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.
“What are you doing?” Twitter is a micro-blogging social networking site that asks that one question, and gives you 140 characters to broadcast an answer to all your friends, family and co-workers. Intrigued by the possibilities? Here are a few guides to get you started: MasterNewMedia’s Twitter - A Beginner’s Guide , Caroline Middlebrook’s Big Juicy Twitter Guide, and Rafe Needlemen’s Newbie’s Guide to Twitter.
A wiki is a website that allows users to add and edit content collectively, as opposed to having central editorial control. In a classroom, this would mean both students and teachers could add content to the wiki website. PBwiki.com and Wikispaces are two wiki platforms specifically designed for the classroom. Learn more at MisterTeacher’s blog.
Polling is a fun way to take the pulse of a community. And if you have a webpage, blog or profile on a popular social networking site, BuzzDash makes it easy to create and distribute a your own custom poll. Polls can have from two to five answer options, can be skinned in a variety of themes, and can optionally be shared on the BuzzDash site.
Have you ever landed at a website filled with Latin-looking gibberish that started “Lorem ipsum?” “Lorum ipsum” is dummy text that has been used in the printing and typesetting industries since the sixteenth century when an unknown printer scrambled some type to make a type sample book. It is often used at web design sites to show off website templates, so that readers are not distracted by real content, or by the repetition of a phrase such as “content here, content here.” To learn more, or to generate some “lorum ispum” for your own use, visit Lipsum.com.
One of the advantages Google Spreadsheets has over a client-side spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel, is access to live data look ups. Using the GoogleLookup function, data lookup for many kinds of standard facts is simple. Standard facts include, for example, population figures for cities and countries, capitals for states and nations, and places of birth for famous people. For exact syntax and more examples see the Google Docs & Spreadsheet Help Center .
If you’ve spent any time wandering around the blogosphere (the world of web logs and social networking) you’ll have come across the term “permalink”, a concatenation of “permanent” and “link.” Because blogs post only the most recent stories on their front pages, the permalink gives you a URL where a story will always be accessible, even after it’s been pushed off the front page by more recent articles.
