• What are Weblogs? |
• Directory |
• Western Photoblog |
• Podcasts |
• RSS feeds |
• Resources

 

Resources

Starting a Weblog

Building your own weblog is much simpler than it was eight years ago. You need no HTML skills or database experience - just a computer with Web access. Third party weblog applications are very popular - you sign up, you answer some questions about how you would like your weblog to look, and you start contributing content from your vast expertise! Prices range from free (usually involving some level of host advertising) to cheap, and various levels of "under the hood" access to the weblog software are also available.

Providers include:

• Blogger (free)
• LiveJournal (free)
• MSN Spaces (free)
• AOL Journals (free)
• Typepad (USD$5/mo.)
• Wordpress (software)
• Moveable Type (software)

 

Photoblogging

Although most of the above services will allow you to embed photos in you weblog, creating a weblog based on the photos you take is a bit trickier - most services limit the amount of space your material takes up, and photos can take up a lot! But if you are careful to resize your images to appropriate dimensions and resolution for the Web, you will find the photo features that are a part of Blogger or Typepad (for examples) very flexible and attractive.

The department of Communications and Public Affairs uses Flickr, which will allow you to post up to 20MB of photos every month for free, or for USD$50/mo., you can have 2GB every month (just try to use that up!). With Flickr you can "tag" your photos with keywords to make them easier to access, or make them show up with other people's photos sharing the same tags. You can restrict access to segments of your "photostream" to friends and/or family, and you can set restrictions on whether and how your photos can be used by others. Finally, you can also have a "traditional" weblog service (such as those above) read your Flickr photos and insert them into entries without impacting the amount of space those photos require.

 

Hearing and Making Podcasts

To Listen

In July of 2005, Apple advanced the cause of the (already very popular) podcast format by adding a subscription feature to their iTunes software. If you use iTunes, make sure you are updated to version 4.9 (or later) and find the Menu item "Advanced" where you should see "Subscribe to podcast" as an option. This will give you a dialogue box to enter the address for the podcast subscription you want (the address should be on the Web page of the podcast that interests you).

If iTunes doesn't work for your MP3 player, you can try Juice (formally iPodder), the software that started the podcasting phenomenon. Details on downloading, installing, and subscribing to podcasts can be found at the Juice web site.

The University of Cincinnatti has produced a terrific online resource that details on producing podcasts in education. Visit the PoducateMe site.

 

To Create

But don't let the technical language of podcasting intimidate you - setting up your own podcast is actually quite simple, which is why thousands of people are now doing it. Try this article from about.com for details on recording your broadcast with free software, posting your resulting audio file to a Web server, and creating an RSS file to distribute so that people can subscribe to your program.

Also, Apple has a page on "How To Publish a Podcast on the iTunes Music Store" which we have found useful.

 

Reading RSS

Instead of bookmarking your favourite blogs and checking them constantly for new information, you can use an RSS "aggregator" that will keep track of your blogs and alert you to new material. RSS readers come in various forms - here are a few of the most popular ones:

• Firefox (Web browser uses Live Bookmarks)
• Thunderbird (email application supporting RSS)
• Internet Explorer
• Newz Crawler (stand alone application)
• Feed Demon (stand alone application)
• Omea Reader (stand alone application)
• Sharp Reader (stand alone application)
• Bloglines (Web page application)
• NewsGator (Web or Outlook based application)

View an assortment of Western news feeds on the Western Pageflakes Pagecast.

You can read reviews of several of these products at about.com's Web site.

 

 

 

 

 

• Starting a Weblog
• Photoblogging
• Hearing and making podcasts
• Reading RSS