Storm Warnings on your Cell Phone

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We’ve spent most of the last month in ‘Tornado Alley’ - Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota - and we’ve heard lots of conversations about weather alert radios. We’re normally at our computers and on the Internet, so we use a website, my-cast.com to monitor weather. We really like that website, and we didn’t want to buy a radio. We also heard some of the drawbacks of the radio. Most require you to know the county you’re in … right - I’m lucky to know what state I’m in! And, you could get annoying, unrelated alerts in the middle of the night.

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Computer Education for Travelers

We just completed 4 days of teaching computer seminars at the FMCA (Family Motor Coach Ass’n) rally in St. Paul, Minnesota. We taught 8 seminars to audiences of 200-400 people. It was very gratifying to see so many RVers hungry for the computer education we have to offer. One woman came up to me with a big hug saying she loved me! Apparently, after our seminars, she realized that she was doing so many things the hard way. We had just made her life so much easier, she exclaimed.

Why do travelers, in particular, need computer education? Read more

Photographic EXIF Data

I’ve mentioned EXIF data a couple of times - it might be a good idea to spend some time explaining what it is… Back in the point & shoot film days it was not unusual for cameras to print the date in the viewing area of the film: (Photo Credit - Anne Guido) The advantage - you knew when the photograph was taken and, if you kept good notes, could figure out where you were that day and be able to identify the location. The disadvantage - You end up with numbers in all your photographs! Some of the pro cameras provided solutions - I used a MF-23 Data Back with my Nikon F4 that, among many functions, was capable of printing all kinds of data about the image either in the picture area or in the space between frames on the film. Of course when printing the data between frames & working with slides, you had to peal open slide frames to see the data, but at least it didn’t have to be part of the picture.

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Let the Computer Navigate with GPS

I’ve had some conversations with fellow RVers that went something like this: “What kind of GPS navigation system do you use as you travel?”, I asked. They responded with something akin to: “I don’t need no stinking GPS to do my navigating! I can read a map just fine.”

hmmm, that got me to thinking. I’ve told many people that I won’t travel without a GPS navigation system anymore, Read more

Mail Forwarding on the Road

If you use a computer and the Internet as you travel, you may not even need your mail forwarded! Some forwarding services are now adding the ability to scan your mail so you can read it online. Read more

Picasa Slideshow for your Blog

Are you one of the hundreds of RVers who keep a blog? I am. I love that I can post photos and stories for all my friends and family to know where we are and what we’re doing. I post both pictures and stories of our travels. Sometimes, there’s just too many pictures! That’s where a slideshow comes in handy. Instead of posting 25 pictures and making my reader scroll down and down and down, Picasa Web Albums lets me insert a slide show like the one above.

If you have Picasa Web Albums, you can copy a few lines of code for a slideshow of any one album. Those lines of code can then be pasted into most any blog or other website. If you don’t have Picasa Web Albums, there are ’show me how’ tutorial videos on my website at www.GeeksOnTour.com. To see exactly how I made the slideshow above, play the video below. Or, here is a higher-quality version of the video.

Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com

I Love my Satellite Internet

I write a lot about the 3 different ways to get high-speed Internet as you travel: Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Satellite. We use all three. Satellite is by far the most expensive. In the past year, we have heard from so many people who love their cellular Internet that I’ve considered getting rid of our satellite dish and going all cellular. Read more

Of Mice and Laptops

We are currently in Branson, Missouri attending the RV-Dreams rally. This is a very computer intensive group because they all got to know each other through the RV-Dreams website and forums. They’ve been chatting with each other online for a year or so, now they get to meet face-to-face and party! So, what do they do? Sit down at a table and get online to the chatroom! Actually, some of these ladies are learning to use the chatroom by joining this impromptu class.

For the last two days, we taught a Computer Boot Camp pre-rally. One of the things we taught is a real quick tip that I thought I’d pass along to the RV.net readers.

By far the majority of computers used by RVers are laptops. Users of laptops have a love/hate relationship with the touchpads that perform the functions of a mouse. If you hate it, it’s probably because the mouse pointer on the screen jumps to unpredictable locations because you touched the pad and you didn’t mean to. You may use an external, USB or wireless mouse so you don’t have to use the touchpad. If this describes you, please watch the video below which will show you how you can customize, or even completely disable, that pesky touchpad. Some computers have a button above the touchpad that will turn it off and on, but most do not.

Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com

Internet on the Road, Bandwidth Limits

We’ve come a long way since dial-up. Just five years ago, if you wanted to get Internet while RVing, you had to schlep your laptop up to the office and plug into the one phone cable. It was very slow, and you needed to limit your time so other guests could use it.

Now you have 3 choices for high-speed, wireless Internet access:

1. Wi-Fi
2. Satellite
3. Cellular

We depend on our Datastorm Satellite Dish to give us Internet wherever we are.  But we also use Wi-Fi when available, and we tether our cell phone to the computer when the other two methods are not available.

All three of these, when working well, will get you high-speed.  Almost as good as the DSL or Cable you can get at home.  What they won’t get you is unlimited high-speed like you can get at home.  The satellite option has the most clearly regulated limit.  It’s called ‘FAP’ and it stands for Fair Access Policy.  You see, everyone with a satellite dish for Internet is sharing the satellites.  The satellites I’m familiar with are owned by Hughes and Hughes takes care of managing everyone’s usage so no one customer takes more than their fair share of the bandwidth. Read more

Emailing Photos with Picasa

Have you ever opened a photo attached to an email and found yourself staring at a person’s eyeball taking up the entire screen? That’s what happens if the person sending the photo doesn’t know about resizing it first. That is, if you receive the photo at all! It may be so big that your email inbox simply rejects it.

Here’s a photo of my motorhome as you would see it if I emailed it to you full-size. This is how it would appear in many programs - then you would need to scroll around to see the entire photo. This photo would be taking up a lot of space in your inbox as well - 2.7 megabytes to be exact. And, if you have a mailbox that is limited to 10 megabytes, it would fill up real quick, and any further mail would be rejected.

There lots of ways to send photos with email and resize them first. Picasa is my favorite. You simply select the photo (or photos) you want to send, click the email button, and Picasa does all the rest. Watch the quick video below to see how.

Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com

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