Archive for the 'TechTips' Category

Friday TechTip for June 6, 2008: Web 2.0

Published on June 6, 2008 in Web Service and TechTips. 0 Comments

Good Friday afternoon everyone! After a short tech-tip hiatus due to vacation, I’m back and ready to continue our ongoing discussion.

After reviewing the feedback I received both from the survey I distributed and personal comments, it appears there is a need to delve a little deeper in the meaning of Web 2.0. It’s certainly thrown around very casually, but what does it actually mean?

Here’s what Wikipedia, a quintessential Web 2.0 tool, has to say about the topic:

"Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users."

This is a rather nebulous statement and can be applied in a vast assortment of scenarios. Here are a few examples: sharing knowledge by updating Wikipedia articles, providing feedback about a product on Amazon, sharing party pictures on Flickr (and commenting on them), pushing out updates on Twitter during campus lockdowns, etc. The list is endless!

Web 1.0 consisted of static pages, sometimes hard to update, that contained information that easily and often became outdated. Web 2.0 instead uses tools and services which makes it much easier to distribute your content as well as keep it up to date. In my opinion, what it really boils down to is that we’re using the web to better understand ourselves and those around us.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of the sites and services with you that are considered to be "best of breed" in the Web 2.0 arena.

I hope this brief explanation has been helpful. This could easily be a VERY lengthy message, so instead, check out the Wikipedia entry! You might find yourself so intrigued that you’ll leave a comment, just look for the "discussion" tab at the very top of the page. :-)

Friday TechTip for May 16, 2008: Digital Photo Rodeo, Pt. 3 and Survey

Published on May 16, 2008 in Web Service and TechTips. 0 Comments

Good Friday afternoon!

Today is the last part of the digital photo rodeo. Apparently you can’t beat a dead horse too much. ;) Over the past couple of Fridays we’ve covered various tools to organize your photos on your computer as well as hosting options to share your pictures with family and friends. In today’s tip I want to tell you about two online tools for editing your photos. The great thing about each is that they fully integrate with both Flickr, Facebook and other services, so you if want to edit photos you’ve already uploaded elsewhere, you’re in luck!

Picnik – http://picnik.com – Picnik has a very colorful, Web 2.0 look about it. You can even use it without creating an account, however you’ll need to establish one if you want to access the photos you’ve already uploaded to other services. In addition to Flickr and Facebook it also interfaces with Picasa Web Albums, MySpace and other services. Picnik offers a full slate of editing and photo correction features for free. They also offer more tools for Pro accounts which cost $24.95 per year. When I’ve used it I’ve found that the free version has met all of my needs. Picnik is also a great tool to use to edit a photo you have stored on your computer. Simply select your computer as the source, upload the file, make changes, and then Picnik will save the file back to your computer.

Photoshop Express - https://photoshop.com/express – Adobe has decided to join this space as well and now offers Photoshop Express. Currently it is an entirely free service and also offers 2GB of online storage allowing you have yet another place to share photos with others. It also interfaces with Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa Web Albums (sounds familiar doesn’t it). They offer a series of short instruction videos under the help section to help you get started on the path of photo editing excellence!

Personally I really like both services for different reasons and think there’s room for each. As with the services mentioned over the past two weeks, it really comes down to what your needs are when deciding which one is best for you. Next week we’ll be moving on to another topic, in the mean time please take 60 seconds to answer 3 questions to help me better gauge your needs and interests:

Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=KiwaGqSvfQdi22AGqI5orA_3d_3d

Friday TechTip for May 9, 2008: Digital Photo Rodeo, Pt. 2

Published on May 9, 2008 in Web Service and TechTips. 3 Comments

In last week’s techtip I recommended a few different digital photo management tools, including Picasa from Google and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Both tools are free and give you multiple options for searching your computer for photos, organizing, and minor editing. Once you’ve gone through this process, you’re ready to share your photos with family and friends, and the world if you choose!

A few sites (and there are many) I’d like to recommend for sharing your photos are:

Flickr – http://flickr.com – This is considered to be THE web 2.0 photo sharing site. There’s a downloadable application that makes it very easy to choose the photos you want to upload. Once uploaded, photos can be organized into collections and sets, tagged for easy searching, etc. Flickr also allows you to join groups and share your photos with other members (see Boatwright Kids for an example of a test group a few of us are experimenting with: http://www.flickr.com/groups/boatwrightkids/). There’s no limit on storage, however if you’re a free member you’re only able to upload 100mb per month, pro members ($24.95 per year) are allowed to gorge themselves on unlimited uploading. ;) As far as privacy, you can keep your photos completely private and for-your-eyes only, visible only to family and friends, or wide open for everyone. Requirement: Yahoo! Login.

Picasa Web Albums: http://picasaweb.google.com – This is the companion web tool for Picasa. It offers many of the same features as Flickr, but doesn’t have the same community feel in my personal opinion. Uploading from Picasa on your computer is very simple as it’s part of the local application. Storage is a little trickier for Picasa Web Albums; you’re given 1024mb of storage and can purchase more, which is applied to ALL of your Google accounts (Gmail, etc.). My personal feeling is that if you only interested in having a place to direct family and friends to your photos, Picasa is the tool for you! Requirement: Google Account.

In addition to Flickr and Picasa Web Albums take a look at the following:

Photobucket - http://photobucket.com
Kodak Gallery - http://www.kodakgallery.com
Webshots - http://www.webshots.com

There’s really no “must use” tool listed here, just take a look at each and see which one best meets your needs

Friday TechTip for May 2, 2008: Digital Photo Rodeo, Pt. 1

Published on May 2, 2008 in Local Client. 0 Comments

Now that May is upon us (and the semester is ending) most of our thoughts are probably turning to summer! That means summer vacations, family gatherings, weekend trips, etc. For many of you an essential item for these events will be your digital camera. When you think about how easy it has become to photograph all of your life events and the random things you come across, you also quickly realize how much you need a way to organize all of your photos! Like all other gadgets, digital cameras have become much smaller over the past few years and therefore easier to take with you everywhere you go. Also virtually all cell phones now come with cameras, so most of you now have a camera with you at all times. Because of this it’s very easy to quickly a mass a collection of thousands of photos. Once that happens it’s critical you find good software to manage your pics! This week I want to recommend a few of the best options to do this.

  • Picasa - Picasa is my personal choice for managing my photos. During installation it offers several configuration options. You can let it search your entire computer for all photos, select only specific directories (such as your My Pictures folder on Windows PCs), or only load the photos you choose. Personally I recommend the first option, especially if you have a lot of photos. It could be that you may have forgotten where some of them are stored! Picasa also offers options for editing and touching up your photos. Picasa is free (and wonderful).
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery (For Vista and XP computers) - Microsoft has done a good job of improving the photo management abilities they included in XP. Windows Live Photo Gallery does the same thing as Picasa. It searches your hard drive and creates a chronological view of your pictures based on the EXIF timestamp. Windows Live Photo Gallery is also free.
  • Adobe Photoshop Elements - Elements will do all of the above functions but also offers a more editing options as well as the ability to create photo scrapbook projects, etc.  Elements sells for $99.99 unless you can find it on sale at an office supply store.

Of all these products, I highly recommend Picasa.  I think it will meet all of your management needs and also has some very easy ways to share your pictures with family and friends, which is what we’ll review next week. Keep in mind that managing a large collection of photos can quickly get out of hand, just like a large cattle herd (or cats for that matter)!

Enjoy your weekend! -Andy

TechTip for April 25, 2008: FreeCycle!

Published on April 24, 2008 in Web Service. 0 Comments

Good Friday afternoon everyone! This week’s tip isn’t so much about the technology associated with the service as it is the good it potentially offers! In honor of Earth Day this past week I’d like to tell you about FreeCycle, which I know some of you are already familiar with. FreeCycle allows you to post items to give away that you would have otherwise taken to Goodwill or thrown away, thus taking up landfill space.

FreeCycle’s organizational website is located at http://freecycle.org, but they utilize Yahoo! Groups to run each community’s site.  You can browse all the groups, or go directly to the Richmond group here. The only requirement for use is a Yahoo! login.  Registration is free and is done in a few seconds. To list an item, simply create a new post with the term "offer." For example:

Offer: Lightly Used iPhone ;)

You should also provide a brief description of the item.  You can either rely on responses via email to your Yahoo! email address or provide a phone number (I recommend cell) for them to call.  Once someone has arranged to take the item, you can either provide directions for them to pickup or select a location to drop off the item.

You should post another message to the group after the item has been taken to alert others that the item has been claimed.

Taken: Lightly Used iPhone

Personally, we’ve been able to get rid of several things via FreeCycle and have gotten some great freebie kid toys and even a Weber charcoal grill that was in near new condition (retails for $149.00)!  I encourage you to give it a try as your junk is probably someone else’s treasure!

Enjoy your weekend!

TechTip for April 18, 2008 - LogMeIn!

Published on April 18, 2008 in Local Client and Web Service. 0 Comments

Good Friday afternoon library staff! Today’s Friday afternoon tech-tip is a service that is near and dear to my heart as I’ve been a long time user. It also came in very handy last night as my parents now have DSL service and I fully expect to be their tech support person. Fortunately, I installed the software I’m telling you about several months ago while they were using a standard dial-up connection.

LogMeIn - http://logmein.com

LogMeIn offers several tiers of service, but I find the free version meets ALL of my needs (look for LogMeIn Free in the “Products” section at the top of the page). LogMeIn allows you to remotely connect to any PC that you own from anywhere you have web access and have full desktop control. To get started, do the following:

Visit http://logmein.com and create an account. You will then need to “Add a Computer.” to your authorized list. Be sure to be using the computer you wish to access in the future, as a small client will be installed. In Windows, you will see it in the task tray. It’s very light weight and won’t bog your system down. You will also have to give the computer a name, so choose something that you will remember in the future (if you’re going to add multiple computers).

In the future, when you need to access the computer, go to the LogMeIn website, login to your account, and you will then see your “stable” of machines. Assuming the computer is on and connected to the internet, you will be able to login and have full remote control access.

I’ve used LogMeIn to email myself a document that I left on my home computer, upload files to Flickr, and yes, provide technical assistance. Let me know if you have questions or would like further details!

Enjoy your weekend!

TechTip for April 11, 2008 - Jott!

Published on April 11, 2008 in Web Service and TechTips. 0 Comments

It’s April 11, and time again for another Friday Afternoon TechTip! Today’s featured service is Jott, from http://jott.com. It’s a very easy way to put your mobile phone to work, helping you to remember things and stay more organized. Everyone on staff (even Tom!) probably has a cell phone. After creating an account, you can then dial in from your phone to leave yourself reminders, to-do items, and even email others. Jott will take your voice message and transcribe it to text and then send it back to you as an email message. It can also store the audio of your message allowing you to play it back later.

Here’s a quick list of all the things you can do with Jott and simple instructions:

http://jott.com/jott/how-to-jott.html

I’ve used Jott to send email, leave myself a reminder, and yes, even post an update to Twitter. Jott integrates with several web services (http://jott.com/jott/how-to-jott.html) which allows you to create an appointment on your Google Calendar, post a blog entry to Blogger, or even get a list of items you’re interested in purchasing from Amazon.

It’s free, so give it a test this weekend!

TechTip for April 04, 2008 - Online Task Managers

Published on April 4, 2008 in Web Service. 0 Comments

Good afternoon!  It’s time for another Friday Afternoon TechTip! This week I’m highlighting two free services that allow you to organize your to-do lists and projects.  Both are very flexible and easily integrated into other web services.

Both focus on “reinventing the to-do list” in various ways.  Both offer to-do list builders, multiple categories, notes fields, and reminders via email, SMS, IM, and Twitter.  Both also synchronize with most mobile phones and PDAs as well as Google Calendar, etc.  You can also import your to-do list from Outlook, and let’s face it, the Tasks feature of Outlook is a little dated.  Both of these services bring Web 2.0 to life as ways to help you remain more productive and organized.  I’ve been using Toodledo for a while now and really like it.  It has a Firefox extension that gives me full access to my projects without having to go directly to the site. Since both are web-based, you can get your to-do list anywhere you have web access.  Toodledo will also print out a handy little booklet letting you keep a paper list of your projects in your pocket.

Take a look at both and let me know if you have questions or ideas about either.

Have a good weekend!

TechTip for March 28, 2008 - Skydrive

Published on March 28, 2008 in Media and Web Service. 1 Comment

Last week I told you about Foldershare from Microsoft, an easy way to synchronize folders and files between computers. This week, I want to tell you about another fresh-out-of-beta service from Microsoft called Skydrive. In simple terms it’s a 5gb online storage locker, again offered to you at no cost. You can use it to store important files and share them with others if you choose. It’s quite fast and since it’s online, you don’t have to worry about losing your files as you would if you misplaced a USB storage device. Give it a try at:

http://skydrive.live.com

To register, you will need either a Windows Live login or Hotmail address. Ok, that will be all the free Microsoft promos for a while and we’ll look at something new next week!

Addendum to TechTip for March 21, 2008 - Foldershare

Published on March 24, 2008 in Local Client. 0 Comments

As an addendum to last week’s tip, don’t use Foldershare to try to synchronize your local files (My Documents and Netfiles for instance). SyncBack SE is the right choice for this and should meet your needs. Foldershare is strictly focused on computer to computer sharing.  There’s a fully functional and free version of SyncBack SE available at:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware

I’ve used it in the past to automatically sync selected folders with Netfiles. Let me know if this is something you think you could make use of or if you have more questions.