JW Player

I've been using this tool for sometime now, but feel it is worth a mention here.  With all of the available platforms, operating systems, and browser versions, it is very hard to choose a player that will render your video across the board.  Until JW player was recently updated to display in html 5 format, that is.

This is one powerful player. It is open source and downloads are free if not used for commercial use.  The great thing about it is that the website offers tons of documentation, and a wizard that will generate the code you need to just plug into your website where you want the player to display.

The best thing about is that it automatically detects whether a flash player or a player in html 5 should be used.  As we all know, iOS devices can't display flash, which is what html 5 is for.  And if neither will work (which might happen in older versions of browsers), it will offer the file for download.

It sure solved many problems for me, and I highly recommend it.

 

It is available for download at http://www.longtailvideo.com.  You can choose the "viral" version of the download if you want embed/share capabilities displayed at the end.

My rating: 4.5 stars out of 5!

Dia Structure Drawing Software

Back at posting on this blog a bit more regularly.  I've been crazy busy with school, many major papers were due but I'm taking the summer off to develop some online courses.

One tool I've made a lot of use of is Dia, a freeware program that draws very cool diagrams.  It can be used for flowcharts, concept diagrams, and I even used it for a "rich picture" for one assignment.

One of the things I love about it is that if you are drawing connective arrows that are anchored to two or more boxes, and move the boxes, the arrows come with them.  You can import images, and draw just about any shape with the inclusion of an add-on, also available for free.  You can make the boxes any colour you want, which makes drawings very visually appealing.

Drawings can be saved in the native format, or exported to either jpg or png format so that they can be used in other programs.

If I were to find fault with it, it would be that entering and editing text in the boxes is a bit awkward, sometimes a bit hit and miss.   It would be nice to be able to specify default font type, alignment, font size without having to change it to what you want for every box.

It's available for download at
http://live.gnome.org/Dia

My rating: 3.5 starts out of 5! 

Audacity Audio File Editor

Today's post is about a fantastic open source software used for audio editing. I came across this software while completing a school project earlier this year. It is feature packed, and enables multiple track recording and mixing, full audio file editing, so you can cut out pauses, or the ums and ahs we all use in speech. The best part is that your output file can be opened or saved in either .mp3 format or .wav format.

Some of the other features it offers is changing the pitch, or tempo of an audio file. This is useful, for example, if you are learning a piece, and want to slow it down to hear everything without changing the pitch. Transposing is useful if you want to change the pitch of a piece of music because it may be out of your vocal range.

Some of the fun stuff includes adding echo, and gradual fade in and out, phaser, click removal and many more.

It's available for download for all platforms here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

My rating: 4.5 stars out of 5!

FitClick

Happy Labour Day everyone!

Since my last post dealt with recipe management and I'm now tempted to make more cookies and stuff, it seemed only right to share another little gem I've found which I use to keep track of my fitness level and calories consumed.

It's called "FitClick", and can be found here http://www.fitclick.com. It's a great website, free of course, and lets you keep track of not only your calorie consumption but any fitness activity you do on a given day. You can use a workout plan or diet plan provided by them, or you can create your own custom plan. It lists almost 800 exercises so that calories burned can be calculated and thousands of food items and the calories that are consumed. It's a bit slow sometimes, and I'm a bit unclear as to how to repeat the same exercise routine day after day (which is what I do), but since creating your own routine is simple it is doable (just a few too many clicks for me).

There is no software to download, it is entirely web based, and there are support forums, so it is really like a facebook site for fitness buffs. You can even enter two pictures, one before and one after.

I think it's a great service and will undoubtedly make more aware of what I'm eating if I have to record something each time.

My rating: 4 stars out of 5!

Recipe Management Software

Ok, this next review has nothing to do with web design, distance education, technology or anything like that. I was feeling nostalgic today and decided to whip up a batch of my Grandma's Oatmeal Cookies and my mom's Whipped Shortbread. I don't get much time to do it so I make a lot when I do. Even though my Grandma died many years ago, her cookies are still to die for. I made sure my mom got the recipe from her before it was gone forever. My mom is in a nursing home now, and when I started going through her stuff, one of the things I wanted to take my time with were her hundreds of recipes for Christmas cookies, cakes, and casseroles. They were in a mish mash of forms, some hand scribbled, some typed (with a typewriter, remember those?), some printed out, some newspaper clippings. They were all butter soaked, raggedly edged, and almost fell apart when I started handling them. She had at least 5 binders that were bursting at the seams full of recipes, and were in no particular order. Even though Mom knew where everything was, for someone like me trying to find that one special cookie recipe it could take awhile to find the "one" you were looking for.

In my constant quest for cool & free stuff, I was determined to find something that would facilitate organizing these recipes so that I could find things easier. I finally found something that exceeded my expectations. It is called "Recipe Center Software". I downloaded it and installed it and was immediately impressed. For a free title, it packs a huge punch. It facilitates units of measurements and auto fills them for you as you are entering your ingredients. It will automatically calculate new quantities of each ingredient should you decide to double or half your recipe. You can assign keywords to each recipe, such as "high-fibre", "seasonal", etc., and if the keyword you want isn't there, you can create your own. You can search for recipes by title or by keyword, and you can automatically add the ingredients you need for a recipe to a virtual shopping cart, so you'll know how much to buy to do your cooking or baking. You can even create your recipe with a photo if you want, so it looks like what you'd see in a cookbook.

But perhaps the coolest thing of all is that the same company that provides the software has another site that has literally thousands of recipes created by other users of the software. The database is searchable by keyword or title. You can upload your recipes to share with others or download something you want for your collection but don't already have.

How many times have you come across an interesting recipe in a magazine and kept the whole magazine lying around just for that recipe? I used to do that all the time, but now I just enter it in my recipe database and toss the magazine. I'm slowly entering all of my mom's recipes and a bunch that I have lying around so soon I won't need a cookbook anymore.

The GUI skin can be changed to one of many supplied themes, and you can print recipes in a variety of formats, including full page format, small recipe card format, or larger recipe card format. You can also create a PDF version of the recipe so you can email it.

Off I go to pig out on those great cookies, goodbye diet.... :)

You can get the software at http://recipecentersoftware.com/ and the recipes at http://www.recipecenter.com/

My rating: 4.5 stars out of 5!

Site Builders

Today's topic is about tools that can help anyone not familiar with HTML or CSS to create a great site. I only stumbled across it recently because I am preparing an e-portfolio for my Master's Degree. An e-portfolio is like an electronic resume, but can contain much more. It is now becoming almost a necessity when applying for any kind of job that requires a demonstration of competency in a number of areas. You can, and should, display any digital artifacts that you have created, which can include photos, audio files, videos, documents, powerpoint presentations and spreadsheets.

I made an attempt to create this document using the software provided by the university I attend. They actually had two different ones. I found both of them very limiting in terms of what kind of style you could use to display your work. I decided, because I was determined to produce something original to simply create a website under my own domain that would do the same thing.

It wasn't until I actually started doing research about e-portfolios that I came across this amazing service offered by, you guessed it, Google. It's called Google sites, and any other data you have stored with Google, such as in Google Docs, Picasa Web, YouTube, etc., can easily be integrated into the e-portfolio. What I liked best about it is that while they do have a number of templates for style you can choose from, the appearance is totally customizable, and they even suggest starting with one of their templates and introducing changes to their style. Any change made is immediately updated in a preview area, so you can see the effects right away.

They offer many "gadgets" that can be incorporated into the site. I was even able to incorporate this blog in it's entirety into the site, and embedded my resume and my written assignments, which are all at Google Docs into the pages as well. You can do all of this without any real HTML or CSS knowledge, and all editing is done remotely, so you can add to it and edit it from anywhere there is an internet connection. It makes creating new pages a snap, and even creates a sitemap automatically every time you do.

There is no apparent limit on the number of pages a site can have, or to the number of sites that can be created, but since it's a part of your Google account, the total amount of space for all the Google products you use probably can't exceed 7.5 GB. Even with all my uploaded documents, saved emails, and hundreds of photos stored at Picasa Web, I'm still only at 1% of the total.

There is also a way to place any site within your own domain name, but the URL you are supplied is very user friendly. I was able to create a CNAME record for my domain name at the place I host my website, and then specify the new address at Google sites. Even though it's still under construction, you can check out the progress I've made on my e-portfolio site so far at http://eportfolio.barbhall.com

Of course, google sites can be used to create any type of website, and also provides templates depending on the type of site. The e-portfolio is just one of many available.

My rating: 4.5 stars out of 5!

Web Page WYSIWYG Editors

No discussion of web editing would be complete without discussion the tools I use to create them. I really wanted a WYSIWYG (that's What You See Is What You Get) editor. There are many for HTML, but I wanted one for PHP and CSS editing as well.

For HTML, my favourite has always been Arachnophilia. I've been using it for so many years, there have been many versions of it published since I started. I tend to stay with an older version because it let's you preview your page with any web browser you want. It has an internal browser, and a powerful replace all that let's you replace one string with another in all open pages if you want to. The newer versions are written in Java, which works on any platform. I'm sticking with the 4.0 version myself, which only works on Windows. Suits my purposes just fine. Get it here at http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index_old.html

My rating: 4 stars out of 5!

For CSS, my hands down favourite is Eclipse Style. This is a very powerful editor that not only takes the guesswork out of CSS, it gives you a preview of what your style will look like, and with each attribute that is changed, the view changes too. Save it and you have your CSS elements arranged in alphabetical sequence, with all punctuation and spacing automatically done. Get it at http://www.greeneclipse.com

My rating: 4.5 stars out of 5!

Finding a PHP editor was much harder, well, a free one that is. When I finally did find one, I was pleasantly surprised to find one that had WYSIWYG. Because PHP resolves at the server, it comes bundled with an internal PHP server that you must install to be able to preview the code, if you don't happen to have one installed on your PC (most people don't). I'm not sure where the code was built, but during the install, you can select your language. I of course, selected English. About the only complaint I have about this software, is that the tool tips, and some of the components of the software are in another language - could be Spanish or Portuguese. A minor annoyance considering what else the program can do, and it wasn't enough to make it unusable. Support for hot-keys is limited to a only a few functions and is not customizable. Still pretty good though. You can get it at http://www.brothersoft.com/php-editor-download-36654.html

My rating: 3.5 stars out of 5!