Photoshop Tutorials - recommended by Mashable

Many people are going gangbusters with digital photography, so correcting and organizing digital photos is a big deal.  This year, Adobe Creative Suite 5 promotes use of Adobe BRIDGE as an organizer, and it is better than iPhoto. In addition to the Photoshop textbook or class, Mashable recommends a number of beginner tutorials for Adobe Photoshop. 

BagIt - Digital Preservation

The Library of Congress offers an easy and free digital preservation solution called BagIt. Here is a description from the website:

"The Library – with the California Digital Library and Stanford University – has developed guidelines for creating and moving standardized digital containers, called “bags.” A bag functions like a physical envelope that is used to send content through the mail but with bags, a user sends content from one computer to another.

Bags have a sparse, uncomplicated structure that transcends differences in institutional data, data architecture, formats and practices. A bag’s minimal but essential metadata is machine readable, which makes it easy to automate ingest of the data. Bags can be sent over computer networks or physically moved using portable storage devices.

Bags have built-in inventory checking, to help ensure that content transferred intact. Bags are flexible and can work in many different settings, including situations where the content is located in more than one place. This video describes the preparation and transfer of data over the network in bags."

The Library of Congress has been adding to its digital collections for years. Over time, LOC has refined its digital preservation standards.

Aviary - Copy Web Pages With Ease

Foxfire's tool for copying a web page, Aviary, captures a full website, not just a screen shot. Now, there is a new tool that allows you to simply insert ‘aviary.com/’ in front of a URL. I experimented with my 2CoolTools blog and several professional development sites:
http://aviary.com/2CoolTools.blogspot.com (too large -- but can crop.)
http://aviary.com/ClassroomLearning2.blogspot.com (Just right!)
http://aviary.com/DiscoveringAT.blogspot.com (Just right!)

I'm taking an introductory art DESIGN course, so finding this site is timely. For a novice art student, a free digital imaging tool is an attractive alternative to pricey software. Below is a video clip about Aviary.