How to Create Photo Essays Similar to TIME Magazine

One of the very interesting features of TIME Magazine’s website is their Photo Essays section where they narrate news events using slideshows of still images that also have closed captions and voice narrations in the background.

For instance, this one walks you through Hilary Clinton’s exit from the Presidential race while another essay discusses health issues faced by people of Kashmir.

To make photo slideshows like TIME Magazine, all you need are some still photographs and a copy of Camtasia Studio – this is not free but you may get a full functional 30 day trial from Techsmith. Here are the steps involved:

a. Open Camtasia Studio and import all your pictures into the Clip Bin (Shortcut: Ctrl+I). Next drag and drop these into the video timeline below.

b. Go to Tools –> Options and change the default duration of Transitions from 3 to 1 second. We want the transition from one photo to another as quick as possible so that viewers don’t even notice it.

c. Open the “Transition” windows, right click the Fade Transition and select the option that says “Insert Transition Between all Clips.” Click Finished to return to the home screen.

d. (optional) – If you like to include background music in your photo essay, press Ctrl+I to import the MP3 / WAV audio file into the timeline. Alternatively, you can plugin the microphone to directly record voice narration for your essay.

e. To add text captions, go to Edit –> Captions. Point the cursor in the timeline where you want the caption to appear and type the text in the editing space. Make sure that Overlay and Display settings are selected under Options.

If you are using pictures from Flickr, you may used the Closed Caption space to credit the photo owners.

f. Now let’s render the video. Go to File –> Produce Video As and select Custom Production Settings.

Select SWF / FLV as the format and chose ExpressShow as the video template. Make sure that “Captions Initially Visible” setting is deselected under Flash Options –> Playback Controls.

You can then embed FLV video in your blog or upload it to blip.tv since it accepts that format. For SWF files, you can put them on screencast.com or Adobe Share.

Here’s a screen capture from one of the photo slideshows that was created using Camtasia Studio. Your viewer can view or hide closed captions via the CC button available in the player itself.

Desktop Blogging Clients for Linux

Praval is looking for a desktop based offline blog editing software for Linux (Ubuntu) – something on the lines of Windows Live Writer. Here are some suggestions from the extremely helpful Twitter community:

1. Scribefire – A hugely popular Firefox extension for blogging that lets you blog from the comfort of your browser. Supports almost every blog platform and is frequently updated.

2. Flock – This Firefox like browser has built-in blogging capabilities. Open the blog editor in the browser, drag-n-drop content from anywhere and publish.

3. Bleezer – This Java based WYSIWYG blog editing software can upload images to your web server and includes a spell checker but the developer has not updated the software since a long time.

4. BloGTK – This is a pretty popular blogging software for Linux that supports Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress but again, no new updates since long.

5. Drivel Journal – Another blog editor for the GNOME desktop though sort of abandoned now.

6. KBlogger – This is a blogging application for the K Destkop Environment. It integrates in KDE Kicker and is also available as a standalone application for KDE 4. Supports Blogger, WordPress, MetaWeblog API, MovableType API, GData API, etc.

You may also consider blogging through Google Docs, imified for IM or even OpenOffice though the Sun Weblog Publisher add-in costs some money.

Thanks Shankar, Sathya, Ravi, Prateek, Devesh and Bonchi for your inputs.

Can You Depend on Online Storage Services That Are Free ?

When DivShare launched in 2007, they offered unlimited storage space and would accept files as large as 200 MB. You could even hotlink to images hosted on Divshare from your own blog / website and thus save bandwidth bills.

A year later, DivShare announced that files hosted on DivShare servers will be inaccessible to visitors from Asia because online advertising was weak in that region. This limit did no apply to DivShare customers who had a paid account.

Another service called Streamload MediaMax made its debut at CES 2006 and offered 25 GB of free online storage space with no restrictions on file size. They did manage to create a substantial user base because the offered space was much larger than any of the competing services.

But in April this year, MediaMax changed its name to “The LinkUp” and asked all existing free members to upgrade to a pro-account else their files will be removed permanently.

Obviously, old MediaMax customers like Poonam and Dr. Mike aren’t happy because their own data is locked by another company – the files will be lost forever unless they pay. Scary situation indeed.

Determine The Shortest Path Between Two Wikipedia Articles

The shortest path between two Wikipedia articles is defined as the minimum number of clicks required to move from one article to another. This can be used to discover connections between topics that are completely unrelated.

For instance, if you are on the Wikipedia page of Microsoft, it would require just two clicks for you to reach the page of Saddam Hussein.

The route will be Microsoft –> 1990 –> Saddam Hussein

Six Degrees of Wikipedia is an online tool that will help you find the shortest route between any two pages on Wikipedia using links.

Unlike real world where distances remain constant if you move from A to B or from B to A, it’s not so in the case of Wikipedia. The distance going from Article A to Article B is not necessarily the same as from Article B to article A.

Stephen Dolan made this interesting tool using Wikipedia Dumps that contain all the Wikipedia stories in XML format minus the images and history. Thanks Catherine.

Improve Your Note-Taking Skills with Listen and Write

Listen and Write is an interesting online application where you listen to audio clips on the web and type the spoken words at the same time. The audio clips are syndicated from a news website and are always about current events.

There’s a difference between your regular typing software and Listen & Write – here you have to type what you hear not what you see on the screen.

You can create an account to track progress over time. And the application won’t let you proceed unless you get the transcription right.

The app may even help improve the transcription skills of journalists who cover press conferences or even bloggers who are into live blogging.

Listen-and-write.com – Do the Dictation Yourself.

Create Mockup Designs Quickly with Yahoo! Stencils

Yahoo! Stencil Kit is a set of graphics to help you create mockup designs real quickly – you can use these stencils for designing web pages for the desktop or mobile phones.

And even if you are no web designer, you may use Yahoo! Stencils to create illustrations. For example, you may place screenshots inside the BlackBerry mockup that comes in kit or try different placements of the keyboard on the iPhone screen.

The graphics are available as PDF, Visio, SVG (Illustrator) and PNG (for Photoshop).

Yahoo! Design Stencil Kit - Thanks Lucas Pettinati.

Recover and Restore accidentally deleted blogger blog04Jul08

Its really painful if we deleted any blogs by mistake , and that is already index in google , it is not possible to reindex that blog with same url but it is possible to restore that post with the help of feedburner or via some social networking webiste that publish yours blogs in full like zimbio etc.

But the best way is feedburner , Feed can help you recover yours accidentally deleted post , but the condition is that you have to regain that deleted blog post with in 24 hours ,Otherwise you will not find yours blogs in feed server.To extract you deleted blogs login to yours feedburner account >>Optimize >> Yours Feed >> And there you will find yours accidently deletd blogs ,copy the blog and republish again .

It is also recommended to backup yours blogger post always for emergency but if you are failed to do that then the only way comes in front of you is to contact blogger support to recover yours deleted blogs.