Getting  Along With Your Computer Column Archive

Share Your Photos, Test Drive Vista
By Cate Eales
Appeared June 28, 2007 on castanet.net

Sharing digital photos should be easy. And it is, if you avoid the temptation to just dump everything from your camera to your email out box! You have several choices, all easy and free.

Do you want to test drive Windows Vista? I'll tell you how.


Getting your photos from here to there
Digital cameras now outsell film cameras. If you're using a digital camera, you're probably wondering how best to share those photos.

The easiest way to do this is to upload them to someplace where they are stored online, and the recipients can view or download the pictures at their convenience. You don't have to worry about file size, resolution, or anything technical. The pictures never go through the email, and besides everything else, it's free.

I have used two different services for this. The first is YouSendIt.com. They'll guide you through the process of uploading your photos. Then, you just put in the email addresses of the recipients. YouSendIt sends an email to the people with links to the files. The files will stay there for 7 days. If you want to share them after that, you'll need to upload them again.

I also use DivShare, especially for photos. DivShare offers more choices about how to share your files, and files also stay there for more than 7 days.

If you use the free photo organizer/editor Picasa2 you can also create online photo albums. That's also very easy, especially if you are already familiar with Picasa2. You have control over who can view the albums by marking them Public or Private. If you mark an album or photo Private, you can then specify who is allowed to see it.

Another way to share your photos is to email them to people. Please resist the temptation to try emailing photos just as they come out of the camera! They are optimized for printing, not for viewing on a computer screen, and the file size is huge. Most ISP's won't let you send or receive attachments over a certain size. Even if you can send them, there's no guarantee that the intended recipients can receive them.

Picasa2 will let you email photos, and will "shrink" them for you in the process. With a photo open in Picasa2, click on File, then on Email. Follow the prompts and allow it to make the file smaller. Picasa will send it.

If you want more control over how the file is optimized, IrfanView and XnView are both free and will let you do that. There are many excellent tutorials about how to optimize photos, starting here. Photos optimized like this will look fine in an email or on a website, but won't look great printed. If you want your friends and family to be able to make a great print, stick with uploading the files.


Test Drive Windows Vista
If you want to learn a little about Windows Vista, check out the Windows Vista Test Drive site, here. This site lets you test Vista without actually installing it.

You can poke around on your own, or stick with the guided exercises on the site. You'll need Internet Explorer 6 or better, and be prepared for some slowness. Still, if you've been wondering what Vista looks like, it's a good way to find out.


Thank you to everyone who wrote with suggestions for Alan's Word problem mentioned in last week's column. I've passed those along to him, and I'm hoping for the best! And thank you to everyone who wrote with questions, comments and suggestions for the column. I appreciate all the emails, and I promise I will be caught up with them by this weekend. If you want to pass along a tip, ask a question, or comment on something you've read, please email me at cate@rlis.com. Also, you can look through all the old columns at any time in the column archives, here.  If you'd like to subscribe to this column by email, please visit this link.  It's easy, and free. If you'd prefer the RSS Feed, click here.

Happy Canada Day!


Links
You Send It http://www.yousendit.com/
Div Share http://www.divshare.com/
Picasa2 http://picasa.google.com/index.html
IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/
XnView http://www.xnview.com/
How to optimize digital photos http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/digitalimaging/f/howreducesize.htm
Test Drive Windows Vista http://www.windowsvistatestdrive.com/
Weird Word http://rlis.com/columns/column100.htm
Canada Day http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/cpsc-ccsp/jfa-ha/canada_e.cfm
Getting Along With Your Computer Column Archives http://rlis.com/column.htm
Get Cate's column by email http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=20618
RSS Feed: http://rlis.com/rlis.xml
Cate's list of good, free software http://rlis.com/columns/column75list.htm

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Cate Eales has been helping people make online computing safe, accessible and fun for over 20 years. She lives in Kelowna with her husband, Eric, and her dog, Sandy. Cate is a partner in Real Life Internet Solutions, helping individuals and small businesses with virus, spyware and malware eradication; personal computer training and management; digital image management; music transfer; and website design, hosting and management. Email Cate at cate@rlis.com with your comments, suggestions, or questions. To browse the column archives, visit the Real Life Internet Solutions website at www.rlis.com.