Mike Martelle has been thinking about the design for the podcasting website. He's working on one that looks like an iPod and will put the links in the iPod display area. Great idea. Here's a first look at the where Mike is going.
April 2005 Archives
Okay, I know it sounds like something out of Spartacus but it's not. Ogg Vorbis is an open source standard for audio files. Here's a link to the vorbis.com website's FAQs to learn more.
Your first question won't be answered on the vorbis.com FAQs page though, because your first question is either "Who cares?" or "So what." And no one can blame you. Here's a little on the whowhatwherewhenwhy that I can provide.
The LTC and the UA CIO are committed to working with open source software when we can. Sure there are times when it's not practical but there are times we want to for reasons even beyond hating Microsoft. But more to the point, open source means free and usually open to a community of developers who will share their enhancements for free. For example Dr. Sally Jackson, our CIO, has been posting to her blog about joining Kuali, a project "to develop Open Source financial software applications for higher education."
So why am I writing about this today? Working on the podcating demo project as I have been over recent weeks, I have been continually thinking about what are good things to cast to students, faculty and the community. I got the idea to create a music section to podcasting using the music we have created from the original audio recorded at the Tucson Meet Yourself Festivals between 1972 and 1992 and featured on the Music of the Southwest website. Big Jim Griffith recorded all performances on the main stage and the recordings have been stored in the Southwest Folklore Center/UA Library Special Collections. About four years ago I collaborated with a brilliant recording engineer, Lee Furr, who was working part time in the Treistman Center. The collaboration involved me carrying the tapes over to Treistman and Lee working his magic on the tapes. To avoid making this a very long story, Lee created QuickTime and MP3 audio from these tapes and also gave me copies on CDROM as music audio files. Today I dug out one of the CDROMs, opened the music audio in iTunes, converted it to a .wav file and then using Audacity, exported it to dot ogg files. I've added five to a Music page on the Podcasting demo site. Check it out and let me know what you think.And finally, you've never heard In The Mood like you will when you listen to our version performed by the Los Hermanos Cuatro's Yaqui Norteño band.
There is a new feature on LTC's blog service that you should be aware of. The update to MovableType that we installed in the LTC a couple weeks ago enables you select a condition that enables comment moderation. This means that if this condition is active, you can have the comments feature open but comments will not be added to entries until you go in and approve them. It's a good feature if you have opened comments and are concerned about uninvited participants adding comments.
We've had good luck this semester with the precautions i've taken in keeping our blogs out of spammers' sights. But this is one more way to help. MovableType is using something called typekey as added security for commenting but so far those of us who have explored have found it too cumbersome to recommend for our instructional blogging.
If you've not been on the Through Our Parents' Eyes website lately, check out the most recently redesigned sites. The easiest way is on the Recently Redesigned ... sites page. This weekend I got the new Sabino Canyon: Our Desert Oasis site done. Andrew Bareham, the LTC student assistant working on the graphics for the new designs, did a nice job creating the banner image. He is working on the Tucson Ronstadt Family site at this time.
I've developed a little website for a demonstration project and have been updating my own page about podcasting. Check them out and let me know what you think. There a so many uses we can make of podcasting in instructional and at the professional level that I think you will become participants once you take a look.
