Academic Tech Tips

Now that you’ve got your latest vacation photos stored on your computer, your next question might be, “how can I share these photos with everyone?” Emailing photos has its limitations, especially if you have many pictures.  With Flickr, an online photo-sharing application, you can upload your photos to the site and create Groups to control who can access the photos.  Not only can the members of your group view your photos, they can make comments and add notes too.  With Flickr, it’s easy to manage your pictures and share them with anyone you’d like -– and did we mention it’s free?   Getting Started If you already have a Yahoo account, you can login to Flickr with the same username and password; if not you’ll need to take a minute to sign-up.

Groups

Once you login, you’ll be instructed to upload your photos.  Click on the Groups tab to create a group.

Groups can be Public, Public (Invitation only), and Private.  Be sure to read the specifications for each type of group before you create one.  Private groups are helpful for sharing with family, friends, or colleagues; keep in mind that once you make a group private it cannot be made public later.  You may want to consider making a group public if you’d like to share some of your favorite shots with the world.  Check Flickr’s Group Guidelines and Group FAQ for more tips on managing groups.

If you have a digital camera then you probably have hundreds of digital photos stored on your computer. You may use software that allows you to organize your photos into albums on your computer or maybe you use an online photo-sharing application such as Flickr or Google’s Picasa. Let’s say you want to take your photo-sharing capabilities even further and create customized slideshows that you can easily distribute online. With Slideroll, you can create video-like slideshows that you can share via email or post to your website or blog. With a free Slideroll account, you can add music to your slideshows and import photos from your Flickr account; plus Slideroll produces slideshows in the Flash video format, which can be played in the most common Web browsers. Here are a few pointers to help get you started with using Slideroll.

Getting Started with Slideroll

In order to access Slideroll’s features, you will need to create a free account. Once you login, you will have the option to upload photos to your gallery or you can click on Slideshow Creator to start creating a slideshow.

In the Slideshow Creator, you can add photos, text slides, and choose music if desired. Once you are finished putting your slideshow together, you will get a link to your slideshow that you can share via email or you may embed a code to display your slideshow on your website. If you create a Slideroll slideshow for a course you can include your link in a PowerPoint presentation or Blackboard course.

The concept of Web browsing has been taken to a whole new level with the social website, Stumble Upon.  The most common method of finding new information on the Web is to search for specific items in a search engine such as Google or Ask.com. Stumble Upon enables users to “channel surf” to discover websites, videos, pictures and more based on their interests. By clicking on a button in your browser’s Stumble Upon toolbar, you will be randomly directed to websites that adhere to the interests you specify.  With Stumble Upon, you can tag webpages as well as rate sites the sites you visit with a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” which will indicate whether or not you would like to see the site again when you “Stumble.”  You can also store your Favorites online, share sites with friends and meet people with similar interests. 

How to Get Started When you visit the Stumble Upon website you will be prompted to set up an account, which entails providing your email address and selecting a user name.  Once you sign up you will need to select some of your interests then install the Stumble Upon toolbar in Firefox or Internet Explorer.  You can login to Stumble Upon from any computer to access your account.  Keep in mind that you will need to install the toolbar on every computer you use to access all of the features. 

Once you install the toolbar, you can simply click the Stumble button to start channel surfing.  Remember to assign the sites you like with a “thumbs up” to save them to your Favorites.  You may also add sites you like that are not listed yet on Stumble Upon by clicking on the “thumbs up” button when you visit the site.  If you are the discoverer of a website, you will be prompted to tag the site based on a category topic so other users will find the site in a Stumble search. You can also review and recommend the sites you visit. Even if you are not interested in the social networking aspect of Stumble Upon, “stumbling” from site to site is a great way to unearth resources you may have never found otherwise.