Jim and Chris, of Geeks on Tour, presented a full day of seminars for the Central Florida Genealogical Society on Saturday, February 16, 2013.
We taught our standard topics of Picasa, Blogger, and Photo Story but with a focus on old family photos and stories, instead of our normal travel photos and stories. The day was quite a success with many appreciative genealogists soaking up the information. We had several offers from the group to teach us about genealogy! So far we are resisting. But we did learn a bit about how they want to use their pictures and blogs. We also learned that Google maps and Google Earth would be a topic of great interest for tracing the locations of their ancestors. Next time! Meanwhile, here’s what we taught on this day:
- Introduction to Picasa – the free program from Google for all your digital photo needs
Find your pictures, Organize, Edit, Caption, and Share. It’s fast, it’s easy, and its FREE from Google. Picasa can: transfer photos from camera, delete and organize photos, rename and caption, browse/view all photos on your computer, improve photo quality in many ways without touching your original, print, email and post to web, create slideshows, find faces and geotags, and backup to CD or DVD. It can even work with your video files. The best part is the fast and easy way to make all your photos look better. This you gotta see! - Using Picasa to Organize and Improve Old Family Photos
In this seminar we will start by snapping new pictures of old family photos. We will show how to store them in appropriate folders and still organize them by family branches. We will explain Picasa’s face recognition feature and, best yet, we’ll show how to make those old photos look better with just a few clicks. - Using Blogger.com for a free Family Website
This seminar will show, step-by-step, how to make and keep a Blog. It is the easist way to make your own website. It can be a public website, completely private, or shared with only family members. We will teach you how to write posts and pages, upload photos, maps, and even videos. We guarantee that, if you pay attention, you WILL be able to go back to your computer and create a Blog! - Using Photo Story 3 to make your Family Documentary Movie
Photo Story 3 is a free program that includes ability to add music and narration to your pictures. This is the easiest class we teach. It is so simple, so fun, and the end result is a movie directed by you. We will use the same family photos that we used in the Picasa session.
Learn how to:
Capture old family photos by simply snapping pictures of album pages |
Then fix them up using the tools in Picasa, including text |
| Make a Movie like This with just a few clicks in Picasa | Or a movie like this using Photo Story 3 |
Nice post 10x. I am looking for a good duplicate finder and I tested quite some tools. So far this duplicate file finder seems to do the best job. I like the free version, but I intend to get the PRO because of the extra features. Unfortunately I can not test them in the free version. Do you have any experience with it?
I am a very appreciative Geeks member. Are their any plans to visit Southern CA and conduct some forums here?
This was great! The only problem – nobody wanted to go home.
It was basic enough for beginners, but those of us who were fairly experienced learned a lot as well. I came straight home to create a blog…
Thanks Betty Jo! We enjoyed the day too. We’re jazzed to have a new audience (genealogists) for our favorite topics of Picasa, Blogger and Photo Story! Maybe even more exciting was the interest in more training on Google Maps and Google Earth – another of our favorites!
Hope to see you again!
Definitely interested in a program via CD or online. Have many old family photos and looking for safe easy way to save & retrieve them
Don Worthen
Surprise, AZ
Hi Chris! Do you do genealogy research? My research has lead to a huge collection of images that need to be organized and made easily searchable and linkable. I have often thought that Picasa might be a great tool for genealogy images. But, my picture collection is so large that I can’t image adding these images to it. So I would need a separate genealogy Picasa database or at least a way to keep them totally separate from my pictures. My genealogy images are all in Family Tree Maker but they are not nearly as accessible as my pictures in Picasa even though I use FTM’s categories for my images (ex: birth records, census images, obituaries, etc.- a long list). Another big plus to using Picasa would be to take advantage of its search and album features. One of the things I especially like about Picasa is the ability to browse my collection without having to open all the folders. This feature alone makes me think Picasa would be very handy for genealogy images. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject. I think there are a lot of people out there doing genealogy who would take classes and buy video tutorials related to this. Prisicila
Thank you so much for sending this notice out or I would have missed the seminar. I can be there on Saturday but gather I will have to be a walk-in as it is too late to mail the registration. Look forward to meeting you.
From a big fan who is posting a comment for the first time
First and foremost, thank you for your wonderfull website!!
As a disabled person who does not drive, but is hungry to learn all that you teach, I would like to echo and second all of the comments made by Anna Ellerbee….AND ask you to Please add me to your “list to post a list of pertinent videos” Thank you
Everything we will be teaching is included in various tutorial videos here in our Learning Libraries for Picasa, Blogger, and Photo Story. We will just be formulating the presentation a little differently to target the idea of old family photos. I will put it on our list to post a list of pertinent videos, or to make a specific ‘course.’ Thanks for your interest!
I can’t attend. I live too far away, but am really interested in taking pictures of album pages with old photos and what you do to make them look better with just a few clicks. Will you have something available for those of us who cannot attend? As the previous poster said – a CD or an online course? Hope so. Thanks!
WOW!!! Sure wish I could come but am in charge of a huge mission sale that day at our park. Is there any hope you’ll make a learning CD about all of this especially the things covered in part 2?? We are coming to your rally at the end of March and would love to learn more about this then or even get a CD