#27 Photobucket

I started a photobucket account last year because I was told that it was a far more effective (and cheaper) way to upload photos to ebay. (it is)


I used it for a while and then promptly forgot about it.

Revisiting it today I thought I'd set up a new account for the purpose of this thing but that probably I'd continue to use flickr for my online photo needs. Now I'm not so sure.

Playing with photobucket again today I really liked the ease of photo handling and the range of visual media that can be accessed and stored.

However I found the ads very intrusive. I accept that the trade off for free access is ads - I just found the ones on photobucket to be very annoying and far more in-your-face than flickr.

Is it enough to stop me converting to Photobucket? Maybe.

Stay tuned as photobucket and flickr go head to head for the chance to host my photos.

#26 Widget, widget, who's got the widget (wicked!)

Courtesy of yourminis I have added a calendar and a clock to my blog. (I desperately wanted to add 'Dilbert' cartoons but I couldn't work out howto resize them so that the whole strip was visible, and not just the first frame and a half - memo to self - homework for weekend)

Late breaking news - I couldn't help myself - I had to add a 'to do' list.

There was a huge range of widgets I could have added (and may still, see comment above) such as 'quote of the day', the weather channel, a 'to do' list and many, many, more.

For a while there this evening my blog was in danger of being 'widgetized' to within an inch of it's life - as I added widget after widget before deciding that widgets should be added in moderation so i settled on clock and calendar, with cartoon and to do list sitting on the interchange bench.

Widgets such as these would be very effective on a library blog (especially weather, news, clocks etc.) as they could localise and indivdualise a web presence (be it a blog or a social network, or even the web page)

#25 Letterpop (My boy Lollipop)

I've created a newsletter on Letterpop. it was fairly easy, although once I'd uploaded and image and dragged it into my newsletter, I couldn't work out how to delete just the image. I ended up trashing the whole newsletter and starting again.

The free version of letterpop only allows you to upload 25 images - which probably wouldn't be enough in a year - a library newsletter would most likely be monthly which would limit you to 2 or 3 piccies per issue - which isn't many because I would want to illustrate a newsletter with piccies of activities, 3 just wouldn't be enough...

If you didn't have ms word then letterpop would be useful - I think it could replace ms publisher in the newsletter stakes but I didn't find it any easier to use than the newsletter template in word.

#24 Zamzar (Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher)

Way back in #7 I mentioned my then favourite website zamzar - it's a file conversion site and I'd been using it to convert old clarisworks and msworks files into formats my pc could understand.

Well three months on and still zamzar is one of my favourite online tools only now I'm using it to convert youtube videos to ipod (mp4) which I can then watch on my ipod (although why I would want to watch them on a 2 cm screen is a mystery to everyone, me included.) But the point is - I can!

After seeing Billy Elliot the other week I've been downloading clips from the previews and rehearsals and watching them on the ipod.

I've also experimented (so far semi-successfully) with converting .bmp photos to .jpg (some have worked, some haven't).

With zamzar you upload the file (or link) you want converted to zamzar, and specify the conversion format. Zamzar then emails you a link to the converted file which can then be downloaded.

The major drawback to the free version of zamzar is that the download link only stays active for 24 hours so you need to be ready (it can sometimes take a little while for the email to arrive)

Still zamzar rocks!

In a library sense I've already recommended zamzar to patrons who want to edit and print a document format not supported on the library pcs (eg: pdf to word, mac to microsoft).

It's an added platform that gives us and our patrons more flexibility when wanting to use our pcs as the number of file formats supported increases. In a 'back room' sense no more queueing up to use the 'publisher' pc - we can convert the publisher file to another format to have a look at it.