June 2021 | Issue 166  | Archives

Get ready to travel

The big RV Rallies were all cancelled in 2020, but they’re ON this year. Both the FMCA Int’l Convention, and the Escapees Club Escapade are being held during the month of July in Wyoming. We’ll be there, and we hope to see many of you there too. The Escapade is already sold out, but
if you’re registered, there is still room in our pre-rally Smartphone Photography workshop.

Since we’re getting ready to hit the road ourselves, the theme for this newsletter is Travel Planning. We use lots of different maps and apps to plan our travels – we’ll be teaching a seminar at both rallies called, “Maps and Apps for RV Trip Planning”. If you can’t attend, you can still view all of the class materials here.

Check out the articles this month about calculating dates in your travel plans, staying at Harvest Hosts, and finding those scenic gems with the Roadtrippers website.

We’re also happy to announce that our Learn Google Photos book has now been updated to reflect the changes in the product before and thru June 1. We’ll be showing the Kindle version of it as we teach how to control the Kindle app in Episode 214 of our YouTube show on June 6.

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What Does This Button Do? (YouTube shows)
May 23 #213 How to play your music in the car

May 8 #212 Our problem with Trip Planning – Solved

May 17 Learn Google Photos open Q&A (make sure to use the chapter links in the description – they link to 27 separate questions!)

• 694.OT-RVParky
• 693.SM-BluetoothSpeaker
• 692. GM – Make a travel map with MyMaps

• June 1, 3pm ET Venice Technology User Group Travel apps
• June 6, 2pm ET Episode 214 of What Does This Button Do?
• June 6, 3pm ET – Backstage Pass for Members Only Zoom meeting
• June 20 2pm ET Episode 215 of What Does This Button Do?
• June 20, 3pm ET – Backstage Pass for Members Only Zoom meeting
• June 21, 3pm ET –  Google Photos Live Q&A streaming to Facebook and YouTube. Chris will demo and take questions
• —————————————————————-
• July 7-10 FMCA 103rd International Convention in Gillette, WY.
  • Wed at 2:30 MDT – Smartphone Photography
  • Thur at 1 MDT – Remember & Share your Travels: Photos, Maps, Blogs
  • Fri at 9am MDT – Google Photos
  • Sat  2:30 MDT – Maps & Apps

• July 11, 2pm MDT Episode 214 of What Does This Button Do?
• July 11, 3pm MDT Backstage Pass for Members Only Zoom meeting
• July 16-17 Camp Reboot – Smartphone Photography & Google Photos
• July 18-23 60th Escapade  in Rock Springs, WY
  • Mon at 3pm MDT Smartphone Photography
  • Tue at 8:30am MDT Maps and Blogs
  • Wed at 10:30am MDT RV Trip Planning

Stay safe. Wash your hands. Get vaccinated.

Ask the Geeks Q&A forum.

Anyone can read the forum, only members can ask questions. This is a valuable benefit of membership. Join Today! Here are some recent discussions

1. Document Camera Woes
2. Google Drive to Google Photos
3. Partner Sharing in Google Photos
4. Wireless Casting to TV
5. Upload Quality

If you use a trip-planning app, here’s how it usually goes … you enter your starting location and your starting date, then you enter every night stop along the way and the app will calculate the dates of arrival. But what if you don’t want to plan every night? We’ve come up with an easy trick to make it all work.

When you travel by RV, you don’t really need a place to stay, you just need a place to park. RV parks with full hookups are nice but not always necessary. If you’re willing to park somewhere without hookups, you have many more options. One of our favorites is called Harvest Hosts.

All of the tips above are part of our seminar called Maps and Apps for RV Trip Planning. We will be presenting that seminar at both the FMCA and the Escapade RV rallies in July. We presented the same seminar at the Tampa RV Supershow in January, and also to several clubs over Zoom.

We’ve collected all the class materials and put them on one page for you to peruse whenever you want! Just visit the page Maps and Apps for RV Trip Planning and you’ll be able to download the seminar handout and view the slides we use to present the class.

You’ll also find links to all the apps and websites that we mention. Last but not least there is a playlist of over a dozen of our tutorial videos on subjects related to travel planning.

Google Photos is changing all the time, and we have several ways of alerting you to the changes, but sometimes the changes are significant enough that we need to reprint the book. The Learn Google Photos book has been updated to reflect the changes that took place on and before June 1, 2021. If you click the image at right, you will go
to the Amazon page to look inside the book at the first several pages of the Kindle edition of the book.

Buy from Amazon: Kindle version 7.95 | Paperback 24.95

Make sure to tune in to Episode 214 of our YouTube show. We will be using the Learn Google Photos 2021 book to demonstrate how to use the Kindle app.

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