Prezi

If you have to make a presentation and you are tired of Powerpoint there is a different way to do one and it has some real advantages for certain types of presentations. You can find the program at http://prezi.com.

Powerpoint has been around for a long time and some people are tired of the same templates and the fact that it is linear. If you are working with content that is best presented in a linear way you might want to use Powerpoint, but Prezi encourages you to be creative and show your information in a new way.



To begin you need to sign up for a Prezi account. You can sign up for free to try it out and upgrade later if you need more space or features.

Next choose a username and password. The account you create is nice because it allows you to work on them and show them from any computer. You can make them private or public. You have control over how they are used. So, create a username and password that you will remember (not the same one you use for your bank account and other important places you log into) and write it down on a piece of paper or booklet and keep it somewhere you can find it.

After you have signed in the best thing to do is to take a look at some of the Prezis that other people have created and made public. That way you can see how they work and start to imagine the way you might use Prezi. There are lots of great examples to look at to get ideas.

You start by choosing a template. There are many templates to choose from Then you can import pictures, video and of course use text. You can even import already finished Powerpoint Presentations. First put all of the content you want to use onto the page. It does not matter exactly where each thing is placed because in the end you will create a path to show what order you want to show it in.

Once everything is in place you choose to create a path and a line shows up with each item (text, picture, video) numbered.  Then you can play it to see what it looks like. You can make it go automatically or have it move from each number to the other with clicks.

See the one that I created while writing this blog post.
http://bit.ly/YDRVxR

What is a BLOG READER (RSS Service)?

NEWSPAPER SUBSCRIPTION

Every morning when I get up, I go out to the driveway to get my newspaper and most of the time it is there. I have subscribed to it and so it comes every day. I pay for this service.



BLOG SUBSCRIPTION

Blogs are different.  A blog writer may write twice a day or once a week or once a month.  How is a person who reads blogs supposed to keep track of when new posts appear? What if you want to read more than one blog and don't want to keep going back and checking if there is something new?

That is what Blog Readers (or RSS Services) do!  They collect notices of your favorite blogs all in one place so that you can look at one place online and the unread posts from favorite blogs will be listed. You can read the ones that sound interesting to you and skip the other ones. It is free.

You may have seen this symbol.  The letters RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication (or easy subscription!) It means that a blog, or a newspaper column can be added to your Blog Reader. The blog with that symbol has a feed.  A feed is code that allows it to show up in a way that you can read it each time there is something new. Sometimes you can click that symbol to get the blog into your reader and sometimes blogs have a link to "subscribe" and you click that. Below I will walk you step by step into how to subscribe to this blog.

So, if you want to SUBSCRIBE to my blog so that it is easy to check in your Blog Reader to see if a new post was written here are the steps:

1.  Choose a Blog Reader. I decided to use Feedly. Google is retiring Google Reader, so many people are just transferring their "feeds" or subscriptions to Feedly. There are a lot of programs out there that will do this for you. I have made a list below. Find one that looks inviting to you and give it a try. You can change to a different one later if you decide it doesn't work for you.  See below for a list of Blog Readers to try.

2.  Sign up for the service by following the directions on their site. You will have to have a username and password like you do for most sites.

3.  Click to open a new tab or a new window in your browser and come to the "Help I'm not a Geek" blog http://helpimnotageek.blogspot.com.

4.  Look for the words "Subscribe" on the left side.

5. When you click on the button below "Subscribe" with the word Posts you will be given several choices. I am using Feedly and it is not listed, so I will have to click the one that says Atom and copy the URL (the web address that starts with html://)

6.  Then go to Feedly and click on "+ website" paste the address into the window that shows up and it will find the blog and you can click on it to subscribe. If you just click + website you can also type just a word into it (I typed in "recipes") and the program will go out and find lots of websites about that topic. You can then look at them and click on the ones you are interested in subscribing to.

As I was going through these steps it was difficult to show you all that was happening. Feedly does a lot automatically. You will have to try it to see.  In Chrome, Feedly shows up on the main screen after I scroll it to the right when I go to a new tab.

If you have not started reading some blogs you really should give it a try. There are great ones on every subject. I will list a few at the end of this post. Feel free to comment and ask if you are looking for a blog or information about a certain topic!  I will look for it!

Great Blogs to try out
The Huffington Post     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The Pioneer Woman Cooks      http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/
The Laughing Squid Interesting Art    http://laughingsquid.com/
PopWatch (Celebrity Info)    http://popwatch.ew.com 
Arts Beat-Art Section of the New York Times  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com 
Mental Floss     http://www.mentalfloss.com/
Golf     http://www.hookedongolfblog.com/
All Things Dog     http://www.allthingsdogblog.com/
Obsessed with Scrapbooking  http://www.obsessedwithscrapbooking.com/

RSS Services (Blog Readers)
http://feedly.com
http://netvibes.com
http://newsgator.com
http://myyahoo.com
http://bloglines.com

Solving Problems and iPhoto Faces

Sometimes this blog is personal. That is, I write about a problem that I have been having and how I resolved it (or didn't). This is one of those posts,

The other day I was meeting with a Mac Club and one of the members wanted to organize her pictures. I told her that since she had a Mac she might find that iPhoto was the best way to do it. We went into iPhoto and started looking around. I showed her how my pictures were organized into events and how to tag pictures and give them titles. Then someone else said that you should use FACES as a way to organize your pictures. Well, I have never used Faces. It seemed like it would just take too long and not be all that helpful. I am still not sure what I think about it, but I found out that my copy of FACES was not working like it was supposed to.

When you open iPhoto and click on Faces you get the message saying that to get started open a photo, then click Name and then type the name of the person in the photo. Well, after I had found Name icon (in the bottom left side) I typed in the name and the corkboard did not change. It should have put that person's picture on the corkboard and found all of the pictures that matched that person. My corkboard still had the picture above on it.

I tried this several times with no results.  So I decided to do what I usually do to try to figure something out. I Googled it. I used the words "iPhoto faces no change in corkboard".  There were lots of results, so I knew that this was a problem for more people than just me. Some of the results said iPhoto 11, so I had to confirm my version of iPhoto first. When I clicked on the iPhoto menu and then clicked "About iPhoto" I found out that I had version 9.0. Since there were still problems with iPhoto 11 I knew that upgrading would not solve my problem.

In one of the discussions that I scanned through there was a comment from someone 

1. "While holding down the Control key (bottom left on keyboard-says "control"
2.  we clicked the iPhoto library that was in my pictures folder 

3. and selected the "Show Package Contents" menu option. 



Then we threw out (click on the file name and drag it to the trash-usually at the bottom right of the dock) the face_blob.db and face.db and restarted the computer - 




(my note) The files are automatically recreated when you restart your computer, so don't worry about losing them.

Now iPhoto works fine - the Faces thing ran showing some sort spinning clock icon as it found all the potential faces in all my photos - "

I tried this and it solved my problem! It took a long time to scan through all of my photos. Now when I click on NAME and Name someone it goes through all of the my photos and tries to find matches. I have to confirm or deny that they are the person that I typed and then their face shows up on the corkboard! 

Places to find REAL Geeks

Today’s post is a little different. I want to share with you some things I have been learning while trying to make connections. One place I am contacting is small IT companies. These are companies that are started by people who are real Geeks. They know how to repair computers and they often buy, sell or repair all types of technology. 

The very first thing you should do when you are going to purchase a computer is ask WHAT AM I GOING TO USE THE COMPUTER FOR? If you just want to type some papers or look at Facebook online and email a bit you will not need a brand new computer with lots of memory. However if you are wanting to watch movies or edit photos and video you need a computer with enough memory and speed that you do not have to wait every time you click until the computer works. Always be ready with that information when you talk to someone about purchasing.

I started by looking at http://yelp.com. I think that YELP is a good place to look when you are wondering about a service (or restaurant, or business). Many businesses are listed and ordinary people who use their services write short reviews of their experience with the business and rate them with one to five stars. Usually you can learn a lot by reading what people say about businesses and how many stars they give. There are always some customers who are not happy, but if it is only one or two out of 25 usually that is a pretty good sign.

Here are some of the companies I learned about through Yelp.

StarTech PC 

http://startechpc.com 

PC Genie 

http://www.pcgeniecomputerrepair.com/

Voted the #1 Computer Repair place in Austin in 2012. They have a page on recycling computers. They will take your old, non fixable equipment (Desktop Computer, Laptop Computer, Hand Held Device, Mobile Phone, Games Console, or Flat Screen Monitor). Shocking Fact: Up to 20 million “obsolete” PCs are discarded annually in the USA alone. They say, “let’s waste less” 

Nerd Austin

http://www.nerdaustin.com/

Mr. Notebook

http://www.mrnotebook.com/

Mr. Computer 

http://www.mrcomputeraustin.com/

Computer Medic of Austin

http://www.computermedicaustin.com/

If you need a new computer or laptop and cannot spend what it would cost to get a brand new one you may want to check out these businesses (first on Yelp to see what other customers say!). Most of them have used computers for sale at a very affordable price.

Questions to ask about a used computer purchase:

1.  How long will this computer in it's current condition last?

2.  Are there some things that cannot be loaded on this computer? (older computers have smaller memories than newer ones and you may not be able to install more memory.

3. How long is the warrenty on this computer? As soon as you purchase the computer use it as much as you can during that time to be sure it does not have problems. 

Besides the savings when you purchase a used computer think also of the fact that you are keeping one more computer from being thrown into a landfill, at least until you are done with it!

P.S. I have I’m not a Geek listed on Yelp. If you have worked with me and have anything to say feel free to rate your experience and write your comments!

Clean Up and Maintenance of Your Computer

This is one of those important things that no one tells you to do and you always feel uncomfortable knowing that there is probably something you should be doing. Then if your computer breaks down one day you think it must be your fault. 

Actually taking good care of your computer is not too difficult or confusing. There are things that you can do beyond what I talk about here, but they are not necessary for most home users. See links below if you want to know more.

There are things that EVERY computer owner should do regardless of if you are using Mac or PC and then a few specific things to each operating system.

1. The MOST important thing to do for any computer is to BACK UP regularly. It can (and does) happen that your computer completely shuts down. You do not want to lose all of the files that you have on your computer, so it is important to have a second copy. You can use an external hard drive, a CD or DVD, or somewhere on the Cloud using a service like Dropbox, iCloud, SkyDrive, Google Drive or one of the many others. Here  is a link to several reviews of free back up software. http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-backup-program.  When you back up your files are all backed up so that you can get to them again, but not your programs. If you want to have a backup of all of your programs so that you do not have to download them individually again you can use Acronis or Norton Ghost which will "take a snapshot" of your whole hard drive. 
2. Physical cleaning of the outside of your computer. This is important because the crumbs that get into your keyboard, the dust that gets into the fan and the general grime can cause your computer not to work as well as it can. Here are suggestions for each of the parts.

• Screen - Use screen cleaner that does not have ammonia or alcohol. For a laptop, set the back of the screen onto a towel or something soft on a table while holding up the keyboard with one hand. Spray the cleaner onto a soft cloth and clean the screen gently with a circular motion.
• Keyboard - Using a similarly damp cloth clean the outside of the keys. Use compressed air to clean out the crumbs and dust that collects under the keys. You can use an antibacterial wipe on the keys since lots of hands touch a keyboard.
• Wipe outside with the damp cloth.
• Clean up the files on your desktop by either putting them into folders that are meaningful OR moving them to other folders in your file system. Each thing on your desktop takes up some of the memory that your computer needs to run. Your computer can slow down if there are too many things just left on the desktop.

Always do the updates that your computer recommends. Most of the time a window will pop up saying that you should update something and you can press OK or cancel. If you always cancel these things you may be stopping your computer from doing some things that can really help.

One more good habit to get into is to empty the trash weekly or even daily depending on how much you use your computer. Everything in the trash is taking up some of your memory until you empty it out. The whole reason that the trash can exists is so that you can change your mind and drag something back out of the trash if you decide that you need it. Once you are sure that everything is not needed empty what is there so that it does not take up space.

Use a surge protector for plugging in your computer. If the electricity is interrupted (like when you are struck with lightening) it will protect your computer from burning out.

Completely shut down and restart your computer regularly (maybe overnight?). When your computer shuts down and restarts many things happen in the background that clean up some of that background stuff that the computer automatically does.

PCs (by this I mean any computer that is not a Mac. It could be IBM, HP, Dell or one of many other companies. You should add these practices to the above in order to maintain your computer. 

• Make sure you have a good Anti-Virus program and that you keep it up to date. There are lots of Anti Virus programs that you can download and you probably have one that came with your computer. There are free ones  http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-anti-virus-software.htm and also ones that you can pay for like Symantec, Norton or Barracuda. Do not load more than one on your computer because they can conflict with one another and will not be effective. 
• Regularly download updates because hackers are always busy creating new ways to get into your computer. If you want to avoid getting a virus there are a few things that you can regularly do. 
• NEVER open links from email if you don't know the person or even if you know them and they JUST sent a link with nothing else. There are hackers that send out email with a link and make it look like it is coming from someone safe. The link might open to a website with an automatically downloading virus 
• Do NOT trust any email from a bank, PayPal, Amazon, Western Union, or any company that looks legitimate, but tells you to give them an account number, send them money or anything that sounds fishy. It probably is a scam. There are lots of these going around and it is REALLY easy to click on a link from one of these to find out more, but it is better to just delete them. If it is from a real company they will NEVER ask for personal information like account numbers in email. You can often look in the TO: section at the top to see who it was sent to. If it was sent to a bunch of people that you do not know it is spam.
• Defragment your computer hard drive monthly. As you save, delete and move your files around they create gaps in the hard drive space which are not used because they are small bits stuck inbetween other stuff. Defragmenting pushes all of the stuff together creating more open space. This is less important than it used to be since Hard Drives are bigger than they used to be, but it might help if your computer is running slowly. The Defragmenter is on your computer. Most likely you will find it under System Tools-disk defragmenter.

On a Mac

1. Remember the things above that appled to both computers. Macs have TimeMachine installed which can do your back ups on a regular basis. There are some features of other programs that you can pay for which TimeMachine does not have. Macs get fewer viruses, but it can still be an issue. You can pay for a virus protection program or get one free. Here is a link to a free one: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx
2. If your Mac gets slow and bogged down there are a few things you can try to see if they will help. Your Mac has something called Disk Utility which is a program that you can run to see if there are any problems on your hard disk and it will fix them. You can find it by clicking on Mac HD, in the Applications File under Utilities. You can also run a program like Onyx which can clean off the HD of any issues that are slowing it down. Some articles I read called for using the Disk Utility regularly, like every three months. 

MacWorld's Maintenance Calendar - MacWorld offers a free download of a calendar to remind yourself when to do different maintenance tasks. http://www.macworld.com/article/1133696/maintenance_cal.html

For even more on cleaning your mac look at this MacWorld article:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1057796/2407mobilemac.html

Ten Tech Skills That Everyone Should Have: Part Two

Here are five more tech skills that EVERYONE should have. If you need help with any of these you may want to give "I'm not a Geek.com" a call at (512)560-2609. I am looking for some people who want to try learning long distance (giving me access to your computer screen so I can see what you are doing), so even if you do not live in Austin give me a call or email to helpimnotageek@gmail.com  

Now to the tech skills:

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE NETIQUETTE WHEN USING THE INTERNET?

Internet/Email/Social Media etiquette - The proper way to use the internet, write professional emails, use social media in relation to your job.


The main rule to this Net-Etiquette is to consider who you are sending something to. Often people do not think before pressing "send" and end up forwarding lots of junk to other people or saying something private to a whole group. If you use ALL CAPS in an email it is like yelling since there is no intonation when someone reads your note. Also, it is easy to be misunderstood when you are sending a joke or being sarcastic. Be careful.


The first link takes you to Wikipedia which is a great place to learn many things. This article is helpful, but in some places difficult to understand. The second link is an online book which is much easier to understand and you can choose which pages you are interested in reading.

Netiquette - Wikipedia

Netiquette - Online Book - This one is easy to navigate

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE YOUR COMPUTER SECURE AND SAFE?

Some security and safety issues are: Antivirus, spam, phishing, sharing too much personal information sharing, stalkers and more. It also involves creating good passwords.

Most of us know what a Virus on your computer is and what spam is, but you may not have heard of phishing although it has been around a long time. Phishing is when someone sends you something in email that looks legitimate, but is not. They often have links to what looks like your bank or paypal, but actually are not. The goal of people who do this is to get secret information from you like your bank account number, passwords or other information.


When I get anything asking me to click on a link (URL) first I look to see if it is from someone I know. If not, I roll the mouse over the URL and it shows in the bottom left corner where it is really going. It may look, from the address like it is going to Paypal, but when I roll over and look at the left bottom of the screen it shows that actually it is going somewhere else. If I am not sure I just delete it. People who send messages will understand and resend the message if they do not hear from you. You should also never send messages that just have a link and no message.

Link to more information about phishing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Cyberstalking means that someone is trying to harass you with multiple emails or saying things that are not true about you through Social Media

More about Cyberstalking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking

Google How You Can Protect Your Family Online - This has lots of links to information that is readable about different things you might need to know.
http://www.google.com/goodtoknow/familysafety/

Common Craft Video - How to make a good password
http://www.commoncraft.com/video/secure-passwords


DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING TO REGULARLY MAINTAIN YOUR COMPUTER?

Look for more information about this in the post coming next week called "Clean Up and Maintenance of Your Computer"

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO FIND PROGRAMS AND APPS THAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO DOWNLOAD TO YOUR COMPUTER OR MOBILE DEVICE?
 
There are so many apps (applications or programs) available and it is hard to know which ones are good and how to choose. 

Quixey is a helpful search engine that will look for all kinds of apps for you. There is a way to look for only free apps for a PC, paid apps for a mobile device

FreeNew (FN)
This is the place to go to find free apps for many different devices and download them easily, even doing several at once.  

DO YOU KNOW HOW COPYRIGHT HAS CHANGED IN THE DIGITAL AGE?
With the addition of computers and the ease of copying and pasting everything Copyright has totally changed. It used to be something that only librarians, inventors, musician, artists and writers needed to think about. If you do anything that you would not like to see replicated somewhere else without your permission (photography is one example) you should take a look at the Library of Congress' Copyright Page.

http://www.copyright.gov/ 


These tips are rewritten and reworked from  http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2012/01/10-tech-skills-every-student-should.html

Ten Tech Skills That Everyone Should Have: Part One

This post is based on a blog that I read online a while ago. I thought it had some helpful tips, so I have edited it and added a bit of my own stuff. It was written by someone who was thinking about what students need to learn about using technology in school. We are all long passed school, so I wonder how many of these skills you feel comfortable with? Here is the URL of the post it is based on:

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.fr/2012/01/10-tech-skills-every-student-should.html

Do you know how to do an

effective Internet search?

Common Craft videos are a great, simple and fun way to learn things about technology. This one is about searching. It does have some extra words on it to protect people from downloading and using it because they make their money from people who subscribe to use the videos.

Common Craft Video on Web Search Strategies

Do you know how to create, edit, and save

documents, spreadsheets and presentations?

These are common uses for computers. Almost everyone knows how to create, edit and modify documents. There are many people who are unsure of themselves when it comes to spreadsheets or presentations. Most people use Microsoft Office to create documents, spreadsheets or presentations. 

There are other low cost and even free options now. Open Office is a free product that is very much like MS Office. You can download it for free and try it out. When you save your document you have to tell it that you want it to be a .doc so that anyone can open it. Otherwise it is automatically an Open Office document and can only be opened with that program. When I downloaded the newest operating system to my Mac none of my Intel programs would work. MS Office was one of the casualties. I have downloaded and used Open Office and it takes the place of word just fine. I have not tried it for presentations.

Another possibility is Google Drive. It used to be called Google Docs and was upgraded to Google Drive. The difference is that you can download a program to your computer so that you can access your Docs even when you are offline. A future post will have more about Google Drive. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation software and some other things. All of your documents are automatically saved and you can even share them with other people and work on the same document collaboratively.

Open Office

Google Drive

Do you know how to get help when you need it?

Recently I have learned that you can find answers to almost everything by just going to Google and typing in what you want to know.  I am soon going to do a post on maintaining your computer and so just to be sure that I don't miss anything important I am going to go to Google and type "computer maintenance". In the first page of links I will probably find links to some very helpful pages. The main problem with this approach can be that you do not understand what they are trying to tell you. If that is an issue here are some links to other sites that may be helpful.

This site is a lot of fun. It is posted as a letter to your parents where you send them videos about things that they may need to learn. You fill in all of the blanks and then press the PREVIEW button at the bottom and it takes you to where you can watch the video. This is a great way to learn and there are lots of choices of videos.

TechSupport help

Can you type?

For the longest time I have been told that "soon people will not need to type because they can just talk to their computers." This has been possible for a long time and maybe sometime we will get used to doing it. Until then it really makes a difference in how fast you can get something done if you can type. Here are a few free programs you may want to try:

Kiran's Typing Tutor

Learn to Type Free

Key Blaze Typing Tutor Software

Typing Tutor - This one has games

If you want to pay for a great program my favorite is Mavis Beacon. There are many others. Just do a Google Search!

Mavis Beacon

Do you know how to use Social Media

(Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc...)?

There is so much to learn in this area. It is like an explosion. The Internet used to be static, meaning that it basically stayed the same. You could not change anything on the Internet. Now everything has changed. You have the power to add, comment, post, and change many parts of the Internet. The most popular is Facebook. Many people have gone to using it as their main way of communicating with other people. There are also many more. I am adding links to many of them. It is not the purpose of this post to explain how to use them all. If you would like me to write specifically about one of them or a part of one of them (more than I have in other posts) please let me know.

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

YouTube

Flickr

Picasa

I have run out of time for this posting, so I will have to do the second five in the next post. Let me know what you think I may have missed and what you want to learn about!