Recording Narrated Slideshows with MS PhotoStory

I have been looking for a free and easy tool that instructors, and students, can use to make recorded narrated slideshow presentations from their photos. MS PhotoStory 3 is one excellent tool for this.

It is very easy to use. Download it from here but you have to verify your Window XP or Vista is legal. It import photos of any size but over 640x480 works best.

You can add special effects like panning and zooming. You can even make a whole slide show from one photo by zooming into different parts of the photo.

It generates WMV files of various specs for on computer, PDA, mobil device, playing or email sing.

If you need your slideshow in other formats, you can convert with ZamZar.com to other formats.

You can add a voice narration but must use microphone, can't import MP3 or wav files. If you need to do this, use MS Movie Maker.

One of the highlight features is that you can easily add back ground music from a MP3 or CD or you can also generate your own original (royalty free) music.

It if Free but requires Windows XP or Vista. Mac users should use Garageband.

GTD on Retro PDAs

I have been exploring a new organizing system that may help me get better organized. It is the GTD system from David Allen. In my explorations I ran across four very interesting tools that can help you organize your life and they are all free, sort of.

The first is the Hypster PDA. Click here to learn more. This started out as a joke but it works so well that many people are using it. Or click here to see how to use Hypster PDA for GTD.

Next is PocketMod. Check it out at www.pocketmod.com This is like Hypster PDA but you can use common letter sized paper.

Then there is Thinking Rock, which is an actual stand alone computer application that is open source. This software helps you to use the GTD system and it prints out reports in PocketMod formats.

For Gmail users you can configure your Gmail account to do the same thing Thinking Rock does but it is online and accessible where ever you can access your Gmail. Go to http://spaceagewasteland.com/gtd%20with%20gmail.pdf to read a white paper on how to do this.

And finally, there is a Firefox addin that even makes it easier for you to use Gmail for your GTD system. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3209

Check them out.

Oh, if you want to check out the book by David Allen about GTD click here

If you are using the GTD system, please post a comment here and let us know how it is working for you.

Rod

Free FLV Player

Here is a free FLV Player the you just run and drag and drop your FLV (Flash Video) files on top of it and it plays it for you. You can also play an FLV stream with it.

FLV is the format that Google Video, YouTube and TeacherTube use for their videos.

Check it out at http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html

Rod

Google Office Folders

Google Docs and Spreadsheet has just added a very cool new interface that allows you to set up folders to organize your documents. This would allow you to set up a folder for each of your projects, courses or whatever category you need to use. Go to http://docs.google.com/ and check it out.

As yet, there appears to still be no limit on how many documents you can post into your account and I ran across a posting in the Google Blog that they have acquired www.zenter.com, which will give them technology to add a PowerPoint like presentation tool to their Google Docs and Spreadsheets tools. Go to http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/more-sharing.html to read more about this. Google is planning to roll out the new tool this Summer. I hope they include a way to add a voice narration to the presentation files.

Podcast Recordings Available for the Future of Eduation Conference

The podcast link is now available for the MP3 recordings of the presentations from this conference hosted by George Siemans and University of Manitoba. Click here to learn more about the conference.

I really appreciate these presentations being made available through MP3 because even though it is online, I could attend any of the sessions live because I have been just too busy this week. I also find it restrictive that I need to use Elluminate to view the archive recordings. I love the MP3 recordings because then I can load them into my MP3 player and listen to them anyway. I can also share them easier.

The URL for the Podcast list in RSS is http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/foe-2007/podcast/index.xml which came up right into my Google Reader, which even offered to play them for them. Nice.

Thanks George.

Rod