However, this particular computer security breach is all of amazing, impressive, and scary rolled into one:
You'll never take your eyes off of your computer again.
I've been having a problem with my iTunes for some time.
Every time I used the short cut it installed to start up the program, the configuration dialog would pop up.
Every time. It was painful.
Then I came across this thread: http://forums.ilounge.com/archive/index.php/t-192809.html
The short of it is that you have to create a new shortcut and point it directly to the iTunes in your program files directory.
It's a little surprising that it worked.
In my last blogging post, I showed you how to add a video to your blogger blog.
In this post, I want to show you how to put a slide show up.
The reasons for choosing a slide show vary. The biggest, in my opinion, is to conserve real estate in the blog. It also minimizes the amount of scrolling necessary to read the blog.
I mentioned in my earlier blogging posts, I mentioned that there are several outside utilities used for blogging. I also mentioned that I would only show the tools within Blogger. This post will be an exception to that. This is because without an external "tool" if you will, you can not earmark a set of pictures as a slide show.
There are many photo services that allow you to embed into your blogs and web pages slide shows. The one I will demonstrate this time is Picasa Web.
Picasa Web is another one of Google's subsidiaries. It is the online album storage of the desktop photo management tool Picasa.
I will describe how to use only the web application, because this does not require the installation of the desktop application.
If enough people request it, I will do a more full review of the Picasa desktop application, with pros and cons associated.
That being said, let's get to it.
Of course in order to use Picasa Web, you'll have to create an account. Since you had to create an account for Blogger, this should be an easy thing for you, and I'll just assume you can get to that point with out more input from me.
Once you've got your account, you should be in the Albums page that looks something like this:
You'll want to click on the new album button ( ) just above the place where your albums will be listed when you've got some.
This dialogue will appear:
Now, you'll notice that you can store some interesting information with your album. You can choose to fill out as little or as much as you'd like.
I'll only point out 2 particular fields of interest. The title, at the top, and "Public" or "Unlisted" down at the bottom.
The title is important, because it will appear with your slide show. So you'll want to pick something easily recognized and understood.
The choice between Public & Unlisted is also something you'll want to make note. If you choose not to have your album be public, you'll still be able to display your pictures in a slide show on other sites. Setting an album to a public allows it to be searched and viewed via different search engines and people who happen by your albums.
You can also choose to upload photos into an additional folder, if you've already got one, but be aware that any existing photos in that album will be part of the slide show.
Once you create the album you'll come to this screen:
From there you'll click on the "Upload Photos" link on the left and you'll see this dialogue:
It will allow you to upload 5 photos at a time. Which is a decent number of pictures at a time depending on the size of your pictures. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you'll wan to make sure the size of the pictures is web appropriate. Remember this is a considerably lower resolution than print, so a given picture should stay in the 250kb range for the even the largest of pictures.
Once you've uploaded your photos, back at the photo album page, you'll see new link on the left side, "Embed Slideshow"
Once you click on Embed Slideshow, you'll see this dialogue:
Here it will help you generate the HTML code needed to embed a Picasa slide show in any web page that you have hosted. Where your blog is concerned, you'll begin entering the post and switch to HTML view. Then you'll paste the generated code where you want it to appear in your blog. For example:
<h1>The Greatest Slideshow Ever</h1>
Shades of Me:<br/>
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="400" height="267" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fwongcienzo%2Falbumid%2F5134793865116909729%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss%26authkey%3D4tfOxdnvDQc" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>
Would produce this when pasted properly into a web page or blog entry:
So far I've written about a basic post, and a post about putting newspaper layout style images into a post.
This blog tutorial entry will be centered around posting a video entry.
The instructions for this kind of post shouldn't be too much different than the other two.
First, login to Blogger and select "New Post" from beneath the blog you want to make an entry for.
Second, Enter your title and any text that you want to go before the video appears in your entry.
Third, from the tool bar click on the insert video button ( ) .
Then this dialogue will appear:
As you can see it's pretty straight forward.
Choose the file from your computer that you want to upload. It lists the type of video files that it will accept.
As a side note about different video formats, there are a lot of competing formats. It's sort a larger topic and if people want I can go into more detail about it. But suffice it to say, the smaller the video file the better. If you have a short video clip around 1 minute, you can probably compress it to under a megabyte. If you need something of higher quality in either resolution or frame rate, it might better be saved as a file file that a person can download and look at in a different viewer, because a blog offers limited real estate to begin with.
Make sure to give your video a catchy title, because video_5043.mpg isn't nearly as memorable as "The Last Man Standing".
Check the "I agree..." check box once you've read the "Upload Terms and Conditions". ;-)
Then click "Upload Video".
You will see this place holder while your video is uploading.
This is nice, because you can continue to edit your post while you wait for the video to process.
However, you won't be able to save your post until your video is done process. This is also a good reason not to put too large a video file as it will be a little painful to wait for something really big.
Finally, you can click on the "Publish Post" link and your video will be "out there".
As a special treat. What would a blog about posting a video entry be with out posting a video. Enjoy!
Building on my prior post I'll walk you through adding a blog with at least a single picture or many pictures in a newspaper style layout.
In my last post I showed you how to make a basic blog entry.
The steps are essentially the same.
Now you can add one or more pictures to make your blog post more interesting.
I the tool bar just above the body of the post, you'll see an image icon 3 buttons from the right:
A pop-up dialogue will appear that gives you some options on how your image will be inserted:
First, you'll notice that you can select an image from either you local machine or one that's already out on the web.
If you choose one from your machine, the image will be put on one of BlogSpot's servers so that it can always display your picture whenever your post is looked at.
If you choose to link to an image from the web, it is possible that the image won't be available if the originating server is down or removes that picture.
If you have rights to the picture, then I would recommend putting the picture on BlogSpot's server so that you can be sure your post displays correctly.
Second, you can choose the way your image lays out. Either Left, Center, Right, or None. You can also determine relative size of the image Small, Medium or Large.
You can upload as many images as you want, however, you'll want to be careful as to the amount of space you have available to store pictures.
At the bottom next to the "Upload Image" button, you'll see some text of how much space you're currently using as well as your max space allotted. So you'll not want to upload large high resolution maps of the cosmos or an image of every grain of sand on a particular beach you like.
Also, most digital cameras now-a-days take images in a much higher resolution than you would want to display on a web page. I recommend resizing your images on your local machine to sizes below 600x400 pixels. This size is plenty large enough for blog entries. You can always link to a larger version of the image stored somewhere else. This is a more advanced thing to do, so I may cover it a later date, if I have enough people wanting it.
You'll also see a checkbox for "Use this layout every time?". If you select this, the settings you pick this time will be your default options. If you post regularly and have a size or layout position that you like, this will save some time. Otherwise, feel free to mix it up a little.
If you choose to do more than one image at a time for upload, the layout choices will apply to all of the images. For example, if you chose "Center" and medium for 3 pictures that you want to upload, you'll get 3 medium sized pictures centered in a row.
For this reason you may want to upload an image, add text, and upload another image, so on and so forth. You may also want to vary the positioning of the image for variety, but that's mostly a matter of taste.
Third, click the "Upload Image" button.
The only really good way to see how your post will look with you image is to push it up (unless you use a 3rd party tool like Windows Live Writer) and see how it flows with the words.
Back at the entry edit page you can click on the "Preview" link in the tool bar and see what it will really look like in the browser you're using.
Keep in mind that different browsers, though theoretically standards compliant, will render things a little bit differently. So, the simpler you can keep you layout, the more likely your post will look good in more browsers.
Also, the way the image is laid out and sized is encoded into the html or web layout code. If you don't like the way the image appears in your blog, you can do one of 2 things:
Depending on your comfort level with looking at code, the fast way to change things is using option #2. You'll want to be somewhat careful about what you change, as it make have some interesting effects your blog display.
It is certainly not a bad idea to delete the image and try again, if you want to ensure that the blog displays correctly.
That's the way you add an image to liven up your post. Next post I show you how to add a video.
