Thursday, August 23, 2007

Why I removed a sidebar widget

The drop down menu I had for interesting Links has been removed. Why? If I wanted to add more links I had to start over again and add all my links just to add a new one, for now I will just use the standard sidebar for links until I find something different if I can. But not now, it seems that blogger is having some issues, one minute I can add a page element (this is where you get the sidebars from) next minute I can't, so for now I will leave it and come back tomorrow and try to add my favourite links.

Friday, August 17, 2007

No.26 YourMinis! and Scrapbooking

No. 26 of Learning 2.1 talks about YourMinis which is all about widgets.

If you have read any of my posts you will see that I have already gone down the road of widgets and I never get sick of them, so of cause I had to get one from YourMinis and then I had to decide what kind of widget I would create. This time it had to be different from all the other ones.

Two of my friends are into scrapbooking (me, not so much in fact not at all but I like their work) have created a blog about scrapbooking and they like to share with you the many ways that you can use their products and to also offer tips and ideas along the way.

My YourMinis is dedicated to them it is RSS feed widget, feel free to check out their site by clicking on the feeds to see what they are up to.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

LetterPop number 25 of Learning 2.1

LetterPop is a website, which lets you create your own newsletter when you do not have any fancy graphic programs on your computer. LetterPop offers 135 templates to choose from for your newsletter.
All you have to do is join and start creating, the drag and drop features make it easy for anyone to use, you are able to upload your own pictures. You are also able to save your creation, publish it for others to view and even email it.
This is a great way to get your news out there . I have created a newsletter it can be view by clicking here.
Using LetterPop I came across two little problems
1. You don’t have control in regards to the resizing of pictures. I uploaded a picture dropped it on to the newsletters and found it was too big, I had go back and resize then upload it again, my advice is to try one picture get an idea of the size required change all pictures you want to use before uploading all to LetterPop.
2. Printing, LetterPop allows printing of your newsletters but you also get excess information like at the bottom of the page the web address is show, perhaps in the future they make be able to offer a printable version without the excess in formation.
Overall, I would give LetterPop

Friday, August 3, 2007

Ning Network and Learning 2.1 explore.. discover.. play

Part of the Learning 2.1 is to joined the Ning Network, this I had done a couple of months ago and have joind several networks within Ning, just look for my little house on the hill I may be your friend already.







I am now part of the Learning 2.1 Ning Network

The journey continues - Thing 24

My learning continues and probably continue till when ever. I've moved on to Learning 2.1, I'm inspired by Learning 2.1 and am looking forward to trying all things suggested perhaps I will find something new but I doubt it.

Thing 23 - file conversations - Zamzar covers conversation for documents, image, music and video formats. I tried the conversion of a PDF (portable document format) to a word documents the formatting was exactly the same the I did the opposite with great results. For anyone who does not have a certain program on the computer they might find the website an advantage for example after creating a word document and wanting to share it with others who may not have e the same version of word can change their document into a PDF file. Another good point is for say Public Libraries who don't always every program available on their computers may be able to help their patrons who want to print the document and the library does not have the correct program. My library have come across this problem, we have tried the free online PDF conversion but it does not accept all types of file extensions like Zamzar.

I used Zamzar to convert a video file into an extension that I could used on my computer and was very happy with the results. I say give it a go.

Talking about file extensions, have you ever been asked (by a patron (library) ) can you please print out my document, you load up the file and it won't open, you look at the extension and think what kind of file it that. I come across this problem many times the latest was .docx this is the extension used by Microsoft Word 2007 I know that now but then I didn't and had to send the patron away to re save it in a different format. My point to all this rambling is suggest this website FILEXT-the file extension source. Some of the extension listed I've never heard of it may not be new find but it's something I found and wanted to post about it.

Enough for now until Thing 25.