Our main event for November was the Datastorm Users' Rally in Tampa, Florida. 50 rigs with the popular Datastorm Internet satellite dish, gathered to learn more about how to use, tweak, and troubleshoot their systems. Motosat, the company that makes the Datastorm, had their top technicians there to teach classes and do free tech support calls. We were there to teach other computer related topics, like make web-based photo albums, blogs, and other websites.

Just to be sure you don't miss anything, here's a list of other articles we've posted this month:
Picasa Tip: Moving folders to a USB Hard Drive
In-Flight Wi-Fi
Translating Foreign Websites
Picasa Tip: Automatic Updates
Picasa Tip: Add a Watermark to your photos
Picasa Tip: Make your own Photo Holiday Cards
Wi-Fire Long-range WiFi Adapter
Picasa Tip: Save Edits and Resize with Export
Listen to Radio Online

In this newsletter

• GOT Class Gift Certificate
• MS Live Onecare
• Using Special Characters
• Photo Calendars

GOT Class? Give a Gift Certificate

Click here to order your gift certificates.

I can't think of a better gift than the gift of learning! What is GOT Class? Why, it's the Geeks On Tour Online Classroom of course!

If you order before December 12, we will mail you a printed certificate *and* a free Computer Companion. $39 is the fee for one full year of access to over 100 tutorial videos. Computer Companion is a $9.95 value. It is a booklet full of information and fill-in-the-blanks meant to be a handy reference to everything you need to know about your laptop PC.

MS Live Onecare is Changing

Microsoft Live Onecare is both a fee-based computer protection program and a free safety scanner. In one of our Safe Computing tutorial videos, we recommend using the free safety scanner occasionally for a 'second opinion' on the condition of your computer. The free scanner also scans and fixes registry settings, an important, and hard to find feature.

According to eWeek magazine, Microsoft is discontinuing Onecare come next June. Nothing is affected right now. The Free Saftety Scanner is still available (just in a new location)- and, as far as I know, it will continue to be available.

Are you a Member of the Geeks on Tour classroom (GOT Class?) Join today so you can learn from all the 'Show Me How' tutorial videos. It's only $39 for a whole year of access to over 100 videos. And, you'll be able to ask questions in the Class Q&A Forum as well.

Using Special Characters

Do you ever want to use a real copyright symbol? You can just type (c), but © looks so much better! Or what about if you need to type something in French, like 'garçon' or sueño in Spanish? You may know that, if you have Microsoft Word, you have an easy 'insert symbol' feature to find these special characters. But, what if you're writing a blog post on the web? Or using any other program that doesn't have that command?

Built right into Windows is the 'Character Map.' In Vista, just click on the Start menu and type 'character.' You should see Character Map in the list. In XP, you'll need to navigate to Accessories | System Tools to find the Character Map.

Once you click on it, you should see:

Find the character you want, click on it and click the Select button. You should see the character in the 'Characters to copy' box. Then you can click the Copy button.

Now go back to what you were typing to Paste the character in place.

You can also change the font and get lots of special characters. In the Symbol font, you can get the card symbols of spades, hearts etc. However, you can't use the symbol font on most websites. In Blogger, you are allowed to use the Webdings font which gives you all sorts of fun little symbols.

Photo Calendars

Picasa makes it very easy to select 13 photos and make a calendar. With all 13 photos (12 months plus cover) selected in the picture tray, click on Shop. You'll have the choice of several online photo processors, including Walmart, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and many more. Most all of the companies in this list will create calendars from your photos and mail them to you. Walmart's includes the ability to add text and photos to individual days of the calendar. A standard wall-hanging, 12 month calendar will cost you $12 - 20.

If you think that others may be interested in buying your calendar, you might want to take it one step further and use a site like Cafepress.com or Lulu.com. These are not on Picasa's list, so you can't just select the pictures and click a button. You'll need to export your photos to another folder. Then go to the chosen website and use their 'Upload photos' tool. Don't expect to make a living doing this ... there's only a couple dollars of profit in a $21 price for a calendar. I made one a couple years ago and I was the only one who bought it!

If you are better at sales than I am, you should check it out. You can also design t-shirts, write books, and sell them all thru your online store with the above sites.

That's all for now. We hope you learned something. Your next issue will be next month. 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 in box - it's free. To see the archives of past newsletters, go to www.geeksontour.com/newsletters.