WiFi Savvy

Last week I told you about Photo Story 3, a great way to make a movie from your photos. But, once you get the movie completed, then what? It plays great on your computer, but the people you want to share it with aren’t sitting next to you, they may be scattered all over the country.

Photo Story 3 can render your movie small enough to send as an email attachment, but it’s awfully tiny. If you have your own website, you can upload the full-size video (a .wmv file ) and set up a link so people can download and view it. This will be the highest quality. Macintosh users won’t be able to view it properly though - see the comments to last weeks’ post. Uploading videos to Youtube.com is probably the most popular method of sharing videos. That is really quite easy. You need to set up a Youtube account - it’s free - then use their ‘upload’ tool to get your video online.

Here is a video I just made for this blog post. It is 7 photos with music and narration added by Photo Story 3. I used all three of the above techniques to share it with you. You can click on each of them to see the difference.

1. Email size video: 269k

2. Full-size .wmv file hosted on my website: 2.23 megabytes, be patient!

3. Full-size .wmv file uploaded to Youtube.com you will need the Flash viewer. Those are three choices, but there is a 4th - and it’s my favorite. Use Picasa! You’ve probably heard of Picasa for managing your digital photos. Picasa makes it one-click easy to upload your photos to a web album. If you want to learn how, watch the videos on my website. Web Albums are provided free of charge courtesy of Google, the owner of Picasa. What many people don’t know is that Picasa will upload videos to your web album as well as photos.

4. Full-size .wmv file uploaded to Picasa Web Album

Both Youtube and Picasa Web Albums convert the movie to a flash format and compress it. The quality suffers in the process, but I think the Picasa version is at least as good as the Youtube, and I like having the video in the same location as all my photos. Chris Guld www.GeeksOnTour.com

As RVers, the road is a big part of our life.  Depending on the size of your rig, there are some roads you should not drive.  Wouldn’t it be nice to know which ones they are before you plan your route?  Maps aren’t always good enough.  And, even if you can find someone who has driven that road - their opinion of it’s driveability may not be the same as yours. 

Most RVers have stories of ‘the road that gotcha’.  The road they’ll ‘never do again.’  It was so steep that you slowed to a crawl going up, or burned your brakes going down.  So narrow that you sucked in your breath passing another vehicle afraid you’d lose your mirror.  Or on the side of a canyon such that the person on the outside edge feels they’re hanging over the abyss and had to close their eyes to keep from screaming.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get a preview of the road before you start driving?  Now you can.  With Google Earth. 

When Jim and I were getting ready to drive to Sedona, we noticed some pretty sharp-looking switchbacks on the map.  So Jim opened up Google Earth on his computer and zoomed in on highway 89.  He set a beginning point and and end point and asked Google Earth to ‘fly’ him over the route.  Here’s a screenshot of the beginning:

When Google Earth finished the ‘flight’, Jim said, “That looks like fun!”.  See our personal Blog for actual photos of the drive.  Here’s what Google says about the product:

“For anyone who has ever dreamed of flying…” - NY Times

The idea is simple. It’s a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route.

The personal version is free, or you can pay $20 for a few extra features. 

Every RVer should check it out!

I’ve been using a variety of computer software, and teaching others how to use it, since 1983. I’ve taught everything from DOS, to WordStar, to WordPerfect, PageMaker, Microsoft Access, Visual Basic, and dozens of others in between. I have never seen anything as quick and easy - and powerful - as Google’s Picasa…

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