Posting Podcasts and Pictures

Now that I've posted the art pictures and podcast, I can reflect on the experience of doing so.

Posting pictures is frustrating. Some of them post in a strange orientation...vertical, when they should be horizontal, for instance. I can't figure out how to rotate them, although it must be possible...other Blogger blogs I've read seem to have all of the pictures looking good. I also don't seem to have a lot of control over the layout of the pictures in the post, plus, they seem to post bottom up. Now that I know that, I can adjust how I add them in the future, but it makes me wonder why a bottom up post would be the default...unless it's because blogs are read from bottom up. (This is a little strange to me, too. Nice, I guess, when you're reading them, because you know the most recent will be at the top. But, why not go the other way with the most recent at the bottom...and just have your aggregators point you to the bottom of the blog? The programming technology must not allow that.) Anyway, it is cool to be able to have a central location to post pictures and comments/backstory about those pictures all in one location for efficient sharing.

Posting the podcasts took some additional learning on my part. I'd hoped that I'd be able to post the cast directly on this blog, but that doesn't seem to be an option with Blogger, like it may be with other hosts. I tried a Google Gadget called Podsharing, or something like that, but couldn't get it to work...in fact, it caused my blog to hangup in mid-post. In the end, I had to go back to my handy dandy Podcasting in School book, and learned that there are a number of websites that will store one's podcasts for free. I tried out the first one on the list, switchpod, and got going on it easily, uploading all the files I wanted to within a few minutes. Then, it was just a matter of posting a link to my "podcast" (which I think of as an individual file; switchpod seems to think of it as a group of any number of files with the same theme) on switchpod. Cool.

Creating the podcast itself is amazingly easy. Once I learned that I needed to use two public-source programs called Audacity and LAME to edit (Audacity) and convert to .mp3 format (LAME), it was a piece of cake. Audacity makes audio editing as easy as editing a word processing document, allowing you to "cut" or "cut and paste" audio tracks. After the file is edited as desired, LAME is a one button click within Audacity to export to mp3 format. Couldn't be easier.

Early Reflections on Blogging

After getting a good, although short, sleep, I find myself thinking about the experience of starting this blog. Since one of the goals of this blog is to capture my efforts to learn new technology, I guess I'd better write down my thoughts!

The process of setting up this blog was amazingly easy. Blogger is a free Google app. I clicked on "create blog" and then followed the set up wizard that got me up and running very quickly...10 minutes or less. Unlike some other Google apps, I wasn't required to have to have a Google email (gmail) to use Blogger. Before I created my blog, I did a bit of doodling on paper to determine the name of my blog and the types of stuff I plan to document here. Blogger will easily allow my blog to evolve over time, but it was helpful to have put some thought into it before I got going...creating the title and description are part of the set-up wizard.

I've been looking at some of my friends' blogs that are also hosted by Blogger, and a couple of them don't follow the template format...they've added very cool sidebars that I'd like on my blog. I suspect that figuring out how to change the template will take longer than 10 minutes.

I've read that people can make money blogging. This is part of Web 2.0 that I don't understand! It must be from advertising, but an economy based on web advertising feels a bit bubblish to me.

Writing, is, as always, time consuming. At least for me. The "compose" screen is not too different from a regular word processor...it even has a spell check feature! But, it's also not quite as robust as a program like Word. It seems to be particularly cumbersome to get the big picture of what a post will actually look like on the blog. Anyway, regardless of the interface, writing takes time...time that I often don't have, so I suspect that this blog will be infrequently updated after the newness of it wears off.

I wonder, too, about the safety of posting information online. I've changed some settings so that it's unlikely that people I don't know will stumble upon this blog...and, I think I could make it completely private, only showing it to approved "friends". I have the same concerns about sharing information on Facebook, LibraryThing, and Ravelry. But, I'm intentionally trying to find the line between sharing too much and sharing enough to make the tool useful. It's an experiment, because someday in the not-too-distant future, my girls will want to do all of these things, and I need to understand the benefits and the dangers.

So far, I'm finding it quite exciting to be learning about Web 2.0...and a little astonished. Where have I been that I didn't realize just how far this stuff had been developed in such a short time? Oh yeah...moderating arguments between my twins!

Karen Has a Blog? Really?

Those of you who know me well are probably astonished that I've created this blog. For someone with an engineering degree, and a general appreciater of technology from a distance, I'm a relative Luddite when it comes to adopting the stuff myself! I'm a fan of more traditional forms of recreation and communication: reading, playing outdoors, knitting, meeting people in person. Video games and even TV have never been able to catch my attention for long. And, alas, marrying someone from a different state, moving to a new state, and raising active twin daughters have pretty much determined that there will not be as much "meeting people in person" as I would prefer. All of this has happened in stages over 15 years, and I've adjusted as time went on (email is an excellent invention that I adopted without hesitation!), but still I have preferred less technologically oriented pursuits. When my daughters turned seven this past year, this all changed. Just about over night, we became owners of DS Lites, and a Wii. I got a Facebook account...and actually use it! I'm learning how to podcast for a volunteer project. And now it's time for blogs. Why? Two reasons: The first was that I had the realization that all of this stuff was here to stay and I couldn't, in good conscience, keep my kids from it. Knowing how to use this technology and participating in current popular culture will be important for their growth, development, and sense of self as they grow older. And, I'd rather have them learn how to use it appropriately from me than from their friends. Which means I'd better know how to use it myself! The second was that I have an amazingly talented friend whom I've known since about 5th grade who recently authored a book that explained the Web 2.0 technology to me...and now it's not so scary any more. In fact, the possibilities for expressing myself and keeping my multi-state family and friends in touch with my family are downright exciting. Check out Kristin Fontichairo's Podcasting at School to learn more about Web 2.o tools and get excited yourself!