ScreenTweet

Twitter does what it does well, and many, many people are using it. But what if you wanted to do more that write 140 characters? ScreenTweet allows you to 'post' pictures and videos to Twitter. You can use an image from your hard disk and a URL link will be created and inserted into your tweet. Or you can mail an image from your mobile using a unique PIN to your account.

It also works with videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and the like.

Ignitecast

I've written about Ignitecast in my SquireMorley (Wordpress) blog, where you can see a longer
description.

Ignitecast allows the combining of various media into a presentation, screencast, slideshow, an online course, broadcast video, and more.

However, I can embed the video, which I couldn't on wordpress.com

Pixlr - photo editor

Pixlr is a free online (flash based) light-weight photo editor, with the such features as brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, crop, and rotate.

Integrate Video Presentation & Slides

So you're doing a presentation, which you're videoing, and you think that it'd be useful to make the content available afterwards. Well there's a useful online service that you can use to combine your video (and audio) with your slides. It's called VCASMO.


It's great for demonstrations and making lectures available to your students.

An extended article on Integrated Presentation is available.

Twitter Analytics - is that tweeterlytics?

You use Twitter, right? And you possibly run a blog, or more, so you're obsessed with analytics. So you want to know what your Twitter usage is like, who has most significance to your tweetin' practices, who you RT and @ the most. Well, you can do all this using TweetStats. Just type in your twitter name and see what you've been up to.

Gliffy for diagrams

You need to produce a professional looking diagram, chart, technical drawing, or whatever and you want it to be easy to do. Gliffy is an online option you could go for. The free version allows you up to 2MB of space for publically visible diagrams (you can't have private ones on the free version).

Site link: http://www.gliffy.com/

Clogging via Amplify

Often people want to blog about or comment on something that they've read elsewhere on the web. Usually this requires a link to the original content early in their blog post. The problem with this is that it can take prespective reader away from your site and your interesting observations. Well the people who brought us Clickmarks (more about this in another post) have come up with what they term Clogs or clip logs. This allows you to clip a section (extract), including text, images, even videos from the original site (with full referencing back to the site) and make your observations directly below in the form of a blog post, allowing comments in the usual way.

Simply register with Amplify to maintain you Clog. You can link it in to your Twitter account, even register via it.

Site link: Amplify

Shortening (and tracking) via bit.ly

So you want to pass on a useful link. What's the best way to do it? Well if you want to pass it on via Twitter or other microblogging site you need to keep things short and most URLs ain't short.

Well there are a number of shortening sites available. The one I use is called bit.ly and this is available automatically when you put a URL into Twitter. However, I find it more useful to have an account on bit.ly itself and use that to shorten my links before passing them on in an email or microblogging them.

Why do that though? Isn't it easier to just use Twitter to shorten then automatically?

It might be easier (very slightly) in the short term, but doing it my way means that you have a record

a list of all the links you pass on, and you can reuse them,

plus clicking the "info" button gives continuing access statistics - over time periods:

and countries where accessed from:

You can also achieve some of this by copying the bit.ly shortened URL into your address filed in your browser and putting a "+" character on the end to see the stats. Okay on an ad hoc basis, but not as good for continued stats.

Alternative to ... Software

So you want some software to do something specific, or a cheaper alternative to some well known software. So where do you look. You can do a search on Google. Or you can do a search on Alternativeto.

Clip that video

So you found something useful on YouTube, but you don't want the entire video, just a small section. TubeChop lets you cut out that section and share the URL of embed it. Handy and neat.

1. Simply copy and paste the URL for the original video into the search box and click Search.
2. When the video is located, click chop it.
3. The video loads into a new panel and plays.
4. Use the start and end slides to mark the chunk you want to 'chop'.
5. Play it through to ensure you have the correct section, and once you're happy click chop it.
6. You are now supplied with the link URL and the embed code for your 'clip'.

Cooliris image viewer

Images by definition are visual. So when searching and locating images its best to do it in the most visually stunning way possible. That's where Cooliris browser plugin comes in, with its 'infinite wall' you can view photographs and videos both on the web and your desktop.

Bringing your RSS feeds altogether

So you've got a few RSS, Atom, OPML feeds or any combination that you want to bring together into one place, perhaps into you portal. Well bringing them all in individually can actually take some time. What about bringing them all together beforehand? This is known as aggregating. Doing it this way can save you time, and makes the aggregated feed more portable; you can easily stick it into somewhere else, a blog for example.

The service I find the easiest and most useful is xfruits.

Here's one of mine as an example.

Screencasting on the cheap

There are some very good free screencasting options, so you don't need to shell out a fortune to capture your onscreen activities and audio when you want to make that 'how to' video.

The question you need to ask yourself is, "Do I want to download some software to my desktop or do it online?"

You pays your money (zero, zilch, nothing, nada) you makes your choice.

Well here are a few of the ones I've used and found to work for me.

Download option

For Open Source it has to be CamStudio. This pretty much does all you'd want; you'll need to configure it to achieve the right output.




The other download option is the Jing project. It looks more slick, and has a funky thingy do-dah that sits at the top of your screen for easy access to create a screenshot, a screencast or share the video. It's made by TechSmith, who also make Camtasia Studio and Snag-It.


Online option

The online option that I use is called ScreenToaster.

Record your screencast online

An example of one I've done:




ScreenCastle is the latest online screencast option.

Slideshare made easy

SlideShare has just made presentations they host even easier to interact with if they are embedded elsewhere using a new menu.

Meet the New SlideShare embed

View more presentations from Ashwan Lewis.

Sumo Paint

This is a free online image editor with real power, so the name Sumo Paint is quite apt.



An alternative would be to download GIMP.

BumpTop - Released today

The PC desktop has just taken on the traits of a real desktop and then some. BumpTop turns your desktop 3D and lets you:

• pile icons
• change their size
• bump them around
• even pin them on the wall.

This could make working easier, or at least more entertaining.

Here's a video of the originator demonstrating the concept:



Detailed howto: