Technogran's tittle tattle

What’s in a name? The G+ question.

technogran — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:37:00 +0000

Though I hate to bring up the pseudonym argument again, this post is about my own personal reasons for wanting to use my pseudonym on Google+ and why I feel that pseudonyms should be allowed. I have thought about the whole argument for a long time, since joining Google+ as a matter of fact. I’ve been on Google+ since the very beginning and I joined as Technogran, my online name and the name that just about everyone knows me by. I have used that name since first buying a computer all those years ago and my reasons for wishing to use a pseudonym are varied and I won’t bore you by going into them in detail here. As far as I’m concerned my reasons for using my pseudonym hinge on the way that Google+ differs in its intended usage as a social network from for example Facebook, which is its closest equivalent.

Facebook began as a means of socialising in college and keeping in touch. I should imagine its first initial remit was usability by students who either knew one another personally or if not, were in fairly close proximity to one another and therefore could in theory meet up at say a coffee house etc. In other words, its aim was a user base of a fairly close nature as its users would all be students. Now of course it has a user base which is world wide, but how do the majority of us tend to use Facebook now? In my case most of those I share with on Facebook are either family or friends who know me personally and who I can meet face to face any day of the week. The same is true for them also. I know where they live and they know where I live. We might not see each other for months at a time or we might see each other every week, but we all know one another personally. Although I would have loved to also use Technogran on Facebook, I am not so bothered about using my real name on there as the public never see it because my posts on there are for my family and friends only.

Now in contrast, let’s look at how Google+ got off the ground. Google invited lot’s of technically minded and corporate users to the beta of Google+. These people were chosen by Google for a reason. They wanted feedback of course, but I also believe that they did not want or intend that Google+ be a Facebook clone. By selecting a certain type of user such as technology bloggers and journalists, corporate users, professional photographers and those who work in the technology field, they automatically set the tone for how Google + tends to still be used by everyone today, for mainly serious discussion with like minded individuals who share the same interests. For me as a self confessed geek, its has been a wonderful and enlightening experience and I have learned so much from the countless users who are so expert in their own chosen fields of expertise. But, the big question is, do I KNOW any of these people personally?

The chances of me bumping into (for example) Robert Scoble down at my local pub, or seeing Louis Gray in my local Tesco’s and having a friendly chat with either of them is about as likely as this Granny going to Mars. I knew OF them before the birth of Google+ simply because I’m such a Geek and into technology myself. I know of other technology journalists and bloggers as well by name because I read their articles about subjects that interest me. It’s one of the main reasons why I begged for an invite and once on G+ felt so at home. But I don’t know any of them personally. I could recognise them if they passed me in the street because I’ve seen photos and watched videos of them on the internet or in other social sites that they are part of. But knowing OF someone is not the same as KNOWING them. They probably also know me. I’ve maybe commented on their blog posts or joined in a discussion on other sites as Technogran in the past.

So THAT is the big difference between Facebook and Google+ and one of my main reasons for wanting to be allowed to use my pseudonym on there. There is also another reason, the way that Google+ works. If I post and make it public then anyone can read that post and if they are on Google+ they can add me to one of their circles WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. I am well aware that the simple answer to that is don’t post to Public. But is that how Google really want us to use Google+? I could also call myself by my real name (which incidentally is not the one I was born with as that changed once I married) and then only have two circles, one for family and one for personal friends and only post to those two circles. However in doing so, I would be essentially cloning my Facebook usage and so there would be no real reason that I can think of to be on Google+! Besides which I don’t think for one moment that Vic Gundotra and the Google+ team intend us to use Google+ in the same way as any of us tend to use Facebook. The posts I usually make on Google+ are of little or no interest to my family and friends. I know this because I do sometimes post on there with the odd link or some other interest on Facebook and I never get any response whatsoever whereas those in my Google+ circles are usually very interested. In other words, its a whole different audience on Google+.

So, its horses for courses as the saying goes, and on Google+ where none of my audience know me personally and never will, and where by the same token I don’t know them either, I prefer NOT to use my real name but to be able to call myself Technogran which is the name I am commonly known by on the internet. Don’t believe me? Just Google it!

My new Mobile. Using the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows phone.

technogran — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:01:00 +0000

Last year I finally tried out an iPhone. It was the first time that I had used a so called ‘smart phone’ and I suppose I was late to try one compared to the rest of the world, but I couldn’t quite see how I needed to use one. Was it important for me to be able to take a picture when travelling about and then immediately share it with my social networks? Or let my online friends know where I was at any particular moment in time? All I seemed to be using a mobile for was calls and messages. I have enjoyed using the iPhone, but I didn’t feel the need to download all that many applications to it, nor did I feel that I had to have it constantly by my side all the time. I didn’t feel the need to use most of its features apart from receiving/making calls or texting my family and friends. At the end of last year, I decided to upgrade to a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows phone and for me, its the best thing I have ever done.

Why? Well, I have always liked the look of the Metro tiled interface, and the Nokia Lumia certainly looks the part. Strangely enough I’ve never been a big Nokia fan, in fact this is the first Nokia phone I’ve ever owned and I love it! Its roughly exactly the same size as the iPhone 4 and it sits comfortably in my hand, feels very sturdy and well made and although I did want the cyan backed version which unfortunately Orange didn’t have available online, I plan to solve that little problem by buying some of the coloured back covers that are available on Amazon for this model. I can then swap and change the back colour to my hearts content and change the colour of the tiles on the home screen to match as I do so!

Getting used to using the phone has been a cinch. Once you have logged into your Windows Live account (don’t worry if you don’t have one, its easy to set one up) you can set up any social networks that you tend to frequent such as Facebook, Twitter etc, and also set up any email accounts you may have such as Gmail or Hotmail for example. Those people that you keep in touch with on any of your social networks or via any email accounts you have, and any updates and posts they make will be available to read and interact with via ‘What’s New’ under the People tile on your phone. The people tile is a so called ‘live’ tile in that it changes all the time on the Home screen showing small avatars of your contacts and friends that constantly flip and change. There is also a Me tile as well which shows your own avatar and which when pressed will allow you to send an update to Facebook, Twitter or Windows Live (or all three if you prefer) by simply entering your message that you wish to share. You can also ‘Check In’ as well as long as you have ‘location’ enabled on the phone, and the resulting message sent will include where you are at that given time using Bing Maps.

I think that one of the most useful tiles if you have location turned on is the Local Scout tile. No matter where you happen to be at any given time, this tile when accessed provides the following useful info , Eat + Drink, See + Do, Shop and Highlights. (The latter consisting in my neighbourhood of, for example the National Media Museum and the Kingsgate Shopping Centre.) I will find this tile very useful when in an area that I haven’t visited before as it will enable me to find the nearest places to eat, visit or yes, even shop! For those users who own a car there is Nokia Drive, which acts as a talking navigation aid similar to a ‘TomTom’ As I don’t own a car, I can’t really report on how good this is or how well it works, as I am not sure if it would work with a walking user such as myself!

You can pin any tile to the front Home screen as you wish and easily remove it again, so for example, you could pin your family group or a certain group of people that you tend to contact the most often so that they are immediately available with just one press. Similarly you can unpin any tile by simply pressing on it and then pressing on the pin. It will then be removed from the Home screen and be placed in the right hand side list of tiles. You can also change the colour of the tiles to suit your style or mood in the settings tile. Moving a tile up to the top, or further down simply requires a held down press, and then a move with your finger to the desired location. It all works really smoothly, enabling you to quickly customise the entire Home screen to suit yourself. You can also easily choose your own wallpaper for the Start screen. Its all so easy to personalise the phone to suit your tastes and how you use it. Being able to choose which tiles are presented to you on the Home screen means that all of your most used features are near to hand and quickly accessed. In fact the entire phone is a joy to use. Its very fast both when scrolling back and forth or swiping left or right. You’ll also find the hard ‘back’ button very useful as well.

In the same way that the iPhone uses iTunes on your PC, the Nokia uses Zune and once an initial connection has been made via the USB cable to your computer, is very easily set up ready for syncing. You can choose to download music, videos or apps to Zune and then sync them to your phone using the USB connection, or alternatively you can use your own home Wi-fi network instead. The phone can also sync via Bluetooth with either other phones or other equipment which is Bluetooth enabled. Of course, you can also access apps directly on the phone via either Marketplace or Nokia’s own App Highlights tile. I have encountered no problems whatsoever using any of these methods to access any of the apps to try out on the phone. Its all worked faultlessly.

Because the Nokia Lumia 800 is a Windows phone, it makes use of SkyDrive for storage of your photos and/or documents which will become especially useful if you tend to take quite a lot of photos on your phone. For those of you who might not be familiar with SkyDrive, think of it as an extra ‘hard drive’ online ( in the cloud) for storing your photos and/or documents. As soon as you create a Windows Live ID you are given access to you own personal SkyDrive and you are allocated a massive 25GB of storage for free! If you already have used SkyDrive for storing your photo albums in the past, they will now be all available to you on your phone. When you take a photo with the phone you are given the choice of where to share your photo’s, either to Facebook, Twitter, via you email accounts, or via SkyDrive, and you can also set the phone up to upload any photo as you take it automatically to your SkyDrive for storage. So SkyDrive can be very useful because it gives you a vast amount of storage in addition to that available on the phone itself. As I have quite a few photo albums already stored over the years, its a really nice touch to be able to see and access all of them directly on the phone.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I wondered why I would ever need to use a ‘smart phone’ at all, now thanks to the Nokia Lumia 800 I am finding myself taking it everywhere I go and I absolutely love using it. I can keep in touch now with everyone and see exactly what they are doing as I travel about and I fully recommend it, especially to those of you who haven’t yet decided to try out using a smart phone and are wondering what all the fuss is about. If your also on Facebook or use Twitter, you’ll love how those social networks are ‘inbuilt’ into the phone. So keep in touch with everyone whilst your on the move with the Nokia Lumia 800! Enjoy!

Google+. From a Granny’s point of view.

technogran — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:31:00 +0000

For the last few days, I’ve been trying out Google+, the new social network to arrive on the scene from Google. What, another one? I hear most of you cry, but I for one love it, in fact I haven’t been able to keep off there since I received the invite! Some of my readers may be aware that I have never been a fan of Facebook, I only began using it because members of my family asked me to join. Google+ is far more to my taste, from it’s brilliantly conceived circles that allow you to keep everyone separate so that you can just post an update to those you choose, to its fantastic integration of Picasa and your photos. Oh, and don’t of course forget Blogger!

As on other social sites, your profile is key to others getting to know you and choosing whether or not to add you to their circles, and it is also key to using Google+ search which allows others to find you by searching your info such as where you work or the area where you live. If you want to be more vague about this info when you fill in the respective areas, you can of course do so to help to protect your privacy, but you can no longer keep your Profile private in Google+. However, don’t be worried about privacy because Google+ does have a very impressive way of setting up your privacy settings to suit you. Nor do you have to fill every item in as you can see from my Google+ Profile. Just remember when you fill it in, only put in what you wish others to see. (as with all social networks.) In fact you can get a view of how others see your profile once you have filled it all in so that you can check that your not giving too much info away to others by simply clicking on your profile icon and then choosing the View Profile As box and entering someone’s name who is in one of your circles.

It’s Circles that are really the backbone and the inspiration that makes Google+ such a success in my opinion. Far too often on Facebook I have added some link or other that I knew would not be interesting to my family and many of my friends, so being able to post an update to your individual circles (or even just to one particular person) is a godsend. The principle of Circles is fairly easy to understand and Google starts you off with some default circles such as the obvious one’s of Family and Friends. You can rename these default circles as you can any of the other circles that you may create later. No one is going to see what you have called your circles or who you decide to place in them and you can add as many circles as you like.

Picasa has been fully integrated into Google+ and is the default for your photos that you share on there, either in your stream or as uploads to Google+, where they are saved as posts as is your profile picture. Clicking on your photos icon from the top of your stream (home) or alternatively from your profile, takes you to your photo page where you can see all of the photos that people in your circles have used in their streams, plus photos from your phone, photos of you, and lastly your photo albums that you have amassed in Picasa. Clicking on someone’s photo from this page or from your stream brings up an full screen version with a black background where you can leave a comment about the photo. There are also some useful features for the owner of the photo accessed from the Actions tab such as Photo Details, Rotate Left and Right, Edit Photo, Delete Photo and report or delete comments. You can also add a tag to your photo.

I feel that Picasa has been well integrated into Google+ and the enhancements made to the UI are to be welcomed. When I go to view my photos in my albums now from Google+ and hover my mouse over an album, the album fans out’ to display the first three photos in that album and it looks very attractive.

The other feature of Google+ that I have used so far is called Sparks, where you can use Google+ search to search any subject and then choose one of the articles found to post to your stream in order to share with others. There are some subjects already provided for you but you can search on any subject that interests you or may be of interest to those in your circles. So if you had a circle consisting of all the members of a book club for example, you could search for the latest books.

Another very popular feature found in Google+ is Hangout where you can invite others to join you in a video chat. At this particular time, you can invite up to ten people to chat to all at once and this feature is turning out to be getting some really good use from those who are on Google+ at this time. A chat feature is also available but many of the early adopters consider that the Hangout feature is a fantastic idea and one that will be used in the future for lot’s of collaboration and get togethers. Whether the maximum number currently allowed will be increased as Google+ evolves is debatable, but if it proves popular with users it might be possible for Google to increase it. The following video shows how hangouts work in Google+

Google+ Hangout

My personal concern so far is that most of the initial users on Google+ have been the more technically able, and although one can understand why any big technology company would tend to focus on such users to trial their software, the feedback and the usage so far is bound to be skewered. Whilst we ‘Geeks’ and more tech able have found Google+ easy to set up and get to grips with, and there have already been some fantastic ‘tips and tricks’ doing the rounds on Google+, and also some very useful extensions for Chrome have already surfaced from developers, the success or failure of Google+ is as always going to hinge on whether or not the mainstream users take to it or not. So far, most of the tech able users love it and it is proving very VERY addictive, but whether the man or woman in the street is going to feel the same and abandon other social networks for Google+ is a moot point. Will they be able to easily grasp setting up their circles and the concept behind it all? Of course, Google has tried to be as helpful as possible by providing some really good videos to demonstrate how it all works, and others are quickly providing helpful guides via their blogs etc, but it is can prove very difficult to gear your user interface to cover every level of user out there. The success or not of Google+ will all hinge on this very question in my opinion.

How I make use of Photo Fuse in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

technogran — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 09:11:00 +0000

During our recent day out in York I wanted to take a photo of a very attractive building, but there were so many people walking in front of this particular building, I simply couldn’t get a clear shot of it. The answer is to take quite a few shots from exactly the same spot so that you can ‘fix’ it and remove all of the people using Photo Fuse in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Of course, the original intention of Photo Fuse was to arrive at a perfect ‘Group’ shot of people, but I find Photo Fuse far more useful when I wish to take a shot of something and I can’t get a clear shot without including people walking past. Here is my step by step ‘how-to’ showing you just how to remove any unwanted portion of your photos and arrive at your perfect shot.

1. Firstly take as many shots as you can of your intended subject, the more the merrier, and make sure each shot is taken from the same spot. (see my photos of the building below.)

Notice that in each of my shots there are different people walking by in front of the building. By using the Photo Fuse feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery, I’m going to remove them all so that I eventually end up with my desired photo of just the building.

2. After importing the photos into Windows Live Photo Gallery, highlight the photos that you intend to fix using Photo Fuse, and then click on Create in the ribbon interface and then choose Photo Fuse.

3. Wait a few moments whilst Photo Fuse aligns your chosen photos to Fuse.

4. Next, your photo shot will be shown in the Photo Fuse window, and inside the photo will be a square of dots that you can move around the photo. At the right hand side of the square, you will see a small window containing a scrollable collection of the same area from each of your photos in question, in my case four. You are asked which one of these you like best. As I need to get rid of all the people in front of the building, I will need to choose from the selection, the one with no one present.

5. Now move the square of dots around your photo by clicking on it and holding down the left hand mouse button. I need to move mine over the first set of people in the picture. You can enlarge the square by clicking on each dot and dragging it sideways by holding down the mouse button until the dotted square surrounds the area you wish to change. I shall make my square cover the two people holding hands.

6. Now all I need to do is choose one of the corresponding areas from the ‘Which do you like best?’ pane, so I need to choose the one with no person in it. Click on your choice from the pane to select it.

Like magic the couple holding hands have disappeared! Next I need to move onto the couple with the blue t-shirt on.

7. Continue in the same way with all areas of your photo that you wish to change. Simply move your dotted square over the area in question, making sure it covers the entire area that you wish to change, select one of the other views of that area, click on it to select it and your photo will change to your choice.

In this how-to, I only have the far set of people to eradicate now. So I’ll place my square over them, making sure it covers them completely, choose the version from my other shots from the sidebar window that contains no person at all and voila! I now have my perfect shot!

TG (Isn’t technology marvellous?)

The Trouble with Microsoft.

technogran — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 10:47:00 +0000

As a purely ordinary PC user, i.e not a corporate or business user, I thought that I would put my views forward as to why Microsoft has missed the boat somewhat and allowed others to pass them by in the ‘keeping up with trends’ race. First of all, I feel that every corporation or manufacturer, in whatever area they are, needs competition. Without competition, you would simply stagnate, there would be no one to ‘keep you on your toes’ to encourage you to be innovative or imaginative. You would tend to sit on your laurels because you would be the only one available to your customers, and they in turn would have no other avenue to compare your products with. There would simply be no incentive to improve.

Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, if you had the market all to yourself, you would have little need to listen to feedback from your customers, what they would like in the way of improvements, the future avenues they would find useful, so feedback would not be as important either, you could just move in any direction that you as a business felt was right or suited you. Which users feedback should you listen to as a huge business anyway? The one’s who make you the most profit? Or have done in the past? In Microsoft’s case, this has tended to be the corporate user simply because they were the ‘cash cows’ as they were the largest PC users, and also needed Microsoft’s Office Suite.

The ‘none corporate’ user were in the minority, not a lot of none corporate users owned their own computer in the past, but now things have changed. Slowly over time, we the ‘ordinary’ none corporate user have grown in number, we own PC’s, laptops, iPads, smart phones, and our needs and wants are no where near the same as the corporate user. We want to share, form communities, make friends online, share stories, photos, communicate, and be able to sync instantly our files and photos across our devices without hassle, as long as we have okayed that sync.

Because Microsoft was listening to the wrong audience, they have allowed themselves to lag behind the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook, who haven’t been as concerned about concentrating their listening to the feedback from their corporate users. Today technology has a different set of users, still growing in number, whilst the corporate user, at least in my neck of the woods, is still stagnating and falling behind by still using Windows XP as their operating system, probably because of the cost of re-training their workforce to use a new version of Windows. In fact, I would imagine that there are more none corporate users who have made the leap to Windows 7, and will do the same with Windows 8. It could also be the same story with MS Office as well, but as I am not party to sales this is only a guess on my part.

So where does all the money come from now? The large corporate user, or the ever growing number of ‘ordinary’ users? If you are only looking and listening in one direction, you miss the ability to listen to the requests from the other direction, and can end up lagging so far behind, that it’s going to be hard going to keep up.

(I’m only a Granny, and this post is my personal view of why I think Microsoft need to take a long hard look at who’s feedback they take notice of.)

Creating a Header using Windows Live Photo Gallery

technogran — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:57:00 +0000

If your blogs theme allows you to use your own header, its nice to be able to use one of your favourite Vistas or scenes so that you can really make your blog really personal to you. Whether you use WordPress or Blogger, here’s how to make a fantastic header using the panoramic feature available in Windows Live Photo Gallery. You don’t need an expensive camera either, so here’s the step by step way to make that favourite scene or spot feature as a header on your blog.

1. Download Windows Live Photo Gallery from http://explore.live.com/windows-live-photo-gallery?os=other and install on your computer.

2. Now you need to go and take your pictures of your favourite vista or view. You will need to take your shots of the scene from either left or right, and slowly swing your camera horizontally along the entire scene from one side to the other taking your individual shots. Try to keep the camera on the same plane as you pan either left or right. Each shot should overlap each other so that Photo Gallery can ‘stitch’ them all together. See the separate shots below and how they overlap one another as I took them.

3. Next we need to make our Panorama inside Photo Gallery, so select all three (or however many shots you took of your chosen vista) and then click on the Create tab from the ribbon in Photo Gallery.

4. From the Create ribbon, choose the Panorama icon and Photo Gallery will then begin to ‘stitch’ the individual photo together into a panoramic shot. Once completed it will ask you to give the panorama a name and then you can click on Save.

5. It’s highly likely that your newly created panoramic shot will need cropping, so click on the Crop icon in the ribbon and then crop out all of the black excess from the panoramic shot. When you are certain that all of the black has been cropped out, click on Crop once more to tidy up your shot.

6. Now that our panoramic shot is complete, we can use it on WordPress or Blogger as our header. I’ll deal with WordPress first. Go to your WordPress Dashboard and click on Appearance and then Header from the left hand Menu list.

7. Next you will need to upload your panoramic photo so click on Choose File and then navigate to your panoramic shot and select it, then click on Upload. As it will probably be a large file it may take some time to upload.

8. Once uploaded, you may have to do some more cropping of the panoramic shot depending on the width of the header that your theme uses, then once you are happy with your final crop, click on Crop and Publish.

9. Now go to your blog by clicking on Visit your Site and admire your new personal header!

10. Now let’s use our panoramic shot as a header on Blogger. Go to your Blogger Dashboard and select Design, then click on Edit in your current Header.

11. Next, from the window that opened click on From your computer and then Choose File. If you want your blog Title to still be shown, then also select Behind Title and Description from the list. It’s also a good idea to tick Shrink to Fit so that the header fits into your chosen theme.

12. Once your new header has uploaded click on Save. Now you can go and view your newly created header on your blog!

Keeping up with your friends blog posts.

technogran — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:03:00 +0000

We all like to keep tabs on all of our friends blogs and to be able to read their latest posts as soon as they are published. However, this can often mean trawling around blogging sites, or in the case of WordPress, subscribing to them and then keeping up with reading all of our subscriptions. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every time a friend published a new post to their blog we could not only be informed but read it straight away on our computers? Well you can do exactly that! Without leaving your desktop, you can see all of your friends blog updates and read their posts just as if you were online! Here’s how.

1. Firstly you will need to download Windows Live Mail if you don’t already use it. Get it from HERE

2. As soon as you have set up your email in Windows Live Mail, you need to set up all of your friends blog feeds to send updates to Windows Live Mail, so next, go to your friends blog site.

If you are using Internet Explorer as your browser, then simply click on the orange icon and a drop down list of all the available feeds on that page will be listed, so choose the blog one from that list in order to subscribe to it. Any feeds that you subscribe to in Internet Explorer are automatically added to the feeds in Windows Live Mail.

3. Many blogs also contain the RSS feed in the sidebar or in the header. Click on this to access the feeds URL address and subscribe to the feed. If you are using a different browser than Internet Explorer, then you will need to Copy the URL address of your friends blog feed, so here’s how to do that.

4. Visit your friends blog and click on either the RSS icon if it is present in either the browser or the blog page itself and then click on the words in the address bar at the top of your browser window. They will usually change colour so right click and choose to Copy from the drop down list that appears.

5. Close your browser and open Windows Live Mail on your desktop and select the same orange icon at the bottom of the email accounts column on the left hand side. If you used Internet Explorer to subscribe to your friends blog, the Feed will already be present in the left hand side column. If you use a different browser, then select the orange icon from the ribbon at the top.

6. The Add RSS Feed window will open so place your cursor inside the URL bar in that window and then right click and choose Paste. The URL of your friends feed will then be inserted into the address bar. Click on OK.

Your friends blog feed will now be added to the RSS feeds in Windows Live Mail. You can now choose how you view all the posts from that blog, either Ascending (oldest post at the top) or Descending. Next, let’s change the view of those posts in Windows Live Mail so that they appear exactly the same as if we were viewing them online.

7. From the ribbon interface, click on the File icon at the very top left hand side of the ribbon, and then select from the drop down list, Options and then select the orange Feeds icon on the right. You are now in the Manage Your Feeds window.

8. Click on the name of your friends feed. The feeds name will appear for a second time under the first one. Select the lower second name to bring up the Edit Feed window.

9. In this window you first need to tick the box next to Show articles as web page, instead of summary. Next you can choose to update your friends feed using your own schedule or the default for updating your emails. Lastly you can choose how many blog posts to show and keep in Windows Live Mail.

10. Once you are happy with your choices for your friends blog posts, click on OK to exit the Edit RSS Feed window and save your settings, and then click on Close in order to close the Manage Your Feeds window. Now you can read all your friends blog posts just as they appear online but still from your desktop. Just simply repeat this for every one of your friends blog posts that you like to keep up with whether on WordPress or some other blogging platform.

After reading your friends posts, if you decide you would like to leave a comment on that post, then simply click View Online at the top of the post. You can read all of your friends blog post updates at the same time as you read your emails! How easy is that!

TG Remember, Windows Live Essentials is all about making your life easier.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, how-to, live mail, RSS, feeds, blog, posts

My 2010 year in blogging

technogran — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 09:32:00 +0000

Courtesy of the WordPress Team!

Happy New Year from WordPress.com! To kick off the year, we’d like to share with you data on how your blog has been doing. Here’s a high level summary of your overall blog health:

Wow

Blog-Health-o-Meter™

We think you did great!

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 24,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, you wrote 76 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 90 posts.

Your busiest day of the year was September 16th with 896 views. The most popular post that day was Problems with your Hotmail upgrade?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were digitalspy.co.uk, en.blog.wordpress.com, avforums.com, mail.live.com, and windowslive.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for technogran, hate ribbon interface windows 7, gufsdtr500hd review, scotland windows 7 theme, and hotmail problems august 2010.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010. You can see all of the year’s most-viewed posts and pages in your Site Stats.

Problems with your Hotmail upgrade? August 2010
19 comments

Grundig GUFSDTR500HD Freesat DTR review. January 2010
21 comments

Moving your Photo Albums over from Windows Live To WordPress. September 2010
39 comments and 9 Likes on WordPress.com

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Live Photo Gallery. November 2010
101 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

Who Am I?
23 comments

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TG Wishing all my readers a very Happy and Prosperous New Year and don’t forget! Keep Blogging!

Windows Live Writer, Dual postings.

technogran — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 08:10:00 +0000

One if the big advantages of using Windows Live Writer to publish your blogs posts is if you have more than one blog and each is on different blogging platforms. I am in this position, I have two blogs on WordPress.com and also two on Blogger. Windows Live Writer allows me to send the same post to both at the same time, so I can do a ‘double’ posting to each one. In this post, I will be showing you how to do this, step by step. Firstly you will need to set up both your WordPress.com blog in Live Writer and also your Blogger blog. For this how to, I’m going to use my Photo blogs in order to demonstrate how to set them up in Writer and then how to publish the exact same post to both of them.

1.In Live Writer, click on Add Blog Account from the ribbon interface. or click on the File Icon in the top right hand corner of the screen, and then from the drop down list, select Options, Accounts and finally Add.

2. Choose which Blog service you are using for the new blog and then in the window input the URL Address of your blog, your user name and your password. When that is completed, click on Next. Live Writer will then begin the ‘sync’ with your blog including its current theme. Once that has completed, you need to sync Live Writer with your other blog on the other blogging platform but this time filling in the details for that blog instead.

TIP! If Live Writer has any problems correctly syncing with your blog, check the URL address, your user name and password are correct. Also try at some other time when perhaps your internet connection is at a better speed.

3. Once both blogs have been correctly set up inside Live Writer choose one of them and begin to compose your post.

4. Once your post is completed, publish to that particular blog. Then simply switch to the other blog by clicking on the list of Blogs in the Home ribbon. Selecting the other blog will then show the post you have just composed but now displayed in the other blog. If there is any difference in the width of the second blog, you may have to slightly adjust your formatting or size of any included photos.

5. Once you are happy with the second blogs format, publish the post up to the second blog. And that’s all there is to it! One post to two different blogging services!

TG ( And this post will be published to my WordPress blog at http://technograns.wordpress.com and also my other blog at http://techno-granny.blogspot.com and is for my friend Arlene)

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, how-to, live writer, 2011, posts, wordpress, blogger

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Windows Live Writer.

technogran — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 09:12:00 +0000

Of all the programs included in the Windows Live Essentials suite, Live Writer was probably the most obvious one to benefit from the use of the ribbon interface. Before this update, it was amazing just how many had been using Live Writer for their blogs and were not aware of many of the features contained within it. To give one example many users did not realise they could add a watermark to their photos from within Writer or alter their photos by applying different effects. These features were all tucked away out of sight under the ‘Advanced’ area in the sidebar originally, but now that they are offered to the user in easy to see icons across the ribbon when they click on a picture or photo, they are constantly visible and only one click away to access.

The Home Ribbon.

The Home ribbon contains all that you need in order to compose and edit a blog post and includes Paste, choosing a font including its size,colour, bold, underlining etc, choose bullets, numbering and quotes and alignments for your paragraphs, your headers and their size, all depending of course on your particular themes settings, and also to use the spelling, word count, find and select all when editing your post. Inserting a Hyperlink, Picture or Video is also available from the Home ribbon as well as under the separate Insert Ribbon.

Being able to dispense with the sidebar has meant that the entire width of the screen can now be employed for your blog theme and post in the editing window. Wisely, the categories box, tag box (in WordPress) and the set post date have now been moved above the edit window allowing them to be constantly in view and so not as easily forgotten about and at the bottom left are three tabs, Edit. Preview and Source.

The Insert Ribbon.

Accessing the Insert ribbon by clicking on the Insert tab allows the user to quickly have access to all of the following, Horizontal line,Clear break, Split post ( not also added for Blogger as well as WordPress) Table, Hyperlink, Picture, Photo Album, Video, Map, post tags, emoticon, or add a plug-in and plug in options. To add a single photo or picture, you simply click on that icon from the ribbon, choose from ‘your computer or the Web, then add your photo. Once its added to your post, you are then offered lot’s of choices in the Picture Ribbon which appears whenever you click on a photo or insert one into your post.

This Picture Tools ribbon contains all the features that you could possibly need to make your included photos and pictures look both attractive and to position them as you see fit inside your blog post. Crop, resize, rotate, tilt, different borders to apply, picture effects, contrast, place a watermark in your picture which in the new version already includes the copyright mark. Next you can add properties to your photo such as a link or apply alternative text. Alignment allows you to position the picture to the right or left of any text (word wrap) or centre the picture. Lastly Margins allows you to place an ‘invisible’ margin around the picture so that your text doesn’t butt right up to the edge and look unsightly.

Blog Account Ribbon.

This ribbon actually looks rather sparse at the moment, but its here where you can have full access to your blog account. This contains Blog Options, shortcuts to your blog such as View the site, Dashboard (in the case of WordPress) Manage Comments, then under Theme, Blog theme and Update Theme. The latter is very useful if you happen to have carried out a fairly small change to your blog such as changing the font for example or the background.

Tucked away under the very top left hand corner icon are the File options and choices. These are in a drop down list, accessed by clicking on the icon and include New post, Open local draft, Open recent post, Save (draft or post as draft online) Delete a local Draft, Publish, Print, Options and About Live Writer.

I would much prefer that most of these choices were instead added to the Ribbon interface, maybe the Blog Account one which at the moment looks very empty. New users to Live Writer are still going to find these choices hard to find, tucked away as they are under the very tiny file icon at the top left hand side.

All in all, Windows Live Writer has benefited greatly from the use of the ribbon interface, especially in the area of inserting pictures and photos to your blog post. Now all of those features that tended to be overlooked by many users previously are now easy to spot and accessible via ‘one click’ icons in the Picture Tools ribbon interface. I certainly wouldn’t dream of blogging without Live Writer, it makes all of those online editors seem very clumsy and basic. Best of all, once you have inputted your blogs credentials into Live Writer, you can see exactly how your post will look once published as it is able to sync with your blogs chosen theme on any of the major blogging sites.

Clubhouse Tags: clubhouse, story, windows live essentials 2011, live writer, blog, account, draft, home, insert, photos, ribbon, save, theme