Google Calendar - Free and Easy

“Free” and “Easy” are part of what makes Google Calender (www.google.com/calendar) a terrific help in keeping you organized. Use it to add single events (Little League game, doctor appointment), recurring events (birthdays, anniversaries, other yearly events), or monthly or weekly activities. Make it fun, decorate with a birthday cake, soccer ball . . . you get the idea.

Display business, personal, organization calendars and the like by different colors, separately or with all calendars together, by day, week or month. Google saves your calendar on its cloud servers, ready to use any time, from anywhere.
 

 

Share your calendar with family, friends, business associates or organization members, sync with your desktop calendar, access it on the go or print a hard copy. It’s available in 40 languages and tracks appointments across time zones.

Need to set up meetings between members of your organization? Just pick a date and time, and Google Calendar checks each member’s calendars; if that time and date is clear, it adds the event to each person’s calendar. If not, it suggests alternate “clear” times for everyone. Saves all those phone calls or emails.

Ditto for a family or school reunions and the like. Or use the calendar to send invitations and track replies.

Google Calender can send you reminders of events via email, text message or a popup window and lets you add a mini-version to your Internet browser’s home page so it is always there.

No excuse not to get organized now. Free and easy works! More info in our column at www.norma-tony.com

Searching The Internet: Tips And Tricks

You know the information is on the Internet somewhere, but with BILLIONS of Web pages and sites, how do you find what you want?

Use search engines -- those specialized Web sites such as Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com or ask.com. Enter words or phrases related to info you want, and the search engine displays a list of Web sites that include your search words or phrases.

Each search engine has its own set of rules so may not display the same results. Try more than one site or use meta search engines, such as Metacrawler.com or DogPile.com, which simultaneously search several search engines.

Or, narrow your search by using:

* phrases in quotes that search for a whole phrase rather than individual words.

* the + or - signs to include or exclude specific words.

* advanced search to specify languages, file formats or other parameters.

* a wild card symbol * when not sure of word ending.

* natural language, such as “My computer locks up when I try to save a Word document to a thumb drive.”

* a comprehensive list of search engines www.search-engine-index.co.uk.

* parental controls for safe searching; also www.askkids.com.

* help menu from each site.

Be patient and persistent to get results.

Explore (surf) the Internet with www.awwwards.com for sites that have won awards for good design and useful content, or try www.stumbleupon.com. But be sure your anti-virus and anti-malware is installed and up to date.

Fun, Creative Story Writing Using Technology

We’ve discovered some terrific programs that can spark the creative spirit in children and give parents and grandparents hours of fun watching what happens:

StoryBird book cover

Storybird (www.storybird.com) encourages building a story from a set of images you drag and drop onto the page and then add text to develop the story. The images are wonderful, drawn by professional artists and are mostly “open ended,” suggesting multiple interpretations. Create as many pages as you want, rearrange or edit and save.

An added value is in getting two or more children to toss ideas back and forth and collaborate on a project. They’ll have a ball doing it. Publish the story free on the Storybird website to share and have others comment on, or pay a fee and have it printed as a keepsake.

Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) lets you create interactive stories, games, fun animation and more, all while learning some principles of logic programming by snapping together color coded blocks that represent various commands. 

Commands control the actions of on-screen figures, sound, music and narration, take input from the keyboard or mouse and more. Children soon get beyond the nuts-and-bolts of programming commands to the fun of interactive story creation.

Zooburst (www.zooburst.com) lets you write stories and illustrate them with provided images, which can be assembled into a 3-D pop-up page viewed on screen. For even more fun, add pop-up text balloons or record your voice, speaking as a character when clicked or, using a webcam, include yourself surrounded by the 3-D story characters.

These are fun ways for youngsters–or adults--to create stories.

Free Music From the Internet

A great choice of free music is available to stream from music services such as Pandora, or Spotify, allowing you to listen to a vast selection without having to rip CDs or copy files.

Spotify (www.spotify.com) is new in this country and offers streaming music from a choice of more than 15 million songs.

Spotify offers several choices: What’s New details newly-released albums, including album art and track listing. Top Lists show the hottest tracks or albums chosen by other users. Feed connects to other users to share new finds or playlists and the latest news from Spotify.

We used the provided free software to build playlists by dragging and dropping tracks. Play for enjoyment, share with friends using Facebook, or sync the playlists with your iPod, iPhone, Android or (soon) iPad.

Spotify’s free version includes ads and a time limit. Premium version ($9.99/month) has no ads, unlimited access, enhanced sound quality and allows streaming to mobile devices.

Pandora (www.pandora.com) takes a different approach. Custom “radio stations” are created after you enter an artist, song or genre that’s used to match more than 100 characteristics to produce a playlist for you.

Refine the selections by indicating those you like or don’t. You won’t see the playlist, and selections are randomized, but when we used Pandora, we were usually happy with their selections.

The free version lets you set up radio stations and stream music, has a time limit, and includes ads. Pandora One ($36/yr) offers unlimited time, no ads and improved quality sound. Mobile versions are available for iPhone, iPad and iPod.                                   

More Life With An iPad

 We keep finding fun and effective ways to use our iPad, but we’re also hearing from readers who found it helpful in other ways. A reader who has a medical condition that made it impossible to hold books for reading or sit without pain when using a computer found the inherent mobility and flexibility of the iPad helped with both problems. The reader said “the iPad gave me back my books, my computer games and Internet!”

The included Internet browser, based on Apple’s Safari, allows searching, surfing and more. Internet uses open a world of opportunities. We can go to our favorite sites from our iPad with touch ease and enjoy all the Internet has to offer--all with us wherever we are. Also bundled with the iPad is Apple’s Mail program, which can support several email accounts, so we each can check our email and reply, print or delete messages. Internet and email do require being logged on at a WiFi hotspot (including your home wireless network) or having the 3G/4G version of the iPad, and printing requires a network connected printer.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of all we can do, and we’re  still learning. Stay tuned.

More Life With An iPad

We’ve had a great time discovering some of the fun apps that come with our iPad 2, but we also enjoy the ways we can use it to have information at our fingertips, anywhere, any time.

For example, we’ve set up our family calendar and contact list on our iPad. It was a snap to use iTunes to sync our current Mac calendar and contact list into the iPad, so we can see appointments, recurring events, holidays, contact information and more while on the go. Any changes we make on the iPad can be synced to the Mac and vice versa,

Another app we like that comes with the iPad is Maps, which uses the GPS in the iPad to pinpoint our location and provide text and map directions to desired destinations. The GPS also displays a tracking ball that shows your route as you move along. Cool.

Although many smart phones can perform these calendar and map functions, the large, bright screen makes everything easier to see, and the touch screen makes interaction easier.

Now to move on to those nearly 500,000 more apps to explore.

Life With An iPad - photos

One of the joys of having an iPad is that you can show off photos on the large (9.75"), bright display by just sliding your finger across the screen to scroll from one photo to another. The iPad changes automatically from horizontal to vertical view, has easy touch zoom in and out, and shows photos in brilliant color. Oh, did we mention that it does videos too?

So how do we get photos into the iPad? Just use the iPad’s built-in camera (two actually) , take the photo you’d like and it’s ready to display. Another way  is to e-mail photo(s) as attachments and pick them up on your e-mail on the iPad.

Apple also sells a camera connection kit that will connect the iPad directly to your camera or, using the included SD card reader, to the camera’s SD card. Thumbnails are shown for the entire contents, and you can select which you want fully downloaded and ready to view.

But the best way to get photos into the iPad is to install Apple’s iTunes program on your PC or MAC, load the photos directly from the camera or its memory card into iTunes, sort them into albums if you want, edit if needed and “Sync” them into the iPad.

It’s that easy to wow everyone with photos of friends and family, share trips and special events, and much more.