My thoughts and feelings about Facebook are always evolving.
Currently I think of it as a kind of porch where I can relax and have “friends” drop in and chat. – http://joanvinallcox.ca/facebook-my-porch/
Category: blogging
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Image Copyright Made Easy
My experience teaching university students has led me to believe that they don’t know enough about how to attribute images that they haven’t created themselves. From my own experience as both a student and a teacher, I am familiar with applications that make creative bibliographies much easier (BibMe, EasyBib, etc.). I am also familiar with what happens when it’s easy to correctly create bibliographies and citations; I (and others) are much more likely to make sure we’ve give credit where credit is due.
So I was delighted to read Judy O’Connell’s description – https://heyjude.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/greasemonkey-and-flickr-for-the-adventurous/ – of how to get images from Flickr that have Creative Commons licensing, and are totally easy to attribute.
The image above was my experiment, and, as you can see, it worked. Now it is easy to find free images in Flickr and correctly attribute them. I strongly recommend her post – https://heyjude.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/greasemonkey-and-flickr-for-the-adventurous/
How to Target a New Tab for an Image Link
Here’s a picture I want to link to another website and have it open in another tab or window:
The image above links to the website it’s from, but opens on the same page as this post, replacing this post.
I click on the image (in Edit) and choose the far left icon of a picture, and check that the link I want to target is there:
Then I click on “Advanced Setting at the top, and scroll to the bottom of the next screen
Click beside “Target, and now, your link will open in a new tab or window:
Using SoundCloud for Podcasting
I want to see if I can embed a podcast in this, my WordPress.com blog. If this works, you can hear it below.
Here are the instructions I followed – http://kathryncorrick.co.uk/2009/08/18/testing-how-to-embed-soundcloud-files-to-wordpress/
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.
Crunchy numbers
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,400 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 62 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 548 posts. There were 48 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 10mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was March 31st with 57 views. The most popular post that day was Kluging: An LMS Alternative.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were teacher.pageflakes.com, c4lpt.co.uk, twitter.com, ianmason.net, and browse.workliteracy.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for visual literacy, fotobook editor, udutu, google cheat sheet 2010, and google search cheat sheet.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
Kluging: An LMS Alternative October 2008
11 comments
2
Visual Literacy and Visual Thinking July 2008
10 comments
3
Joan Vinall-Cox’s E-Portfolio September 2008
20 comments
4
Photobook Adventures (and advice) December 2008
4 comments
5
udutu – Free, Easy, and Perhaps Unnecessary August 2008
2 comments
The Web is a Creativity Generator generating a Culture of Creativity
Photo by Tabea Dibou, from Flickr 
We can see more people creating more works than ever before in history. And it’s because of the web and because the web is social. On the web, much is possible. Whether you are finding the right beautiful photo (with the right Creative Commons license) to illustrate metaphorically the connectivity and the beauty of the internet for a blog post, or whether you are playing with a web app (Skitch – http://skitch.com/) to draw
or to explain something
The web is a space where people want to make, to create. I’m creating this blog post, because it’s FUN! And easy. The phrase “user-friendly” developed with the personal computer. Web apps are aimed at being user-friendly to entice and encourage people to use them, to be creative.The social aspect of the web, the possibility of being seen/heard/recognized, even if only by a very few others, encourages people’s creativity. I might not have composed this blog post if the one I created yesterday hadn’t been re-tweeted, and got a comment. That thrill of recognition is energizing. So people are playing on computers and posting their creativity on the web. As we get responses ourselves, and even if we just see others get responses, we are encouraged to join in the play. And playfulness spreads.
So serious people who sell cars and race cars become part of the crowd playing:
Two typographers ( Pierre & Damien / plmd.me ) and a pro race pilot (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design a font with a car.
The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman. ( openframeworks.cc )
Which I downloaded – nl.toyota.be/iqfont and played with.
Art, play, creativity – that’s how we humans learn and that’s what makes us happy and healthy. And the web is our creativity playground.
Social Bookmarking – Diigo
Social bookmarking is one of the most useful aspects of the web. You can use it to create your own online library, organized to your own interests by using tags. Although I’ve been using some form of social bookmarking for years, every so often I want to review what I can do with the social bookmarking tools I use.
Currently I use Diigo and del.icio.us.
One of the useful aspects of webapps is that many give you notice when an upgrade is available, and then, when you install it, open a page explaining all the changes. Diigo has recently upgraded and among the items available in the upgrade page were these very informative videos:
I use two social bookmarking apps because I’m wary of any web app closing down, and having two makes it more likely that I’ll still have access to most of my saved bookmarks if one closes. But who wants to do that extra work you ask? It’s no extra work, because I can save to Diigo and have my new bookmark automatically added to my del.icio.us account.
The final step I’ve taken is to add a del.icio.us widget to my blog so readers can see what I’ve been saving.
If you don’t already use social bookmarking, you might want to give it a try.
More from WordCamp Toronto 2009
Nick La on Customizing WordPress
Lots of valuable how-tos!
WordCamp Toronto 2009
Live Tweeting vs Live Blogging
At the Toronto WordCamp 2008, I live-blogged, and that was fun:
- https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/live-blogging-at-wordcamp-toronto-08/
- https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/live-blogging-wordcam-day2/
At WordCamp Toronto, 2009, I Tweeted using the hashtag #wct09, and that was fun, and more social for a couple of reasons.
- I was less focussed on getting every piece of wisdom and could relate more f2f with the people around me; and
- I could have conversations via Twitter with others at wct09 (if they were using the hashtag) pick up pieces of wisdom from their tweets, and talk f2f with them after meeting on Twitter.
So, for me, with the current social applications, Live Tweeting was a richer experience than Live Blogging, but both were fun.
Learning
I learned from the mix of new information in presentations and conversations around and between the sessions, and my most frequest conversationalists were –
- Dawn – http://www.dawncomber.com
- Alfred – http://www.butterscotch.com
- Ruth – http://www.dandelionwebdesign.com
- Clarence – http://www.picpu.com/
I enjoyed great conversations on shared interests with them – who could ask for anything more?
Sessions
- Erin Blaskie was very interesting – http://www.erinblaskie.com/ – Her social media case study was amazing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtscIOwTvSU
- Leveraging Social Media, which I embedded in a previous post –https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/wct09-leveraging-social-media/
- Joey DeVilla – Accordian Guy with fascinating stories –
- James Walker – Your Blog is Your Social Network
There was much more of value there, and others will be blogging about WordCamp Toronto 2009, but this is my contribution for now.
Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/lexnger/
Oh yeah, and I won:
