Keeping Up With My Blogging Family!

Since November 2007, I have six family blogs that I have added truth about enzyte to other blogs I read in my personal blogosphere. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs so there are blogs of every sort. Here is how blogging fever caught on with my family...
My oldest daughter Betsy started her blog (The Mauney Family) to keep the family current on Isaac, my first grandchild. I serves as an online record of his growth.
My brother Mike (Mike Goes A Bloggin') enjoys writing and after seeing Betsy's blog he started one to share his writing with the family instead of sending out e-mails.
My brother encouraged our Dad to start a blog and tell some of his stories. Dad (Glenn A. Gurley) went to Blogspot and started his own blog and decided to share his life's story through text and also to record some of the stories he would share. This has ended up being a joint effort of my Dad and I.
After reading her sister Betsy's and Paw Paw's blogs, my daughter Kati started her blog (A Little Thing Called Life) where she shares life of a university student and becoming engaged.
My daughter is engaged to Ray and he started his blog Looking Forward... and also an internship blog
Finally, I pulled out my blog, dusted it off, and started it up again!

Think goodness I can subscribe to blogs by using RSS feeds and with one click can see if any blogs have been updated. The RSS readers (podcatchers) check feeds every few minutes and shows the newest updates. So instead of having to visit a dozen different places to get updates, I just go to one screen and see it combined ("aggregated") into a single window. Every time a blogger makes a new post, I receive an update through my RSS reader, Google Reader. So if I receive an update I know there is fresh content to read and if I don’t receive an update, there is no new content, so there is no point in my visiting the site.

There are several podcatcher sites; I use Google Reader. Several RSS feeds can be added so there is content from many locations all in one place. So rather than visit 20 blogs a day and wait/check for new content, RSS does this automatically on the one page. Clever, and it saves time and energy, so it might be worth using if you visit several blogs daily. Once an update is published at the source server, RSS send updates and only takes moments to get to your screen.

Video about Google Reader. Instructions to set up an account with Google and add feeds:
Go to Google.com and look for the list of services at the very top of the page and click on “more”
Click on “Reader”
Log in to your Google Account with the user id and password you created when you created the account or go to the link for “Create an Account”. A Google e-mail account is free and a good one to have in addition to the e-mail account you normally use
Click on the “Add Subscription” tab located on the upper left frame
Type or paste a RSS feed URL into the box and click “Add”
To read your feed just click on the name of the feed.

To read the new material that has been posted, log in to your RSS reader page. I use G-mail so all I have to do is click on Reader when I am checking my e-mail.

Web browsers may contain built-in feed readers. Mozilla Firefox comes with built-in feeds set up already and you add the ones you find to the existing list. Internet Explorer 7+ has one built in too and is under the Favorites tab. These remain on the computer you put them on so when you are on a different computer, you don't have access to your feeds like you do using Google Reader.

You may want to check into using a podcatcher to make your Internet social life more efficient.
Posted by Glenn Gurley Jr.
at 7:24 PM
5 comments Links to this post
Labels: Google Reader, podcatcher, RSS
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Family Pictures, How They Have Changed!

As I was making sure that my Nikon D-40 SLR Digital Camera was charged up and there was plenty of room on my 2 gigabyte secure digital card so everything would be ready to take to my parent’s house for Easter, I thought back at how photography has changed over the past few years. I remember my first digital camera had a resolution of 640 x 480 and started with around 1 mega pixel. This camera has 6.1 mega pixels and has more bells and whistles than I think I will ever use. I keep the pictures at 6.1 mega pixels so when I crop or edit the pictures they will be of excellent quality. Leaving the picture size at maximum resolution I have been able to crop small section of the picture and it still turn out well when printed.

As I have been working with my Dad on his blog I see the limited photographs that show him growing up. I have more that were taken when I was growing up and even more when my daughters were growing up. All these combined don’t equal the number of photographs that we have taken in the past few years. Now, we are free from the long process of taking 12, 24, or 36 pictures on a roll of film and after it is shot, carefully rewinding, removing the roll, and taking it to a store to have it developed.

I am having the best of times with Isaac, my first grandchild. I am already teaching him to call me Gramps and how to stand up and sit down. The picture that is flipping on this page is a four month picture of him. I edited a digital picture using an Internet based free service, BeFunky Cartoonizer to transform one of Isaac's photographs to this cartoon picture. The statement, "I love puppies" did not come out on the cartoon very clear so I decided to edit the words on the t-shirt to Gramp's Big Boy. To use the BeFunky Cartoonizer, you have to register but there is no cost to create the cartoons. After registering, you click on Cartoonizer then upload a picture, crop, then click on cartoonizer to sketch and then color. If you want to tweak a little you may want to try your hand using warp. Once you have your picture edited the way you want, print screen then crop down to the picture. You can save the picture to your account. You can even order, mugs, t-shirts, posters, or share the photo on a social networking site.

Another service that turns a picture into a conversation piece is Pictosaic. This is an online photo mosaic creator which can take an uploaded picture and turn it into a mosaic in a few seconds. Upload a picture, make choices of little pictures that will make up the picture. I like to have the original picture as one of the pictures so folks can locate it when viewing the picture. Isaac’s mom, Betsy, send the picture to SnapFish and they printed an 11” x 17” photograph which seemed the perfect size for this.

Sometimes you may want to resize your picture if it is too large or change the file type of a picture. I found a site that will do that for you. Gary’s Hood - Convert And Resize An Image - This web page will convert a .png, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, or .ico into any image format and size. The max image size to be uploaded is 5 megabytes and the max resolution to convert an image is 1280 x 1024. Animated gifs can be resized, but cannot be converted to another format.
I look forward to a day with my family, eating plenty of food and taking some memorable pictures!