No more posts until 15th January

Hi everyone

I am having a holiday break so there will be no more posts until the 15th January.

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year everyone. See you in 2010!

Digital scrapbooking for community groups

You have probably heard of scrapbooking. Scrapbooking is where you create art from your photos using attractive papers, letters and embellishments.

You can also scrapbook on the computer (digital scrapbooking). To digital scrapbook you need a computer, digital images, a photo programme and a printer. Photo editing programmes such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro are very expensive and hard to learn. Why not start using either the photo editing software you received when you brought your camera or something like Picasa (free software).

Once you have a photoediting programme you can change your photos e.g. crop your photo. Now open a new Word document and add your picture to the page. Then add a wallpaper and an embellishment from one of the sites listed below. Use the ”order” command to arrange your elements e.g. If you wanted your embellishment on top of your photo then right-click on the embellishment and send it to the front.

Good websites for papers and embellishments:
www.shabbyprincess.com
www.oscraps.com
www.freedigitalscrapbooking.com

Digital scrapbooking is time-consuming but it could have potential for the following:

• As a leaving gift create a special photo or series of photos showing a staff members journey through your organisation
• You could create gifts for staff e.g. gift tags and Calendars   

Have fun! Let us know if you have used digital scrapbooking in your community group.

More keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are great. Start with this list and add more as time goes on. They definitely help to speed up your pace on the computer. Here are some I use regularly:

Clicking f2 lets you rename a file
Clicking Control + f2 lets you print preview
Clicking on home takes you to the beginning of the line you are currently in
Clicking on end takes you to the end of the line

External hard drives

As we know computers can die and can become clogged up with files. An external hard drive allows you to create a back up of your computer files and software and keep them in a separate location from your computer. It also enables you to store files that are clogging up your computer. 

Hard drives used to be expensive but fortunately they have come down in price. You can now buy an external hard drive in New Zealand for less than $200. They are easy to use and you can get ones that you plug into a USB port on your computer.

Do you use an external hard drive? Do you find they work well or do you know a better way to back up your computer?

Great list of Web 2.0 tools

Hi everyone

Click on the following link to find a great list of Web 2.0 tools. Once you have clicked on the link you will find the information about the 2.0 tools half way down the page.
 Web 2.0 tools 

If you try any of these tools out let me and the others who read this blog know what you thought of them.

Coping when your technology fails

Many Not-for-Profit groups rely heavily on technology such as computers and printers. These things are wonderful tools until they don’t work. One of the best things we can do is to have a back up plan for when these tools fail. How do we do this?

• Find someone in your building who would be willing to print out a document for you in an emergency. Also find a copy shop close to you so that when your printer fails you can still print.
• Have a spare computer if possible (often you can get one donated) which you can use if your computer fails.
• Make sure you have a USB/Flash/Thumb drive so you can transfer information to another computer if necessary
• Find an internet cafe close to you so that if your internet crashes you can still use the net.
• Learn how to use online programmes such as Google Docs (a word processing programme) so that if your office software is not working you still have a way to produce documents.

There must be heaps of other ways to cope when our technology fails. What works for you?

Coping with computer problems

Ever have one of those weeks where nothing goes right on the computer? I had one of these recently. It made me think about how we can support ourselves when this happens. Here are my ideas:

• Ask fellow community workers and friends what programmes they know well. Ask whether they would be willing to help when you get stuck. Create a list of these people and the programmes they know
• Take classes in programmes you use regularly
• Expect a learning curve when learning a new programme or tool, even if you are an experienced computer user!
• Realise that programmes and tools are not perfect. Often it is not your fault that you can’t do the task you want to do. Many programmes or tools are poorly designed and not particularly logical.

What helps you when you are ready to scream at the computer and throw it out the window? Lend us your wisdom. Please!

Free graphic design tool

As we know it’s not cheap to hire a graphic designer.  Fortunately there are free sites such as Big Huge Labs where you can develop great images from your photos.  This site also has other great tools e.g. the ability to create a colour scheme for your website using colours from a photo. 

This site is well worth playing around with. Besides its fun and we all need that in our busy lives!

Have you found any other great image creating sites that would be useful for Not for profits? Send in your picks.

Customised home page for your web browser

I found this tool recently to create a great home page for your web browser  (an example of  a web browser is Internet Explorer). The page allows you to:

• See the weather report for the next few days
• Link directly to your photos, videos, Facebook and twitter pages, podcasts and email accounts
• To type a ‘To Do List’
• To use the pages calendar
• Option to add news reports e.g. CNN (no New Zealand news reports unfortunately)
• Option to customise the pages theme and to add new pages
• Can add lots of new features to the page

I plan to use this as my home page. I will give you more feedback about it once I have set it up and used it for a while. What do you use as your home page?

Using keyboard shortcuts to save time

Most of us Community workers are busy people. Using the keyboard instead of the mouse can save you heaps of time. Here are a few I use every day:

1. Hold down the ‘control’ key plus the ‘n’ key (this opens a new document in any office programme e.g. Word)
2. Hold down the ‘control’ key plus the ‘o’ key (this opens the file dialogue box,  from here you can view your files and choose the one you want to open)
3. Hold down the ‘control’ key plus the ‘p’ key (this opens the print dialogue box)
4. Hold down the ‘control’ key plus the ’s’ key (this saves any changes you have made to an existing file)

Do you use shortcut keys? If so what are your favourites?