My reviews of digital stories

As part of the Slough of Despond 2 task of CMWP,  my review of examples of digital storytelling shared along with one of my choice are as follows:

1. Teaser of the movie: Sound of my voice

http://www.soundofmyvoicemovie.com/index2.html

Overall, this was an amazing trailer, which left you wanting to watch the movie.

In design the trailer begins with a visual design constituting of dim lit scenes to give a suspense feel. The initial few minutes almost had no dialogues but background music appropriately used with extremely exaggerated sounds of movements and actions like shutting of doors, footsteps, sound of paper. In terms of functionality, it delivers huge intrigue and interest in me to know more about what will happen next. The story unfolds very slowly to unveil the expected topic of the movie. In structure the entire scene sequence leads to a gripping unfolding of more about the movie. It just stops at the right time, when the audience is intensely engaged with the scene when she will know what the movie is about. Obviously, she will have to go and watch the movie to get her answers as an audience.

All through the screen, one gets options of sharing and embedding this teaser video. In order to further enhance viewer interaction, if you have really liked it, you can post the link of the teaser on twitter/Facebook/tumblr .You can also see who all viewed this particular video.

2.My second review of digital storytelling is on twitter stories as per recommended reading/link

http://www.fastcompany.com/3003726/twitter-emerging-creative-medium-digital-age

There are examples of success in twitter stories. To my mind, this success is attributed to the fact that Twitter helps reach people very closely given the fact that it delivers stories straight on mobile phones in real time. The restricted character size of 140 helps to keep the interaction crisp and short making the audience consume content comfortable instead of overloading them with a lot at one time. In functionality, twitter proves to be a flexible platform with real time broadcasting ability. It manages to deliver high on parameters of engagement and anticipation, which are key requirements of audiences for any story. One can create a feeling of suspense by broadcasting every line, which can even be done in the identity of the fictional character of the story. This edge of twitter is a clear winner as it helps the character tweet and gives a sense of his/her personality and likes/inclinations. Example: Pyre created a horror story on twitter as a white house nanny with actual tweets of the character over 5 days without programming his tweets. He matched his tweets with actual time, example: a horrific nightmare was timed with actual night time of Washington time zone. This is how real Twitter storytelling can be! Just not this, but it helps interact with audience in real and imaginary space by creating a fictional character on twitter and bringing her/him alive with tweeted photos, posters, press clips etc.

This mode of storytelling is highly interactive given that many authors have tested its interactivity quotient by asking audience to tweet the expected endings of a story.

Success of this medium is evident from examples such as detective story called Working theory of love by Scott Hutchins delivered in five instalments. Pulizer prizewinning author Jennifer Egan’s story “Black box story” was broadcast over 10 hours in 600 tweets.

Going by the high interactivity and functionality quotient, according to me , twitter stories have huge potential especially for the horror/detective genre.

We considered using this aspect of twitter in the prelaunch of our digital story called food quickies : a show on quick & healthy food recipes.Twitter will help us generate interest in our launch and also help create a fictional character : our chef who is the host of our food quickies show. He will keep the conversations alive with the community interested in quick and healthy food recipes.

3.My review of a trailer of my choice of minininjas

http://www.minininjas.com/us/#/Trailer

I decided to review this trailer which I stumbled upon when I saw my son watching it. The look of the website and the trailer got me interested in it! The visual design is excellent with close to real and interactive animation to illustrate the ninja world. The animated illustration of ninja associated with the usual ninja identity coupled with background audio sounds of birds, insects, animals, thunder and other actions give a true feel for ninja to be on alert! The interplay of the voice over and background music makes the narration of the story to the children who are the primary audience, highly engaging. These sounds help create intense suspense for the children audience in this story. To my mind this story delivers highly on visual design with excellent animation and structure for storytelling for children. My viewing experience however was interrupted strangely due to the continuous buffering of the trailer video. The trailer stops at a point just before a critical revelation is to happen. This led me to have a lot of interest in the video to know what will happen next. The website which was playing this trailer supports many interactive options for children in the form of games, screens ,character information as trivia. This helps keep them attached to the theme of ninjas continuously.

4.My review of Goldilocks-the iphone 4 & mobile series episode 1: meet locks on vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/15608787

Given that its shot on an iphone and ipod touch, it is a well shot episodic mobile action series with scene sequences which keep the audience interested.The unbelievable power of a mobile camera phone comes alive here!There is continuity in actions which are shot that helps unfold the story comortably to the audience but with an element of surprise.The extensive use of background sounds illustrates that the story is a thriller.There is a continuous overplay of audios of actions and background soundtracks which help create a highly engaging and intense emotion amongst the audience.There are almost no dialogues until the end .It’s then when the story flips and creates a big turn with the dialogue.It stops at a critical point leaving the audience wanting to know more.This is the desired response which actually highlights the success of this story.As an audience, I give it full marks on structure and functionality as a suspense thriller!

A social platform for social media-holics?interesting !

Hi, as part of the digital story project, while we all created our very own, we were also to share a feedback with a peer on their digital story.

I had seen a linked in request from Ebony Warren sent by Alex ,which got me really interested in his project.This was the start of my want to know more about it! To my mind, this is a sure shot positive for a new beginning. Honestly, I did not end up accepting the invite simply since it was on linked in, I wanted to be sure of the identity of the person I was including in my professional network.Given the sensitivity such as this involved in using Linked in, it may perhaps been a better idea to use facebook instead,I thought? Having said that, if Alex was trying to portray Ebony Warren as a respected professional in his field which we didnt know, then of course Linked in was the right choice but may be with more profile information and not just a teaser!?Would be my suggestion to Alex.

When the project was finally launched, and the link shared on the CMWP group today , I could’nt wait to press the click button on the website address http://crematoriumcafe.com/

Now this click landed me to a very neat homepage with clean and well navigated content.The name however got me thinking ?I could not link up Ebony warren and crematorium café! While I understood that Ebony Warren is a social media holic and wants to share his experience of finding his love through social media, then what is he doing at a place called crematorium café? I began to deconstruct the name to help me link up the two. So a café is a social place! Where you share and meet.But crematorium,to my best undertstanding is a place where life which has ends sees it’s last.so why this name?

I am still thinking!!

Without this link association, I would think of this project being a plat form for all media passionists to express their experience and love for social media.

But the deconstruct of the name makes me believe I am missing a point here?

Or is this intended? I think it is, since the beginning also had the sense of intrigue which continues !!

Home page of Crematorium cafe

I went on further to explore it to find a blog post about an experience at a cafe.

Great project in aesthetics and very pleasant instrumental soundtrack which plays as you navigate your way.The design is modern and neat.The FB & twitter is not activated as yet.Only the Blogpost was which I read.

The notebook design page as a blog post looks very personal and real.Good insight used since most of us first pen down our thought and then transfer them elsewhere!!

Notebook pin up blog post design

Alex, may want to immediately activate the Fb & twitter to get people to know about this ! and this is about Social media.Right?

Even if the project is what I think it is :about social media passionist sharing and deconstructing their lives on yet another social media, I would surely jump onto this and be part of this set simply coz being social is the only way of life for everyone!

Get tuned into life with Food Quickies

Food Quickies is here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UfAGWNtFs0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.facebook.com/foodquickies?fref=nf

http://foodquickies.wordpress.com/

http://instagram.com/p/uhbHe_H5RP/?modal=true

http://instagram.com/food_quickies

It’s just for you guys looking for some quick fixes of some good healthy food !This show will be your true friend in times when you need to fix an unplanned quick meal and all you have with you are, just a few ingredients and of course, the Food Quickies Show to count on!

We are confident that you will relate to this quick fix recipe show with a touch of humor and spontaneity, which takes you away from your life stress and gives you therapeutic quick food served with lot of humour!

The show hosted by a young working International student metaphorically signifies fusion of cultures at Melbourne and, food being the universal way to a person’s heart helps brings people together!

Some behind the scenes for you !!

To gift your life with this amazing digital show,we all : Mona. Angela,Andy and Shakun , set out to achieve our deadlines as we discussed and planned.

so  you can make out from the schedule as below on what kind of efforts went into creating this just for you! I can just say that creating this was’nt a quickie!:)

Week of 1 September 2014: Planning and Pre Production: Location, Props, Costumes. Storyboard, Treatment note,Equipment,Crew)

Week of 8 September 2014: Rehearsals, Music Production, Icon design, shoot

Week of 15 September & Week of 22 September 2014: Editing, Patch Shoot, Graphics work

Week of 29 September 2014: First cut sharing with Tutor (week 11 of class)

Week of 6 October 2014: Feedback inclusion

Week of 14 October 2014: Social Media Build up to launch

Week of 20 October 2014: Launch of Food quickies show

Along the way,we encountered hiccups owing to a team member not contributing. So the rest three of us folded our sleeves and decided to make the project happen against all odds in both the pre-production stage and the production stage.! Isn’t that actually what life is all about?!! This way this project gave us a live experience of handling unforeseen and unplanned hindrances and the challenges which come along with it.Nothing is simple as they say! We had to change the shoot venue too and were obliged by a friend in last minute to give us their kitchen. A big thanks to them all once again!

A day before the shoot, I created the prop list and went for shopping along with Andy.All the cooking ingredients and ofcourse the Chef’s hat had to be bought.I also briefed Yuri , our chef on the script on this day itself.So he had time to familiarise himself with the script in advance.He was kind enough to bring along an awesome chef hat with him which we used for the shoot.I rehearsed the entire script with Yuri at least three times along with one round of timed rehearsal. As the director of the project, I could actually feel the pressure on me! With every shot Angela took, I was confident that we were doing a fair job! ! Post the shoot,I treated the entire crew with Food Quickies Pizza and smoothies.

Once the video was shot though with a delay due to reasons mentioned already shared, we begun editing the videos. We had too much to do given the submission pressure and team dynamics, we did not spend enough time on creating super quality edits. This is one  area which we have learnt cannot be a Quickie! Angela could’nt agree more with me! She was full time on it! Then the music mixing was done which was last minute.Though I had created a soundtrack, but we used another ! Shakun put the music and the team credit piece last minute.This is one aspect which we could have done better.We apologise for having missed out on our ackowledgement of Yuri’s name in our video.

The Icon used to represent food quickies was something on which considerable time was spent. Infact it underwent many iterations and changes. The final one looks nowhere near what we began thinking with! This is something that brought us joy!

Food Quickies Icon

We had a well thought of implementation strategy. We used the video teasers and the icon teaser as part of a very impactful pre launch stage.

Pre launch : teasers on what are we ? Telling people that we are coming soon.

https://www.facebook.com/foodquickies/photos/pb.387708984713523.-2207520000.1414124597./394732107344544/?type=1&theater

We followed this with videos on the second day.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=394771970673891&set=vb.387708984713523&type=2&theater

pre launch video

This was for three days of high impact cross promotion across social media. which gave us excellent results across Social Media. We learnt that even today, most people may not be on twitter or instagram but they are surely on facebook. Having found this out , we decided to focus our efforts on Facebook with some presence across communities and groups on twitter and instragram. In two days we got almost 71 likes.The stats are as below:

Stats of our pre launch of food Quickies

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=395062480644840&set=vb.387708984713523&type=2&theater

Now for the launch. We launched by embedding the video and we are here for you!…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UfAGWNtFs0&feature=youtu.be

The Social  Media success is something we are extremely proud of ! The numbers speak for themselves.This is something which I was very passionately driving myself along with the team.

We plan to expand our community of all you believers and followers by constantly remaining engaged by consistently posting fresh, intriguing food quickies content to ourFood quickies social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and our blog, which still needs a lot of work as we speak.We have also joined a few of you on the quick recipes & recipes Twubs and will be closely interacting with you there!

We have lots of stuff stored in our kitchen just for everyone : Some amazing videos and recipes.So remember to stay connected with us, which we will share with you over the next few days!

Keep watching coz now you are tuned into life with Food Quickies.

Signing off till you get ready for the next food quickie:)

QR code: Find my friendship story

You are reading my blog thanks to the QR code I have put up at the backyard of the common area in the neighbourhood. If you are reading this, the chances are that you will be convinced that you got yourself an unconditional friend,just as I have, by visiting here!

QR CODE PASTED AT POOL ENTRANCE

Generated QR Code for my story blog post

Yes, I want you to know about by special friend! My stay in Melbourne has earned me a friend who is cool and forgiving all the time! Well well, just in case, you are getting ideas, let me break the suspense! I often spend a lot of time at the backyard of the common neighbourhood area.

As much of my time has ever since been into studying, this is one corner which is my favourite. The backyard with a pool with palm tress towering it! As if, they are it’s power! This combination somehow lends me a feeling of having a firm and strong friend who is always by my side standing tall and firm. Each time I am sitting beside this pool, I feel safe. I often find myself talking to it too! While this may sound insane, I feel we guys have a great chat! The cool chilled out outlook is not just evident in the look but in it’s presence too!

But the recent storm shook the fence down and also many strong branches of the guarding palm trees, which fell on my friend.I actually felt it’s hurt when I saw the branches in water. Eversince, it remains covered.I hope in my heart that it’s fine and I am confident knowing it’s versatility, it will survive!

I know by now, you certainly feel I have a freaked out streak in me. But , this has been my friend through sunshine and rain! It stands by me and listens to me whenever I want to share anything! It’s there for me at anytime of the day. Still and cool as always! My friend! My Pool!

Just to share with you on how i created this link with the QR code which you scanned and read my blog post: I first wrote and posted my story as a blog post .I then put the link f my blog post on qrstuff.com.By doing so, I was given a QR code.I printed the same and put it up at the entrance of the pool for you /anyone to scan and this got you to my blog post.So thanks to this QR code you were able to read my story!

Am also attaching screen shots of qr scan which i tried doing on my phone.Pl see as below:

QR Code scanned on Quick Scan App

I wanted to share this special story of friendship with you through this QR code. Hope you enjoyed it and wish you find this friendship with it too!!

Learning about EBooks

Over the past decade a new concept of reading has evolved which is slowly causing the death of physical paper books, magazines and newspapers. It’s called an e book. “E” is for electronic version. Hence the name ebook.

It seems that gradually, ebooks are becoming the preferred choice over physical books. Reason being they are light weight, easy to store, easy to read and work well for the world by being an environmentally conscious way to save the trees.

The electronic material is available in various formats such as exe, html, pdf etc.The formats tell you what file type the book has been made in depending on which, what programs are required for it. Example :  Files like htm are opened in Internet Explorer mostly.For opening a pdf file one needs one needs a program like the Adobe Reader. Other programs available are Microsoft reader (for LIT files), Flip Album Viewer for both Mac version as well as Windows version.

Specific devices for reading ebooks: Apart from the regular desktops and laptops there are devices which are available specifically for the downloading, browsing, surfing and reading of ebooks .Some of them are Kindle, Palm Pilot and Rocket ebook.

Creating an ebook

Once the material is written, it needs to be converted into specific file formats.Some of the popular file formats nowdays are : .epub, .mobi and pdf file formats. .epub is one of the more popular formats which however is vendor-independent but is not supported by EKindle.

.Mobi is known for it’s ability to include complicated content and high file compressions. This format is a popular choice amongst e book readers who want to make their notes or make freehand drawings while reading the content of the ebook.

Most common file format is PDF which can run on all platforms.It needs Adobe reader for pdf to open. There is an I book format from Apple. This is created using I books author on Apple. Ebooks created from this will therefore be sold only to Apple e bookstore.

There are plenty of softwares available today for creating an ebook from a word, .doc or .doc x file.

Ebook creator and Jutoh are some of the popular softwares. They import the doc files and let you work on them before converting them into .epub, .mobi or pdf files. Infact,I did some online tutorials to how Jutoh works.It was simple to execute if the instructions are followed as advised. The software is also available for windows/apple

Screen shots as follows of Jutoh available for Mac as i needed a Mac version (credit : http://www.jutoh.com/)

Jutoh options

After downloading the software for mac, Jutoh lets you create ebooks either as a normal reflowable format or a fixed format.you can also write a full ebook in jutoh itself or import the content on jutoh to create one from an existing document.

Import file in Jutoh .

I understood that the ebook could be created simply by importing the word file ,in either ms word,.docx or .doc file formats.since Jutoh ignores the page numbers and fonts , one just needs to import the text in the .doc/.docx/msword format., jutoh gives us the option of creating separator in the ebook content examples create chapters of the ebook. while creating a new project ,It is suggested to remove page breaks since the formatting of the document may not be perfect. You can also choose cover page designs by either going with Jutoh template or create a new one. While importing , the import coding is chosen as unicode 8Bit(UTF.8) the content Once all this is done, we just need to export the content.But in my trial I used the standard style sheet and format of jutoh. When all of this is done.We just need to select export from the file menue.Though may formats are possible, the .epub is most used.The file obtained in this .epub format can be read/browsed in an ebook reader.

Once content is converted to an ebook, these need to be launched. Some of the major players in the market which launch ebooks are Amazon, Apple, Kobo and Barnes and Noble. Just like for physical paper books, there are players who help launch them in the market, the same holds for e books too.

As per Forbes :

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2013/12/30/top-five-ebook-publishers-in-2013/

The 2013 end-of-year ranking of which publishers had the most success publishing ebooks in 2013:

1. Penguin Random House — 478 best-sellers*
2. Hachette — 258 best-sellers
3. Self-published — 99 best-sellers
4. HarperCollins — 91 best-sellers

I sincerely hope that this post helped you get an idea about ebooks and how they are created and distributed.

Hashtag Research

We often hear about the use of hashtags for research and social media marketing. In this post I intend to share and explore how to do hashtag research and have a meaningful use of the same for your projects by sharing my experience. This post makes the whole process really simple by starting with what are hashtags and how to do research and get access to conversations on topics of interest. I have illustrated this with example of my Digital Story Project. I sincerely hope that you will find this useful.

To start with let us first understand what is a hashtag.

As per Twubs.com: ”Hashtags are any word in that social conversation that begins with the #symbol” (credit: twubs.com)

Hashtags are used when you are talking about a specific topic. Let me explain how it works. For example if I am talking about RMIT. Then #RMIT will be the hashtag used by me. Effectively Hashtags work as the keywords for making my message appear in any global search, which may happen on the topic of RMIT. Also, it’s good to note that even tough I am not being followed on twitter, but if someone is doing a research on #RMIT, then my contribution or conversations with #RMIT will feature in that person’s search.

Twubs is the platform, which actually aggregates tweets, pictures, videos and other information on one page.

On Twub one can connect with people of similar interests. For our digital story project named food quickies, which gives quick food recipes, I initiated a research to find out the conversations and interest levels on this topic.

Now I decided to use this to do a search for conversations on Quick recipes, which is the theme for our digital story.

So, I did a hashtag search with #quickrecipes which gave me the following : screen shot as below:

#Quickrecipes search

I also did a hashtag search with #recipes, which gave me some more conversations: screen shot

#recipes search

The hashtag research on quick recipes helped me get access to all online conversations pertaining to quick recipes. I can accordingly promote my show on this quick recipes platform amongst these participants.

I also joined the twub of #recipes.

Joined the Recipes Twub for my Digital Story Promotion

I made the list of people from here whom we will follow and engage with to promote Food Quickies.

I also added the hashtag search with#quickfoodrecipes and #quickecipes on Google and got the following links:

https://www.google.co.in/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%23quickfoodrecipes

https://www.google.co.in/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%23quickrecipes&start=10

Now the plan is not just to use this as the universe to promote and engage with for the food quickies show but also get some insights to build our offering so that we have high engagement and participation from them for food quickies. After going through these links I realised that how many people were actually directly /indirectly linked with quick recipes. But after going through many of these conversations, there is an evident current trend on Halloween, Vegan diets and gluten free quick recipes.

Hence now we will consider incorporating quick recipes specific to Food quickies

So this research based on hashtags: quickrecipes/Quick foodrecipes has been indeed very useful in the following way:

• Locate conversations and interest in the topic
• Seek opportunities to engage
• Evolve our offering/product according to interest groups: so now we will incorporate recipes for Halloween, vegans and Gluten free diets.

Now while I saw the group of people with same interest: #quickrecipes, #quickfoodrecipes, I can post my message to this specific group. I can also do a live chat thanks to the chat mode. So my plan is that on Monday, when we do a pre-launch of Food quickies show, which is about quick food recipes, we will use this to messaging on twub to build interest in our upcoming launch.

So We will post messages three times a day with teaser clips of the show on this twub with #quick recipes and #recipes, both.

We will host a chat on the launch day to reveal food quickies to this group.

The above strategy will help in automatically showing us instantly on twitter feeds. Hence our tweets will be easily reachable. With all this information, we have identified a trend and hence a need for us to integrate Haloween, Gluten free, vegan and pizzawiches in foodquickies.

It is fair to round up this conversation with very fruitful results of my hashtag research which have helped us evolve our brand proposition:  Foodquickies with all the information I found on the related theme of quick food recipes and the current trends.

Applying the social media triple connect

Post going through all the readings and examples shared along with online research on social media, I would like to share that I realized that the Social Media Strategy must necessarily have three aspects, namely:

1. It must help us to market our Project
2. It must help us get an entry into the community of people who are interested in food and quick recipes.
3. It should help us share our project for people to view or experience it.

So what better than applying my learnings to the Social Media Strategy for our Digital Story! Let me illustrate my grasp through application to our digital story project.

Therefore, any strategy we decide to choose and implement for our digital story project, a quick food recipes show called FoodQuickies, must have the above three aspects.

1.Now, let me address the first aspect of marketing our digital story. Given the success of social media vehicles such as Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and U-tube, we have decided to post and create a buzz about Food quickies through these vehicles. Food quickies social media pages will be created on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

We will upload a photo of Food Quickies icon along with a short description about Food Quickies so that the followers know the content.We will hashtag Food Quickies and hashtag quick recipes too in all our posts across social media.

There will be need for continuous updates on these. We will use these social media to launch, engage and present the Food Quickies Show. Initiated by video launch on YouTube and our Blog called Food quickies, food quickies social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will carry all messages related to Food Quickies.

We will have to keep a close watch on the participation on our Food Quickies Social pages and it’s mentions(#foodquickies)  on other social media pages. It’s critical to note here that our brand mentions on other social pages will only happen once we have joined and become an integral part of the quick recipe community/interest group.

Alongside, we will encourage people to share on Fb and also retweet about Food Quickies.

2.Now let’s look at the second aspect of getting an entry into the community of people who are interested in food and quick recipes. In this, as I understood, the clear way for us is first connect with them by being a part of their network and then engage with them by sharing regular updates. They are very important set of people as they act as key influencers of the community/interest group of quick recipes.

So, how to do this ?

• We will research the social media networks for all groups which are interested in this theme of #quick recipes.
• We will join their FB groups, which are active on the theme of quick recipes.
• Do a search on twitter with #quickrecipes and start following them.

By doing this, we are actually infiltrating these networks and creating engagement with our key influencers.

We will also do some trending analysis from these social conversations on selected hash tags of quick recipes. We will ask fans/groups to tell us what they want from foodquickies. This will also help us immensely in step 3 of managing content and cross-pollinating our Food quickies presence in Social Media Space.

3.We should know that while we are clear on which Social media to use and which communities to be part of. It is equally important to create highly engaging content and also manage it. Make sure that there is cross-pollination amongst the social media. I have decided to keep the following in mind:

We will use hash tags : By using #foodquickies, #quickrecipes we will figure in the related search engine, category messages and key words with chosen Hash tags.

Examples say for Instagram: Choose a good photo, which is the icon for food quickies.  We will add our blog address and Facebook page URL. It’s important to synchronise this with the digital story twitter account.

We also activated the geo-location on Instagram since we want to show people that food quickies is just like Melbourne: a fusion pot of cultures and we stand for quick food recipes with extensive food fusion. What is we decide to open a restaurant from same address; the people will know where to locate us! Future thinking!!Have a weekly contest of pictures of foods with quick food recipes on Instagram.

We also decided to put some “behind the scenes making of Food Quickies” on U-tube.We will update these links on twitter and facebook.

On Twitter, we will focus on targeted tweets to related networks. Join the twub of quickrecipes.

Creating brandvocates for Food quickies

Content should be such that it encourages sharing amongst people. We will ask people to like and share our FB updates and retweet about us.

We will do two contests. There will be an exciting pre-launch activity: a week before the launch: food quickie icon contest where we will ask fans to guess the name of the show by sharing only the icon and other clues.Second contest will be Post launch, when people will be invited to share their pictures and recipes. Hence, this will encourage sharing and enhance engagement with Food quickies.

I am confident that by closely connecting across the above mentioned tri-connects of social media, we will achieve success in marketing, creating engagement and building community brandvocates for Food Quickies on social media.

Garageband; Musically Yours !!

As part of the task of doubting castle 3,I went through the flipped lecture on audio editing and some online resources and lessons on Garageband. While the flipped lecture introduced us to both Audacity and Garagband, I chose to experiment and learn to work with Garageband as I personally use a Mac which will make it simpler to synchronise the music straight with I Movie. However,one dos still have an option to export this to another editing software such as Premiere,if I wasn’t using IMovie.

Having gone through the tutorials and some online examples, I decided to create two soundtracks on Garagband.One Latino soundtrack for my Salsa Practice and the other soundtrack for background to the Behind the scenes and credits video of our digital story.

Atleast the first would be more experimental!

Practically, basis my first hand experience in using garage band, I feel it’s fairly easy and friendly with unlimited choice of options for treatment for recording tracks.

Beginning of creating Latino Soundtrack on Garage Band

One starts with opening the Garage band, you get a display of various tracks which one can choose from.Select the track of your choice and drag the same to the timeline.Should you wish to repeat it,you hold the option button and drag the selected part of the track where you want to add it.

Chosen Tracks to create the Latino Song

You can keep adding the various instruments/base . Once done, press share with options of sharing on ITunes/disk and others as per screen shot below. on left top corner

I saved it on my itunes in MP3 format. AAC format is also possible which in-fact gives a better quality of sound track. Then Itunes will launch and play the song.

Exporting the file

Saving the file

So here’s the link as below of the Latino Song track I created on Garageband.Happy listening!

https://soundcloud.com/mona-puri/07-latin

https://docs.google.com/a/student.rmit.edu.au/file/d/0B2u-rV9i4nKWSUlPVWFqTFZpZzA/edit

On garageband apart from creating soundtracks, one work on multiple tracks : can mix Voices, Jingles, radio sounds, others and many adjustments such as Ducking on help to keep a particular track dominant so that by using which you don’t have to keep adjusting the volumes of the various soundtracks. By hitting solo to a particular track, only those tracks become active.

I went ahead to create another soundtrack to use the same as background music for our Behind the scenes and credits video for the digital story.

Here are some screen shots of the making of the soundtrack by me and the link of the soundtrack created.

Starting the new song

Adding different tracks

Song saved in mp3 format

https://soundcloud.com/mona-puri/digital-story-credits-soundtrack

I uploaded my files on soundcloud.com

The files can be stored in garageband and be worked upon anytime later you feel like changing something in them.This saves you from starting all over again and just editing the file as per your requirements.

Files can be used later too

Hope you enjoy listening to these as much as I enjoyed creating them!

Signing off! Musically yours

Learning and Experimenting Image Editing

Through this blog post, I will share my learnings from the flipped lecture and my experimentation with working on image editing using GIMP and Photoshop.

To start with I downloaded GIMP on my laptop. GIMP is available for use free. I used Photoshop software available on the RMIT system.

To do the image editing I needed to have an image to work on. As part of the Digital story work, we wanted to create an icon for thematic representation of our story.

We wanted to create a neat icon for our theme of foodQuickies. For this, I downloaded a free clip art form a site openclipart.org.

I chose the clip art and then decided to edit this with help of GIMP. Since we wanted to have a very clean and clutter-free icon, I was clear from the beginning on what I wanted to experiment with. I had to add a clean text description to state it’s name and add an effect to make the chef hat look more natural. What better than a paintbrush to show the wrinkles of the hat!

So I opened and exported the clip art file in GIMP.

I had to work with layers. I first saved the original image on one layer. Then I created another layer on which I would add the text.

Then I used the “A” tool in the toolbox. Chose red colour since Red goes well with Black.

I wanted to further give a Block paint brush effect on the chef hat so I created another layer for this and applied the paint brush from the tool box.I then added paintbrush strokes to the top of the chef’s hat. So now  we had three layers.

I took this icon then, as a reference for our discussion on next steps on the digital story project.

Infact,I took two options with different text font styles for the Group to choose from.These are as below:

Option 1

Option 2

My wedding anniversary was round the corner. I wanted to personalise a picture of me and my husband and gift the same to us! So I decided to try my hand on Photoshop.

I took a picture of ours at Flinders Street. I transferred that image from my phone to my laptop. I then opened the image in Photoshop.

Having learnt now that one always works with layers, I created a layer to add text on it. I then chose the option of “ T ” tool from the Toolbox. I chose Red colour for the chosen font style.

Text Layer added

Now I wanted to make this picture in Gray scale which is personally my favourite look! So I created another layer as a copy. Then adjusted the R/G/B to 71/72/74 in Colour adjustments to make the visual in Gray scale.

I really enjoyed using the paint brush option. So I created another layer to give a paintbrush effect to the background buildings in the picture.Went to Filter Gallery,chose Brush Strokes.

GrayScale and Paintbrush

I also experimented with opacity adjustment to see how the visual gets impacted.Along with this,I also chose the sketch option in filter gallery,adjusted charcoal area to 9,Chalk Area to 11 and Stroke Pressure to 1. With both , I got the following result:

Opacity Change

Finally,for printing, I settled for the colour option with our life written on it.

My Life

I saved the image in jpeg and PNG formats. I have realised that a Jpeg is very useful as it compresses the image while maintaining the image quality very well.

While working on both softwares, as you can see I chose to do almost similar effects, maybe more in Photoshop owing to it’s limited access for me since it’s not free, I realised how important it is to keep the actual image in a different layer. Each time you want to work on an aspect of the image, you need to create a layer to work on!

I think the opportunities, which both these softwares ;GIMP and Photoshop give us are unlimited! I can keep experimenting everyday to spruce up one’s skills of image editing since it’s immensely valuable to know how to edit images while evolving your digital stories.

Researching the Search Engines!

Researching DuckDuckGo, Google and Instagrok on my first hand Experience and their Privacy Policy.

When comparing the three search engines, I found out that:

• DuckDuckGo shows all users the same search results for a given search term. It distinguishes itself from other search engines by not profiling its users.
• Google shows personalized results to a search depending on the search history of the user.
• Instagrok positions itself as a research engine. When a search is done, it shows results in the form of graphical concept maps showing how ideas connect. This engine is found to be useful with very specific research and hence, it is appropriately called a research engine!Extremely useful for the Education and Research sector.

In order to delve deeper, there’s nothing better than actually experiencing a product or a service. Therefore, I did a search for 4 g Telephone network on all the 3 search engines and I realized that:

Google was the fastest to show results. However, there were ads in the search followed by information links on the search term.The ads were perhaps related to my last search I did on Google on Optus.

In DuckDuckGo, the speed was good to show results, which were links, related to the term. The information shared was unique and interesting, thus highlighting the fact that DuckDuckGo also emphasizes getting information from the best sources rather than the most sources, generating its search results from key crowd sourced sites such as Wikipedia and from partnerships with other search engines like Yandex, Yahoo, Bing, Wolfram, Alpha, Yummly.

I also looked at the Privacy Policies of these search engines. Here’s a comparison of the Privacy Policies of these.

DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. With regards to Search Leaks, at DuckDuckGo, search leakage is prevented by default. When a user clicks on the link, it routes that request in a way so that it does not send search terms to other sites. Though the other site will know that they were visited, but they will not know what search was entered.

At other search engines such as Google, when you do a search and then click on a link, your search terms will be sent to that site you clicked on in the http referrer header. Some call this sharing of personal information or search leakage. For example when you search for something private, you are sharing that private search not just with the search engine but also with all the sites that you clicked on for that search. The encrypted version of DuckDuckGo can protect your search from being leaked onto the computers it travels. At DuckDuckGo, the encrypted version even goes further and automatically changes links from a number of major websites to point to the encrypted versions of those sites. Another way to prevent search leakage is by using a Post request, which has the effect of not showing your search in your browser, and, as a consequence, does not send it to other sites. In case you want to prevent sites from knowing you visited them at all, you can use a proxy like Tor.DuckDuckGo operates a Tor exit enclave which means it gives end to end anonymity and encryption in search using Tor & DuckDuckGo together.

Unlike Google where the searches are often tied together through browser cookies, which are pieces of information that sit on your computer and get sent to the search engine on each request, DDG does not use cookies by default. Only if you have changed any settings then cookies are used to store those changes. Howevre, not stored in a personally identifiable way. Google often stores a unique identifier in your browser and then associates that identifier with your searches.

Google uses all information on your use of services and how you use them, like when you visit a website that uses advertising services or you view and interact with ads and content. This information includes:

• Device information: which is collected by Google such as device specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with the Google Account.
• Log information when Google services are used or content is viewed on Google. This information is automatically collected and stored in server logs such as:
  • Details of how you used the service, such as the search queries.
  • Telephony logs information like your phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls.
  • IP Address
  • Device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL.
  • Cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account.

• Collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser(including HTML 5) and application data caches.
• Google uses various technologies to collect and store information when you visit a Google service, and this may include sending one or more cookies or anonymous identifiersto your device. The cookies and anonymous identifiers are used when you interact with services offered by Google and it’s partners, such as advertising or Google features that may appear on other sites.

While using Instagrok, the site can be used without creating an account. Certain features, however, require registration. If you register as a General user or as a Teacher/Librarian, you will be asked to provide your email address, a user ID of your choosing, and a password. Collected information: collects information on how you use the Site, such as what topics users have researched. Like most major websites, Instagrok may use “cookies” to store information during your use of the site that are stored in a designated file on your computer.