The response to my last column was huge.  I received many emails regarding blogs.  Several of you thought my personal blog was boring, some funny.  Most of you that took a look at Ron’s boring blog thought the videos were quite comical.  So thanks for visiting!

I was surprised by the number of readers that would like to start their own blogs.  Most of you wanted one to keep up with family and friends.  Some wanted to express thoughts on local, U.S. and/or world politics.  One wants to post their poems and thoughts on life.  Well go for it!

Many of you were worried about not knowing how to build a website and others wanted advice on how to create a blog.  Sorry, but I don’t have enough time to get into those specifics.  Remember you can find anything with Google.com.

Here are a few ideas for free blog sites.

If you want to keep up with friends and family I suggest Facebook.com.  You can also you’re your pictures on Facebook.  You may be surprised how many people you know have Facebook sites.  It is easy to setup.  Facebook has many extras called “add-ons” which can be daunting.  Just don’t use them if you don’t understand them.

For photographs alone I would recommend Picasa Web Albums (picasa.com) or Flickr.com (not misspelled).  You can upload most all of your photos at either site.  If you don’t want everyone seeing your pics then you can share them with only those you wish.

Finally for the more standard bloggers of you I recommend WordPress.  Be cautious as there are two distinctly different WordPress sites online.  If you want to let WordPress take care of all the “heavy lifting” involved in creating a blog, use Wordpress.COM.  Just click the “Sign Up Now!” button and you will have your blog going in a short period of time.  My personal blog, ‘rondoyle.wordpress.com‘ is one of those.  I don’t spend much time with it including its creation so that is what I used.  It has an amazing number of color template designs you can choose so that your blog site will be unlike any other.

For you geeks out there I suggest Wordpress.ORG.  You can do much more with this than the dotcom version but you must have your own domain name.  If you don’t understand that “domain name” part skip it and go to the dotcom site.  Please note that this will be the hardest to set up and will take a lot of time on your part.  This site, DoubleClicks.info site was set up mostly using Wordpress.org and believe me it took me weeks, working on it part-time, to get it the way I wanted.

Let me know if you set up a blog or have one.  I would love to take a look at your sites and I’m sure they won’t be boring.

I have mentioned Blogs from time-to-time but have never really talked about them specifically.  The reason I am now is that someone emailed a good question this week.  Sheri asked, “Ron, is your DoubleClicks.info site for your column actually a blog?”  Well I had to stop and think about that for a minute…is it?

First, what is a blog?  It is a contraction of two words, Web, meaning a website and Log, which used to be a written record of messages sent or received like a Captain’s Log.  So a blog is a website with written (not always) messages including comments from readers.  The reason I said, “not always” is that many blogs are specific for a type of blog.   For example a blog site with only videos has another name, “vlog”.  There are also photoblogs, artlogs, mp3logs and the list goes on and will probably grow over time.

So in answer to Sheri’s question yes, my column site is a blog.  I list each column I have written for the past couple of years.  Also, readers occasionally make comments about my columns.

Personally, I find regular “blogs” to be pretty boring.  I don’t usually care if someone I have never met had a great cup of coffee before work or someone else is late for a movie, etc.

Now since I am a computer/internet geek I also have a personal blog.  I put this one up a while back just for fun to try it out.  And just like the majority of blogs it has only a few followers.  Most of my readers are relatives and friends.  My personal blog is named, “Ron Doyle, Another Boring Blog, Read It and You Can Be Bored Too!”

Some blogs are interesting, yes, even to me.  One of my favorites is “Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows“.  This guy is one of the top in the field of advice and research on Microsoft software.  He has good information on Windows 7 and also the recently announced next Office version, 2010.  So you can understand why I like it and if your interests slant that way you should go take a look.

I also like to read through the MSNBC technology site.

The last of my favorites is a Christian site called, CrossWalk which has many interesting reads too.

So you can see the blogs I enjoy are pretty specific. To find blogs that may interest you, go to blogcatalog.com where they have thousands of them listed by category.

OK and now the answer to the question you have all been waiting for, “Where is your boring site?”  Try it at rondoyle.wordpress.com and see some of the stuff I think about…that’s pretty scary.

Last week’s column regarding printing your digital pictures online generated many emails.  Some responded by suggesting other sites and many recommended various ways to improve your photos before printing them.  Several people wrote asking how to remove redeye from a photo before printing it.  Today we will look at software that will allow you to edit your photos and make them a little better before you print your photo album.

There are many software packages out there which will let you do this like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and others.  However, if you are like me you don’t have the hundred or hundreds of dollars to spend on those programs.  So something a little more “pocket friendly” would be appreciated.  You may have even gotten some type of photo-editing software included with your digital camera and it may be all you need.

However, if you didn’t get one of those applications with your camera never fear, there are many other freebies out there.  The two that I most highly recommend are Picnik.com or Picasa.

I have mentioned Picnik here before which is basically a free graphics editor.  It can do many of the basics in photo editing plus some of the not so basics.  It is free unless you want more advanced editing features. If so, you can pay $24.95 per year.  Also, Picnik is in the cloud, meaning all online and you do not have to download anything to your computer.

Picassa is the one that I use most and is owned by…guess who.  Yes, Google. Can you believe that?  I can since they appear to be taking over the web/computer world more each day.  I will tell you more on that another time.

Both of these programs do very well when doing basic editing of your digital photos.  Basic editing includes such features as; resizing, rotating, cropping, adjusting exposures, color saturation along with the “biggie”, getting rid of “redeye” in your subjects, etc.  In other words there are many things available, some you may use often and some that you may never use. No matter which, there should be enough to keep you busy.  Once again, this would be for the average photo taker.  If you consider yourself a advanced amateur or professional then you will want to get something more heavy duty with more functions.

If you would like to see my vacation photos, some of which were edited in Picasa, go to http://bit.ly/lJgaF (case counts in this link).  Let me know what you think of Picasa’s photo storage and sharing features.  You can also comment on each individual photo if you have a gmail account and the time.

I have had two readers in the past two weeks recommend online “photo processing” sites for a column.  I thought this would be a good idea for a couple of reasons. First, I have never written about them before and second, I have never used one before.

Since my wife and I just returned from our summer vacation to the western part of the country (I highly recommend you see the Grand Canyon) I thought we should try it.

The two sites that were mentioned to us were WalMart and Costco.  Although there are many others I thought these would be the most convenient for us as far as picking photos up when completed.  Before I go on I will mention that either one of these will happily mail you your pictures after they are printed, but I wanted immediate gratification so we chose pickup.

The sites are very similar and after reviewing them I decided on Costco.com since it seemed a little more straightforward and easier to use.

It is pretty simple.  I had to start by moving the pictures from our cameras to my computer.  Next, after going to Costco.com I clicked on the “Photo” link near the top of the page. I needed to create a Costco online account which took just a minute.

Once logged in I created an “Album” which is where my photos are stored once I upload them.  You may create multiple albums for different reasons; vacation, fieldtrip, research, etc.  To add photos to the album click, “Add Photos” or “Add More Photos”.

You will then get a legal screen which states that if the photo was professionally taken, it is copyrighted and you must get the photographer’s permission to print it.  This doesn’t make much sense to me since it could be a picture of me, paid for by me and used by me, but I’m not a lawyer and that’s the way it is.  All photo printing services say the same thing so this is nothing unusual.  You photographers don’t need to email me about it, I worked as a photographer to pay for college before these restrictions existed and you won’t change my opinion.

Then you choose the photos you wish to upload to their site for printing.  I selected ten and it took three to four minutes to upload them all.  Please note that I have a very slow internet connection so times will vary…downward.

Now, before you finish just choose each photo and make some basic edits, i.e. rotate, brightness, contrast, etc. and then send it to your cart.

In the cart choose the size print you would like along with the number of prints. Click, “Continue” and you will make sure everything is correct.  Finally, decide whether you want them mailed to you or will pick them up at the store.  Once you are finished you get a screen informing you of the cost and when to pick them up.  One hour is what they say; however, the day I ordered their computer was down…can you imagine that?  An email and phone call let me know they would be late.  I did get them the next day and it was a very convenient experience which we will definitely repeat.

Let me know via email which online service you use for your photo prints and how well, or not, it works.

Tags: photographer, photography, photos, Ron Doyle, vacation