Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Emerging Technology 3: Internet Radio

For my third emerging technology I explored internet radio. I had never heard of internet radio until I responded to one of my classmate’s blogs about this emerging technology. Internet radio is the product of the Music Genome Project, in which tens of thousands of songs were analyzed and categorized according to their melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, arrangement, lyrics, and vocal harmony. This categorization is what allows websites like Pandora Radio, to create personalized radio stations. You simply type the name of an artist or song title, and the website searches for songs that match the first song you listened to. Instantly, a radio station is created to fit your style of music. The more artists or songs you enter into your station, the better suited your station will be. You can also select whether you like a song that Pandora has suggested or not. If you like it, it will remember the song and try to play others like it, thus personalizing your station ever more. If you don’t like it, then it won’t ever play that song again. It is a completely amazing technology! With each preference you list and with each song played, your station builds off of itself. It’s like the website functions on its own.
After I opened a free account, I started two different stations. One station was a soft guitar/piano genre (John Mayer, Gavin DeGraw, Jason Mraz, etc.), while the other was a soft alternative genre (Linkin Park, Hoobastank, Staind, etc.). I was amazed at how precisely Pandora pin pointed my taste in music. Instantly it began suggesting artists and songs that I loved and some I had never heard of before, but they completely fit my taste in music. I love that this website is free, that you can have multiple stations, you can save your results in your account, you don’t have to download anything, and that the songs play continuously.

Tips for using internet radio:

1) Create an account with your email and a password
2) Enter in multiple artists to obtain a more personal station
3) Create more than one station
4) You can access Pandora on any internet capable mobile phone

Like I said earlier, I already created an account with Pandora Radio and I will post a link to the site, but for obvious reasons, I cannot create a sample of this technology.

Pandora Radio

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Emerging Technology 2: Digital Scrapbooking

For the second emerging technology post, I explored digital scrapbooking. Digital scrapbooking is creating scrapbooks online through a website. The difference between scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking is that with digital scrapbooking you don’t have the mess and hassle of cutting pages and pictures, it’s stored in your computer, and it’s free. Any scrapbooker will tell you that it is very expensive to buy all of the scrapbooking material (i.e. albums, decorative pages, scissors, tape, and multitudes of decorations). Also, when you digitally scrapbook through a website, they will provide you with layouts so you don’t have to start out from scratch if you don’t want to. The downside to digital scrapbooking is that you don’t have the finished product in your hands, it’s on the computer. You can pay for the website to print and publish your scrapbook in an actual book, print your scrapbook from home, or keep your scrapbook online. The website will allow you to save your scrapbook and then usually give you the option of sharing it. I did my sample scrapbook through Scrap Blog. It asked me if I wanted to share it and I said yes, so it sent it to my Face Book and Blogger for me.
Again, I used Scrap Blog to create my sample digital scrapbook, and I have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. Here is the process of digital scrapbooking:

1)Create a username and password
2)Pick a theme (layout)
3)Upload pictures from your computer
4)Begin dragging pictures into place

Once I got the hang of the process I was cropping and rotating pictures, changing fonts, and changing the frames, stickers, and backgrounds the website had originally provided me with. I felt like a professional! I am just so impressed with how easy it was. All of the tabs were easy to find and use. Their layouts are amazing! I added Scrap Blog to my favorites and I plan to make another scrapbook this weekend. I have always wanted to scrapbook but could never afford to do it and I never wanted to mess with the hassle of printing all of my pictures. Also, I was always afraid to try scrapbooking, because I would have to start from scratch. Digital scrapbooking allows me to choose layouts, so I don’t have to come up with decorating ideas unless I want to. For me, it was just completely convenient and fun. I am so happy I can scrapbook without the cost! If I don’t want to pay for a professional album of my scrapbook, I can print my scrapbook on photo paper and place it in an album.
My tips for future digital scrapbookers are:

1)You have to drag your pictures from the bar at the left and shrink, crop, and rotate them to fit the frame.
2)To rotate a picture: select the picture and either change the degrees in the bar at the right or click and drag on the small circle above the picture.
3)Everything can be changed, the background, frames, stickers, text balloons, font, and font colors.
4)Extra frames are located under stickers, not the frame tab.
It’s so easy and the results are so cute and creative that you have to try it!

P.S. My digital scrapbooking sample is located below. To view it, click on view full size in the bottom left hand corner of the black box.

Emerging Technology 2: Digital Scrapbooking Sample

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Del.icio.us URL

http://delicious.com/curtisan

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Listen To My Podcast!

Amber McGarr's Podcast

Emerging Technology 1: Podcast

For my first emerging technology post I experimented with podcasting. A Podcast is an online audio broadcast that is transmitted by an RSS feed. RSS is the chosen format for published works that are updated frequently. In order for technology like blog entries and podcasts to be updated, the user must subscribe to a particular feed or channel. Once the user subscribes to a feed, the RSS reader (included in computers and other mobile devices) will constantly check and download any new material. However, a user does not have to subscribe to a feed in order to listen to a podcast. Subscribing is only for users who desire to receive constant, updated information on a particular subject. There are three different types of podcasts. An audio podcast contains only audio and usually comes in an MP3 file. An enhanced podcast can contain audio and visuals, and comes in an AAC file which cannot be played on all electronic devices. A video podcast is a video with sound and comes in a variety of formats, with MPEG-4 being the typical format.
There are two main uses of podcasting, to communicate or share a message with a group of people and for a user to receive sought after messages or information. However, the messages and information being shared and received through podcasts are limitless. Podcasts can be used for sharing and receiving announcements, greetings, advertisements, tutorials, talk shows, news, or anything! In the classroom, teachers can use podcasts to exchange ideas, provide parents with a new form of access to their child’s classroom, or create an archive of material for students who missed class or would like to refresh themselves. Foreign language teachers can record podcasts that their students can listen to and practice speaking.
Podcasts are useful because they can be created using any touch tone phone, may be listened to at the user’s convenience, can be accessed through any electronic device with internet, may be downloaded to devices without internet, automatically download updated information with a subscription to a particular feed, and professionals can subscribe to a feed geared towards their field. Podcasts can also be beneficial because of the knowledge and experienced gained in creating them, especially for students. The idea of a world audience would push students to create a spectacular product, and their reward would be the opportunity to hear and/or view something they created themselves.
Learning how to use this technology was sort of hard for me. I have never created a podcast before, and honestly I never really understood what a podcast was. I did hours of research to understand what a podcast was, so I could blog about it. When it came time to create it, I was lost. I didn’t know where to go. I downloaded itunes, because I thought I had to have it in order to podcast, but it turns out I didn’t. Finally, I went to Gcast, created a username and password, and then just followed the steps. It was really easy to do once I figured out where to go to create it. I highly recommend Gcast, because the directions were easy to read and easy to follow.

Creating A Podcast:

1) Go to Gcast
2) Enter your email address, password, and Gcast username
3) Enter your phone number and a four digit pin
4) Title your podcast
5) Call the Gcast number, enter your pin, record, follow phone options
6) Wait a few minutes, click on the title of your podcast, scroll to the bottom of the screen, click edit audio, click add changes
7) Then click on the tab on the left side of the screen that says Podcasting Home
8) On the right side of the screen, right click on the XML box (make sure you are signed into blogger before you right click)
9) Scroll down and click Send To, then click Blog This Page
10) (A new blog post box should appear) click publish post

These directions might seem kind of crazy, but it took me a while to figure out how to do it. Like I said earlier, creating the Podcast was easy, but figuring out how to post a link to my Podcast on Blogger was awful. Every url I used wouldn't hyperlink. Finally, I stumbled (literally) on the right click and send to Blogger. I wanted to make sure and post these directions, so hopefully no one else had the linking problems I had. In the end, I learned a lot. I also realized that it is fun to blog and to create a podcast. I definitely want to keep using this technology.