Here's Pete acting funny 

Well, here it is meeting night and as usual, I'm not ready (completely). If this is your first time reading posts here, you'll of course notice that these are sort of in "reverse" order... in other words, the latest (newest) words and pictures are here at the top. You can scroll down to see the previous posts or use the handy "previous posts' links... they just take you down the page.

Let's see. With Blogspot you can...

* Easily post some words to your own website. It's got a very easy intuitive interface, and if you know something about coding web pages you can do almost anything you could do with a regular web host and some web page making tool like Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

* You can now add images. You can't place them... they come in as a separate post, but I'd bet you could do some cool stuff if you knew how to change the code.

* You can also easily create hotlinks for your readers to click on to go to other place in your blog or anywhere on the Net.

* You can open the blog to comments from anyone, or just "members" and you can completely lock out all users except the ones you want (providing they know the password and are members of blogspot themselves)

There's much more, but I won't blather about it here... you could read all about it on the instruction pages and in the Help feature here. Like about any other computer related endeavor, you learn this stuff by doing and making mistakes. Remember, this is not in stone, you can get back in and easily change your posts and even delete them or the entire blog and start all over again.

This particular Blogging tool was originally recommended by TechTV (sad to say they've now been 'absorbed' by a big Gaming TV network, and it's not nearly as handy as it used to be. That's from a non-gamer's point of view, but you have to be Windows and hardware saavy to play games effectively, so I don't know what they're thinking taking off great shows like 'Call for Help' and reducing the play time of Screen Savers to one show a day.

I was going to try and put some handy links here in the box off to the right (currently, depends on what template you're running), but perhaps we'll try that and some more picture posts tonight at the meeting.

I will also have an external hard drive and show you how easy it is to back up your system nowdays. See you over there.

Blogger "sign in" page or registration and instructions 

I've decided to also do a bit about backing up your hard drive. There's been so many viruses, worms, etc. over the last couple months (heck, it's been rampant for over a year, but particularly since this new Sasser worm appeared).

But first, lets take a brief look at Blogspot.

You see here the opening screen when you type www.blogspot.com in as a URL address. Simply follow the simple instruction here (you'll have to make up an acceptable name and password), then you can create your own blog. BUT, that's not all. You can also then join the blog here as a member and add to this thing. You can do that already if you click on the comment link at the bottom of each post.

OK, by tomorrow you will see by article on a backup strategy and hopefully we'll have something for the Site-O-the Month.

Later

Dave

Well, it's the morning of the day before the club meeting. Unlike the newsletter, I don't have to "finish" this before the meeting in order to "publish" it. I could just as easily notify you by email that this is what we're going to do. That might even happen today if I have the time. Email is getting a bit tedious nowdays. Is that happening to you? Here's what I mean... when I send a group email to SCCC members, I must break it up into three groups of ten or less email names each before I can send it. This is due to something the SBC mail server has done to prevent worms and spammers from using your mail account to broadcast their wares for free and undetected. Some people tell me that they don't have this "problem". I need to try it on some other machines. I might even try from my Yahoo mail and see what it does there.

Well, I've gotta go get to work... I'll be back later with more pictures and a description of how YOU can get your own Blog.

Dave

I don't really have to create a new post after every picture, but it gives me good practice in opening and editing things. It probably helps to know a bit about coding HTML, but you don't really have to know ANYTHING at all. The key, like most anything else, is experience that comes from practice practice practice.

Now, let's see if I can create a link for you to click on to take you somewhere else on the internet. If you click HERE you go to the website to sign up for a free Blog, or to login to ones you've created if you're already signed up.

I've also activated the "comments" feature here. The pictures, comments, and links are all new features since I started this particular Blog. Before, you could do it, but you had to know how to code HTML to do it.

I think we can have a group or team post capability on here as well. To do this, all you need to do is have everyone who desires to be a member register with Blogspot. It also means you could create your own blog or blogs.

I click "Send Picture of Window" to show you last month's newsletter open for editing in Publisher. 

I've decided to make this month's meeting about Blogs and Blogging. Just to show you what you can do with these things. We'll go over the details of creating your own blog at the meeting. Actually, this thing might be ideal if you're traveling on vacation and wanted to show the folks back home all your boring pictures. If I've read the instructions right, they would even be able to comment on the posts you make, sort of like a "board" conversation. The only thing you're going to need to do this is access to a computer while you're on vacation... a laptop, an internet cafe, public computers such as our County Library system has, even an internet capable cell phone or PDA... you can "post" to your Blog via email if you wish (although I'm not quite sure how you might post pictures).

You see here another "screen shot". To do pictures like this, you simply sign up for a "chat" service called "Hello" and the pictures go to Blogspot through it.

You can send a "screen shot". This is my wallpaper. 

I haven't posted here in quite some time as you can see. By accident I came across a free blog tool on Google. I found out that it could support picture posts now, so I dived in. Guess what? It's the same tool I used to create this blog. There are quite a few new tools, such as the screen shot you see here. We can use this to actually post the club's newsletter here, and NO WEB FEES to support and the administration is minimal.

You all can make comments if you want, but judging from the last time I tried this, I'm not going to depend on it. If you want to, send me an email and I'll arrange it.

Well, that's all for this time, but I should be getting something up HERE for this month's newsletter. You won't be receiving an email with an attached newsletter, but rather an email will contain a link to this site.

Good night and happy computing.

Dave