Podcast: Introduction to Podcasting March 26, 2009
Posted by Steve Boneham in : podcasting, HowTo, social media, Training, JISC , add a comment
A brief introduction to podcasting and the training offered by Netskills recorded for JISC RSC-Eastern. It’s always painful to listen to yourself, but I hope it’s less painful for you!
Listen to more podcasts from JISC RSC Eastern
photo credit: gpl via stock.xchng
Survival of the Twittist February 11, 2009
Posted by Steve Boneham in : Twitter, social media, science , add a comment
Charles Darwin has always been a hero of mine (I was a science geek before I became a tech geek), so it seems fitting to post something relevant to his work on the great man’s 200th birthday. So, here’s a quick take on how natural selection could apply to Twitter.
In The Origin of Species, Darwin defined the characteristics of the environment that enable natural selection to drive evolution. With a little imagination, we can find similar processes at work in Twitter.
Excess production: Just as far more organisms are born than go on to reproduce, so far more tweets are written than are ever read.
Variation: Although a tweet is only 140 characters, that’s more than enough to allow for an almost infinite variation in meaning (phenotype). Many tweets are trivial and go unnoticed, but some have certain traits that mean they get attention.
Competition: Each tweet must compete to be heard amongst the noise of so many others. As most of us can only follow a limited number of people and read limited number of tweets, we tend to be selective in what we read.
Selection: A tweet with traits that are well suited to their environment - that is appeal to the followers of the person that created it - are successful. They get read. Successful tweets give feedback to the person that created it in the form of@replies, clicks on links, retweets and new followers. As a result, subsequent tweets are more likely to have similar traits, allowing for cumalative selection. Unlike the genetic world where we have to swap DNA to pass on traits, in the Twittersphere traits can be adopted and spread quickly through cultural evolution (e.g. #hashtags).
Time: I’m sure I’m not alone in spending what seems to be an enormous amount of time on Twitter. If we extrapolate from (Stephen) Fry’s Law of Digital Time, a second in twitter could equate to years in the real world, so there’s ample time for selection to operate.
Changing environment: Traits that are successful now almost certainly won’t be in the future, so remember, it’s not the strongest or most intelligent that survive, it is those that are the most adaptable to change.
And if you want to know what the great man would make of this, or anything else, you could always follow Charles Darwin on Twitter.
Disclaimer: Unlike Darwin’s work, this post wasn’t informed by years of painstaking observation and reflection. Nor did I face the anguish of sharing a great truth despite it undermining my own beliefs. But then, that’s what made Darwin a truely great scientist and me an ex-scientist who writes stuff like this!
Twitter badge without @replies January 13, 2009
Posted by Steve Boneham in : Twitter, HowTo, social media, RSS , 16commentsI’m a recent convert to Twitter and was looking for a way to display my tweets elsewhere on the web - such as on the sidebar of this blog. However, I wasn’t happy with the standard Twitter badge, which mixes tweets on ‘What I’m doing’ with ‘@replies’ intended for individuals. Don’t get me wrong, I value @replies, I just didn’t want them on my badge. If you don’t either, here’s how to filter them out with Yahoo Pipes.
Shortcut: copy the pipe
If you don’t want to spend time building your own pipe, all you need to do is create an account, copy the pipe and point it at your twitterstream.
How it works
I used Pipes as it provides a simple way to manipulate RSS feeds. If you want to know more about how this works, read on.
In the Twitter RSS feed, each item is prefixed with your username. That’s useful when you’re mixed in with tweets from other Twitter users, but in a badge where all the tweets are from you, it’s a bit redundant. So we’ll strip that out too.If you ‘re familiar with pipes, then the screenshot below shows you what you’re after. The notes following this give more detailed instructions.
Creating the pipe
- Add pipe Sources > ‘Fetch Site Feed’
- Enter URL of your Twitter account
- Add pipe Operators > ‘Loop’ and connect this to the Fetch Site Feed pipe
- Add pipe String > ‘String Replace‘ within the Loop pipe (where it says Add module/pipe…)
- Set the ‘For Each’ to ‘item.title’
- Set ‘first’ to your twitter username followed by : (e.g. sboneham:)
- Set assign results to ‘item.title’
- Add pipe Operators > Filter and connect to the Loop pipe
- Set item.title ‘Matches regex’
- Set value to ^ @ (space between them is required)
- Connect Filter pipe to Pipe Output
You should now see a preview of your filtered twitterfeed at the bottom of the Pipes window. This should not contain any of your @replies and your username should have been removed too.
Using the pipe
You can now use this feed to create your Twitter badge as follows:
- Save your pipe and return to the My Pipes page
- Click ‘View Results’ to see your pipe output
- From the menu ‘More options’ select ‘Get as RSS’
- Use the URL of this feed to create your badge
Credits
This pipe is a simplified version of the Twitter Feed without Replies pipe created by Emil S
PowerPoint smoke and mirrors December 17, 2008
Posted by Steve Boneham in : HowTo, presentation , 1 comment so far
Ever wanted to have your speakers notes on screen, but your nice image-rich, bullet-free slides on the projector? Here’s a quick HowTo on setting up PowerPoint to use multiple displays using the built in Presenter View.
I’m assuming PowerPoint users are on laptop PCs, so you lucky Keynote users may have to find your own way to do this!
First, you need to set your computer to use an Extended Display as follows.
- Right-click on the desktop and select Properties.
- On the Settings tab click the monitor ‘2′
- Check the “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor” box
- Click OK to save your settings
Now go to PowerPoint and do the following:
- Select SlideShow > Set Up Show
- Under Multiple Monitors select Display slide show on Monitor 2
- Check Show Presenter View
- Click OK to save your settings
Open your slideshow and you should now see a “Presenter View” onscreen (as below) and your slides on the projector.
photo credit: ReubenInStt via Flickr
For Pod’s Sake: making better podcasts December 2, 2008
Posted by Steve Boneham in : podcasting, HowTo, projects, social media , 1 comment so farI recently developed a podcasting workshop for Netskills that’s turned out to be one of our most popular events and certainly my favourite to run (thanks for the funding Lawrie!). So, based on what I learnt from putting this workshop together, here are a few tips for anyone thinking of producing a podcast.
Understand the medium: When done well, podcasting is engaging, entertaining and educational. However, podcast directories are full of podcasts that only a mother could love. So, how do you keep it interesting?
- Plan before you produce: Your mind will be elsewhere when recording, so have an outline to keep you on track. Some people script, but if you do, be careful not to sound scripted. You can’t script interviews, but you can still plan for them.
Respect your audience: It takes time to make a good podcast, but it takes time to listen to one too. Audio is listened to in real time, so let people know what’s coming and why it’s worth hanging around. Your listeners may be mobile, distracted and time-shifting, so don’t ask too much of them.- Be conversational: Don’t think of it as broadcasting to the masses, but more like having a chat with a friend. That forces you to be less formal and more personal, which works well in this medium
- Add detail: Your words help listeners create images in their minds, so give them enough detail to make that image interesting as well as accurate.
Get the right equipment: You don’t need to a sound engineer to produce a professional sounding podcast, but knowing a bit about the hardware will help you get a good, clean signal that your listeners will thank you for:
- A decent mic: Forget the one that came with your PC. For under £100 you can get one that will make you sound like a pro. We use a Samson C03-U condenser mic with USB output - plug this into a laptop and you have a portable studio.
- Another decent mic: Condenser mics are no good for field work as they’re too sensitive to handling noise. Instead, get a
decent dynamic mic such as a Shure SM58. We also use an Edirol R09-HR recorder, which is lightweight enough to carry around, but gives surprisingly good results. - Mixer: you might not need one at first, but as your show grows you’ll find their multiple high quality (XLR) inputs and control over each channel essential.
- Headphones: Our brains tune out background noise, but mics don’t, so use a good set of headphones to monitor your signal.
Present like a Pro: The best equipment won’t help you if you can’t use it to communicate effectively.
- Get in the zone: Find the positioning that gives the best sound for your mic. Too far away, and you’ll sound tinny; too close and you risk popping the mic and picking up some unpleasant mouth sounds. As a rule, place the mic about a hands width from your mouth and slightly off to one side.
- Be natural: Talking into a mic can seem strange at first, but the more you do it the easier it gets. A common mistake is to talk too quickly, so be aware of your pace. Watch the ‘erm…’ count, but don’t let it put you off - you can edit them out later.
- Adopt an on air persona: This might mean being a bit more OTT than you are in real life, but a little over-emphasis in the right places is very effective.
- Listen to you: This might come as a shock, but yes, you really do sound like that! Once you come to terms with this, you’ll find it’s easier to be natural and to make the most of your voice.
That’s a wrap: But the work doesn’t stop at recording. The post-take edit is where you can tweak your content with tools like Audacity to make it really sparkle.
Cut paste: Audio software makes it easy to cut, copy, paste & resequence your audio as well as add extra tracks- Signal processing: Equalisation, compression and normalisation can really give your audio warmth and presence. But use each in moderation.
Get it out there: Of course, the final step - publishing your polished podcast - is the most important, but is usually the most simple. It certainly is if you use a free podcast hosting service like Podomatic, to which you just upload your content via a set of forms and through the magic of RSS, your podcast will find its way to your listeners. There are of course lots of ways to host podcasts, but that’s another post.
If you want to know more about podasting, check out the links below, get in touch or come on one of our workshops!
- My podcasting bookmarks on delicious
- Netskills podcasting workshop
- Podcasts by workshop participants
I’m aware that it’s a little ironic to blog about podcasting, so I will eat my own dogfood and do a podcast version of this post soon.
(photo credits: All images downloaded from stock.xchng)
Put that in your Yahoo pipe and smoke it! November 26, 2008
Posted by Steve Boneham in : HowTo, projects, RSS, JISC , 1 comment so far
I’m no web programmer (I don’t even have a beard), but I do appreciate the clever things they do that with a little hacking can make me look clever too! From JavaScript libraries to netvibes widgets and open-source Flash video players, you can go a long way without really programming. But when recently I needed to aggregate some RSS feeds, then filter, truncate and modify them, I thought I was in for some long nights of coding. That’s until I found out how easy this stuff is with Yahoo Pipes.
Pipes lets you mashup and manipulate web content through a simple graphical interface. So rather than writing lines of code, you simply drag & drop blocks from a code library and change a few parameters [see image above or view the pipe].
Pipes has been around a while, but the first time I found a need to use it in anger was for the JISC-IRET support project I’m working on. We needed a way to syndicate content from each of the project blogs to a portal we were building on Netvibes. It’s easy to add each blog feed individually, but we felt that a ‘latest from the projects’ block would be good for the homepage and blog sidebars.
To create this, what we needed to do was:
- Combine feeds from six blogs in various flavours of RSS/Atom
- Truncate feeds so there was only one post from each blog
- Modify post titles to include the name of the blog it came from
- Sort posts in descending date order
It was surprisingly easy to apply this logic in Pipes. Most of the blocks are self-explanatory. For example, ‘FetchFeed’ fetches a feed, ‘Truncate feed after’ truncates after a set number of posts - you get the idea. The only complicated block was Regex, which takes the title of a post as a string and appends the name of the blog to it.
Once you’ve designed your pipe, publishing it creates a public web page with an RSS feed which you can then syndicate elsewhere - such as to the JISC-IRET blog and JISC-IRET portal.
I’m sure some of my more bearded friends will view this crude attempt at web programming with disdain, but perhaps what they should be moer worried about is that services such as Yahoo Pipes might just turn some ordinary web users into wanabee programmers who can do things for themselves.
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