We had a great time at the Gypsy Journal Rally. Now we're getting ready for the big FMCA International Convention Feb 25-28 in Pomona, CA. We will be presenting 6 of our seminars there: Internet on the Road, Digital Photos with Picasa, Safe Computing, Every RVer Needs a Blog, Google Earth, and Making Movies from your Photos with Photostory 3. When not giving one of our seminars, you'll probably find us hanging out around the Internet Cafe and Computer help desk in the Information Center.

If you're going, stop by and say Hi! You can see the specific times and rooms for our seminars on the FMCA website, or on the home page of www.GeeksOnTour.com. If you are a member of FMCA (Family Motorcoach Ass'n) be on the lookout for your March issue of the magazine. We wrote the article about High-Speed Internet on the Road!

As always, you can keep track of us by watching our blog at: www.geeksontour.blogspot.com.

In this newsletter

• Article #1 is about using our Tutorials on the DVD.
• Article #2 is about keeping your computer up-to-date.
• Article #3 is about Printing when you have no printer.
• Last are a couple of quicktips: a shortcut to get to your desktop, and using your scroll wheel to increase/decrease text size.

If you know someone you think would be interested in this newsletter, please forward it to them. If you have any requests for future articles, please send us an email.

Geeks on Tour Video Tutorials on DVD

I hope you have tried watching some of our Video Tutorials and learned about Picasa, Blogger, or general computer use from them. They are currently available for free on our website and you can also purchase them on disk . They cover many of the topics we present in our seminars, plus a lot more. After our seminars, many people ask, "will you come home and sit next to me at my computer?" With our video tutorials DVD, we can! I get to spend more time when recording the videos. At our seminars I'm always watching the clock.

We spoke to lots of people at the rally last week about our DVDs. Some people asked if they could play them on the TV. No, they only play on your computer. When I asked why they wanted it to play on the TV, they replied, "So I can follow the instructions on the computer at the same time." Ahhhh, now I understand. So, I showed them how you can pause the playback of the video, switch to a different window on your computer to practice with your own software, then switch back to the video and start it playing again. You can also drag the playhead to any point in the video. Already watched the beginning and want to skip to the end? Just drag the playhead forward. Spaced out for the last couple minutes and need to back up? No problem, just drag the playhead back.

"Oh, that looks easy enough!" So they bought one. What really made me feel good is the woman who bought a DVD, watched a few videos and then came back to buy another. She thought it was so good, she wanted to give one to a friend. Someone who bought a DVD a few months ago asked me if they ever wear out because she watches them over and over again!

Right now, we sell our Picasa seminar-on-a-disk, Blogger, and Computer Essentials. These single-topic CDs are $15 each. OR, you can purchase the Complete Collection on a DVD which includes all the lessons from the Essentials, Blogger and Picasa CDs, plus 3 on Google Earth, 2 on WiFi, 4 on Safe Computing and 2 Quicktips. The DVD sells for $39.

#1 Safety Procedure: Keep up-to-date

There are lots of things you can do and software you should have installed on your computer to protect it from Viruses and Spyware. See our videos and handouts on Safe Computing for more details. But the number one, most important thing is to have your computer's operating system UP TO DATE. It is very easy to do, just turn automatic updates ON and your computer will update itself whenever it is online.

How do you know if your automatic updates are on? Just go to your Security Center: Control Panel / Security Center in both XP and Vista. You should see an indicator that Automatic Updates is ON. If not, turn it on.

The automatic updates will only install the critical updates, also known as 'patches.' We call them patches because they 'patch' security holes. These are the holes that allow viruses to enter your computer. If the holes have been patched, viruses can't get in!

Here's a typical warning about a virus going around,

"A user receives an email titled “You’ve received a postcard” in his inbox and is requested to open the link contained in the message body in order to view the virtual postcard. On visiting the link, a cocktail of browser and application exploits that attempts a drive-by install of malware on the users machine is performed. "

You have to read almost to the end of the page before you see the fine print, " ... install of malware is attempted on unpatched machines."

If you have installed the patches, the Windows Updates, you are not vulnerable. Is it possible to get infected even though your computer is up-to-date? Yes. Is it likely? No. My computer is online 24/7 except when we're on the road. I've only had one virus in 5 years.

Printing when you don't have a printer.

Lots of RVers travel with a computer. Not so many have a printer. If you just want to browse the web, or read and send email, you don't need a printer. But every once in a while, you do need to print. If you have a friend nearby with a printer, just attach your file to an email and ask your friend to print it. If that's not an option, the easiest thing to do is to copy the document to a USB drive, then take that drive to somewhere you can use a printer.

You might not know what I'm talking about when I say USB drive. They're also called thumb drives, jump drives, flash drives, and travel drives. They look like the image at right. You plug them into one of the USB ports on your computer and they show up as a drive letter in 'My Computer.' If you don't have one of these drives, you can buy them just about anywhere. Expect to pay about $20 for 1 gigabyte.

You can save files to these drives; you can copy files to and from the USB drive; and you can delete files from the USB drive. So, if you have a file that needs to be printed, you can copy it to the USB drive and take it to somewhere with a printer. Office supply stores with copy and printing departments know how to deal with these drives. Just take the drive in, tell them the name of the file you want printed, and they'll take care of it.

The only problem left is if your file was created by an uncommon program. If the office supply store doesn't have the right program, they won't be able to print the file. The solution is to convert your file to a .pdf (portable document format) type file. You can do that with a free download program at www.cutepdf.com.

Quick Tips

Quick Launch to the desktop: Sometimes you need an icon that is on your desktop, but you have to close - or minimize - several programs to get there. In a previous newsletter, I told you about the keyboard shortcut to quickly view the desktop. There is also an icon in your Quick Launch Bar that does the same thing.

This is the Vista Quick Launch bar - the area directly to the right of the Start button. The 'show desktop' icon is the first one of these three.

This is the XP Quick Launch bar - the area directly to the right of the Start button. The 'show desktop' icon is the last one of these three.

Changing Text size: When you're trying to read a web page, do you find yourself hunting for different glasses? Try this neat trick to increase the text size. Hold down the Ctrl key and spin the mouse wheel up away from you. If you made it too large, just spin the wheel the other way.

If you're using the touch pad, the right side of the pad is the equivalent of the scroll wheel. Rub it up and it's just like you're spinning the wheel up.

This doesn't work on all websites, but enough to make it worthwhile. To get the text back to 'normal', you can use the 'Page' menu. Choose Zoom and 100%.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. Your next issue will be in 2-3 weeks. 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. To see the archives of past newsletters, go to www.geeksontour.com/newsletters.

Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com