Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Have you ever wanted to bookmark images you find online in the same way that you would favorite an article or website in delicious or other social bookmarking website? The New York Times has hand-picked some top photo-oriented bookmarking sites which will let you do just that in their recent article Tag That Image: Visual Bookmarking Sites Worth Browsing.

The folks at Common Craft have put together a new video explaining Windows Live in plain english. If you have an interest in setting up a profile in this website community, you may want to check this out.

The Parisians, Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

Google announced the LIFE photo archive yesterday, a collection of images photographed by LIFE Magazine photographers and newly digitized by Google. The collection which has been added to Google’s Image Search consists of approximately 10 million photos dating back to the 1750’s, of which about 20% has been digitized so far with the rest expected to be added over the next few months.

Mashable presents a list of 20 Great Online Image Editors. These are both free and subscription-based online applications which will allow you to import your images from social networking websites in order to crop, resize, remove redeye and more.

Torley at the Mashable blog has put together a quick guide to How to Master Screencasts in Seven Steps. The author, who has created over 200 video tutorials, shares detailed tips and tricks organized into the following steps:

1. Understand audio engineering
2. Indulge in templates
3. Focus on using eye candy to enhance learning
4. Learn from the best screencasts in the world
5. Practice narrating and love your voice
6. Be codec-smart, context-aware
7. Continually explore delivery mediums

Educause has another installment in its “7 Things” series, this time on UStream, an interactive web streaming platform that lets users broadcast their own channels on the Ustream network or on a third-party website such as MySpace or Facebook. The quick guide answers the following questions about the technology:

1. What is it?
2. Who’s doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. what are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

The Hongkiat blog puts together an interesting list of 60+ Tools To Enhance Your Flickr Experience. The post provides a screenshot of each application along with a brief description of its functionality. Flickr tools are divided into the following categories:

• Flickr Downloaders & Uploaders
• Flickr Search Engines
• Flickr Slide Show & Gallery Makers
• Interesting Flickr Tools
• Flickr Wallpapers
• Miscellaneous Flickr Tools

Facebook has announced that the social network has just topped 10 billion photos uploaded by members. And actually, since FB stores four images sizes for each photo uploaded, that number is more precisely in the 40 billion area. This is quite significant when compared to other top photo-sharing websites including Photobucket which hosts 6 billion photos and Flickr which stores just over 2 billion.

Facebook members view over 15 million photos every day, and at peak traffic times, over 300,000 images are viewed per second.

Michelle Jeske writes about enhancing your library’s online presence with Tapping Into Media: Take your online presence to the next level with audio and video in the latest issue of Library Journal. The article discusses how adding media extends the reach of library content, ways to go about incorporating media into your library’s website and beyond, and finding inspiration on the Web.

“Some people learn better through viewing and listening, and some people simply don’t like to read. In our society, there seems to be a general move away from text, or, at least, text as we have defined it in the past. Moreover, mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs, and cell phones make video and audio incredibly easy to imbibe. So how do libraries compete for attention in this environment? According to the 2005 OCLC report Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, the library brand is books. If our communities think we’re all about books while people are used to getting their information from places other than books, how do we stay relevant?”

Hongkiat has compiled a list of 20 of the best Web destinations which offer free e-books which includes 15 additional briefly suggested sites, and reader-contributed recommendations in the comments. If you haven’t had enough with these, you could check out the 22 e-book websites listed in 80 Online Resources for Book Lovers, or if you’re on the fence about the value of e-books, head over to read the 30 Benefits of Ebooks.

ReadWriteWeb reports on a consumer research study conducted by Universal McCann which interviewed 17,000 Internet users in 29 countries. The study compares its results with previous reports or “waves” conducted in 2006 and 2007. Some of the study’s findings include:

• 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content
• 23% of social network users have installed an application
• Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration
  in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
• 73% have read a blog
• 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog

View the study here.

From the George Eastman House Collection

Since the early sucess of Flickr’s The Commons pilot project with The Library of Congress in January of this year, several other organizations have joined up to make their photography collections available to the public. These are the latest members of The Commons:

• George Eastman House - Over 200 photographs.
• Powerhouse Museum of Sydney, Australia - 650 images.
• The Smithsonian Institution - 900 photos.
• The Brooklyn Museum - Over 450 images.
• The Bibliothèque de Toulouse - 800 photographs.

via Open Access News

Video - My Recent Trip to Gettysburg

Create Animoto Music Videos - Easily create music videos from your photo sets on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, and others with Animoto.

Create Blog Slideshows with FlickrSLiDR - This very simple tool instantly creates nicely formatted slideshows from your Flickr photos that can be embedded in your blog or website. PictoBrowser and many others are similar. See my slideshows with these tools here.

Create Business Cards - Make business cards, stickers, postcards, and more from your photos which you have stored on Flickr, Facebook, and other social networks at Moo.com.

Create Librarian Trading Cards, Badges, & More Fun - Easy to use tools will walk you through creating trading cards, magazine covers, movie posters and more with your online photos here at Big Huge Labs.

Edit Photos with Picnik - This Web-based photo editor has partnered with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, and others to provide you with instant image editing tools from within these social websites, look for the Edit Photo option when viewing your photos, or browse to Picnik to connect the editor with your accounts.

Create an Online Scrapbook - Organize your photos into an online scrapbook such as this one which spotlights a trip to Italy with Scrapblog.

Create a Coffee Table Book - Create gorgeous hardcover photo books with the easy-to-use Blurb bookmaking software.

Create a Newsletter - Create beautifully designed newsletters and photo collages with LetterPop.

Turn Your Photos into Cartoons - Run your photos through BeFunky’s Cartoonizer and create comic book versions of your images.

Create an Online Portfolio - Collect your best photos and set up an online portfolio of your work using Carbonmade.

Publish a Brochure - Create a brochure, online magazine, portfolio, or other image-based project with FormatPixel.

Caption Photos - Add captions, objects, and speech bubbles to photos from Flickr, Webshots, Shutterfly and more with Graphita.

Create Comic Strips - Browse Flickr photos by user or tag and create comic strips from them using the Bubblr tool.

Create Social Networking Slideshows - Create fun slideshows to embed on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Customize backgrounds, music and special effects at Slide.com or RockYou.

Frame Your Photos - Add photo frame templates to your photos which will transform them into motivational posters, bus stop signs, and billboards at Image Chef.

Create Photo Collages - Place your photos into Web-based collages with Tabblo

Create Photo Widgets - Experiment with thousands of photo widgets found on Widgetbox and embed your creations on your websites and blogs.

I’m sure there are many other creative things to do with online photos, please list some of your faves in the comments!

The website I like sharing videos aggregates over 600 video sharing websites and video search engines along with their history, recent news, Alexa traffic ranking, and testimonials.

via Social Media

LifeClever has put together a nice list of 10 free Web-based applications which can be used for photo-editing. Be sure and check out the full post for screenshots of each:

1. Picnik
2. Splashup
3. Phoenix
4. Photoshop Express
5. Snipshot
6. flauntR
7. Pic Resize
8. Pixenate
9. FotoFlexer
10. Phixr