Blogging speed at your fingertips: P2 theme by Automattic

Have you noticed that nowadays blogs are increasingly becoming shorter?
SEO privileges quantity over length, so sites that publish five short articles per day will rank higher in Google searches than sites that publish two long articles, for instance.
The WordPress theme P2 theme by Automattic is perfect for bloggers to quickly publish several articles as well as what Automattic calls updates.
You can see P2 theme by Automattic by yourself in this blog.
You can download P2 theme by Automattic for free for your WordPress blog or just activate it as your theme if you have a WordPress.com blog like this one.
P2 theme by Automattic is a very light and easy to use theme, but most importantly it lets you quickly create and edit articles from the frontpage itself. Unlike many other themes, you do not need to go to your dashboard to create a post, but you can do it directly from your frontpage.
P2 theme by Automattic has a tabbed menu on the frontpage with the items Status Update (the equivalent of Twitter), Blog Post (where you write an article), Quote and Link.
From the frontpage itself, you can Upload/Insert movies, images, sound, and other media, just like you do from the Dashbord. And what is more important you can also enter tags.
When you are done writing, you click on Post it and you start writing your next post.
So, if you want a theme that enables you to easily publish several articles a day, please give P2 theme by Automattic a try. You won’t be disappointed!

Introducing the P2 theme

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Flatscreens at Parisian Bus Stops

A Line 52 bus stop in Paris, very close to the Opera Garnier (http://bit.ly/7xRu1s), is equipped with a cutting-edge flatscreen with touchscreen capabilities.  The screen displays a wide variety of information about the area and public transportation services.

The device includes an interactive map for buses and subways as well as other mapped-in information including links to historical places with photos and articles as well as business with descriptions and photos–primarily restaurants and cafes.

You access the items mentioned above through a menu similar to the Windows Taskbar.  The display is colorful and bright, and mainly in the evening it becomes very inviting.

The screens are impressive and very helpful for tourists and locals.

If you are in Paris, don’t miss the chance to play around with one of them (unfortunately, the only one I know is the one by the Opera).  Will keep updating this post as I find more.

Shot with my iPhone. Talent: Anna Ten

Streaming live video with my iPhone using Qik, a jewel! http://qik.com/imwinkelried

Etherpad does not take you to the Heavens, but it comes very close to it

I had been using Etherpad –http://www.etherpad.com–for a while, but had never experimented its potential as a collaborative tool in the classroom.

Etherpad is one of the best online-based word processors out there not only because it is free (and now open source since Google acquired it) but also because it enables users to create a public pad without having to sign up for an account.  Etherpad has many other wonderful features such as easy sharing, author colors and timeslider with different formats to save to.

Perhaps the most important feature for me is to be able to use an online-based word processor that I do not have to sign up for nor sign in.  Google Documents is great, but I need to sign in in order to access their word processor.  With Etherpad, I am only a click away from starting to type my document.

As soon as users create their public pad, Etherpad gives them a URL that users can email or IM to their collaborators.

Users have their texts highlighted with different colors and their names show up on the sidebar, also provided with a chat tool.

The Timeslider tool enables users to slide through the history of the document.  They can do this manually or by hitting play, and watching the history of the collaboration develop.  Etherpad offers several formats to save your document including HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, or Plain Text.

Today, my first-year journalism students took full advantage of this great tool.  They wrote articles individually that they later shared with the rest of the class as they joined the public pad that I projected on the screen to the entire class.

The students would correct their documents themselves and also their classmates’.  The group-correction process is already a very rich one, and Etherpad only enhances it by the color-identity feature–students and teacher can make corrections and the student can easily identify the corrector by the color.

Students could eventually save the document so that they can review the corrections.

We ended the class with two presentations.  Presenters used Etherpad to write their keywords.  The rest of the class wrote notes and questions for the presenters using the Etherpad public document.

Etherpad is a free and no-signup-necessary application that offers plenty of possibilities including collaborative writing via sharing URL, highlighted text with a different color per user, a slick Timeslider tool to navigate through the document history, and plenty of formats to save your document.

Etherpad does not take you to the Heavens, but to heights with a great potential to be explored.

With Pixlr, Who Needs Photoshop?

Pixlr is an online photo editor with a vast potential.  Certainly not for those with printing needs, but for those designing for the web Pixlr may become a better option than Photoshop.  Pixlr is not only free, but also web-based (no need to install anything on your computer nor to keep up with updates), and you do not even need to create an account to work with it.  In addition, there is a bonus, an extension you can install on your browser called Pixlr Grabber.

Many web-based photo editors require you to register.  With Pixlr, you can start editing your images with a browser and an internet connection.

Pixlr has three applications, Pixlr Editor, Express and Grabber.  Editor is almost like Photoshop, Express is to perform quick edits, and Grabber is a very handy extension you install in your browser to have ready acces to online images.  With Grabber, you have three capturing options, entire page, a selection, or the visible area of a page.

Pixlr Editor looks  very similar to Photoshop and has almost all the same basic functions and toolbar.  Pixlr also has Layers, History, and Navigation windows.  The text tool is also very powerful with a considerable library of fonts.

To start working, you can open an image from your computer or directly from a URL (you can also create a new image from scratch).  When you finished editing, you can save the result to your computer just as if you were working with Photoshop or any other application installed on your computer.

So, if you create web content, you should certainly give Pixlr a try.  You do not need to open an extra application, just open a new tab, type pixlr.com and start working.

Other web-based photos editors reviewed here http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10170333-2.html

 

Belgian Bells: Creative Commons Music Library

Electrobel.be is one of the largest Creative Commons contemporary music libraries I know of and certainly the European leader. Yet, Electrobel.be remains largely unknown to many listeners and producers.
Electrobel.be is a Belgian site that features original music composed primarily by Belgian musicians.  In addition to its Electrobel.be site, Electrobel has other sites dedicated to musicians from other nationalities,  UK, French, Italian, and Dutch branches.
This site offers a wealth of music that could be used for different purposes since their tracks are free to use and released under a CC license. Video makers, podcasters, screencasters and other producers could take full advantage of these easily downloadable tracks.
Electrobel.be’s thousands tracks are organized by genres from hip hop to breakcore and acousmatic.
Users do not need to sign in to download their mp3 tracks. They can access the player by simply clicking on a track or the “listen to all” button at the end of every page.
The quality of Electrobel.be’s tracks varies, but for the most part they are seriously made and showcased on the site looking for feedback and support from other fellow musicians. As they state on their site, “Electrobel is far more than just your local MP3-host. Electrobel is a living community bringing together artists and fans, organising music events, coordinating mutual help and promoting the independent music culture across Europe.” (www.electrobel.be)
Electrobel.be also has its own label Netlabel, which has already released over fifteen albums since 2006, also downloadable from their site http://www.netlabel.be
Producers and listeners need yet to discover this wealth of content and high-quality tracks free to download and use.
Visit Electrobel.be and get started http://www.electrobel.be

Know-how and Content Worth

“I can’t publish!”
Once I teach my students about online tools and they are all ready to go, many of them tell me that they can’t publish. They feel what they have to say does not merit publishing because nobody would be interested in reading it.
This is when I realized that teaching online publishing and marketing tools was not only about having my students learn the know-how, but that it was more complex than that.
Once my students overcome all technical difficulties and are finally ready to press de WordPress’ blue button labeled “Publish,” many of them, believe the content of their publication will be of no interest to anyone.
I finally realize that teaching the need of a tools does not only involve teaching students how this tool can help them, but also making them understand that what they have to say matters.
This is yet, a third step that I need to accomplish in order to make my students successfully use online tools for publication and marketing.

Create It Live

Click Here

Why WordPress.com

Wordpress.com

My experience with CMS dates from the Mambo era, starting in the year 2000.  I used to be a Mambo/Joomla fan who ended up switching to WordPress in 2005.

 

WordPress.com offers the best option for my project because it is not only free but also advertisement-free.  Therefore, all my students should have access to a site and domain of their own at no cost.

There is much written about the advantages of WordPress and WordPress.com.  I would only like to emphasize here what probably most people are saying about this free and high quality service.

Besides the fact that it WordPress.com is free and advertisement free, I strongly recommend to use WordPress.com in the ETA because of the following reasons:

• Very quick start.  It usually takes my students between one to two minutes to create a site (without content, certainly)
• Very intuitive so that students can create a site with three to five pages in thirty minutes to one hour without guidance.
• Functional and without a need to be maintained (as opposed to having a WordPress.org site you could host yourself or pay to have hosted)
• Excellent for SEO; i.e. to be found in Google and the-like searches
• Multimedia ready.  WordPress.com sites are all set to display content from Youtube, Dailymotion, etc. for videos.  For audio files or podcasts, BlipTV is a reliable free option, and is WordPress.com-ready.
• I find WordPress.com so appropriate for the task that I could not say anything negative about it except for a very little detail–I wish the mShots sites previews in this blog were disabled by default (just in case, if you want to turn it off but do not know how, go to Appearence/Extras)