What is Cloud Computing?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our E-mail Digest or RSS Feed. We will then send you the stories that are posted each day in an e-mail digest. We use a service called Feedburner for delivery of these emails. You will receive an e-mail from Feedburner after you subscribe and you must click on that email to activate your subscription. Thanks for visiting and enjoy all the information! RV.Net Blog AdminWe (Chris and Jim of Geeks on Tour) are currently in Colorado Springs at the RVSEF Lifestyle, Education, and Safety Conference.  We are presenting two seminars today for the RVers in attendance.  The first one is on Cloud computing and how we take advantage of it in our Fulltime RVing lifestyle.  We thought our online RV.net readers might want to come along for the ride! The ‘Cloud’ is simply The Internet – but it is taking on special meaning as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others are offering accounts where you can have your own slice of the sky.  They also offer device independence.  If you can start a document with your computer, finish it on your tablet, and view it on your smartphone, you’re using Cloud Computing.  With names like DropBox, Google Drive, iCloud, or SkyDrive, it no longer matters what device you have in your hand because the application, and the content is in the Cloud. The Cloud is the Internet So, where is this cloud?  And who owns it?  Remember … the ‘Cloud’ is simply... Read more

MS Streets and Trips to Plan Your Travels

Long before we took to the road in our RV, we had a computer training center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida called Computer Savvy.  We were a Microsoft Authorized Training Center and one of the classes was Mappoint.  Mappoint was a very expensive mapping, routing, and demographics database program.  As an authorized training center we had our own copies of all the software, including Mappoint.  So, after we sold the training center and became RVers – we figured we’d give Mappoint a try for planning and navigating our travels.  Mappoint’s inexpensive little brother is called Streets and Trips.  We installed it on our laptop, bought the USB GPS receiver for it and found a place to mount the laptop in the cab of our 30 foot Class C motorhome.  That was our sole mapping and navigation program for our first few years on the road – 2003-6. Here’s the very first video we made about MS Streets and Trips. Then came the Garmin dashboard GPS, the Rand McNally, and Google Maps on our Android smartphones.  Streets and Trips had to take a backseat while we played with all these new toys.  But, we still used Streets and Trips when we had time to sit at our computers and dream about our future plans.  There’s a lot of good things to be said about all of those while you’re driving and want voice-directed turn by turn directions, but nothing beats Streets and Trips for the planning part.  Now, with our new MS Surface Tablet that... Read more

Use Blogger to Keep Your Journals

Did you keep a diary when you were a kid?  I did.  I love being able to go back in time and find words that express exactly what was going on.  Many of my paper journals have been lost or destroyed over the years.  I wanted something better for our travel logs.  When we started thinking about traveling in an RV back in 2003 – I found Blogger.com and decided to keep my journals there.  Tioga and George were my inspiration.  A solo, fulltime RVer, George used Blogger and wrote every day!  Because of reading his blog, we met up with George on the road a few times.   We credit Blogger with making us many friends over the years. Most everyone we meet who travels wants some way to record and share their travels.  Some keep a paper notebook just for themselves, some send an email blast to their list of friends.  We think Blogger is the easiest way to keep your journals.  It’s free, and it’s certainly simple to share with your friends – just tell them the link.  They can even subscribe to your blog via email and get a message in their inbox every time you post.  What if you don’t want to share? If you just want a private journal – Blogger has settings for that.  You can even specify a small group of people that are the only ones with access.  You could give each of those people the ability to write in the blog and turn it into a family affair!  You could even have one public blog... Read more

Printing Pictures with Picasa

I don’t print.  We live in an RV – there’s no place to put printed photo albums!  I love being able to share my pictures by uploading them to Picasa Web Albums / Google+.  (see Member Tutorial Video: Intro to Web Albums)  But that’s me.  I know that some people still like to have prints.  And, I have been known to print some pictures for my Mom to have.    Printing to Your Own Printer Just select the picture (or pictures) you want to print and click the Print button at the bottom of Picasa’s screen (see Member Tutorial Video Printing).  You will have options for print size, Shrink to Fit, printing captions on borders, printer setup options, and number of copies.  For a quick way to get something printed, this works great, but keep reading and I’ll tell you a much better way to print your pictures. Let the Pros do the Printing You will get much better results if you use commercially available photo-printing services like Walgreens, Walmart, Shutterfly, or CVS.  Many people know that already and they export their photos to a USB thumb drive and take them to the store for processing.  Oh no!  It’s so much easier than that!  Picasa will upload your pictures (the edited version) directly to Walgreens, Walmart, Shutterfly, and more.  Then you can go pick up the finished prints in an hour!  Or you can have them mailed to you – or whoever you want to get them. Here’s how:  Just... Read more

Using MovieMaker for your Slideshows and Videos

How many of you have a camera that takes video.  A bunch, right?  Now, how many of you ever put that video together with pictures and music and made a movie that you can enjoy showing to others?  Not so many, huh? Let’s give it another shot OK?  Windows MovieMaker 2012 is really quite simple if you take it slow.  Don’t try to import 2 hours of video and edit it down to a 5 minute movie right away.  Start by learning how to do slide shows with your pictures.  Windows MovieMaker is a free program from Microsoft, it is part of what was called Windows Live Essentials, now it’s just Windows Essentials.  If you don’t already have it,you can download MovieMaker here.  Even if you do have it, check the version, it was upgraded and improved in August of 2012.  It is now version 2012. Import the pictures with the ‘Add Photos and Videos’ button Drag the pictures into the order you want Set your timing.  Each picture can have it’s own duration, or you can select all the pictures and enter the duration for all of them.  The easiest way to select all is with the Ctrl-A shortcut.  If you don’t set your own duration, the default is 7 seconds – much too long. Set your transitions.  Same thing, you can do them one at a time, or all at once by clicking ‘Apply to All’.  Transitions are on the Animations tab. Just hover over each one and you’ll see what it does.  Once you click it, the selected picture will show a gray triangle on its left side indicating... Read more

RVers Learn About Technology

Marion Kerns was not happy when her husband, Karl, said he signed them up for a computer learning rally.  She told him that she would just stay in the RV and do her quilting while he went to class.  But no, that wasn’t Karl’s plan!  He made her come to class along with him.  By the end of the week, Marion was seen carrying her iPad with her everywhere.  With a little extra encouragement in a one-on-one session, Marion had learned enough to open her eyes to new uses for her tablet computer, but what she liked most about the rally was the small size.  With only 20 couples who shared breakfast and dinner each day of the rally, she said it felt like family by the end of the week and she truly enjoyed herself.  Good job Karl! TechnoGeek Learning Rally is for RV Travelers It’s called the TechnoGeek Learning Rally and it is co-hosted by Geeks on Tour and TechnoRV.  RV travelers actually use technology more than average seniors because it is just so useful to our lifestyle.  Whether it’s GPS technology for getting us where we want to go, or cellphone/smartphone technology for keeping us in touch wherever we are, RVers are quick to adopt.  And then there’s the photos!  We like to have good cameras and take lots of photos of our travels.  Learning about the different settings on our cameras help make those pictures better, and then using Picasa afterwards can improve them even more. Some people came... Read more

Google Maps from the Web to Your Smartphone

Use your computer to mark places using Google Maps, and you’ll see them on your smartphone!  I love this feature of Google Maps – this is the appeal of ‘cloud computing.’  Use whatever device is most practical and see the results on any other device. Let’s say I’m researching where to stay as we travel from Fort Lauderdale to Bowling Green, Kentucky.  I will use lots of different resources to do this: Streets and Trips with the POI Megafile is my first choice, then I’ll supplement that with websites for RV Park Reviews, Georgia State Parks, Passport America etc.  Google Maps may or may not be part of the tools we use to find places to stay, but it’s definitely a good idea to mark the places once we’ve made our decisions.   How to Create ‘My Places’ with Google Maps First, you need to go to the website for Google Maps – www.maps.google.com.  Have you ever noticed the other button, beside ‘Get Directions’, for ‘My places’?’  That’s where you need to be in order to mark your special places.  For this to work, you need to be logged in with a Google Account.  If you’re not logged in, then clicking on ‘My Places’ will take you to a login screen – you can also create an account here if needed.  If you are logged in, take a look in the upper right of your screen and check the account that is being used.  Lots of people have more than one Google account, you need to be... Read more

Pictures of Anastasia Island State Park in Florida

It’s places like this that give me joy in using my good digital SLR camera, and then viewing and editing the pictures later in Picasa.  The picture of the two of us is of particular interest since we were all alone on this beach, and we didn’t have a tripod.  How did we get that picture?  The answer is at the bottom of this post. Anastasia Island is a Florida State park on the beach at St. Augustine.  We only stayed there one night, but we made our way to the beach at those all-important photography times of sunset and sunrise.  I can’t stop looking at these pictures and just feeling love for the world of beauty that we live in.  I took over 250 pictures!  With help from Picasa’s Side-by-Side editing feature, I chose the 49 best and then edited them so they look even better.  I hope you enjoy them! The better way to view the pictures is to follow this link to the pictures on Google+, then click on Slideshow.  That will show them full-screen. My Favorite Picasa Editing features: Just one example of Before and After editing in Picasa.  I hope you agree … the one on the right is better! Crop: most all of my pictures need a crop I’m Feeling Lucky: I always click on I’m Feeling Lucky. Sometimes – especially with sunsets – I don’t like what it does so I click on Undo Straighten: my horizon always seems a bit crooked when taking ocean pictures! Graduated Tint: to make blue skies bluer, or sunsets... Read more

Using Picasa’s Search to Find your Pictures

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksonTour.TV If you have thousands of pictures of your travels, you need some way to find them.  I look to Google for all my search needs, so what better place than Google’s photo software, Picasa, to turn to for searching my pictures? One of the reasons I use captions on all my good pictures is so I can find them even years later.  I keep most of my 40,000+ pictures on an external hard drive, but they all show up in Picasa’s Library so I can view any digital picture I’ve ever taken as long as I can find it! // // // ]]> Let’s say I want to see a picture of that cool Stonehenge place we visited in Washington State.  I just type Stonehenge into the search box, next to the magnifying glass in the upper right corner.  Picasa will instantly match whatever you type by looking at captions, folder names and descriptions, file names, tags, people, albums, and more.  Since I entered captions on all the good pictures of Stonehenge, my search will produce results.  Notice that it even finds that we were there 2 times, once in 2004 and again in 2010.  I didn’t have to know that, it found all pictures with the word Stonehenge in the filename or caption. Back to View All When Picasa finds matches, it filters the pictures in the library to just those that match. It will appear that all your other pictures are gone. Let’s say that, in my thousands of photos, I have a few hundred with the word ‘beach’ somewhere identifying them. If I search for... Read more

CoPilot Live: an RV-Aware GPS for Mobile Phones and Tablets

by Jim Guld, www.geeksontour.tv CoPilot Live Premium, North America Maps $14.99 for iOS and Android. For complete pricing and map availability, visit their website at www.copilotlive.com. There is a free version, but it does not offer voice-directed turn-by-turn instructions. Technology can make travel a richer experience. Teaching technology to travelers is what Geeks On Tour is all about. We have been using GPS for navigation since we started RVing back in ’03. Keeping up with this stuff is a full time job and we love it. Visit us at www.geeksontour.tv. Our Advice Don’t get rid of your paper maps and atlases. Do get the CoPilot Live app for your mobile devices – we like it! It is available for Android phones and tablets, iOS iPhones and iPad 3G/4G, Windows mobile, and laptops, too. Be sure to read thru the excellent user guide available on their website under the Support menu. ALK, the company behind CoPilot has been in the business since 1979. They know what they are doing, and they do it well. I first got the CoPilot app for my Droid RAZR phone and used it in our travels from Louisville, KY up through New Jersey, New York, and New England. While in Vermont, I bought the new Google Nexus 7 tablet. The main reason for getting the tablet was for navigation. This review is based on those 2 devices. Stand-alone Dashboard GPS navigation tools have been around quite a while, and they still have their place. More and more I see them being replaced by general purpose devices... Read more

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