Follow us on Twitter

Like Us on Facebook

Add us on iTunes

it2go – The IT Training Podcast

So I decided that I would share with you all. If you’ve been a long-time TweetDeck user like I have been, you may or may not have noticed the added feature called Global Filter. Global Filter allows you to completely filter out people, hashtags, sources, etc. from all of your lists, searches, and feeds in TweetDeck.

The Global Filter is located in Settings -> Global Filter. From there just add the information you want to filter out of your feeds like so:

Click Save Settings and you’re done! No longer will the annoying posts show up in your timeline, and you don’t have to go through the awkward situation surrounding the unfollowing of someone you are real-world friends with!

Happy Tweeting!

Today, I’m looking into how to create the category RSS feeds that you can see in our sidebar. This article will discuss how to create the following by editing the default WordPress category sidebar widget:

NOTE: This article is intended for individuals who are working with WordPress at an administrative level. A familiarity with PHP is required.

WordPress Version: 2.8.0 and up

Understanding How Category Lists Are Generated

Before we dive into the specifics of how to edit the Category widget, let’s explore how Category links are made.

In the most recent version of WordPress (3.0.1 at the time of this writing), the function that generates categories is called wp_list_categories() (link opens in new window). I will spare you the entire explanation of how the function works (follow the link to go to the WordPress Codex), but we will need a general working knowledge of how we will send it input.

The typical usage is:

<?php wp_list_categories($args); ?>

Where $args is an array that passes display settings to the function.

Dynamic vs. Static Sidebar: Which One Am I Using?

This article focuses on the dynamic sidebar. The easiest way to tell if you are using a dynamic or static sidebar is whether or not you are using widgets in your theme. If you use widgets, you are using a dynamic sidebar. If you aren’t using widgets, you are using a static sidebar. If you are using a static sidebar, you will probably still get some helpful information out of this post, but it’s truly geared toward the dynamic sidebar.

Creating Category RSS Feed Text Links

Let’s start with the easier of the two methods, text-based RSS links.

1. To begin, you need to find your wp-includes/default-widgets.php file.
2. Save the current file as wp-includes/default-widgets-OLD.php.

Now that we’ve backed up our work, we can begin looking for the code we need. In the file, you should find an area of text around line 414 that looks like:

/**
 * Categories widget class
 *
 * @since 2.8.0
 */
class WP_Widget_Categories extends WP_Widget {

	function WP_Widget_Categories() {
		$widget_ops = array( 'classname' => 'widget_categories', 'description' => __( "A list or dropdown of categories" ) );
		$this->WP_Widget('categories', __('Categories'), $widget_ops);
	}

	function widget( $args, $instance ) {
		extract( $args );

		$title = apply_filters('widget_title', empty( $instance['title'] ) ? __( 'Categories' ) : $instance['title'], $instance, $this->id_base);
		$c = $instance['count'] ? '1' : '0';
		$h = $instance['hierarchical'] ? '1' : '0';
		$d = $instance['dropdown'] ? '1' : '0';

		echo $before_widget;
		if ( $title )
			echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;

		$cat_args = array('orderby' => 'name', 'show_count' => $c, 'hierarchical' => $h);

		if ( $d ) {
			$cat_args['show_option_none'] = __('Select Category');
			wp_dropdown_categories(apply_filters('widget_categories_dropdown_args', $cat_args));
?>

There are essentially two locations we are interested in in this code chunk. The first is where we will declare our feed link’s name:

$c = $instance['count'] ? '1' : '0';
$h = $instance['hierarchical'] ? '1' : '0';
$d = $instance['dropdown'] ? '1' : '0';

The second is where we modify the $cat_args array:

$cat_args = array('orderby' => 'name', 'show_count' => $c, 'hierarchical' => $h);

We will add a $f variable and set it’s value to ‘rss’. We will then add the variable in the $cat_args array to make the links appear.

1. To create the $f variable, in the code editor, under the line that reads $d = $instance['dropdown'] ? '1' : '0'; type,
   $f = 'rss';
2. To modify the $cat_args array, immediately after the $h, type:
   , 'feed' => $f

   The line should now read: $cat_args = array(‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘show_count’ => $c, ‘hierarchical’ => $h, ‘feed’ => $f);

   Full code listing for the WP_Widget_Categories class. (opens in new window)

3. Save your file and upload it back to your wp-includes folder.
4. Refresh your blog front page.

You should see something similar to:

Creating Category RSS Icon Links

The process for creating RSS links with an icon is very similar to the above process. Instead of settign the $f variable to 'rss', we will set it to the location of the image file and instead of adding 'feed' => $f to the $cat_args array, we will add 'feed_image' => $f.

To complete this section, you will need a small RSS icon. Right click here and choose ‘Save Target As…’ to use the one that we use. You will also have to upload the image to a folder you can link to from your WordPress installation, we stored ours in our wp-content/themes/current_theme/images folder.

Let’s get started.

1. Find the same code snippets listed above, namely:
   $c = $instance['count'] ? '1' : '0';
   $h = $instance['hierarchical'] ? '1' : '0';
   $d = $instance['dropdown'] ? '1' : '0';

2. To create the feed variable, after $d, type:
   $f = ‘path_to_your.image’
3. To modify the $cat_args variable, immediately after the $h, type:
   , ‘feed_image’ => $f

   The line should now read: $cat_args = array(‘orderby’ => ‘name’, ‘show_count’ => $c, ‘hierarchical’ => $h, ‘feed_image’ => $f);

   Full code listing for the WP_Widget_Categories class. (opens in new window)

4. Save your file and upload it back to your wp-includes folder.
5. Refresh your blog front page.

You should see something similar to:

Where To Go From Here

Now that you have modified your default-widgets.php file, you will have to preserve it before upgrading your WordPress installation. I recommend that you keep a copy of the modified file stored somewhere safe. For example, you could save your default-widgets.php file as default-widgets-NEW.php and move it to your desktop or any other location.

UITS  has just published Twelve Tips for Safe Social Networking. If you have a Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, or any social networking account, you should check it out!

See the article here. (opens in a new window)

Here’s how:

In your Twitter space, click the Profile link at the top of the page. Under your username, click the Lists   button and choose New List. You can name your list anything, and make it Public or Private.

Once you have one or more lists, in the “Following” section on the right of your Profile, click the View All link. To the right of each of your followed usernames is a List button:   Click this button to see your lists, and then assign the selected username to a list.

Your Lists appear in the right section of your Home or Profile. Click a list to see only tweets that have been assigned to that list.

The social networking sites don’t want to remind users about privacy, even if they talk about it positively, because any reminder will result in users remembering their privacy fears and becoming more cautious about sharing personal data. But the sites also need to reassure those “privacy fundamentalists” for whom privacy is always salient, so they have very strong pro-privacy rhetoric for those who take the time to search them out. The two different marketing messages are for two different audiences.

And therein lies the rub: social networking sites are really just an amped-up version of the old-school telephone.  If Sally Sue is the only person with a telephone, the telephone has practically no value (except maybe to throw at an intruder).  When Sally Sue’s friend gets a telephone (and, more importantly, makes a commitment to learn how to use it and then actually use it), the telephone’s worth has just exponentially increased. The worth of social networking sites is entirely dependent on the number of members (in the short term), but also the members’ free labor to self-disclose (over the long term, as these member-offered knowledge bits are what increase usage and draw new users into the site).   The study cited by Schneier clearly finds that the more privacy policies are made evident, the more people are aware of privacy issues and less freely giving with knowledge bits. While many users would probably benefit from a privacy policy reminder (especially just before releasing pictures from an inebriated vacation in Cabo), it’s clear why Facebook and other social networking stalwarts trumpet everything but their privacy policies: it’s not in their best interests to do so.

1. Read the original paper: “The Best of Strangers: Context Dependent Willingness to Divulge Personal Information.”
   Citation: John, L., Acquisti, A., Loewenstein, G. (2009, July 6). The Best of Strangers: Context Dependent Willingness to Divulge Personal Information. Social Science Research Network. Retrieved August 17, 2009 from ssrn.com: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1430482.

Sending Tweets

• - After you sign up for Twitter, just enter a message (maximum 140 characters) in the entry field at the top of your Home page. All who follow you will see your tweets. If no one is following you yet, send a little introduction message anyway just for practice. It will be there for people later.

Receiving Tweets

• - Your Twitter space will be populated by the tweets of all the people you follow, so go out and find some Twitterers. See Finding Friends and Following Tweeple, below.

Finding Friends and Following Tweeple

• - Having an avatar is helpful when people start following you; everyone wants to know with whom they’re speaking. Therefore, as soon as you can, add a picture of yourself or supply an image by which people can identify you. A bio is helpful, too. (See Making It Your Home, below.)
• - To find friends or interesting individuals who twitter, click Find People at the top of your profile. Type in their names, or just try searching “New York Times,” “Library of Congresss,” “noaa,” “oceanexplorer,” or other entities of interest. This is a good way to find news sites and other topics as well. To receive all their tweets, click the Follow button.
• - People you follow will receive a notice that you are following them, and in turn they will probably follow you.
• - To find more people or sites to follow, see who THEY are following and follow the ones that interest you!
• - To find celebrities, people, or categories of interest, go to http://wefollow.com/.
• - If you know someone’s username, you can travel directly to their Twitter space by going to http://www.twitter.com/[username].
• - If you don’t want certain people following you, it’s easy to Block them.

There’s more!

Finding Topics that Interest You

• - You can find a comprehensive directory of topics at
  http://tweetdeck.com/beta/directory/.
• - Another way to search Twitter is to go to http://search.twitter.com/. You can do advanced searches here. To use Advanced Search, click Advanced Search. Here, you can refine your search to find just what you want among the zillions of tweets.
• - TweetScan is another Twitter search engine: http://tweetscan.com/.
• - There is a Search field in your own Profile area. Type any term into that field. For example, “How to Paint Stripes on Your Walls. “
• - To find a discussion with a more continuous thread, try typing a hash tag (#) before your one-word search term, as in #iranelection. (See more about hash tags below.)
• - When you get Advanced Search results, note the Twitter operators at the top of the page. This syntax can be typed into any search field. For example:
  “faux painting”
  location:”las vegas”
  near:”bloomington, indiana”
• - To find trending topics (those that are popular at the moment), see http://twitscoop.com/ or http://hashtags.org/.

Twittering for Fun

• - If you like a tweet and want to preserve it forever, mouse over it. A star-shaped icon appears at the right of the text. Click that. After you collect Favorites, you can click the Favorites link on your home page to see all the tweets you’ve ever saved as Favorites, no matter how long ago you saved them. You can also go to other users’ pages and browse through their Favorites.
• - Retweets (or RT’s) are a way to quote another Twitter user. If someone posts something interesting, you can quote them by sending out a RT. RT’s provide a way to help a message to be redistributed widely. The syntax for RT’s is as follows: RT @username post. For example:
  rt @threeporcupines How to Paint Stripes on Your Walls : http://bit.ly/Ql9q9
• - Want help in shrinking your message to 140 characters? Go to http://tweetshrink.com/, type in your message, and when it has done its work, just copy and paste your converted message into the message field.

Sending Special Tweets

• - If you want people to follow your new discussion topics, try adding a # (hashtag) before the topic. To learn more about hashtags, see the illuminating article at: http://www.techforluddites.com/2009/02/the-twitter-hash-tag-what-is-it-and-how-do-you-use-it.html. To see trending (currently popular) hash tags, go to http://hashtags.org/ . If you use hash tags, remember that it’s helpful to get your topic seen by more people if you also follow http://hashtags.org/, because it follows you and categorizes your hash tags for others to see .
  Also, See http://www.gissisim.com/2009/03/learn-more-about-hashtags/ .
• - Want to be a Twitter nag? Send nudge username and they’ll get a request to send a current Tweet.
• - You can send a Twitter message directly to another Twitter user’s phone and email account with the Direct Message (DM) command. Enter d username message, and users will get your message in their email, and also via device if they have enabled their phone or IM account.
• - If you enter a Tweet with @username at the beginning of it, your message will go directly to their Twitter profile, and is understood as being intended for that particular person, although others will be able to see it.
• - A newer feature also using the @ sign is “Mentions,” which you use simply to share another username. You can type @[username] anywhere in the message, and that username automatically becomes a link to the specific profile. This technique is used extensively on Fridays. To see how it works, try this: next Friday, log into Twitter, search #followfriday, and see all the Twitterers that other people are following. Put some of your own favorites out there with an @ sign and append the #followfriday tag. This lets your followers know who you think are good people to follow. (Getting the hang of this?)
• - To post a picture with your tweet: Go to http://twitpic.com/, log in with your Twitter username, and click Upload photo. Choose an image on your computer, add a message, and post it. It goes out as a tweet with a link to your picture. You can also post photos from your phone–just send your photos to your username as specified on the Twitpic upload page.
• - Want to know how those little URLs get there? If you have a URL you would like to share, go to http://tinyurl.com/ and see how it’s done! There are more URL shrinkers, too. See http://lifehacker.com/5068945/five-best-url-shrinkers .
• - If you use Facebook, You can make your writing a two-for-one effort: see http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/ or http://twitter.com/widgets/facebook . Use one or the other.

Sending and Receiving Tweets by Phone or IM

• - Activate your mobile phone on Twitter if you want to tweet on the go: Click Settings, and then click the Devices tab. Follow the directions.
• - To tweet from a mobile phone, send an SMS message to 40404, and the message becomes your Tweet. (Your phone’s caller ID is attached to your Twitter account, so the system will know it’s from you.)
• - From IM, message TwitterIM if you’re on AOL, or twitter@twitter.com if you’re on Jabber/GTalk.
• - In the cases above, all your “followers” will see your message on their own Twitter pages and possibly on their mobile devices as well.
• - By default, alerts to your mobile phones (Devices) are set to Off. To get cell phone alerts, add your mobile phone, as described above. Then, you can set up your phone to receive all messages, no messages, or just messages from a selected few.
• - You can set up Twitter to send you device updates (cell phone alerts and email messages) from only specific usernames from whom you want to hear: Go to your profile’s list of “Following,” open the profile of the person you want, and then click the Following status icon beneath their username. Turn Device updates On or Off here. Once the Device is set to On for those individuals, you will receive their tweets–and only their tweets–in your email and on your cell phone.

Making It Your Home

• - It’s best to add a picture of yourself (or else an image by which people can identify you) as soon as you can. Also add some information about yourself–just enough so your friends and interested parties can find and accept you. As we said above, everyone wants to know with whom they’re speaking.
• - To add your personal info: Click Settings at the top of your page. Under the Account tab, minimally add your name, location and a little bio. Under Picture, add a small picture or an icon that you think identifies you.
• - You can decorate your space as you see fit! Under Settings, click Design. Select a theme, change design colors, and add your own picture. Have fun–make it your official presence, or rearrange the furniture as often as you want!
• - You can always change your username from the Settings/Account panel; be assured that your followers will continue to follow you. However, you should notify anyone who has become accustomed to messaging you at @username.

More Information:

• - When you get to a point that you have so many tweets it’s difficult to weed through them, there are several remedies. Since November 1, 2009, Twitter offers a new Lists feature: (see http://bit.ly/hG92T). Another web-based option that enables you to filter tweets into columns using any scheme you choose is HootSuite. If you don’t mind installing software, you can also try using TweetDeck, a desktop application that lets you efficiently filter tweets into columns. 
• - See some Twitter commands at: http://wayofthegeek.org/2009/02/twitter-commands/, http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/14020, and http://help.twitter.com/portal . Most of these can be used either from your cell phone (txt message to 40404) or the web.
• - Twitter messages may drive you insane if they are coming into your cell phone. If you want to turn them off, here’s how: send the command Off, Sleep, or Stop to Twitter. To turn it back on, send On, Wake, or Start.
• - There are lots of twitter applications, too. See :
• http://tweetdeck.com/beta/; more at http://wayofthegeek.org/2009/02/twitter-commands/; and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/technology/personaltech/07basics.html
• You can find a compendium of Twitter apps at: http://oneforty.com/.

“One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.”

-@Jack

This article is intended to give people new to Twitter or people who don’t have a good understanding of the application’s capabilities a brief overview of why Twitter is powerful and how they might start using it themselves. It’s focused on companies/departments/groups for an Indiana University audience, but the information is applicable for everyone.

What is Twitter?

This might seem like a simple question to answer, but in reality, if you look at each of the following definitions, you will see that they’re all different.

• Twitter’s Definition: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
• Wikipedia’s Definition: “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets.”
• My Definition: Twitter is a technology that facilitates synaptic, asynchronous, and individualized communication between its users.

They’re all similar in one respect, communication. The truth is that Twitter is whatever you make of it. The service’s architecture is open-ended and loose allowing users to use Twitter for whatever purpose they desire. Whatever you put into the service by way of interaction will be returned.

Check out the rest of the post after the jump!

Twitcabulary – The Vocabulary of Twitter

Before I go any further, I want to list some of the Twitter-related buzzwords in the Twitter vocabulary.

• Tweet – short update of 140 characters or less, answering the question “What are you doing?”
• Follower – someone who has subscribed to someone’s updates.
• Tweeps – friends/followers on Twitter.
• Tweople – people using Twitter.
• Twitterati – Tweople who attract thousands and thousands of followers. Sometimes they are real-world celebrities or sometimes their celebrity comes from their online presence only.
• Hashtag – meta information (think categorization) added to a tweet. Hashtags are prefixed with the # sign i.e. #bloomington or #iub. Hashtags allow for quick searching to reveal related tweets.
• Reply – a reply to a specific user using the format @username. Replies are public.
• Direct Message (DM) – a message sent to a specific user using the format d username. DMs are private and can only be read by the recipient.
• Retweet (RT) – passing along someone else’s tweet to a larger audience, sometimes with extra commentary.
• Tweetups – a meeting of Tweople outside the virtual world (real life).

Brief Twitter History

Twitter was born out of the idea of staying in touch with one’s friends. It evolved into a service that would allow its users to do just that, in addition to finding places to hang out and hot spots around town.

You can take a look at the history of Twitter in a lot of places. If you’re looking for something brief and graphical, see the Manolith article here: http://www.manolith.com/2009/06/21/the-story-so-far-of-twitter/.

In recent history -Iranians use Twitter to communicate important news about the happenings in the country using the hashtags #gr88 and #iranelection.  The US State Department urges Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance that would have cut out daylight service in Iran citing Twitter as an invaluable and important communications tool.  Many Twitter users change their location and local time to Tehran +3:30 GMT to help obfusgate the legitimate Tweople in Iran.  Tweople, using the hashtag #cnnfail, expressed their desire to hear more about the Iranian election rather than coverage on John and Kate Plus 8 and American Chopper… and CNN listened, beefing up their coverage of the Iranian election.

In My Experience – Recently in a Cascade Server: Site Managers workshop, I was teaching a large group how to use IU’s new WCMS.  A lot of them use Twitter regularly and I noticed as I walked around the classroom that they were using Twitter during the workshop, so on breaks, I started finding their user accounts and read their tweets.  They created a hashtag for use in the workshop and I was able to see what they were saying and customize the workshop experience based on what they were saying.

More on “The Real Power of Twitter” – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-real-power-of-twitter

Using Twitter Effectively

There are a lot of opinions on how to use Twitter effectively and they change drastically depending on what your role is in your company/department/group.  The truth about Twitter is that you get out what you put in, i.e. if you interact and are an active part of your followers’ conversations, your group will benefit most from Twitter.

Using Hashtags

This is probably the technology that adds to the usefulness of Twitter more than any other. To use a hashtag and have it cataloged, you must be following the user @hashtags. This ensures that when you use the hashtag, #example, it shows up in the hashtags.org directory with all the other tweets that use the same hashtag allowing users to easily find people who are talking about what they’re interested in.

Finding a hashtag is simple. Simply point your web browser to search.twitter.com and search for the tag you desire. For example, one of the hash tags I follow and interact with regularly is the #climb tag (clicking the tag will take you to the search for #climb).

Use Twitter to Follow Current Trends

Now that you’ve found hashtags you want to follow, how do you keep up with what’s being said in conversations of interest? You could constantly be heading back to search.twitter.com and constantly be searching for the tags, or you could do the following:

• Use an application that allows you to save and update searches in real time (TweetDeck).
• Discover the hashtags that relate to topics you have interest in using either http://hashtags.org or http://search.twitter.com.
• Create a saved search looking for the topics of interest.
• Find trending topics on http://www.twitter.com/home or at http://www.twitscoop.com.

Use Twitter as a Marketing AND Interaction Tool

The most successful companies using Twitter aren’t those companies using Twitter to update users only on new products or company news, they’re the companies that use Twitter to interact with their customers as well as inform them of news.  Take these feeds for example, @Direct2Dell compared to @JetBlue.

That’s not entirely fair to Dell because they use Twitter to allow their employees to directly interact with their customer base.  For example: @RichardatDell, @JohnatDell, @LionelatDell, etc.  Dell’s strategy is to have specific accounts for marketing and others for interaction.  JetBlue, on the other hand, uses one account for everything from communicating promotions, interacting with their customers, and disseminating corporate news.  For more information, see http://www.dell.com/twitter.

The most important consideration is context, for example, @cnnbrk simply reports news and has little to no interaction other than being a fountain spewing breaking news stories, yet they have almost 2 million of followers (at the time of this writing).

Another important consideration is audience, for example, @aplusk has well over 2 million followers (mostly because of a follower race with @cnnbrk becoming the first person to have over 1 million followers). Something else important is going on with @aplusk as well. He has over 2 million followers, but is following less than 200 himself. The beauty of Twitter is that you can follow who you like, but they don’t necessarily have to follow you back.

Twitter also serves to bring people of celebrity status down to the “normal people’s” level. Again, the example of @aplusk comes to mind, also @feliciaday, @danecook, @stephencolbert, @chickmcgee1, @oprah, @mchammer, @the_real_shaq, and many, many others.

To sum it all up, Twitter is whatever you make of it. If you’re the kind of person who wants to sit and observe what’s happening, don’t expect hundreds of followers. However, if you’re going to participate with a community or two, you’ll find your time on Twitter to be much more rewarding.

creepy effected.mp3 – The final sound

Soundbooth is an audio editing and creation program that is available through the Adobe/IU licensing agreement.  It is part of the Production Premium suite.  It can record, edit, and add effects to sound files.

Starting out, I decided since I was very out of practice with guitar, I’d just record a simple three note phrase.  I practiced with some different arrangements and ended up with what I thought was a suitably creepy beginning.  To make sure I had a good amount to work with, I played it three times into the microphone. Here is the sound that resulted:

creepy.mp3 – Feel free to download and follow along in your own copy of Soundbooth CS4.

This is the screen once the sound was recorded.  In the upper left, we have the Files panel, which shows my previous attempts, and just below that is the Effects panel, where we’ll be spending most of our time.

I recorded my sound directly into Soundbooth with the record button at the bottom of the screen.  Once there, click record again and start talking, or playing.  Click stop when finished.

Finding the Sound

Once I had the base sound in place, creating the final effect was mostly a process of trial and error until I found the sound I was looking for.  Here are the effects I used to create the final sound effect.

To begin, I added an Analog Delay effect from the Effects menu (Effects->Analog Delay).  Analog delay gives us a nice echo effect.

In the Effects Panel(see to the right), we can see that Analog Delay has appeared:

Effect Panel Features

• The green button next to the effect is an On/Off switch.  One very cool aspect is that these effects are applied in real time.  So as an effect is playing, you can turn an effect on and off to see the difference.
• To delete an effect from the sound, Click the effect, and hit “Delete” or “Backspace” on the keyboard.
• Another great thing about Effects is that they remain in preview mode until we either save the file, or click the “Apply to File” button at the bottom of the Effects panel.
• You can apply an Effect to a particular portion of a sound by pressing and dragging part of the sound, and then clicking the “Apply to Selection” button in the Effects panel, once the Effect is ready.

Working with the Effects Presets

Listening to the default, it doesn’t sound very impressive.  However, one of the cool things about Soundbooth is all the ways we can modify our effects.

To change the settings of the effect, you can click the “Default” drop down menu, and experiment with different options.  For this project, I went with Drainpipe – Aggressive.  We can hear a fuller sound immediately.

The next thing I added was a Chorus/Flanger Effect (Effects->Chorus/Flanger).  This effect adds some interesting vibrations to your sound files.  I selected A Flanger Darkly – Aggressive as my preset.

Finally I added a Convolution Reverb effect(Effects->Convolution Reverb).  This effect can be very subtle or very intense, but it adds some simple reverberation to your sound, giving it some repeating elements.  To really crank things up, I gave it a setting of Dreamscape – Aggressive.  Verge of Control gives a similar if slightly different effect. Once I got here, I knew I had the sound I wanted.  It was suitably creepy, and had a feel of something distant and threatening.

Here’s what my Effects panel(in the image to the right) looked like when I was finished:

No changes are final until you either save the file, or click the “Apply to File” button in the Effects panel.  You also won’t see any changes in the visible sound wave until clicking this button either.  Soundbooth saves (from the menu File->Save) as a .wav by default, but you can also save in popular formats like .mp3 and .aif.

Soundbooth is a program clearly designed for experimenting, so pop it open, and start trying out some sound editing of your own.

If you’re interested in more information about the basics of sound editing, including recording, editing the timeline, and adding extra sounds to an existing sound, check out IT Training & Education’s Podcasting: The Basics workshop.