A screencast is a video of a computer screen, and can be a useful tool for demonstrating software, teaching or training. I’ve used Camtasia for years, but it is expensive. I’ve also heard great things about Jing, which is available in both a free and a pro version. To learn more, Lifehacker Jason Fitzpatrick lists Five Best Screencasting Tools in his article of the same title.
Wikipedia is a collaboratively-edited encyclopedia, but only a small percentage of visitors ever contribute by editing an article. To learn how, start with this overview from Gina Trapani or the official Wikipedia Tutorial And if you think that the tutorial itself needs improvement, feel free to jump in and add your own two cents.
Although both Windows and Mac have built-in font viewers, there are quite a few utilities that do a better job, many of them free. I like Font Picker, a free download that runs on Adobe Air for both Mac and Windows. For more typography tools, read Lifehacker .
If you are using a modern browser such as Firefox 2.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, or Safari you might have noticed an orange (or blue) RSS icon in the upper right-hand corner of many websites, such as my Jokes By Kidssite. If the site owner has added the appropriate RSS autodiscovery code to their site, you can quickly add their RSS feed to your favorite feed reader by clicking on the RSS icon in the address bar. This saves you the trouble of searching through their site for an RSS link. If you have a website, learn how to add this special code to your own site at PeteFrietag.com.
If you’ve never created a personalized homepage, or custom start-up page for your browser, there are a lot to choose from. My personal favorite is iGoogle but Pageflakes looks interesting too. A custom homepages is a place to gather all the news, feeds, email, gadgets, widgets and apps that are important to you, to give you a single place to start your web sessions from. For a closer look at fourteen different homepage services, read Mashable.
Are you confused about what social media is, or why it’s being hailed as the next big thing? For starters, try Social Media in Plain English ( http://www.commoncraft.com/socialmedia ) a video from Common Craft that explains social media by telling a simple story about Scoopville, a town that is famous for ice cream. For another stab at the same topic, read Robert Scoble’s What is Social Media?.
Using free tools, Tinkernet’s Daniel Davis explains how to create an Internet radio station that all your friends can listen to. The tools needed are Winamp, Shoutcast DSP Plugin, Shoutcast Sever, and a supply of digital tunes to play. Sorry, today’s tip is for Windows users only.
One of the most popular trends of Web 2.0 design is a glossy badge with highlights and reflection. But creating them from scratch takes skill and talent. With Web 2.0 Badges , however, you can make badges for free by simply pointing and clicking. Badges can be customized with your choice of text, color, and shape.
Google Sites, a free website creation tool, is now open to everyone. Google Sites makes creating and sharing a website easy. You get single-click page creation, and don’t need to know any HTML. Sites can be private or public, and you can allow multiple people (such as all the members of a club, or students in a classroom) to edit pages and submit content.
In addition to being a handy way to keep up with updates from your favorite sites, RSS feeds also can also be added to your own website as source of fresh content. There are a variety of free tools that enable webmasters to publish third-party feeds. My favorite is Carp but it requires a bit of technical know how. An easier option is RSS Feed Reade. Be sure to check a feed’s copyright and usage restrictions before republishing it.
