Byte of the Week

Today’s Byte is a little disjointed but I have come across some fun sites lately that I wanted to share:

TechPresident http://www.techpresident.com/
Tracks how the Presidential candidates are doing online including how often they’re mentioned on blogs, the popularity of their YouTube videos and more. I wrote more about then in the Blandin on Broadband blog earlier this week:
http://shorl.com/gresubrubyjeja

Hollywood Librarian http://www.hollywoodlibrarian.com
First, who would be cooler than the librarians? No one! This documentary tracks the job of the librarian today and debunks outdated myths. You can see a clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8kd4fC1bwo (Even the non-librarians in the crowd will like the clip!)

Also I have been talking lately to a few local, journalist/bloggers. These sites may or may not be of interest to folks outside of Minnesota – but I think they’re good examples of community news web sites:

Twin City Daily Planet http://www.tcdailyplanet.net
A mix of local stories compiled from various resources and investigative reporting. In the Twin Cities we’re seeing a lot of cuts in local newspapers so it’s nice to see someone picking up the slack.

Minnesota Monitor http://www.minnesotamonitor.com
A compilation of local bloggers covering various aspects of the community. MN Monitor helps a diverse group get into blogging so I think get diverse topics and views, which is fun.

The Northeast Beat http://www.northeastbeat.com
A nice mix of news, events, and features from a Minneapolis neighborhood.

This morning I gave a presentation to the Minneapolis Breakfast Club http://www.minneapolisbreakfastclub.com. I am a member there, each week one member gives a presentation on their industry, and this week it was my turn. The presentation, 8 ways to drive traffic on the Internet, is available here:
http://www.slideshare.net/atreacy/8-ways-to-drive-traffic-through-the-internet/  

I wanted to share the presentation and the PPT tool. I had visited this site a while back, but Jan in Wisconsin reminded me of it yesterday. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/) is a place where you can upload, view, comments on, and download presentations and slideshows for free. You can point people to it and/or embed the presentation on your site as I’ve done on the Byte blog:

I hope you find that useful – I did. Have a fun and safe Memorial Day! Ann

I’m trying to pepper the Byte blog with tidbits throughout the week – mostly focusing on real life use of Web 2.0 applications, last minute conference type announcements, or super fun successes. These won’t appear in the email newsletter – just online.

I just did a podcast with a client of mine who is a real estate agent. We talked about a recent story on 60 Minutes. It’s rarely great when your industry is featured on 60 Minutes but I think Susan does a great job distinguishing the difference between RedFin (an online real estate service provider) and traditional buyer agents. You can hear for yourself below:

powered by ODEO

I stumbled upon StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) last summer and promptly forgot all about it. I just heard a rumor about Google looking into buying it, which makes me think we’ll hear more about it in the future.

What is StumbleUpon?
It’s a toolbar for your web browser that helps you find interesting web sites based on your profile. They build your profile first by asking you to select from a list categories that would interest you. Next you can approve or disapprove of the sites you visit, which helps them recognize what you like and also helps to promote or demote web sites accordingly. You can also email web sites to friends and review web sites through StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon Groups
You can join a StumbleUpon group to meet others with similar interests. You can share your favorite sites or join an online discussion. People can see when you’re online.

If I had time to surf for stuff I think I’d really like StumbleUpon. Unfortunately it can eat up a lot of time, which is not what I need these days. I do like to review client web sites through I haven’t yet noticed that it helps bring in traffic.

Completely Unrelated
On an unrelated note for folks who might be buying flowers in the Twin Cities this weekend (May 18-21), if you mention NACAC (North American Council on Adoptable Children http://www.nacac.org) at Linder’s flower marts, they will receive 15% of the pre-tax total. I have a good friend and Byte reader who works at NACAC so offered to pass that on to folks.

Today’s Byte is for web developers. A couple of weeks ago I created a text-based drop down menu for a web site. Here it is:

www.mn150years.org (If you mouse over the navigation you’ll see the menu drop down.)

One nice thing about a text-based drop down menu is that it is easier for search engines to track. Another nice thing is that folks who use assistive technology can “read” the text based menus much better than graphics-based navigation.

I had been looking for a resource that would help me build a drop down menu for a long time, when I ran into Dynamic Drive DHTML Scripts:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/dropmenuindex.htm

The web site walks you through the process of adding (and possibly changing) the code to create the drop down menu.

It’s been a hectic week so I’m recycling an article I wrote for another blog/newsletter, Blandin on Broadband; I thought folks would find it interesting
http://blandinonbroadband.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/intro-to-flickr-video-podcast/

Last week I created my first video podcast. I did it using a resource called PodcastPeople to record the videocast. Then I posted it on YouTube, which makes it easier to embed the video into the blog. (Both PodcastPeople and YouTube are free.) We used a webcam to record the video. It was pretty easy. The hardest parts were trying to get a good shot of the computer screen and getting over the whole idea of being in a video. (You’ll notice the camera is on the computer screen, not me!)

On a similar note, my girls and I have been podcasting again. Not a lot, you can see the latest here: http://10qs.wordpress.com/. But I thought I would mention that we have been using Odeo’s online studio to record the podcasts rather than Odeo’s phone service. I wrote about the phone service a year ago or so. And then Odeo discontinued the service. Well, I finally bought a microphone at Target for $10. I plug it into my laptop and really the studio at Odeo does the rest. It’s so easy that I’m not sure my 8 year old really needs me.