We know how to help you with Microsoft Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. We like Open Source software because it’s price is good and it’s consistent across different operating systems.

We also are an E-Cyling company. Instead of taking your old computer to the dump and filling up landfills you can bring it to us and we will E-Cycle it for you! Please check out list of clients and our remote training and repair services for more information on ways we can help you today.

If your interested in saving money either on computer related items or on anything else just check our blog below. My wife is an avid coupon user and is always sharing some helpful way to save money on your shopping.

Today I made my biggest haul yet. I had in my possession 20 coupons for Nivea body wash. Our local Wal-Mart carries this particular body wash for $3.00. It so happened that the coupon I have is for $3.00 off. This means I get to walk into Wal-Mart, pick up $60.00 worth of body wash, and pay nothing for it.  This is exactly what I did! I now have enough body wash to last me for about 5 years!

I went to the Dollar General a few days ago and picked up a few items that I had coupons for. These items included 4 Reach toothbrushes, 2 Venus razors, 3 ivory soap bars, trial size degree for women, and 2 magic erasers. I went to the cashier and when I finished giving her my coupons the register said she owed me 27 cents! The store actually paid ME money to take $14.00 worth of merchandise off their hands.

Needless to say I am hooked. Some of my friends think I’m crazy, but I’m loving the fact that I can save money and provide for my family. If  money ceases to be worth anything at least I will have some food and supplies to help my family.

John Rosemond ,the author, is a psychiatrist and author. His discipline suggestions are similar to Dr. Lehman and definitely promotes an unabashedly old-fashioned approach to child rearing. This book covers a great deal of the how to’s and why’s of what makes the old ways so much better. He details handling problems like respect, chores, obedience, and others. Great book all in all and one which I’ve really enjoyed.

I snagged a 200 in electronic project kit for 1.99.
We also got an Imaginext T-Rex mountain also for 1.99

We saved over $100 on this Goodwill trip.

First we’re going to be dealing with files that are on your hard drive. Getting pictures off a camera or cell phone can be done in so many different ways that it’s almost that impossible to detail it for each person’s setup.

So let’s begin. First thing is to know where your photo is. Put your picture some place easy like the Pictures folder on your desktop. For example here is a picture of my Picture folder where I’ve got a picture chosen.

So then the next step is to log into Facebook. Once your at Facebook click on the link on the right that says Profile. It looks like this.

Once your on your profile click Photos. It looks like this.

This will open up your Photos and will allow you to add a new album, manage an album, and add photos to your album. Creating an album is easy. Click the create Album button and give it a name. Once that’s done you will be greeted with the add photos page. I’ve allready created an album named William Aiden. Here is the Add Photos page.

Click the AddMorePhotos button. You will see this popup window.

Once you do that you will see this window open up. If you notice on the left my Pictures folder is listed on the left. My photo that I’m uploading is in that folder. Either way click on your picture and then click Ok. Once you do that your photo will be uploaded and you can add a caption or tag someone in the photo. Your done!

So you have a bunch of pictures and you want to make a nice movie out of them. Whether it’s for a graduation, anniversary, funeral, or any other slideshow you might need to make there are some software packages that you can use to make it. I’ll detail some of the choices that you have that are freely available and how you can combine them to produce some awesome results.

Before we go any further we have to figure out how to get your pictures into the computer to start with. If your pictures are on a memory card ,cd, or saved in a photo on your hard drive great you can move on to the next step. If however you have lose photos or negatives then we need to scan them.

If you have an hp scanner you’re in luck. Hp has some very well designed scanning software that makes your job so much easier. First let’s organize your photos. Set them out into groups of about 4 to 6 depending on their size. 6 4 x 6 photos can fit comfortably on a scanner bed. Hp’s software is intelligent in that it can figure out that you have placed separate pictures and will separate them for you. If you have a different scanner then you will have to scan the picture in one lump and use software like the gimp to cut them apart. Incidentally the gimp is free and makes cutting photos out easy. If you load your main picture into the gimp you can highlight a picture and then hold down ctrl and c to copy that picture and then push ctrl and shift and v to paste it as a new picture. The gimp will open a new window holding your cut out picture that you can then edit.

You will need to create a folder some place convenient like in your documents folder. When we do these for clients we store all the pictures that we’re editing in a folder called toedit and the edited ones go in a folder called finished. You can name them however you wish but if your not organizing them you will very quickly get lost and confused.

Once you have your folders stored into a folder(s) on your hard drive it’s time to make your show. There are several different programs you can use to make these slideshows and today I will cover two very easy to use and freely available programs from Microsoft. The first is called windows movie maker the other is called Microsoft Photo story. They both have advantages and dis-advantages and we will deal them as we go along. I could recommend some of the software by Nero or Roxio but they aren’t as freely available or as user friendly.

Windows Movie Maker is probably on your pc already. So we will start with it. To start it up click on your start button (the marble thing if your using Vista) and go up to all programs. It should be in your main program list their or it could possibly be in the accessories folder. Either way once you start up you should have a screen that looks like this below.

Click on the Import pictures link and it will give your basic file box. If you saved your pictures in your Documents folder (or Desktop) there is a button on the left to go to either place. Once your have your folder opened in front of you, highlight all the pictures you want to include in your slideshow and click add. This will add all the photos to your “collection”.

From here drag the photos onto the timeline below in the order you want them to appear. If you want to add an effect or transition then I suggest you do it as you go and make sure to save and preview your movie often. You will want to stick with a consistent theme of effects throughout the video or at least limit your changes to more important photos. Lot’s of random changes will really annoy viewers. You can also add text to each of the photos and even credit intro text or credits at the end.

One limitation of Windows Movie Maker is that you can only add one sound track. You won’t be able to add multiple sound tracks very easily. But there is a work around. Using a program like Audacity you can line up several audio files in one long mp3 file. Then you can have a track as long as you need.

Once your done with your movie you can save the movie file. Make sure to save it someplace that you can find it later. Once you have your video you can post it on the internet or even burn it as a dvd. I’ll cover making a dvd in a later article.

Here is the sample video created with Movie Maker. Note I didn’t do anything fancy these are just a rough cut first draft example.

pregslideshow_0001

PhotoStory is another Microsoft project aimed at making photo slideshow type displays. You can click here to download it (you’ll need Windows Media Player 10 at least). After downloading and installing all the pre-requisite software you can go to your start menu and click on the photo story icon. You should have a screen that looks like this (At least at version 3).

Click on Create New Project and hit next. You can add photos by hitting the Import Pictures button. Same thing applies here as did in Movie Maker. Browse to where your photos are. Select the ones you want to use and hit open.

Once you’ve done that step you should have a long strip of pictures at the bottom. You can rearrange the order by clicking on a picture and either dragging it or hitting the left and right arrows to the right side. If your pictures have a black border you can hit the remove black border button and Photo Story will guide you through cropping your pictures. You can also do some basic editing to the pictures by clicking on the picture to edit and then using the buttons below the preview picture. You can do rotation, red eye removal, and color correction.

Clicking Next when your ready will bring you to the page that allows you to put text on pictures. These aren’t credits but are more like titles. You can alter their location, orientation, and font styling using the buttons above the preview text window. Below the picture window you can add some stylized effects to the picture. Clicking next will allow you to add Narration to each picture or to the entire show. Clicking next again will take you to the page where you can add music to the show.

Photo story gives you easier control of your slideshow by holding your hand along the way. Movie Maker gives you more control over all but your options can overwhelm you very quickly. The reason I chose to write a tutorial/review on these programs is because they are freely and easily available. These programs are very capable at producing some decent presentations and there are even plugins you can purchase (such as a Ken Burns Pan and Zoom effect).