Picasa: Online photo's done right

Well, I know there hasn't been a post for quite some time, but I had something that I wanted to share:  the awe and beauty of Picasa, Google's online photo service.

I am home sick (really just riding out the 24 hr. after a fever, I'm better now) and my wife wanted me to put photos up on Picasa.  Since we both have Google accounts, Picasa is our online photo storage place of choice.  One big thing that needed to be done was to size all of the photos down so that we didn't fill up Picasa too fast (they provide 1 GB of storage).  I had downloaded Picasa 3 which is the PC software that allows you to organize photos on your computer.  I knew that there was some integration with Picasa 3 and the online storage, but I hadn't played with it much.

Well, long story short (too late) I am in the process of uploading the photos and it works like a dream.  It lets me upload them to the online storage and resize them on the fly as they are being uploaded.  SWEET!!!!

If you have a Google account, I would highly recommend using Picasa.

At this rate she will never be a movie star...

Why so complicated?! For a long time now, I have wanted to spend some time understanding digital video formats and moving videos to and from various devices. I have TWO camcorders (one a mini DV and another a mini DVD) that I have NEVER been able to get video from. I can video all I want, but I can not get the video transferred to my computer so that I can burn it to DVD or even share it online. All this expensive equipment and I have to rely on a $200 Kodak Easy share for any video that I want to actually show anyone via the web. I have my very expensive Nikon D40 camera and I still keep the Kodak laying around and charged up because I can take videos quickly, easily, and I can even more importantly GET THEM OFF THE CARD and onto the computer easily.

Now that my daughter is 1 year old, I have VOWED to get this figured out. I WILL get videos from this damn camcorder. I WILL get them on DVD. It WILL happen.

A former co-worker told me that he uses the free version of Windows Movie Maker and it does everything that he needs. So I downloaded it. And I figured that it would be the easiest if I started tinkering with it in order to edit and title and prepare the videos that I already HAVE on my computer. Well, that wouldn't work. And frustration and time constraints have prevented me from figuring out why. Today I realized that a new baby would be coming in the new year, and I still have all of Ardyn's mini DVDs that I can't access, organize, or burn to a regular DVD.

So I researched. And found that
1. Most Digital Cameras take videos in the .mov format, which is the apple/quicktime format. Because it's apple, you can't open it in Windows Movie Maker (Argh.) and therefore in order to use WMM (Windows Movie Maker) for any .mov files from a digital camera, you would first have to download and convert all of your movies to a more compatible format, such as .avi

2. My Camcorder Disks cannot be read in a regular CDRom or DVDRom Drive until they are finalized. In order to finalize them, the Camcorder must be running on AC power from the wall adaptor. Unfortunately, we don't HAVE the cord to use as a wall adaptor, so we have to ORDER it for $16.95 plus shipping.

3. If you try to play a disk in your computer's CDRom Drive or a DVD player without finalizing it, not only will it not work, but you may inadvertently ruin the information on the mini DV, making it unusable and losing the videos. So, unfortunately, I have the fear of god that I may have ruined some of my daughter's videos of her first year, because this is exactly what I did.

And people wonder why the average joe gets all confused when trying to deal with videos. I will conquer this, and soon. But seriously, this is not simple folks. And to be honest with you, by the time I have time to sit down and study all of this again, it will be confusing and my head will be swimming and it will feel like I am starting from scratch. But maybe it will help if I come back and read this post first?

By the way, sorry that I missed the November meeting. I was getting ready to go out of town for a long weekend without my daughter or my husband, so there was alot of preparing to do at home and I had already been to Princeton twice that day. In fact I was asleep on the couch during the meeting. I was exhausted!

And in case anyone is reading this... the new baby is a boy!

SEPTEMBER MEETING CANCELLED!

Spread the word. The September meeting has been cancelled.

The library has a meeting policy which states (rightly so) that library events as well as specific community events have precedence- and therefore get dibs on the meeting room, and there is a conflict on our regular meeting date. We considered rescheduling, but we were all equally busy this month and the dates just didn't work out.

We will see you in October and hope that you are gathering your helpful websites for the next meeting. (please see previous post for details!)

Solution: give it a new name

Sometimes I need my fellow geeks to keep me in line. That being the case I would like to thank Meagan for calling me on the yarn I spun with my last blog entry and apologize to all of you who are in love with your wireless keyboard and mice. Type and click on.

Also on a side note, as some of you know I recently got married (two weeks ago today) and I would like to take this opportunity to tell the world how blessed I am to have ended up with the woman I ended up with. She is wonderful.

Anyway, I have a funny thing to tell about something I saw while watching Fox News video's online (O' Reilly Factor). Fox News inserts video ads in between video segments so you can't help but watch them. One of the ads almost had me for the first half. In this ad, people were asked, "Why haven't you switched to Windows Vista", and people gave their reasons (I will spare you mine). Next the interviewer asked the people to try out Window Mojave. I was somewhat excited at this point. I thought, "Well, Microsoft might have something better to offer. Cool enough." The people were excited and remarked on how good the product was to use. Then the bomb was dropped when the interviewer explained that they were just using Windows Vista and that they had renamed it for the purpose of the commercial interview experiment. Whoa!!!! Microsoft has stumbled onto a tactic that many other companies have tried. If people don't like your product, change the name. Don't like Coke, try Diet Coke. Don't like sour cream, try fat free sour cream. Don't like Windows Vista, try Windows Mojave. It's a gas. I think that it is totally funny that Microsoft thinks that computer users of any education level will buy into a cheap trick like that. I urge you to not be like the people in this commercial. WINDOWS MOJAVE IS WINDOWS VISTA, no matter what Microsoft says.

Your Favorite Websites: September

So, for the September Meeting, we are asking each person to bring in AT LEAST one website that they use on a regular basis, that may be of help to another user. Hopefully these will be NEWER websites and not things that we have discussed in the past. We are not limiting these to computer websites, in fact, it would be nice to see some websites that are quite the opposite!

Bring your sites and we will compile them into a list!
See you in September.

We are ON for our August meeting

I wanted to put a note out there to let you all know that We re ON for our August meeting. The First Tuesday of the month at 6:30pm at Matson Public Library. The library director himself will be letting us into the building and I *suggest* that you don't arrive early unless you want to be standing outside. :) He will be there at 6:30 and I don't think much earlier.

Hope to see you then!

Is a keyboard a keyboard?

First off this is an issue that I got punched in the face with a few days ago. I have since gotten over it (I think), so I feel comfortable talking about it. The subject is horrible, frustrating, and it strikes fear in the heart of most IT people. This is WIRELESS KEYBOARDS AND MICE. In case some of you have them and swear by them, just hear me out. First off, they drain batteries. This is just one more item to troubleshoot when someone is having trouble. If you have used these devices in an office environment with many people around using the exact same wireless keyboard and mouse. This brings me to the second problem. Say for instance one mouse goes bad, their wireless connection device is still working fine, and someone at a desk a few feet away has the exact same mouse. Any guess what happens next? Yup, the person who has the working mouse is now able to control the pointer on the other person's computer which leads to massive confusion. My main gripe is this: I feel that when a keyboard/mouse poops out, that's it and you get another one. With these wireless devices, you generally have to buy a whole new setup in order to keep the all of the devices working.

The main complaint that I have heard towards wired devices is, "The cord is too short". Well I have a novel idea. Let's pay $15 for a 6' USB extension cable. With this simple item you not have to deal with these pitfalls that I have mentioned above.

NOTE: This entry was basically a rant about something that happened this last week. Give me a post back if you feel my pain. PEACE!!!!!!!!