Las Vegas, here I come!

Today I signed up for the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The event takes place every January and this will be my fourth year to go. Rick and I spend the week meeting with important people in the electronics industry, looking at the latest gadgets, lining up interviews for future shows and riding rollercoasters. I am already making my list of the companies with new products that I am anxious to see. The short...

Amazing Photoshop Elements: Toolbox

The Amazing Photoshop Elements Toolbox There are so many wonderful things you can do with Photoshop Elements. You will find many of our tips in our notes from previous meetings. Photoshop Elements Part I Photoshop Elements Part II Photoshop Elements Part III This time we will spend most of our time discussing the Magical Photoshop Elements Toolbox. There are three kinds of tools in the Toolbox: Hover your mouse over any area...

Unplugged and loving it!

When I talk about wanting to live in the 1800's, people are always surprised. A tech guy, an expert wanting to live in a time when the Pony Express was high tech? It's true I tell you. As much as I love technology, I also see how much time it can eat up as well. On our old fashioned road trip vacation, I took my laptop (used it twice for a total of about fifteen minutes), my GPS (used it once), my beloved Treo (used...

Photo Blogging

How to Create and Use a Photo Blog What is a Blog? A blog is an online journal. What you type in, email, or send via cell phone to your blog page automatically gets posted onto the web. Sounds scary. Why would I want to do that? Have you ever gone on a vacation and wanted to keep the folks at home posted on what you have been up...

Organizing and Backing Up Photos

Getting organized: The best way to get your photos organized is to start with a system that works for you. My system is to create a single folder for all my digital photos on my hard drive. Inside that folder, called "Digital Pictures," I place a sub-folder for each month of the year. In each month's folder I may place more folders for each activity held during that month. For example: Digital Photos...

The Magic of Digital Filters

The Magic of Digital Filters In the world of film photography, filters are transparent coverings that are placed over a lens to enhance or alter the image. Digital filters serve the same purpose, but in a much more dynamic and dramatic way. DIGITAL FILTER: Almost all image editing programs contain filters although they may be called by a different name such as Effects or Adjustments.   Before...

Create Your Own Slideshows and Screensavers

Create Slideshows and Screensavers Here are some of the basics we discussed at the Meeting   FINDING THE RIGHT PROGRAM   Good Shareware Sites: Hotfiles Download Make sure to check if the software is trialware or freeware. HOW TO MAKE A SCREENSAVER USING YOUR OWN PICTURES IN WINDOWS XP Windows Me had a similiar screen saver option, but Windows XP made the feature even better. Since many...

Adam and Rick attend Drupal User Group meeting

Adam and I just returned from our first Drupal user group meeting. Some nice folks in Denver (230 miles East of us) started a user group to discuss the new way we are managing our web site; using Drupal. Yesterday, we left Grand Junction at 1:00pm to attend the meeting held at Paris on the Platte (if this is what Paris is really like, I don’t think I will visit). The coffee was good and strong, however. We met some...

The adventures of Rick and Adam in Glenwood

Today Rick and I spent a while in Glenwood working on the handout material for our eBay class to be held on May 2 from 1-4pm. Rick had to get his VW Van worked on and so I went along and we made a business meeting out of it. After the van was done we stopped at the only tech store in Glenwood (Staples) and looked at all of the computers (about six of them) and other goodies. We walked over to the digital cameras and looked...

Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows

Microsoft PowerPoint is a program for creating business presentations but many people use it for creating elaborate photo slide shows. In addition to discussing PowerPoint we also talked about a few PowerPoint alternatives. OpenOffice – a great free alternative to Microsoft Office Ulead Movie Factory – for creating Slideshows and movies on DVDs or CDs There are a couple of others that I failed to mention at the...

Technology solves problems tracking medical record...

Have you ever been to a doctor’s appointment where the doctor asked you a lot of questions then referred you to another doctor only to have that doctor ask you all of the same questions all over again? Are you tired of answering questions about whether you have any allergies? Are you ever curious why the doctors ask you when your last tetanus shot was? Don’t they ever write this stuff down? As it turns out,...

Successful Searching of the Internet

All too often I hear comments like “I can’t find anything on the Internet” or “I’m afraid of getting viruses from the Internet” or “Where do I start”. In today’s meetings, we discussed some tried and true methods of searching the Internet successfully and easily. Google is the current king of web searching and should be your first stop to start any search. Boolean...

Learning is fun

By far the most satisfying part of my job is teaching someone something new about their computer that will enable them either to do more or do something more efficiently. However, when I learn something new (and I do every day), nothing exceeds that satisfaction. Today, as I was helping a client learn to use their new computer and Palm handheld organizers, they informed me about some of the great features available in the...

Digital Photo Special Effects

Digital Photo Special Effects Here are some of the basics we discussed  at the Meeting Filters: Various filters found in most good image editing programs allow you to make drastic changes to a photo in one fell swoop! Layers: If you work with individual layers, you can alter different parts of the picture without changing the rest of the picture. Effects: In Photoshop Elements you can apply a wide...

Digital Darkroom Basics Revisited

DIGITAL DARKROOM BASICS (revisited)   This was the topic of our first meeting. I was nervous and talked faster than usual (yes it’s possible). As Rick Castellini sat on the side lines watching me ramble he just kept reminding me to take a breath once in a while. The user group has grown since then and I am much more comfortable teaching the group. This month should be a much better meeting than that first one...