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To create your own website, you need to understand the difference between domains and hosting.

The first thing about creating a website is creating a domain. A domain is a web address for your website. For example, this site is hosted on the domain name: riverflowing.com I pay about $8 per year for this address. You have to find an address that is available and original.  Usually a combination of two to three words works.  Domain names are available through web hosts (see below). Once you own the domain name, you can go into the settings and automatically forward it to any address on the web. It can be an web location and might have a long address. It’s easy to tell some one to visit coolcatposters.com as opposed to a long web address like sites.google.com/site/skram. Some people buy all versions of the same address (.org, .com, .net), but remember that will cost about $30 per year to renew each variation of the address. A year-long domain registration is typically free with a hosting contract. Of course, you will have to pay for future years.

The second ingredient of creating a website is hosting. Hosting is space on the web where you can upload and save your web site and related files. This may include images, documents, videos, etc. Hosting costs about $10 per month for a limited amount of space.  Most hosts are shared servers. This means that you will have your website on a server along with possibly hundreds of other users.  You won’t know that you are on the same server and will have no interaction with the other sites.  However, performance may be affected if you have multiple people overloading one server.  As a result, finding good hosting is never easy. You may have heard of GoDaddy.com because of its advertisements, but I never have been fond of its user interface. I’ve used a variety of different services, including Omnis and currently MDDHosting.com. Once you have a space to store your website files, you can then direct your domain name to location of your files on your host.

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My favorite two new discoveries this summer are Google Voice and Music Discovery

Google Voice

Google Voice is an awesome service that allows you to create a new phone number.  It works perfectly like any phone number.  You can choose it from a list of phone numbers in your area.  This phone number when called will ring your mobile phone(s).  It’s nice because you can give it out to whoever you want and it’s not your real phone #. You can always abandon the # at a later date without switching your real phone #.

How I currently use it:

1. I can text from Google Voice or from my IPod Touch.

2. When I receive a text to my Google voice #, it will send a text message to my email.

3. If someone calls it and leave a phone message, it records the message (playable in a browser) or on my IPod Touch and sends me a email message with a poorly transcribed message.

Why it’s valuable to me is I can get much of the functionality of a mobile phone without paying for a phone service contract and use a pre-pay cell phone.  It’s another cool offering from Google that seems hard to believe is possible.

Music Discovery through MOG and Rdio

It’s funny, but I’m not much for ownership of digital media.  I have at the most about 10 DVDs and rarely ever purchase a novel or book, relying heavily on the library (say it isn’t so).  I have a large music collection though.  I don’t value owning digital media because it’s an occasional event when I want to watch a movie or read a book a second time.  It’s not that I don’t ever, but I usually can find an old book in the library and can get any DVD from Netflix if I feel the desire.  I’m moving away from owning music media.  I hate paying $1 for a song when I like to play a song repeatedly at the beginning, but after I burn it out, I don’t feel the need to listen to the song as much any more.

There are many free services for music discovery from Pandora to Rhapsody.  I dislike advertisements with a passion and refuse to listen to the radio anymore and Pandora, Rhapsody and Grooveshark are almost as bad.  They are free though.  I have become a fan of subscription services like MOG and Rdio.  You can pay $5 for unlimited streaming or $10 for unlimited streaming plus mobile syncing.  I think having access to entire catalogs of songs online for $10 is outstanding.  I always thought that Apple would deny the inclusion of these types of services on IPod/IPhones, but they have changed their mind.  I can sync any album to my Touch as long as I’m a subscriber.  Why do I need to ever pay for a song again?  For $10, I have a vast, always-fresh library without the need for storage.

I have been back and forth between two services, MOG and Rdio.  I loved MOG at first, but they lacked a mobile syncing option.  I moved to Rdio and loved this ability to sync an entire album.  I’d try albums I’ve never listened to before and go running.  But the Rdio collection has holes and with the MOG’s ability to sync to mobile devices, I’m headed back mostly due to the more complete library.  I prefer the Rdio user interface more, but there is nothing more frustrating than paying for a service and searching for an album everyone is raving about (Arcade Fire), and finding it’s unavailable.  I’m going to resubscribe to MOG, but I’m sure this is not the last move.  I loved Lala, but Apple bought it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same occurs to these services in the future.  These services are an improvement on Lala due to the ability to play every song or album as much as you want and sync it to your mobile devices.  I had been waiting for another service called Spotify to come to the U.S., but it looks like MOG and Rdio beat it.

For a list and comparison of all the different options for music discovery, check out this Lifehacker article.

Lynda.com. I had the opportunity to try out Lynda.com recently due to a promotion through Adobe for a 30 day free trial.  Lynda has tutorials in all software applications and technologies (CSS, programming languages).  With any large selection, there is a mix of quality in the tutorials.  I wasn’t disappointed by the quality of the tutorials, but each trainer had a different approach, and it requires finding your preference of training.  The monthly subscription to view all content is $25.  The cost is clearly worth the price if you are determined to learn the content.

Adobe TV devotes its training to Adobe products, but it’s free and very good.  I have been going through the Flex in a Week series.  The training is high quality, though the videos don’t seem to be organized correctly–the next video is often not the one mentioned at the end of the previous video.  Also, it seems the trainers in Adobe videos, when accessing external data, always connect to a ColdFusion server, which always annoys me.  I have no idea how to use ColdFusion and would benefit from a server solution like PHP/MySQL.  I did locate some additional tutorials on using PHP and Flex.

**I initially viewed these tutorials in Adobe Media Player, but though the Media Player has potential.  It’s clunky and not the best UI for viewing a series of videos.  I became so frustrated with the Media Player, I searched for Adobe videos and found Adobe TV.

I finally had time to dig into an online tool called Prezi (www.prezi.com) and found it a refreshing and compelling approach to the presentation software idea. The user interface is easy to learn and it took me about 30 minutes to figure out the majority of the tools to create a presentation.

The main control tool that allows you to write, format, create frames and paths, and view the show is shown below.  It appears in the top left hand corner.

Understanding the workflow:

1. Imagine a large piece of white butcher paper.  You can type and add pictures all over it.  Think of a brainstorming session where you put all your ideas down in any order.  You don’t have to know the overall picture from the start, just get down ideas and visuals.

Here’s a sample below:

2.  Click on the white butcher paper and add text, images, grouping main ideas and topics.

3.  Click on an item and you can move, enlarge, or rotate the object to your requirements (using tool below)

4.  Add frames around blocks of content (text, images).

5. Finally, create a path from first item to next and so on.  This creates the “slide order” or the path which the presentation will take.

Key concepts you will need to understand: frames and paths.  Frames group content together into one location.  Paths are used to connect pieces of content or frames of content.

Here’s my first Prezi presentation for an in-service I conducted.

I love the openness and freedom of the personal computing space (found via a laptop or desktop computer with software installed locally on a computer). I feel handcuffed by many online web tools and IPhone apps limited by bandwidth and tiny screens.  I dare you to try getting a document or video in and out of an IPod Touch or a cell phone and move it from one computer to another. Every little tool costs a dollar here and a dollar there. How often did people pay for software in the PC environment? Most software, outside of professional level programs like Office or Adobe, and Windows, was shareware or freeware.   You could install what you wanted and use it how you wanted.

I have to pay an additional fee ($15) to use the MLB app EVERY YEAR (even after I’ve paid $100 for the streaming service) and advertisements fill the limited real estate of small screens on most of the free apps, driving me to delete them. I’ve had an IPod Touch for two years, and I have only bought a handful of apps and have no more than three screens of apps.  Once I buy an app, it’s soon to become out-of-date if I buy a future IPod Touch. The IPad wants me to pay two or three times the amount for apps, even though I would have to dish out $500 to get it.

As a cost-conscious user, I think we should all take a five year break for the day when mobile phones become more CPU capable and break free of all the restrictions and experience the freedom we have enjoyed in the personal computing space for years.  I can live with the fear of malware and viruses for the ability to use any software in an open environment without being nicked and dimed for everything. I love my IPod Touch, but my joy is tempered by how awesome it could be if it had the freedom of my simple $1000 laptop.

I wish all music services allowed the freedom to explore and discover new bands and music. It always reminded me of the listening booths you see in a Borders where you can sample entire albums. But it makes much more sense in your own home on your computer. If the music industry is paying attention, I have bought more music and been more engaged in finding new favorite bands/singers as a result of Lala. And I’m confident that my students become more avid music aficionados as a result of Lala.

Apple bought it out and shut it down, and hopefully they will offer something comparable in its place. But there is no guarantee. The way Apple controls distribution of content through ITunes, I’d be surprised if we see a valuable service like Lala. Spotify is a similar service in Europe, but we haven’t benefited–it has been promised in the United States, but no signs yet of it here.

Lala is one of many online services that I discover through observing students in the computer labs. We should be aware of our students’ activities when they think we are not watching because sometimes they will make us aware of tools and services that might help or benefit our instructional practices.