Did you ever have a long audio clip that you wanted to break up into smaller files based off of pauses or silence breaks in your audio? Sure you can do it manually with a program like Audacity, but Audacity also has a Silence Analyzer that will insert labels in places where there is silence in the clip and from those tags you can export the audio into smaller chunks all in one step. Here’s how to do that.

1. Open up Audacity. Load your audio clip.
2. Now use the cursor to scroll over the shortest silence period in your clip. This is where a label will be inserted to show a break in audio parts. You are measuring the time.
3. Look at the bottom of Audacity. You will see how long that silence period is.
4. Now select all your audio clip by clicking Control  + A.
5. Now go to the Analyze menu.
6. Choose  Silence Finder
7. In the minimum silence duration text box, type in the number you saw at the bottom of Audacity when you measured the shortest silence period in the clip.
8. Click OK
9. Now you will see a series of labels with a S. You can also manually enter labels (if the analyzer missed any spots) by clicking on the silence spot and pressing Control + B.
10. Now that all your silence spots are marked to break up the clips, go to File  and choose Export Multiple.
11. Choose the format (wav, mp3), where to save it, how to name it, and choose Split based on labels.
12. Click OK.

I hope this helps. It worked well for me.

I have been using Twitter for close to two months now. I actually had a twitter account a year ago, but just never used it. I thought why would I use this? Who cares about where I went to lunch? Then in March I created a new account and decided to give Twitter another shot.  I found some people to follow (I started out with 10). Nobody was following me. I thought that was fine. I kept reading, following others and tweeting.

I recently came a across a new tool called Prezi. It’s a web based application that allows you to create slideshows and display information on a screen. So what’s so new about it? It’s the way the information is presented. You have one giant screen with all your information on it, instead of a group a slides that you navigate by clicking the forward and back buttons. Here, you can go up, down, left, right, sideways, zoom in, zoom out. You can draw graphics like circles arrows to call out to information, add text, and media (like images, video, and PDFs). It’s a nice alternative to the typical presentation, but the zooming and bouncing around effects can becoming dizzying and over used. You can sign up for a free account here (there are also paid accounts with more space and the option to keep presentation files private, with a free account, your presentations are public. I also did not see an embed feature which would be nice in the future) :

http://prezi.com/

I recently had to figure out how to get the webcam attached to my computer (Win XP, MS Office 2003), to show up live in a PowerPoint presentation (without leaving the presentation). With some help from this forum (http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-919143.php -Thank you Glenna Shaw and Mike M.), I was able to get my webcam to stream live in a PowerPoint presentation.

What you’ll need:

• PowerPoint (I have PowerPoint 2003)
• Windows Media Encoder (free download)
• Webcam

Steps:

1. I downloaded the Windows Media Encoder.
2. Then I opened up PowerPoint and added a new slide.
3. In PowerPoint I went to Insert—>Object—> Windows Media Player.
4. I opened up Windows Media Encoder and chose Broadcast a Live Event.
5. Choose my camera for the video and audio devices. Clicked Next.
6. I chose Pull from Encoder
7. I decided to click on Find Free Port but 8080 is fine.
8. I did not change the Encoding options but you can play around to see what you like.
9. I did not archive my broadcast
10. I chose No to include Video Files
11. Clicked the Finish button
12. Click on the connections tab and copy either the LAN address or the Internet address (by clicking on the appropriate button)
13. Click the Start Encoding button at the top of Windows Media Encoder.
14. I went back to the PowerPoint presentation and right clicked on the Windows Media Player Object and chose Properties
15. Click on Custom at the top of the properties and click the button with the three dots.
16. Paste the Internet or LAN address into the File Name or URL text box.
17. Click OK
18. Now play your PowerPoint file and click on the play button on the Windows Media Player.

Please note: I am not sure how secure this is by broadcasting on port 8080. I am also not sure how well this would work on a Mac machine.  Also, I had a 5-10 second delay from the encoder to the PowerPoint slide. I hope this helps.

I know the add-on Firebug is not new for Firefox, but I am currently using it to tweak the CSS and design of a web site I working on, in Roxen. The hierarchy of the Roxen CSS design can get a little confusing when you are trying to over write the CSS code in Roxen (and you are not familiar of the layout of the code since you did not write it).

How It Works:

You install Firebug and it’s part of your web browser. You can then open up a website you are working on. You click on the Firebug icon at the bottom right. A pane will open up on the bottom of the browser. It will have the HTML code for the page (which you can hover over and it will highlight the section the code comes from) and the CSS that is associated with that HTML on the page. If you click on the tag in the HTML, it will skip right to that section in the CSS. You now know what exact part you need to tweak in the CSS. Just for that, this add-on is worth installing. Based off the HTML tags and CSS, it can show you how the site is laid out. For example, if you have a content wrapper, then a content main tag, then a content nav, it will show you the nesting of the tags in a diagram if you click on the layout tab.

This add-on has made my life with Roxen a little easier over the past couple of days. If you would like to install the add-on, click on the link below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

This is a screenshot of the FIrefox add-on Firebug

BubblePLY is a web based service that allows for you to add comment bubbles (in different shapes), subtitles, images, clipart, and even a webcam feed over different sections of a YouTube video 9other services like Google Videos, Dailymotion, and metacafe work as well). You can use this service to circle something on a video and add a comment box (maybe a vocab review in another language) or add subtitles to a foreign clip. It’s super easy to use. You can sign up for a free account to save your BubblePLY videos. Another great thing about the service is that it allows for you to embed the video into a website or quick post it to different services like Facebook, Blogger, Live Spaces, and much more. To take a look at the service (which you can demo without signing up) click on the link below:

http://www.bubbleply.com

View of adding items to YouTube using BubblePLY

SUMO Paint is a free web based (online) image editor. What’s really nice about this service is that it has some of the features that you would see in image editor like GIMP or Photoshop (that you need to install on your computer). SUMO Paint can do many things like transform an image, it has support for multiple layers and many other features like a smudge tool, blur tool, and symmetry tool. This is a great tool to have in your toolbox if you edit maps or create images for a presentation. You can edit them online and them download them.

SUMO Paint also has a community you can post your images to for others to see and comment (but you can not directly save the image to services like Facebook or Flickr, you would need to download them to your computer first). If you want to explore the tool before creating an account, you can by visiting the link below:

http://www.sumopaint.com

This is one of the weirdest but most inspiring pieces of art I have ever seen. They move like a creature that is alive. Think of all the robotic possibilities!

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/162

About this video:

“Artist Theo Jansen demonstrates the amazingly lifelike kinetic sculptures he builds from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. His creatures are designed to move — and even survive — on their own.” TED blog.

So I found an easier way to embed video into a Roxen site. The RXML component allows for you to paste raw code into the text box. The RXML component is great if  you want to type or paste code into your site, it really works well with the embed tag. This is just a follow up on a previous blog entry about embedding video into your Roxen site. I hope this help!

Screengrab is a Firefox add-on that allows for you to capture your web window as an image. Some operating systems have a built in screen capture device or you can always download a separate program to take screen shots of webpages, but what’s nice is that this is in your browser and you don’t need to open up a separate program. If you would like to download this Add-On, please visit the link below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1146