June was a fun month. We spent much of the time as a tourist in Iowa. There's really a lot to see here. Our favorites were spending time in places where favorite movies were filmed, like Bridges of Madison County and Field of Dreams

Next up it will be on to Bowling Green, Ohio for the FMCA International convention - July 20 to 23. We will be presenting all 7 of our popular seminars there, PLUS the hands-on Boot Camp. See our schedule page for details.

Welcome to our new Members!

June Articles

So you don't miss anything, here's a list of other articles we've written this month. Notice that the Picasa tips now have a domain all their own:
Picasa Tip: What happened to Sharpen?
Picasa Tip: Folders and Subfolders
Picasa Tip: 4 Clicks to Dramatically improve your Photos
Picasa Tip: Picasa to Facebook
What is Twitter?
Internet by Tethered Cellphone - Reboot

In this newsletter

• Use a Blog for a Club Website
• How much is 5 Gigabytes?
• Searching for Files in Vista

www.GeeksOnTour.com  
An online classroom offering Computer Education for Travelers with Show-Me-How Video tutorials on Picasa, Blogger, Google Earth, Basic Windows Computing and more

Join Today! Normally $39 for one year. Special pricing for June, 2009 = $29. If you get one question answered in our Q&A forum, you've surpassed the value!

$29 Membership Special - June 2009

Use a Blog for a Club Website

We spend a lot of time teaching people how to use Blogger.com to keep a Blog. We define a Blog as a website with dated entries displayed in reverse chronological order. They are usually used as a journal. We keep a log of our travels on our Blog, as do many of you.

The reason blogs are so easy is because you use a web-based program like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to make them. These are also completely free.

What I want you to think about now is using the blogging software (Blogger or WordPress) to create a club website. I know lots of clubs, RV parks, FMCA chapters, or Good Sam groups that want to have a website of their own. Most of them tap the skills of a member who knows how to create regular old websites. That means than nothing gets added or changed on the website except what that one person will do. If the club loses that one person, they lose the website.

Winter before last, we stayed at Palm Creek RV in Casa Grande, Arizona. We got involved with several of the activities and clubs there, so I set them up with a blog for several of the clubs. It has a main page, with links to all the different clubs:

Each 'page' is actually a separate blog, but it's all under one account, and I used the same template so they all look the same. When you click on the Pickleball club, you see:

This page is being maintained by someone in charge, or at least very involved in the Pickleball club. If the time comes that she doesn't want to do it anymore, it's pretty easy to show someone else how. And notice the menu of links at the right which include the club calendar and the club photo album. These are the free tools of Google Calendar and Google (Picasa) Web Albums. You can click on the images above to visit the real pages if you like.

To use Blogger, I had to create makeshift pages by creating separate blogs and tying them all together with links. If you use Wordpress, creating pages is part of the package. The RV.net blog is much more complex than any club would create, but it's a good example of what's possible. This is not a simple journal, it is an industry website with articles by 30+ authors. And, it's all done with Wordpress. There is an extensive menu system which navigates to separate pages, like the Authors page, and to groupings of articles.

Wordpress is a little more difficult than Blogger, but you have more options. Alberta Roamers is an example of using Wordpress for a RVing group's website. Notice the menu at the top - those are pages. Also notice the categories at the right - those are groups of blog posts organized by categories.

A reader recently asked me about using Google Sites to create a website for her club. This is another free service and, yes, you could make your club site with it but a blog would be much easier. You see a 'regular old website' is something that you have to create each page, lay it out and attach it to a menu option somewhere. A blog is actually a database of entries which can then be laid out simply by choosing settings. For example, in the Alberta Roamers site, you'll see a category called 'Lunches' and another called 'Events.' If this was done on a 'regular-old-website' you would have had to create a page called Lunches and another called Events, and it would be up to you to have a menu option somewhere linked to Lunches and one linked to Events.

Let's say you decided that you didn't need 'Lunches', you wanted to call everything an Event. In the regular-old-website you would need to copy all the content from the Lunches page and put it on the Events page, then you would need to remove the Lunches page, and remove it also from all menus where it had been displayed. In the blogging software, all you have to do is change the category of the Lunches post to Events - they will automatically come under the Events link now and the Lunches link would go away because there's nothing there.

Also, Blogs allow for comments, so it can become a 2 way conversation. A wonderful feature for a club website.

We would love to hear from any of you who have a club blog. A day or so after this newsletter goes out to our subscribers, I will be posting these articles at Blog.GeeksOnTour.com. Please go find this article there and leave us a comment with a link to your blog.

How much is 5 Gigabytes?

If you use a cellular service for your broadband Internet connection as you travel, you are probably aware of the 5 Gigabyte per month limitation on your usage.

The obvious question, once you're told that your account has a 5GB/mo limit is, "How much is that?" Well ... it's a lot. Most people we've asked tell us that they use less than 2Gigabytes/mo, but then ... there was this one guy who was completely unaware. He downloaded movies, watched streaming videos, and participated in peer-to-peer file sharing groups. He got a $2,000 bill that he had to pay.

First let's check that you understand the measurement. A Byte is one character - the smallest measurable unit. A Kilobyte is roughly 1,000 bytes, a Megabyte is roughly 1,000 Kilobytes and a Gigabyte is roughly 1,000 Megabytes. So 1,500 MB = 1.5 GB, and 5GB = 5,000MB. If you used the same amount of data transfer every day, a 5GB limit for a 30 day month would mean you could use approximately 165MB/day.

Got it? Ok.

Here are some rough estimates of the amount of data that is being transferred during typical Internet activities:

• Surfing the Internet and looking at web pages with pictures = approx 30 MB / hr
• Surfing the Internet and watching videos = 100 MB/hr
• Emailing photos = negligible if you use something like Picasa to resize them first
• Download of Windows updates = usually <10 MB, but can be over 100 when you least expect it!
• Download a full length movie = 2 Gigabytes

5 Gigabytes/month is normally plenty, even for a heavy Internet user. Where it can get problematic is if you use a router to enable two or more people to use the same connection. If two people are using the connection regularly, you need to keep a watch on your usage. Whatever software is managing your connection, should tell you about your usage. If you are using Verizon, you are probably using the software called VZAccess and you can click on the Usage button, or you can log into your account at Verizonwireless.com to see your usage. Here's a sample screen:

At first glance I thought we were *way* under our allotment. I thought the numbers in the right column were totals for each day, but, no. If you look at the first column you'll see that there are several entries for each day. The important thing is to look at your total and make sure it's proportionally under 5,000MB.

This is the first month that we have relied on our cellular connection all month. There was just one day when we were in an RV park with good Wi-Fi, and you bet we took advantage! We watched a couple of our favorite online TV shows (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart!) and we downloaded some humongous Microsoft Updates that we'd been putting off.

We use a tethered cellphone for our Internet connection right now. We have it tethered to a Cradlepoint router so both Jim and I share the connection. So, these statistics are for 2 geeks using one connection. We are at our computers at the very least 2 hours every day (sometimes 12), and we do watch Youtube video clips, we do have to upload and download rather large files.

I'm writing this on June 24, and since the beginning of the month we have used only 2.7GB!

We have been careful. We have not been watching TV shows on the web, or downloading movies, or watching streaming video. We look at our usage stats regularly. Even though 5GB is plenty, it still makes me very nervous to have that limit. But if 2 geeks who are on the computer all the time can stay under the 5G limit, most of you should be fine.

Searching for Files in Vista

If you've watched our series of 'Show-Me-How' videos on Vista, you know that my *favorite* feature is the fast search. I am so accustomed now to simply clicking on the Start button and then typing what I want (powerpoint, earth, tax letter etc.) that I have a really hard time on an XP computer any more. On XP, I have to know where something is - Vista has spoiled me.

Today I used another aspect of Vista's search. In the Files and Folders area. I was looking to see what new video files I had created since the beginning of the month. My videos are all in the Documents/Camtasia Studio folder. From there every video has it's own folder so I couldn't just sort by date. Besides, there are lots of other files in there besides my video production files. Every video starts as a Camtasia recording file.

Here's what I did. First I opened my Documents folder by clicking on Start and then Documents. From here I could see the Camtasia Studio folder so I double-clicked on that. Then I typed Date: >6/1/09 into the search bar. Lastly, I clicked on the drop-down arrow next to the Type column and put a checkmark in the 'Camtasia Recorder Document.'

Realize that the results come not just from the Camtasia Studio folder, but all subfolders below. And, a really cool thing is that, since I have this question often, ("What are the most recent videos I've made?") I can save this search by clicking on 'Save Search', and call it Recent Videos. Then, next time I have the question, I'll open Documents, click on Searches and open my saved 'Recent Videos' search. I'll probably want to change the date, but I won't have to remember anything else.

This is just a tiny sample of what's available with search in Files and Folders. If you're a member, be sure to review the Vista videos in both the Vista series as well as the Boot Camp series of videos. Member Log In here.

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.