Omnivorous Surfer

I was creating a form in Excel for a friend this morning and wanted to have her take a look to see if she liked its appearance and suggest any changes. I won't be seeing her for a few days, and she is not very comfortable with computers, so sending her an attachment was not going to be the best option. In looking for a way to let her easily view a PDF version, I tried Zoho Viewer. While Zoho is a complete suite of productivity, collaboration, and business applications, I won't attempt to address those in this post. Instead the focus will be on Zoho Viewer.

It really couldn't be easier. All you have to do is browse to select your document, indicate how long you want it to be available from their server (1 day-"do not expire"), and click the view button. From the viewer you have option of saving the file, sharing it (put in an email address and a message, and off it goes), embedding it (code is generated for embedding the document itself or a link), and printing it. From the email or the link, someone who views the document has the same options.

For presentations, text documents, and spreadsheets, you have the additional option of exporting it to any of the supported formats appropriate for that type of file. For the spreadsheet, even the charts exported as editable charts.

File formats supported include MS Office, OpenDocument, and OpenOffice formats as well as pdf, rtf, html, txt, and csv. The Excel example on the site shows that it will display multiple sheets in a workbook. A PowerPoint presentation can be viewed as a slideshow (no animations or transitions) or exported to any of the above-mentioned presentation formats.

I was not successful in obtaining an acceptable view of a document with several images included, probably because of the layout specified for them within Word. This was my only failure. The solution in this case would have been to upload a pdf version of the document.

This is so quick, easy, and clean. To make it even better, there is no registration required! I think this is a great way to share a static document simply for viewing or for downloading, or to share a document via email without having to use an attachment. Nice!

 There have often been times when I needed some music to add to a video, Photo Story 3 creation, or PowerPoint slide. If I didn't have the right style or sound, or if I wanted a clip to fit a short span, I found one website which often fit the bill, but that was about it. The advent of the Creative Commons license, however, has brought about some new alternatives. In finding music for projects, you have to be careful about giving students too may options, especially if they're like me. The less structured the site, the more time I spend listening to find just the right music. The first two sites listed provide a method of narrowing down your options, which helps. If you have some time, though, browsing through these can be kind of fun.

Freeplay Music has been around for a long time, and still does very well what it sets out to do: provide short clips for video productions. It presents a large number of instrumental selections in wide variety of styles and moods. Each composition is available in 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-, and 60-second clips, very useful for video broadcast productions. You can search by style (e.g. ambient, baroque, drum & bass, funk) or feel (e.g. building/tension, cinematic, driving, hopeful), or you can browse through albums.

A newer player is in the royalty-free music game is Jamendo. This site is not designed for video production but could easily serve as a source for background music. Jamendo is a venue for artists to share their compositions and performances for others to use and enjoy. You can browse by artist or album, or you can select a "radio" for your choice of style (e.g. metal, jazz, lounge). If you scroll to the bottom of the home page, you will see an option to search using tags. This may be the easiest way to filter the content to find what you're looking for. Each piece has a brief description to help you see if it might be what you need or want. I've heard some nice music here.

Moby Gratis is a section of moby.com "for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short." You simply browse the text list by title, play, and download. If you want to use any of the selections for commercial purposes, you can apply for a license; otherwise it's free. You do have to create an account for Moby Gratis, and it asks for a lot of information, including address; I suppose this is so they will have the information needed if you want to license a work. You have to guess the style of music by title, but, again, there is some nice music here, though this site has a much more limited selection than the previous 2. It is also entirely textual.

The last site for today is ccMixter , "a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want." To search for music you'll actually go to digg.ccMixter. I have not thoroughly browsed this site, but there seems to be a lot here. I really liked the first instrumental I listened to, and it was something I would use.

I know there are other sites, but this is more than enough for today! Happy listening...or searching.

I have been using Creative Commons (CC) licensed photos for some time now, finding them by using Flickr's advanced search option. Compfight is a website that makes that search easier and much quicker. Basically, all you have to do is to click beside "Creative Commons" to change the parameter to "Only," enter your search tag, and click "Search." Click on your chosen photo to open it in Flickr, where you can check the CC details, and then view sizes to choose to download one or to use the link to the size of your choice. You can then copy and paste the URL or CC code to complete the attribution requirement.

You can also further define the search by using Seek Original, which refers to the size of the image: "Only" will limit results to images saved in their original size, "On" will display images of all sizes, with an informational blue bar giving dimensions of those which are not original size, and "Off" will display images of all sizes without the blue bar. Your search results can also be filtered by using a Safe Search to display only images which are safe for work.

If you aren't familiar with the Creative Commons license, it is a  license granting a set of baseline rights to the owner and requiring the work (image, video, audio, text) to be attributed to the original author. I won't go into details here, but basically, for a licensed work, you will see the CC logo along with a description of the guidelines for use. You are then given the opportunity and responsibility to use the work according to those guidelines. A CC license can be obtained for no cost from Creative Commons. When creating a license, the owner can decide if he or she wants others to have the right to use the work commercially and if others will be allowed to modify the work.

 Sometimes it's not easy to find an agreeable time for a number of individuals to meet. If you don't already have software that facilitates this, When is Good is an incredibly easy, FREE solution. There's no registration, no sign-up. How often do you see that! All you do is mark the dates/times that work for you and record a results code. Then you send to others an email with a link to the site. They see your times and mark those that would work for them. Finally you go back to the site, enter the results code, and you'll see a calendar with the days/times that are available for all.

I have used Doodle before, but I think this is easier. Next time I need it, I'll be using When is Good!

I have used Zamzar for a long time and just realized that I have never posted it here. This site will do a greater variety of conversions than most others I have seen and so can be quite useful.

This is my preferred site for converting YouTube or "otherTube" movies to a format (.mov, .wmv, .flv, or other) I can save to view/show offline; use the "Download Videos" tab for this. All you need to do is to paste the URL (Internet address) of the video in the first box and choose your preferred file format. If you have a video file on your computer you want to convert to another format, Zamzar will do that, too. The audio from these videos can also be converted to .mp3 or other audio format if you don't want or need the video portion.

For converting PDFs to .jpg, however, I use ConvertPDFtoImaGe.com. The site does other conversions, too, as described in an earlier post. Rather than email the converted file to you, this site allows you to simply download it once the conversion is complete.

For conversions other than video and PDF to .jpg, you may want to compare for yourself to see which you prefer.

Are you looking for an online app to use in the classroom or for personal use? I've always used a Google search to find Web 2.0 tools, but from now on I'll probably try Web 2.0: Cool Tools for Schools first. This is a wiki which provides links to cool Web 2.0 tools. Choose from the listed categories (e.g., presentation , converting, audio video, organizing, mapping) and you will be presented with an easy-to-read table of sites with a brief description of each.

Don't forget that since this is a wiki, you can add any cool tools you like that aren't already there.

The wiki does not include any kind of ranking, review or recommendation. This means you'll be trying everything out for yourself, but it does give you a quick starting point.

UNFORTUNATELY, eTRADE HAS ENDED THEIR "BABY" CAMPAIGN AND NO LONGER MAKES THE BABYMAIL APP AVAILABLE. (added August 2013)

My last several posts have been way too serious, so I think it's time for some fun. Who doesn't like the eTrade babies ads? Well, I'm sure there are some, and if you're one who doesn't, you won't be interested in this post. For the rest of you, eTrade has posted a little app, BabyMail, that will let you create your own short message to be delivered by one of their little cuties (or your own, though I haven't tried that one out). You can create your own BabyMail below!



Leslie Edwards shared this on her The WebFooted Book Lady blog after finding it on the Techno Constructivist blog, where Carl Anderson used it to share six reasons for using social networking in schools. You can learn about all kinds of things by reading blogs!