Today was abnormal for a weekend day: I actually came across all sorts of multimedia tools, as opposed to just sleeping all day. I attended the second day of the Illinois College Press Association conference, and was able to attend a session that gave us tons of tools we need to get around the particular shortcomings of College Publisher. It’s refreshing, because I’ve been made legitimately angry by the horribly outdated multimedia tools that we’ve been stuck with. Now, I’m not blaming those bad tools for all of the shortcomings of the website, but they certainly don’t help.
One of the really cool tools we were shown was Vuvox. I’ve been slightly anti-Flash on this blog, but only because it’s annoying to a blogger– I can’t link to content within the site itself. Vuvox is cool though, because it creates a lightweight flash slideshow presentation within the website itself. Here’s an example that I threw together quickly:
Vodpod videos no longer available.Cool, no?
Another site we were shown was Wix. Wix makes free and quick Flash websites, and though I don’t like trying to link to them, I can’t avoid the fact that Flash looks better than anything else on the web. Whether or not it’s easier to code than HTML/CSS (I don’t know, I’ve never tried), it always looks like more work went into it. Loads more. I’m contemplating using Wix to run my Convergence Journalism class’ website, but I’ll have to work out the bugs. It’ll probably be a mix of our current content manager and these Flash tools, whatever is the most efficient/good- looking.
Two more short thoughts, and they’re both Facebook-based. The first is just a matter of confusion. Take a look at this image that was in a Facebook advertisement on my sidebar today: 
Apparently whoever made this image put a phone’s keypad onto the body of a Canon Digital Rebel DSLR. Usually camera phones work the other way, but hey, if someone invents this, it’ll be handy to… Um… Somebody with really large pockets. I just don’t know what they were thinking. It’s a curious idea, though, I’ll give them that.
Also: I’ve commented on the vapidity of social networking sites, but I was crushed (crushed) to see that a friend de-friended me on Facebook today. It hurts surprisingly much for such a small, relatively meaningless thing. I guess it depends on who it is, but it never feels great.
Enough Facebook. Here’s the music.
I don’t feel good posting this first track… It feels like sacrilege of some kind. The Beatles are just so much better than the Monkees. They do sound good together, though. Probably because the Beatles taught the Monkees everything they know.
Speaking of cheesy bands, this second track features Green Day.
This last track is a long ‘un. It’s got a great groove, though.
PS– My (horrible) method of keeping track of which mash-ups I’ve posted is to download them and search my iTunes for a track I’m suspicious about double-posting. The problem is that I don’t download all of them, so a bunch slip through the cracks. I also haven’t cleaned up my desktop in a while, so now it’s covered with two weeks of mash-ups. What a mess.
Gorilla Media 