Youseph Tanha

I was recently asked by a friend how they could setup an online photo gallery. So i thought i would give some information on the easiest way I know how to do this.

Lot of people out their want to know of a good and free way they can share their photos on the internet so that friends and family can see them. We live in a day and age where so many people own digital cameras and take tons of photos. The hard part can be getting these images on the internet so other people can view them.

The first step is to download a program that will help you save the pictures off your camera and keep them organized. The best program I know for that in Windows would be called “Picasa” and iPhoto on the Macintosh.

Picasa is a photo album program built by Google. It’s free and it’s good. You can download it from here. iPhoto is made by Apple and comes with the iLife suite of programs. Most new Apple computers already come with iPhoto installed.

Once you have loaded Picasa or iPhoto and put your first images from your camera in the program you want to follow this next link. It will walk you through setting up the Google online photo gallery part, so you can share pictures with people. The link walks you through setting up Picasa to upload your photos to the gallery but their is a plug-in for iPhoto you can download that will let you do the same thing.

Also, (and this is important) please make a backup of all your photos if your not doing so now. I learned the hard way. Not having a good backup system in place caused me to loose a lot of photos a few years ago. Make sure you backup everything to CD-rom/DVD-rom or another hard drive.

In my line of work I more often then not find myself bouncing from computer to computer. Some days I can end up work from more then 15 different computers. While other days I may only work from 3 different computers. Needless to say, coming up with a way to organize my data in a safe and secure, easy to access way is very important to me.

The way I have gotten around this is with a 1 Gig Thumb Drive and some applications that have been designed, or re-tooled, to be portable. I pretty much keep a hand full of programs I use everyday on my Thumb Drive along with whatever files I may need.

One key application I use is Firefox along with a Google Sync plug-in. Having my own copy of a web browser like Firefox on my thumb drive insures that no cookies or passwords are being saved on whatever computer I am using at the time. It’s all being saved on my little thumb drive. The Google Sync plug-in for Firefox means that any computer that i have Firefox on with the Google plug-in will all have the same bookmarks and settings. It’s been very useful for me.

The best place I have found for a full list of portable applications (both Macintosh and Windows based) has been Wikipedia. I personal keep both a Macintosh and windows version of Firefox with me because I am always on so many different computers through out the day.

Another great site is called PortableApps.com. Their you can find cut and dry installs of many portable windows applications or install a whole suite of them  on your thumb drive with their Portable Apps Suit.

Lastly I use a Wiki. TiddlyWiki to be exact and it’s great. This wiki is a completely self contained wiki. It’s just one solid HTML file that saves all updates and changes to it’s self. I think a wiki is the best way to store information that you need to be able to get at easily and quickly. I keep all kinds of work and personal related data on my wiki. Everything from recipes, quotes, jokes, to  work related data like Windows or Macintosh tips or application specific trouble shooting techniques.

The end result is that because at my job i am always switching to work on different computers. Having a thumb drive to be able to run applications from and store data to has made me much more efficient in my tasks.

“My God Jim… They are light-years ahead of us!!”

This is the coolest thing in computer interfaces that I have seen in a long time. Good bye Keyboard and Mouse. We have needed a better way to interact with our computers for a long time now. I have been saying it for years. We as computer uses are limited in what we can do and how fast we can do it because of the keyboard and mouse. Well this new “Interface Free” Interface.

“Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Here, he demonstrates-for the first time publicly-his intuitive, “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure.”

Links
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