Blurb Booksmart

The Title sounds like I am going to share some really high tech information, doesn't it?

Well, I may....

I found a website for photobooks that really met all of my needs (trust me, that is hard to do for an avid scrapbooker). I know that there are a lot of services out there now that offer photo book services with prices ranging from fair to one where you would expect each page to be made of gold. Usually, you get what you pay for, but Blurb may be the solution.

Blurb is a photo book building software that you download on your computer to create photo books. You can upload photos to the website and share them with other Blurb members, as you can do with other photo book websites, but you can also take your photos directly from Flickr, Picassa, and SmugMug right into your photobook. You can also seemlesssly integrate photos from your iPhoto library. You can also collaborate on the building of a Groupbook using the Blurg website as a media. How neat is that! This could mean so may different uses for print, both in education and the corporate world. I get excited just thinking of the different possible uses it could have for my high school and the neat projects that you could have-- a collaborative yearbook that it accessible online, history book for class or of the high school, poetry publications, cookbooks for home economics, story books for child pyschology classes...


But for me, the best part was having the freedom of not being held to the pre-set designs and templates, but still have the software to help you easily build a custom book.

Check it out:
Blurb

Fotki: A New Kind of Photo Repsitory

As an avid scrapbooker, I am consistently looking for the best deal for photos and different ways to share them with family and friends. I was searching for more competitors to compare rates against and came up with Fotki. I usually use photo respositories like Shutterfly, Snapfish, PhotoBucket, and Flickr. However, this photo sharing and printing resource has many abilities. Not only can you house your photos and share them with other memebers of Fotki (like many other photo respositories), but you can use RSS feeds to link your photos to your blog and get updates with the new photos you upload. How awesome is that-- it is a lot less work if you keep family members up to date on current pictures of your children or you!

To my knowledge the only other service that provides this kind of same RSS feed with photo editing, sharing, and printing is Flickr. However, most services are starting to include these MANY ways to share your photos. Either way, they are both great resources. Check them out!

Photo Story 3 for Windows

What is Photo Story? Photo Story is software, which you can download FREE from Microsoft, that will enable you to tell a story with your digital photographs. It is simple and easy to use and you can literally create your first Photo Story in about 10 minutes, replete with photo captions and music! It is as easy as 1-2-3. First, you download the software from the following web address http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92755126-a008-49b3-b3f4-6f33852af9c1&DisplayLang=en . After you download (or run) the software, simply accept the defaults and the program is installed and ready to use. When you first open Photo Story, Begin a New Story is the default so click on Next and the next screen will prompt you to import your pictures. You will then browse for your pictures on your pc. It will then ask you if you want to remove the black borders from your pictures, which I recommend. You can click next and then you will have an option of adding titles to your picture, the placement of those titles, and the color and size of the font (so the words don’t get lost on the page). Go through all of your slides, and when complete, click next and you will be given the option to narrate your pictures. Click next and you can create music (music already there by Mozart, Beethoven, 80’s music, etc) or you can select music that you already have on your pc. Pick the music you want and your Photostory is complete. You can then chose to save your project to play back on your pc, email it to someone, or, with special software, make a dvd of your photo story. There are also great, advanced features like transitions from slide to slide that you can play with and learn as you go in addition the ability to add audio to your slides. As with any Microsoft product, there are great tutorials you can go through to learn this simple, fun product.

It’s fast, easy, and fun! Try it!

Wordle!

This site seems to be creating quite a 'buzz' amongst technology coaches. One can enter ANY text - could be the contents of an email, could be text copied and pasted directly from a website - something of personal interest or something content-specific. Hence, the educational application. There is one drawback, Wordle is not intended as an educational site specifically and its content is NOT monitored in anyway for appropriateness to an educational setting.
It is, however, very cool - here is a sample of a word cloud created in Wordle. The creator must have been comparing presidential candidates McCain and David Letterman ;-)
What I suggest you do for fun, if you want to check out Wordle is click on the link in this blog to your latest entry and simply copy the URL. Wordle will pull the text and 'word cloud' it for you - you can then change font styles, background colors, etc. Here's what the create screen will look like if you decide to do that:

Microsoft AutoCollage

Microsoft Research has released a new Photo Collage software, named AutoCollage. The program automatically makes collages with selected pictures.

Microsoft pulled in research from various Microsoft teams including the Cambridge Incubation group. Major features include face detection, object selection and blending technologies.

The program costs $19.95 and can be installed on up to 5 machines. A 30-day trial is available.

Links: Microsoft AutoCollage
AutoCollage Demo Video
Microsoft Research Paper