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Tech Tips

CTAT's Weekly Websites

Adobe Flash Player    Flash is streaming animation for web pages. Sometimes Flash is a portion of an html web page, and sometimes a web page is made entirely of Flash. Either way, Flash requires a special free plugin (modification) to your browser before you can view Flash movies. Flash movies offer two very special web browsing experiences: very fast loading, and vector animation with interactivity. (Source: http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/f/f/flash.htm)
Animoto   Animoto seamlessly combines pictures, video clips, music, and text to make beautiful videos. Use Animoto to create your videos and then easily share them via e-mail, on a blog/website, exported to YouTube, or downloaded to a computer for use in presentations.
Audacity   Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-lingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can use Audacity to record live audio; convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs; edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files; cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together; change the speed or pitch of a recording; and more.
authorSTREAM   authorSTREAM is a free platform for sharing PowerPoint presentations on the Internet. authorSTREAM makes it easier to share your PowerPoint slideshows through blogs, websites, on YouTube and even via iPod. Tag your presentations and search for related videos as well.
Chirbit   Chirbit is a free online tool for audio sharing/micro-podcasting. It enables users to record, upload, listen to and share sound bites easily. You can also use iPhone Voice Memos to post to chirbit. You can generate RSS feeds of your posts and they can be easily shared out to sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.
CiteULike   CiteULike is a free service to help academics share, store, and organize the academic papers they are reading. Your citations are stored on the site’s server, so you can access it from any computer. You can share your library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. It’s a great tool for writing and research.
CNET   CNET is the premier destination for tech product reviews, news and price comparisons, free software downloads, daily videos, and podcasts.
Cobocards   Cobocards are virtual flashcards you can create alone or collaboratively. Track updates as you work in a team to add information, pictures, and graphs. You can update or edit content to different sets of flashcards and check the status of your knowledge. Study them online or print them out and take them with you.
Delicious   Delicious is an extremely popular social bookmarking site. Use Delicious to save and access your bookmarks from any computer with internet. Bookmark and tag (associate keywords) with the pages you want to keep. Delicious organizes all your tagged sites for easy organization. It’s great for sharing websites and seeing what your friends, family, or co-workers are bookmarking. Also find out the most popular, or commonly tagged sites, that other users have marked as useful.
Digg   Digg is the most popular social news site. Users submit stories and links they find all over the web. These submissions are voted on and users either ‘digg’ them which pushes stories to the front page, or users ‘bury’ articles they dislike to push them down the list. A wide range of new stories can be found from the most mainstream to obscure media sources.
Doodle   Doodle is a free online scheduling tool. Simply create a poll, forward the poll link to the participants, and find out when everyone is available to meet.
Drop.io   Simple real-time sharing, collaboration, and presentation. Use drop.io to privately share files such as pictures, documents, audio, video, or web links. Collaborate in real time by web, email, phone, mobile, and more. Upload up to 100 MB per drop. Create each drop in two clicks and share what you want, how you want, with whom you want.
Ed2Go   This is RSCC’s Centers for Training and Development website. They have a large inventory of online classes that last for 6 weeks each. All RSCC employees can take classes using the Credit/Non-credit Form (at no charge to you).
eSchool News   Learn about the latest breaking news on how schools are successfully integrating technology into the learning process.  Discover how schools are using technology successfully in the classroom.  Find the latest grants and funding opportunities for your school…plus much, much more!
Eyejot   Sending video messages with Eyejot is as easy as sending email. There is no software to download or install. You just need a webcam and a user account. You just login to your account, record or upload your video, and send! The recipient gets a friendly email message telling them they have a new video message, and they can watch it with a single click. No registration required.

With Eyejot's Pro account you can also watch your video messages on any mobile device that supports mobile web browsing and video, including iPhones, Treos, Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries. You can easily sync your Eyejot video messages with iTunes and access your Eyejot inbox from iTunes and your iPod, as well as other popular RSS readers.
Google Docs   Google Docs is an easy-to-use online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation editor.  It enables you to create, store and share instantly and securely, and collaborate with other online in real time. You can create new documents from scratch or upload existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. There's no software to download, and all your work is stored safely online and can be accessed from any computer.
iSpeech   Simply cut and paste the text you wish to convert to speech into the iSpeech text box and click convert text. Or, upload any supported document, website, blog, etc. and click convert file or the listen button. Supported file types and websites include: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Rich Text File, Blogs, RSS news feeds, hypertext markup language. Once your file is converted, it will auto-play. You can download it, podcast it or even embed it as an object on any webpage that supports html including MySpace, Blogger, eBay, etc.
Lovely Charts   Lovely Charts is a free online diagramming application that uses a simple and intuitive drag ‘n drop method.  Create professional looking diagrams such as flowcharts, sitemaps, organization charts, wireframes, and many more.
MERLOT   MERLOT, Media Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. It is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.
Microsoft Office Training   Brush up on your MS Office 2003 and 2007 skills with free self-paced tutorials directly from Microsoft. Choose applications within the Microsoft suite such as Access, Excel, PowerPoint,Word and more. You can pick the lessons to review or demos to watch as needed.
National Weather Service  
The National Weather Service is a component of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and is an Operating Unit of the U.S. Department of Commerce.  According to their mission statement, “The National Weather Service provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy”.
Pixlr   Pixlr is a free online image editor with an interface very similar to Photoshop.  You can upload your images to the site and edit them in your browser. It is built in Flash so you need to have Adobe Flash Player installed to use it.
Poll Daddy   With a free account from Poll Daddy you can now create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles. Create surveys and polls using custom templates or create your own. Use Poll Daddy’s in-depth reporting engine to aggregate, print and export your results.
Prezi   Create a map of your ideas, images, and videos, then show an overview and zoom to enlarge the detail. Create and perform stunning non-linear presentations with interesting relations, zooming into details, and adjusting to the time left without the need to skip slides. Sign up for a free account and get started creating a new type of presentation.
Print What You Like   Use PrintWhatYouLike.com to clean up web pages for printing. Simply enter the url of the page you want to print onto their site and click Start. You will preview your web site and get a sidebar editor that allows you to select only the content you need to print. You can remove ads or empty space and customize what you want to keep by changing the font size or type, remove the background and/or images, and use ‘Fit to Width’. If you really like this site you can always add the Bookmarklet to your internet browser toolbar just by dragging and dropping. Then when you come across a page you need to clean up before printing you just simply click the bookmark to access the editor.
Ref Desk   Since 1995, Refdesk has offered a free web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources. Find search engines, the word of the day, local weather, MapQuest, news sources, and a whole host of other helpful links.
Scrapblog
Create stunning multimedia scrapbooks you can share with your friends or family online. Print them out into beautiful hard copies if you like…perfect for personalized gifts.
Screen Toaster   ScreenToaster is a free web-based screen recorder designed to capture your screen activity, audio and webcam images in real-time then publish and share your video in blogs and websites. ScreenToaster works in all browsers and doesn't require any download so that you can use it anywhere, anytime. Check out the website to see what others are capturing too. There are specific categories such as web, e-Learning, development, and design, along with a tag cloud for you to find interesting videos.
Scribblar   Scribblar is a simple yet effective free online collaboration tool. Create a collaboration room and have access to a multiuser whiteboard, live audio, a chat room, and a place to upload images. If you choose to upgrade to ScribblarPRO, you can even integrate Scribblar seamlessly into your existing web site or blog.
Skype   Skype is an online service that enables users to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages, and share files with other Skype users. Use your webcam and see your friends and family for free Skype-to-Skype calls. You can also use your cell phone or computer to call landlines and other mobile phones for a fee or through subscription.
SlideShare   Upload and share your PowerPoint presentations and Word documents on SlideShare. It’s free and you can choose to share publicly or privately. You can also add audio to make a webinar. You can browse through the many categories to choose from and tag your own presentations to add them to the collection.
StumbleUpon   StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. Add Stumble to your internet browser toolbar to find websites suited to your personal preferences. Pages are categorized and have been explicitly recommended by either your friends or one of 6 million+ other websurfers with interests similar to you. You can choose to rate the sites you like in order to share them with your friends or build a network with like-minded people.
Tapped In   Tapped In describes itself as ‘The online workplace of an international community of education professionals. K-12 teachers, librarians, administrators, and professional development staff, as well as university faculty, students, and researchers gather here to learn, collaborate, share, and support one another. Plan and conduct learning projects with colleagues and K-12 students; participate in or lead topical discussion and groups; attend online courses offered by TPD providers; mentor other educators or find a mentor; try out new ideas in a safe, supportive environment; and find a career-long home.’
Teacher Tube   Similar to YouTube, you can upload, tag and share education oriented videos worldwide.
TED   TED is a small nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading”. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize. Go to the website to listen and watch videos from over four hundred speakers presenting a wide range of stories and emerging technologies. TED attendees include thought leaders and innovators from a surprisingly broad range of endeavor: technology, entertainment, design, science, business, global issues, philanthropy and the arts.
TypingWeb   TypingWeb is a free online typing tutor & keyboarding tutorial for typists of all ages. All skill levels can benefit from the keyboarding lessons by learning the proper typing technique and increasing productivity. Course sections include Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Specialty, News Headline Exercises, and Your Problem Keys. Take tests, play typing games, and review statistics based on your personal results.
USA Service   USA Service is a new website dedicated to providing information about ongoing community events. Find events to participate in, post an event of your own, or read the blog to see what others are doing. Sort events by category: blood drives, shelters, food banks, civic, community, health, training, environment, clean-up, and/or service.
Wetpaint   A Wetpaint website is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based around a variety of topics. Wetpaint features click-and-type page editing, easy photo/video integration, photo galleries, video galleries, page level discussion threads, customizable page templates, layout zones, tables
spell check, and more. And it’s free!
Wikipedia   A free online encyclopedia.  Enter the criteria in the search box and gain an overview of the topic with references provided.
Yuuguu   Use Yuuguu in conjunction with Skype. Enhance your web conferencing experience with these compatible applications. Yuuguu offers cross network instant messaging, instant screen sharing, real time collaboration, web conferencing and remote support.
Zamzar  
Zamzar converts your songs, videos, images and documents into different file formats.  With a free account, one can concurrently convert 5 files of up to 100MB each.  The converted files are then sent to your email within the same day.  Zamzar serves as an alternative to downloading file conversion software.
Zillow   Zillow provides free real estate information. Search homes for sale, home prices, home values, recently sold homes, mortgage rates, and more. Browse through the Home, Mortgage, Advice, Directory, and Local Info sections to find a variety of information, discussions, and tools. Also check out their blog, company news, or iPod App to gain additional real estate tidbits.

CTAT's Weekly Technology Tips*

“Build Better Internet Search Queries”

“What to do with an email attachment?”

"What is Google Docs?"

"How to set or remove your homepage in Internet Explorer."

"How do I clean up my system tray in Windows XP?"

"How do I flag emails in Outlook 2007 for follow up?"

"How can I improve my PowerPoint presentation?"

"How do I take a screen shot of my computer?"

"How can I improve my Microsoft Office 2007 skills?"

"How can I make Office 2007 documents compatible with older versions of Office?"

"How do I create secure passwords?"

"How can I compare two documents in Word 2007?"

"How can I move images around Word 2007?"

"How do I set all my windows so they have the same view?"

"How do I zoom in and out of documents and the internet?"

"How do I categorize appointments in Outlook?"

"How do I use Data Validation in Excel?"

"How do I create templates in MS Office?"

"What are the limits of Excel?"

"How do I use Outlook's 'Out of Office Assistant'?"

"How can I increase the amount of 'Frequently Used Programs' displayed in the Start Menu?"

"How do I use the Research function in Word?"

"What is Defrag and why should I run it?"

"How do I run Scan Disk?"

"How do I print my worksheet heading on each page?"

"How do I customize my mouse settings?"

"How do I add Holidays to my Outlook calendar?"

"How do I share my iTunes library?"

"What are some basic computer tips?"

"How do I easily switch between programs?"

"How do I customize the Quick Access Toolbar in Office 2007?"

"How do I insert a symbol in MS Word 2007?"

"How do I insert large audio files into PowerPoint?"

"How do I insert a drop cap in Word 2007?"

"How can I use Drag and Drop to Create Tasks, Appointments and Contacts from Existing Emails in Outlook 2007?"

"How do I update my Outlook 2007 Signatures?"

"How do I mark my Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 documents as 'Read-Only'?"

"How do I record narrartions in PowerPoint 2007?"

"How do I customize my user name and initials in Word 2007?"

"How do I view Properties on a Word 2007 document?"

 

 

* CTAT's Weekly Website/Tech Tip is intended for RSCC's Faculty and Staff only.

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