I support the Murray State News

I had to add my voice. The following is my letter to Dr. Randy Dunn, Murray State president. If you haven’t read the section that started it all: http://bit.ly/dmYJDE – the special “SEXtion” is filled with stories that illustrate the need for personal responsibility, and is not in fact a salacious crumb. It also addresses topics of interest to students.

Dear Dr. Dunn,

Although I now live elsewhere, I am a proud product of Murray, Ky – a graduate of both Murray High and Murray State who frequently returns to visit my family and my husband’s (he’s also a Murray High and Murray State grad). I have also served as an undergraduate and, later, as an adult student on The Murray State News; as a staff writer and copy editor for a professional newspaper; as a copy editor for a publishing company; and as Senior Director of Content for Cincinnati’s public television station. At one point in my career I advised a high school student newspaper.

The News is a student-run newspaper by students for students. If its staff gets negative feedback from those not in their primary target audience, the staff has to learn to deal with that like any newspaper staff does. There’s really no reason for the Regents to take any action at all. I’m disturbed that they feel the need to step in. If a media outlet loses a point of distribution (I believe it was a place of business that complained in addition to some readers), then it decides how to deal with that. When news or media organizations plan these issues, they are not taking it lightly. They know they’ll get feedback. These students are big kids and they can deal with it. They better, because it’s not going to get any easier. They need to learn to make decisions and understand why they make them. And the Regents need to concentrate on what they can and need to influence.

I thank you for your well-reasoned comments to the Board of Regents at the onset of the situation. Please add my comments to the number who support the The News, its adviser, and the University as a place for learning and exchange of ideas and information, even outside the classroom. Please convey my comments either individually or aggregated with others to the the Regents at your convenience.

Best regards,
Patsy (Crawford) Carruthers
Murray State University, BA Journalism/English ’86

using YouTube captioning

I finally have tried YouTube captioning … well “finally” is perhaps overstating it, since it hasn’t around been around that long.  But nonetheless, I’ve felt the passage of time, and so I’ve taken an opportunity to try it out.

I started by using Jing (I have moved on from the free version and now pay for the $15/year subscriber level) to record a demonstration on my desktop. I then uploded that to YouTube. Since I always work from a script, it only took moments to follow YouTube’s instructions (available after uploading) to copy my script into Notepad and place appropriate breaks for pacing. After uploading, YouTube worked its behind-the-scenes magic to make it happen. Below are the results. Not perfect, but pretty good!

social networking

Blue 2.0 has been so much fun. It’s been a great way to explore some applications that have been only in my periphery. The last set of assignments have to do with social networking. I started with MySpace … I’m least famliar with that one. I’ve been on Facebook for a while and am used to it, so MySpace was a little cumbersome to use. I really can’t tell if it is not as intuitive or if I’m just an old fogey who learns slowly. I still can’t quite figure out how to post my “mood.” This is my MySpace page. My Facebook page is more robust because I joined last fall. I found Facebook to be a little more straightforward and, well, grown-up in look and feel. Groups were easy to join and to create, and I have the bonus of being able to stay in touch easily with nieces and nephews who are far cooler than I. For the final (*sniff*) activity, I had to investigate another social network, either choosing one from a list or finding one on my own. I found one called BOOMj, which is touted as a social networking group for both the elder statesmen Baby Boomers and their kid brothers and sisters, Generation Jones, the latter of which I fall into. (Apparently we of the last few Baby Boom years have our own designation. Aren’t we special?) BOOMj (man, the j for jones is even lower case; what the … ?) is very similar to fb (Facebook). EXCEPT THAT THE IMAGES AND FONTS ARE BIGGER AND CLEARER. So I set up my BOOMj page and went exploring. Most of the functionality is the same, but without the cool factor. Sorry, the cool is just not there. And the “targeted” ads kind of get on my nerves. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BIG. Okay, so I’m old and my vision’s going. What’s your point? Frankly, I have friends of all ages and far too many social networking opportunties (online and in real life) right now, so I don’t see piling BOOMj onto that and making another friends list. I do like fb quite a lot, and will continue to keep that active.

For the university crowd, fb seems a natural. There are so many students on fb already that it makes a great conduit for information and discussion. If you haven’t tried to set up a fb account, it’s worth a look. To create your own page, go to http://www.facebook.com and follow the instructions. If you use your UKy email, you’ll automatically be put into the Kentucky Network. What you reveal about yourself is up to you. If you do it, “friend” me and I’ll be happy to answer any questions.

a startup podcast

Continuing with my assignments for Blue 2.0, I’ve created a podcast. The content is not the point of this entry; rather it’s the process for a first-timer that I thought you would find most interesting. First of all, a podcast is a series of downloadable audio (or sometimes video) “episodes” that offer subscription (like RSS) as an option for automatically downloading new episodes. Some listeners will download into their mp3 player; others will keep on their desktop or laptop computer. Still others won’t subscribe but will visit a webpage to download and listen as needed. Here’s my adventure in podcasting:

I was getting a late start with the last two weeks’ assignments, so to make up for lost time I tried to make the content of the podcast assignment as easy as possible. Looking around the room, I spied my copy of Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Hmmm. First, I had to ensure that Spoon River Anthology was in the public domain. A visit to the online Gutenberg Project verified my suspicion that it was indeed.

To record my introductory episode and the subsequent readings of the epitaphs in the book, I used Audacity. Many if not most personal computers come with software to record audio, but I have always liked Audacity for the power it offers. I would suggest using software that is easy for you to use. Next … where to host it/post it? There are various resources for posting your own podcast, not the least of which is your own homepage. I decided to check out a free service. I kind of liked podbean at www.podbean.com. The instructions were easy to understand and the whole process seemed uncomplicated. Best of all for me, the web interface is almost exactly the same as it is here at WordPress. Here is a link to the resulting podcast weblog.

YouTube for Blue 2.0

For Blue 2.0, my next assignment for the weeks I let pass me by is to write a review of a YouTube video created and tagged with the word “libraries.” My favorite is this one for the Cincinnati Public Library’s 2007 Summer Reading Program. This short (30-second) video was created to advertise the library’s summer reading program for children. It plays on the Mission Impossible theme with plenty of action. Since it’s primary audience consists of adolescents and families, it strikes just the right tone of mock-seriousness and crams plenty of information (how-to, timeline, prizes) into its 30 seconds. I found it an effective use of the medium. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it was created as a television commercial first, but it could just as easily have been created as an amateur video.) I think certainly librarians would get a kick out of it, and kids would enjoy it. As a matter of fact, my 9-year-old son was watching over my shoulder and he said, “That was a great commercial!” So, not only did he like it … he also knew what it was. YouTube can be a very useful tool.

I know I posted it all over the place earlier, but here’s a link to the video my staff and I created for the Second Life opening of University of KY Island. I posted it earlier this month on YouTube. It was fairly easy to create my account and upload, though it did take longer to upload than I expected. But having it on YouTube gave me much more control over its placement and distribution than did having it on my own website or on TASC’s website, because I could embed it in invitations and my blog.

flickr’in

For my latest work on Blue 2.0, I did a little work in Flickr. It’s an easy-to-use photo site where you can share photographs … for all kinds of reasons. I have long used Kodak Gallery, which I got into by virtue of having bought a Kodak digital camera. It allows me to upload photos and share … or of course to paste on all kinds of products to purchase (those I share with also get that invitation). Flickr is similar but less commercial (in that it is not tied to a product that I have bought) and a little more like social networking (you can tag photos, comment, create groups, and so forth). It’s also a little more flip (“not only does Flickr make you smell better, it also makes you more attractive!”) and fun. I enjoyed working with Flickr, but as always it takes a while to learn the ins and outs of a new service (one that’s “new to you”).

For the purposes of this assignment, I’m supposed to share the page I created. But I think more interesting, from an earlier entry on my technology180 blog, is what the Library of Congress is doing with Flickr, calling on all of us to participate in identifying historical photos. Here we can see the potential for using Flickr for research or project development.

More to come, as I am running shamefully late on assignments … .

you … but not really

I’m in the habit of using a photo of my inner child (who was my outer child when I was about 5) for blog posts and other matters of the Web. Some people use a current photo, some use none at all or an unrelated graphic. And then there are those who create specialized avatars for themselves. This week for Blue 2.0, in addition to the photo editing I talked about in my earlier post, I also played around with avatar creation. My favorite of the sample applications was Mr. Picasso Head, which allowed me to create an avatar from Picasso-like strokes but did not seem to give me a way to save and keep my avatar. There doesn’t seem to be a way to save the resulting avatar image, except to either print and scan it (what I did) or do a screen print (alt+printscreen keys) and paste into your photo editor (which can take a little more effort to get exactly what you want). The avatar does remain in the gallery.

fun with photos

For Blue 2.0 this week I worked on fun editing applications for photos. The “artwork” here was produced using LunaPic, a free online photo editor. In an earlier entry on my other blog, technology180, I talked about Gimp, a photo editor that you download and use to crop, artistically alter and otherwise edit photos. An online editor allows you to upload a photograph to the editor (which is found at a website, in this case the LunaPic site). It was a fairly easy operation: I went to the website, uploaded the photos as directed, and chose the appropriate effect. It was fun to try the different effects (and easy to remove the ones I didn’t like), and I finally found that, for this photo of my little gal, the “Warhol effect” was the right one. There are many effects to choose from, and even other categories, such as animation, drawing and other effects. I really liked how this turned out, and after I was done, it was a simple click to download the finished product to my desktop computer’s hard drive. I highly recommend it. You can try it for yourself at http://www.lunapic.com/editor/.

Google Docs

In the continuing Blue 2.0 work toward learning about Web 2.0 applications, I’ve done some work with Google Docs. In fact, this blog entry was created in Google Docs and then posted directly to technology180. It was very easy. The interface is familiar (no different really than most word processing packages I’ve worked with), but the difference is that it is completely web-based and is accessible from any computer (requiring only a browser and Internet access). I can save it, I can share it with others, I can post it to my blog, etc. The only catch is, of course, that you must have a free Google account.

Google Docs does make it very easy to share documents for editing. Here at UKy we also have SharePoint, which is probably preferable for my work-related shared documents. Google Docs does, though, give me other options for sharing with friends, volunteer groups, and social groups.

ser.ious.ly add.ict.ive

OMG. As part of Blue 2.0 I have learned how to use del.icio.us and I am now addicted. My assignment was to create a free account and tag five websites. Okay, so I tagged 39. That doesn’t mean I have some kind of problem. I mean, I can stop at anytime. Really, I can. So, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. You can share your bookmarks with anyone, see how many other people have bookmarked that site, find lists that exhibit shared interests and find more more more cool sites. Send help, please.

My del.icio.us account is at http://del.icio.us/patsycat01. I’m embarrassed, 39 sites are all I could really add in 20 minutes. Attempting … not … to … go … back … .