Cool Tools | Moultrie Creek Gazette

Flickr Goes Wild!

May 21, 2013 7:00 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

Flickr Makeover

Yesterday Flickr introduced their site redesign along with an important announcement. All users get 1TB of photo storage and the ability to share those photos at full resolution. You can upload videos in full HD quality. The length of these videos has been upped to 3 minutes each. In addition, a new Android phone app has been released. The iPhone app was updated several weeks ago and it is impressive (review coming soon).

The Pro subscription is no longer available. Existing Pro accounts can continue to renew their subscriptions if they so desire. If a Pro account is not renewed, it will revert to a standard account. In place of the Pro account, Flickr is offering two fee-based options: Doublr which adds an additional terabyte of storage to your account and Ad-Free which removes all ads from your Flickr pages. Each of these services will cost you $49.99 a year.

For most of us, a terabyte of storage should be plenty. After all, that means more than 500,000 photos. (I’ve got just under 6,000 on Flickr at the moment.) I’ve had a pro account for so long I can’t remember what Flickr looks like with advertising, but I’m sure I could live with it to protect my images. I will continue to renew my Pro account as long as Yahoo! will let me and I will continue to recommend its use as an off-site archive for both current photos and scanned images. The social side of Flickr has always been a delight and I’m hoping to see Flickr and Tumblr working together in fun and fascinating ways very soon.

A photo set displayed after a custom header image has been added to my profile.

I am a long-time fan of Flickr as an affordable off-site archive and I’m very happy to see Yahoo! giving it the attention it deserves. If you haven’t visited Flickr recently, now would be a good time to get re-acquainted.

Posted in: Cool Tools

Journaling Your Past

May 20, 2013 10:30 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

We’ve all heard the quote, “Write your past for your future.” I’ve been using my Day One journal apps to capture memories along with the current events and notes related to my world. Day One has both Mac and iOS versions of the app – all sharing the same cloud-based storage. This makes it easy for me to use my iPhone to photograph a ticket stub or brochure to go along with the related story.

All of the senses are involved in family history. The way things sound, feel, even a change in the weather helps lead you back.

~ D. G. Fulford, One Memory at a Time

My favorite inspiration is an old photo, but there are always those flash-back moments when an old song or a familiar scent brings an associated memory to mind. Having those journaling apps nearby – my iPad or iPhone is almost always within reach – makes it easy to at least jot down a couple of words before that memory fades. The rest of the story can be expanded later.

Do you have a system for capturing the stories from your past? What inspires your memories?

Posted in: Cool Tools

Pixelmator Update – Getting in Shape!

May 9, 2013 11:30 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

It’s all about shapes in the latest update from Pixelmator [Mac - $14.99], the awesome photo editor for Mac. The Smart Shapes tool lets you quickly create and adjust shapes, including converting text to a shape. Theres more than 100 other improvements and new features including Color Popovers – quicker access to color swatches. Existing users get the update for free. New users can take advantage of the $14.99 promotional price while it lasts.

Here’s a look at what you can do with shapes and Pixelmator.

Posted in: Cool Tools , Tagged: macapp, photo-editing, software

Making room for more storage

May 3, 2013 9:30 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

Years ago, an engineering firm I worked for increased the size of their office by half again the existing square footage. Most of that additional space would go to file storage. At the time I had just gotten my first scanner and was just beginning to learn the joys of digitizing photos and documents. Surprisingly, the scanner’s software even included an OCR function and it worked quite well. I was just beginning my fight with carpal tunnel syndrome and this OCR thing was a real blessing to me. The engineering firm was using computers for documents and drawings, and while they did appreciate the ability to grab an existing digital document and edit it rather than start each one from scratch, they hadn’t realized the potential of digital storage. In fact, we were often making multiple copies of paper documents and filing them in different places just so it would be easier to find them later. HUH?

One day I was given an old paper proposal – a rather large one – to be typed so they could edit it for a new project they wanted to bid. I drove home, scanned it , OCR’d it and drove back to the office in half the time it would have taken to type. They were delighted I had it ready so quickly, but this scanning thing was just a flash in the pan to them. I even prepared a cost analysis comparing the cost of storing their paper files (office space, cabinets, paper, etc.) vs. digital ones (disk storage, software, scanners, etc.). Even back then the digital solution was significantly less expensive – and that didn’t include the amount of labor spent filing, managing and finding paper documents. I was told it would be too disruptive.

It was time to start looking for a new job.

This week I bought my second external hard drive. My existing 1TB WD My Book is almost full now that I have more time for scanning and other digital projects. I got a 3TB WD My Book for less than $140. The Windows version is about the same price. These new drives take advantage of the USB 3.0 protocol which is significantly faster. If you have an older computer that only has USB 2.0 connections, you can still use these drives, but you won’t get the speed advantage. Once you upgrade your computer, the drives will perform at their top speed.

So now I have two drives – each the size of a good James Michener novel – sitting on my desk. A quick search can bring any document or photo to the screen in a matter of seconds. In addition to family ephemera, I’ve been working to take our household records paperless (or as close as possible) too. I should be in pretty good storage shape until I get ready to tackle my husband’s collection of slides. He’ll be buying that drive!

I still need to do some reorganization and remodeling to update my entire file system. Santa brought be a copy of Apple’s Aperture app for Christmas which I haven’t really put to good use yet because my photo collection needs some serious spring cleaning. Now’s a good the time to do that too. At least there won’t be any heavy lifting involved in this remodeling job.

I wonder if those engineers ever saw the digital light . . .

Posted in: Cool Tools , Tagged: digital storage, OCR, optical character recognition, scanning

Dropbox Collaboration Tutorial

April 18, 2013 10:45 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

Here’s a great video tutorial from lynda.com showing how you can use Dropbox to collaborate using shared folders. The document example shown here is using Word’s review and annotation tools as the two collaborators work on that document.

Posted in: Cool Tools , Tagged: collaboration, Dropbox, tutorial

Protect Your WordPress Blog From Attacks

April 16, 2013 6:55 am , 1 Comment , Denise Barrett

There is a “brute-force” botnet attack on-going against self-hosted WordPress sites. They are using programs they have installed on other compromised blogs (that’s the botnet) which logs in to your blog’s “admin” account over and over again thousands of times using a different password each time, hoping to find one that works. If they succeed, then they will install a backdoor so they can use your blog to attack other sites. Security firms are speculating that the WordPress attacks are being used to build a bigger botnet “force” which can later be used for a more massive attack on someone – or some thing – else.

My site has been very slow and even inaccessible several times in the last week which probably has to do with this attack. Although I can’t stop them from attacking my blogs, I can take steps to prevent them from taking them over. You can do the same.

First, I don’t use the default “admin” name for my blog’s administrator account. That way an attacker needs to figure out my account name as well as my password. If you are using the default, then create another user account with a name that does NOT identify it as an administrator (something like BobJones, maybe), set the Role for this account to Administrator and make sure this account has a very strong password (a minimum of 8 characters combining upper- and lower-case alphabetic characters with numbers and special characters). Now, log out and log in again with the new account. In the Users section, edit the old admin user and change its Role to Subscriber. While you’re at it, update the password to something hard to crack. That way, if someone should hack into the admin account, all they can do is look at its profile.

Regardless of what your blog’s administrator account is named, you should always have a strong password assigned to it. Even accounts with lesser roles should have strong passwords and everyone’s passwords should be changed regularly. WordPress.com has some very good recommendations for effective passwords.

Don’t allow your blog to become a botnet used to attack others. Take steps now to protect your blog and the content you’ve created.

Posted in: Cool Tools , Tagged: hackers, security, WordPress

Become a Magazine Publisher with Flipboard

March 27, 2013 1:48 pm , 2 Comments , Denise Barrett

Flipboard, the amazing reading app for iOS and Android devices, has kicked things up a notch with its new magazines feature. If you’re a Flipboard fan, look for an update to your Flipboard app. Once installed, you’ll have access to an already impressive number of user-generated magazines along with the existing social and news offerings. I’ve loved Flipboard since the first day I set eyes on the app and they continue to amaze me with all the new ways to collect interesting news, photos and articles.

With the new magazines feature, users can collect and curate content on their own which Flipboard will display in its trademark magazine format. It only takes a moment to set up a magazine, then you can collect content from across your Flipboard subscriptions – Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. – to add to it. You can make your magazine public and share it with others.

Flipboard add panel

After you’ve updated your iOS app (Android updates are coming soon), you’ll notice plus signs all over the content you see displayed on Flipboard. Tap one and a panel similar to the one you see here appears, allowing you to add this item to your magazine (DIGITAL Storytelling in this example) or create a new magazine. As you can see, you can add a caption and even post a link to your Facebook profile.

DIGITAL Storytelling Cover

Here you see the current cover for my magazine. Notice it also includes some interesting analytics about this publication along with the most recent topics. I’m just getting started, but I can see lots of potential for the genealogy community. This could get really interesting!

If you’d like to subscribe to DIGITAL Storytelling, just search for it in Flipboard’s search function. It should show up in the results. There are a number of digital storytelling items in the search results, but only mine has the “A creative resource for family historians” tagline.

Posted in: Cool Tools , Tagged: Flipboard, Google Reader, magazines, news reading

Reeder for Mac and iOS

March 25, 2013 1:00 pm , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

While Flipboard is still my go-to app for enjoyable news reading on the iPad, I have found the Reeder app [Mac - $4.99, iPad - $4.99 and iPhone - $2.99 ] to be an impressive information processing platform. By that I mean an app that will allow me to quickly review my feeds and share or capture them with other services.

Reeder for Mac screenshot

As you can see from this screenshot of the Mac app, the interface is designed to quickly move through your news sources to read, share or send to Evernote, Pocket and any number of other services. There are more services available than shown in this example, I just have them turned off since I don’t use them.

Reeder02

Here you see the iPad version – also showing the sharing options.

Although you can subscribe to feeds directly in the app, Reeder is currently designed to synch with Google Reader. They have already announced that they are not going away. I am looking forward to watching their efforts to build a platform to synch news content between devices.

Posted in: Cool Tools , Tagged: Google Reader alternatives, iosapp, macapp, Reeder

Air Dropping Files

March 18, 2013 9:30 am , Leave a Comment , Denise Barrett

If you have a relatively new Mac computer running either Lion or Mountain Lion versions of OSX, then you probably also have Air Drop. This is a new feature in Finder that will allow you to quickly and easily move files from one nearby computer to another. What’s different about Air Drop is you don’t have to have a Wi-Fi connection to do it.

To see if you have Air Drop, open your Finder app and look in the app’s sidebar. You should see the Air Drop item towards the top of the list. Click on it and you’ll see an icon representing your computer appear in the main pane. When other Macs nearby also have Air Drop active, you’ll see icons for those computers too – like you see in this example. When you do, you’re ready to start Air Dropping files.
Air Drop screen
The easiest way to do this is to select the files you want to copy, right-click on them and choose Share > Air Drop. A window similar to this one appears on the screen asking that you select the destination by clicking on the icon for that computer, then click the Send button.
Transfer screen
The receiving computer must accept the files before they will be transferred. A screen similar to this one appears on that computer giving that user the opportunity to accept or decline the file(s).
Receivers screen
Once accepted, the files are transferred to that user’s Downloads folder.

To shut down Air Drop on your computer, just choose a Finder item other than Air Drop.

In Mac families like ours, this is the easiest way to share files between computers. It can also be quite useful in a conference situation where Wi-Fi connectivity is limited. Take a minute to see what Air Drop can do for you. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.