Free tool of the week: CommonCraft tutorials on social media tools

flickr/dorineruter

Need to introduce your staff or anyone else to social media tools?

CommonCraft offers a set of nine very short (3-4 minutes each) beautifully simple YouTube tutorials in plain English that appeal to even the least experienced among us. They really are small works of genius. Use one a week at your staff meetings, then spend a few minutes talking about possible work setting applications.

The videos include: RSS, social media, social networking, social bookmarking, online photo sharing, blogs, podcasting, twitter, and wikis. Here’s the one on wikis to give you a taste.

CC photo credit: dorineruter

Free tool of the week: Free music for nonprofit podcasts and videos

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flickr/[phil h

I’ve already blogged about the some of the advantages of Creative Commons for nonprofits. Here’s another biggie—ccmixter. It’s the place to go for free music. Nonprofit video makers and podcasters, take note!

ccMixter is a community music site featuring music licensed under Creative Commons. You can sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. The site lets you browse others’ videos and podcasts to hear some of the great remixes they’ve built from music on the site, all licensed for free use with attribution under Creative Commons license. It’s a great way to get ideas and inspiration for your own work.

CC photo credit: [phil h]

Free tool of the week: Audacity for nonprofit podcasters

flickr/zoomar

 

Free, open source software is true blessing for nonprofits. Luckily there’s more and more of it out there.

If you’re into podcasting or considering it as a communications channel in the future, you should know about Audacity—free software for audio editing that works for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. They just issued a new beta version, but are still recommending that all but advanced users stick with version 1.2.6. The Audacity site offers lots of support through a wiki , tutorials, tips, FAQ, and user forums.

Among other things, you can use Audacity to

• record live audio
• convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs
• edit MP3 (and other types of) sound files
• cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together
• change the speed or pitch of a recording

Another great freebie for DIY podcasters is the Levelator, a simple-to-use tool that adjusts audio levels within your podcast to even out volume and make it sound more professional. Users call it technical magic. During recordings, volume levels often change—when someone turns away from the mic, when they are farther from the mic than someone else, or when someone has a softer voice. The Levalator evens out all those variations and yields a much better sounding file.

For more terrific tips about podcasts, check out the webinar presentation that Corey Pudhorodsky, host and producer of 501c3cast, did for TechSoup and NTEN. 

CC photo credit: zoomar