Originally, Aviary was a suite of tools, including image editing, audio editing and music creation available for free online, but most recently they have started to focus their energy on a simple image editor for web applications.

Fortunately all of their creative editing tools are still available at http://advanced.aviary.com/. Check out what is available, and hopefully they have something you can use on your next project.

In honor of our new offering, we are spolighting Drupal in this week’s Resource Friday.

Drupal is an open source content management system similar to WordPress, but at the same time very different. Drupal can scale up to incredible large-scale solutions for a social networking website, or opperate for an individual user as a blog. Also like WordPress, Drupal has Themes and plugins (called Modules).

Drupal is a little complex for beginners, but with the advancement of Drupal Profiles, users can install all the components they need for their website, out of the box. Also, Drupal is widely supported and has an active community, incluing a prolific Boston branch.

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) with blogging and online publishing at its core (available at wordpress.org). Anyone is free to use WordPress under its GPL License, in fact you are looking at it right now (acmi.tv is built on WordPress).

There are some base Internet skills needed to set up a self hosted WordPress website, but the platform is known for its Famous Five Minute Install. If this is too complicated, which it definately can be, many hosting services provide a one-click-install of WordPress (here is a list of providers which offer this service).

Additionally, if signing up for hosting is outside your budgett or comfort zone, you can set up an account with WordPress’s commercial product, WordPress.com. At WordPress.com you can still experience the best of what WordPress has to offer, but all of the technical and hosting aspects are handled by Automattic, the organizing company responsible for WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

WordPress is also extensible with the use of plugins and themes, developed and supported by a large network of contributors. Also WordPress provides information on how to leverage and extend its core functionality through documentation on the WordPress Codex.

If you choose to give WordPress a try for your project; good luck and happy blogging.

The game will be presented live on the Education channel (Comcast 9, RCN 13, Verizon 24)at 10AM on Thursday, Thanksgiving morning. You can also watch it live streaming.

High school sports replays will follow at 1PM and 7PM on the education channel.

First, we kicks of with Focus Media Movie Night on October 21; where we will be viewing the Ivan Reitman film, Ghost Busters.

Next, on Thursday October 27, ACMi presents a Halloween Effects Demonstration, where Arlington youth between 13 and 17 years of age can learn about special effects and makeup effects, including zombie skin.

And finally, on Halloween eve and Halloween Night, ACMi presents back to back showings of Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Night of the Living Dead, for cablecast on the Public Channel.

The two shows, “2oth Century Revisited, years 1938 through 1941 and 1941 through 1945″ were taped the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Early that morning, after viewing the tragedy on television, I called all of my panelists: World War II veterans Pauline McGuigan, Thomas W, Murphy, Robert O’Neill, James “Zeke” Motherway, Harold Brenner, Elaine Delaney and the show’s director Maureen Jackson to ask if they would be emotionally prepared to tape the show. They all felt that it was important to continue with our plans, especially as we were to talk about another devastating day in U.S. history – Pearl Harbor. In the days that followed, I began my new “Afghanistan Series for The Mary Lou Bigelow Show.

Mary Lou Bigelow – host of 20th Century Revisited

Once again, ACMi will be covering Arlington Town Day, the annual end-of-summer (beginning-of-fall) celebration of all things Arlington.

We will be covering the event live on Saturday Septemer 17th, starting at 10AM (tune in early for some pre-show coverage). The broadcast will be available on the Public Channel (Comcast 8, RCN 3, Verizon 31), through our live web stream, and in the following week on our Video On Demand website (for playback and download).

Town Day will be replayed throughout the month, in full on Saturdays at 10AM, and in segmented pieces on Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Friday at 9PM. For the most up to date playback info, go over to our Public Channel page.

Have a great Town Day!

We couldn’t agree with the Club more. We are blessed to have Sally’s green thumb available to us and we join with the Garden Club in congratulating her on her award-winning garden design for Arlington Community Media Inc. at 85 Park Avenue in Arlington Heights.

Because ACMi has been growing, and reconfiguring its production facility, and acquiring new equipment, we need to take a breather and organize our inventory and our space. We also need to do some technical maintenance on our stuff. So we ask you to understand and appreciate our need to close the ACMi station for three days this week to undertake this work.
Thank you.

Amy Currul and Steve Katsos, winners of Hometown Video Awards

Amy Currul, an Arlington High School sophomore, and Steve Katsos won top honors in two categories of the national video awards contest that promotes community media and local cable programs distributed on Public, Educational, and Governmental (PEG) access cable television channels throughout the nation. It is local cable’s largest video awards competition.

Winners receive national recognition and a plaque listing the producer’s name, program title, and category for which it won. This year nearly 1100 entries were received from community television centers in the US and Canada.

Currul received the award for best Informational Feature in the Youth Division for her series, Wicked Green, about ways to join in local conservation and recycling efforts to preserve and protect the environment. Wicked Green may be viewed on ACMI’s Education Channel throughout Arlington via Comcast channel 9, RCN 13, and Verizon 24, as well as streaming online via the ACMi website (www.acmi.tv).

Katsos, along with colleagues Hope Orfanos, Lakis Koulouris, and Todd Speros, received the award for best Website for Producers in the Professional Division. (See it at http://stevekatsos.com.) The Steve Katsos Show, produced weekly at ACMI’s studio, may be seen on ACMI’s Public Channel throughout Arlington via Comcast channel 8, RCN 3, and Verizon 31, as well as streaming online via the ACMi website.