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Ever wondered how to add a flickr slideshow to your website? Or a YouTube video? Or a PowerPoint slideshow? Check out this great article by Aaron Schmidt: Widgets and Widgetry for Librarians: Copy, Paste, and Relax in MultiMedia & Internet@Schools (Posted Mar 1, 2008)

Widgets pull in updated content, making your web site less static (and less boring?)

Adding a widget is easy. Usually just a short form to fill out and then a snippet of code to copy and paste to your website. You really don’t have to know anything about the code. (Though you do need to be able to edit your web pages.)

With widgets you can have your del.icio.us bookmark links updating on your page, the most recent YouTube videos, photos from your flickr account, books you’re recommending via LibraryThing and so much more.

If you want to see a whole bunch of flickr photo widgets in action, check out my flickr slide show examples page.

Go get widgety!

In the NYT tech section today, David Pogue give the simple little Flip video cam a terrific review - Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot

I bought one about 4 months ago, lured by its ’shiny new toy-ishness’. And it truly is a terrific little camera. Perfect for schools & libraries doing video projects with kids and teens (and adults). I’m thinking durable and easy to use. Is it the greatest video quality in the world? Not really. But is it good enough for fun youtube type videos? You bet!

This is the camera I’d throw in my beach bag or give to kids to use at a pool party. And I might just buy the waterproof case mentioned in the review. I think a snorkeling trip to Hawaii would be a good way to test that one out. Aloha.

In honor of the vernal equinox and Easter, learn how to stand an egg on end any time of year. It just takes patience and a steady hand, so says Phil Plait over at the wonderful site, Bad Astronomy.

Embedding YouTube videos on your web site? The embedded player that YouTube provides includes links to videos related to your video based on the words you used to describe your video. Problem is, these ‘related videos’ might not be what you want on your library web site. Take a look at the related videos showing up on your video pages on YouTube to get an idea of what might be showing up on your embedded video player. Fortunately YouTube provides an easy way to turn off the ‘related video’ feature if you choose to do so. Thanks YouTube!

To turn off the ‘related videos’ feature, edit the embedding code that YouTube gives you and change the two instances of: $rel=1 to $rel=0

Explanation at: http://tinyurl.com/2xbrob

UPDATE: even easier way to do this - just click on the customize link above the embed code to get the option for excluding video. Thanks to Curtis Rogers for posting this tip to flickr.