Presenting Dipity.com

Recently, I gave a presentation to my fellow co-workers regarding http://www.dipity.com, a website that creates timelines that can also incorporate photos. I used a presentation created by Kelly Metz, who works at one of our sister publications in Lorain, Ohio. The presentation can be found at her blog.

Presenting Capzles.com

Submitted by Austen Smith

Recently, I made a presentation to fellow staff about Capzles.com, a social media driven timeline tool that allows users to post and share images, video, audio and much more. When you upload files under your own account, those files are quickly coordinated into individual “Moments,” and all of those moments make up your entire Capzle. See below to read through my presentation:

 

CAPZLES.COM OVERVIEW

 

What can you use the application for?

Capzles.com is a social networking site that allows users to tell a story using pictures, video clips, audio tracks and text. Users are given the ability to place this media, called “moments”, together chronologically in a timeline. The result is called a “capzle”. Any of the moments can be viewed individually, or all of the moments can be viewed in progression. Users can share their capzles or individual moments with their friends by sending an email link or by inviting them to join the site. The site has the usual social networking features of being able to search and view user’s profiles and to send messages between users. Users have a My Stuff tab on the navigation bar which allows them to view their friends, messages, capzles, profile, favorite capzles and favorite moments. The Create tab on the navigation bar gives users access to the capzle creation applet used by the site. This applet allows users to easily add a title, description, and tags to their capzles. Users then add their media moments individually and choose the background colors and theme to be used with the capzle. Users can also add an audio track to be played in the background as their capzle is viewed. The capzle creation applet is very well designed and easy to use.

 

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAPZLES AND DIPITY?

-          Users can attach audio/background music and video clips to their moments

-          Users can share their entire Capzle timeline or the individual moments

-          A number of different files can be uploaded into each individual moment such as images, videos, MP3s, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files

-          More social networking features like being able to invite friends through e-mail and searching for users on the site and messaging

-          More design usage, users can choose different background colors and themes for their timelines

-          All in all, Capzles seems to be more multi-media friendly than Dipity

  

HOW DOES IT WORK?

 

1. Log in screen
2. Create new Capzle: Add title and description, you can make the title any color you want
3. Tags and categories: There are many tags, categories and sub-categories that you can attach to your Capzle that will help people browse through the site. Here I chose Babies and Kids.
4. Add Content: Here is where the rubber meets the road for Capzles as this is where you can upload your files which includes images, videos, MP3s, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. All of the files can be set into the que at once and you need only hit the upload button once. The site will automatically take each file and create individual moments which make up your Capzle.  I uploaded close to 30 mb of data here and it took about 10-12 minutes, and that included a 20 second video. Other options for your moments are to add a “Stack” of files, meaning multiple files that can be scrolled through in one moment, and you can also submit blog entries.
5. Add title/description to “Moments:” After your content is uploaded, you can go through each file, or “Moment,” and put a title, description and tag. And in each Moment, there are options to add a date/time, mapping info, technical information (about the device used to produce the file) and the option to set the privacy level. Your files can be made public, friends only or private which Is pretty self explanatory.
6. At this point, the basic Capzle is done for the most part and now you have several options to jazz it up with background design and music. They have many different patterns you can choose from for your design and even a function that allows you to create your own. Background music can be uploaded as MP3 from your computer.

Rethinking Facebook

I was a sophomore at Oakland University when I first heard of Facebook. I think it was 2003.

I distinctly remember the first time I was made aware of the (then) new social networking site. I was at a party and one of my friends, a Scottish soccer player, was telling me all about it.

It sounded like a really cool site.

I went back to my dorm room later on that night and tried to find it so I could sign up. Unfortunately, my friend’s thick accent had led me down the wrong path.
Apparently there was no such site as http://www.faceboot.com.

A few days later, though, Facebook exploded on our campus and it was impossible to avoid it. I’ve been an active user ever since.

Facebook is part of most of our lives now. It helps us maintain relationships, share photos and make sure our friends know what we are thinking from moment to moment.
But with the explosion of social networking as a way for companies and news services to share information and media, it’s important for us to rethink how we are using Facebook.

Sure, Facebook is a great tool for sharing links and getting headlines into newsfeeds of thousands, but it’s important to remember that it can also be an unparalleled tool for keeping track of and making new contacts.

As a sports reporter at the A2 Journal in Ann Arbor, my beat includes covering all the high school athletes in the area. But in addition to keeping everyone up to date on the current high school sports stars, it’s also important for me to keep my finger on the high school standouts who head off to college to play sports.

In the past, this normally meant calling coaches or athletic directors to try to get phone numbers for current and former players. This could be a very time-consuming effort that often led to dead ends and stories that were killed before they even had a chance to become anything. But now, Facebook allows me to directly contact any athlete that has an account (and almost all of them do).

Recently I created an alternate personal Facebook account for myself. This one has no videos of my son, no embarrassing photos from college and none of my real friends commenting on things.

This profile is simply “Mike Larson, A2 Journal Sports Reporter.” From this account, I have added high school athletes from my coverage area as friends (I realize this could be a slippery slope, but I am convinced it can be done in a very professional manner). In addition to adding current high school athletes, I have also added many former athletes who are now playing in college.

So now, I have a database of athletes that can be reached with a simple Facebook message.

In addition, I can use this Facebook profile to do so much more.
I can post a status like, “The Pioneer-Huron game is this Friday, any score predictions?” And people will comment on it, allowing me to do an impromptu poll, which might turn into a really cool blog post.

I can also tag individual athletes in my postings. For example, we upload the front page of our sports section to Scribd, and I can share it on Facebook, and in the description say something like, “Check out the sports section, top stories include Skyline hockey and Greenhills basketball. There’s also a great photo of @Jordan Woods” (The “@” will tag the person in the post, and make the story show up on their wall). It’s cool because it gets the link out to another huge group of people, and it is kind of a badge of honor for whoever gets singled out.

Facebook can be used for so many things these days, it’s important for us to all realize its full potential.