by Chris Guld, aka Mrs. Geek

As Geeks on Tour, my husband Jim and I travel around the country and present seminars on personal technology like how to use smartphones, how to manage all those pictures you take with your phone, and how to use Google Maps, among other things.

This is usually done at RV Rallies. When we’re at a rally for 3, 4 or 5 days and we’re only busy in seminars one or two hours each day, I spend the rest of my time giving free, one-on-one half hour sessions to answer people’s questions about their devices.

Why do we do this for free? Because I get as much out of it as the people I teach. How else would I get to learn about LG phones, iPhone Xs, Moto phones, and Samsung tablets? We buy a lot of devices to play with but we can’t own them all!

I love hearing people’s questions. It helps me know what to teach in our seminars. For example, it is second nature to me to keep my appointments on a calendar on my phone. Only when I get so many questions about how to do that do I realize it is something we need to teach.

Easy Questions Sometimes their questions are easy, like: how to use their fingerprint reader, how to adjust their screen timeout setting, how to install my favorite app: Google Photos, or how to use the keyboard to type word by word – called swiping or gliding.

Hard Questions Sometimes their questions are harder, like: why does my iPad not automatically connect to the data on my iPhone like it’s supposed to? or How do I get back in to my original Facebook account when I forgot the password and mistakenly created another account?

One Person Teaches, Two People Learn Every time I teach a one-on-one I get a little smarter! Here are some more of the questions I get to help people with:

1. Installing/uninstalling apps
2. Rearranging app icons on the home screens
3. Setting up widgets
4. Recovering passwords
5. Setting up email to sync to computer
6. Taking screenshots
7. Solving problems by rebooting phone
8. Backing up contacts
9. Backing up photos
10. How to navigate with Google Maps
11. How to make a blog with Blogger
12. How to copy/paste with phone
13. How to save photo received in a text
14. How to send text to multiple recipients
15. How to make a video call when you can’t use Facetime (because one person is on Android not iOS)
16. How to record your location and send it to someone you want to meet you
17. How to get photos from their Mac to show up on their Android device (Google Photos)
18. and lots, lots more!

If you are a Geeks on Tour member, you can ask your specific questions on our Ask the Geeks: Q&A page. It’s not as good as sitting side-by-side, but it is specific to your question. And, if it really can’t be handled in writing, I’ve been known to arrange a phone call or a video call.

Keep on Learning!

Screenshot of my Business Card album in Google Photos (blurring added)

For years, I’ve wanted a simple system for storing business cards people give me along my travels. The operative word is simple! Sometimes they’re important, like my insurance agent’s card, and sometimes it’s just friendly, like the camper next door who tells us to stop by if we ever pass near their home. Sometimes it’s just a scrap of paper with a name and phone number written on it!

I like being able to see the actual card rather than the scanned information. I might remember the look of the card before the person’s name. So, I take a picture of the card – nothing special, just a picture taken with my smartphone. That puts it into Google Photos, then I have an album called business cards and make sure all those business card photos get put into that album so I can find them easily.

Google Photos can Read Business Cards

Here’s the magic part. If you open the card’s photo using Google Photos, you can tap the button called Lens, it’s the 3d button at the bottom and it looks like a square with a dot in the middle. Google then unleashes it’s artificial intelligence to read that card and shows you the name, address, phone number and email that it finds on the card. You then have the choice to add this information to your Contacts, or to use it right from Google Photos to make a phone call or send an email to this person.

In episode 153 of our YouTube show: What Does This Button Do? our guests were Eric and Tami Johnson of TechnoRV. We demonstrated the Google Lens technique on their business card. You can see that portion of the show here. Also, if you have Mrs. Geek’s Guide to Google Photos, you can read about the Lens feature on page 78.

Show Notes for Members below

Everyone can view any episode 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. This week, you’ll find the names of all the apps we discuss as well as links to their websites. 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: Phone storage sizes
2. Our favorite apps: we are joined today by Eric and Tami of TechnoRV.com – they are Full-Time RVers and they sell RV products like Cellular Boosters, WiFi Boosters, RV GPS systems Tire Pressure Monitors, and Electrical Protection Systems.
3. App: lots of them!

Continue reading →

We’re here at the Grand National Rally of the RV Travel Club in Sevierville, Tennessee and we made a Google Photos shared album where anyone attending can add their photos. We’re hoping to get quite a collection by the end of the rally. Just click the picture below to see the whole album. In order to add photos to the album, you need to use Google Photos. See more detailed instructions below.

Click here to view the Shared Photo Album and add your pictures and videos

How to use Group Photo Albums

I like to use my phone and/or my iPad for navigating. We’ve used many different methods over the years for mounting our devices on our dash. In the past, we’ve used vertical surface area to attach Velcro, stick a bit of the other side of the Velcro to the back of your device and you have an easy dashboard mount, but the Velcro on the back of the device gets messy after a while. When we had a Rand McNally dashboard GPS, we used a beanbag type of mount up on top of the dash.

Currently we are quite happy with these magnetic mounts by Wizgear. The mount is a magnet on a swivel base with adhesive so you can just stick it to a flat part of your dash. Your phone or tablet must have a metal plate so it can connect to the magnet. Several stick-on metal plates come with the magnetic mount. These are so convenient! Just touch your device to the magnet and it’s mounted. Want to hold your device? Just grab it and pull it loose.

In addition to the mounts that stick to the dash with adhesives, you can also get ones that clip  on to the the air conditioning vents. We find these to be a bit more problematic, but we love to position our devices in front of the cold air to keep them from overheating when they’re navigating.

You might notice that the iPad mounted to the dash is in a case. We just stuck the metal plate to the back of the case. The mounts are inexpensive enough ($2-10) that you can keep a few extra around just to use as a hand-holder for the iPad as well.

Don’t magnets damage electronic devices like phones? Back in the day of computers and magnetic disks, this was a real problem, but not now. The data storage technology in phones is not magnetic and is not affected by magnets. A powerful magnet may possibly affect the compass in your device, but the small magnets used in these mounts, or other cases, are nothing to worry about.