Online Research Toolkit

I covered Picnik, the web-based image processor back in April. But the photos still originated on your drives, either uploaded directly to Picnik or through a photo-sharing shite, making it a little less than a true “web-app”. Well, now thanks to the Picnik Firefox Extension, you can take a screen shot or find a web-mounted picture and import it directly to Picnik (assuming you use Firefox, of course.)

I can definitely see this being used to add images, possibly cropped, “doodled”, or with text or block shapes, into a paper or presentation (suitably acknowledged to avoid plagiarism, and under proper fair use or copyright permission, of course). If you didn’t want to download the new photo before adding it to your project, you could import into one of the photo-sharing sites available.

Picnik works directly with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, and Webshots. You log into your photo-storage/sharing site via the links within Picnik and “activate” Picnik. (Activation is essentially giving Picnik your passwords. Use at your own risk.) Then you can choose your photos, edit, and save the newly edited photo into the site. Or email it, print it, download it, or save it to a different site.

This is the original image from NASA’s JPL PhotoJournal.
This is the image I produced in Picnik.

I imported the image directly from the NASA site. (US Government materials are in the public domain by law.) I cropped, heightened the contrast to show the smoke a little more, and added the text in Picnik. Then I exported the image to Flickr, which is the source for the image above. No downloading at all, so no worrying about virus checkers, disk size, or plugging my USB drive into a public computer.

Update (12/6/07): You can now edit Flickr pictures from within Flickr. Just click on the Edit button on your photo’s page (you can only edit your own photos.)

I’ve not updated this blog for a while, so I’m hoping this will be the first of some more regularly updated material.
I had mentioned Zoho earlier. With a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool, they were a nice contender in the online tools arena. I even noticed when they started adding lots more modules, like a database, project manager, and chat. However, they have really won me over now, by being the first on the online tools that I’m aware of to offer (free*) synchronization with Microsoft Office. The Zoho plugin allows you to edit your text or spreadsheets in either Zoho’s online service or Word/Excel. Good job, Zoho!

They are also working on an independent offline editor. Offline viewing is already available via Google Gears. No Microsoft Office required, just the Google Gears download. Very intriguing. Plus Zoho offers plugins for IE and Firefox to view documents in Writer (doc), Sheet (xls), or Show (ppt).

And I’m checking out the Notebook. Not only can you do web clipping (like Google’s Notebook), but you can incorporate documents and other Zoho services, add audio and video (like YouTube), record(!) audio and video, and use the built in chat or Skype. And all of this can be edited collaboratively and be published for public viewing (with comments, too.) I’m going to experiment with this for doing online presentations. (Oh, and did I mention that they’ve got a Web Conferencing module, too?)

(*Thinkfree will be offering an online/offline sync, but it looks like you’ll have to pay for it.)

Picnik is an online photo/image editing program with some very nice features. There has been a void in online tools for image related services, so Picnik fills a greatly needed niche.

You can upload from your computer or get a photo from Flickr, Picasa, direct from a webpage, Yahoo! Search, or even from a webcam plugged into your computer. You can crop, apply a bunch of filters, sharpen and soften, fix red-eye, rotate, and resize. Once you’re done, you can save, email (including “send to website” services, as some blogs have), send to Flickr or Picasa, or print. All features are currently free while the service is in beta testing; some features, like the Doodle function, will be premium services when they move out of beta (assuming someone like Google doesn’t buy them and change the business model.)

Now, how does this fit into the “presentation” category? I can see someone taking a photo with an online camera, uploading it, editing it, then adding to to a paper or presentation. Or taking a screenshot, converting it to JPG, GIF, BMP, TGA, TIF, or PNG with the basic software that usually comes with computers, such as Windows Imaging or Paint, then uploading it for more sophisticated editing then those “come with the computer” programs allow. Most scanners allow saving in JPG, GIF, BMP, and/or TIF, so scanning an image in would is definitely an option, too.

Here is the inevitable copyright statement: Remember that almost every online image you run into is going to be copyrighted, as are many images from books and magazines that you might scan. Even if the original object, painting, etc. is not, the photograph probably is. Given all the copyright free, Creative Commons, and otherwise permissioned images that are available, please use discretion when choosing images for editing and use in your papers and presentations. And always give credit where credit is due. Copyright and plagiarism are not identical, but both are frowned on.

Thanks to Wayne McPhail and his Online Tools for the 21st Century for tipping me off to this great tool.

Zoho came out with Zoho Writer about the same time that all the other online word processors were coming out. They were good, but I didn’t think they were special in any way. However, Zoho is really making strides in the Office Suite department. They now have a word processor, slideshow, spreadsheet, database application, planner, and chat system that are all free. They also have a virtual office suite and a customer relations manager that are free for small groups (10 for the suite, 3 for the CRM), and they are now demoing a project management service. And, of course, all of these allow collaboration with anyone who has an email address.
One of the other exciting things that Zoho offered, and one that I installed immediately, is a plugin (available for IE and Firefox) that will display office-type files in the web browser without having the software installed. It reads doc, xls, ppt, odt, rtf, sxw, sxc, sxi, and pps files. (I’m really excited about this, because, if it works well and I can get our IT department interested, it might solve some of the viewing problems we have on our public computers.)

I’ll be trying everything out and will report on the individual applications separately, but I couldn’t resist posting about the whole thing right away.

Odeo (http://www.odeo.com/) is a service for managing audio. You can record audio directly through the website if you have a microphone, record a segment over the phone (note: I haven’t gotten this to work yet), or link to an existing MP3 file on the web. You can then organize, annotate, add a picture, and share the files. either by RSS or via a Flash based player that can be embedded in a website.

I used Odeo to create and embed the audio segments for a presentation on Web 2.0 tools and this blog at HigherEdBlogCon. (The video on the first “slide” is hosted by a similar service for video called YouTube.) You will need a Flash plug in for your browser in order to hear the clips.

I mentioned Portable Thunderbird in the Email post. The same person who allows us to carry our email around on a USB drive has also developed several other portable versions of applications. You can download them individually or as a whole collection in the Portable Apps Suite (http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_apps_suite/0 ). Imagine carrying around an email program, a web browser, a calendar, an office suite, a chat/IM client, even a web editor and FTP client, all on a USB drive to plug into any Windows computer. (more…)

Wow, talk about “thin client”. Ajaxwrite (http://www.ajaxwrite.com) runs strictly in the Firefox web browser on any operating system, imports and exports MS Word, PDF, Open/Star Office, RTF, and text (.txt) files. It handles tables, graphics, bulleted and numbered lists, over a dozen common fonts and styles (including strike-through, ^super and _subscripts). The only things it doesn’t do is store your files–you’ll need an online storage or portable drive for this one–and allow you collaborate with others–it’s back to sending the docs back and forth. I don’t see any language support, so my guess is that English style fonts are all that is available.

There is no sign up or registration, so this is a great one to start exploring online word processors. Just go to the site and click on Americas or Europe, and you’ll go directly to the sample document, which you can edit, or load a new or imported document. AjaxLaunch promises new applications and they also have some good implementations springing up. They are also working on a protocol to call Ajaxwrite when you click on a Word document link in a webpage. (They also say that traffic has been very heavy, so there may be delays despite the new servers they’ve put up. I had no trouble this morning.)

Need a table for a web presentation? Want to collaborate on something involving figures? Try the Num Sum Web Spreadsheet. You can import or paste data from Excel or Open Office, as well as start a spreadsheet from scratch. Spreadsheets can be public or private, and you can invite others to work on your spreadsheet. Once you’re done you can export your files as tab or comma deliminated files or as an HTML table. Or generate a small piece of HTML code to paste into a website (via the Post to my blog link).

Update: Writely was bought by Google in March, 2006. At this time (April 11, 2006), Writely is not accepting new registrations. You can give them your email address to be notified when registration reopens. (There may be a workaround, contact me if you really want to try Writely.) In the meanwhile there are several other online word processors to try: Zoho, Thinkfree, AjaxWrite, and gOffice. Individual reviews to follow.
This post was first posted on my FAQ blog in September 2005.

One problem that many online students have is needing to do word processing in a variety of situations. You may be in your local public library doing online research, logging in from a hotel while you travel, or working with other students spread out around the world. You need access to your files, access to a word processor (many public computers do not have full word processors available), and the ability to share with your classmates. Luckily, there are some online services that meet these needs (and some of them are even free).

I’ve used Web Collaborator for several projects with colleagues and it is quite useful. You can create and edit documents and hold discussions about the project, all within a password protected environment. You can even allow read-only access for some (classmates, instructor) while retaining editing control by you or your group. Versions are saved in a history section. When you have a finished product, you can download as PDF or MS Word (formatting can be a little weird and may need some clean up, depending on your version of Word.) Web Collaborator is a project by a Reed College student and I don’t know what his plans are for keeping it updated.

Writely is a new service with some similar functions (thanks to Paul Pival, The Distant Librarian, for the link). One of the nice features is that you can upload HTML, MS Word (.doc), plain text (.txt), and image (.gif, .jpg and .bmp) files. Document files can be up to 500k and image files up to 2Mb. You (the document “owner”) can invite collaborators by email. There are also several publishing options, including posting to a Blogger blog, publishing on a Writely web site, and exporting as a Word document. Older versions are available in the History. One useful “publish” feature is that you can work on a document in the background while the published version is available without changes. This post was written within Writely, and then posted to the blog. Writely is currently in beta, and is currently free. When they do the full release, there will be free and for cost options, according to the FAQ.

Writely is more robust (though I do like the discussion aspect of Web Collaborator). The programmers are working on several additions, including uploading PDF and RTF files, and will take suggestions. They are also planning on offering a corporate/enterprise version, which would have some interesting implications for educational institutions. What if a college or university decided to license Writely instead of Microsoft Word? Most of the standard editing features are available (see the image of the toolbar below). I don’t see a way of doing the proper indentations (hanging indents) for cited reference pages or any way to do double spacing. (In some ways, it’s more of an HTML editor than a word processor. Of course, that’s probably because, as an browser based tool, it is an HTML editor.) Still, for the vast majority of writing on campus, and the willingness of the faculty to let go of a few conventions, it would be fine. You can’t do a hanging indent in an email or in most online discussion boards, either. It doesn’t affect the purpose or clarity of the citation.

This may cause some consternation in the library world. Many libraries, including this one, don’t put an Office Suite on their main public access computers. The main reason is that we don’t want students to be using every single computer to write papers leaving nothing for checking the catalog. We already have a problem with having most of the computers needing a personal log on, especially when it takes longer to log on than to check the catalog. So now what do we do? Any reasonably savvy student (like all my readers, of course) can now write their papers online. Shall we block Writely from our public access computers? I hope not. Personally, I think that browser applications are the way to go, and I don’t think that we should prevent students from writing and collaborating online in the library. Writing is part of the research process, which is what we are here for. A few dedicated terminals for the catalog, and other research are necessary, especially in a state institution like ours.