It’s single-click easy to add a map to your blog post using Live Writer.

I especially like the plugin that links directly to my Picasa Web Album for photos.  I also like that it reminds me to add labels or categories to each post.  To understand the importance of labels and categories, see last week’s post.

Let me show you exactly what I’m talking about:

View more tutorial videos on blogging.

We saw the humble beginnings of Herbert Hoover in West Branch, Iowa:

And got close and personal with the Lincoln’s in Springfield, Illinois.

We can relive any of these visits because the stories and photos are all on our Blog.  Without the blog, I have no way of telling you when we visited any of these places! With the Blog, I can give you dates, maps, photos, and links to more information about the places we’ve visited. 

Sometimes I spend several hours revisiting some part of our travels and being reminded just how special this fulltime RVing lifestyle is.  I would keep the blog just for myself, even if no one else ever looked at it.  But, it is also a wonderful way to share our travels with family and friends.  They never need to wonder about where we are or what we’re doing.  Since we post to the blog several times a week, they actually know much more about our life than when we lived around the corner.

But, how do you find our blog posts just about Presidential Museums?  After all, we’ve been keeping this blog since April of 2003.  We have over 1,200 post pages.  I make sure to apply a ‘Label’ to each post with a word that gives some indication about what the post is about.  For every Presidential library we’ve visited, we make sure the post is labeled with the words ‘Presidential Library.’   When you visit our Blog now, you can see a listing of all the Labels on the right side.  If you click on the link for ‘presidential libraries’ the page will refresh and you will be viewing just the 11 post pages that were written about our visits to presidential libraries.

Our Blog is created using the free Blogger.com system, and it makes adding a label to posts very easy.  Other blogging systems have similar features.  Wordpress and Typepad call them Categories.

I’ve often said that I’d like to write a book.  But, wait!  I already have … 1,200 pages of a book anyway.  And, the table of contents and index are already done for me automatically.  The Table of Contents is the Archives where every page has a title and is organized within the month and year that it was created.  The Index is the Labels (aka Categories.)

We think that Every Traveler Needs a Blog!

Chris Guld, www.GeeksonTour.com
Computer Education for Travelers

by Chris Guld, Geeks on Tour: We spent the past week in Essex Junction Vermont at the FMCA Northeast Area Rally (NEAR.)  To our surprise and delight, there was Wi-Fi available right at our parking spot.  We could tell it came from the fairgrounds since it was named, “CVFairmn1.”  We were at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds.  We like taking advantage of available Wi-Fi so as to avoid going over our bandwidth allotment on our Verizon contract. 

We connected right up and to our double surprise it was blazing fast.  And, I do mean blazing. 

Until all the coaches got parked!  The Wi-Fi slowed to a crawl and became unusable.  We had to go back to our Verizon connection.

Then, when we taught our Google Earth seminar, we tried the Wi-Fi again.  Google Earth has some pretty hefty bandwidth requirements.  There are some things we just can’t show if we’re using our tethered cellphone. 

The Wi-Fi worked great!  We zoomed around Google Earth, turned on several layers, and still could dive into a Street View without a hiccup.  This was on the same CVFair network, so we tried it again when we got back home.  No good.  It was so bad that it refused to display a web page.  The connection showed as 5 bars, and the connection speed (as opposed to the throughput speed) was fine – it wasn’t a signal issue.

We waited a couple hours and tried it again … we were back to high speed.  Thrilling high speed!  For those of you who like numbers,  I did a download speed test with TestMy.net and got 4.2 Mbps on the Wi-Fi as opposed to .5 Mbps on Verizon.

So … what was going on?  Well, there’s no way of really knowing without talking to the network administrator and using some diagnostic tools.  But Jim and I have our suspicions from having seen symptoms like this before – when he was the network administrator and did have the diagnostic tools. 

We think it was an individual connecting to the network, and their computer had the kind of virus that turns it into a ‘zombie.’  These ‘zombies’ are being controlled by some spammer and are programmed to send out thousands of spam messages.  When an infected computer connects to a Wi-Fi hotspot, it starts sending these spam messages and simply takes over all the available bandwidth – leaving none for the rest of us.  The owner of the computer is usually completely unaware, cursing the slow Wi-Fi along with everyone else. 

As soon as the zombie disconnects from the network – all is well.

What can you do about this?  Not much. But I think it’s still good for you to know.  If you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot where there is a support phone number to call – that often means there is a system administrator who can monitor the activity and kick off an offending user.  It’s certainly worth a call. 

By coincidence, we also heard this week from a friend staying in a park that uses a satellite dish as the Internet source to their Wi-Fi hotspot.  One person connected to the network, downloading full length movies, pushed the network over the FAP (Fair Access Policy) limits.  This essentially eliminates Internet service for the whole network for 24 hours. To understand more, you can watch this video on FAP. 

Chris and Jim Guld

www.GeeksOnTour.com

If your computer is not up to date, it could easily be infected and being used by cyber-criminals as part of a “botnet” of zombie computers.

Worried?  You should be.  The remedy is easy, though.  Get up to date with your Operating System, Virus definitions and Spyware definitions.  Scan your computer for Malware and fix any vulnerabilities the scanner finds.

Practice BUCS as outlined in our articles.

Backup – Update – Cleanup – Scan

You will save some bucks if you use our BUCS system.  It is free and easy.

To see some examples of how you might want to use custom maps, take a look at this blog by our friends, the Gundys.  In the sidebar they’ve mapped their journey to Alaska this summer, as well as a past trip to the Southwest.  Other friends, ‘Diandy’ used the route drawing capabilities to show a one-day trip they took. We use a map on our website to show our Rally schedule and current location.

If you like sharing your travels – Google Maps is an excellent tool to learn.

The reason blogs are so easy is because you use a web-based program like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to make them. These are also completely free.

What I want you to think about now is using the blogging software (Blogger or WordPress) to create a club website. I know lots of clubs, RV parks, FMCA chapters, or Good Sam groups that want to have a website of their own. Most of them tap the skills of a member who knows how to create regular old websites. That means than nothing gets added or changed on the website except what that one person will do. If the club loses that one person, they lose the website.

Winter before last, we stayed at Palm Creek RV in Casa Grande, Arizona. We got involved with several of the activities and clubs there, so I set them up with a blog for several of the clubs. It has a main page, with links to all the different clubs:

Each ‘page’ is actually a separate blog, but it’s all under one account, and I used the same template so they all look the same. When you click on the Pickleball club, you see:

This page is being maintained by someone in charge, or at least very involved in the Pickleball club. If the time comes that she doesn’t want to do it anymore, it’s pretty easy to show someone else how. And notice the menu of links at the right which include the club calendar and the club photo album. These are the free tools of Google Calendar and Google (Picasa) Web Albums. You can click on the images above to visit the real pages if you like.

To use Blogger, I had to create makeshift pages by creating separate blogs and tying them all together with links. If you use Wordpress, creating pages is part of the package. The RV.net blog is much more complex than any club would create, but it’s a good example of what’s possible. This is not a simple journal, it is an industry website with articles by 30+ authors. And, it’s all done with Wordpress. There is an extensive menu system which navigates to separate pages, like the Authors page, and to groupings of articles.

Wordpress is a little more difficult than Blogger, but you have more options. Alberta Roamers is an example of using Wordpress for a RVing group’s website. Notice the menu at the top - those are pages. Also notice the categories at the right - those are groups of blog posts organized by categories.

A reader recently asked me about using Google Sites to create a website for her club. This is another free service and, yes, you could make your club site with it but a blog would be much easier. You see a ‘regular old website’ is something that you have to create each page, lay it out and attach it to a menu option somewhere. A blog is actually a database of entries which can then be laid out simply by choosing settings. For example, in the Alberta Roamers site, you’ll see a category called ‘Lunches’ and another called ‘Events.’ If this was done on a ‘regular-old-website’ you would have had to create a page called Lunches and another called Events, and it would be up to you to have a menu option somewhere linked to Lunches and one linked to Events.

Let’s say you decided that you didn’t need ‘Lunches’, you wanted to call everything an Event. In the regular-old-website you would need to copy all the content from the Lunches page and put it on the Events page, then you would need to remove the Lunches page, and remove it also from all menus where it had been displayed. In the blogging software, all you have to do is change the category of the Lunches post to Events - they will automatically come under the Events link now and the Lunches link would go away because there’s nothing there.

Also, Blogs allow for comments, so it can become a 2 way conversation. A wonderful feature for a club website.

We would love to hear from any of you who have a club blog. Leave us a comment with a link to your blog.

Do you turn your computer off?  Leave a comment below.

There is a middle road, and it’s called ‘Sleep.’  With Vista, that is the preferred state.  For Macintosh, here’s an article about Sleep.  If you put your computer to sleep in between sessions it won’t take so long to boot up the next time.  It will just pop right up to where you left off.  If you put it to sleep overnight, and you are plugged in to power, it will wake itself up to do scheduled tasks like backups and scans.  My computer does this every night while I’m asleep so it doesn’t slow down operations during the day when I want to work.

Watch the video below for an excerpt of our Geeks on Tour Show-Me-How topic about Vista and the Sleep option.

Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com

Computer Education for Travelers

Last month was the first month that we used our Verizon service exclusively for all Internet access.  Although we were very happy to see that we could comfortably stay under our 5GB bandwidth allotment, it wasn’t particularly fun.  We had to constantly be aware of our bandwidth usage.  We like watching Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on his website.  We didn’t dare do that more than a few times because of Verizon’s limit of 5GB/month.  And, downloading a movie was definitely out of the question – most of them are close to 2GB.

We also turned off the automatic updates on our Windows Vista systems.  One update (SP2) was 350MB!  If both Jim and I had downloaded that using our Verizon connection, that would have been 15% of our monthly allotment right there!  So, we held off on that. 

Finally, last week, we were in a campground with good Wi-Fi.  Yeah!!  No limits here.  We downloaded our updates and had a Jon Stewart marathon! (we don’t have a TiVo – or even a TV for that matter!)

Our bottom line, as always … If you need the Internet wherever you travel, you need to use all three ways: Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Satellite.  I’m looking forward to having our Satellite service back operational … Jim’s working on that right now!

Now, if I could just find a park with a working Hot Tub!

Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com

p.s. If you happen to be at the FMCA Convention in Bowling Green, Ohio this week, we will be giving our High Speed Internet on the Road seminar on Monday, 7/20/09 at 11:45 in Seminar room #12.

And, if you follow the link under our picture … to ‘Mobile Internet’ you can watch one of our videos that is featured there.

The FMCA International convention starts next Monday in Bowling Green, Ohio.  We’ll be there and we’ll be presenting 7 different seminars:

• Mon:  High Speed Internet for Rvers
• Tue: Picasa – Managing Digital Photos
• Tue: Vista – What’s New
• Wed: Safe Computing
• Wed: Every RVer Needs a Blog
• Thu: Photostory 3 – Professional looking Slideshows
• Thu: Using Google Earth

We are also giving our hands-on Boot Camp.  That is offered in 3 evening sessions from 5-7.  If you’re going to Bowling Green and want to attend the Boot Camp, registration is on Monday at 7am in the Information Center.  The cost is $60 and we can only take 20 registrations.  Last time we were sold out in 45 minutes!  So, get there early.

The FMCA website includes a complete list of all the seminars available at the Bowling Green FMCA rally.

and … if you’re a Geeks on Tour member, you will be getting an invitation to our private get together.

Hope to see you there!

Please Visit our sponsor:

Although I like Live Writer a lot, I haven’t been using it for my personal blog (on Blogger) because I use a lot of pictures and the pictures come from my Picasa Web Album.  I use Picasa Web Album’s ‘link to this picture’ feature, and it just seems easier to do that while working in Blogger than with Live Writer.

UNTIL …

I discovered the Picasa Web Album plug-in for Live Writer!  How cool!  Now all my Picasa Web Album photos are available to me with just a couple clicks.  I am using Live Writer for all my blog posts now.

If you use Live Writer, you’re familiar with the Insert section of the sidebar.  This contains all the basic tools for creating links, photos, and maps.  If you look at the bottom of the list, you’ll see the option to Add a plug-in.  Click on that and you can spend hours perusing all the possibilities.  The one I’m talking about is called Picasa Image Plugin.  If you don’t see it in browsing around, you can search for Picasa.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed it, you will see ‘Picasa Link…’ in your Insert bar.  Click on that, enter your username and password for your Picasa Web Album, and in a couple seconds, you should see a list of all your albums.

Select the album to work with and you’ll see all the photos.  Adding a photo to your blog is as simple as clicking on the little left arrow next to the photo you want.  The picture will be inserted exactly at the point where your cursor is in your text. 

You must be online

In my previous article about Live Writer, I promoted the fact that you can create your blog entries while you are offline.  This is a big reason to use Live Writer for travelers who don’t always have a good Internet connection.  But, to use this Picasa plug-in, you must have an Internet connection to your Web Albums.  You can always use the ‘Insert Picture …’ button to get photos from your My Pictures folder on your computer.  Then Live Writer will upload them to Blogger (or whatever Blog system you’re using.)

If you don’t have a blog now, then just stow this tip away.  The point to learn is that Picasa has gained support from lots of directions.  It’s good to be popular!

Chris Guld
www.Geeksontour.com
Computer Education for Travelers

Videos: Adding pictures to your blog from Picasa Web Albums (membership required)