(T+A #4) Technology and the Arts: 2/7/2007
Rider University professors Donald Ambrose and Sigfredo Hernandez, and our very own John LeMasney, an instructional technologist at Rider, are interviewed about a project there involving the visual metaphor teaching strategy and the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Other topics discussed are the UbuntuStudio project, Midomi.com, University of Pennsylvania radio station WXPN, and more. File size: 18.7 MB. Time: 38 min., 55 sec. Hosts: Brian Kelley, John LeMasney.
Brian & John,
I enjoyed your latest podcast.
You often mention Linux and the open source software that accompanies it in tandem. I thought your listeners would benefit from knowing that most of the open source software you discuss is also available for Windows and MacOS X in the form of pre-packaged binary installers. Therefore, users familiar with these operating systems need not switch to Linux to enjoy creative open source software such as Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, CinePaint, JACK, Ardour (MacOS X only), etc.
Keep up the good work.
-Jason
I have a question. How do you get the little podcast button to appear on your post. I tried to find the answer in wordpress yesterday but I couldn’t find the answer.
Good point, Jason.
I’m very much an advocate of using open source on the platform you know best, and I apologize for not making it more clear.
You can enjoy a free software [libre] experience on Windows and Mac OS systems, of course. We use Audacity on Windows and Mac to edit our podcasts and interviews. I use Cygwin on Windows to do most of my repeatable system tasks via cron. I use VLC on Windows to listen to, view and transcode media. I use Filezilla to SFTP files. I uninstalled MS Office a long time ago when OpenOffice2 arrived with support for database manipulation in oo.o base.
The GIMP Visual Metaphor presentation was a good example of cross platform flexibility in open source apps. For my presentation, I worked on my XCF presentation pieces on a Windows binary GIMP install. I gave the presentation on a portable GIMP install on my USB key. Everyone else in the room was using GIMP.app on Mac OSX.
Here at Rider University, hardly anyone uses Linux as a desktop, (though I get excited when someone shows some interest in doing that) and as a result, we’re always finding OSS solutions for the other platforms.
I think a great place to start for Windows users is http://portableapps.com , where many open source applications can be run without even installing them on your system. This makes it particularly easy to run applications like Firefox and the GIMP from a USB key, but also to run them them from your My Documents folder. Maybe a “My Applications” folder might be more appropriate.
Thanks so much for your feedback, Jason, and keep an ear out for more cross platform OSS encouragement at techarts.
- John
@marshaloftis, it’s easy – so unbelievably easy to add the embedded audio player to your posts at WordPress.com!
1. You must be using wordpress.com, rather than a full blown wordpress.org style install. If you want to do this in a local WordPress.org install, you should use the podpress plugin, which offers a lot more media functionality, such as FLV streaming and iTunes Music Store integration.
2. Go into your blog, go into a post, enter the editing window. You should do this at first in the ‘Visual’ side, rather than the code side, or else you’ll have to enclose this line in a code tag.
3. Add the following code to embed a media player on your site:
[audio http://www.your.site.com/youraudiofile.mp3That’s it – enclosing the word ‘audio’ and a link to an mp3 in brackets will tell wordpress to embed a media player to play that audio.
Hope this helps!
- John.
Marsha,
Thank you for the comment and for stopping by Technology and the Arts.
Just to add to John’s reply to your question, the WordPress.com post that deals with uploading mp3, ogg, wav, m4a, mov, wmv, avi, and mpg files and the embedded player can be found at:
http://wordpress.com/blog/2007/01/19/songs-and-movies-on-wordpresscom/
- Brian
Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou!!! It works!! Now all I have to do is go back and edit all of my entries.
@marshaloftis
Our pleasure.
-j.
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