Unchartered Territory

This course continues to challenge me in significant ways. It is one thing to read about various web tools and all of their uses, but it is a whole other story to try to actually use them. When I signed up for my Snapchat account, I was confident that it wouldn't take much to snap a selfie and post it. In theory this is true, but in reality I got majorly stuck trying to figure out how to add the fun face filter to the selfie. What seemed obviously simple became more difficult than I expected, and I wasn't exactly interested in reading the instruction manual. (Which is probably the worst idea ever!) Fortunately, a colleague attending an institute with me was able to show me how to not only use the fun face filter but also how to save the photo for future use. I am not sure how often I will use Snapchat, but I am relieved to know that if I want to ever see myself as in cartoon form, it can be done in a snap!

I really wanted to learn how to easily post content from other websites on my blog and Twitter. When I attempted to add the class's Twitter feed to my blog, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. Google to the rescue! I have heard of embedded codes but never knew how to get the embedded code for a particular website. Thanks to a quick Google search, I discovered embed.ly. This site allows you to cut and paste an URL into a generator to get the embedded code for the web page. Once you have an embedded code, you can easily place other website content onto your own.

Check out the embed.ly code generator: http://embed.ly/code

Last week, we learned about Real Simple Syndication (RSS), at tool that allows you to set up a collection of websites for one-stop convenience. It sounded like a useful tool, so I set out exploring options. I came across this good article about the top-rated RSS feeders: https://zapier.com/blog/best-rss-feed-reader-apps/. I decided to check out Feedly, as it seemed to offer features that fit my needs. I have now started two collections for various types of websites and am pondering more collections to start to help me navigate the massive World Wide Web.