The Art Institute Online Student Community

Have you ever needed to create a Word Document or PDF, but were on a computer that didn’t have Word or Acrobat? Well, if you have an internet connection, you’re in luck! AjaxWrite is a website that allows you to create a Word Document with practically all of the same types of formatting and tools that is available in Word. It’s quite amazing what is possible using Web 2.0 code and a little imagination. I played around with the website for a bit and saved both a Word Document and a PDF and they opened up perfectly on another computer with all of the proper formatting! That’s pretty impressive and incredibly useful if you find yourself without Word or Acrobat.

Check it out at http://www.ajaxwrite.com .

Another aleternative for creating Word documents, PDFs, and others for free is Zoho Writer. Either one will do the job.

A few years ago I played a computer game called “Unreal Tournament” regularly and ended up playing a match against someone at a LAN ( www.lanwar.com ) that ended up being a fairly big deal. In order to make the match more interesting to show people, I took the highlights from it and turned then into a music video. I wasn’t the first person to do this, but I had a ton of people asking how I created a music video out of computer game clips, so I created tutorial on how to do it back in 2003. The tutorial became very popular around the world and led to many incredible videos being made out of games. This gave me an idea for my final project in Interactive Authoring II at The Art Institute Online.

–> Continue reading ‘Create Music Videos from Computer Games’

Many of you are either running websites or about to get started as you move closer to graduation. More than likely, you will come across a point in your career where you will look to utilize some form of advertisement on your websites. It could be for the extra revenue or the added value that targeted ads bring to your viewers…either way, this article will tell you exactly what and what not to do when getting started in website advertisements.

Most of you know that this site has been somewhat a labor of love for me since January of 2004 with little-to-no compensation to keep it up and running. In order to continue to provide this source for the students I had to implement some form of advertising and/or affiliate marketing. I chose to go with Google AdSense as they seemed to provide the best and most relevant ads for content, which would create a win/win situation as users would get quality, related content while also helping to keep this site alive. I was completely new to the world of AdSense, but in a month’s time I learned so much…and you’re about to dramatically benefit from it. So let’s assume you’ve just setup an AdSense account and are ready to roll. Let’s break down the tips to help you succeed.

–> Continue reading ‘The Best Tips for Getting Started with Google AdSense’

If you’re anything like me, you don’t have time to hit 1 for English, 2 for customer support, 1 for hardware, 2 for laptops, 2 for blah blah blah….just give me a human! Automated phone systems have taken over our lives and and stolen a lot of our time. Fortunately though, there is a way around it! A database is available at http://gethuman.com/us that lists exactly how to reach a human at practically every major company in America. Some examples are:

• Sallie Mae ‑ Student Loans 888‑272‑5543 Don’t press or say anything.
• Apple 800‑275‑2273 Press 000; if virtual rep answers, say “operator.”
• Dell 888‑560‑8324 Press 00 at each prompt.
• Amazon.com 800‑201‑7575 Don’t press or say anything.
• Cingular Wireless 800‑331‑0500 Press *## at each prompt.
• Verizon Wireless 800‑922‑0204 Press #00 or enter phone # then 0 4.

Sliced bread doesn’t have squat on this!

Core77 has put together a great way to scan through portfolios of students of various art schools. As you can imagine, The Art Institutes International is well represented as you can see in this tag cloud below with the second most portfolios of any school:

–> Continue reading ‘Great Collection of Student Portfolios’

People often ask me how I find out about news releases and such before the article makes it into a newspaper or magazine. Newspapers use to be the best way to get the latest scoop, but the internet has changed all of that. Many people bookmark their favorite websites to scope for information every day and can spend quite a bit of time going through each site just to find information that they are interested in. Fortunately, Really Simple Syndication (or RSS) has made that time-consuming process a thing of the past.

RSS is basically a way for you to “subscribe” to a site and they will send a “broadcast” each time they release a new article. It is basically the title of the article and a brief clipping of it or even the entire article. So you might be wondering what this means for you and what you’re supposed to do with this “broadcast.” Here is where the fun stuff kicks in!

–> Continue reading ‘Make More Time in your Day with RSS’

The idea behind “social bookmarking� has become incredibly popular lately as del.icio.us led the charge. In a nutshell, it is a website where you create a free account and then you can bookmark your favorite websites & pages by categorizing them with “tags� and even giving them your own description so that you can remember later why you bookmarked the site in the first place.

I was a skeptic and never saw much of a use for it at first. Then I had people asking me for links to sites for various reasons. I found myself sending the same links to multiple people over and over. Then I was in situations where I would be out of town or at work and wondering what the address of that neat site was that I found at home. I needed a way to share my favorite sites with not only other people…but myself as well! Enter social bookmarking.

–> Continue reading ‘Social Bookmarking 101′