Using Netvibes

Netvibes is a great personal start page. One feature I had not noticed before is the tabs feature. Using the tabs feature, I now have the following tabs set up:

1. Productivity: GMail checker, GMail Calendar, Laptop Lounge Calendar (via Google Calendar..I love that you can subscribe to iCal calendars using Google Calendar).
2. News: headlines from MSNB, CNN
3. Social Web: the latest stories on Digg and del.icio.us.
4. Bookmarks: all of my bookmarks on del.icio.us
5. Photos: the RSS feed for my photos (mostly my daughter) at Flickr, also Flickr memories, a good feed of pictures I can use for wallpaper.
6. Weather: five week forecast of weather in Tampa
7. Podcasts: the top 2 or 3 podcasts I listen to. I discovered that you can even play them using an embeded player with Netvibes, so no need to open up a separate window, etc.

Netvibes is a great way to have all the information you need in one place (page). The only other window I need to have open is Pandora, currently my favorite website.

What’s new on Laptop Lounge website

The support section has been updated with four new software guides:

• iMovie 06
• iPhoto 06
• Garageband: Music
• Garegeband: Podcasting

You can subscribe to these guides in iTunes (yes, iTunes supports PDFs).  The “Subscribe with iTunes” button is also on our podcast page.  You can use the subscribe button to subscribe to two feeds: one for weekly audio podcasts, and one for screencasts (screen recordings).

Screencasts have been added for the following topics:

• the Dock
• the Finder
• Spotlight
• Expose

If you’re new to the Mac OS, these screencasts should be a good introduction.

ImageWell

ImageWell is a free image editor for the Mac.

From their website:

ImageWell is the popular image editing software for quick manipulation and upload to an iDisk (.mac account), FTP server or other web server. Whether you are adding images to your documents, editing offline images, or posting photos to the web for others to see, ImageWell will do the work for you. Drag images in and out of the well, resize, crop, shape, rotate and add a watermark, border, or drop shadow. No need to launch multiple applications to add text, labels, arrows, circles and squares to your image. Add a thought cloud or talking balloon. A few simple clicks, copy, paste, and send them off to your web server instantly. At the click of a button the image is sent and a handy URL is copied to the clipboard. Just like that, it doesn’t get any easier!

I used ImageWell quite a bit this summer to edit screenshots for the Tech-Ease website. I used ImageWell to place arrows, callouts and text boxes on my screenshots (which I took with either the keyboard shortcuts built into OS X or the Grab application found in Applications > Utilities.) ImageWell allows you to take screenshots as well, but I needed the delay feature of Grab to take screenshots of open menus.

The program really is very easy to use. I like how you just have to drag an image into the program’s window to get started with it. Scaling an image is also very easy, all you have to do is use a slider until the image is the size you want.  If you prefer, you can change the save location so that the edited image is saved to any folder on your computer when you click on Send.

ImageWell is a great complement for iPhoto.

Laptop Lounge Hours

Our hours for the fall semester are as follows:

• M-F 8:00 am to 5:00 pm

We are available to help you with the following:

• Laptop Setup
• Software Install
• Troubleshooting (hardware, software)
• Project Planning (what software to use, etc.)

You can also reach us by calling (813) 974-6816 or by sending an email to laptoplounge@coedu.usf.edu.

Welcome to our new blog.

We look forward to posting links to useful applications and websites on this blog, as well as ideas for technology integration in the classroom.