CyberCoyote - February 12, 2009

NEWS and NOTES
Google Earth

George gave us a quick look at the new Google Earth 5. I must say, it has much better images and is more navigable than version 3, which I explored a while back. Warning: You could waste inordinate amounts of time there. ;-)

Next week...

Dave Whittle will be our guest speaker next Thursday at 2 PM, in NC-2. The meeting will also be open to non-members, so BRING A FRIEND. He will speak on the topic: "How You Can Know Which Technology Products Are Cool, Hot, or Not — Using Social Networking To Help You Know Good From Evil and Choose Between Right and Wrong." Whew!

Mr. Whittle will introduce web sites and products of general appeal to computer users, including hidden gems from companies around the world with outstanding, innovative technologies. The computer club will sponsor a question and answer period as well as door prizes and special product offers. Non- members of the group are invited to attend and take advantage of this special opportunity.

PHOTO PHANTASIA
Well, maybe not quite...
Managing and editing digital photos

George also showed us two photo editing programs — Picasa and Photoshop Elements — that are at opposite corners of the capability matrix. Picasa is free, and you can learn to use it fairly quickly using just your intuition. Photoshop Elements is much more capable, but it is not free, and you'll find it has a steep learning curve. Steep enough that you'd be better off getting it with a book. You should find Elements for less than $80 at Amazon.com. Windows Live Photo Gallery is another free contender that is near Picasa in features and ease of use. Paint.net is a free, middle-of-the-matrix program, which might be all you'd ever need for photo enhancement. [more free image tools]

Sharing videos and large photos

If you're emailing photos for people to view on their PC, then you might as well reduce the file size before you send them. They won't need full resolution to see them on a monitor. But if they are going to print the photos, or if you want to send videos, you may need another solution. Microsoft has consolidated their free online storage services under the Windows Live SkyDrive label. SkyDrive offers 25 GB of free storage and is easy to set up. Just upload the full-size files, and tell your recipient(s) how to find them.

TECH TOPICS
Trying Windows 7
Thumbnail of Windows 7 screenshot.

Microsoft released the first beta of Windows 7 last month, and made it widely available. It was free, but expires on August 1. I installed it on this old PC as a lark, even though I didn't expect much out of it. Now here I am using it every day, and loving it. :-)

This PC has a 2.6 GHz CPU, and 2 GB of memory, which it seems is more than enough for Windows XP. It would be nice to have a dual-core, 3.0-GHz, 4-GB computer for Windows 7, but it runs very nicely on this one. It would struggle with Vista though. My main concern was drivers, but that turned out pretty good. HP does not yet have a Windows 7 driver for my printer, but I don't seem to have any other driver problems. I've installed over a dozen major programs and they all work well.

Simpler online defense

Windows 7 is easy to use as a "Standard User". That's a primary benefit of 7 (and Vista too). You have much better online security in that mode, without the troubles you'd have running Windows XP in the similar "limited account" mode. I've taken advantage of that by revising my pro-active security setup to make it much simpler than it was for Windows XP.

WOT (Web of Trust), the Firefox add-on that I mentioned a week or so ago, is part of my simplified defense. WOT warns you before you interact with risky websites. It's designed to keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites.

And now there's something for you Internet Explorer users. It's called SmartScreen Filter, and the protection it offers is very similar to that of WOT. You can have SmartScreen Filter when Microsoft releases of IE8, which shouldn't be long. Or you could install RC1, the first release candidate for IE8, which should be refined enough for you to take a (relatively small) leap of faith with. ;-)

Word cloud.

Embiggen

ODDS and ENDS
Words

Wordle creates a word cloud from any text that you feed it. The more often a word is used, the bigger the font size. This cloud is from what you've been reading here the last couple of months. Or at least what I've been writing. :-)

Dinner Party

The busy hostess.

The Twitter Experiment

There's a good chance you've never heard the word Twitter used as a noun. David Pogue ran a public experiment with Twitter that's fun to see in any case. Twittering is "texting" on steroids — if you've heard of texting. :-)

I also found an interesting retro-twitter that recently started posting the "line-a-day" diary of Ginny Spencer, a real farm girl from 1937. (You need to know that the newest twit is at the top of the page, and older ones are down the page.) I don't text or twitter, but I do try to keep up on things. ;-)

That's all, folks.