Addington.net

Picasa Web Albums

2010-05-12T11:19:00.003+12:00

In Picasa web albums you can create online photo albums. You can sign into Picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com using your Gmail account.

If you already have Picasa on your computer, you can upload photo’s straight from there to Picasa Web albums using the Upload button. You can also upload photo’s from you web album site or you can change the settings to allow uploading photo’s from your email.

Photo’s can be uploaded in 3 sizes. If you want to keep the original size choose the biggest size. Be aware that you will use up your storage space more quickly. Picasa Web albums offers 1Gb free space.

When you upload photo’s an option will appear to add people who share with contributing photo’s. The people you add can login to your web albums with their account and add photo’s to an album.

You can choose to make your albums listed or unlisted. Listed or public albums can be viewed by anyone. Unlisted albums are like unlisted phone numbers. Only if you know the web address you can find it.

There are several features in Picasa Web Albums, for example;

You can turn your album into a slideshow by clicking the slideshow button
You can add captions and tags to your photo’s
You can add name tags. When you named a few photo’s, Picasa will automatically scan all your pictures and finds the pictures with the same person
You can add a map with the location where you took the photo’s

Get ready to create your online album to share with family and friends anywhere in the world.

Google Tips

2010-03-05T13:39:00.002+13:00

10 great Google tips

If you type words into Google, Google will find websites which contain all these words. Use the word OR if you want to find one term or another, or use the symbol (shift \). For example Apple|Epson|Philips means find Apple, Epson or Philips
If you want to find an exact phrase use quotes , for example “get connected to addington.net” You can also use quotes for a part of your search, for example “Bichon Friese” breeder Christchurch.
If you type the word Define into Google you get a definition of the word you are looking for, for example define computer
You can use Google as a calculator Type in 10 + 20 and the result will be shown underneath. You can use the following symbols + - * /
You can search for a range of numbers. For example if you want to find computers in the price range of $700 to $1000, you type into Google; computer $700..$1000. Make sure you type two dots between the two values.
You can do a site specific search. Google will search for the specific term inside the website. For example type into Google; Picasa site:addingtonnet.blogspot.com and the pages with Picasa in it will be shown.
You can use Google to convert units of height, weight and volume e.g. type 5cm in inches
You can use Google to convert currency e.g. type in 100 NZD in EURO
To find an online book click the arrow next to More, than go to even More and select Google books. Type in for example Word Microsoft 2007 and there is your free online book about Word.
Find the weather of today by Typing weather followed by a zipcode or city. For example weather Christchurch New Zealand

Interview with Gary

2009-12-17T11:56:00.003+13:00

Addington.net cares for people with disabilities and provides free internet for them. One of our regular clients who visits about twice a week is Gary. Gary is 49 years old and is partially blind and deaf and doesn’t have the internet connection at home.

Gary used to work in engineering and these days he helps people when they have problems with their computers. He helps them with the memory and CPU and sometimes with software problems.

He also used to help the Salvation Army fix computers so they were able to be sold in their shops.

Gary has a lot of experience with computers. He did a business computer course in 1990. However, now most of his knowledge is self attained. When he talks about computers it makes me almost feel like a novice.

Gary knows Addington.net almost from when it opened in 2001. He used to come in to download software, such as Java and virus protectors, from the internet and now gets our staff to check if there are any updates for these. Gary has a USB flash drive which he brings to the Centre and we download any updates onto that. He then takes it home and transfers the updates to his laptop. These days Gary loves to play PS2 games and comes in every week to get some cheats from the internet.

A wish Gary has for Addington.net is to see software on our computers with voice synthesizer and a reader. Such an application is able to enlarge the text and it will read the text for you as well.
Gary really enjoys coming to Addington.net, because he feels welcome here and we hope he will visit us for a long time to come.

Addington.net at the Addington Fair

2009-11-18T09:54:00.001+13:00

Armed with stickers with the text "Get connected with addington.net" and a display of the Summer Holiday courses. the addington.net promotion team went to meet the community.

Kay Skyla and Marja promoting Addington.net at the fair on Saturday the 31st of October 2009. It was a sunny day and information about our courses were shared with interested people.

It was great to exchange ideas, answer questions and to talk to the people from Addington and the wider community of Christchurch.

Printing pictures with Picasa

2009-10-14T15:48:00.004+13:00

When you print your own pictures it is good to know something about pixels and megabytes

Pictures are usually stored on your Computer in My Pictures. The filename has at the end a code what tells you what type of file it is. We deal mainly with JPG or JPEG files (Joint photographic Expert Group)

All cameras use the standard JPEG file format. They are widely used because they can be made smaller by compression while still giving an acceptable image.

All cameras have a set amount of pixels 3 to 5 mega pixel cameras are widely used. A mega pixel is 1 million pixels. The more pixels on your photo the higher the resolution and the larger you can print.

If you have a 3mp camera, this means you can make pictures at 2048 by 1536 pixels; 2048x1536= 3.145728 or 3 mega pixels.

It depends on the printer settings which picture size is best. Commercial photo printers are often set at 300 to 360 dpi (dots per inch)

For printing at 300 dpi the ideal size to print at would be 5x7. ( 5x300x7x300=3.150.000 dpi)

On the left side of this website is a link to an Excel sheet which helps you to convert pixels into print sizes. Just enter the dpi and the width and height of your image in pixels. (link http://www.shortcourses.com/uses/using1-5.html)

To see at which pixel size your photo was taken, within Picasa select the photo you want to print. In the library, on the bar underneath the photos it will show for example 1728x2304. Hold your picture in the Photo Tray and click the print button. In the Picasa print program it shows you at which dpi your printer is set.

You can take a picture with a higher amount of mega pixels than you need for printing. The number of pixels will be downsized to match the number of pixels to print. Removing pixels doesn’t effect the quality a lot. Adding pixels to a photo never looks good.

Picasa has a default option e.g. to print two photos at 5x8 on an A4 sheet. If you want to change that size to 5x7 then click in the menu at the top Tools>options>printing. Click the arrow next to 5x8 and change the size to 5x7.

Within the printing program in Picasa the result of how your pictures will be printed will be shown. By default Picasa is set on Crop to Fit. Picasa will crop the picture to fit the chosen print size if necessary.
If you select Shrink to fit Picasa will add white spaces to the side or top to get the whole picture printed.

In border and text options you can select if you want to print the caption, filename or Exif information and where you want to print it. You can add a caption to your photo in the Picasa editing section.

By clicking the plus you can increase the number of copies you want to make.

Printing text from the Internet

2009-09-30T14:53:00.001+13:00

When you would select File>Print to print of a Webpage you will find that part of the text doesn’t fit on the page you print. What can you do:

A lot of Web pages have a Printer Friendly Button above the text. When you find this printer symbol, click it and a new screen will appear with the text on A4 size. Click Print
If you can’t find a Printer Friendly button you still have the following options; Click File>page setup, make sure A4 is selected and change the orientation to Landscape.
You can also leave the page on portrait and make the Left, right, top and bottom margins smaller.Check out if all the text fits into the A4 by Clicking File and selecting Print Preview.
If you only need to print of a selection, highlight it by clicking and dragging through the text. Click File> Print> Tick selection
If you want to safe the selected text, copy it first into a Word document. After you highlighted the text, click Edit>Copy. Go to start>programs>Microsoft Word and a blank page will appear. Click Edit>Paste and safe the document.

Send an email message to a group

2009-09-17T11:48:00.000+12:00

Within Gmail and Hotmail there is a feature which makes it easy to send email to a group of people.

Send a message to a group of people with Gmail

Add contacts to a group

Go to Contacts.
Tick all contacts you wish to add to a group.
Click the Groups button.
Select the group to which you wish to add the contacts or select New Group. In the contact information you are able to see to which groups the contact is added.

Delete a contact

To delete a contact from a group, select the group in My Contacts.
Tick the contact you want to delete.
Click delete contact.

Change the name of a group

To change the name of the group, select the group in My Contacts.
On the right panel click Edit.
Change the Name and click Save

Send an email to a group

When you want to send an email to a Group click Compose Mail to create a message.
In the To: Box Type the Group Name.
Gmail will search for it and the name will appear below the box. Click on the name of the Group.
Finish your email and click send send.

Send a message to a group of people with Hotmail

Add contacts to a group

Click Contact List on the left panel.
Tick all the contacts you want to add to a group.
On the top click categories.
Select the category to which you want to add the contacts or select New Category.
Give the New Category a name and click Save.

Delete a contact

Click Contact List.
Click Manage Categories on the left panel.
Tick the category from which you want to delete a contact.
Click the X behind the Name of the contact you want to delete and click Safe

Change the name of a group

Click Contact List
Click Manage Categories on the left panel.
Tick the category of which you want to change the name.
Change the name and click safe

Send an email to a group

Click New
In the To: Box type the name of the category you wish to send the email to.
Hotmail will search for it and the name will appear below the Box and click on the name of the group.
Finish your email and click send

Google Friend Connect and Blogger

2009-09-11T09:24:00.000+12:00

Google Friend Connect is primarily a social tool. It enables you to connect with your friends. It is built within Blogger and to use it go to Layout>Add a gadget>Followers. Once the gadget is added visitors can sign in and join your site. Accordingly their picture or logo will be added to your member gadget.

Google Friend Connect also provides a feed reader within Blogger. Go to Dashboard and there you will find a Reading List where the Blogs you are following are in alphabetical order. On the right side of the list a part of their updates is shown. You are also able to add new Blogs you want to follow, on this page.

Google Reader is an independent Feed reader. The Blogs you are following within Blogger will automatically be added to Google Reader. There is a link to Google Reader on the dashboard of Blogger. In Google reader you are able to read whole Blog posts.You can also go straight to Google Reader and sign in with the same Gmail address you use for Blogger.
There is also a website for Google Friend Connect. Here you can find additional gadgets and graphs.

Feedburner and Blogger

2009-09-10T10:24:00.000+12:00

Feedburner is a Feed management provider which provides RSS feeds and management tools. You can sign up for Feedburner with your Gmail account and then you enter your Blogs URL. Some of the options to select within Feedburner:

In Feedburner you can choose a button to let people subscribe to your feed. Click publicize tab>chicklet chooser (under services) Select the icon you want and add it to your Blog as a widget.
Turn on Pingshot Service. This informs search engines and feed Readers that you have published a new post. Click publicise tab>Pingshot>activate
Turn on email subscriptions. Click Publicize>email subscriptions
It gives people the opportunity to receive the feed by email>click activate
It will also provide a code for a subscription form to add to your page.
Click Publicize>email Subscriptions>email branding and you can customize your font, headlines and include a logo to the email feed
Add feedFlare. Click Optimize>FeedFlare to include extras to your feed, like links to dig.com, stumbleupon.com and Flickr
Click Optimize>Title/description burner and you can change the title and description of your feed
Click Optimize>Feed image burner and you can add a logo to your feed
Click edit Feed Details and you can change your Blog address without sacrificing your subscribers
Check the Feedburner stats and you can keep track of the average number of people per day, who access your feed. Click analyse.

When you are all set up you go to your Blog. Select Blogger settings> Site Feed. Check Allow Blog Feed is set on Full. Enter your feed in Post Feed Redirect URL like http//feeds.feedburner.com/”the name you gave it” You can find this name within Feedburner by selecting Edit Feed details>Feed Adress:…….

Feeds and Blogger

2009-09-09T10:25:00.000+12:00

A web feed is a part or the whole of the update of a website, within a Feed reader.
A visitor can subscribe to your Blog by using a feed reader. In the feed reader they enter your Blogs URL. When someone subscribes to your Blog, a feed will be provided using XML RSS or Atom. XML, RSS and Atom are tools for transferring data across the internet. You can also add a Feed button to your Blog which makes it easier for the reader to subscribe to your Blog.

The feed will usually appear to the reader in the form of a link or as a part of your new Blog post in their feed reader. In this way they find out about updates to your Blog without having to visit it.

There are about 2000 different feed reader available; Web based readers and readers that run on your computer. Some examples of feed readers are Google reader, Bloglines, NewsGator, Feed Demon and Blog Navigator.

The button with share on the sidebar of this blog supports 54 popular feed readers. You can also make you own button with a feed button generator. Search for it on Google. Another option is to get a button from feedburner. Feedburner not only pulls a feed, but delivers many extra services e.g. It provides a gadget for your Blog to give your readers the opportunity to receive a feed by email and it has statistics on how many people subscribe to your Blog. You can read all about it in this post.
Within Blogger you are able to receive feeds of your friends by using Google Friend Connect.

Interview with a Picasa student

2009-08-28T10:27:00.001+12:00

I spoke to one of the students who attended the Picasa course. Her name is Jennifer. Jennifer has been working in Real Estate for over 8 years now and computers play a big part in her life. She is however only knowledgeable with some programmes like email and Facebook because she never had any training to learn about computers. She doesn’t have a computer at home as she uses the computer at work where she has a PA to do the paperwork “I’ll pay somebody to use the computer for me” she says.

I asked her how she came to do the Picasa course. Jennifer said:”My son bought a digital camera. I wanted to learn how to get the photos on the computer “I heard about the course and it was on a convenient time for me and it was only 3 sessions. That was easy for me to fit in. I was very excited about the course I loved to make collages and it was great how you just could drag the pictures around and how easy it was to remove red eyes from your photo. I am now looking at buying a computer and want to learn more."

I told her that Addington.net is running some new community courses which are being held in the School holidays at daytime but that she could always come in at lunchtime between 12.00 and 12.50 and I would help her with the things she wanted to know more about, like how to find things on the internet.

I asked her what other topics she would be interested in as we are planning to set up some new courses. “I would love to know all the details about Facebook, learn more about email as I don’t use all the features and a workshop on Trade Me would be good. I don’t know all the possibilities of my cell phone either. That is something I need to learn. Or maybe a taster courses to get a glimpse of the several things combined. Jennifer left me with plenty of ideas to work with.

If you have ideas or things you like to learn leave us a comment or email us at addington.net@gmail.com

Saving pictures with Picasa

2009-08-06T10:43:00.000+12:00

Picasa keeps your pictures safe. The original photo will never be changed. There are different ways to save your pictures.

Save to Disk and File>Save
The Save edited photos to disk button underneath the filename, will be highlighted, when a photo within that folder is edited. The other option is File>Save
These options create a copy of your edited photo. Your original photo will be moved to a hidden folder called “picasaoriginals”.

This will create a backup and allows you to undo or revert your saves.

Save a copy and Save as
“Save a copy” will create a copy of the edited photo into the folder. This Copy will have a ‘1’ at the end of its filename to distinguish it from the original. This copy will not allow you to undo or revert the edits.

Click File>Save a copy

“Save as” is similar to ”Save a Copy”. The only difference is that it allows you to specify the filename and location of the new copy.

Click File>Save as

Saving to a portable Device
In Picasa there is only one way to Save your photos directly to a portable Device.

Select a photo in the folder you want to save
Click create a Gift CD
Remove the tick “Include Slideshow”
Remove the tick “Include Picasa”
Insert CD
Click Burn Disc

If you want to exclude pictures from the CD, right click the picture and click Hide
To unhide the picture later Select View>hidden pictures. A picture will appear.
Right click the hidden picture and select unhide.

Saving your pictures to a pen drive
If you want to save your pictures to a pen drive you can do that only from your C:\Drive.
There are two ways to do this.

1. Save them from My Pictures
If you know the name of the folder you want to save
Click Start>My Documents>My Pictures>folder you want to save
Right click the folder
Select Send to>select removable drive or CD-RW drive

2. Export the photo’s from Picasa to your C:\Drive
Select one or more photos or an entire folder and add them to the photo tray (green button).
Make sure the tray is empty, if not click on the red circle. When you click once on the folder name a pile of photos and the words “Folder selected … photos” appear in the photo tray.
When you have selected the photos click the Export Button.

You can change the location of where you want to store the folder by clicking browse.
When you have selected the entire folder click browse to give it a new location and create a new folder. If not you end up in the opened original folder and have to save the pictures one by one
You can select original size or choose to compress the photos
You can add a watermark to the photo

When Exported the folder name will be highlighted and on your C:\ Drive. Right click on the folder. Select send to>select removable drive or CD-RW drive

Be aware that if you choose the last option, the photo’s you exported will be stored twice on your C:\Drive. In the original folder and the folder you just created.

Email Tip

2009-07-30T13:16:00.000+12:00

Sending an Email to Multiple Recipients

You can send an email to multiple recipients in three ways, by entering them in the To, CC or Bcc fields. The To field is designed to enter your main or original recipients email address. CC or Bcc should be used to enter the other addresses you want to send the message too.

CC means Carbon Copy. A copy of the email will be sent to all email addresses you enter in CC. You separate the addresses by a comma or semicolon (;). Every recipient is however able to see all the addresses you have sent the email to.

Bcc means Blind Carbon Copy. The addresses you enter here, separated by a comma or semicolon (;), will not appear on any of the copies. The only recipient that will be visible is the one in the To field. If you do not want anybody to see any of the recipients, then enter your own email or an alternate email of yours in the To field as follows:

Create an address book entry
· Go to Contacts
· Click New
· Type Undisclosed under first Name
· Enter recipients under last Name
· Enter your personal email in the email address field
· Click save

Free After School session for children

2009-07-22T14:15:00.000+12:00

Addington.net provides free after School Sessions for children aged seven and over. I talked to Kendra and Talia, two sisters who have been coming to Addington.net now for over two years.

About twice a week they come in after school to use the computers. They have a computer at home, without access to the internet.

Kendra uses the computer a lot for homework. When I asked her what she was doing she said:
“I found a website with information about herbs and how to grow them. I need that for my science project. I want to print it out and then I write the information down in my own words.”

Kendra feels she is getting better in finding the information she needs and she is also getting faster with typing. Both Kendra and Talia use the computer for communication with their friends as well. Usually they do it by email and Kendra also has a page on My Yearbook where her friends can leave messages and she can share pictures with them. Talia likes to play games on the internet.

Kendra and Talia are both happy that they are able to access the computers at Addington.net and what they especially like is that everybody is quiet so they can concentrate and relax.

Backing up files

2009-07-10T12:18:00.001+12:00

Computer tips: Backing up your files

The hard drive of your computer can fail (crash). When this happens you will lose your documents, photo’s and everything else that you have stored there. Sometimes an expert can recover them for you, but not always. It is more reliable to backup all your files onto portable storage devices and keep them in several places to ensure their protection.

Online storage

There is a possibility to store your photos online for free on websites like Picasa Web Album, Photobucket and MySpace. On Picasa Web Album for example you can store up to 4000 photos

You can upload files to your email like Gmail and Yahoo

Offline storage

External hard Drives
An external hard drive is actually simular to the computer hard drive. You can connect it to your computer and backup large amounts of data.

Discs
If your computer has a CD reader/ writer or DVD reader/writer you can backup your files on disc
There are two main categories of writeable discs you can buy:
Recordable discs such as CD-R or DVD-R are discs that can only be written once.
Re-Writeable discs such as CD-RW or DVD-RW can be written over many times.

Pen drives/ Flash drives
A Pen drive or Flash drive is a very compact storage device, which you can hang on to your key ring.
It is ideal to store your most important files on. You just insert the stick into the USB port. Right click the file you wish to backup. Select “Sent to” in the menu and click (F) removable disk

Hardcopy
Print out your most important documents and file them somewhere.

Help with your Job Application

2009-06-26T11:16:00.000+12:00

Are you looking for a job and have to make that dreaded CV. It has been made easy for you with the templates of Microsoft Office Word 2007, available on our computers. A template is a ready made document, in this case a CV. You just have to replace the example details with your own. Alternatively you can find CV templates on the Internet.

To make the CV you can use the computers at Addington.net for free and if you need some assistance, we will be there to help you.

These are the most common elements to include in your CV. Write down your personal details before you enter them into your template.

Personal information
This includes your name, address, phone (include area code) and email address

Job objective
A job objective is a statement of

The area of work you are looking for
The job title you are after
Your skills and areas of strength you want to use. E.g. a chance to be creative

Skills Summary
Here you provide a list of skills you have relevant to the job you applied for

Experience
This is the most important part of your CV. State your most recent job first and then work back to your first job. You could also list volunteer or weekend jobs
Include:

Starting and finishing date; e.g. June 2008 – present date
Name of your current or past employer
Your job title. Describe your most important duties and responsibilities

Education
Start with your most recent qualification and include:

Diploma or course passed or studying for
Dates/duration
Name of the Institute

References
Include two references and provide

Name
Job title or relationship to you
Phone number
Suitable people could include a teacher, employer, a family friend.

When you get all this information bring it with you and;

Open Microsoft Office Word 2007
Click the Office button
Click New
Scroll down and click Resumes and CV’s
Select the template you prefer and it will download on your computer
Overwrite the example details in the template

Good luck !

Picasa Course

2009-06-10T11:10:00.001+12:00

Addington.net is offering a new course using Picasa software. Over three nights you will learn the easy steps to organising and editing your digital photos.

The course starts on Thursday 23 July 6 pm to 8 pm
and continues on 30 July and 6 August.

The course fee is $10.

Phone 9627244 for more information or drop in and pick up a registration form at

Addington.net

Shop 5, Addington Mall
300 Lincoln Road
Christchurch

Please bring your camera with your pictures and USB cable or put your pictures on a Flashdrive or CD