Vote for your favorite mashups!

Vote for your favorite mashups! Our annual mashup contest has taken off this year with 33 entries, and for the first time, we are taking online votes at http://wic.library.upenn.edu/mashup/2009voting.html
All entries are linked there with descriptions. Online voting closes on April 30 at 10 am.

Join us at our awards event this Thursday - we will award prizes to the winners selected by our judging panel as well as certificates to the winners of the online voting.

Don't Leave your Project on the Workstation

Hey everyone. Please don't just leave your project files on a workstation in the lab and expect them to be there when you come back the next day. There's nothing stopping anyone else using that machine from deleting things to make room for their own files. And those hard drives do fill up from time to time--particularly at the time of year. Adding "Do Not Delete" does not stop anyone from deleting it.

We will store your files on our networked user storage drive for up to three days at a time, as long as you return to continue working on it. Just ask a lab consultant for help transferring your files before you leave the lab.

Comic Book Contest Winners!

We congratulate the winners of the 2009 Comic Book Contest sponsored by Penn Libraries in conjunction with POW!: The Year of the Comic and this year's Penn Reading Project selection, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion Year History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin.

Even cheaper hard drive

This is almost getting ridiculous, how cheap these things are. Buy.com has a 640GB hard drive for only $66.99 with free shipping. That's TEN CENTS per Gigabyte. That is a CRAZY price for one of the portable drives. I just bought one of the 400GB drives for the same price last week! And *THAT* is still a good price. It's USB only, meaning it doesn't require a power cable at all.

Those of you with large video files should strongly consider getting one of these babies. It should last you your entire time at college, and you can just throw it in your bookbag and go. If nothing else, it's a great backup drive. Most of you will be able to backup your entire laptop several times over on a drive this size.

http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-elements-640gb-usb-2-0-external-hard-drive-black/q/loc/101/209389534.html?adid=17653&dcaid=17653

Hawk Cam

Very cool.

You can watch live footage of the hawks that have taken up residence on
the ledge of a Franklin Institute window at:

http://www2.fi.edu/hawknest.php

New Lab Consultants!

We have three new lab consultants, Chase, Janice, and Thomas!

You'll be seeing a lot of them around the lab, so be sure to say hi (and try to go easy on them at first.)

Really cheap hard drive

Wow.  I'm not sure what's going on with this, but it's a 400GB mini/portable hard drive for under $70.  This is a fantastic price, so if you're in the market for a portable external hard drive (it's powered solely by USB and does not require an external power source), this looks like a great time to buy.

http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-elements-400gb-usb-2-0-portable-hard-drive-black/q/loc/101/210411579.html

Twitter

Just a reminder that we twitter almost daily with info on how many poster slots are available, when we're closing, how busy we are (ie. when's a good time to come in to work on your project), the occasional interesting link, and more. You can follow us at http://twitter.com/digitalmedialab (early adopters get all the best user names, am i right?) or over in the right-hand sidebar of this blog. Follow us and we'll follow you, too. If there are other things you'd like to see us tweet about, leave a comment on this post.

Also, a couple interesting twitter links:

1. Twittervision (http://twittervision.com/) a graphic display of tweets from around the world. I don't know how useful it is, but it's certainly interesting to watch.

2. Tweet Deck (http://www.tweetdeck.com) a free program (requires Adobe Air to run, but it'll take care of that for you) that acts as a dashboard for all your twitter needs. Probably less useful for the occasional tweeter, but if you use twitter regularly, it's great.

3. Tweetie (http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/) At $2.99, it's more than I'd generally pay for an iPhone app, but it is quite useful if you're a hardcore tweeter, and it allows you to manage multiple twitter accounts from your phone, see other tweeters who are nearby, search twitter for specific terms and bookmark them. Check the webpage out for more on what it can do. I bit the bullet and downloaded it and I've been testing it out. So far, it's great.

Let us know if you have more twitter tidbits or advice!

FINE ARTS SENIOR THESIS EXHIBITION!

Come see the work of 1 lab consultant, 1 former lab consultant, 1 almost lab consultant, and many people who've worked on their projects here in the lab.

FINE ARTS SENIOR THESIS EXHIBITION!
March 26 - April 30

OPENING RECEPTION:
THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 5–7PM

Charles Adams Hall
36th and Walnut Streets

Refreshments will be served.

Featuring the Senior Thesis work of the Class of 2009 Fine Arts Majors:

Penina Bernstein Matthew Thomas Cianfrani Matthew Emrick Abdi Farah Andrea Finch Rachel Gogel

Natalia Martinovna Grindlinger Jesse Alexander Harding Emma Katzka Brandon Lake Bryce Lefort Erik Nielsen

Nicholas Salvatore Manya Scheps Aura Seltzer Andrew Shults Tovë Smith Artie Vierkant

Gallery Hours: 10am-5pm
Free and open to the public.

Penny Loafers Show this Weekend

Come see our very own Chase Irwin perform in the Penny Loafers show (Penn's co-ed modern rock/pop/indie a cappella group) this weekend. The show is named (in a timely way) "Stimulus Package". I'm told Chase even has a solo or two. Tickets available on the walk this week, or at the door the night of the concert.

More info at http://www.thepennyloafers.com/

Visual Self-Perception

Please help out Ashley Templeton by filling out her online survey. She's been working in the lab for a long time on this project, and it'll just take a few minutes to help out.

Interested in Visual Self-Perception? Rate and analyze the accuracy of virtual images:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Bh6RmFtaLAQh27tLGWuZnw_3d_3d

Dark Blue

This is a video for "Dark Blue" from Jack's Mannequin's debut album, Everything in Transit. It was created by Clay Smith (who worked on for a very long time here in the digital media lab and did a fantastic job) for his film/video II class. If you go the youtube page for the video, you can watch it in HD.

Best. Music. Video. Evar.

Jesse found this video on YouTube. This talented musician "took a bunch of other youtube videos of people playing instruments and singing, sampled them and mixed them so the different people are playing together... and its really good. Really reminds me of DJ Shadow, a more modern version of his record sampling but still with the same charm and soul." Check out his other music too.



Apparently he has WAY too much free time on his hands. How I envy him....

8GB SD card deal

Here's a good deal on a 8GB secure digital card for only $17.50, with free shipping.

http://www.buy.com/prod/kingston-8gb-secure-digital-high-capacity-sdhc-card-class-6-kingston/q/loc/101/204333366.html

Midi Keyboard in the Lab!

Almost exactly one year ago, I asked if anybody wanted a midi keyboard for the lab. And the answer was yes. So in a less-than-timely manner, we finally have one. And check out the awesome sign (now also hanging on the wall of the lab) that Sarah made for it:


There is also a (better) midi keyboard upstairs in the recording room in the Ormandy Listening Center on the 4th floor of Van Pelt Library.

400gb portable hard drive deal

Hey guys. Another great hard drive deal. This time, it's a 400GB portable USB 2.0 drive for only $99 from buy.com.

Check out the details here: http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-400gb-my-passport-essential-usb-2-0-portable-hard/q/loc/101/209225089.html?adid=17070&dcaid=17070

Open Call - Filmmakers, Visual Artists, VJs

Print from your own Laptop

You can now print to the computers in the library from your own PC or Mac laptop. Instructions are here:

http://www.library.upenn.edu/computing/printing/Personal.html

Subjects Needed for a Study on VISUAL SELF-PERCEPTION on SECOND LIFE

This study seeks to compare the visual self-perception of one's face with the visual perception of one's observers. Subjects will be asked to create Second Life avatars of an unknown subjects based on the subject's photographic image. Second Life is used as a form expressing the visual perception of individuals who are presented with the same subject. Time involved is about 1 hour.

If interested, please contact Ashley Templeton at ashleyht@sas.upenn.edu

Encoding Video for PowerPoint

Thanks to Shawn Zamechek at SAS Multimedia Services (MMS) for this great video tutorial on how to rip a video clip from DVD and encode/embed it for PowerPoint. Shawn uses 2 pieces of software in the video--Handbrake and Quicktime Pro. We have both on all of the Macs here in the lab. You can actually download Handbrake for free (Mac or PC). QuickTime Pro will cost you $29.99 to download from Apple, also for Mac or PC. Shawn provides links to both on the tutorial webpage:

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/mms/demos/encode_for_powerpoint