Experiments With Zentation

I recently came across a reference to the Zentation service, which describes itself as the place “where video and PowerPoint meet on the Web“. This seems to be a relatively new service, which was featured in a Techcrunch article on 28^th July 2007.

As the Techcrunch article describes “Using Zentation is simple. Users upload their video to Google Video, log into Zentation and copy and paste the URL of the Google video, then upload a PowerPoint file. The final step involves using the “ZenSync” tool to provide precise start timings for each graphic in the presentation“.

I’ve tried this with a recording of Michael Webb’s talk on “Developing a Web 2.0 Strategy” at the IWMW 2006 event. We has videod this talk and my colleague Marieke Guy uploaded it recently to Google Video. It was very easy to upload the PowerPoint slides to Zentation and then to sync the video with the corresponding slides, as illustrated.

What I find particularly interesting with this application is that it separates the streaming of the video (provided by Google Videos) from the synchronisation with the PowerPoint slides. It should also be noted that, as with many of these services, the interface can be embedded within Web pages.

I’m not the only person to be impressed with initial experimentation - a post published last week entitled “More than one way to share your presentations” on the dalebasler.com blog summarises a talk given to a meeting of the National Congress on Science Education on the basics of online communication which concluded that “Zentation appears to be the best tool“.

I’ll be experimenting further with Zentation for the videos of the plenary talks at the recent IWMW 2007 event.

Technorati Tags: zentation

Blogging Librarians

Way back in December 2006 I asked Where Are The Blogging UK Librarians? There were a number of replies to the post and, since, then, I’ve touched on a number of issues related to the use of blogs within a library context.

And I’m please to announce that myself and my colleague Kara Jones (who works in the Library here at the University of Bath) have had a proposal accepted to facilitate a half-day workshop (or ‘masterclass’ in the official parlance) at the ILI 2007 conference.

I think the blogging UK librarians  are to be found in many more places than when I first asked  my question. So the issues Kara and I would like to address in our workshop include how are blogs being used; what strategies were used to get blogs deployed within the organisation (did you encounter any barriers and, if so, how did you overcome them?); what is the technical architecture for your blog (what software do you use and is it hosted externally or installed locally); how is you blog managed; do you have any metrics to demonstrate (or perhaps justify) the success of your blog and what advice would you give to others who are just starting on this path?

Note that the resources we will develop for the workshop will have a Creative Commons licence to allow their reuse by others.

Thoughts, comments, etc. will be appreciated.  You can add comments to this blog post. Alternatively, as part of an evaluation of the Ning social networking environment, Kara and I have set up a “Using Blog Effectively In Your Organisation” discussion area within the Library 2.0 area of Ning.  Feel free to the discussions in that environment.

Technorai tags: ili2007