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Posts tagged ‘YouTube’

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A quickie about Qwiki.

Image representing Qwiki as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Ever see a new site that wows you, not just because it has good content, but because of the way it presents it?  That’s where I file Qwiki.  So far as I can tell, it basically takes text from a variety of locations, adds a great text-to-speech translater to it, and then blends in images and videos from a bunch of other sources. The end result is a video encyclopedia mashup of content from around the web.  It sounds pretty darn decent, it looks incredibly polished, and everything is hyperlinked.  Videos, images, related content, all just a click away.   More…

1/27/2011 12 Comments Short URL
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A Browser Bag of Tricks

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Image by Daniel Pouliot via Flickr

While sharing my browser during a DEN webinar last night, I was surprised to see the hot topic of conversation wasn’t the public beta of the new DEN website that I was sharing…. rather it was the various bookmarklets and links that I have saved in my Bookmarks toolbar.

I guess I don’t really think about it much, but that really is a bag of tricks that I depend on daily, and there’s some fantastic tools there that I’ve gathered together over the years. SO, I thought that I’d share a brief glimpse into my ‘dashboard’, the view that surrounds my view, all the toys gadgets and gizmos that customize my browsing experience.

First of all, my browser of choice is still Firefox. I’m on the verge of switching to Chrome, as I think it’s faster and more stable, but for now I like the suite of plugins and utilities that I have set up in Firefox better. Since I often have more than 25 tabs open at a time, real estate is always at a premium. That’s why I go with the Classic Compact Firefox theme. It’s about as small as you can get while still having actual icons for the primary buttons. Clean and minimal, that’s how I like my browser themes. The only plugin I have that adds actual buttons to the browser is Delicious. And to be honest, that can probably go as I don’t use any more functionality than I would out of a bookmarklet. However… My space for bookmarklets is pretty limited as you’ll see shortly.

In the status bar (that bar along the bottom that displays what URL you’re about to click on when you hover over a link), I have five tools. The first is the MeasureIt plugin, which resides in the lower left. This is a simple tool, but I use it almost daily. Click on it and your screen goes grayish. Then, you can draw a box anywhere on your screen and it will tell you how many pixels each side is. Incredibly handy for measuring web elements, pictures, embedded objects and so on. Honestly, it’s pretty darn close to indispensable. On the right hand side I have the Delicious notifiers, and a Google Wave notifier, but to be honest I rarely look at those. They could go away and I wouldn’t notice. I also have an indicator letting me know that Greasemonkey is running, another that I don’t really even ‘see’ anymore. But then we come to the far lower right, which is reserved for something I check nearly every day: Woot Watcher. It displays what the deal of the day is for Woot, and during a Woot Off it displays roughly how many of an item is left before it switches. I’m a big fan of Woot, and yes, I do glance down at that daily.

This brings us to the heart and soul of my web based toolbox: the bookmarklets. For those that don’t know, a bookmarklet is basically a bookmark, but instead of taking you to a favorite web page, it performs a function. I actually wrote a post on bookmarklets a few years ago, but the info looks to still be valid. I have quite a few of them in my browser bar and use most of them pretty regularly. In that they appear in my browser bar, here’s my current list:

  • TinyURL - The mac daddy of URL shorteners. While there’s many that work well, this is my go-to standard. In particular, it’s reliable, simple, and I love that you can customize the shortened URL that you create.
  • URL.ie - Sometimes size matters. In particular for Twitter, you want URL’s as small as possible. They don’t come much smaller than URL.ie. So when even TinyURL is too large, I switch to this one.
  • EDIT any page - This one is interesting and to be honest, really deserves a blog post to itself. Basically it’s a Bookmarklet that makes any page…. editable. Yes, you can just double click on any text and change it to your liking. No, it doesn’t actually change the page, just your view of it. However, it’s incredible for grabbing screenshots for presentations. You can even remove images from the screen if you want! Try it, it’s fun. *disclaimer* I’m not responsible for evil or chaos that you cause with this.
  • X-Ray – This bookmarklet is invaluable for web developers. Click on it, and then click on any element on the page. It will show you detailed information about the element itself, as well as any thematic settings that may be affecting it. Very quick and incredibly powerful.
    Flickr2Facebook - Just a simple exporter that will help you move photos from Flickr to Facebook. Go to a Flickr page, click the bookmarklet, and choose what Facebook album you want it to go into. Easy!
  • Printliminator - This one helps to print nice clean versions of web pages, without the annoying adds and sidebars and such. Just click on the bookmarklet and you can then select any elements you want to remove. Poof, they’re gone. Then just send it to the printer!
  • TBuzz - This serves two purposes. 1) It allows me to tweet about something I’m looking at without leaving the page itself (it even adds in a shortened URL for you) and 2) It shows me any recent tweets that contain links to the same page. That way you can just choose to retweet someone else’s message instead of typing your own if you so choose.
  • KeepVid - This one is my YouTube downloader of choice right now. Go to a YouTube video, click on the bookmarklet, and you’ll have the option to download it. What I like tho is that it provides you the option of saving it in a variety of formats, and often in a variety of sizes. Saves a step or two.
  • Quietube - Ever need to share a YouTube video, but were nervous about what links and related videos might pop up? The Quietube bookmarklet takes that video and displays it on a plain white background. Very neat and clean. Perfect for presentations and staff meetings.

    • Since you can store folders on a Browser bar, I do actually have a couple of those as well. In side I have a slew of websites that I want easy access to. You can even put folders inside folders, to create a nice hierarchy of sites that you want to be able to access quickly. Nothing fancy, but it does work pretty well.

    So that’s my browser bag of tricks. Got any that I’m missing? Or something you think people ought to know about?

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    4/12/2010 26 Comments
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    The Networked Student… in plain English

    This CommonCraft inspired video does an excellent job of explaining what a truly networked student looks like. And more importantly, what the teachers role is for them.

    Consider it your weekend video break.

    12/6/2008 19 Comments
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    What’s in a domain name?

    Shared with me by Charlene Chausis.

    MSAD48 is doing something rather interesting for their high school seniors. Upon entering senior year, every student is given a unique domain name to be used for “work on their resume, portfolio and communicate with their class.” I would assume that when they leave the school at the end of the year, they will be taking it with them to be used throughout their college and professional years. See the video below for more…

    I most definitely applaud their efforts in this, and wonder why more schools don’t do the same? In fact, taking it a step further, shouldn’t they be getting their own domain name in Freshman year? Or even in middle school? At what point is it too early to be preparing students for a life online?

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    10/27/2008 11 Comments
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    OSTube: DIY YouTube

    YouTube blocked? TeacherTube not quite what you’re looking for? Ever wish you could just do the darn thing yourself? I recently discovered that you CAN!

    Via a Tweet from BudTheTeacher, I found a link to WeberTube. If you check it out, you’ll find it’s remarkably similar to YouTube, except with the abilty to upload pictures and documents as well. Users can create profiles, rate videos, watch them there or embed them elsewhere. And it looks GOOD. I was so impressed that I poked around until I found a link back to the application they used to build it.

    I’d never heard of it before, but it turns out to be an Open Source project called OSTube.

    osTube is the first content management system for media content (MCMS) – a basic framework for creating websites similar to YouTube, Veoh, and Revver. After the successful release of osTube 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1 we have just published the brand new 2.2 version of osTube – a quantum leap in player-functionality and CMS-scalability.

    A complete revision and further development of current features as well as numerous new features guarantee even better usability of the framework. Also, many features requested by the osTube community are now part of version 2.0. The addition of AJAX, social bookmarking services and extended search capabilites are just a few key-aspects that will make the implementation of osTube more seamless than ever before.

    There are premium versions available that allow you to insert ads into the videos, rotate banners and other such silly things. But for a school, the community FREE version is just peachy. On the backend it looks like you can maintain all the controls you might want, including moderation, video approval queues and other such things.

    Pretty darn sweet considering the price. Definitely worth checking, whether for public consumption or for use behind a walled garden.

    9/26/2008 6 Comments
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    Hump Day Video Break – One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song

    You can take this as a social commentary on the way we teach foreign languages here in the states, or just sit back and enjoy it. Either way, I think you’ll get a kick of this video Larry Anderson shared with me at NECC.

    7/9/2008 8 Comments