Category: Technology

Flickr – institutional photo database

Flickr

Flickr is the best online photo management and sharing application. It is simple to use and relatively inexpensive. A Flickr-Pro account is only $24.95 per year. The benefits are incredible:

  • Unlimited photo uploads (20MB per photo)
  • Unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max)
  • Unlimited storage
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited photosets
  • Archiving of high-resolution original images
  • Tagging, searching, browsing and sharing
  • View count and referrer statistics
  • Compartmentalized access

Brad J. Ward has a most-excellent post up on the potential for institutions of higher education to use Flickr as an institutional photo database.

Post inspired in part by Tales from Redesignland:

Use Flickr as a web based institutional photograph database

Listen up, the RIAA sucks

Pandora

Pandora, my ultra-favorite web radio station, may be forced to shut down due to a RIAA sponsored policy by a federal panel that has skyrocketed their operating costs.

Muxtape - make a mixtape online using MP3s

In other web-music news, Muxtape, another favorite locale for web music, is currently down. The homepage sadly displays the following message:
“Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

The RIAA sucks. Seriously. Web-based radio stations “pay more for playing a song than traditional or satellite radio.”

eduStyle Award Winners

2008 eduStyle Award Winners - higher education campus web design

The Winners of the first eduStyle Awards were announced at the eduWEB Conference July 21-23 in Atlantic City, NJ. I was selected as one of this year’s judges. The eduStyle Awards categories that I was responsible for voting on were:

  • Best Home Page
  • Best Redesign
  • Best Use of Photography
  • Best Prospective/Future Students or Admissions
  • Best Online Tour or Maps

I’m not going to post my confidential judge’s comments…However, I’m glad that the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, Biola University, University of Notre Dame, Boston University and the frequently borrowed Brown University were among the award winners. Congratulations!

A video of the award ceremony is after the cut.

Continue reading eduStyle Award Winners

Strands

Strands Beta
Strands is a web-based social media aggregator with a twist. Strands is currently in beta (I have 2 invites, if you want one let me know) and it currently pulls in my personal feeds from Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, Facebook, this blog, and a few other sites.

“Strands helps people discover new things from people they care about. Strands gives users the ability to record their activities and keep track of their friends across multiple social networks and services. Based on your aggregated activities, Strands enables discovery of new things based on your own behaviors as well as those of your friends and influencers.”

Strands (the company) also happens to be located in Corvallis, Oregon! They sent me that spiffy t-shirt after I sent them an email…the site is still in beta so there are definitely still some issues, but overall, it looks promising.

Student Affairs Technology

The following videos were not created specifically for student affairs practitioners. However, due to their extreme awesomeness, I feel that they are must-watch for anyone who is interested in technology and student affairs.

What is a podcast?

What is social media?

What is Twitter?

Continue reading Student Affairs Technology

Brown University’s design stolen again

Brown University Homepage Design
It would seem that Brown University’s homepage design has more than its fair share of fans. Brown’s website design has already been ripped off by UAH. The College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University has decided to fully implement Brown University’s code and call it their own.

Unbelievable.
Ohio State University rips off Brown University homepage design and code

Found within the CSS of the OSU site:
“Why did Pentagram design this at such a small width?”

Pentagram Inc., in collaboration with Brown University’s Public Affairs and University Relation’s staff, created the BU homepage design. Why is a comment about Pentagram Inc. in the CSS file for the OSU website? Because the OSU site “borrowed” the BU code. Verbatim!

Tip via eduStyle.

Pilfered design + code

This came first: Brown University
Brown University Homepage Web Design

Then this showed up: The University of Alabama in Huntsville
The University of Alabama in Huntsville Borrowed Web Design

“The copyright for this material rests with Pentagram Inc and Brown University. You may not alter this information, repost or sell it without prior permission.”

Umm. I don’t think that the University of Alabama in Huntsville got the message. Jump to UWebD and eduStyle for additional commentary. This is definitely more than just a case of borrowed design ideas, colors, grid, etc. Brown’s stylesheet is named “master.css”. UAH’s is named “master2.css.” The HTML looks like a badly synthesized genetic clone.

I’m a huge fan of Brown University’s home page design. It’s too bad that UAH took their fandom a bit too far.

PS: Brown’s site is so hip that it is even prepped and ready for iPhones! I found this little gem in their source code: sets width for iphones.

Screen Reader + Website Accessibility

I remember the first time I closed my eyes, put on a pair of headphones and browsed the web using a screen reader. It was extremely challenging. Images without ALT attributes, Flash objects, and poorly coded websites left me feeling extremely frustrated and gave me even more empathy for web users with visual impairments. I think all website designers/coders should experience what it’s like to browse the web using a screen reader. This video shows Aaron Cannon, blind since birth, browsing a website using a screen reader.

WordCamp Portland

WordCamp Portland Oregon
Save the date; WordCamp Portland will be held on September 27th, 2008 at CubeSpace.

WordCamp is a gathering of WordPress folks. Whether you consider yourself an enthusiast, developer, designer, marketer, or writer, WordCamp is for you. The event organizers are currently working out the details of the conference format and schedule; stay tuned to the WordCamp Portland site for more information.

I hope to attend the Portland, Oregon WordCamp. I will proudly post at WordCamp Portland on my WordPress-powered blog while wearing my WordPress t-shirt whilst drinking java out of my WordPress mug :-)

WordPress is the best blogging application of all time

via Silicon Florist

Bloglines is offline

Bloglines is temporarily down

It is moments like this when I contemplate using an RSS client instead of a web-based service like Bloglines. “Bloglines is down temporarily. We will be back shortly.” They have been offline for quite a while now. Bloglines is not yet at the same level of unavailability as Twitter, but my RSS feeds are far more important to me than my tweets. Bloglines’ “Twister on drugs” background image is fun to look at, but only for a couple reloads.