In case you missed it in the last newsletter – You are invited to join us in January 2024 – as we cruise the Hawaiian Islands on NCL’s Pride of America. You can find all the details at GeeksOnTour.com/Hawaii.  Reserve and make $125 per person deposit by June 10 to lock in the current group pricing. That deposit is refundable up until September when the full amount is due. The trip will include a whale watching excursion in Maui.

We’re so close! 9,978 subscribers on YouTube. We’ll be at that 10,000 milestone real soon. If you haven’t yet subscribed, please visit our YouTube Channel: YouTube.com/@GeeksOnTour and
click the Subscribe button. We’ll highlight our 10,000th subscriber and link to their YouTube channel in our next newsletter.

• Group Chat Apps
• Chatting with Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT, Bard, Bing Chat
• Trimming Video on your phone
• Time capsule moment: 1984

• Thank you to our premium members for supporting us and making this newsletter possible! If you learn something from us, and you’re not a member, consider joining us now.

June

• “What Does This Button Do?” 2pm ET Sunday Live on YouTube
  • June 11 Episode 258
  • June 25 Episode 259
  • Members Only Backstage Zoom after the shows
• June 7 at 3:30pm ET on Tinkering with Tech “Does Google Photos play nice with other apps?”
• June 23 4pm ET Members Only Zoom

July

• “What Does This Button Do?” 2pm ET Sunday Live on YouTube
  • July 9 Episode
    260
  • July 23 Episode 261
  • Members Only Backstage Zoom after the shows
• July 18 7pm ET Ask Chris Anything Google Photos Live on YouTube

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, click on the bell for notifications, and Like us on Facebook.

You don’t want to miss a second of your granddaughter’s graduation ceremony, so you start the video camera rolling as she’s walking up to the stage. Now you wish you hadn’t done that! Nobody wants to watch the 3 minutes
of her walking, they just want to see her step onto the stage and get her diploma. And, you should probably cut out that part where she tripped.

No problem, if you took the video with your phone, you can use Google Photos, or even the Photo Gallery app that came with your phone, to easily trim the beginning or end of your video. It’s a little more complicated to
cut out a piece in the middle, but this article will show you how.

Today we have apps that allow groups of people to communicate with each other – instantly – like you are all in the same room at the same time. Group chat apps are oh-so-useful for communicating with multiple people at
the same time. You can plan events, brainstorm ideas, or just keep up with what everyone is up to. You can also share photos, videos, and files with everyone in the group chat.

The problem is, we have so many apps to choose from. In this article we’ll list several of the contenders, then we want to hear from you. Do you use a group chat app? If so, which one and how do you like it. Take just a minute to respond to our survey.

I (Chris), along with my mother, Marilyn, opened a computer training center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1983. I wrote a quarterly newsletter for 14 years to keep in touch with the students who attended our classes. This was back when we had to get a newsletter typeset, printed, addressed, stamped and mailed! I kept a copy of
each one and it’s fun to thumb through them. The following article is from one of those newsletters in the Fall of 1984. It’s about my first use of online services. I used a personal computer and a modem to connect to a service called CompuServe so I could participate in an electronic bulletin board called Whole Earth Software Catalog. It’s really a blast from the past for me. I hope you enjoy it as you open this time capsule to 1984 …

January 2024 – You are invited to join us as we cruise the Hawaiian Islands on NCL’s Pride of America.

Jim’s (Mr. Geek’s) 70th birthday is coming up. He wants to go to Hawaii and he
says, “the more the merrier,” so we’ve arranged a group cruise through a travel agent. This is not a guided tour. Everyone who signs up will be free to do their own thing.

We will have 2-3 optional group meals and 2-3 optional group classes a la Geeks on Tour. The topics will probably be about smartphone photography and Google Photos with a lot of
smartphone “HodgePodge” in between. We’ll have a group photo album and maybe a photo contest. If we have enough interest we’ll book a group whale watching excursion since January is supposed to be a prime time for whales.

Save the dates on your calendar – Jan 6-13, 2024 and check it out at GeeksOnTour.com/Hawaii for all the details. Reserve and make $250 deposit no later than June 10. The best cabins are first come, first serve.

• Never-Ending list of Tech Tips
• How to edit a PDF file using
  the Free Google Docs
• Using the timer on your phone’s camera
• Force Quit Apps to ‘Fix’ phone

May

• “What Does This Button Do?” 2pm ET Sundays
  • May 14: Episode 256
  • May 28:Episode 257
  • Members Only Backstage Zoom after the shows
• May 5 at 10am ET – Deerfield Beach Computer Club  via Zoom
• May 8 at 7pm ET “Ask Chris Anything?” Google Photos Q&A on our YouTube channel
• May 10 7pm Sun City Computer Club Live in person!

June

• “What Does This Button Do?” 2pm ET Sundays
  • June 11 Episode 258
  • June 25 Episode 259
  • Members Only Backstage Zoom after the shows

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, click on the bell for notifications, and Like us on Facebook.

And we’re getting closer to 10,000 subscribers!

Do you remember setting your old fashioned camera on a tripod, setting a timer, then walking around to get in the group shot? Did you know that your phone’s camera has the same timer feature? It’s actually very useful for selfies. Set the timer and press the shutter button, while the timer counts down you can hold the camera out
without the need to raise your other hand to press the button.

This article explains and shows you how on both iPhones and Android.

PDF files used to be cast in stone, you could not change them. Not so any more. With the free Google Drive and Google Docs, you can. This article shows you
how.

1. Embed YouTube video into Powerpoint
2. What happened to Word Processing?
3. Turn photos into artwork with Prisma
4. Backup or Sync, what’s the difference?
5. Google Photos Q&A: Ask Chris anything
6. Blast from the past – a 2007 article about traveling with computers

• Thank you to our premium members for supporting us and making this newsletter possible! If you learn something from us, and you’re not a member, consider joining us now. Join Now

October

• What Does This Button Do? Episodes on chosen Sundays at 2pm Eastern
• October 4 7:15pm ET Kentucky Indiana PC User Group Presentation
• October 6 8:30pm ET Wisconsin All-Computer Users Club
• October 11 10pm ET Laguna Woods Presentation
• October 25-27 Roadtrek RV Rally, St. Augustine Florida
• Google Photos Q&A on a chosen Monday

November

• What Does This Button Do? Episodes on chosen Sundays at 2pm Eastern
• Google Photos Q&A on a chosen Monday

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, click on the bell for notifications, and Like us on Facebook.

Prisma is a free app for both iOS and Android and it is just so much fun. Simply open the app, open a photo from the camera roll and then tap on one of the
artwork styles.

If you learned technology when the #1 lesson was Backup, Backup, Backup, it’s time to take another look at your
processes. Things have changed. Sync is the new backup, but the devil’s in the details. Be sure you will have what you need if disaster strikes.

One of the very first software programs I used on a personal computer was WordStar. I used it to write letters, articles, outlines, newsletters, class materials,
and more. Before computers, I had a typewriter. With WordStar, I could toss my old typewriter in favor of this new “Word Processor.” After WordStar came WordPerfect. I liked WordPerfect so much that I became a WordPerfect Certified Trainer. WordPerfect was my specialty from 1986 to about 1992 when I started teaching MS Word on Windows. See this 22 minute video of my 1988 “audition” to be an
advanced WordPerfect Instructor at my computer training center, Computer Savvy.

32 Questions asked and answered. See the chapter links to see each question.