Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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

Anne Blecksmith at CR&L News compiles a listing of seventeen digital image collections available on the Web from universities, public libraries, historical societies, archives, and Library of Congress, including the New York Public Library Digital Gallery with over 600,000 digital images.

To those, I’ll add a couple of places that I visit to find hi-res images:

ARS - Agricultural Research Service image gallery with over 2,000 hi-resolution photos available for download free of charge in subjects such as crops, animals, and insects.

GRIN - Great Images in NASA is a resource with over 1,000 hi-resolution photographic images available free of charge in subjects including space, aeronautics, and Soviet Spacecraft.

NOAA - National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s collection of over 30,000 hi-resolution images in albums such as the Coral Kingdom with underwater images of plants and creatures and the National Sever Storms Lab with tornado and other storm photos.

NPS Digital Image Archives - The National Park Service offers this image resource with hi-resolution photos available free of charge. The archive is searchable by park.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Image Library - Thousands of free, hi-resolution photographs of wildlife and plants.

NARA Online Exhibit Hall - The US National Archives & Records Administration offers some great photos from American history.

DefenseLINK Multimedia Library - Hundreds of military photos available for download in hi-resolution.

For more, the Digital Librarian provides a descriptive list of hundreds of images archives available online. And you may want to check out these helpful blog posts:
Find free images online!
Where can you find good images?

Please list your favorites in the comments!

If you’re at all interested in social media such as social networks, blogs, wikis, podcasts, microblogs, etc., you’ll want to check Mashable’s latest article linking to 15 Free Social Media White Papers and Ebooks. Here are some of the titles:

What is Social Media?

Social Networking, the “Third Place”, and the Evolution of Communications

We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information

12 Essential tips for Success in Social Media

Social Networking: Brave New World or Revolution from Hell? A look at the phenomenon of Social Networking and the implications for Businesses

Mashable comes up with a list of seven tools for editing images online.

1. A.viary Phoenix
2. FlauntR.com
3. FotoFlexer.com
4. Lunapic.com
5. Phixr.com
6. Picnik.com
7. Splashup.com

Educause has created another of its 7 Things guides, this time on the photo-sharing website Flickr. If you’re looking for a nice overview of the popular website, be sure and check out this document which covers the following points:

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?

Less than two weeks ago we saw the Library of Congress partner with the photo-sharing website Flickr in a pilot project called The Commons to display some 3,100 historical photos, (Read our earlier coverage here). Within days of the project launch, the LOC received an overwhelming response. According to their blog, here’s a summary of what happened within the first two days:

• 392,000 views on the photostream
• 650,000 views of photos
• Adding in set and collection page views, there were about 1.1 million total views on our account
• All 3,100+ photos have been viewed
• 420 of the photos have comments
• 1,200 of the photos have been favorited

And just look at all of those tags!