Rick

Warning: the intent of this warning message is to warn

Rick
1 min read

Our family’s van died this week so we replaced it with another van. My wife was reading the manual and found these legal gems of prose.

Picture Slideshows….take a cue from TV

Rick
2 min read

My daughter ‘graduated’ from middle school today. During the ceremony, a group of ambitious students put together a 60-75 slides, using Microsoft PowerPoint, documenting their 8th grade year. PowerPoint and other slideshow making programs give us great flexibility in putting together our pictures like never before.

Does anyone use the old slide projectors anymore?

These students had a minimum slide time of 20 seconds and some slides were on screen for almost 30 seconds. Needless to say, the impact of the program was dramatically reduced because of the extremely long time the audience had to stare at the same picture. The students also put the slideshow to music. Being of the video and Internet age, I would have thought these students would have questioned the length of slides, but I also expected their tech teacher to point it out as they were putting it together. The kids showed some gumption in doing the slideshow, so I have no fault with them at all…I just wish the teachers would have helped guide them.

Picasa 2 Revisited

Rick
4 min read

We discussed Picasa 2 late last year, but since then I have discovered many more wonderful things that can be done with the program. In fact, I now use it more often than any other program for my day-to-day digital photography.

HOW TO GET PICASA:

1. Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button.

“My Dell computer is terrible”

Rick
1 min read

That’s a quote from a customer I saw today. Actually, it was a quote from her friend at her work. She relayed the story that the friend had bought a new Dell computer and that it was running slow and had a lot of popups. I hear this same kind of statement day-after-day. The problem isn’t with the manufacturer (Dell’s computers work well). The problem is with the setup of the computer.

People are always amazed at how much goes into setting up a computer properly. If done correctly, any brand of computer will function extremely well for you for years to come.

Norton causes problems…blah,blah,blah

Rick
1 min read

This is going to be a short one because I have to get to the digital photography user group soon. I just wanted everyone to know that I saw two computers with exactly the same problem today.

They were connected to the Internet, but couldn’t view the Internet. In other words, they could get windows updates and use programs like Yahoo! Messenger, but they couldn’t view web pages.

Here’s what I did to fix the problem:

1. Uninstalled Norton Antivirus

I then Installed AVG to make sure that their system was protected.

Both systems also perked up significantly after changing the antivirus.

Cell phone confession

Rick
3 min read

There are two facts about my business:

I could not do my job without a cell phone.
I would not make much money to feed my family if I didn’t talk while driving.

Many cities and even states are looking at banning talking on cell phones while driving. Some want an all out ban, others say the driver must use a ‘hands-free’ setup. Unlike many drivers, I still keep a picture firmly planted in my head of the horrific crashes we were shown in Drivers Ed almost a quarter century ago. I also remind myself daily that my odds of getting in a fender-bender are higher than others because of the mileage I spend on the road (all my work is done on-site, so I travel from job-to-job all day long versus commuting to and from a central office).

Fact: Palm is better than Windows Mobile

Rick
3 min read

I had the pleasure of setting up a new Windows Mobile powered cell phone/PDA today.

In the past, I have probably setup five similar devices and they have never gone smoothly. Today’s was the worst.

I have setup dozens of Palm powered devices and I have never had a major problem with setup that wasn’t hardware related.

As I setup the Windows Mobile device today I would go all the way through the install and then the device would attempt to sync with the computer for dates, addresses and notes. A Window would immediately pop up that said something like, "Can’t sync, reconnect the device and try again. If that doesn’t work use the ActiveSync troubleshooter."

Sending pictures via email

Rick
2 min read

Computer users are always grateful to learn new tricks of the trade. One ‘trick’ that was implemented with Windows XP more than five years ago continues to escape many computer users…send pictures via email efficiently. Sure you might be sending digital photos as attachments, but can you send more than one at time? Are you resizing your photos before sending them so they don’t require horizontal and vertical scrolling? Do they travel quickly through the Internet or do they take a long time to transmit?

No matter now…this tip will get you sending multiple, appropriately sized photos quickly with Windows XP.

RSS – Really Simple Syndication

Rick
2 min read

Admittedly, I’m always a little late to some technologies. Sometimes because of a time factor and other times because it takes me awhile to figure out a use for the technology. One technology that has been around a few years that I’m just starting to take advantage of is RSS.

RSS allows any web user to ‘subscribe’ (for free) to an automated feed from a web site. At first, I thought, "hmm, why not just visit the sites you are interested in instead of having the headlines (and summaries) delivered to me in an RSS program or email." Now, I can see that getting customized headlines delivered to me immeadiately is an extension of personalized portal pages like MSN and My Yahoo. In fact, one HUGE reason that Adam and I worked so hard in the fall to redesign and orgainze our site was to be able to offer a clean way of offering RSS on our site.

…

142

…