Several weeks ago I was talking to one of my old friends, Mitch.  Mitch and I first met many years ago when I was teaching a computer course he took at Massanutten Technical Center.  We later became friends as a result of our mutual appreciation for cigars and computers.

He was saying that he has created a blog that had 10,000 views as of November 9th.  We proceeded to talk about blogging and some of the tips and tricks of the trade.  He supplied me with many.
 
He mentioned that it was very hard to post to his WordPress.com account, "Heritage Basket Weaving & Chair Caning.”  He told me how difficult it is to add new posts to his blog using the WordPress Dashboard and I agreed.  The geek in me knew a better way.

Microsoft created a tool for posting to your own blog several years ago called "Live Writer." If you are a blog owner I highly recommend it to you.  It is actually a portion of a larger MS suite called "Windows Live Essentials."  You can find out all about it at the MS site, or you may search for it using its name.

At this time there are a total of 11 applications which may be installed with Live Writer. You may find some of them to be beneficial.  After you download the small installer file from the site and you are ready to install "Live Essentials" select, "Choose the programs you want to install."  If you choose the other option you will install all 11 applications which include Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety (good if you have little ones in the house who are sometimes online), and Live Mail to name a few.  Most of them are excellent apps but you may not need them all.

If you are a blog owner you know the hassle it can be to post using the dashboard but with the writer application it is much, much easier.  There are a few setup questions to get started but after that you will be on posting "easy street."  I use "Live Writer" to post all of my articles to the Double Clicks site and you know me…all of these apps are free.

You can add graphics (just like the one on the left) to your blog just by pasting them where you want them.  You can easily resize them and place them on the page.  The text will appear exactly as you put it on the page and not "jump" around after your post is online.  Another very useful feature is that you can write the post and tell it a time to actually put it on your site, whether it is hours, days, weeks or even longer.  There are a number of other great features included in the application.

I found after an article several weeks ago that there are a lot of you out there blogging.  If you are a blog owner you simply have to try this out.  I am sure you will not be disappointed.

As always, if you try it, let me know how you like it.

Tags: blog, Blog owner, edit, editing, Live Writer

I had quite a few emails after the screenshot column last week about the print screen key.  Thanks for emailing me and please keep them coming!  A couple of them inspired this column.  Send them to me any time… they often make great columns. You will not usually see extremely specific questions answered here since they do not affect nearly as many people.

One very astute reader asked why I said you had to hold down the "Prnt Scrn" key for a second or so.  They stated that they only had to press theirs for a split second and it would copy the screen.  The reason I said longer than a split second is that some (usually older) PCs required that. However, on newer computers you can usually press the key quickly.  Try yours both ways to see which works for you.

Next, a couple of readers stated having seen that I sometimes added arrows, text, boxes,  circles, etc. to screen shots on my site.  They wanted to know how to do that.  OK, I do not use the "Prnt Scrn" key all by itself.  I actually use a program called SnagIt (techsmith.com). Go to the Techsmith website and scroll down to the bottom left of the page you will see the link for the product.  It is $49.95 but will also allow you to record videos of your screens.  For me it is worth the cost of a license when they upgrade only once every several years.

There are also several other free screen capture utilities out there.  Use your favorite search engine (Google.com and Bing.com for me) to see what you can find.  Screentoaster.com is also good. I have used it for making videos of screens as well.  Be advised, screen videos are sometimes complicated to create.

For stills you can even use a program like Microsoft Word.  If currently own Word, you can add effects like arrows, lines and many more to any graphic for free.

With Word, you first copy and paste the screenshot into a Word document using the "Prnt Scrn" and "Ctrl + V" keys we talked about last time.  Then you can size it as you desire with the sizing handles.  Once that is done you may use some of the advanced features under the "Insert" commands.  Play with them to see all of the available options.

You will be creating your own graphics in no time.

Tags: editing, graphics, microsoft, screen shot