I rarely do this – but I’m going to give a huge product endorsement for the Byte this week. This year I got a Flip Video (http://www.theflip.com/) for Christmas. Really I got it about 6 weeks ago and we have just loved it.
The best thing about the Flip Video is that it’s so easy to use. You turn it on then push the red button to start filming and push the same button to start. You can zoom in or out a bit. It’s very easy to hold and the videos seem to turn out not so shaky. Also it’s very easy to upload the videos to YouTube. The Flip Video comes with a USB port on the side so all you really need to do it plug it into your computer and the software will walk you through the process of uploading to YouTube – you just need to set up an account ahead of time. Here is a sample video: http://10qs.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/playground-equipment-in-dublin/ (It’s a video of playground equipment in Dublin – not techie but more fun than the video I took of the Christmas play at the girls’ school.)
I want to thank Andy Rose for his great one-sheet (Save as Doc) on how to automatically save .docx as .doc. Apparently this came up often at his office and he was kind enough to share the cheat sheet he made for co-workers.
Last week we ran into a problem when my husband, using his laptop with Vista with Word 2007 tried to send a document to someone who didn’t have Word 2007.
Word 2007 automatically saves documents with a .docx extension. Unfortunately no one with earlier versions of Word can open these documents. Microsoft Word has a fix you can download if you want to open a document from someone else: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100444731033.aspx
I have a friend who is looking at starting a blog for her vacation. I told her I’d write up some quick instructions and so I thought I’d share them here too. I am a fan of WordPress so that’s the blog we’re using here:
To change look of your blog, click on PRESENTATION, where you can choose a new template. As you can see there are a number of options. Some will allow you to upload your own header or choose your background color.
To change the options you have on the sidebar, click on WIDGETS
You can click and drag widgets from the bottom of the page to your page. For example, if you want to add a little description of your blog on the sidebar, add a “text widget”, double click on the widget ad type in the text you want. (Don’t forget to click on update before you navigate away from the page.)
You can change the widgets and templates at any time.
You can’t change the address of your blog, but if you want to change the title or tag line, click on OPTIONS and type in any changes.
I hope that this is helpful. WordPress provides some good help too if you get stuck. Or you can always have someone set up the blog as you’d like it and then just be responsible for adding posts.
Below are a few quick instructional videos for folks who are looking to post article to the Blandin on Broadband (Bob) blog. The information is general enough to applicable to any WordPress blog.
Each BoB author will receive an email from WordPress inviting them to become a member and become an author. To sign up with WordPress, please follow the instructions in that email. You will not need to set up a blog; you will only need a username. (WordPress will ask.)
The following videos will (hopefully) help you:
Set Up Your Profile Name (so that you can sign your posts)
Today’s Byte is for folks who manage their own web sites. If you don’t build sites, here’s a web site that will help you build a gingerbread house with kids: http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/cafe/grahamcrackergingerb.html (Guess what we’re doing soon? This is from Zoom, and generally their stuff is super easy to do.)
Back to web sites…
CSS or style sheets help people use code to create look of their web site. Here are some tools to help create basic web site layouts using CSS. I think it would be hard to use these tools if you didn’t know CSS – but if you do it can be a quick start for a new site.
CSS Creator: http://csscreator.com/?q=tools/layout
This site will create the basic code for a fixed or liquid width for a site with 1, 2, or 3 columns and a header and footer.
I hope that’s helpful to you. Have a great week! Ann
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