Web

Old School Press Release with How to Embed in Blog

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I am following my path of assignments – which is the #ds106 way isn’t it? I should be working on design and audio this week but keep getting sidetracked – but all with good outcomes. I am still using the assignment bank or creating them as new assignments to add to the bank.

puffintransblog #Burgeron106  Family Story Time happens weather permitting, under Dr. M’s treehouse near the sum19503134775_58e5801dc3_omer retreat trailer. Readings are for  the children. In order to keep some semblance of family time for the Burgeron’s and not be overwhelmed with festival visitors recordings of  the story time are available for viewing and use.  To deal with the increase in traffic in the region almost all activities of the Bovine County FairyTale Festival are available for virtual attendance 24X7 to accommodate the needs of global (and perhaps extra terrestrial) participants.

The new Burgeron106  PR team saw the need to develop a press release  to help publicize the access to Artist in Residence information. As a member of the fledging team, I needed to learn the ins and outs of a press release. It is a much honored and long time tradition that has not changed as the world has changed. I first researched the news release format. It is simple and straight forward which is probably the toughest part – how to say what is important without lots of words and descriptions – not necessarily my strongest skill. Most recommendations were consistent with each other and I used this page guide while writing.

The following is a news release:

Another feature I worked on was embedding from Google into the blog. Part of this is my learning and trying to develop a strategy for content maintenance and usability. As of now, Google is providing me with options to keep content in order and accessible and only have to update in one space to create change no matter where posted or linked.  Currently in WordPress it is not as straight forward as Flickr or YouTube by just pasting the URL as a line of its own. However it is still an easy process.

Creating in Google and Embedding in WP. There are some steps to this so I created a screen cast thinking that would be easier than listing each step. It is a first run at using Camtasia for screen casts. You can get a trial version. I happen to have it as a perk from a workshop I took a couple of years ago and now am just getting around to using it. They have a great set of tutorials on their support site and many options.  I can see a lot of potential and ease of use, but after a week of video editing – left this down and dirty for this post. If it helps at least one other person – then it is a success. I do want to come back and create a ds106 tutorial contribution using it – just not sure what topic yet. I am also not embedding as a Google Video to make it more accessible to other ds106 participants but could have done so using the same process.

on to the rest of the week and hopefully back on track with Celtic design and Prisoner106 audio!!

 

 

Fail of Webbing Fairy Tale News

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puffintransblogWeb Assignments – Week 1 Summer 2015

Nanalou has a newsletter…….and she wanted it embedded into the family story blog. She used an email service that gave her a good choice of templates and ease, but still very basic. NanaLou went through a lot of hoops to present her information to the rest of the family at the level she is known for – but way too much work on detail things when she could be spending the time on sharing her other talents.

This prompted me to identify this as my web assignment. While it is not telling a story of Holland Fairy Tales – it is a #ds106 tangent of which to pursue. More on the Holland fairy tales later – I did dive into them and enjoyed the tales!

Vertical Response – great free tool, but limited in features – doesn’t print to PDF, doesn’t archive. The work around is to use the View Online link and post it as a text link where ever you want others to access it. Not a bad solution -but I also found that NanaLou did that and the page that comes up is a registration page. This might explain the 50% open rate (which in marketing circles is pretty darn good – usually success is marked at 30%). Vertical Response support tickets had a similar request in its logs and this was the answer:

Jaime (VerticalResponse) 

Hi there Laura,

While we do not generate a link so that you can archive older newsletters on your website, we do have a workaround. In order to generate the link,  you will have to insert the “View Online” link into your email. It is normally added by default. If it is not there, you can add it to a text box by using the “Insert” drop down menu on the right hand side and selecting “Hosted Version Link”. Once you’ve launched the email to your recipients, click on the View Online link and copy the URL in your browser’s address bar. This is the link that you can put onto your website. Please ensure that you are only doing this with launched emails as it will not work with test emails. Feel free to let me know if there is anything else I can do for you!

Regards,

Jaime W.

Verticalresponse Support

The first thing I did was try and find a URL that would go back to the newsletter without having to login. I found one, but also wanted to make sure it did work and just was not accessing because of cache or other things on my machine. I found it was working by using another computer in the house and someone elses profile. I then created a shorter url for the link because it was way too long!! I am not sure if Vertical response stays consistent with its URLs – we will see. Nanalou – I did update the links in your post so that others did not hit dead ends.

The Burgeron site is also using WordPress.org and not a self hosted version so plugins are at the mercy of WP. This made finding solutions more difficult as the subscription is set up to help maintain security and is not as open to plugins.

Tried iFrames – but WP.org scrubs those out and makes it irrelevant. I searched the available widgets and no luck – nothing that would allow embedding another site or html. Suggestions were to create a new page. I tried that and came up with nothing usable.

PDF conversion didn’t work either and is not supported by VerticalResponse.

I have been working around with my Google account for this site so thought I would try for the Burgerons. Using Google Drive and docs is coming along nicely and was worth a shot.

Trying to get the newsletter as formatted with active links proved difficult. I could import and put things in a Google Doc but Copy and paste loses formatting from the template for the newsletter. It also smashed columns together. If it was a little different that would have beennewsembed2en okay – but it was more like a cut and paste that was like spaghetti on a barn – some stuck and some didn’t. It didn’t meet quality criteria.

Even though it didn’t look quite right – I wanted to find out if it would embed and actually work if it was a GDoc. I titled it and then went to File>Publish to Web and chose embed. I copied the code and pasted it into WP – it worked! Great scroll bar and you can also resize the window of the embed in the code for different purposes. Filing that one for sure!

 

It still did not solve Nanalou’s issue. I tried Google slides, and draw – neither accepted the template features where they looked good enough to consider a solution.

I also tried taking the source code from the newsletter and pasting it in as text to see if it would replicate. It added a whole load of text and the newsletter. Might work – but to putzy for a solution.

newsembed  Copying and pasting the newsletter itself added extra lines and table features that would be a bear to go through and delete.

So at this point – I have spent a good amount of screen time and futzing. I have come up with a better handle on using Google for embed into WP and if info is created in Google first to look good, that will be a solution.

Also did come up with the ability to use the links for accessing the Vertical Response newsletter. Creating a standard Newsletter header or graphic to hold the newest link and another going back to an archive of links might be a good solution and still add some visual.

 

Nanalou created a Pinterest page to give a visual for the newsletter. On that path I found this in the support logs. I don’t think it would have saved anytime or hoops – but it is what is available by the tool support.

Hi there Mel.

To better assist you, may I ask what format your poster is in? i.e JPG, GIF, PNG. If you do not know, you can right click on the image and select properties. A window should pop up displaying the file type. As long as it is in one of the image formats I listed above, you should be able to use our Social tool to create a social post. Here are step by step instructions, along with a video tutorial, to walk you through the process: http://helpcenter.verticalresponse.com/articles/VR2/Create-a-Social-Post/

I don’t have a product that came out of this web assignment, but it was time to spend on solution finding and trying new things out within tools and systems so that I can apply.

Holland Week:

Thanks to NanaLou, Cousin Ron, and Sappho with work on Holland fairy tale history and creating. I am at this point on the consumable end of fairy tales over creating them. The resource links of stories has been great to use. I find I read and enjoy them and then remember I was supposed to be looking at how they are constructed, the style and flow etc. Instead – I have been purely enjoying them as a good story.

Reading the stories and seeing what others are creating is also helping in my support work on the Bovine PR Department team. Sappho had mentioned in a post that if Prisoner106 had a badge shouldn’t the Burgeron’s and the Fairy Tale Festival. This took me on the path of creating an animated GIF badge and with the support of the family a usable outcome came out of the efforts. It is great to have others give that gentle push to reach a little farther. Thanks Family!

And while not directly a Holland fairy tale – I did work on walking out of my comfort zone and recording audio for Mama Boo and Christina Hendricks for a remix of the 3 Bears and Goldilocks. It was actually fun and may make the next audio of self be a little easier to add in a product. I also spent some time looking for first sound effects for consideration by the group.

A few daily creates thrown in for some exercising some creative muscles.
TDC1271

One week into the festival summer and it seems everyone is giving one and gaining many. Totally cool!

 

Gornie Invoice – delivering the finger physically?

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WebAssignment58

Bill Clark Invoice – pdf full view

Invoice Jerry's Gornie

I created an invoice for webassignment58 based on an event of my character in his freshman year of high school.

I was not aware of this interpretation of gornie until reading the book Eastside: fractured Tales of Milwaukee’s Eastside and finding my Dad’s name in it as this event. My mom was Italian. We all had a gold gornie necklace and told it was an Italian good luck charm. I still have mine on a charm necklace with some other charms and wear it on holidays. My mom wore one most of her life. This gives me a little more insight into why it was special for her and that she wore it with pride for 53 years of marriage before she passed away.

This is 3 stars – but with character development, seemed this is more of a 1.5-2 at this point. Most of the creation is in writing and connecting to a story line.

Jerry of Eastside for Sale on eBay

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As the #noir106 cohort works on character development as collaborations and listens to their audio #ds106radio episodes over the next two weeks, I am opting for some creations based on the open course week 8 for this week. I am of course changing it up and adding my own little slice of the UMW Noir Cohorts to my mix.

I started using my dad as my character. He really doesn’t interact with any of the Noir characters, but the time period I am focusing on now starts during that era. As others create Twitter personas for their characters and will develop stories and interactions I realized these assignments are the updated version of ds106 and Storytelling within the Web.

I began with this first assignment – WebAssignment713. This is a 5 Star assignment. Story telling within the web. I chose an eBay page for this first attempt. I searched for 1955 and came up with some great auction items. I chose to replace the first 9 items with some of my work and other photos of Jerry across his life – just some samples. You can see the screen shot below and go to a working html page by clicking this link: Jerry Eastside on eBay

Story in Web

The eBay story should help in identifying different parts of Jerry’s life and things that happened to him. Marriage, activities, love, etc.

I used X-Ray Goggles to reconstruct the eBay page. I even changed some of the text to #ds106. 🙂 At first I thought I had to change all the parts to go to a page that would just explain that this was all a story and not go to the original products. When I was finished, it produces a page, but the links do not go anywhere – so that step can be eliminated. That makes this more of a one layer kind of presentation which is a lot easier to think out than the multiple branches and side trips that could be created and make this a far deeper and complex assignment. (Update: upon another load and look – the links do work – so now the ones I changed go to a blank page of my site – oh well! – next time!)

I can see using this for different characters in search pages, IMD, and maybe even Facebook or LinkedIn so that you can tell the story but not have to create an account and set up etc. to support. It reminds me of prior to Photoshop and other remixes having a magazine cover with your own photo inserted.

Building a portfolio for a character could easily be accomplished using this method to tell a story.Threading a full trail “in” the web for a character will add dimensions and interaction for readers. This first attempt has sprouted many tangents and ideas of how to use the web as the story for telling. I want to also explore further into how to work with the CSS of a page to alter the content to my choosing.

ds106.ioAnimatedNewOldFriend_290NOTE: Listen in M-Th the weeks of March 8 and March 15, 2015 to #noir106 radio shows.
9pm EST at ds106radio and
Tweet along with other listeners and the creators using hashtags:-#ds106radio, #noir106, #ds106.

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