US Park & Rec Supply - The RecTech

The Official US Park & Rec Supply Company Blog

Welcome to US Park & Rec Supply Company Blog! We are excited to launch a venue where we review products, answer questions and share useful information about Social Media Tools available to Parks & Recreation facilities. Our primary goal is education and share our experiences on how we utilize technology and the extensive research we do regarding the various solutions we offer to our customers.

Matt Owen
Co-Founder
US PARK & REC SUPPLY

Flickr | Cool Gallery Feature

Imagine access to millions of pictures all for the public to use, enjoy and share (can't alter) but you can benefit from some amazing photographers for FREE.

Flickr.com allows the user to designate the type "permissions" his/her photos will have. Not only can you use Flickr.com to host your own content/images/pictures, however you can browse through and search for keywords that relate to your need.

Take for example a popular park or recreation area. Flickr.com allows you to search your words, refine the search, review the accuracy of the images and to build a digital gallery player that you can share on other sites.

Below is an example of a SlideShow player created on Flickr with shared permissions from the photographers. Win/Win. They gain exposure and you gain access to photos of your parks (potentially).

My example I searched for State Parks, Iowa, Federal Parks, County Parks. They returned the results and displayed the Slideshow player. In the upper corner their is a button "Share" and it will display an option to obtain "Embed" code. It will look something like this;

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<object width="760" height="560" data="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">

<param name="data" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649" />
<param name="flashvars" value="offsite=true〈=en-us&page_show_url=%2Fsearch%2Fshow%2F%3Fq%3Dcounty%2Bparks%252C%2Bstate%2Bparks%252C%2Bnational%2Bparks%252C%2Biowa%26mt%3Dall%26adv%3D1&page_show_back_url=%2Fsearch%2F%3Fq%3Dcounty%2Bparks%252C%2Bstate%2Bparks%252C%2Bnational%2Bparks%252C%2Biowa%26mt%3Dall%26adv%3D1&method=flickr.photos.search&api_params_str=&api_text=county+parks%2C+state+parks%2C+national+parks%2C+iowa&api_tag_mode=bool&api_media=all&api_sort=relevance&jump_to=&start_index=0" />
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
<param name="src" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649" />
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />
</object>

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...Once you have this you can customize the display size and paste the code into the Page HTML Code where you want this to display. If you are set up with a blog, the default setting to create a post is "Rich Text". There is a tab right next to this labeled "HTML" generally that you click. Paste the code in where you want it displayed (a good trick is before you click the HTML tab, to place your curser on the page where you want it to appear. When you click into the HTML code your cursor should appear where you need it. Right click, paste and save.

It really is pretty easy. If you run into trouble or have questions, drop me a note and I'll be glad to see if I can help!

Flickr | Photo Hosting, Sharing and more

By now most Parks & Rec Departments, County Conservation Boards and States all have a web presence of some kind established. Some are keeping pace with the wild array of social media tools. However most are still trapped into expensive web hosts and designers if they want to make changes.

However,,,,

If you need a fast, FREE, solution for hosting pictures (and video) Flickr.com is an awesome solution.

Flickr.com is owned by Yahoo and allows you to set up an account for Free to host high quality digital pictures;

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This is from Flickr.com regarding their FREE Account;

How many photos and videos can I upload for free? When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 2 videos and 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. While the 100MB bandwidth limit for photos is firm, we do allow a little leeway for video in case you encounter transcoding errors, sound sync weirdness, etc. You will be able to delete and upload a new video. Please note, that if we determine you’re abusing your free video upload privileges, we may block your ability to share video. Your upload limits are reset to zero at midnight in Pacific Time Zone (Flickr headquarters time) on the first of each calendar month. You can't recover any of your monthly allowance by deleting photos. If you have a free account, you'll see your limit on the upload page. If you find yourself hitting your limit, try a pro account. Or, you can shoot your photos at a lower resolution or resize them to be more "web-friendly" (like 300KB instead of 5MB).

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....I'll get into more details about Flickr.com and some of the really cool features they allow you in future posts. However for now, take a look for yourself, I think you'll be glad you did.

Don't pay a web-designer to build you some really cool photo gallery into your site. You'll be wasting a ton of money if you do. Create an account with Flickr, create individual folders/galleries and upload your images. You can then add a link to your site (literally a 5 minute bill if you do have to pay a designer) or similar to YouTube.com you can click on the "Share" button and add them into your Blog, WebSite or any other Social place such as FaceBook.

Blogger | A Great "FREE" Blog Host Provider

As mentioned previously, there are several great choices when it comes to Blog Host Providers.

Another good choice is Blogger, which is owned by Google.com

TypePad.com | "A Blog? A who? Heard of it...but have no clue."

You are not alone.

Although you may have heard of the word "Blog", more than likely you have no idea why you need one, how to set it up or the features available to you once you have one.

Guess what?

It's not hard and in most cases you can do it yourself and do it for FREE!

Let me try to dissect this one.

What is a Blog?

In the simplest terms a Blog is a web-site. It is a tool you can use to instantly publish information. A Series of "Templates" are used to design the look and feel of your pages. Behind the scenes I am logged into a control panel dashboard and as easy as drafting an e-mail and clicking Publish (send)...poof! My "post" as we call it is now public and published for all the world to see right here on the Blog.

What about setting it up? Is it hard? I have no clue about the web stuff!

It can be...however companies offer pre-formatted templates that can address almost any business or Park needs. In less than 20 minutes you can sign up, choose a design theme and be ready to create your first post.

Why do I need one?

I can think of a million reasons! The days of a brochure style web-page are over. The world is demanding and hungry for your information whether you know it, trust it or believe it.... Someone, somewhere wants what you have.

A Blog is an amazing tool to help you (your company, park, product, event, you name it) be found on the web. Search engines love content and fresh new information from trusted sources. A Blog quickly allows anyone the ability to publish videos, pictures, audio files like MP3, write text, include PDF Downloads and about anything else you can think of.

Do you struggle with paying high fees to publish information in the newspaper about upcoming events, auction items, emergency response or anything else related to your Park Management Operations?

A Blog can be tied in directly to your existing website or you can choose to keep it very simple and not worry about the design and simply focus on the content. Either way, their are billions of Blogs and trust me, Google loves them and so will your readers eventually.

You may even be able to replace your existing website with a Blog.

What?

We use a service provided by TypePad - Six Apart, Ltd (www.typepad.com) I have personally used it for over 6 years with various different businesses. They offer a several different versions, however you can take your information from an existing site and create "Pages" within the software and replicate your old site.

Many of the things you can't do with FaceBook or afford to do with your web host and designer can be done with a Blog.

Imagine setting up a Blog for your most Popular Park or Recreation Area. Or a new bike trail or have your Naturalist use it for an on-line News Letter.

Trust me. If your not using a Blog, it is something (regardless of skills and background on the web) that you can do and should seriously consider.

If you would like to discuss this further about how a Blog can benefit your Parks & Recreation Department, please drop me a comment below or feel free to call or e-mail anytime.

The~REC-tech

More on Blogging in future posts.

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Example Video:

I went to www.Youtube.com search "County Conservation" and this video appeared. I clicked to play the video and selected the "Embed" button, highlighted the code and copied it (right click with your mouse) and then came back into TypePad and pasted in the code. Poof. Now you have Video.