pafa.net Rotating Header Image

Miscellaneous

Friday Picks: May 4, 2012

May 4th, 2012
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

Friday Photos : Clouds Obviously this isn’t really going to be a weekly sort of thing. You’d think I could manage that? But I’m barely managing to keep up with the weekly “Friday Photos” group on flickr. So let’s cheat a bit and make that my first pick this week.

  • Friday Photos 2012: Do you like photography. Interested in seeing photos from great folks all over the world? And you know you’ll never be able to keep up with the Photo-a-Day challenges? Then a weekly challenge might be just the ticket. Sarah Barker, a librarian from Wales, started this project. Each week a new topic is given. Post a photo to the group and you’ll have the lovely feeling of having accomplished something. This week was clouds, next week windows. Fun to see lots of creative interpretations.
  • Present.Me: Such a great tool. Upload your slide deck, turn on your webcam and microphone, record. Easy peasy. Voila, you have an embeddable presentation with your slides and your lovely face right next to them. Almost like a live presentation. Camera shy? Just record the audio. Audio shy? You can just upload slides. Free account: (more…)

Friday Picks: April 14, 2012

Apr 12th, 2012
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
2 comments

More odds and ends. Some new, some not.

  • New photo editor for Flickr - With Google having gobble up the Picnik photo editor, Flickr has turned to Aviary for photo-editing features.
  • Digging Into WordPress - New printed edition updated for WP 3.3 now available. I love this book, it’s chock full of WordPress tips and and information. I also love their sales model –  buy the printed book and get all future updated PDF versions for free. Same goes for buying  just the PDF version. (The link is an affiliate link, I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t really recommend the book though)
  • Learn HTML & CSS – Free, painless AND fun! The amazing Codeacademy hits another one out of the ballpark. And when you finish that, start their Javascript course. I hear there’s a future for people who know how to code??
  • Send to Dropbox  - Not a new tool, but one that I was reminded of this week and find quite handy. Use it to set up an email address so you can email attachments to your Dropbox. I use it in tandem with a WordPress backup plugin that runs once a week and sends the backup file to my Dropbox account.
  • Slideshare and Google+ – better together? I haven’t tried this yet, have you? Sounds like a great idea. Present your slides in realtime and interact with others in your hangout. Mini-webinars?
Whoops – it’s Thursday not Friday!

 

 

 

Friday Picks: March 30, 2012

Mar 30th, 2012
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

Some interesting things I’ve run across this week.

Trying to restart my “New & Not So New” posts that I used to do!

‘New Librarianship’ Pinterest Boards -  Contest that was run by the Syracuse iSchool. Contestants created pinterest boards reflecting their vision of the future of librarianship.  Voting has ended, but take some time to view the top 10 finalists. Fascinating stuff!  (via: Tame The Web)

How Librarians Can Successfully Navigate the 7 Cs of Social Media – a quick read with simple tips for success when using social media in your library.  My favorite tip? #4. Conversation: Always remember the “social” in social media. By Joe Walsh, Social Media Manager, Library Connect. (via: Rebekkah Smith Aldrich)

What about me? A picture of my digital life – Connect your twitter and facebook accounts and get a personalized infographic of the types of things you’re doing & saying in those spaces. Richard Byrne (Free Tech for Teachers) (more…)

Pinterest and WordPress

Mar 7th, 2012
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post
Embed Pinterest Pin

Embedding a Pinterest Pin

When I searched the WordPress plugin directory for “Pinterest” 2 weeks ago, I found 20 plugins. Today there are nearly 50.  These plugins add PinIt buttons to your posts and pages, provide options for displaying pins in sidebar widgets and also offer ways to block people from pinning your content.

Of course I wanted to test out a few plugins.

SHARING BUTTONS: I’ve added the Sharing is Caring plugin to replace the sharing buttons I had been using, which didn’t seem to be working anymore in any case.   Of course, for the Pinterest button to serve any purpose, you need images in your posts! Even so, a pinner might get the message “sorry, we can’t see any big images…” For more info on that error, check out this Quora post.

EMBEDDING BOARDS: Next I wanted find ways to show pins on my site. Pinterest doesn’t yet have a way to embed a board on a page and there aren’t any magic plugins for that. So you could take a screenshot and link back to your board, but obviously it won’t update. However, embedding individual pins is quite easy . When viewing any Pin there is an embed option to the right. Change the size to suit your needs, copy and paste, voila.

SIDEBAR WIDGETS: I also added the Pinterest RSS Widget plugin to add a display of my latest pins to the (already overcrowded) sidebar of my site. It quite easy and straightforward to use. You don’t need your full RSS feed to make that widget work, but if you want it for other reasons, it takes this form:  http://pinterest.com/yourusername/feed.rss

I’ll be on the lookout for more Pinterest addons!

 

 

Busy!

Jan 30th, 2012
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post
Like Spinning Plates by Jameson42, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  Jameson42 

At this time last year, I had lots of training travel plans for the winter months, all of which came to an abrupt halt when I broke my knee in February. Even with that in the back of my head, I didn’t really plan to stay put this winter.  But it turns out I am and that’s a good thing, because I have a ton of projects on the go.

Here’s what I’m working on and what I’ll probably be writing about during this week of Library Day in the Life.

  • WordPress eCourse for ALA TechSource – Amanda Goodman and I put together a 6 week class that filled up quickly. This class is now in week 3 and has over 100 students. We’re hoping to schedule a repeat later in the year for people on the waiting list.
  • Cool Tools for Schools – This is a “23 Things/Learning 2.0” course running over about 8 months. (more…)

Colors with Storify WordPress plugin

Jan 12th, 2012
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

One more plugin to test today. This one is the Storify plugin plugin. I think Storify is a great curation tool and it’s one of the first ones that I tested out.  The fexibility of being able to add notes and commentary interspersed with the embedded content from other sites makes it a great choice for students working on research projects.

The plugin adds a Storify button to the editing toolbar to easily insert a story into a post. But this is pretty easy to do without the plugin, just copy and paste from the Storify site to your WordPress post/page.

The plugin also adds a panel where you can build a new story from within your WordPress dashboard. If you spend all day in your WordPress dashboard this might be handy. Personally, I’d rather use the Storify bookmarklet in my browser toolbar to add content to my stories. And with them already embedded on a page/post, the content will just update itself anyways.

Tell me what I’m missing? I’d love to hear how people are incorporating this into their workflow?  I do love that Storify listened to folks who wanted this plugin though!

Photos from my flickr feed – to test the Storify plugin for WordPress

(And this is my last #blog12daysxmas post! Hooray, I did it, a week late, but done!)

(more…)

← Earlier Posts