School Tech Connect: Testing Grounds

Testing an iFrame

Just testing the settings for a particular google calendar...

This is a tracker widget from GovTrack. In it, I'm attempting to track the progress of HR 2218, the billion dollar charter bill, which passed the House and is doing something over in the Senate--- languishing, I hope.

Developers

Monkey Track.egg on Aviary.

Just a space I'm using temporarily to test embeds, gadgets, and widgets. This page is not organized in a particular way or even designed for public consumption; it's just handy to have a place to test the performance of various gadgets and to see what something will look like in a particular browser.

Here I'm just testing the NPR embed code.

Here I'm just testing YouTube's embed code to see if the start-up time can be adjusted easily through an embed code itself. I know there are other ways to do it.

Below I'm testing a Ustream embed. As you know it's hard for Ustream to see a webcam in OS10.6.8. You sort of have to fool it into finding the webcam.

Live Video app for Facebook by Ustream

Here's a test of the original embed code for the Jonah Edelman "Yes, I Am Indeed A Dbag" speech at Aspen Ideas Coverup. I'm posting it here to see how long the original embed code persists--- clearly at press time, the Aspen tech people hadn't figured out how to completely scrub the video from their server, which is why NBC News is able to keep it running at their site. I would love to hear the backstory here; there is no doubt whatsoever that Aspen took down the original host page and all references to this video-- they just forgot to delete it from their mediahost server, so the embed code is still live. Maroons!

Tim's Sample Picasa Album

Here's a test embed of an Influence Tracker widget by MAPlight.org. We'll just see how it works.

That's pretty cool. I'm making a page for it.

Here's an embed of a Paper.li publication by Mike Cooper. If this works I'm going to put it on the front page.

Here's a picture of one of my dogs, Ranger. I'm using the Flikr embed code just to see how that works.

Ok, works fine. Apparently it's a link--- if you click on it, you get sent to my Flikr account. Ok, by contrast, I'm going to put the same picture below, but I'm going to upload it from my desktop and insert it using the Blogger thingy.

Ok, that's a screenshot of the image, uploaded. According to my recollection, if you click on it, you'll be sent to a webpage with this picture on it only. Why would anyone give a flying leap about this? Because I'm actually experimenting in Google Calendar right now--- and in Google Calendar you can add an image to the background of your calendar, but it doesn't work if you use the image's URL on Flikr. It does work if you use a simple webpage URL. So, now my Google Calendar has that picture of Ranger on it as a background. Voila.

Here's a 99Chats embed. Checking this out to see if this is a good service for an embedded backchannel.This one is the javascript version; they also have a shockwave version.

This is a test embed from ARKive, which has zillions of high quality images and videos of animal life. I'm just testing here to see if the citation information comes through with their embedder dealy.

ARKive video - Immature male polar bears play fighting on the ice

Aha! It's not an embedder--- it's a thumbnail link over to their site. Sneaky. Veddy, veddy sneaky.

This is an allegedly more HD embed of one of my Miguel del Valle videos. Let's see if it looks different.

made on Wondersay - Animate text with style

Fun with Ayn Rand. This is just a test of SnipSnip.It, which I saw over at Richard Byrne's blog. Swear to g-d I learn more from that blog than anywhere else. Anyhoo, this is a SnipSnip.it of Ayn Rand talking to Phil Donohue. Incidentally, this was during the Carter administration-- she said Carter didn't have any ideas. Here's her idea about disabled people:

cropped with SnipSnip

Nice lady, huh? Anyway, Snipsnip.it is a 2.0 tool that lets you trim streaming videos down to the section that you want, and you get an embed code or a link. There are other ways to do this, but this way is pretty cool. Incidentally, now that I'm older, I friggin love the leaning busses that she was so in-a-knot about. Ayn Rand is probably looking up from where ever she is right now and wishing someone would euthanize me.

This is just a test of the MSNBC "clip and share" gadget, which lets you edit their streaming video... to an extent. This little segment has Richard Engel talking about the causes of the uprising in Egypt, and it sounded to me like was describing the US, not Egypt. I was going to do a blog post about this but then I realized that I really know nothing about this, and it just would have been one of those two clever by half blog posts. Cool embedder-editor thing though.