You can make professional looking images with your digital camera, no matter what the pixel count is. I’ve always been a firm believer that it isn’t the equipment that makes the photo – it’s the photographer. Here are a couple of ideas to make your family photos pop.

1. Goo-free lenses are the best. They can be wiped gently with a lint-free, non abrasive cloth, like those micro-fiber things you dust with.
2. The owner’s manual usually talks in detail about white balance function. The balance makes colors look better, depending on where the photographer is shooting – indoors, in the sun, dim light. Those who know which white is the right white, make better pictures.
3. Composing is something only a human can do. I like capturing something interesting just off center frame. Centered makes me feel constrained. Offset just a hair looks good. I like to keep my background uncluttered, too, unless, of course, I’m shooting a landscape.
4. I love images that fill the frame. One of my favorite things is the macro setting (little thing that looks like a tulip) to shoot odd parts of objects. My little grandson’s toes, for example…filling the frame. Incredibly fun to frame and hang near a bathtub. No macro? Use telephoto – stand back, zoom in till a relatively small object fills your viewfinder. Click.

Want more tips? I like Kodak’s consumer photo Web site and Picture Correct has tips from beginner to advanced.

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Google just acquired a website called Picnik that you should know about if you like digital photography and photo editing. Picnik is FREE cloud computing, with an available upgrade if you want it. With a simple click you can edit and manipulate photos to your heart’s content. Use filters, special effects, and controls once only available in expensive editing programs.

People are bringing their photos off their hard drives now and sharing them, posting them, mailing then, printing them, and displaying them on my favorite gadget of all time, electronic photo frames. If you’re going to use your digital images, you might as well get all the functionality you can. Here’s how it works.

Browse the web or your hard drive and find a photo you like, but you think it needs a little work. Cropping? Red eye correction? Color shift? Ok. Go up to Picnik, there is no registration to fill in. Just click “Get Started Now” and — get started.

Follow the prompts to upload your image. The site is very intuitive and the documentation is right out front and easy to follow. Play around. Use the tools that appeal to you. Experiment. When you like what you’ve created, save the photo and download it back to your computer.

From there, you use it the way you have always used images. Picnik is an application that was ahead of its time and really did the cloud-thing right. I hope Google never decides to charge for this service. Picnik, along with Google Docs, Windows Live and a few other easy-to-use cloud-based application will get us into the nimbus very quickly. Let me know what you think of Picnik.

There’s a FREE online productivity suite that uses none of your system’s resources and requires no download. Google Docs is fun to explore and to play with. If you want to jump on the bandwagon and get some of the larger programs off your own harddrive, in other words, go for cloud computing, start with Google’s tour of Docs.

The idea is to upload your existing files and then create new documents from scratch or from templates. You can share the stuff you write, store it online and set controls to keep it private and secure, they say. I’m not sure I trust online workspaces just yet. I mean, how many times a month do we hear that a given site was hacked and all the users vital data has been scattered across the universe?

It all works pretty well if you have a robust broadband connection, though you’ll doubtless experience lags when web traffic is snarled or crowded. I’ve seen lags. Type a sentence and it appears a couple of seconds later. However, consider this, too. Sites come and sites go. This isn’t to say Google’s going anywhere soon, but who thought half the banks of the world would skate the edge of failure, either?

Google Docs is worth a look, especially if you have a thousand year-old version of one of the big name productivity suites and you’re seeing the necessity of upgrading. Those high price tags are intimidating in today’s bleak economy. Go up online, sign in with your Google account or Gmail password and take a test drive. You might like it and you’re likely less paranoid than I.

Google Chrome outshines the rest

Google’s web browser, Chrome, is now in version 4.0.249.89.  I like it, especially in view of IE’s recent problems. Gurus and pundits are advising people to use IE only when absolutely necessary since it’s security credibility roughly resembles Swiss cheese. It’s full of holes and that can cause you problems.

There are seven or eight really good browsers. I’ve tried them all, and until recently, was happy with Firefox. However, Mozilla, trying to keep up with Microsoft, bloated and screwed up Firefox. It’s slow. It’s porky. It has way, way too many updates, add-ins and plugins. It’s a drag. Nor is Chrome perfect – the biggest issue is that Chrome doesn’t get along well with a lot of sites. Wordpress and Chrome – not a good fit, for example. On some sites, Chrome can’t display images or headlines. Chrome doesn’t even recognize Stumbleupon, a hugely important tool for web-writers like me. I’ve resorted to using Chrome most of the time, Firefox sometimes, and IE never.

Usually, the first thing I do when  setting up a new installation of IE or Firefox is turn off as many of the menus and toolbars as I can, leaving only the bare essentials like navigation buttons – I do like tabs. Well, for me Chrome is the way I like it, straight out of the box. Minimal menus. One toolbar. Clean text box for the URL I’m visiting, and a few navigation buttons, and tabs. The rest of my screen real estate is open for content, which, after all is what I’m really interested in seeing – not clever icons.

The folks at Google designed this browser to be an application platform, not just a web page viewer. Computer programs and web pages are becoming more and more like each other, and bridging the remaining small gap is something that Chrome does exceptionally well.

Chrome is significantly faster than all others, too, which seems logical, considering its clean, minimalist appearance. The program starts quickly and pages load faster. It can auto fill forms, remember passwords, and do things the big boys do. It has a neat little bookmark bar at the top for those sites you visit continuously – maybe Facebook? Twitter? the browser is secure, too. That may be because it hasn’t attracted hacker interest yet since its market share is rather small. But it downloads easily and quickly – about two seconds – installs like a flash and has no learning curve. You might give it a test drive and protect yourself form the threats hovering about IE and the sludge miring Firefox.

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The bottom fell out of the real estate market in some areas, notably parts of Florida where I happen to own property, but some places seem to be on the rebound. And it’s unlikely that real estate, in any market, will fail to increase in value over the long term. Still, many of us worry about what to do with homes, second homes, vacation cabins. There’s no definitive answer, but I do have a pretty cool idea of where to find a lot of information about any neighborhood, house, city or town. It’s called Zillo.

A beta site, that is one that isn’t completely tested and perfected, Zillo is becoming very popular. Zillo calls itself “your edge in real estate.” Here’s what it gives you, FREE:

• Zestimates – estimated values on 70,000,000 homes from a secret proprietary formula.
• For sale listings — post your home or buy one
• Most talked about homes – those with lots of inquiries
• Blogs
• Services for buyers, sellers, and professionals.

From what I saw, prices are pretty accurate – there’s an occasional anomaly, but mostly good info. You can see maps or lists of the properties you’re interested in. Just put in an address with zip code and wait for a response. I was able to look at street configurations, aerial maps and surface maps. I could zoom in or out, much like, say, Mapquest. There are price ranges calculated for specific neighborhoods. It’s possible to calculate a fairly accurate price estimate of your own place by entering some non-identifying info into the site. You’ll need Flash installed to play at this website.

Zillo is interesting. It might not solve all your problems, but it’ll give you something to do while the market continues to improve. Might even motivate you to pick up a property or two at bargain prices. I have this place in Mississippi, if you’re in the market….

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Birthdays – we all have ‘em. We all have to remember other people’s — and what a hassle that is for me.  I found a perfect solution — FREE! There’s an online site I’ve used for a year that sends you automatic reminders of birthdays you want to remember.

Drop in to Birthday Reminders and take a few minutes to set it up. The coolest thing for me was that I entered email addresses for the folks I want to remember, and the site sent them a request to update their birthdate for me. That’s my idea of a good time. All the work is done.

Birthday Reminders sends me email reminders three times before each birthday, anniversary, or whatever and I can send a card, make a call, or buy a gift. I’m remembrance-challenged and I’m hoping this will change my life-long handicap in that vein. It isn’t that I’m ambivalent about people’s special days – I just flat out can’t keep track. Scatter-brained.

This site, by the way, also allows you to send egreetings, ecards and singing birthday ecards. It’s fun and practical – and again, it’s FREE. The site managers claim their turf is ad-free and spam-free. They swear they do not share your info with anyone. In a year, I haven’t has any spam or cause for alarm.

Not recommended for cleaning your PC

While not as exciting as Chistmas, Halloween or even… Fruitcake Toss Day,  Clean Out Your Computer Day is an actual day which you just might want to consider participating in. Little is known of its origin other than it’s been around since 2000, and it was originally sponsored by the Institute of Business Technology as a day to declutter and clean out old and unused files from our computers.   It lands on the second Monday of each February.

(Today we’re looking at a guest post by computer gurus at iolo technoligies, fans of DigitalGrandparent. There are some great tips in this article for cleaning up your computer and getting it back to good computer performance. If you want to try the software mentioned, System Mechanic is currently available at a special sale price. I have no vested interest in the product, but you might find it useful.) –mkpelland

Clean out your computer day

Is your computer running slow, or low on memory?   Does it take forever to boot up?   Are there programs or files on it that you never use and/or don’t even know why are there?    Maybe Clean Out Your Computer Day is going to be your day.

In time for Clean Out Your Computer Day, here are some PC Clutter Facts and PC Cleanout Tips provided by iolo technologies, PC tune-up company and makers of System Mechanic software.

PC Clutter Stats

1. The average American adult has 1,800 digital files, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, making searching them quite a task.
2. Executives waste six weeks each year looking for lost items and information, according to a study published in the Wall Street Journal, adding up for huge corporate operating losses.
3. Americans waste nine million hours per day searching for misplaced items. On average, people spend a year of our lives looking for lost items, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers.
4. In 2007 alone more than 40 million computers were dumped, up from 20 million in 1998. On average, each computer lasted only 30 months (2.5 years), that short life span often attributed to the PC running slow and having low memory/drive space due to unnecessary clutter.

10 Useful PC Clean Out Tips, and how a utility (like System Mechanic) can help

1. Delete unused, old or duplicate files, emails, email addresses, bookmarks and favorites. Tools like SM’s “Remove Junk Files”, “Remove Internet Debris” and “Find Duplicate Files” tools can be used to recover a lot of lost space – and a lot of time wasted while looking for files on a cluttered hard drive.
2. Organize your files. Make sure to use a logical file naming system and put them into folders that make sense and are easy to remember and access.
3. Defragment your hard drive. While that won’t categorize your files (you have to do that manually, see #2 above), defragmentation will speed up your access to them, again saving you valuable time.
4. Back up your files and programs at least every month. Imagine all the time wasted if your files are lost. Back up regularly to a separate device like a portable hard drive or set up an automatic online back-up service.
5. Uninstall programs that you no longer need or use. To make sure they are completely uninstalled and do not leave any residual clutter, use a tool like System Mechanic’s “Remove Installed Programs” to uninstall even the most stubborn components.
6. Once you’ve uninstalled unused program, make sure to clean out your registry as well. Invalid or out-of-date registry settings can slow down your computer’s boot time. Use System Mechanic’s “Repair Registry Problems” and “Defragment and Compact Registry” or choose another good quality registry cleaning program to shave valuable minutes off your boot time.
7. Further improve your computer’s start-up time by removing unnecessary start-up items. Many programs lodge themselves in start-up without your knowledge.
8. Once you’ve organized all your files into folders, make sure all the shortcuts are still accurate. Remove those that aren’t working properly – as you’ve guessed, SM can do that for you.
9. For an ultimate clean out, try a program like DriveScrubber. DriveScrubber can securely wipe out all your hard drive data or you can use a more selective approach, removing only your personal files and leaving the programs intact. Definitely opt for this clean out option if you are planning on donating your computer to make sure your personal information is not recoverable.
10. For a complete PC clean out on Clean Out Your Computer Day, don’t forget your PC’s outside. Clean the screen, dust the keyboard, clean the mouse. After all, your computer deserves some pampering too.

Now mark your calendar – kick-start your spring cleaning on Monday, February 8 – it’s Clean Out Your Computer Day!

(The photo above was borrowed form a very cool blog called My PC Crashed)

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I read a recent email from a PR agency that works with entertainment clients, and I almost hit delete. The email quoted book making odds on which electronic reader will top the 2010 market in sales. I though it was plain silly – and useless to argue odds about whether Apple iPad will bludgeon the rest of the readers. But then, I figured my readers have a right to know. So here it is.

Bookmaker’s odds – will iPad beat Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader and the rest?

The email press release says:

With the recent unveiling of the new iPad, it has without doubt raised awareness on how it will compare to similar pieces of technology on the market today. CEO Mickey Richardson and his team at Bookmaker.com, one of the leading sportsbooks, have put together odds on the BEST SELLING TABLET IN 2010.

The +/- Indicates the Return on the Wager. For Example: Betting on the candidate least likely to win would earn the most amount of money, should that happen. The percentage is the likelihood the contestant(s) will win.]

That’s for what it’s worth. My two cents-worth: None of these electronic book readers is quite there yet. I’m waiting for electronic paper, promised by gurus since the early ’90s. It will, they say, look, sound, and feel like paper. (Harry Potter’s newspaper?) I also want the equipment to be smaller, and to do more, and to multi-task.

I haven’t seen iPad up close yet, so I won’t critique it. Early word is early adopters of that unit will be folks who are slightly less tech-oriented. No problem there, plenty of baby boomers like technology but don’t want to wallow in it. Let’s see how it goes.

The odds above are not much use to me, but if you’re in to that sort of thing, maybe you can get up an office pool or something. Of course all proceeds would go to charity, and none of you would gamble….

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Reading this may save your grandchild’s life–or yours. Using a cell phone and sending text messages while  driving is as dangerous as drinking to excess and getting behind the wheel of a car.  Texting is the most dangerous distraction on the road and an epidemic among teens whose heads are firmly in their back pockets. If you know teen drivers – ride herd on them until they get it. You’ll save lives.

Are the Feds hiding evidence?

Two consumer groups FOIA-ed (Freedom of Information Act) documentation that indicates possible hanky panky in 2003 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Network news mediasays NHTSA declined to conduct a study related to cell phone use by motorists.

NHTSA allegedly squelched pounds of existing documentation that indicates extreme danger when drivers use cell phones. Even hands-free cell phones. Drivers on cell phones, says that documentation, caused nearly 1000 highway fatalities in 2002 and were responsible for 250,000 accidents. The data in 2002 said 6% of drivers were using cell phones at any given time. Imagine what that figure is now.

In 2003, traffic fatalities due to cell phone use more than doubled, and texting didn’t even exist.

I took a defensive driving course a couple of years ago, something I strongly encourage my peers to do. It was fascinating – I learned things I had never known and revisited basics I had forgotten.

A key points our instructor made: Your car, at highway speeds, goes half the length of a football field in under 2.5 seconds. If you look away from the road long enough to locate and pick up your beverage, unwrap your burger, swat your misbehaving child, or glance at your map, you can easily find yourself in an emergency situation facing a traffic hazard you never saw coming.,

If you are texting, you look down in your lap. Your thumbs are busily punching text buttons while your knees steer the car. You compose a text to your BFF (best friend forever), it could be your last thought. Or the last moment of someone else’s life. All because of 140 characters of text that were so urgent.

You don’t text, you say? How about your kids, nieces and nephews, grand kids? My daughter does. My neighbor texts in the car. My real estate agent texts or talks on a cell phone constantly.

You don’t think it’s a big problem? This year, many cities, like Chicago, outlawed texting while driving. I challenge you to watch other drivers carefully as you drive home today. See how many swerve slightly as they go. Are their heads canted downward, toward their laps? Are their hands on the wheel…or texting? You’ll see an amazing number of people in that position as they fly down our roads and highways. If you honk – you’ll get the finger.

If that text-addict screws up – you may get dead.

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