If you need to create a screencast, perhaps to demonstrate an app, there are many tools out there that can help you get the job done. We’ve covered Jing and CamStudio previously here on WebWorkerDaily. If you want a really simple free solution that you can use from any browser, though, you might like to check out ScreenToaster — especially in the light of some great new features that have been announced today.
ScreenToaster is an eay-to-use application that runs as a Java applet; it works in pretty much any browser on any operating system. It can record audio from a microphone and video from a webcam, as well simultaneously recording the action on the screen. The results are high quality and you can add subtitles after you’ve finished recording. Here’s a quick screencast of ScreenToaster in action (made using ScreenToaster, naturally!) Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks to a few lucky opportunities at school, my transition from print to web was a gradual process, and a move that I made voluntarily. That’s not the case for a large number of writers currently making the same transition. The print journalism and publishing industries are in big trouble, with no sign of turning a corner anytime soon. More and more print publications are switching to the web, and finding it hard to deal with the fact that they can’t just move their existing content and keep on doing the same thing.
Likewise, writers can’t just keep producing the same kind of content for a different medium. The web, and its readers, demands a different kind of writing, delivered in a different way. It can hard to find the right mix, especially if you’ve spent your entire professional life writing one way, only to be asked to completely change that up. Here are some tips and resources to help get a handle on just what kind of change is required.
Practice Makes Perfect
It’s an old maxim, but one that doesn’t seem to lose its validity no matter how much time goes by or how many technological changes we may experience. If you want to learn something new, you need to practice it. For online writing, there are a number of different ways you could go about it.
First, there’s good ol’ rewriting. Find a source, or better yet, a number of sources of writing samples that resemble the type of working you’re aiming to do. Then try to produce a similar piece, maintaining the spirit of the original(s), but incorporating your own take. When you’re examining your sources, pay special attention to what they all share, and, when you’ve written your own version, look for things that your piece has that the others don’t. It may be a useful innovation, but maybe it’s something from print that’s extraneous to web writing. Read the rest of this entry »
Technorati has long been known as a source for ranking the authority and influence of bloggers relative to one another. In an effort to maintain its position as a go-to source for online authority ranking, Technorati has now launched The Technorati Attention Index, a list of “mainstream media” sites that bloggers link to most… when they’re not linking to other bloggers, that is.
Technorati’s Jen McLean, in announcing the launch of the Attention Index, writes:
[T]he blogosphere is not self-contained. What about bloggers’ other sources? This is something we’re asked pretty frequently. We know the independence and immediacy of the blogosphere has had a huge impact on mainstream online media. Much is made of the tension between the two – but what we’re seeing is convergence, and a symbiotic relationship. In the most recent State of the Blogosphere study, we asked bloggers about the other media that influence them. Not surprisingly blogs are in the lead at 61%, but this is followed by non-blog web content at 46%. So what is the influence of mainstream media sites in the blogosphere?
The Index, which is to be updated monthly, currently includes the likes of YouTube, MSN, and Yahoo! News near the top of the list, along with The New York Times, BBC News, and CNN.com.
In looking at the Attention Index and thinking about how it is relevant for bloggers and web workers alike, my first thought was: how is an online mainstream media source defined relative to a blog, or social media source for that matter? The Index is telling us that Google (YouTube), Microsoft (MSN), and Yahoo! (Yahoo! News) are considered mainstream media sources alongside the more traditional likes of the New York Times, BBC and CNN.
Read the rest of this entry »
AltSearchEngines has a couple of posts up that should be of interest to web workers who frequently travel. SeatGuru, a great site for planning out which airplane seat to sit in and which amenities your seat will provide, has been steadily adding site visitor reviews and more since being acquired by TripAdvisor in 2007. Meanwhile, FlightWait cuts through the complicated muck at many of the flight tracking sites and shows you just the flights in your area that are delayed.
Here’s what you’ll find at these useful travel sites.
Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I wrote about more efficient RSS reading through pruning, filtering, prioritization, keyboard shortcuts and more. After spending some time reading the comments on the post and thinking about how I use RSS, I realized how many of my feeds are outside of the typical feed used to read blogs or other news. While RSS is a great way to keep up with blogs and other news sources, it can also be used for so much more.
I try to keep updates out of email, so I push as much as possible into my RSS reader for those items that I want to keep track of. As a web worker, so much of what I do relies on being able to keep on top of new information and find the conversations that people are having about the many activities where I have some type of involvement (blog posts, organizations, my consulting services, etc.) I’ll illustrate this with a few examples.
I get many of my blog post comments as RSS feeds instead of email, especially for the high volume blogs, like WebWorkerDaily. While this is straightforward for single author blogs, it took a little work to get a feed of just the comments from my own WebWorkerDaily blog posts. I ended up writing a custom Yahoo Pipe to come up with a feed that worked for me.
I also use many vanity feeds to track mentions of the various activities that I’m involved with across multiple organizations. Most of these are complex Yahoo Pipes that track mentions across blog posts, Twitter, Flickr, video sites and more with filtering to clean up some of the noise. I even posted a two-minute video demo for how to create a quick and very simple vanity feed using Yahoo Pipes. However, vanity feeds don’t have to be complex. You can track the feed from a Twitter search and a blog search in your feed reader to find the most important mentions, without getting into more complex methods. Read the rest of this entry »
The U.K. press is reporting this morning that online networking may be damaging to your health. A few articles, including a particularly sensationalist piece by the Daily Mail, “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer,” are reporting the latest findings from every luddite’s favorite researcher. According to an article written by Dr. Aric Sigman (author of the book, “Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives”) and published in The Biologist, the journal of the Institute of Biology, increased online networking may have biological impacts. Dr. Sigman is concerned that social networks like Facebook are displacing face-to-face contact. He claims that reduced face-to-face contact could, among other things, lead to a change in the way genes work, alter hormone levels and affect the functioning of arteries. These changes could increase the risk of serious health problems including cancer, strokes and heart disease.
As web workers we spend a lot of time online using social networks, but is it potentially damaging our health?
I’m skeptical. While I believe spending excessive time online and stuck in front of my computer with no breaks might cause health problems (in particular a lack of exercise, raised risk of RSI, and back problems), I think I’ll wait to see some more concrete evidence before altering my working habits significantly.
Do you think that online networking could be hazardous to health? Share your thoughts in the comments.
In an effort to give you a slightly different perspective from what you normally get on WebWorkerDaily, we decided to talk with folks whom we feel are doing especially interesting web working jobs. We’re kicking off the first installment of this series of web worker interviews with Raven Zachary.
Zachary works with investors, startups and established companies on iPhone strategy and product development. He has directed the launch of two “Top 20″ iPhone applications: Obama ’08 (for Obama for America) and Nearby (for Platial). Raven is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference, and a contributing analyst with The 451 Group, an IT industry analyst firm and works closely with O’Reilly Media on iPhone and mobile technology-related events and coverage. Raven is regularly quoted by the press about the iPhone and is a frequent conference speaker on the topic. Read the rest of this entry »
I was recently interviewed as a “web expert” for a national women’s magazine. The reporter kept trying to get me to explain how a professional could build a static web site on the cheap to effectively “manage online reputation.”
“Web sites don’t really actively manage your online reputation,” I countered.
“Yes, but aren’t there free templates that people can use to set up cheap web sites? And what about hiring someone to create a one-page site?”
“I’m sure there are templates, but I would never recommend to a client today to build a web site like that,” I explained. “And I’d never recommend that anyone just put up a single page.”
My comments didn’t faze the writer, who was determined to present me as a “web expert” recommending cheap and easy web site building solutions for her article.
That exchange got me thinking: How did I – a former web developer – become so anti-web site? And why is a national publication promoting an article advising that businesspeople build web sites for themselves to manage their online reputation, especially when their chosen web expert was telling them, “Don’t do it!“? Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
