Feb 24 2010

Increasing accessability – an experiment – audio blogs

Category: Blogging tipsSarah Arrow @ 1:37 pm

I recently discovered ProNagger, and I am gutted she has my name ;-)

One of her post suggests using a site called Odiogo which is added to your Wordpress blog in the form of a plugin in and allows people to listen to your blog rather than read it.

Image representing Odiogo as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

As increasing a blogs acessibility can only be a good thing, I thought I would try it on Birds on the Blog. I know that Birds have deaf readers and readers with physical disabilities, I wasn’t aware of any readers with sight issues but I still thought that I would give Odiogo a try – if it makes things easier for our readers, then it’s worth having.

Firstly, it does sound a little stilted as it’s read, a bit like Stephen Hawkins and it has a male voice.  It works by converting the blogs feed to an audio MP3 file, so your blogs become podcasts as well. Secondly, the podcasts are iTunes compatible as well.

So far so good.

It has also highlighted the need for me to tag images in posts correctly – or the reader reads out “our flickr pic 5677889″ instead of “a picture of a cute fluffy kitten”…

Odiogo is currently free, but I would happily pay for a female voice as the majority of my bloggers are female :-)

Go take a look and let me know what you think or pop on over to Birds and have a listen to one of the blog posts.

Sarah

PS the plugin is available for some of the major blogging platforms and not just wordpress, I should have mentioned that sooner :-)

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Jan 07 2010

Gravatar, what is and should I use one?

Category: Blogging tips, Quick winsSarah Arrow @ 1:16 pm

When you have a Gravatar account, your image is linked to your email account. This means wherever you comment on the web, if Gravatar is enabled, your image will appear next to your comment :-) Gravatar is a great word meaning Globally Recognised Avatar.

This means you can scan a blog, see a familiar face make a comment and stop to read it. It helps people get to know you and your brand across the web. It helps you recognise people in the blogs community and get to know them.

Attaching your image to your email is dead easy.

Click the link and add your email address that you use for making comments http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup/

then an email will be sent to you to activate your account. Click the link in the email.

You will then be asked for a user name and a password, choose wisely your user name – it’s going to be with you a long time!

Upload an image from your PC or choose to add an image of you from the web (Quick Note how to add web image – right click the image, click properties and a grey box appears, use the image location URL.)

You can then crop the image so it fits the box and then when you click crop and finish, you will be asked to rate your image.

Unless you have upload a naughty or graphically violent pic, I suggest you use a G rating, which signifies for general use.

Thats it, all done :-)

Next time you comment on this blog, your image will appear next to your comment :-) it also works on all other WordPress blogs and other Gravatar activated forums.

Let me know how you get on :-)

Sarah

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