If you participated in any of my “How To Plan A Webinar” webinars, you have heard me recommend a tool called SlideShare, which is a FREE service that allows you to share a PowerPoint presentation (as well as other document formats) without having to be live. Slideshare offers many benefits that ordinary file sharing services don’t offer including the ability to:

1. Upload and share your PowerPoint for FREE.
2. EASILY synch an audio file (mp3) to your PowerPoint and mark the points at which you want the slides to advance (slides will advance automatically). *You don’t need to be a “techy” to be able to do this.
3. Set privacy controls.
4. Grab an “embed” code which would allow you to place your presentation inside of another web page for playback (same approach as with YouTube).
5. Choose if you want to allow people to download your presentation.
6. Choose a Creative Commons license for your presentation.
7. Track how often your presentation has been viewed.
8. Receive feedback/comments on your presentation, and share that activity with social networking services such as Facebook & Twitter.
9. Create your own channels (aka categories) as a way to organize multiple presentations, and as a way to allow others to access your content by following your channel or through RSS.
10. Offer playback of your presentation without requiring your users to have PowerPoint or other costly software .

If you have a PowerPoint presentation to share that can stand on its own through the inclusion of audio file, and you don’t need to hear back from viewers of the presentation while its occuring, you should try SlideShare. Slideshare will let you share your presentation without the technical worries and difficulties that go along with doing a live webinar. Check Slideshare out for yourself and be sure to checkout some of the the Slideshare featured presentations.

Need a website but don’t have access to an experienced web designer, or a budget? While tapping into the expertise of an experience web designer is most desirable, there are some free web design/hosting services that will get you started. Googling “free web design” will provide you with a number of options worth exploring, but I would  like to expedite the search process for you and make a recommendation based upon my own trials of these free services.

I recommend Yola http://www.yola.com. Yola’s free package offers an ad free site, 1GB of storage, a 15MB file upload (think of all those PowerPoints or PDF files you might want to upload), customizable templates, easy drag & drop design, a TON of widgets including google maps, social networking tools, RSS, photo galleries, chat tools, and polling tools (to name only a few). In return, your site displays a tiny Yolo image at the bottom of the screen.

While one may be tempted to instead use a free service like Wix, which offers slick Flash designs complete with animations, I would advise against it. Flash sites, unless intentionally programmed, are not user friendly to individuals using assistive technology, nor do they play on iPhone/iPod touches. Additionally, Flash sites are not search engine friendly. If you want your website found by search engines then you want every piece of text on your page to be read, and Flash based sites do not allow for this, Yola does.

So in short, Yola is the least obtrusive with regard to ads and offers the most features for FREE, and is easy to use. For a fee, Yola can host your custom domain name, and provides an option for purchase.

Word clouds, as most of us know them, have traditionally been used on web pages as a way to see what popular words have been assigned as search terms. The greater the popularity of the term, the larger the text is of that word. On this web page (to the right) you can see my website’s word cloud. This word cloud is unique to my website, is related to the content of my website, and uses a plugin designed for my website.

Wordle is an independent application that allows you to create word clouds on any topic. You choose the words and then decide which words should be weighted heavier than others. Relevance? Consider the idea that the mere organization of words by size, color, placement can impact and affect one’s interpretation of those words. That said, here are some ways you might find the creation of a Wordle word cloud useful to you.

• Use a word cloud as a visual aid in a presentation
• Display info collected on flipcharts during a meeting
• Use it as an instructional aid (have students create study guides; show relationships to a specific word, or idea)
• Use it as a brainstorming tool (words mentioned more than once become larger)
• Tell someone how you feel in a new way
• Use it as a graphic design (t-shirst, book cover, etc.)
• Show recurring themes in a report or document by cutting and pasting its contents

If you’re still wondering about why you might use Wordle, or are just looking for new ideas, I suggest reviewing Wordle’s Gallery, which allows you to see word clouds created by other users. Below is sample I pulled from the gallery. I’m not sure of the designers intended use, but it sure seems like it might be a nice visual study guide. It’s titled “Body Systems” (its size has been reduced for use on this webpage).

Wordle is very easy to use, but I do feel it would be worth anyone’s time to at least scan the contents of Wordle’s FAQ page. It answers questions about how to grab & reuse your word cloud for future use, and explains some of the subtle nuances of the application such as why numbers can’t be displayed and how to make a particular word larger than another.

My single piece of advice on using Wordle is to make sure that you have copied your words to your clipboard (or have them saved in another application) because once you have created your cloud, you can’t go back and edit it….you have to create a new one.

]]> http://techforfree.org/2009/11/wordle-free-app-does-more-than-you-think/feed/ 0 http://techforfree.org/2009/10/free-creation-of-favicons/ http://techforfree.org/2009/10/free-creation-of-favicons/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:50:07 +0000 Rebecka Anderson http://rebeckaanderson.com/?p=1140 Just to be clear, a favicon is that little icon that shows up in the browser address bar. If you are wondering how to create one look no further! I’ve got a couple of options available for you.

How it Works
You need to create a 16×16 pixel image in the .ico image format. Once you’ve created the image it needs to be titled “favicon.ico”. The image then needs to be placed at the root level of your website, and in order for it to work, you need to add a line of code inside the tag on the pages in which you wish the favicon to appear.

Creating a .ico Image
Depending upon your software and its version, the ico export option may already be built-in. If its not, you can download a plugin (software specific) or you can take a look at some free web-based services that will automatically create an .ico for you based upon an image you upload to their site.

Create a .ico Image Using Free Web-Based Services

Dynamic Drive
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ has a great service. Simply choose the file on your computer, click create icon, and then download the final product.

Favicon.cc
Favicon http://www.favicon.cc/ allows you to create your favicon from scratch on their site, or you can import your own image. A nice feature of this site/service is that it allows you to make color corrections prior to exporting–multiple colors may look great at 100×100 pixels but at 16×16 (the size of a favicon) it may not look so hot.

*Favicon from Pics
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ This service offers more than just your standard favicon. Once you convert your image you are presented with option of customizing colors, creating an animated favicon, as well as an option to create the iPhone/iPod icons. Its all very easy to do, though you will need to add some extra lines of code to your pages if you plan on using a animated favicon or the icons for the iPhone/iPod.

Making it Work
Now that you have your favicon, you need to upload it to your web server (place it at the root level of your website). Once I uploaded my favicon to the web server, it showed up without the addition of any code to my pages. However, in the interest of consistency and insurance, its a good idea to include the line of code (see example below) in your pages if the appearance of a favicon is important to you.

Example
*if you’ve chosen to use an animated favicon or have created a favicon for the iPhone/iPod you will need to add some additional lines of code. http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ Will generate the code for you once it creates your favicons.

TIP

• Before uploading your image to any of the services listed above do what you can using your own image editor to reduce the number of colors and busyness of your image. Remember the favicon is displayed at 16 x16 so its better to have 1 or 2 colors.
• Before uploading your image be sure to trip off any additional white space of the edges so that your image is shown as large as it can.
• If you want to use your favicon on the iPhone or iPod make sure the image you are uploading to the service is at least 60X60 pixels. Use http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/
• If possible, upload an image with a transparent background. Doing so will allow your image to show up on the grey browser tabs without a white box outlining it.

One of the great things about email is that it can be read at one’s leisure, regardless of the time of day. While this is true, you should know that a reply should be sent within 24 hours, even if it’s just to say “I’ll get back to you.” Failure to check your messages regularly or to respond sends a message  (without a single keystroke) of  “I have poor customer service and communication skills.”

For those of you that “don’t have time” to check your email I have bad news for you. You need to make the time. If you can’t, don’t bother distributing your email address. Emails aren’t sent with the intent of them being read or replied to 3 weeks later.

Problems with email access at your place of work? I’m sorry to say that you need to check your email at home, your phone, or a public computer. Certainly a separation of home from work life is important so maybe just take a note of who emailed you and then call them back the next business day if you aren’t willing to do email at home. But again, if you aren’t willing to make some type of a compromise, don’t distribute your email address.

For those of you who have experienced the challenges of unread email by those you employ because that’s “just not how they operate” I can only offer this suggestion: specify in future contracts that email should be checked and responded to regularly. Sure it’s possible that someone may not have access to email every day of their life, but you should at minimum expect employees to check their email a couple of times a week.

If you are looking for more detailed information to share with those you employ or even for yourself, check out Business E-mail Etiquette