Adding the NEW twitter follow button and other twitter widgets to your blog

Just yesterday Twitter launched a new “Follow” button that will make life easier for all of us twitteraholics.

Before now, you had to put a link to your twitter page and then potential fellow tweeters had to click “follow” there. Now, they can do it all from your site with one single click.

He’re an example for my account. Go head – click follow – I won’t mind!

Follow @ronnieburt

So how do you add one to your blog?

Twitter makes it easy to grab embed code for your own personal follow button here.

We’ll walk you through the steps, but if you want to know more about embedding, you should check out the in-depth post here from our Teacher Challenge blog.

1. Visit the Twitter Resource page for the Follow button

2. Choose from the available options and then copy the code that appears on the right side

3. Paste the code into the HTML tab of a page or post. A popular place might be to put it on your Contact or About page.

How To Embed In a Sidebar

You can see that we’ve embedded the follow button into the sidebar of this blog on the left side under our photos.

Here’s how to this:

1. Complete steps 1 and 2 from above (which is to go here)

2.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

3.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

4.  Add a text widget to the desired sidebar by dragging it from the Available Widgets into the Sidebar area on the right.

5.  The widget will automatically open — just add the HTML code for your follow button or widget, click Save and then Close.

6.  That’s it!

What other twitter widgets can you add?

Using the exact same steps as embedding the follow button, you can also add several other twitter widgets too!

All of the different widgets and options can be found here.

Here are a few on display for you too see:

The Profile Widget








The Search Widget








Edubloggers List Widget

Other Twitter Resources

• A twitteraholics guide to tweets, hashtags and all things twitter


• To hashtag or not to hashtag


• Edublogs on Twitter

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A free widget to enhance collaboration and discussion right in your blog!

We recently came across CollaborizeClassroom and think that anyone with a blog will love what they offer!

Like blogging, CollaborizeClassroom makes it easy to have discussions online. And best of all, there is a widget that lets you embed questions and polls right into your blog!

Anna and the team from CollaborizeClassroom was nice enough to set up a site just for edubloggers – you don’t need to even be an Edublogs user to use it. You can also set-up your own online space and the service is completely free either way!

So play around with the following directions and let us know what you think!

Step One: Visit the Edublogs Collaborize Community. Click Ask a Question. When the window pops up, it’s time to set up your poll.

Step Two: This is the form where you’ll create your poll. In the first field, type in the topic (or title) of your poll. Add any other information you would like to include in the description area. We recommend using this space to explain how you would like people to use your poll. Next, select a category. If you don’t see a category that is specific to your poll, you can use the “Other” category. You can also add an end-date or attach an image, video or document.

When you are done, click Publish.

Step Three: Once you see your topic displayed in the topic listing, click Make Widget (the link with the gear icon next to it). You will be taken to a wizard that guides you through the process of customizing your widget’s appearance.

Step Four: Once you have customized your Widgets appearance, click Next then click Grab Code at the bottom of the page.  Copy the Widget Code.

Step Five: From your Edublog site, in a New Post – Click on the HTML Tab and Paste in your Widget Code.

Step Six: Click Publish and view your new widget in action!

Let’s test it out!

Thanks CollaborizeClassroom for putting together this site for our community and for helping with the directions above!

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Blogging with an iPad: Choosing a web browser, setting up your theme and adding widgets

My iPad is a significant part of my life.  It goes almost everywhere with me and is the one device I can’t live without for both work and leisure.

With more educators looking at iPads as a replacement for student laptops and netbooks, we’re regularly being asked for blogging tips using iPads.

So I’ve decided the best way to provide advice is build a new blog using just my iPad and post about it as I go!

Web browsers on the iPad

Lets start by talking about web browsers since you’ll need to use one as you’re setting up your blog.

While Safari is the default web browser on an iPad there are apps that provide considerably better browsing with greater functionality than Safari.

Alternative web browsers for iPads include:

• Atomic Web – US$1.19


• iCab mobile -  US$2.49


• iChromy – free


• Skyfire- US$2.99

I’ve decided to use iCab mobile because:

1. It has the richest feature set


2. It supports tab browsing so you don’t have to keep zooming in and out of your browser to move pages


3. I’m able to access more blog features inside my dashboard than any of the other browsers

You can choose to use Safari rather than purchase an app like iCab mobile however support of tab browsers makes the process considerably easier and quicker.

Here’s a quick comparison of the main differences between these browsers:

Tip:

• The iPad’s dock at the bottom of the screen where you can ’stick’ icons of your favorite apps so they remain accessible from all other Home screens can hold up to six different apps.


• To add more icons to the iPad dock, or replace existing apps, just touch and hold any Home screen icon until the icons begin to wiggle.


• Now drag the app you want to add from the Home screen into your dock.  When complete, press the Home button to save.

The most annoying aspect is Safari is the default browser and, unlike a computer, you can’t change this on an iPad.  So instead I’ve added iCab Mobile to my iPad dock to make it easier to access.

Creating the blog

Now it’s time for me to create the blog.

I’m creating it via the Edublogs sign up page using  iCab mobile however:

1. If you’re new to blogging start by reading these things to consider before creating your blog


2. If you’re setting the student blogs follow these instructions

Tip:  A handy shortcut is to doubletap on your home button. This brings up a toolbar which makes it easy to navigate around your iPad apps.

Setting up the theme

Now my blog is created it’s time to give it my personal touch by choosing a new theme.  Last thing I want is it to look like all the other newly created blogs!

Changing the theme was simple.

All I needed to do was:

1. Log into my blog dashboard using iCab mobile (or you can use Safari)


2. Go to Appearance > Themes


3. Click Activate below the theme I wanted to use

If you’re struggling to decide on a theme it’s best to activate a theme you want to check out and then view your blog in another tab, than to use Preview — it’s less time consuming.

Here’s where you’ll find more information to help you choose your theme:

1. What to consider when choosing your blog theme


2. The 137 Edublogs Themes Separated Into Categories To Make Choosing Your Next Theme Easier

I’ve decided to use PrimePress because it’s a nice clean theme that suits my purpose.

Uploading the custom image header

While changing the theme was simple, uploading a custom image header wasn’t. It’s definitely something that’s considerably less painful using a computer.

But it can be done and here’s what you need to know:

• The easiest option is to use a free image header that is close to the image header size you need to upload


• You need to use iCab Mobile as most iPad web browsers won’t let you locate images on your iPad to upload


• You need to make sure the image is exactly the size recommended on the Appearance > Custom Header page because you can’t crop images in the dashboard on an iPad

Here’s how I did it:

1.  Downloaded a free image header from FreeWebPageHeaders

• Images from FreeWebPageHeaders are a standard size of 800 pixels wide by 200 high which means for most themes you’ll need to resize and crop.

2.  Resized the image to 920 pixels wide using iResizer (Us$1.19).

• There’s lots of image resizers you can choose from.


• I just found this app the easiest of the ones I already have and it’s handy to have a good image resizer.

3.  Opened up the resized image in PhotoGene (US$2.49):

• cropped to 920 pixels wide and 150 pixels high (size required for uploading)


• Added text


• Saved the image

There’s lots of image editors you can choose from.  This app is easy to use and is handy for cool image editing.

4.  Then reopened my new custom image header in iResizer to check:

• it was definitely 920 pixels by 150 pixels


• otherwise I wouldn’t be able to upload.

5.   Next I logged into my blog dashboard using iCab mobile

6.  Went to Appearance > Custom Header

7.  Clicked Select File, selected image from Camera Roll and clicked Upload image.

Presto!

My new image header is now on my blog!

You can check out the progress of my blog building on an iPad here!

Changing the tagline

The concept behind a blog tagline is to create a memorable phrase that sums up the tone and premise of a blog.

Changing the tagline was simple.

All I needed to do was:

1. Log into my blog dashboard using iCab mobile (or you can use Safari)


2. Go to Settings > General


3. Add my new tagline and click Save Changes.

Changing Widgets

You can’t drag and drop widgets on an iPad.

You can, however, still add widgets with relative ease using the following steps:

1.  Select ’screen options’ from the tab at the top.

2. Enable accessibility mode

3.  Click add on the widget you want to add

4.  Add the information

• In my situation I need to add an attribution for the image I’ve used

5.  Then decide where it goes

6.  Click Save Widget

You can learn more about working with widgets here!

Final thoughts

My blog is now set up ready for me to start adding content.  You can see how the blog is going here (if you can bear it’s current messy state!)

The next post in this series is all about creating and editing posts and pages using an iPad.

Please let us know:

1. What have I missed?


2. What other advice would you give?


3. Or are there any other questions you would like answered?

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Upload Your Email to Google Apps

By Greg Robbins, Software Engineer

Several years ago, I began hosting the email for my personal domain with the free Standard Edition of Google Apps. At first I remained a curmudgeon, and set my email client to delete messages from the server after retrieving them, because I wanted my email stored just on my own computer. But Gmail's threading interface grew on me, as did the temptation of having access to all of my email from any web browser. So the cloud won me over, and soon my messages were living on the server. Since then, I've been able to search my email from home, from work, and from any computer on the Internet.

But my personal email archives stretch back to long before the advent of Google Apps and Gmail. Suddenly, the years of conversations I'd happily stored in Eudora files seemed awfully inconvenient. That inconvenience goaded me into developing Google Email Uploader for Mac. It's a free utility application that you can use to push your archives from Apple Mail, Eudora, and Thunderbird up to your Google Apps email account. If you are sometimes anxious to locate your very earliest e-commerce receipts or your threads of political discussions from bygone elections, the email uploader can make them as easy to find as last week's family letters.

The email uploader is built on our open source Google Data APIs Objective-C Client Library and the Email Migration API. There is also a Google Email Uploader for Windows, as well as online tools for migrating web-based email to Google email accounts. Unfortunately, the Mac and Windows email uploaders currently can upload only to Google Apps email accounts, not to gmail.com or googlemail.com accounts.

Google Email Uploader for Mac is available today as an open source application at the Google Mac Developer Playground, where our Mac and iPhone developers share our toys and experiments. If you have a Google Apps-hosted account and email archives that stretch back to the Dark Ages, I hope you will download and try it.

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Use Junctions to view your social content on a map

Over the years we've seen a few services that help to put your social activities into Google Earth, but none that have done a very effective job of it. That's where Junctions (jnctns.com) comes in, with a very innovative iPhone app that can help build maps of your social actions.

The service automatically builds "exMaps" (experience maps), which are 3D interactive maps of your social activity. Real-world interactions are noted in exMaps as crossable intersections called "junctions". Users can dynamically browse all content based on location, time and/or people.

For now, the system requires that you use their iPhone app, but that will be changing in the future. Soon you'll be able to add tweets to it with the #exMap hashtag, and they have other plans in mind as well. Personally, I'd love to be able to just feed it my full Twitter and FourSquare accounts and let it just parse the data from them. It seems like this is the direction they're heading, so it'll be fun to watch them progress.

To try it for yourself you can visit their website, which includes a sample exMap that you can play with, and you can download their free iPhone app here.

For more, check out the video below:

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