Mixed potpourri of geek snippets

Office 2007 file format converter
So I don’t think much of Windows Vista. It is said that in 2007, Vista was only shipped with 39% of all new PC’s because nobody wanted it. I also heard that in June this year, XP will no longer be available to buy, so anybody needing to stock up on licenses should do so soon, if they prefer to steer clear of Vista. Although you don’t need Vista to run Microsoft Office 2007; it can be run on XP, not too many people are using Office 2007 yet either. It looks radically different from the conventional Microsoft Office 2003 so many believe that if it aint broken, don’t try to fix it by migrating to 2007. The main reason for the reluctance to migrate is the file format change, though. MS Word 2003 and prior versions created documents with an extension “.doc” and MS Word 2007 has “.docx”, the old Excel uses “.xls” vs. Excel 2007 “.xlsx” and old PowerPoint uses “.ppt” while 2007 has “.pptx”.

Users of previous versions of Office can’t read documents created in new versions and the only solution is for 2007 users to back-save before distributing to their older version contacts? Not quite! Microsoft has come out with a file format converter that allows Office 2003 to be spruced up to open 2007 documents. This converter is free to download from www.microsoft.com. Microsoft say you must ensure your system (if an Office XP or 2003 user) is up to date by installing all High-Priority / required updates on http://update.microsoft.com beforehand. Then, in the search window on www.microsoft.com type FileFormatConverters.exe and download this hefty 27Mb executable. Double-click to install and that should take care of opening documents from 2007 in 2003.

Avast outstrips AVG
Next update is on the Antivirus front: AVG used to be the most popular free antivirus program out, but in recent times a new name has made itself felt and people, including myself, have started to uninstall AVG and migrate to Avast. Avast is available free for home users on www.avast.com . I have come across a couple viruses/trojans that AVG did not pick up but Avast did. If you suspect your system is compromised, the thing to do is download avast ( 19Mb), load it, download the latest virus database as per avast menu, restart your computer in safe mode and virus check your system.

Safe Mode
Chances of adware/spyware/viruses loading in Safe Mode are minimal. To boot into Safe Mode in Windows XP, shut down the computer totally (as in power off – keep power off for 30 seconds). Turn the computer on and start tapping the F8 key every second as the white (pre-windows) writing starts coming up on the screen. You will drop into the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Using the arrow keys on your keyboard (the mouse won’t work yet), choose Start Windows in Safe Mode. Virus check your system, then reboot normally to get back into conventional Windows.

Synch it with Google
An interesting addition happened in Google Calendar not long ago. The Google team came up with “Sync with Microsoft Outlook calendar”. If you use the Google Calendar to its fullest, inclusive of free reminder sms’s of upcoming events, but you also want the features offered by Microsoft Outlook, syncing Google Calendar to Outlook (or Outlook with Google – or both) is now possible and easily set up. All you need to do is surf to www.google.com/calendar, click on the new red link at the top that leads to the Sync feature and download, as per instructions, the executable GoogleCalendarSyncInstaller.exe . Once downloaded, double click on it to install it and decide if you want a 2-way sync, or a one way from or to Google Calendar. You are also able to set the interval between each synchronisation. Sweet, this can now easily be incorporated into your existing Microsoft Outlook Calendar, or the one used at work. It only syncs your main calendar for now, which is a downside if you use several calendars in Google.

Load Shedding Info
Focusing on the wonderful world of load shedding, forewarned is better than being caught off guard. The internet has a number of websites dedicated to the power issue. The obviously important one is when can we expect a load shed? Ideally keep an eye on www.eskom.co.za/live and watch that dial they show on TV. If it goes into brown – trouble. Another useful site which quotes more links is www.poweringsouthafrica.co.za and is especially useful to find out what can be done to help Eskom out of their quandary and how to save electricity.

And if you want to take power saving to new heights, use www.blackle.com instead of www.google.com which swaps the white background with a black one, thus saving energy. Or does it? The jury really is out on this one, but hey, blackle sure makes for a change.

Don’t blow your lid
If you need to be prepared, there is a company in Cape Town that specialises in UPS’s (Uninterrupted Power Supply) as electronic equipment not shut off in time can take strain and blow. If you need a solution, maybe www.powerbackups.co.za have it?

The Witness Geek, when not in panic mode of one form or another, answers emails on geek@witness.co.za or you can visit her blog on www.witnessgeek.blogspot.com .

OF FAXING AND OTHER INTERESTING PASTIMES

First off, I would like to thank Ronan Duff for piping the accidentally misspelt URL of Maritzburgs' Blog back to our www.pmbblog.co.za . So drop by and set yourself up on our Maritzburg blog spot.

But if blogging isn’t your scene, maybe faxing is? Read on as I’m about to demystify how to receive and send faxes from your computer.

Before you sign up for a quick and free fax number via some service provider advertising this service, consider if you will need to send faxes, too, or if being able to receive faxes is good enough. Choosing your fax service provider depends on this decision as not all service providers also accommodate the sending of faxes from your PC. Here’s the lowdown:

RECEIVING IS EASY
It is easy to set yourself up with a quick fax number to which you can receive faxes. Incoming faxes will come through on your email and it is a free service which many service providers offer, including Postnet. Surf to www.postnet.co.za and click on their Fax2Email icon and choose a Postnet outlet near you. Then fill in your details, wait for the activation email to come through to you and click on the activation link. You will now already have an 086 fax number allocated to you, but Postnet still needs to set the 086 number up to pipe any incoming faxes to your email provided. They say it takes about 2 hours before it’s activated. When a fax comes through to you, you will see it as an email in your Inbox with either a tiff file (Tagged Image File Format) or an Adobe Acrobat Reader .pdf attachment.

SENDING REQUIRES DECISIONS
If you need to send faxes from the comfort of your computer, here are further options:

If you still have a dial-up modem, and Windows XP or younger, you can send faxes from your computer using “Windows Faxing”, a facility which Windows provides, but which can be tricky to set up.

It involves adding the Windows Component ‘Fax Services’ in the Control Panel. The Windows Component Wizard should be able to set up the rest and you will be able to send a fax by pretending to “print” and instead of using a physical printer, use the Fax option. Read more about this on the Microsoft website by searching for “Faxing” when you’re at www.microsoft.com .

If you have moved onto ADSL, please note that an ADSL router cannot be used for faxing as it is a router, not a modem. I asked Des Ramsay of SAI for a technical explanation: “ADSL modems do not dial into POP's like your old dial up modem does. This time an ADSL modem works like an ADSL router, but connects to a DSLAM port. You can't put a telephone number into a ADSL modem, if that makes sense.” Clear as mud to me, but what I will remember is that if I had an old dial-up modem still connected to my computer, I could plug it into the phone line and use it to fax, even while using the ADSL router to surf the net and get my email.

However, remember that sending faxes this way incurs a cost as it is essentially a phone call you are making.

But, at a reasonable price, you could circumvent this roundabout way of faxing and faffing by asking your Internet Service Provider for a solution.

I asked SAI and they offer VAX Services. SAI, like Postnet, are able to supply you with a free 086 fax number which allows you to receive faxes. The good news is that even if you are not an SAI client, you can get your free fax number from them.

Should you require to send faxes, you can then ask SAI to install VAX Services for you, which enables you to use your email to send faxes. These sent faxes incur a cost, and a monthly premium of R35 covers this service. If faxes sent for the month exceed R35, the cost jumps to R70. Speak to them on 0861 33 22 11 or email them at freevax@sai.co.za.

Once Vax Service is installed, a fax would be sent from your email program with the recipient address showing the fax number like this: 27865183606@vax.co.za

USE IT OR LOOSE IT
Unused 086 fax numbers are recycled after three to six months, so if you rush out to get one just for fun, use it or loose it, dears. They are also not transferable between service providers. This is the geek faxing out the signal. Roger Roger.

Check out the Witness Geek blogspot on www.witnessgeek.blogspot.com or visit www.pmbblog.co.za

Social Networking

Wayne Janneker is a passionate twenty five year old Network Systems Engineer. His involvements range from the Pietermaritzburg Linux Enthusiasts Group to the Lincoln Meade Neighbourhood Watch. His day job includes programming and fixing peoples problems and I should know, he’s helped me on a number of occasions. We started chatting about trends in social networking, especially how the internet has redefined how people connect and find like-minded communities. Janneker has been researching this, and I went to quiz him in “real” life at his office.

When he started looking into social networking, he first asked himself how the average local Internet user had adapted to the Internet as a whole and discovered that the FUD theory is still very much alive and kicking. FUD standing for “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”. People are still scared to give out credit card details online. Janneker found random people he chatted to “horribly shocked” when asked if they would book a flight online. Most people had heard urban legends that they would get to the airport only to find they had been “suckered” into divulging their credit card details, that there was no booking or seat on the airoplane for them and that their details had been leaked to spam engines or even the Russian Mafia for identity theft. Read more on the truth behind urban legends at www.snopes.com. Janneker explains that one needs to be savvy and understand that sites like the online SARS, Discovery Health, Mango Airlines and banks, ranking amongst legitimate sites, may require more personal information and advises users to look out for the golden keypad on a secured website.

Controversially, Janneker says that on social networking sites such as Facebook, users often gladly reveal email addresses, telephone numbers and photos of themselves publicly and thinks that this is where stalkers could have a field day. He draws the line at handing out email addresses on social websites.

“I must state social networking, even from the begin of time, can only be as safe as what you disclose!” philosophizes Janneker.

After these so-so findings, Janneker decided to dig deeper into the aspect of social networking and came to the conclusion that social networking is a culture, not a “thing”. It existed well before the Internet, computers and even telephones and today’s technology has just opened quicker and easier avenues.

“Social networking is really you and a group of people coming together on a common ground and communicating on a mutual level that is fun and easy. The internet just makes it possible for you to communicate with others on a global level.” says Janneker.

Today’s methods of sharing these common interests include blogs (text based journal entries posted on the Internet), podcasts (audio blogs) and vlogs (video blogs).
Immediately one thinks of Facebook or MySpace, which is inherently a social networking site mainly used by the younger “folks”. Janneker discovered a strange phenomena: comparing friends he knows in the “real world” with their “cyber” persona, he noticed that their attitude and personality took on a new shape:

“I noticed, for example, shy friends I knew from school, who are now on facebook looking cool and hip. On a human level they are more timid, but on a cyber level they’ve upped their personality a good deal. They now have a “second life” online.”

“If you didn’t know me in real life, I, Wayne, could portray a new image. It’s almost like a second chance to better their image, nobody knows the true you and you can live what you are missing.”

This led Janneker to find out more on attitude change. He found a survey on www.eweek.com which states that conventional internet dating sites used to find poor responses to posts: around about a 5% match. Then a new dating site offered a “virtual makeover” which reports a 99% success rate. What did they do? They “spruced up” members profiles to make them sound more desirable.

Janneker came away saying: “My personal view is that you have to be true about yourself online.”

These were almost alarming findings, so I asked Janneker to let me come away with something positive.

We discovered a common passion in Pietermaritzburg and its communities:

Janneker has taken his involvement in the Lincoln Meade Community watch online: www.lincolnmeade.co.za is an active and up to date website reporting on issues surrounding latest arrests, incident and information boards. Janneker has linked up with other community watches in South Africa who share tips and even phone to help with issues.

Computer forums are inherently helpful and none more so than PLEG (Pietermaritzburg Linux Enthusiast Group), who have been the trading post for taking unwanted computers off a companies’ hands and redistributing them to the needy communities such as schools, using open source software.

Women in Business and the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business use their active cyber community to network, giving it a business spin.

Using a blog to address business issues has been all but totally underestimated by South African businesses so far. Why not create a business blog such as a daily health tip aimed at South African women, or a weekly posting on financial tax tips pertaining especially to our local environment and let people add these to their RSS feeder to keep on top of their business game. This would be a lot more dynamic than a website.

If these blogs are helpful and handy, you are sure to get spin off business when readers have specific needs and hire your services.

Pietermaritzburg gets its own blog site
So during our interview, ever pro-active Janneker put on his thinking cap and went away to create a place where a network of Pietermaritzburg based interest groups could have a common blog or a link.

Not a new idea, but certainly one long overdue in our city, it is an open site to develop social networking in our city.

Surf to www.pmbblog.co.za and set yourself up. It is aimed at common interest local communities having one place to find each other.

“Blogs have a greater response, are read by more people more quickly than traditional ways of getting heard such as standing on a street corner.”

Google Earth – Now Bigger and Better

I decided long ago that buying even a relatively recent encyclopedia in printed form is a waste of money and space in this day and age. No sooner is it printed than it is out of date. Nothing brought this home to me more clearly than re-looking at Google Earth the other day. Now on version 4.2 (beta), Google Earth is an out-and-out wealth of knowledge, and hours of amazement were spent by the entire Arbuckle family. My husband had oodles of fun showing the world to our inquisitive four year old son, who, in return, could not wait to play the “Earth game” again the next day.

I was dumbfounded to learn that in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, there are several man-made structures easily visible from satellite and thus, Google Earth. There are Palm Jumeirah and Jebel Ali, artificial islands created in the shape of palm trees and loaded with luxurious houses, all with beachfront access. And then there is the “World” which is also a man made set of islands in the shape of the world. These islands are for sale and if I remember correctly, Angelina Jolie has already bought “Ethiopia”.

But let’s just straighten up some basics: Google Earth is a virtual globe program which shows satellite images and aerial photography in a surf-able program. The baseline resolution is now so good that I even saw my car parked outside our house. In Europe you are even able to see people milling around the London Tower (which you can now view in 3D, if that floats your boat, er, tower!).

The age of the images vary, they are not live! Most international urban images date from around 2004 (says Wikipedia) but the US images are more current.

Don’t even try to run Google Earth on a dinosaur of a computer, minimum recommendations are from 128M Ram upward with Windows XP or up. Broadband Internet access, unless you are of the most patient persuasion, is recommended. Start by surfing to http://earth.google.com and download Google Earth for free. It clocks in at 12.7Mb.

Once loaded, the Earth itself is navigated using the scroll wheel (the middle button) on the mouse to zoom and the left hand click drag to pan around.

The panels on the left side of the screen are divided into three categories: Search, Places and Layers. In Search, a simple “Pietermaritzburg” followed by the Enter key will take you home. In fact if you zoom in as far as you can, you’ll be parking on the intersection of Langalibablele and Boshoff street.

You are able to save your Favourite Places in the middle panel, “Places”. Start by finding a place of interest and adding a Placemark (a yellow tack) and dragging it over the exact spot. Then you need to name your Placemark and you are even able to give a more thorough description. Google Earth will supply you the Latitude and Longitude. Once you click OK, you can now right click over your Placemark and send directions to a friend. You may even be re-directed to Google Maps, which is a related applications whose main aim is to get people from one place to another and does not require you to download or install Google Earth, even if you can use co-ordinates obtained from it. It’s a happy mappy medium, if you will excuse the pun. I’m sure even your Garmin GPS can interface.

But if you click on “Add Content” next to the Place button, the fun really begins. Now you can add KML’s. (Keyhole Markup Language – the geographic answer to HTML). KML’s are tools for viewing and making interactive highly visual location-specific information. Phew, what a mouthful. Some KML’s I found: There’s one that shows you the World Energy Consumption, another a Rising Sea Level Animation. Nightlights of the World, City of London Timeline, the list goes on and on. Each creates a Layer that is superimposed on top of your view of Earth with the promised information. Some do have programming errors, be warned! These and other, preset layers, can be switched on and off so that you don’t have a total information overload.

The Layers section on the bottom left is basically a whole lot of options you can choose to see or hide at any one time. You may want to see roads or hide them. You could choose to see photos other people (or you) have uploaded around a certain landmark: they appear as blue dots before you click on them and they fall under the piggy back program called Panoramio. Pietermaritzburg has a total of three photos uploaded, what a scrawny shame. I tried to load more by subscribing to Panoramio, but I believe it takes a few weeks for them to reflect on Google Earth. Wikipedia entries are really interesting purple dots (and sometimes golf ball shapes) that pop up a Wikipedia (online free encyclopedia) entry when clicked upon. I even found a stunning panorama view of the Fish River Canyon (yes, I know that’s not in Maritzburg), which was uploaded using Gigapan and people are able to upload videos using YouTube.

But then Google looked up and in August 07 Google Sky was added “en toe het die poppe gaan dans”, as they say in Afrikaans. A little unremarkable black button in the toolbar and, Zzoooop, you suddenly switch your gaze to behold planets, stars and galaxies above. Now you are able to use the Layers to view constellations such as Orion or Leo, follow the planets’ paths and even learn about current sky events such as a brown dwarf eclipse in the Greater Orion Nebula currently taking place.

Google Earth is crammed so full of information and fun things to do, I would not be able to tell you about each feature even if I had all day. Go on, play!

Contact Husbandry

The art of contacts husbandry is easily overlooked or put off for a rainy day, but in this day and age of electronic networking, that is very short sighted thinking. In the past I have harped on about “Thou shalt not steal thy co-recipients email addresses to use for spam” or “I shall hide mass email recipients in the BCC.” BCC being “Blind Carbon Copy”, not “Before Christ Computerised”, in case that was a jargon-swish.

The physical hoarding up business cards of people you need to keep in touch with is oh-so-passé because keeping this information at your fingertips involves sending an email or skyping them via your contacts list. Now a business card stuck in a fancy leather pouch just won’t do as you’d have to type the address into an email over and over again.

Right, dropped the bombshell now, have I? Contacts. Where on your computer is the best place to keep contact information, especially seeing as you want to duplicate as little as possible? It is a personal choice; you might be a whizz with databases and write one, or you might use an Internet based program such as Plaxo, or you possibly created an Excel spreadsheet or even gone out and bought a software package, but lets assume you’ve done none of the above. Let’s also assume you use Microsoft Outlook for today’s article, not Outlook Express, for your emailing needs. My suggestion is that you take a good hard look at the full functionality of the “Contacts” within Microsoft Outlook. You will be forgiven if you have only used it as an email address book, but it is so much more.

First, find it by looking for a longish “Contacts” button on the bottom left of your Microsoft Outlook screen. Change to Contacts from Mail (the default) and straight away you will see your current contacts, if any, in Address card view. Double clicking on an existing contact will show its properties, and if you have quite a few contacts, you may search for a specific contact by typing part of their name in the “Look For” window and clicking on “Find Now”. Alternatively you could use the “a to z” buttons on the right hand pane. If you have no contacts at all, adding a new contact is done by clicking on the “New Contact” icon on the task bar in the same place you would find the “New Message” button if you were in the Mail option. Essentially a “Contact” needs only two things to work: a Name (not even a surname) and an email address. After this you could “Save and Close” and start using it in your Mail program. But while you’re there, note how there are five tags to a contact, namely General, Details, Activities, Certificates and All Fields.

Browse these and start using the fields that are useful to you. The big blank area on the right in the General tag can be used for arb information that doesn’t fit elsewhere. Also, you could use a field such as “IM address” (which stands for Instant messaging) for the locally more popular Skype Address.
Note that fields which have a down arrow next to them allow for multiple entries, such as alternative email addresses.

Another tip is that if you fill in the postal address (snail mail) carefully, you can use it to mail merge in MS Word or Excel by choosing the Outlook Contacts as the database.

The Categories to which your contact can be added as seen at the bottom of the General tag can be used to group your VIP business contacts together, or, creating your own Categories under “Add to Master Category List”, your golfing friends. You can even View by category and send all contacts belonging to a set category a mass message by clicking on “View by Category”, Actions, “New Message to Contacts”. This will send a message to all Contacts who have that category in common.

That would almost be like creating a distribution list, which is done by clicking on New, Distribution List, naming the list (for example Family) and selecting members to belong to this list. A group email to this distribution list is now easy by choosing the List name.

If you want to save your typing but you wish to add a contact from an email you’ve received, proceed as follows: Return to the Mail button and double click on the email from your new contact. Hover over the email address and right click. Choose “Add to Outlook Contacts” and fill in any other bits as needed.

Back to the Contacts menu, selecting the “Activities” tag on a particular contact will invoke a search of all activities that have occurred between you and this contact, be it incoming or outgoing emails, meetings, tasks or even a birthday reminder if you’ve filled this information in. This is an ideal tracking help when your inbox overflows and you’re looking for that email that came in sometime last year. Note that Outlook wants to refresh this window every time you open the contact to make sure it’s missed nothing. Now remember your Excel hints and use column manipulation as in Excel and if you right click over the column headers you will be presented with more tools such as Sorting and adding more fields such as Sent or Received dates. Dead handy.

You can even be nice to your contacts (or business savy) and create a contact for yourself, filling in all information you wish your clients/friends to have. When you now write an email, attach your vCard by clicking on the down arrow next to the paperclip that attaches files and choosing Items instead. Now browse to your Contacts and select yourself. The recipient of the email can open and save this contact of yours (and overwrite any older information) and never be at a loss of how to get hold of you again. Perfect way to spread the word that your email address has changed, as long as people use Microsoft Outlook.

Keeping your contacts up to date and tidy and in one place is becoming one of the most important things anyone can do. The Contacts file can over time become your most valuable file, so backing it up is a must. A simple way of backing up is to open Contacts, click on File, “Import and Export”, “Export to a File”, Next, Microsoft Excel, Choose Contacts, Next, Choose a name and location for the exported file to go to, Next, Finish. This Excel file can be opened and used in Excel however you see fit, or you can use it to import your contacts to a different computer and even import it to Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlooks’ little brother.

It pays to spend some time with this contacts database and save yourself double work in the long run.

New ideas with photographs

Recently I took a few photos at a friends wedding and considered how I could make an imaginative present out of them. Even without an expensive photo manipulation program such as Adobe Photoshop, there is quite a bit of ingenuity and even mischief that one can get up to.

Have a look, if you, like me, own a Canon scanner, because it comes with quite a competent program called ArcSoft Photo Studio 5, and if you’ve ever bought a printer, you will know it has oodles of software that accompanies it. My favourite photoviewer and smalltime editer, I must add, still remains FastStone which can be downloaded for free from www.faststone.org.

My digital camera came with a free photo stitcher, that makes panorama photographs right up to 360°C. You tell the stitcher which photographs are meant to fit together and in what order and it makes an admirable attempt at putting a panorama of these photos together for you.

Imagine you’re standing at the Victoria Falls and, turning on your own axis, taking photos as you go. Then your computer stitcher recreates the view all round when you get home and you can enjoy it and even share it with people who have never been there. Of course, you have to remember to take neat, slightly overlapping photographs while out sightseeing. At weddings, it can be used to create a group shot of all the guests, which would otherwise never fit on one photograph.

A fellow blogger introduced me to a fun site to add a bit of class (or tongue in cheek) to photographs. The site allows you to create custom motivational posters with your own images and quotes. The outcome, which you can download, look exactly like those awe-inspiring posters you see in your managers office with quotes such as “Persistence” or “Aspirations” written underneath a stunning picture of a super trim rock climber hanging off a cliff by a fingernail. Now just close your eyes and imagine what quote you could put beneath one of your photographs and surf to www.mobuck.com to create your very own inspirational poster. For $1, you can download a high resolution image, hence the website’s name.

This made me curious and I browsed around for similar sights and found www.magmypic.com which specialises in fake magazine covers which allow you to insert a picture of your choice. With fake covers ranging from National Geographic to GQ, there is something for every occasion, be it to build a fun birthday card for a friend or to create an avatar (which, in digital speak, is the graphical representation of a user) for your facebook account. Just remember to choose an upright (portrait orientated) photograph of medium size.

So inspired was I that I carried on looking for unique ideas and found a website that had me totally bowled over. It must be one of the most creative websites out there and it’s called www.worth1000.com . It specialises in image manipulation. Every other day the site posts a contest topic, for example ‘Animal Geeks’, and invites registered users to post their manipulated and themed images. If they win, accolades follow. The best part is that the gallery of past contests is available for viewing and is mind blowing.

If you want to see a blow by blow account of how a very average model is made to look like a million bucks with nothing but makeup and photo manipulation, visit www.youtube.com and enter the words “Model Evolution with Make Up and Photoshop” into the search criteria. The video which comes up, will once and for all reveal to you how “airbrushed” our beauties of today have become and especially your teenage daughter will feel better for having seen this.

I hasten to add that my avatar (with me holding a computer chip in front of my left eye) which accompanies this article saw me in the accomplished hands of make up artist cum photographer Karen Edwards and is “only” colour manipulated. Needless to say, I was amazed at how a Geek like me can look so glamorous.

Inspired by what is possible with the right amount of imagination and dexterity, I became mischievous and decided to do some imitating on www.witness.co.za . If you are a frequent visitor to the site you will know that one is able to view past and present “front page Witness” pages, and it’s one of these I nabbed by right clicking over it and saying “Save Picture As” and squirrelling it away on my computer.

I opened my photo manipulation program. A free program called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is available from www.gimp.org. GNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software, in case you were thinking wildebeest. GIMP is, as yet, inferior to Adobe Photoshop, I hasten to add.

Back to the mischief: I hacked and slashed the front page of the Witness into shape and superimposed my married friends into the front page photo and sneakily erased the headlines out to be replaced with a personal message.

All this done, I now wanted to make a sweet slide show with musical accompaniment which my friends would be able to watch on TV via the DVD player.

Enter Nero Vision Express. This is yet another program which is shipped free, this time with nearly every new CD/DVD burner sold. The latest version is Nero 7, but I will briefly explain how to use the more common Nero 6 version to create a slide show of all the pictures I had created using my ideas mentioned earlier.

If you open Nero (which is the software often used to burn data onto CD’s and DVD’s, there is an application called NeroVision Express in the top left part of the window. Inside here you can create your own project which can consist of a photographic slide show, or a movie or both together.

Initially, I was confused by what the difference between a project and a slide show is. Eventually I understood that a project can consist of several slide shows. The confusing part was that the program doesn’t ask you for a project name straight away, but wants the slide show name in the first step of the wizard. So I named the Project “The Wedding” and the first of 7 slide shows “The ceremony”.

To create a new Slide show, click in the top right window and “Create New Group”, then “Browse and Add to Project” the photographs you want. I recommend resizing very large photographs beforehand, so that Nero doesn’t struggle too much. I discovered that one slide show cannot contain more than 99 photos. A song or two can be added to play during the slide show. It’s fun to add “photo transition” effects or apply a random one so have the photos morph nicely from one to the next. This “Group” you’ve now created becomes a “slide show” when you click on ‘Next’. More slide shows can be added in the same way as before. Once all the photos have been added, you are wizarded onto the DVD menu creator, which allows you to use a template to make a neat DVD menu which will eventually respond to your remote control input. You then get ushered to burn the creation after which you can view it on your DVD player connected to the TV.

What a lovely gift. Visit www.tucows.co.za or www.download.com if you want to search for other free or shareware software that do similar things.

This story and other articles can be viewed on the geeks weblog at http://witnessgeek.blogspot.com/ and you can email her on geek@witness.co.za .

Forms for Word

So you’re back with your nose at the grindstone, either already or soon, are you? Just to amuse your co-workers, why not send them a quick holiday questionnaire?

Microsoft Word has a feature called forms. Forms can be used to neatly collect data from many users (who also use MS Word) in form fields, check or drop down boxes provided. The entire look of the form and the form fields are created by you. So your imagination is the limit, and here is how it works:

First, switch on the Form toolbar by clicking on View, Toolbars, Forms. It’s a very uncomplicated toolbar. The first three icons on the left are the ones that make the fields.

Think of it this way: A form field is the placeholder where the person filling in the form puts their answers. So if you want them to put their name, create a form field (the first icon, which has the letters ab in them) in the exact place where they should put their name. Obviously you have to write what it is they need to fill in. That would be normal text and in my example I’ve simplified the overview by making my questionnaire in the form of a table. It’s easier on the eyes.

Choose “Form Field Shading” (the ‘a’ with the stripes around) so that any form field shows up in grey.

Once you’ve got a form field inserted, you can double click on it to see all the different options. A normal text form field, for example, can be set to a specific type, namely text, numbers or dates. Special form field options include automatically inserting the current date or doing simple calculations based on previously entered information. You can add help texts for users by clicking on the “Add help text” button at the bottom of the properties box. The help text can either appear in the Status bar (the grey line which shows the number of pages and lines and columns at the bottom of the screen) or the help can show up when the user presses the Help Key (F1), or you can play it safe and add it to both.

Advanced text form field options - calculations
Also in the properties you can rename the form field by changing the name in the ‘bookmark’. If you want to do simple calculations based on other fields entered by the user, you use the name given in the bookmark. For example I created a simple subtraction formula by asking before and after Christmas gluttony weights. I then created a form field calculation which works out the gained weight and tells you to hit the gym. In that calculation field, I changed the type to Calculation and my formula reads: =After-Before .

Check please
The second icon on the form toolbar inserts a simple check box which can be ticked or unticked.

Drop Down Form Field
If you want to have a multiple choice type question, you can use the third icon (Drop Down Form Field) and once you’ve double clicked on it, you can add your own answers. You type the options one by one into the ‘Drop Down Item’ field and click on ‘Add’. The top item will show as default. You can move your inserted items up or down the list.

Done? Save the form. (See step three for optional template creation).

Step one: LOCK – not optional
The only really tricky part about forms is to set them up ready for use.
Once you’ve finished the form and you want to use it, you must lock it. Do this by clicking on the padlock icon on the form toolbar (the last icon). This will allow you (and the users) to only type in the form fields. Hide the form toolbar. Now save it again. Users can now open the form, fill it in and either save it again or print it or email it. It looks neat, can be easily viewed and even scanned.

Step two: PROTECT – optional
If you want absolutely nobody to be able to tamper with your form, don’t only lock the form, but protect it. Do this by clicking on Tools, Protect Document and note how the Task Pane on the right hand side now has three steps waiting for you. Tick Step 2 and change the drop down list to ‘Filling in Forms’. Then, in step 3, click on ‘Yes, Start Enforcing Protection’. You will be asked for a password.
For heavens sake, don’t loose this password if this is an important form. I’ve never found a way to crack back into a word document once it has been password protected!

Step three: TEMPLATE – optional
If you want a squeaky clean entry form every time a user opens the form, but you want to keep a saved copy of every user, the best way to make sure your form isn’t overwritten is by turning it into a template. To do this, click on File, Save As and choose Word Template in the ‘Save as Type’. This will create a template much like the fax templates available. Tip: Don’t change the location of the template from the one the computer recommends, else it can’t find it. Once saved, close the template, click on File, New and see your template appear in the General Templates place. Unfortunately this will only work on the computer you’re working on, not anyone else’s. You have to copy it to each PC that needs it.

Serious uses of forms:
• Capture information about people applying for one of your services, i.e., school application, or subjects to be taken at a learning institute.

• Basic order/quotation forms which do simple calculations based on entered information.

• Internal Company questionnaires required by HR departments.

• Marketing surveys and other type of polls.

Note: Microsoft Word Forms do have their drawbacks. They are not real data capturing tools as there is no database attached to the form that just adds each entry to it as it is filled it. It only simplifies and neatifies the filling in process. Adding this information to a database still has to be done afterwards by a data capturer.

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