Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Mixing Sounds

I wanted to create a new welcome message for Halloween when people call my Service Desk, the question was how to do it using Cloud Computing from my Windows 7 laptop.

A quick google search brought up the kind of sound bytes I needed, this was a really easy site to pick up royalty free stuff - http://soundbible.com/

Next I needed a sound editor, I wanted something simple but with multiple channels - a quick search brought up http://www.aviary.com/ it was 'relatively' easy to use, I could import the sound bites I had downloaded from Soundbible and then record my own voice direct from my headset.

As you have multiple channels in the Aviary suite, you can adjust the different volumes and add extra effects.

I was very pleased with the result



Happy Halloween everyone!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Video Conferencing - getting the right ambience

The powers that be have just enabled MS Office Communicator for Video Conferencing at our site, which means that anyone with a webcam can join in Video Conferences from their laptops in their office, this is of course, great news, it means less travelling, less cost and better communications.

Having a Video Conference from my office did get me thinking though, now that I have participated in a few 'VCs', some of the offices are, well a bit crabby, there are papers everywhere, old computers dotted about the place etc. so I have decided to improved the quality of how people see me when on a VC.

The 1st job was to find an appropriate photo on ebay, I picked up a large beach poster for £6.  The poster is stuck behind my desk on the wall.

Getting the poster in the right place was a tad tricky, it needed two people, then I had to play around with the zoom function on the web cam, but eventually I managed to get the kind of result I wanted.
Now all I have to do is improve the ugly mug in the picture, and I will have the desired effect I was after - perhaps a George Clooney look would be better...