-=Larry=-

A visit to Live.com lists an a number of services I think anyone can find useful the most obvious is Skydrive and Live Mesh.

Live Mesh is a Dropbox.com sync service with 5 gigs of space available free. It’s like having 5 gig memory stick available anytime, anywhere you have an Internet connection. SkyDrive is 25 gigs of space which you can’t (for free) sync, but you can store files with a simple upload. Not a bad deal for free.

Come to the EPCUG meeting Monday Dec. 27 and see if this service is useful for you.

I’m always looking for ways to have meetings, webinars, with everyone in a manner that would let us have folks at the cafe, at home or work, anywhere be able to join us and share. To make that work I require our method to include use of Linux and most of us require Windows, 7, XP, and a few of us need Mac support.

Yuuguu.com may make this work for us and this week, next Monday April 5, 2010, I suggest everyone visit this site,  download and install their software and create an account. Then at  5:30 we all start it, find each other through our Internet Messenger accounts, chat or (if you have free long distance) use the Yuuguu telephone conference call.

If there are support questions that member can show us their screen and we can all commiserate together or maybe find a solution.

If you need more explanation have a look at this video or Google ‘Yuuguu video’ and see more.

How To Use Yuuguu For Simple, Free Screen Sharing

Picasa 3: Free download from Google

I have used it on a number of machines over the years and recently have enjoyed being able to use it in Linux. What I hadn’t realized was the Linux edition is several versions behind what is available for Windows. And since version 3.5, last September, there has been the ability for Picasa to detect faces:

It’s pretty simple. Picasa shows the ‘Unnamed’ faces in all your photos and you identify them and add a name (and email address if you wish) to it. It then picks out all the other faces it has that it thinks is the same person and asks you to check its work. It’s uncanny and in our meeting’s experience, very good.

If you are using Windows and haven’t updated it yet, do so! Its worth it.

It can never be said enough. Backup your files. But how many of us are really protected this minute? There are now three good services for online backup for Windows and two of them work on other platforms as well and can sync files as well. We’ll look at Dropbox.com, Mozy.com, SpiderOak.com and ZumoDrive.com and what we can do with them to protect ourselves. Join us at the Monday January 11, 2010, 5:30pm meeting at Aqilla & Pricilla’s Cafe at Poineer Pkwy and Q St.

If there seems to be interest we will setup a conference call for the folks not at the cafe. Call or write us ahead of time if you are interested in this tomorrow.

-=Larry Cotton=- webmaster@epcug.net

Sumo Paint :: Online Image Editor :: Home

We had a great time last week just doing problem solving, but the consensus after the meeting was to try to do the graphics demo we had planned weeks ago. So this week for sure we will watch ways to ‘tune up’ photos and just plain have fun with graphic editors online.

For years graphic editing had been the ‘Mac” thing, Mac’s had more memory than PC’s and tended to crash less so folks in the know used them and software programmers wrote for them and the best graphic programs were Mac. But as PC’s improved and programming advanced these same programs became available for PC’s. Coreldraw for vector images and Photoshop for bit images became the standard, but they are expensive.

Now there are some very good Open Source alternatives, Gimp for bit images and Inkscape for vectoring and there are versions (ports) for Windows PC’s, Mac’s and Linux operating systems. If you really want practise graphic editing I recommend these programs. (And I recommend the commercial programs if you have the money.)

The latest advancement is now ‘Online’ programs that do the functions of the editing programs from in our web browsers. No need to install a program on our hard drives and not even to store our images. Websites now offer both from any browser, any computer, wherever we are we can access our work and edit it. And this will be our demo this coming Monday using the site linked at the start of this post, Sumo Paint. Come join us and learn what is available.

If you want a look in advance visit their site and view the video and read about its Features and FAQ’s.

If you want to see other sites with similar features check these out:

• Photoshop.com
• Splashup.com
• Pixlr.com
• Picnik.com
• Aviary.com

Another great review of these sites is at Lifehacker.com, let me recommend it as well.

Update: I can’t believe what is available these days! Just while writing this post I rediscovered Aviary.com. I’d looked at this before and not understood it all, but on second glace today I found it to be incredibly complete. So it and its tutorial videos will be part of our show.

Note to John – remember to bring the projector, this will be a good chance to make good use of it! 

If you have been wondering about spending $200 for the coming upgrade to Windows, Microsoft has made a method available to get a copy, FREE!

They are holding meetings in cities across the nation and Portland will have one on Oct. 14.

If you can make it just sign up and be there for your copy.

Just follow this link: http://www.microsoft.com/business/thenewefficiency/Portland/default.aspx

Then, I made a new install CD for Ubuntu 9.04 and installed it to dual boot on this machine. Being able to compare the two systems on the same machine like this has been a lot of fun. If you join me at Monday, July the 13th’s 5:30 gathering at Aquilla & Priscilla’s Cafe (I had some *excellent* soup there last week!) I’ll be happy to demo these two ineresting systems on a new (used) $200 laptop. This is a Toshiba Satellite Celeron 1.6 with 1.3GigB RAM. Nothing too fancy so many of you may be able to get a reasonable comparison of what your own machines would be like with them.