Of course there are a whole bunch of social networking sites that help us with promoting our causes as well as our organizations. There’s Twitter, Facebook, Blip.tv, and so on. But what do we post on these sites? What tools can we use to process the raw material we have?

We’ve got tools for multimedia like Avidemux, GIMP and Audacity. For those who are interested in podcasting, I am sure Audacity is one thing to check out because of its features that could be used in podcasting. You could cut clips, have fade in and fade out effects and so on. There are versions for Linux, Mac and Windows so that you folks out there could enjoy using this for your needs. I once shared a guide on how to make a ringtone using Audacity but you could also use that as a basis on cutting an audio clip.

GIMP is one heck of a useful tool for processing images. Its user interface is definitely not Photoshop’s but in terms of features, there’s a lot that it offers. If you take a look at the GIMP registry, the many plugins and scripts will blow you away. It will also help you in making it more useful and easier to manipulate images using GIMP.

And then there’s Avidemux. I wasn’t able to play around with it a whole lot but this looks like a promising tool for those who have video blogs and presentations to share. It’s very nifty, I like it and would love to learn more on using it too. The nice thing about it is that there’s quite a number of guides on the Avidemux wiki.

These are but tools to help us deal with broadcasting our information. At the end of the day, we must know how these tools will help us in conveying the messages we have, in making sure that we’ve got the material we need for the channels we want to enter and so on. Every organization has something to share — it’s a matter of how, when and why after you realize what they are.

And then there are also content management systems. But I think that there could actually be separate blog entry for them altogether. There’s too many aspects of CMSes that are worth talking about, I think.

Post from: New Linux User

a ringtone made using Audacity

Audacity is actually capable of a whole lot more audio editing features but as I am not really using them yet, I am not very familiar with them. For now, let me share how I made my own ringtone.

1. I installed Audacity. Of course it has dependencies too so it’s good if you check them first. This is especially for those of you who have a lot of mp3 files.
2. I loaded the song of my choice. Audacity converted that.
3. With the selection tool, I dragged the mouse pointer to the starting time and ending time of the song I wanted to use. If you are not too sure about the time of the song, then you could actually drag the mouse on top of the bar with the time and have it play that segment. When you have decided the part to select, put the mouse pointer over the part with the spiky lines. Take note of the timing. Drag the pointer within the area from the start time to the end time. It will be greyed out by Audacity so you know.
4. I selected the trim tool. It’s the one with the wave in between the sideways T-like things. This will give you only the part you selected earlier.
5. I used the time shift tool to move the segment to the beginning of the time.
6. Lastly, I converted the file to mp3 via the Export command on the File menu.

It’s the simplest way I know to make a custom ringtone. There’s probably fade in and fade out somewhere. The moment I figure out how to use it, I’d definitely let you know.

Post from: New Linux User