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School of Pharmacy

UCSF School of Pharmacy

Kiosk

About the announcement kiosk

Put your announcement here! security reminder - lock your computer The Kiosk

In the elevator lobby of the 9th floor of the Medical Sciences building, a wall-mounted television displays public announcements moderated by the School. This display is seen by most PharmD students and some School of Pharmacy faculty and staff. It is also seen by some people outside of the School of Pharmacy. In particular it is on a common footpath for those traveling between Parnassus Avenue and the Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building, which is the headquarters for the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. We use Flickr to store, moderate, and deliver the announcements.

Any UCSF individual or entity is welcome to submit an announcement.

How to get started

  1. Sign up: Sign up with Flickr, either with a free or pro account. If you want to share an announcement related to a student organization, see if it has a Flickr account you can use instead of your own.
  2. Account name: The name you specify in your account settings must reflect your name or the name of the organization you represent. Since anyone can create an account with Flickr, we want to know who you claim to be before accepting your announcement.
  3. Upload 5 or more images: New Flickr users: at least 1 week before your announcement needs to appear on our kiosk, upload at least 5 images to your account. (See "Why aren't my announcements appearing in the group pool?" in column 2.)
  4. Join: Join the Flickr group Kiosk - UCSF School of Pharmacy.

How to submit an announcement to the kiosk

  1. Create: Create your announcement. (See the sidebar for help.)
  2. Upload: Upload your announcement, ensuring 2 settings:
    1. Set the privacy setting so that anyone can see the photo (public). If your photo is not publically viewable in Flickr, it will not appear on our kiosk.
    2. If your announcement is not photographic (i.e., created mostly or entirely with a camera), set the content type setting to art/illustration or screenshot as appropriate. This enables other Flickr members to see only the stuff they want. To view or change your announcement's content type, visit the Flickr page that displays your announcement, find Owner settings in the lower right corner of the page, then select the show more link. More info: Content filters. If you fail to set the content type correctly, an administrator at Flickr might place a restriction on your account that hides your announcement.

  3. Submit: Visit the Flickr page that displays your announcement, then submit it to the Kiosk - UCSF School of Pharmacy group by selecting the Add to a group link from the Actions menu. If our group is not showing up in the list of groups, you need to first join it by visiting Kiosk - UCSF School of Pharmacy and selecting the Join This Group link below the group title.

    how to submit to group

What happens next?

Your announcement is reviewed by a moderator usually within 2 business days. When approved, your announcement appears on the television alternating with the other messages currently in the group pool. You can confirm that it has been accepted by looking in the Kiosk - UCSF School of Pharmacy group pool. If your announcement has an obvious end date, it is removed from the group by the group administrator after that date has passed. (This removes the announcement from our group; it does not delete the announcement from your photostream.) If rejected, the moderator will send you Flickr mail letting you know why, so keep an eye on your Flickr mail for possible messages from us. We often have no easier way to contact you.

Questions? Feedback?

If the answer to your question will help others, post a message to the public Kiosk forum. Or...

  • For questions about using Flickr or creating announcements, contact Web & Data Services Manager Frank Farm (415/502-5372, farmf@pharmacy.ucsf.edu).
  • For questions about moderation, contact Computer Resource Specialist Rodney Yun (415/502-4872, yunr@pharmacy.ucsf.edu).

Go To: Deliver an announcement or Communications

How to create a kiosk announcement

  1. Download a template:

    teal 5493 dark blue 540 gold 117 orange 1595 dark pink 703 purple 667 green 5767

  2. Use a graphics editing application to create your message by adding your own text and images. If you don't have a desktop application such as Adobe Photoshop, consider these:

    Do not use Word or PowerPoint -- these are not graphics-editing applications, and you'll get poor results.

  3. Export or save as PNG-24 or JPEG. If you are given an option to specify the quality of the saved file, use the highest quality setting.
  4. Drag the finished file into a web browser window, then click the image once to make sure you're viewing it at actual size.
  5. Inspect the image, checking for quality. Watch out for posterization and compression artifacts. Need help? See below, in column 1.

More info for advanced users

For best results, your announcement should match these specifications:

  1. 16:9 width-to-height ratio
  2. At least 1366 × 768 pixels
  3. PNG-24 or JPEG
  4. Use the highest quality setting if available
  5. Use anti-aliasing if available
  6. images only -- no video

Notes:

  • Ratio: Width-to-height ratios other than 16:9 will produce suboptimal results because your announcement will be scaled to fit the display.
  • Dimensions: If your file is larger than 1366 × 768 pixels, that's okay, but since larger files take longer to download and use more bandwidth with no improvement in quality, we prefer exactly 1366 × 768 pixels if you can do it. Smaller than this size will result in suboptimal image quality because your announcement will be scaled to fit the display.
  • File formats: Technically, any file format that Flickr permits will work, but these are the only ones we recommend. We recommend PNG-24 over JPEG.

    Do not upload TIFF; Flickr converts TIFF images to JPEG, and you do not get to control the quality setting of this conversion.

  • Video: Flickr accepts video uploads, but our current implementation of delivering announcements to the kiosk does not support video. We are excited about the possibility and might support this in the future, but not right now.

Need help? See the bottom of column 1.

The rules

Announcements must:

  1. Be relevant to our audience.
  2. Be public. The kiosk is not the right way to deliver private messages. Use our LISTSERV mailing lists instead for that.
  3. Provide context. For example, instead of submitting just a photo, open the photo with Picnik or photoshop.com and add some text to explain what's happening in the photo. Our kiosk is seen by people outside of the School of Pharmacy, and the pool can also be viewed worldwide on Flickr.
  4. Abide by our Flickr participation guidelines. For example, you may not post an announcement anonymously or with a false identity. They must also reasonably meet our technical specifications (see column 2). For example, we will deny announcements that have more text than can be reasonably read in 25 seconds.

Why aren't my announcements appearing in the group pool?

New Flickr accounts: To ensure that all Flickr users are setting content filter flags correctly, Flickr wants to see at least 5 properly flagged photos in your account for several days before your announcement will appear in our group pool. Regardless of whether your account is new or not, there are some settings you can check. Details: See "Why aren't my photos appearing in searches or groups?" at Help / Groups. Did you check everything and still aren't seeing your announcements in the pool? Contact us.

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