed added to or read on one is automatically updated on the others.
NetNewsWire
I started by exporting my list of feeds from my current feed reader Google Reader, and importing it into NetNewsWire, the Mac desktop software. The import went well and I spent quite a while reorganizing my feeds (It seems there is no folder tag in the standard so this happens every time I change readers.).
The software itself is a joy to use, very intuitive with keyboard shortcuts for those of us who feel more efficient using them and fairly extensive preferences for customization. Along with the normal options to flag, email and open the item in a browser are a link to the desktop editor of the user’s choice for heavy bloggers and plenty of social web options. Though with the exception of flagging, all of these operations require immediate Internet access. There is no setting it up to be done later as you might wish on an airplane.
NewsGator Online
On quitting or exiting the program it synchs it’s settings with the online and the mobile reader. Here I was disappointed to see that all the careful organizational work I had done in the desktop client hadn’t been transferred over. I know many people don’t bother using folders but I do use it extensively to help triage the information coming through my 370 subscriptions. I understood why my folders were lost moving from one system to another but shouldn’t two products from the same company be able to cooperate? It makes me doubt how well other changes I make in one or the other will synch across the network which is supposed to be its strength.
Then there’s the online service itself, I expected something comparable to the desktop software on the web, in actuality it’s very stripped down and the lack of AJAX support after Google Reader makes feel terribly slow. Far too painful to try to use even for one session with the number of items I deal with and expect to get through quickly. Others who track fewer websites or those who publish less frequently (or both) will find the reload speed far more manageable. It is interesting to note that while the web clippings synch, the flags do not. There is a cool trick where you can right click on a feed or folder and act on them (such as unsubscribing or marking all read) without having to load them first.
HTML mobile reader
The HTML reader is very stripped down as you’d expect from something meant to be loaded on mobile devices. It makes for easy navigation and (relatively) fast loading. There’s reading and that’s all. If you want to do something else with a feed item (e.g. delicious or blog it), then don’t mark it read and go back to it later.
Overall it’s a good system for people who work on their own computers or mobile devices the vast majority of the time. Those who need a good web-based interface might do better with Google Reader or Bloglines.
