Here’s a running list of my favorite apps, add-ons, plug-ins and tools (not including iLife stuff), most of which can be used in one way or another to enhance your Eportfolios, blogs and wikis…

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Audacity: free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

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BannerFans: a free banner-maker that doesn’t embed an ad for its own site, or anything else you don’t want. I made this:

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ColorZilla: a Firefox add-on that will analyze the color of any pixel on your screen. Mac has a built-in application that is somewhat similar; go to Applications > Utilities > DigitalColor Meter. If you want to browse for colors, Google “hex colors” (short for “hexadecimal,” used in HTML) or use a site like this.

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Dipity: create a visual timeline like this:

 

 

Also, check out the History of the Macaulay Honors College timeline created by students for the Spring 2010 Tech Fair.

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Doodle: Doodle is great for setting up meetings, or any other kind of group event. Find out who’s available on what days, before making your plans.

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Flickr Notes: Flickr offers a quick and easy way to annotate photos, like this.

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Google Calendar: create multiple, color-coded calendars within one layout, share some calendars and keep others private, view some calendars while hiding others, and embed selected calendars in a variety of sizes. Highly recommended.

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Google Maps: Did you know you can create your own maps, embed images and video into your maps, and embed those maps into your site? See all the fun stuff you can do here.

View Where I’ve Lived in a larger mapAlso, check out A Walk Along Broadway and Food to eat when you’re stuck here…and their property values, two Google Maps created by MHC students for the Spring 2010 Tech Fair.

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Google Sketchup: This offering from Google allows you to create and share 3D models–for free! Check out how some MHC Seminar 4 students used SketchUp in their final video project, The Hole: A Border Between Brooklyn and Queens (the SketchUp portion begins at 18 minutes in).

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iShowU: record audio and video from your screen, with sound and video settings, plus other features that make it more customizable than other similar apps.

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Jing: allows you to take a picture of your screen or record a video of onscreen action, then share with others. Downsides: it records video as an .swf file, so you have to download a converter if you want to import it to iMovie, and it doesn’t record DVDs playing on your computer. Otherwise, pretty cool.

Here’s a picture of my desktop, taken with Jing, and highlighting all the features it gives you (click on it to see it enlarged):

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Jotnot: for all you iPhone users, this new app turns your camera into a scanner. It’s magical.

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KeepVid: allows you to capture videos from YouTube and other video sites, so you can download it as an MP4, then import it into iMovie and mash away…

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MeasureIt: a Firefox add-on that lets you measure the pixel height and width of anything on your screen. Alternatively, use Mac’s built-in screen capture utility in Preview: 1) hit + + , which turns your cursor into a crosshair; 2) hold down while you highlight the region you want to measure, and when you let go of you’ll hear a picture click and your image will appear on your desktop; 3) open the image in Preview, then click Tools>Inspector.

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Mousepose: A great tool if you need to do a digital presentation. Mousepose allows you to highlight your cursor and create sound and visual effects, so you can spotlight areas on your screen.

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NextGEN Gallery: a WordPress plugin* that allows you to display a gallery of images like this:

Click here for step-by-step tutorial created by ITF Emily Sherwood.

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Paparazzi!: ever want to take a screen shot of an entire web page, not just what’s visible on your screen? Download Paparazzi! and do just that (click on the image to the right for an example).

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Prezi: create embeddable presentations in a more dynamic, non-linear way that will arrest the attention of your audience. See how MHC’s own Lilach Gez used Prezi to create a playlist for her study abroad videos.

I’ll let the Prezi presentation below speak for itself:

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Quicktime: create screencasts quickly and easily by going to File > New Screen Recording. The recording is saved as a .mov file, and can be edited in iMovie!

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Scribd.com: for a fee, upload your documents to this site, and you’ll be able to share them with the world (aka self-publish your work) or with just a few select people. Scribd also allows you to read work from others and embed your documents into your site.

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SlideShare: allows you to share a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation with others, to embed your presentation into your site, to add audio to your presentation, and find presentations in the SlideShare community. Also works with documents and PDF files. Here is a slideshare I created from a PowerPoint about presenting at conferences:

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Tagxedo: a word cloud application that is extremely customizable, more so than Wordle (see below), but which may soon become a paid app. Here’s the word cloud I’ve created using my eport’s url:

Also be sure to check out 101 Ways to Use Tagxedo for more ideas.

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UMapper: create interactive, customizable flash maps, using either your own image or a standard Yahoo or Google map, and embed the map into your site.

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VoiceThread: create a conversation around an image, document or video. Great for collaboratively annotating objects!

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Wordle: create word-cloud art by manually entering words, or linking to a site, such as a blog.

The image above was made with Wordle using the text from this site.

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For a more comprehensive list of apps, see the 67th Street Project, which was created for Spring 2010 Tech Fair.

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*Note: All Eportfolios are hosted by WordPress. To activate a plugin, go to your site’s Dashboard and click “Plugins” in the left-hand navigation bar. There you will see a list of plugins that you can activate in order to enhance your site’s functionality.