The Blog:

The Blog Feed:

What does RSS Stand For?

RSS = Really Simple Syndication.  Think of a ‘Syndicated’ newspaper column.  What does that mean?  It means that, instead of just being printed in one newspaper, the contents of the column are packaged and sent out to many newspapers to be reprinted in their format.  Exact same contents – printed in many different newspapers with different formats – and read by *LOTS* more readers than if it was just published in the one home newspaper.

You could publish your own newspaper if you could subscribe to enough quality syndicated content.  The same thing goes for Blogs – you can subscribe to multiple different Blog Feeds and read them all in one place, like your own personal newspaper.

How do you read RSS Feeds?

The RSS Feed itself is straight text.  It is only meant for a computer to read.  The raw data for the posts shown above looks like:

In order to make sense to us, we must use a Feed Reader.  A Feed Reader is built in to Internet Explorer.  So, for example, if you use Internet Explorer to browse to www.geeksontour.blogspot.com you will see the orange RSS Feed icon in the toolbar like the screenshot below.  If that button is gray rather than orange, it means that you are on a page that has no feeds.

Click that orange button and you will be taken to the Feed for that page.  Internet Explorer will display the feed in a readable fashion like the Blog Feed image at the top of this article.  If you look in the address bar, you will also see the exact URL of the Blog Feed. This is the information you would need to read this Feed in some other Feed Reader.

For example, a Geeks on Tour reader recently asked,

“My son wants to read my blog on his cell phone, how do we do that?’ 

First, your son needs an RSS Feed Reader application on his cell phone.  Then, there will be a place in that Reader to put the URL of the Feed you want to read.  Enter the URL you found using the orange button.  Your son should now be able to read your blog posts in a way that works well on his cell phone.

Subscribing to the RSS Feed

Once you click on the orange feed button and you’re looking at the feed, you will have the opportunity to ‘Subscribe’ to this feed.  If you click that, then that blog’s feed becomes a Favorite and you will find it listed on a tab in your favorites area.

This is an extremely easy way to keep up with all the Blogs you follow.  Just click on the Blog name and you’ll see the Feed.  If you want to just skim the latest content … you’re done.  If you want to go to the full blog, there are links to click on from within the Feed.  There are lots of other Feed Reader programs as well.  For example, if you use Google’s Feed Reader, you will see at a glance how many posts you’ve missed in each blog.

How are RSS Feeds Created?

This is the amazing part.  If you use (most) blogging software, like Blogger or Wordpress, or Typepad.  An RSS feed is created automatically.  It’s just part of the whole blogging thing.  Just like archives are created automatically – so are RSS Feeds.  Actually, Blogger uses something called Atom Feeds – but they work the same way – and, if you really need RSS, Blogger supports that too.

Check Settings for your Feed

If you’re using Blogger, there are a few settings that you want to look at for your feed.  The main one is to specify whether you want the feed to include the entire post, or just a short snippet.  If you choose the short option it means that people reading your feed will only be able to see the first few sentences.  Then, they’ll need to click on a link to the real Blog in order to read the rest.  This can be very important if you depend on people seeing the Ads on your blog. 

If you do use Ads – you might also want to edit the setting to put your Google Adsense code at the bottom of each Post Feed as well.   If you *don’t* want a feed created, you specify ‘None’ as the Blog Posts Feed.

If you want to read a lot of Blogs, using an RSS Feed Reader is a great way to easily keep up.  If you have a Blog, and you want the greatest number of people to have easy access to keeping up with you … make sure that your Feed is working and easily accessible.  You can even use Feedburner.com to make the feeds available to subscribers via Email.  hmmm – that sounds like another article … coming soon.

Related posts:

1. Adding Video to your Blog
2. Are you Being Followed?
3. Re-Energize your Travel Blog

Whenever I need to make a complete website, including a blog and other ’static’ pages – I usually turn to Wordpress – it is a blogging system with the ability to also make pages. We will be teaching a Wordpress seminar at the upcoming FMCA Convention in Albuquerque, and you can download a copy of the class handout if you’re interested in learning about blogging with Wordpress.

Now using the super-simple Blogger system, they have added the ability to make Pages. Cool. Simple *and* complete! You have to look close. Go to your Blogger Dashboard and click on ‘New Post.’ Now, look at your menu options. You should see ‘Edit Pages.’ Then you can click on ‘New Page.’

So, why do you want to do this? What is a page? When you create a page, the process is exactly like creating a normal blog post. You type text, add pictures, and add links just like you’re accustomed to. But a page will exist outside the normal flow of dated post entries. It’s separate. So, if you use Blogger to create a Travel Journal, most of your content will be dated entries that will be sorted so that you see the most recent one first and they go back in time as you scroll down the page. What if you want to create a separate page for ‘About Us?’ That’s not something that should be listed in date order along with the other entries, it’s separate. Or you want one page with an overall map of your travels? Once again, not something that can be included in the list of dated entries.

You create a page by clicking on that ‘New Page’ button pictured above. When you click ‘Publish’, you’ll see one more option before you’re done:

When you have pages, you need some way for your readers to navigate to those pages. Blogger gives you the choice of creating a menu across the top, or over in the sidebar. Try them both and see what you like. They’re not very fancy. If you ever want to change how your menu of pages appears – you’ll find that in the Layout section under Add and Arrange Page Elements. Any new pages you create will automatically be added to the menu.

Related posts:

1. Use a Blog for a Club Website
2. About HTML and Blogger
3. A Picasa Plug-In for Live-Writer

lots more videos coming soon on Live Writer

Related posts:

1. Blogging Offline with Windows Live Writer
2. A Picasa Plug-In for Live-Writer
3. Blogging to Alaska

This is an flv file:

This is an express-show .swf file – the difference in size was my doing:

Third (most likely) option. An .swf file hosted on GeeksOnTour.com:

Related posts:

1. Google Maps – custom route lines
2. Google Earth and Corps of Engineers Parks
3. Adding Video to your Blog

Check out these downloads and Web sites that cost nothing but have big value.

The World Wide Web originally was designed as a tool for the free exchange of information. In fact, in the early days if you were found abusing this wonderful communication system for your own personal gain, you would be “flamed” — an online equivalent of being stoned or pilloried — by the other users. The Web has since developed into a colossal marketplace of commerce and personal gain, but free stuff is still available. Unfortunately, some of the free material offered online is a scam, a way to get you to pay for something else, or a means to deliver payloads of viruses or spyware to your computer. So you need to be informed and stay alert to these types of dangerous offers. Still, there is plenty of useful and beneficial information available, and the free stuff described below is nothing short of amazing. Some of the best software I’ve ever used is included!

Picasa For Managing Digital Photos

RVers take a lot of digital photos, and it can be very confusing to decide what software to use to manage them. There’s the program that came with the camera to transfer photos to the computer; Windows for organizing, printing, and e-mailing them; Photoshop Elements or IrfanView for editing them; and dozens of Web sites for publishing them. Then you also need CD-burning software to make backups or copies to give friends.

The first thing that’s so great about Picasa, available free from Google, is that it does all of the above. You only need to learn the one program. The second thing is that it’s quick and easy. One click and you can e-mail one or more photos — and it takes care of resizing them on the fly. One click prints your photos. And it lets you preview exactly how the pictures are going to fit on the paper before you waste all that ink. One click and you can burn a CD with a slideshow to give to your friends. One more click and you have a Web site for your photos; it’s called a Web Album.

Probably the feature that we love most about Picasa is that it makes it so fast and simple to improve the quality of images. I receive a lot of compliments about the photos on our blog (http://www.geeksontour.blogspot.com). I know it’s because Picasa helps me improve every picture. And it does it without changing my original image. I don’t have to make a copy before I start editing, as with other programs.

I’ve been teaching computer software classes and seminars since 1983, during which time I’ve covered probably a hundred different programs, and I can confidently say that Picasa is the most useful software I’ve ever known. I love the things it does, but I think it’s even better for what it doesn’t do. Because it doesn’t do serious editing (such as erasing a power line from the sky), Google has kept it lean and mean. It does 90 percent of what we need on a day-to-day basis and it does it quickly, easily, and for free. For the other 10 percent you still need Photoshop Elements, Fireworks (the software I use), or some other photo editor.

Picasa is for the Windows platform only, at http://www.picasa.google.com. Sorry, Mac users, but you have iPhoto, which is very similar.

Movies From Photos With Photo Story 3

Picasa will impress your friends with a simple slideshow, but put your photos into a movie and it will knock their socks off. Photo Story 3, a free program from Microsoft, makes it so easy. Just follow the wizard, which guides you through all the steps necessary to create an impressive photo presentation. Import and arrange the photos you want to show, and then click the “Next” button. Add titles, narration, music, and movement. It is so simple. And the results rival productions that took thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment only 20 years ago.

Photo Story 3 can be downloaded for free from Microsoft’s Web site. This is also Windows-only software.

Every Traveler Needs A Blog

Ever wished you could write travel articles for a magazine? Now you can write the whole magazine. It’s called a blog and it’s a special kind of Web site that anyone can create with the help of the free Blogger.com Web-based software from Google. As long as you have a computer, an Internet connection, and something to say, you can have a Web site. The word blog comes from Weblog, meaning a log or diary on the Web. So, any day you feel compelled to write, you can log on to your Blogger.com account and have at it. You also can upload photos, videos, and links to other Web sites.

Blogger keeps everything organized. It date-stamps your entries and publishes them in reverse order so the most recent is always on top. You can write for years this way and Blogger will keep your archives in order as well. Want to see what you were doing in December 2005? Just look it up in the blog. I’ve been keeping our blog since May 2003. You can even search our blog with a convenient search box provided at the top. Want to see the pictures we took at Devil’s Tower or the video of kayaking at La Jolla? Just go to the blog (http://www.geeksontour.blogspot.com) and search. It’s such a great thing for fickle memories.

Since Blogger is Web-based, it doesn’t matter what kind of computer you’re using, so this one can be used on Mac systems as well.

Virus And Spyware Scanners

Unfortunately, it is a fact of computer life that dangers lurk on the Internet. Your computer needs to be protected with antivirus and antispyware programs. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of choices. Some cost a lot, some cost a little, some are free, and some are scams. It is a common consensus among geeks that the Anti-Virus Free software from AVG Technologies (formerly Grisoft) is one of the very best programs available.

You should use only one antivirus program. But in the antispyware category, you can install more than one. There is so much spyware out there that no one program catches everything. Two good programs that also happen to be free are Spybot Search & Destroy by Safer-networking.org and Ad-Aware by Lavasoftusa.com. But our favorite is Defender by Microsoft, primarily because it does everything automatically on a schedule. You install it and forget it. The other two need to be manually run. These are all Windows programs.

Maps And Globes

This category has a ton of offerings. MapQuest, Maps.Live.com, and Yahoo! Maps are all free offerings. They are also all Web-based, so they will operate on Macintosh as well as Windows systems. We have the most experience with Google Maps and Google Earth.

If there’s anything that makes a traveler drool, it’s a good map. If this describes you, get out the bib before you look at these programs. These are so much more than maps. Sure, you can get directions from Google Maps (maps.google.com), but you also can create your own custom map, complete with a line for your route and markers for your various stops (sample: Geeks on Tour 2008 Travels). When a viewer clicks on a marker, they can see your photos of the place, anything you have to say about it, and links to other Web sites. This program does not require a download.

Did you ever dream of having a magic globe? Want to point to a place on the globe and get answers to questions about that location? That’s Google Earth (earth.google.com). You can explore photos and information about any spot on the planet that will keep you occupied for hours. It’s not a map. It’s a globe-based information system that you download to your computer. Photos, Web sites, news feeds, encyclopedia entries, videos, and more are all referenced by latitude and longitude, available just by clicking or searching. After watching one of our Google Earth seminars, I remember hearing one woman exclaim, “My poor husband is going to starve!” She apparently felt there would be no more time for cooking once she got started on Google Earth.

Lots More

The programs mentioned above are just some of the more visible choices. We teach seminars on all of them, but there are many more. If you need a spreadsheet to keep track of expenses but don’t want to shell out the cash for Excel, you can use Google Docs online for free, or you can download the complete productivity suite of OpenOffice, also for free. Yes, you read right — a complete office suite that allows users to work on documents, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, and illustrations. OpenOffice can open and save Microsoft Office files. It is now available for Macintosh as well as Windows and Linux.

Need a free e-mail account? Choose from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, and more. How about an online calendar? Google Calendar can be used by you individually, or you can share it with a team. Want a free Web site? Geocities, Google Pages, Yahoo!, and so many more are available. Just use Google to search for “free Web site hosts.”

A good way to get any of these programs is by visiting Download.com, a service of CNET. I have long trusted CNET as a kind of Consumer Reports for the computer world. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on Download.com, you probably don’t want it.

Oh, I can’t go on without mentioning the free investing tools available online. Yahoo! Finance and MSN’s Money Central are goldmines for stock charts, company research, and analysis. These are two I use, and I’m sure there are many, many more.

Why Is It Free?

It’s important for me to understand why something is free; otherwise, I don’t trust it. I think there are three reasons why software is available to the public at no cost.

First, companies use it as a “presale” or free sample in hopes that people will like it and buy a more full-featured version later. Second, they use it to sell advertising. The more page-views a Web site receives, the more a sponsor will pay for their ads to be placed on that page. Finally, it is used to build a community of loyal customers. The Web today is all about community. The larger your community, the more you can be supported by just a few chargeable items.

Some software has no good reason to be free and may end up costing you in the long run. Some software is nothing more than a scam to gain access to your computer. After you download it you will notice all sorts of pop-ups on your computer; it will become infected with a virus; or you may find that your computer has been turned into a zombie that does only the bidding of the company you downloaded the product from. Remember, get your downloads from Download.com or from another site that has been recommended by someone you trust. Be careful and stay informed, but don’t be paralyzed. Go ahead; use the good stuff. Haven’t you heard? The best things in life are free!Chris Guld is president and Web master for GeeksOnTour.com. She and her husband, Jim, live full-time in their motorhome and tour the country conducting seminars at RV parks, conventions, and rallies, including FMCA events. They recently presented a number of topics at FMCA’s 80th International Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Tutorial videos are available on www.geeksontour.com.

Related posts:

1. Free Computer Anti-Virus Programs
2. Blogging Offline with Windows Live Writer
3. Free Anti-Virus Programs

First, you must get to your blog with the web address of http://draft.blogger.com. That’s it! Just use the ‘Draft’ version of blogger, and you will see a new button in your toolbar:

Just click on this and it works like uploading a photo. Browse to the video on your computer you want to upload. Give it a title and agree to the upload terms. After you click the Upload Video button, it will take a while, be patient. When you publish your blog, the video will be embedded.

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1. What is an RSS Blog Feed and Why You Want One
2. Re-Energize your Travel Blog
3. Make money with your Blog