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Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Slideshare; thing 11 - part 2
Hmm, now I've got my Powerpoint thing up, what do I think? Quite nice, though navigating the site isn't terribly intuitive. I also couldn't see how I could stop Slideshare from advertising similar presentations. It's quite nice, in some way, that it does, but I think it would be helpful to be able to turn that feature off.
Someone's bound to ask why? OK, let's say I advertise some particular process I would liek my users to carry out, but, I'd rather they didn't carry out some similar process. I can't stop them finding out about that second process, but I can at least not point them to it (and therefore avoid any responsibility). I can't think of a practical example right this minute though.
It's also worth pointing out that there are alternative ways of doing this. I've just taken the same presentation and turned it into html in one easy process. It's not very pretty, and does involve ActiveX it seems, but it did work. An alternative approach might be to download and install 'Cute PDF writer' which appears to your PC to be a printer, but produces PDFs. This can turn your Powerpoint presentation into a PDf which you could then put on a website.
P.S. The navigability issues seem to be a bit better once you've logged out and back in.
Someone's bound to ask why? OK, let's say I advertise some particular process I would liek my users to carry out, but, I'd rather they didn't carry out some similar process. I can't stop them finding out about that second process, but I can at least not point them to it (and therefore avoid any responsibility). I can't think of a practical example right this minute though.
It's also worth pointing out that there are alternative ways of doing this. I've just taken the same presentation and turned it into html in one easy process. It's not very pretty, and does involve ActiveX it seems, but it did work. An alternative approach might be to download and install 'Cute PDF writer' which appears to your PC to be a printer, but produces PDFs. This can turn your Powerpoint presentation into a PDf which you could then put on a website.
P.S. The navigability issues seem to be a bit better once you've logged out and back in.
Slideshare; thing11 - part 1
Oh dear, yet another login ID and password needed. At least I could recycle my Yahoo one with no problems.
At first sight this reminds me of the startup screen for IBM's PC operating system OS/2. It's difficult to know where to start, and even after a couple of minutes of looking I still can't see what I'm supposed to do first. Eventually I found a small quick tour link, which wasn't much help, and finally I saw the upload button. So far, so good.
So, I've uploaded a small Powerpoint presentation I've done, now I have to classify, oops, sorry, tag it. I'm not sure that the categories are particularly helpful - "Education" and "Technology" are a bit vague, so I thought I'd settle on "Humor", but had second thoughts as people may be expecting more jokes. At this point I'm trying to post this to Blogger, so I'll publish this bit now.
At first sight this reminds me of the startup screen for IBM's PC operating system OS/2. It's difficult to know where to start, and even after a couple of minutes of looking I still can't see what I'm supposed to do first. Eventually I found a small quick tour link, which wasn't much help, and finally I saw the upload button. So far, so good.
So, I've uploaded a small Powerpoint presentation I've done, now I have to classify, oops, sorry, tag it. I'm not sure that the categories are particularly helpful - "Education" and "Technology" are a bit vague, so I thought I'd settle on "Humor", but had second thoughts as people may be expecting more jokes. At this point I'm trying to post this to Blogger, so I'll publish this bit now.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Flickr; thing 9, thing 10 and tagging
Flickr. I'd had a go at uploading some photos onto another photo sharing website, but hadn't done much with Flickr other than browsing around. Following the instructions I now have this photo:
This is quite a curious photo (taken by one Peer Gynt it would seem). It's of a British designed (specifically Vickers-Armstrong Ltd.) tank called the Valentine, at a museum in Russia. The Soviet Army was supplied with quite a large number of these, not that they were overly impressed with them, but rather than giving this example Soviet markings, they've had a not very successful go at a British marked vehicle (it's supposed to be in a unit of the 23rd Armoured Brigade, but I haven't managed to find the book which will tell me which unit is referred to by '67').
The original photo is at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peer_gynt/3966916040/
(I've now found out more about the markings. It's supposed to be a Valentine of 'A' squadron, 50th Royal Tank Regiment - that's what the '67' means. There's even a photo of this vehicle in Tunisia in 'British tank markings and names by B.T. White'. The Liver Bird symbol to the right of the name really should be black on a white square and the 67 should, I think, be white on a black square, and the whole tank should be painted a sand colour, oh, and there should be a registration number, but apart that it's accurate.)
I've also set up my own Flickr account at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53094833@N03/
So, is Flickr of any use? Quite handy if you want to get photos of obscure British military vehicles or aircraft. I'm not quite so sure about libraries though; after all, someone has to create the images in the first place and then feel sufficiently generous so as to make them freely available afterwards.
One worry might be that one library has a member of staff who's adept at creating such images, does them in work time, or using work resources, and makes them freely available, until there's a change in the economic climate, and management goes kerching! [2] and sees a potential income stream. What's the legal position if I make something freely available, then change my mind a year or two later? Am I entitled to start charging anyone who's used my images? Should people who who have used my images be checking the legal position regarding specific images regularly? One for a lawyer I think?
Another problem is the tagging issue. By allowing people to chose their own tags, you could get the same image described in different ways. For example, in my Flickr photostream, I've currently got pictures of half-a-dozen british military aircraft, carefully described with both their name and the manufacturer's name. Except, that is, for the Spitfire which I though was a sufficiently iconic name not to need Supermarine before it. After checking in Wikipedia I could see there was a car called a Triumph Spitfire, which might have been present at the event where I took the photo. Should I go back and make sure that the manufacturer is in the tag as well?
Not that there are problems only with user defined tags. Library of Congress subject headings are a well known subject classification scheme, but they're incomplete, wrong in some cases, and subject to needless changes (like 'World War, 1914-1918' to 'European War, 1914-1918' and then back again to 'World War, 1914-1918' a year later when people in Washington thought to look at some history books).
At this point I'm going to have to admit that I don't know what the answers are (and probably apologise for having possibly wasted some of your time reading this).
[1] This supposed to be the sound of a cash till. I could also have used the Tom and Jerry image of dollar signs in someone's eyes, but that would have been even more difficult to do - I doubt that there are any free to use images of that around.
This is quite a curious photo (taken by one Peer Gynt it would seem). It's of a British designed (specifically Vickers-Armstrong Ltd.) tank called the Valentine, at a museum in Russia. The Soviet Army was supplied with quite a large number of these, not that they were overly impressed with them, but rather than giving this example Soviet markings, they've had a not very successful go at a British marked vehicle (it's supposed to be in a unit of the 23rd Armoured Brigade, but I haven't managed to find the book which will tell me which unit is referred to by '67').The original photo is at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peer_gynt/3966916040/
(I've now found out more about the markings. It's supposed to be a Valentine of 'A' squadron, 50th Royal Tank Regiment - that's what the '67' means. There's even a photo of this vehicle in Tunisia in 'British tank markings and names by B.T. White'. The Liver Bird symbol to the right of the name really should be black on a white square and the 67 should, I think, be white on a black square, and the whole tank should be painted a sand colour, oh, and there should be a registration number, but apart that it's accurate.)
I've also set up my own Flickr account at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53094833@N03/
So, is Flickr of any use? Quite handy if you want to get photos of obscure British military vehicles or aircraft. I'm not quite so sure about libraries though; after all, someone has to create the images in the first place and then feel sufficiently generous so as to make them freely available afterwards.
One worry might be that one library has a member of staff who's adept at creating such images, does them in work time, or using work resources, and makes them freely available, until there's a change in the economic climate, and management goes kerching! [2] and sees a potential income stream. What's the legal position if I make something freely available, then change my mind a year or two later? Am I entitled to start charging anyone who's used my images? Should people who who have used my images be checking the legal position regarding specific images regularly? One for a lawyer I think?
Another problem is the tagging issue. By allowing people to chose their own tags, you could get the same image described in different ways. For example, in my Flickr photostream, I've currently got pictures of half-a-dozen british military aircraft, carefully described with both their name and the manufacturer's name. Except, that is, for the Spitfire which I though was a sufficiently iconic name not to need Supermarine before it. After checking in Wikipedia I could see there was a car called a Triumph Spitfire, which might have been present at the event where I took the photo. Should I go back and make sure that the manufacturer is in the tag as well?
Not that there are problems only with user defined tags. Library of Congress subject headings are a well known subject classification scheme, but they're incomplete, wrong in some cases, and subject to needless changes (like 'World War, 1914-1918' to 'European War, 1914-1918' and then back again to 'World War, 1914-1918' a year later when people in Washington thought to look at some history books).
At this point I'm going to have to admit that I don't know what the answers are (and probably apologise for having possibly wasted some of your time reading this).
[1] This supposed to be the sound of a cash till. I could also have used the Tom and Jerry image of dollar signs in someone's eyes, but that would have been even more difficult to do - I doubt that there are any free to use images of that around.
Friday, 13 August 2010
A comment
It's been pointed out to me that I've had a comment. I think the commenter (or is that commentator?) may have missed my point (which isn't surprising since I didn't really explain it). Quite apart from the rather silly name, a lot of us have experience of twitter like activity. After all, even my mother sends text messages when she needs to.
The problem I see with twitter is the limit on characters - 140 isn't really enough for any serious communication. Recently I've had to send an email message to a fellow of Peterhouse explaining why the stack request system in the UL has to work the way it does; that couldn't be explained in less than 560 words, or more than 3000 characters, and a few weeks ago I sent a letter to Skoda commenting on their apparent inability to allow people to test drive cars that people might actually want to drive. It had to go as a letter because the comments form on their website had a limit of 1,000 characters.
Iain
The problem I see with twitter is the limit on characters - 140 isn't really enough for any serious communication. Recently I've had to send an email message to a fellow of Peterhouse explaining why the stack request system in the UL has to work the way it does; that couldn't be explained in less than 560 words, or more than 3000 characters, and a few weeks ago I sent a letter to Skoda commenting on their apparent inability to allow people to test drive cars that people might actually want to drive. It had to go as a letter because the comments form on their website had a limit of 1,000 characters.
Iain
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Twitter; thing 7
Thing 7 is "Create a Twitter account and interact with other Cam23 ‘tweeple’"
I don't think so. And certainly not if you can't speak plain English.
I don't think so. And certainly not if you can't speak plain English.
Google calendar; thing 6
I've seen a number of different types of electronic calendars, ranging from web pages, which look extremely dull and cant' easily provide reminders to Microsoft Outlook, which was quite nice, but meant you were more or less forced to use Microsoft's pitiful attempt at an email client [1].
Google calendar, as long as you ignore the web side of it, however is pretty good. Ignoring the web aspect of a web application may seem contradictory, but if you combine Google Calendar with Thunderbird and Lightning you can get a quite effective calendar. Here's how it works:
Why is this important? Part of the impetus for this was hearing that the Computing Service were talking to Google about Google apps, particularly the calendar application. Given that they were going to do this, there was bound to be some pressure from management for some or all staff to use this and I thought I might as well get some experience in how I would like to use it.
A pretty good tool on the whole.
[1] I could go on about how useless Microsoft is at Internet type stuff at great length. On the whole I'm OK with their operating systems and Office is quite good (particularly Access), but IE and Outlook/Outlook Express are pretty atrocious and have changed the way email works and not for the better.
Google calendar, as long as you ignore the web side of it, however is pretty good. Ignoring the web aspect of a web application may seem contradictory, but if you combine Google Calendar with Thunderbird and Lightning you can get a quite effective calendar. Here's how it works:
- Install and configure Thunderbird; the Computing Service has instructions on configuring Thunderbird at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/muasettings/mozilla.html.
- Download and install Lightning, an add-on for Thunderbird that allows you to create calendars on your PC, from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/.
- Download and install the Provider for Google Calendar from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631/.
- Follow the instructions at http://bfish.xaedalus.net/2007/04/stay-in-sync-with-gcal-and-thunderbird/.
Why is this important? Part of the impetus for this was hearing that the Computing Service were talking to Google about Google apps, particularly the calendar application. Given that they were going to do this, there was bound to be some pressure from management for some or all staff to use this and I thought I might as well get some experience in how I would like to use it.
A pretty good tool on the whole.
[1] I could go on about how useless Microsoft is at Internet type stuff at great length. On the whole I'm OK with their operating systems and Office is quite good (particularly Access), but IE and Outlook/Outlook Express are pretty atrocious and have changed the way email works and not for the better.
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