Greetings from chilly, but sunny, Arizona. And, Happy Holidays to everyone! We will be visiting friends in Quartzsite for the holiday. If you're an RVer and you've never visited Quartzsite, be sure to put it on your list. It's a kind of 'Mecca' for RVer's in the wintertime. You can read all about it as written by our friends at Hitch Itch. And, be sure to follow our travels and stories on our blog at www.geeksontour.blogspot.com.

In this newsletter

• Article #1 discusses how to send a last minute Xmas card via websites and email.
• Article #2 is about Burning CDs.
• Article #3 is about live traffic on Google Earth.

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Last Minute Christmas Cards

I've always said, "If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done." With computers and email the definition of 'last minute' has gotten closer to the actual *last* minute! When sending Christmas Cards by 'snail mail', you had to have them ready by what? December 10? And, with travelers who rely on mail forwarding, let's put that date back another couple weeks. With email, you can send them on December 24! What perfect timing! To have your card in their inbox on Christmas morning. And, these ecards usually include animation and music.

A few good sites for email greeting cards are www.bluemountain.com, www.greetings.yahoo.com and www.hallmark.com. You can expect to find at least some offerings on each of these pages that are free. And then there's the amazing animated cards of www.jacquielawson.com, and the adorable www.elfyourself.com where you put your face on a dancing elf! It's guaranteed to put a smile on the face of your recipient!

Unfortunately, I have to add a warning in regards to e-cards. A few months ago there was a virus going around masquerading as an e-card. You might get an email with a subject like: 'You've received a postcard from a family member.' It included a link where you could supposedly see the card. If you clicked on the link *and your computer was not up to date* you may have downloaded a nasty trojan type of virus. This won't happen with any of the above sites, but you should make sure to add personalized text when creating the card, so your recipient knows it's really from you.

How to Burn CDs

In our last newsletter, we showed you how to make regular backups using an external hard drive and Windows Backup utility. But, what if you don't have enough data to justify getting an external hard drive, or you want to 'archive' some data off your computer. By 'archive' I mean, make a copy to CD then erase it from your hard drive. I don't trust an archive to any type of media that can be erased. Permanent copies of my old files are always burned onto CD-Rs. A CD-R is a 'Read Only' type of media. You 'burn' it once, from then on you can only read from it. You don't add more to it, you don't overwrite it. Same definition goes for a DVD-R, a DVD just has 6 times more storage capacity. Don't worry that you're only using a fraction of the available space - CDs and DVD's are cheap; your files are priceless.

So, you have several files in a folder called 'MyNovel', how do you get them onto a CD? Just a few years ago you needed special CD Burning software like Roxio or Nero, and those programs are still very good. But, now Windows XP (second edition) and Vista can do it without any help.

In Windows XP: Select the files or folders you want to burn and right-click on them - choose Send To: and find your CD or DVD burning drive in the list of destinations. When you click on that, you will see a message balloon pop up saying, 'You have files waiting to be written to CD.' Click on the balloon and find the option (at the left) to 'Write these files to CD.' Make sure to check the CD before you put it away. You need to verify that the files indeed made it onto the disk properly. You can label the CD by writing on it with a 'sharpie' felt tip pen.

In Windows Vista: Select the files or folders you want to burn and click on the 'Burn' command in the toolbar. In the dialog box that follows, choose the 'Mastered' type of disc. You will only be able to burn this one set of files, but it will result in the most compatible and reliable format.

For Pictures: Although you can use the above techniques for archiving pictures as well, I highly recommend using Picasa for burning your photos to CD/DVD. See the GeeksOnTour.com showme video on Picasa Backups to see how it's done.

Google Earth now has Live Traffic

Google continues to amaze me. If you use Google Earth, make sure you've downloaded the latest update ... we're on version 4.2 now. You will see a new 'layer.' Click the checkbox next to 'Traffic.' You may have to wait a few seconds while it gets the latest data from the Internet. Then you'll see something like:

So, if you're about to drive thru Phoenix, this map will tell you to avoid the 101. See the yellow and red dots? If I click on one of the green dots, they show that traffic is moving at 65mph. I click on the red dot and see that traffic in that area is moving at 8mph!

Good to know!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Your next issue will be in 2-3 weeks. Any questions, please email us. If you like this newsletter, please forward it on to your friends! If you received this issue forwarded by a friend you can subscribe to get your own copy delivered to your inbox. To see the archives of past newsletters, go to www.geeksontour.com/newsletters.

Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com