If you haven’t participated in the library’s seasonal reading challenges in the last couple of years, you may be surprised to learn that you can now use an app to track your progress. Paper trackers are still available upon request, but we hope you will enjoy the convenience of being able to enter your progress on your device of choice.
The free app we use to configure and track seasonal reading programs is called Beanstack. We also use it to track the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten for preschool-aged children. Here is a brief video demonstrating how to sign up for Beanstack. This video only covers setting up Beanstack for the first use, not how to use the tracking features. We did it that way because each reading program has different rules and activities, and we didn’t want to confuse folks by creating a video that shows the activities from previous years.
If there is only one reading challenge running that you qualify for when you sign up, you will automatically be added to that challenge. When you click on the challenge, you will be presented with a list of activities you can perform to earn raffle tickets used to win prizes at the end of the program. In some cases, logging reading time or titles may be part of the program. Return to the app each time you have something to log.
Registration for this summer’s reading challenge startsJune 27th, with the theme Oceans of Possibilities. After the summer reading program is over, make sure you save your login credentials because you will need them again for the next reading challenge! If you have any questions, please contact library staff for assistance.
Descript is an online service with several tools to help you edit audio and video files painlessly. There is a free version that is limited, but if you need more transcription time or a larger vocabulary for your voice clone, there are three different paid tiers.
Overview Video
If you would prefer to watch an intro video created by Descript, you can view it here:
Key Features
Use Descript to capture your screen and record your microphone or computer audio.
Transcribe your audio or video at the press of a button.
Record remotely
For podcasting: edit audio, remove silence, add crossfaces and effects.
Edit video, add titles, shapes, lines, arrows, and images.
Remove uh, um, and other filler words instantly.
Overdub: create a digital clone of your own voice to generate and edit audio tracks.
Overdub
The feature that really made me stand up and take notice of Descript is Overdub. It allows you to create a clone of your voice (free version limited to 1000 words). You can then create an audio track of your voice by just typing the words! It can also be used to make changes to an existing audio recording and blend the tone on each side to make it sound natural. You can also create voices in different tones and performance styles in order to apply Overdub in a variety of situations.
While this technology has been around for some time, consumer tools have left a lot to be desired. Overdub marks a giant step forward in quality, with its AI doing the heavy lifting.
To hear samples of Overdub voices, check out this page: https://www.descript.com/overdub. Even better – if you’d like to take it for a live test drive, there is a widget at the bottom of the page that invites you to choose a voice profile and type in any text you want. Click the “speak it” button to hear your text “read” by the AI voice profile. Just below the widget, there is an option to test it against other popular text-to-speech services.
Conclusion
Descript is a free, easy-to-use tool that is full of features and can help you create and edit audio and video tracks easily. Have you used Descript or Overdub? Do you have another AI tool you find indispensable? Let us know in the comments.
Have you ever tried to use an image online that looked pixelated or otherwise low-quality when enlarged? Most of the buzz in using online images is how to make the file sizes of the images smaller, but that often results in a quality loss that can leave you disappointed. The good news is that there are several AI-backed tools available to assist you in enlarging your images without losing quality.
There are a number of tools that can accomplish this, such as:
They all work similarly, though their free plans have different limitations. For the purposes of this demo, we are going to use https://bigjpg.com.
Upscaling an Image
The main page contains a standard upload window that allows you to choose an image on your device to upscale.
When your image has finished uploading, select “start.”
The configuration window will appear. First, select the type of image you are using. Then, pick a factor by which to increase the image. For this tool, the free version is capped at 4x.
In testing, I tried a few different images. I found that photos best showed the power of the noise reduction aspect of the tool. For this, I used one of our stock photos of a young man at the library. Here is the original:
First, I enlarged the image 4x, and didn’t apply any noise reduction. Click/tap on the image below to make it full size. Depending on the size of your screen, you may be able to see how fuzzy the image looks in his face and his shoulders. That’s the “noise.”
I started from the original image and enlarged it 4x again, this time also opting for the highest noise reduction. Click/tap on the image below to make it full size, and note that this image has all of the “noise” smoothed out to make the picture quality appear better.
You may wonder why they offer different levels of noise reduction. To see the answer, compare the last image with the original. Where the AI has reduced the noise, it has also “guessed” at how to edit the image and left it looking a bit like a soft filter has been applied. In some cases, you may want to balance that effect with the noise for a better outcome.
Summary
Now that AI technology has become available to the consumer market, free image editing tools have gotten much more sophisticated. There are several sites that will allow you to upscale and enhance your images without a pricey software product. Have you used any of the tools we listed? Do you have another image upscaling tool you love? Let us know about it in the comments.
Today we are highlighting Avatarify, a face animator app backed by artificial intelligence that is able to take an image and a song and make the person (or animal!) in the image sing that song. Then you can share the video with friends. The app is free and available from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. Keep in mind that while this is called a “deep fake” video, you aren’t likely to fool anyone with the resulting video.
Using the App
After installing the app on your device, the initial screen makes it appear that a subscription is required to use the app. Note that it is easily dismissed by tapping the x in the corner of the screen.
Pick a song from the Avatarify library.
Next, tap “add photo” to select an image from your gallery.
The first time, you’ll be prompted to enable access to your gallery. This is required unless you want to use a demo image. For the first round, I chose a picture of my kittens. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the mouth land in the right place, giving the cat a monstrous look in the video. I gave up and tried a demo image of Elon Musk.
If you’re using your own image, it might detect the face(s) automatically. If not, the next screen shows a shadow face over the image (the part I had trouble with in the cat picture). Move it over a face and save. You can select multiple faces in the image to animate.
When I didn’t have to aim the “shadow face” over the image, it was really easy! This is how mine turned out:
The quality of the initial video was higher, but I compressed the file to lighten the file load on this page.
After the video is created, you have the option to save it to your device or share it using any method available on your phone.
Would You Use It?
This was a fun little tool, and the demos on their webpage suggest a variety of use cases: https://avatarify.ai/. Is this a tool you would use to share videos with your friends? Let us know in the comments.
If you’ve been on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, chances are you’ve seen them. Posts that appear to be innocuous enough, asking for a combination of personal info to find out things like what your Bridgerton name would be by asking you to name your grandmother’s name combined with the street you grew up on.
The problem with these types of posts is that they are not innocuous – far from it. These attempts by various entities to gather personal information are a type of social engineering.
What is Social Engineering?
According to this helpful article on Imperva, social engineering is “the term used for a broad range of malicious activities accomplished through human interactions. It uses psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information.”
The types of posts you may see on social media sites will ask all sorts of questions related to personal information that is often the same type of information used in security questions used to retrieve a forgotten password. A single question may appear innocent enough, but the way these scammers often operate is to gather information through multiple questions. For example, to gain access to someone’s account by answering security questions, you will often need to enter your birth date. These social engineering posts will be clever in the way they ask for information. Instead of, “post your birthday!” they will instead ask things that combine your birth month or number combined with other information. If you were to comment that you were born in January, they would have one piece of information. Another post may ask when you graduated high school, or what age you were in a certain year. When pieced together, the perpetrators have your birth date.
Example of a social engineering meme
Answering security questions can be used to retrieve a forgotten password or as an extra security measure to log in to some websites. Some common security questions ask about the street you grew up on, your favorite pet’s name, or the name of your firstborn child. To get this information, the perpetrators will word it in a different way such as, “what’s the name of the child who made you a mom?” A question that sounds innocent, but has malicious intent.
What Do They Do With the Information?
There are several ways the perpetrators can use your information. The easiest way is security questions. Once they have your information, they can visit your various accounts, be it Google, Yahoo, or even your bank account, and use the information to reset your password. What about the example question mentioned above about the name of the child that made you a mom? A common security question asks the name of your firstborn child. Your favorite subject in high school is another common question asked in Facebook posts that people answer without hesitation.
Besides answers to security questions, this information gives a heads up to those attempting to guess passwords. If hackers have a starting point, for instance, if your password contains the name of your childhood pet or your first born, it makes it easier to guess the rest of the password, especially if they are using hacking programs that can automate the process.
An Easy Solution
An easy way to combat this problem is to not share personal information on social media. While you may think only your friends will see the answers, once you comment on a public post, anyone on the internet can see the information you provided. Another way to avoid this problem is to not use security questions when given the choice. Instead, opt for a backup email address or a text message as a way to verify your account in the case of a forgotten password.
While the attempts to find out personal information on social media are plentiful, with due diligence, you can keep your information away from these information harvesting attempts by scrolling right past them.
Have you noticed these types of posts on social media? Let us know in the comments.
