Real-time image searching

Want to find a great image of a news event that’s just happened? Free Technology for Teachers put me on the path of NachoFoto.

NachoFoto is an image search engine designed to bring you the latest images from across the web on emerging trends and breaking stories.

At the moment the Trending Topics they have images for are:

Afriqiyah Plane Crash 12th May 2010 Pictures Bay to Breakers Pictures Cannes Film Festival Pictures Elections in the United Kingdom Pictures Miss USA 2010 Pictures Oklahoma tornado outbreak 10th May 2010 Pictures Open Air Mass At Fhatima 13th May 2010 Pictures Quebec landslide 11th May 2010 Pictures Series Of Explosions Hit Iraq 10th May 2010 Pictures Thai Anti Government Protest 2010 Pictures Uranium Exchange Program 17th May 2010 Pictures Wall Street reform Pictures War in Somalia 2009 Pictures

It can offer great images to link to current events/topics and you can use the NachoFoto’s timeline slider to look back at images taken over the course of the development of a news story.

 

A few online tools for your library

by  pt

Over at the Speak Quietly blogs there is a really useful post called Online Tools Your Library Needs Now & Why.

It talks about different technologies that libraries can use to connect better to their users and gives helpful stats and implementation examples. Some of the technologies may be “old” but they can still be useful and fun to try!

1. Text a librarian
2. Facebook
3. YouTube
4. iPhone App
5. Meebo
6. Blogger
7. Flickr
8. Twitter

It’s a really useful and practical post.

 

Free software downloads – that actually helps

by  the justified sinner

the eLearning Coach posted a very useful list (with a small review) of free downloadable software that will aid you with:

AUDIO RECORDING AND EDITING
Audacity
Audacity is an audio recording and editing application with a lot of the features you find in commercial products. It works on all platforms and is probably the most popular free audio program around.BURNING CDs and DVDs
ImgBurn
This is supposed to work more smoothly than the software that comes with Windows for burning CDs and DVDs. It creates data backups, video DVDs and music CDs. The publisher provides a list of sites where you can download the application. They’d like a donation, so oblige if you can.

DOCUMENT CREATION
Open Office
I keep hearing good things about Open Office. It’s the free alternative to the Microsoft Office Suite. You can create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. And it comes in many languages.

PrimoPDF
Primo PDF has a free and paid version. The free version is all you need to quickly convert most file types to the .pdf format. To create a .pdf, just use the print command from the source program that the file was created in.

EMAIL
Thunderbird
Some say this email program from Mozilla is better than Outlook Express. It’s supposed to have great features and is easy to use. I’m thinking of using it on my Mac.

FILE TRANSFER
FileZilla
I like this for uploading and downloading files to and from FTP sites. It’s open source software, yet actually has some Help documentation. It’s plain and simple and does the job through a drag-and-drop interface. Works on all platforms.

GRAPHICS
GIMP
GIMP is one of the better, if not the best, downloadable image editing and manipulation applications around. It can do some of your Photoshop tasks and works on all platforms. For more on free editing tools, see Image and Optimization Editors in the Resources section.

Picasa
Picasa is the other popular image editor and its from Google. You can import photos from a digital camera, edit them, and make and share Picasa Web Albums online.

ONLINE CHAT
AIM
Most everyone has their favorite online chatting tool. Just in case you haven’t found yours, check out AOL’s Instant Messenger, as it has lots of capabilities. In addition to text chats, I’ll often use it as the tool of choice for video chatting. You can download AIM for all platforms. By the way, their Lifestream product looks interesting too. It’s a way to broadcast and get updates with AIM buddies from all your social media.

Pidgin
This chat program gets rave reviews. It lets you connect to most of the other chat services, like AIM, Google Talk, IRS, MSN and Yahoo, so you don’t need to install different programs to chat with different people. It doesn’t have video or audio chat, though. But it does runs on all platforms.

SCREENCASTS
Jing
Jing works on both Mac and PC, to capture single pictures or to record video of screen activity. You can also paste the video into an IM chat, email or Twitter. Now that could save time.

CamStudio
CamStudio can record all the screen actions on your computer, as well as an audio narrative, and create AVI files which can converted to a streaming Flash (SWF) format. This app only works on PCs.

SECURITY
AVG Anti-Virus
This is a well-known and loved anti-virus software for home use only. The software is free, but registration is required.

SYNCRONIZING FILES
Dropbox
Dropbox seems to be the file synchronization software of choice. It will automatically synchronize files between all of your computers, regardless of whether they run the Mac, Windows or Linux OS. You get 2Gb for free, after that you have to pay.

VIDEO PLAYERS AND CONVERTERS
FLV Player
If your a multimedia maven, then you need to play FLV files. I like this better than the one that comes with Articulate for the PC. You can download the free FLV player at CNET. It’s got a simple install and works well. I had it downloaded, installed and running very quickly. Then I fainted.

Handbrake
Have you ever been stuck trying to get DVD video into another format? Well, Handbrake can save the day. It’s a cross-platform media converter that can pull DVD video and convert it to MPEG-4. It may not give you ultimate control over all settings, but it has a nice interface and gets the job done.

VLC Media Player
VLC might be the media player you’re looking for. It’s cross-platform, open source and plays most video and audio formats as well as converts files from one format to another.

VOICE OVER INTERNET (VOIP)
Skype
Skype is the software of choice for talking to people over the Internet, using a headset and mic. It installs easily and the sound quality is good. I have some clients that prefer Skype rather than the phone, so I use it regularly and can vouch for its quality.

ZIP FILES
7-Zip
This is an archiving application with a very high compression rate. Free, open source and all that good stuff.

Some of these I use, some I planned on using (thanks for remind me again!) and some I’ve never tried – but it’s a very useful list to keep and refer back to!

 

Students: check your spelling, grammer and plagiarism

Free Technology for Teachers posted a great link to PaperRater a free service designed to help high school and college students improve their writing. It checks your spelling and grammar but also checks for plagiarism – almost like TurnItIn that most South African universities use.

Paper Rater scans students’ papers then gives students an estimate of the likelihood that someone might think that their papers were plagiarized. Some of the other useful features of Paper Rater are style indicators, word choice evaluators, and a vocabulary sophistication indicator

Applications for Education
Paper Rater could be a valuable tool for high school students to run their papers through before turning them in for a grade. Paper Rater can make students aware of potential acts of plagiarism. Paper Rater can also make students aware of changes in vocabulary that they may want to make before submitting their final papers.

To use the service you have to register, but it’s free and an easy process. It took seconds for me to upload a document and see Paper Rater‘s comments:

 

Harvard College Library’s Digital Collection

The Harvard College Library has digitized thousands of historical photographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, books, music scores, rare maps and other rare and unique materials. The vast majority of these images are freely available online for public access.

The easiest way to lose yourself in their collections is to Explore the Collections – they have various themes that you can chose from:

• Artemas Ward House and Its Collections
• Book of Hours
• Chinese Rubbings Collection
• Digital Papyri at Houghton Library
• Digital Scores and Libretti
• Edwards Bangs Drew Chinese Maritime Customs Service Photographs
• Etz-Trudell Lantern Slides of Asia
• Gardner Collection of Photographs of the New England Landscape
• Hedda Morrison Photographs of China
• Harvard Map Collection Digital Maps
• Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System
• Images of Colonialism – Africa and Asia
• Iranian Oral History Project
• Judaica Division Image Collections
• Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection
• Medieval Manuscripts
• Mercator Globes at the Harvard Map Collection
• Naxi Manuscripts
• The Poet’s Voice – A Digital Poetry Collection
• The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China
• Russian Theatre Designs from the Harvard Theatre Collection
• Tehran Propaganda Murals
• Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs

Of course my eye was caught by the Images of Colonialism – Africa and Asia and there are some great images from newspapers etc.

Thanks to Cheryl LaGuardia for alerting me on this.

 

Free + Open Source Tools for Video and Media Playback and Encoding

Ostatic posted a terrific post on 9 Free, Open Source Tools for Video and Media Playback and Encoding that one can use.

They not only list the 9 sources – such as Miro, VLC Media Player; MPlayer; SMPlayer; Chameleo; Prism and MediaPortal – but also includes a screen capture and a brief description.

The one I will def be checking out is:

Prism is a free application that will let you convert video from one format to virtually any other popular format. You can preview the output to guage whether you have all the encoding right. For doing animation and working with it in video offerings, also get to know Blender, and the free book on it you can find here.

Originally posted by iLibrarian

 

Word clouds with word it out

WordItOut is very similar to Wordl, as it lets you transform your text into word clouds. You can then save and share them.

But it has a few more customizable features than Wordl:

• Create word clouds from sentences, whole documents, web addresses or tables.
• Decide how to filter that text, which words to display or remove, and tweak their importance with ease.
• Design your word cloud as you like, find that perfect layout, choose your own colours and sizes (and how to mix them), or let WordItOut find a random look for you.

Below is the word cloud from this blog:

 

tools to create a mobile version of your web

I love the iLibrarian as she always posts very useful stuff. Like this morning’s post 10 Great Tools to Create a Mobile Web Version of Your Site:

Tom Walker at Spyre Studios reviews 10 Great Tools to Create a Mobile Version of Your Site. Each entry in the list includes a screenshot and features discussion. If you’re considering creating a mobile site for your organization you’ll want to check out this list as well as the suggestions in the comments.

Some of Tom’s suggestions are subscription based, but most are free to use. And the comments section has some great suggestions as well.

 

Free GEO Data Portal Posters

Free posters? Jup, the UN Environment Programme has a series of free posters you can download (in PDF) compiled from the UNEP’s Geo Data Portal

The full-colour posters are divided into four main groups:

1. Basic Facts posters
2. InfoGraphics posters
3. ISO Code posters
4. Bubble Chart posters

The Basic Facts posters contain 9 posters covering: electricity consumption; ecosystem management; hazardous waste management; global environment treaties; forest management; carbon dioxide emissions; fisheries; waste management and recycling and electricity production

The InfoGraphics posters contain 13 posters covering: global environmental indicators; recycling rates of OECD countries; global CO2 emissions and wealth; total CO2 emissions; total final energy consumption; marine fish catch; global total and capita CO2 emissions; energy supplies and FCS forests.

The ISO Code posters contain 9 posters covering: global CO2 emissions; global water footprints; global ecological footprint; world heritage sites and energy supply per $1000 GDP (PPP)

The Bubble Chart posters contain 3 posters covering: CO2 emissions and wealth

 

See the planet – in statistics

StatPlanet is a browser-based interactive data visualization and mapping tool. You use it to create interactive thematic maps, interactive graphs, and feature-rich interactive infographics – it’s super easy to use!

It is used by UNESCO and SACMEQ, NGOs, Fortune 500 companies and government departments.

It comes with up-to-date statistics on demography, economy, education, environment & energy, gender and health, for most countries in the world. You can use it online or download it.