EASY TECH ONLINE - Basics With Easy Steps for Novices

Creative Multimedia: How To Use Effects and Transitions in a Slideshow

The slideshow below illustrates how software for creating slideshows in Windows Movie Maker or other  programs offers ways be creative with EFFECTS and TRANSITIONS. 

1.  EFFECTS -  You can click to use EFFECTS to zoom in and pan across photos in a slideshow.  This makes a photo seem like a moving picture, as you can see in the slideshow example below.

2.  TRANSITIONS. In your slideshow you can insert interesting photo flips, spins, page peeling or more by clicking and choosing from the choices in TRANSITIONS.  

Five Steps to Creating a Successful Blog - Guest Blog Post by Matt Raven

Your blog is a place to vent, speak your mind, and write whatever you would like to.  If you want your blog to be successful, follow these five quick and easy steps to success.

 

1)   FORMAT AND DESIGN

Use whatever works for, you but simplicity in structure and format is always a plus.  Make your blog easy to read and have the content flow naturally.  Use visual elements to enhance your blog and to add texture. 

 

2)   CONTENT

The best content wins!  Whatever it is you’re writing about, make it solid.  Well written, concise and coherent posts will help boost your blog to success.  It also doesn’t hurt to consistently update your blog.  It will allow for greater interactivity. 

 

3)   ORIGINALITY

Because blogging has become so mainstream, it is important to be able to set your blog apart from the millions of others all over the world.  Have an ongoing theme, write creative and original content, implement a unique design.  Do something to set your blog far and above the many others and give people a reason to read it.

 

4)   BE INTERACTIVE

While blogging, encourage feedback through email or comments.  When people have something to say, follow up.  The more you put yourself out there, the more reach and effectiveness your blog will achieve.

 

5)   PROMOTE YOURSELF

Contact other bloggers in your similar field.  Ask them to link to your blog to increase credibility.  Be an online networking guru, you will never know who you will find.

 

Computer Humor - A Commercial John Cleese Made in the Early 1980's

Ten Steps to Create Your First Video With Windows Movie Maker and Upload It to Youtube

If you are making your first video you might use Windows Movie Maker software for editing since it comes with Windows on your computer for free.  Don't stress, just follow these steps.

1.  CONNECT. Connect your camcorder to the computer with the usb cable or by inserting the flash memory chip.

2.  UPLOAD. Upload the video clips.  The camcorder software will have an easy program that will probably pop up by itself when you turn on the camcorder and it is set for uploading to the computer.  If not just open the program.

3.  SAVE VIDEO CLIPS.Upload the videos, play them and delete or save them in your videos file.  Go to Windows Movie Maker, choose file, choose "import media items" and click to import the video clips you wish.  

4.  STORYBOARD. Drag the clips you want to use to the empty boxes on the storyboard across the bottom of Windows Movie Maker. 

Click on the menu items on the left side of the page to choose to add titles and credits, and transitions.The transitions are the means by which the video moves from one clip to the next, for instance by fading, or using some type of pattern as one frame changes to the first frame of the next clip. 

5.  PLAY THE MOVIE. Play your movie by clicking the arrows above the storyboard.  Edit clips by choosing the icon for "split" below the viewing screen on the right. 

This will split a clip as many times as you wish.  The extra split sections show up then as clips and you can right click and choose remove if you don't want that section.

6.  PUBLISH.Click on the menu on the left side of the page where it says Publish to and choose "This Computer" and save the movie to your desktop. 

As the wizard moves through the screens to do this choose the radio button to "compress" the video.

7.  YOUTUBE ACCOUNT.Go to youtube and create an account if you don't have one yet.  

8.  UPLOAD TO YOUTUBE. Click to choose "Upload" and fill out the information about the title and description of the video.

9.  BROWSE FOR VIDEO. Click to "browse" and find the file for your video on your desktop, Then click upload video and give it time to do this.edit

10.  VIEW ON YOUTUBE. View your video on youtube and the video information if you wish. 

Top Ten 2008 Website Creation Software Reviews - Ease of Use for Novices a Factor

At Website Creation Software Reviews you can check their ratings for the top ten web building softwares.  These products are suitable for novices. 

Ease of use and good support are important factors. You don't need to know how to write code or be a computer whiz to use these.  Point and click, wizards, and templates are used. 

For free website software that offers point and click with templates you can take a look at Office Live.

Some of the top products that professionals use, such as Dreamweaver, are not listed but this list will help novices to find suitable software.  The very popular Coffeecup software is also not listed, but it's been one of the top softwares for a long time.

The top ten products from the site are listed below.

• Web Easy ProfessionalWeb Plus
• Web Studio
• IMS Web Engine
• Site Spin
• Web Page Maker
• Perfect Website Creator from Cosmi 
• Web Page Wizard
• Thundersite
• Ezypage

Video Tutorial on Photo Software: Free Alternative to Adobe Photoshop - GIMP.org - Open Source Software

Submitting Your Site to Web Search Engines

Below is a list of web search engines that will accept your URL.  Follow the directions at the site to go through the process of submitting your site to be listed with the search engines.

You can also check to see if your blog or website software automatically submits new sites.

Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html  
Yahoo - http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
Altavista - http://www.altavista.com/addurl/  
AllTheWeb - http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php  
Dmoz - http://www.dmoz.org/help/submit.html  
Webcrawler - http://www.webcrawler.com  
Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com  
Metacrawler - http://metacrawler.com  
LookSeek - http://www.lookseek.com  

10 Tips to Get Help With Your Blog or Website

1. GETTING HELP. You can turn to the menus at Help, Support, Forums, FAQ's, and search the internet as well for answers when you need help.  You might want to print out the help steps.  This prevents confusion and avoids slowing down your computer from having too many windows open at once.
2. HELP MENUS The menus work the same way an internet search box works.  You type in a word or phrase related to the problem and related articles pop up.
3. FORUMS. If you are having a problem someone else has probably had the same problem sometime too.  Under "Forums" you can enter in search terms such as "uploading pictures" and you'll see the questions and answers from other bloggers. 
4. EMAIL SUPPORT - Be sure to try the other help and support options before using email. Telephone support may also  be available, depending upon the software.  
5. FAQ's - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - This support function has a search box, enter a term or phrase, and related answers pop up.   
6. INTERNET HELP - Other bloggers and articles can be found on the internet, not just at Wordpress, because often blogs that discuss Wordpress.
7. SEARCH YOUTUBE.COM for a solution if you think there might be video tutorial on it.  For instance, search for "wordpress posts" and you'll find a lot of tutorials.
8. SEARCH ASK.COM - Use the search engine at ask.com.  Just type in your whole question or the keywords in it to get a list of with answers related to it.   
9. WIKIPEDIA.ORG - Search the Wikipedia for definitions and other information by entering keywords
10. REFDESK.COM - List of hyperlinks to tutorials, definitions and internet resources can be found there.

An Introduction to Web Site Traffic and Free Analytic Software to Measure It

There are a variety of free website analytic softwares that you can use to measure your blog or website traffic.  

This is useful because you can get data that helps in the continued development of the site.  Which topics are most popular?  Least popular?  Where do the visitors come from? 

REWARDS OF HAVING TRAFFIC ANALYTIC SOFTWARE

• OTHERS ARE READING YOUR CONTENT. Checking the traffic analytics also provides a feeling of reward when you can see that others are reading your material.
• CUSTOMERS AND BUSINESS CONTACTS.  For a business blog or website the traffic analysis is critical because visitors may become customers or business contacts.

A few of the many topics measured by a traffic analysis of the website include the following.

• VISITS - the number of visits
• UNIQUE VISITORS - individual visitors might click to go off the site and come back
• LOCATIONS - (city and country) of visitors
• REPEAT VISITORS
• NEW VISITORS
• TOP LANDING PAGES - which pages bring in the most visitors
• TOP EXITING PAGES - from which pages are visitors most likely to leave the site
• KEYWORDS - searches that led visitors to your website
• TOP CONTENT - articles most viewed
• TIME SPENT ON SITE - length of time your visitors stayed
• PAGEVIEWS - how many web or blog pages were viewed, and much more.

Several of the many free softwares you can try include the following.  If you wish to have additional options you can upgrade to a software that charges a fee.

Sitemeter.com

Google.com/analytics

Statcounter.com

Video Tutorial: How To Use Free Screen Capture Software from Google's Cam Studio To Make Software Video Tutorials

Video Tutorial: How To Make Videos With Sony Vegas Movie Studio - 45 Minute Video Tutorial

MAGNIFY THE SCREEN FOR EASIER VIEWING OF THE VIDEO:  To see this video in a larger format for easier viewing click the tiny icon of a magnifying glass in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio has come out with version 8 now, but this tutorial for version 7 is still very useful.

Free Web Building Tutorials at w3schools.com

Free web builder tutorials with a wide variety of classes are available at w3schools.com.  The classes offer a Beginners Primer Tutorial for Web Building as well as one for a Developers level.  The HTML class has the student open notepad and practice entering code step by step.  This type of learning by doing is effective, and the step by step approach is low stress for novices.

Many of the classes are not for the novice, but are for those who would like to advance their knowledge and have a challenge.

Classes include:

HTML, XML,

Browser Scripting - Javascript, HTML DM, DHTML, VB Script, Ajax, E4X

Server Scripting - SQL, ASP, ADO, PHP,

.NET - .net Microsoft, .net ASP, .net Mobile

Multimedia - Media, SMIL, SVG, Flash

Web Building - Browsers, Web W3C, Quality, Semantic, Careers, Hosting, Certification

News - Betas, etc. 

How to Create a Free Website, or Online Store with Office Live, No HTML Needed

At officelive.com the Microsoft Office Live Small Business offers an easy, free way to create a website or online store.  The software uses the Microsoft type icons and it's click and create.

You don't need to write any code or understand technical terms. The webs are not ad supported, the way many of the other free web creators are today.  Your website won't have ads suddenly popping up on it. 

If this is your first website you can create one for practice, delete it, and use what you learned to create another one.  It's a good place to go for practice and experience.

Office Live Small Business includes the following.

• Free website
• Custom Domaine
• Free email
• Low cost e-commerce online store software
• Contact Manager software, marketing, customer tracking, storage for documents
• Analytics to Evaluate Website Traffic
• FAQ's, Community Message Boards, Resource Center, How To articles

Wordpress 2.5, March 2008, Video Explains Wordpress Dashboard Changes

March 2008 - Wordpress. 2.5 has arrived. This video reviews the chaneges in the dashboard and explains what's new.