April has been cold. Through Texas, New Mexico and now into Iowa - most days have been somewhere in the 40s. But, no - the picture is not snow - that's White Sands, New Mexico, and it's quite a sight. See more on our White Sands Web Album.

We were in Albuquerque, New Mexico for The Rally. We did 4 of our seminars there and made a lot of new friends! Over 3,000 RVs participated. We even got interviewed by Brian Brawdy. You can see the video of our interview on RV.net. Taking Technology on the Road with Geeks on Tour.

So you don't miss anything, here's a list of other articles we've written this month:
Picasa Tip: Screen Captures
Computers and Exercising
Picasa Tip: I'm Feeling Lucky
Google Earth and The Rally
Picasa Tip: Using the Text Tool
Blogging to Alaska
Picasa Tip: Cancel Unfinished Operations?

In this newsletter

• Don't delete your original photos
• Tips for watching our Tutorial Videos
• Spring Cleaning your Computer

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Don't Delete your Original Photos

I've had a few emails from Picasa users lately that got me worried. They said that they uploaded some photos to their web albums then deleted them off their computer.

What?!

NO! Picasa Web Albums is not a way to backup or store your photos. It is a way to share your photos with others over the Internet. If you want an online storage website, we recommend Carbonite.

Photo size, and file size, is important
When you upload photos to Picasa Web Albums, you should be using a much smaller size than your original photo. My camera is a 6.3 megapixel camera - yours may be more or less. That means a picture taken by my camera at highest resolution will have 6.3 million pixels - the little dots. Usually that's 3,072 pixels wide by 2048 high. When a photo is displayed on a computer screen (which is the whole purpose of Picasa Web Albums) an 800 by 600 pixel picture looks big.

Most computer monitors are set to 1024 pixels wide, so an 800 wide picture will take up 80% of the screen. I upload my photos at the 1024 pixel setting. This is 1/3 of the pixels in my original photo. This also means the file size is a lot smaller. I have several hundred photos online and I'm only using 60% of my alloted 1Gigabyte of free space.

Deleting your original photo because you have it uploaded to a web album is like throwing away your original Van Gogh painting because you have a copy print.

Even if you upload to Picasa Web Album at full size, it will be compressed, and the result is not as good as your original. If you ever want to print it, you'll want your original.

Who's in Control?
But, probably the main point though, is that once you've uploaded your pictures to a free website like Picasa Web Albums, things could happen to them beyond your control. I've heard of people who had Web Albums that had been tagged as violating the Terms of Service and were then deleted by Google. Even if it's a mistake, it can take a long time to clear it up. I know other websites that got hacked and the content destroyed. Admittedly, this is unlikely, but if you still had your pictures on your computer, it's a simple matter of re-uploading them.

So, what is a good procedure?
Here's what I do:

1. Transfer pictures from camera to computer. Keep them all in folders by month.
   (Members, see video: Import from Camera)
2. Upload just a sampling of the best ones to Picasa Web Albums to share with others.
   (Members, see video: Introduction to Web Albums)
3. Backup-Copy all photos for each month to a CD (or DVD if CD isn't big enough) Store CD in a safe place.
   (see free video: Backup pictures)
4. Each year I move all photos for prior year to external hard drive. This external hard drive is usually connected to my computer - so, when I'm in Picasa I have access to all years.
   (Members, see video: Move Folders to External Hard Drive)

You don't have to follow that exact procedure - just make sure you follow a procedure that allows you to work with all your pictures, share a few of them, and have a duplicate set of all your originals in case catastrophe hits.

Tips for watching our Tutorial Videos

The Geeks on Tour website now has over 140 tutorial videos all about how to use your computer and how to use Blogger, Picasa, Google Earth and Maps, Photo Story 3, and Vista. Each video is 5-10 minutes long. Each individual video is listed on the page for that topic. So, for example, if you go to the Vista page, you will see all 14 videos on the topic of Windows Vista with individual links. Three of these videos are freely viewed by anyone - they are clearly labeled - Free. These are provided so you can 'try before you buy.' Try playing them to be sure the videos work on your computer. You should see a computer screen and hear the narration. Our videos work just fine, first time, for the great majority of people. Anyone who has told us they haven't worked has fixed the issue with one of the suggestions below:

1. You must have a current version of the Flash Player on your computer. Go to the Flash Download page. It's free, just click on the 'Agree and Install Now' button.
2. If that doesn't do the trick, try using a different browser. We've had reports of trouble while using AOL - use Internet Explorer instead. If you experience trouble with Internet Explorer, try using Firefox. Firefox is a free, downloadable browser. The reverse is also true - if you're having trouble viewing or hearing the videos and you're using Firefox, try using Internet Explorer.
3. You need a good, high-speed connection to the Internet. If the video plays back jerky, or just stops, it's usually because the Internet connection isn't fast enough to keep up. The playback stops while the downloading continues. The dark grey bar is the download progress. If the playhead (the little white triangle) bumps up against that, the video stops playing. What you can do is click on the pause button (the first one - 2 vertical bars) and wait until the download progress is sufficiently ahead of the playhead. Then you can continue playing again - that same first button will be a triangle representing Play.
   
   If this happens to you all the time, then you either don't have a good enough Internet connection, or your computer needs a tuneup.
4. All of the newer (last 6 months) videos are hosted at ScreenCast.com. You can also read their troubleshooting help.

Try the 'Classrooms' instead of the individual video links
If you are a member, there is another complete set of the tutorial videos we call the Classrooms. Use the Main Menu option, 'Members: Login', then you can click on Vista, for example, and see a screen like that pictured below. All the tutorials are listed down the left and they will play one right after the other if you just sit back and let them. You can also click on any video on the left menu and it will play on the right.

Spring Cleaning

Your computer needs some basic maintenance just like anything else. We call it BUCS, for Backup Update Cleanup and Scan. We've written about this before. My point in this article is about serious cleanup. If you're anything like me, stuff collects in your computer. You may be good at regularly using Disk Cleanup, but that doesn't delete any of those old emails, or duplicate documents! That just deletes files that are recognized as temporary and garbage files.

No program is going to delete your 6 year old letter to Aunt Sylvia. Only you, spending some dedicated time, and reviewing the contents of your folders can clean up old, duplicate, or just unwanted files. Why do you want to do that? Two reasons:

1. So you can find stuff!
   Computer hard drives have gotten so large you can literally store a lifetime worth of files. After just a couple years of unexamined file storage, it's going to be difficult to find stuff. Take it from one who knows - I've recreated some documents lately because I couldn't find my first one (even with all the wonderful search tools w/Vista.) And I know it's there! Now I have two copies ... somewhere. What a mess.
2. So your computer runs better.
   One friend called me a month or so ago to say that something was wrong with her email. She uses Outlook. It was so slow, she said, as to be unusable. I helped her clean out hundreds of emails - from her inbox, from her deleted folder. And, I helped her archive anything over 1 year old, and then compact the remaining data files. Hey! Her email program is fixed now! It works faster than ever.

Before you start deleting everything in sight, PLEASE make a backup first. Copy all your files to a CD or DVD or external hard drive. Now, if you delete something you shouldn't have, you can get it back.

There are some tools that can help. We've written about CCleaner that will help with all the standard stuff. And Picasa will help you find your duplicate photos. But, it's still up to you to examine the duplicates and delete the right ones.

If the main goal is to free up hard drive space, the best files to delete are the biggest. Windows Vista has a very handy tool to find those. Click on Start, then click on your username at the top right of the start menu. You should see a screen like the image below. When you double click on 'Searches' you'll see a special search for 'Biggest Files'. Open that, and then double-click where it says >128MB. You're now seeing a list of all your biggest files from anywhere on your computer. If you know that any of them are unwanted, you can delete them.

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.

Happy Computing!

The Geeks on Tour website is an online classroom for Travelers who want to learn to use their computers for managing digital photos, making blogs, using maps and other online resources. Anyone can watch our free sample videos, read articles on our Articles and Links Blog, sign up for our free monthly newsletter, or Picasa weekly tips. A small fee makes you a 'member' and you can then view any of our 140+ video tutorials on these subjects. If you're an RV traveler and you have a Web site, please add it to our list.