We are currently traveling in New Zealand and taking lots of pictures! I’ve taken about 1200 pictures so far, and Jim has probably taken nearly the same. How would you like to see a slide show?

I think not! But, here’s our trip album with just our selected photos – just click this link to view the album.

The conventional method of photo organizing teaches to:

• Keep the best
• Delete the rest

But, I am way too lazy! Deciding which pictures need to be deleted is both time-taking and stressful. That sounds like work to me. I avoid work! I will certainly delete the obvious garbage – the mistakes when my phone took a photo of the inside of my pocket, or my foot, but, at the Hobbiton movie set yesterday, everywhere we turned was a beautiful image. Our phones take great pictures, and Google Photos stores them in the cloud, unlimited and free, so why not take every picture you see. I am not even close to being a professional photographer, but if I take enough – I’m bound to catch a good one here and there! Here is what my phone’s Google Photos screen looked like yesterday:

I can’t delete any of those! But, I can pick out 3 or 4 representative shots to put in our New Zealand trip album, so that’s what I do. My method is:

• Keep them all
• Pick a few for the album and add them

That’s easy, actually it’s fun. I can even accomplish that, using my phone, on the tour bus on the way back to the RV! I love looking at the pictures I just took, adding a few of them to the trip album is as easy as tapping the 3-dot menu, selecting Add to Album, and tapping the New Zealand album. Before I go to bed at night, my friends and family are all able to see the wonderful things we did that day by viewing the album.

I cringe when I hear people say, “I took so many pictures on my vacation, now I have to spend a few days deleting and organizing them once I get home.” How many people never get around to that? That’s work. What a shame.

What about photos on your computer?

I took the pictures with my phone, Google Photos uploads them to the cloud. I can view all those photos using my computer as long as I have an Internet connection. So easy! If I add photos to an album using the phone I will see them in that album using the computer. If I use the computer to do the work, I’ll see it on the phone. So easy! But, what if I don’t have a connection? What if I want my photos on the computer? That’s when I download the album to my computer by clicking the 3-dot menu. Voila! I’m not taking up unnecessary hard drive space, but I have my best photos on the computer. Essentially it is a backup of my best photos.

For more details and a complete photo management workflow, see my book, Mrs. Geek’s Guide to Google Photos, chapter 11. Geeks on Tour membership includes free access to the .pdf of the book here.

Learn more

• Episode 119: Google Photos Albums (45 min)
• Episode 159: Organizing photo albums (45 min)
• Tutorial 527: Google Photos, making albums (6min)
• Tutorial 400: Lifetime of photos at your fingertips (2.5 min)
• Tutorial #397: Relationship between photos and albums (6 min)
  
• 428.GP-Deleting Pictures from iOS (iPhone/iPad) (2.5 min)
  
• 427.GP-Deleting Pictures from Android (2 min)

A lot of people are getting emails lately, “Your Google+ account is going away.” People have then been asking us, “What is Google Plus, and should I care that it is going away?”

First of all, please realize that Google+, aka Google Plus, was a separate service by Google. It is not your Google account. Google+ was Google’s attempt to have a social network similar to Facebook. If you did not use Google+, then the fact that it is shutting down will not affect you. Your Blogger blog continues on, your Google Photos will all still be there, your thousands of Gmail messages in your inbox aren’t going anywhere, and your appointments on Google Calendar are safe. The only thing that is going away is the website with the red G+ icon shown above.

However, Google+ was not completely separate. It had fingers in the pie of other Google applications, it was an add-on to your Google account and, for a period of time, everyone who created a Google account got the Google+ add-on whether you wanted it or not. It was referred to as your Google+ profile, as opposed to a simple Google profile. The idea was for Google+ to be the hub of all your Google services. So, as Google+ is closed down, it unravels some of that connectivity. This is happening over a period of time, everything I know about it is subject to change as the shutdown unfolds.

How is your Blogger blog affected?

Your Blogger blog will continue and all your posts will still be there. Only if you took advantage of Google+ special features will you see any change. See the official Google info on Blogger and Google+ here. If you set up your blog using a Google+ profile, you should change it to a simple Blogger profile. It is still using your same Google account, just without those “Add-ons” mentioned above, and you need to supply a screen name for use with Blogger. Find this setting under User Settings, General, User Profile. If the Google+ profile button is selected, change it to a Blogger profile.

If you checked the box to use the Google+ comment system for your blog, all comments written using that system will disappear. I’m afraid there is nothing you can do about that. To see if you are using these features, go to Blogger.com and be sure you’re signed in with your Google account, select your blog from the left sidebar, then click Settings, and Google + Comments. You should see a screen like this:

If you have been knowingly using Google+, please read the linked articles above in detail. You may also want to download your Google Plus data. Another good resource for more info is PeggyK’s weekly update for Google+ and Blogger.

We are currently traveling in Australia and New Zealand. We use our phones to know the current time – that’s a given – but it is also important to us to know what time it is at home. Home is in Eastern time, aka Miami.

Android: Dual Clock Widget

On my Samsung (Android) phone, I use a widget called Dual Clock. If you don’t know about widgets, see Episode 139: Widgets.

To add this widget to your home screen:

1. Long-Press on a blank spot on your homescreen and then tap the button that appears called Widgets
2. Find the widget for Clock and tap it, you should then see a button for “Dual Clock” – touch and hold (longpress) on that, then drop it off on the home screen location where you want it
3. You should now see the local time and a link to tap to add the second time you want.

iPhone World Clock

On an iPhone, you have an app called Clock. The icon for that app on your home screen is a live analog clock showing you the current local time. To see the time in any other part of the world, tap the clock to see the full screen with all the options. You can also reach the clock from any screen by getting to your control panel. In all but iPhone Xs, you reach the control panel by swiping up from the bottom. In iPhone X, you swipe down from the upper right corner. Then you’ll see an icon for clock. Tapping on that is the same as tapping on the clock icon from a home screen.

The clock has several purposes: World Clock, Alarm, Bedtime, Stopwatch, and Timer. Notice all these options at the bottom of the screen. Tap World Clock to see the time in other cities. To add a city, tap the +, to change the order of cities, tap Edit.

Checking to see if I can create a blog post using Word, New Blog post

Here is an image

Everyone can view all the episodes for free. Just click on the play button above.

A great benefit of membership is access to the extensive show-notes Chris writes up every week. Read them online and follow links directly to the parts you’re interested in. We recommend you print them out and keep them in a notebook. It’s a great way to learn.

Not a member? Join here. This episode covers:

1. Tip of the Day: Results of our Learning Survey
2. Beginner’s Lesson: Organizing and Sharing Google Photos Albums
3. App: Google Photos

Download .pdf (you’ll see a dropbox login, but you can just close it – no Dropbox account is needed)
Download entire YouTube video (184MB)