January 2020 | Issue 149  | Archives

What’s Up with Jim and Chris – the Geeks?

Happy New Year everybody. And, Happy New Decade! The 2010s saw the smartphone transform our world – what’s next?! 5g, IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence, and virtual reality, promise to be even more transformative. Hold on to your hats.

The photo above is at home having a rare New Year’s Eve party. Thanks to our friends who helped us make this decade changer a memorable one. No, we didn’t make them stay till midnight, we followed the countdown from Rio de Janeiro and made midnight be 9pm our time! See our December Google Photos album for lots more pictures.

Now we’re home for the holidays. We wish all the best of the season for you and your families as well.

What Does This Button Do?

We delivered two of our YouTube “Button” shows this month:

• 180. Make great gifts from your photos
• 181. Video calling with Google Duo – Michael Daniels

We also posted lots of new short, tutorial videos:

• 606.GP-How-To Search Using Google Photos
• 605.GP-Lens Button to Identify Birds
• 604.GP-How Do I Update Google Photos?
• 603.SM-How Do I Copy and Paste?
• 602.OT-Blog Book
• 601.GP-Photo Book
• 600.GP-Snapseed Faces Effects
• 599.GP-Snapseed Perspective Effect
• 598.GP-Snapseed Text Tool
• 597.GP-Snapseed Healing Tool
• 596.GP-Snapseed Stacks and Brush Effects
• 595.GP-Snapseed Brush Tool
• 594.GP-Snapseed Tune Image Effects
• 593.GP-Snapseed HDR
• 592.GP-Sort by date added
• 591.GP-Capture frame of motion photo

What’s coming up – Our Calendar

Back at it for the New Year. Everything is in Florida. We’ll be visiting the Tampa RV Show, too. It’s always entertaining and we see a lot of our friends.

• Jan 3  Deerfield Computer Club 10am Here’s the Seminar
• Jan 14-16  Roadtrek Rally in High Springs, FL – Just for fun
• Jan 28- Feb 2 Discovery Owners Rally in Seffner, FL.
• Feb 4-7 Riverside RV Resort in Arcadia, FL
• Feb 12-16 RVillage Rally Spirit of the Road 2020
• Feb 26 Sun City Center Computer Club Seminar
• Feb 27 Golden Gate Computer Society Remote Seminar on Snapseed

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. Fixing Not Red-eye, but White-eye
2. Printing from Google Photos
3. Albums
4. Signing in to MyMaps
5. Make iPhone Ring Longer

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Try Google Maps for Restaurant Delivery

You’ve probably heard of DoorDash, or Uber Eats? Well, there’s another one called Postmates. And then there’s Google Maps, where Restaurant listings may connect with any of the delivery services.

Read the Article

Lots of Google Photos updates in 2019

We keep up with them all! And, we’ve written them up in one place for you to read:

• Snapseed has moved
• Account and backup status has moved
• Manual Face Tagging
• Pick a frame from a Live or Motion photo
• Google Drive no longer syncs with Google Photos
• Get prints made straight from the app
• Photo Frames
• Markup and Text on photos
• Crop Document
• Edit movies on computer

and MORE!

Read the Article

Decade of the Geeks

It’s hard to believe that it was only 10 years ago that we bought our first smartphones. Now we’ve taught 183 episodes on how to use them!

On the other hand, it seems SO long ago that we were teaching Picasa. That was our most popular topic EVER – with a live audience of over 700 people. That all ended when Google Photos was released in 2015 – and we jumped right on that bandwagon. Cloud-based storage is definitely the way to go!

Read More

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If you like this newsletter, please forward it on to your friends! If you received this issue forwarded by a friend you can subscribe to get your own copy delivered to your in box – it’s free. You can also visit the archives of past newsletters. If you’ve learned something from us along the way, we’d love a Google Review from you!

December 2019 | Issue 148  | Archives

What’s Up with Jim and Chris – the Geeks?

We started November at home, then flew to Colorado for the Google Product Experts conference in Boulder. Chris learned a lot and had great fun with her fellow Google Product Experts. Then we went on to Denver and presented a couple of Google Photos seminars at Senior Planet.

The photo above is at Denver airport – quite a sight. We were lucky to be flying back home to Florida well before the snow became a problem. See our November Google Photos album for lots more pictures.

Now we’re home for the holidays. We wish all the best of the season for you and your families as well.

What Does This Button Do?

We delivered two of our YouTube “Button” shows this month:

• 178 How to navigate using Google Maps
• 179 Google Photos 2019: What’s New?

What’s coming up – Our Calendar

• Dec 16 Bellaggio Computer and Technology Club 7pm in the Media Room
• Jan 3  Deerfield Computer Club 10am
• Jan 14-16  Roadtrek Rally in High Springs, FL
• Jan 28- Feb 2 Discovery Owners Rally in Seffner, FL.
• Happy Holidays!

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. Changing the Date in Google Photos
2. Picasa in Windows 10 ​​​​​​​
3. Apple Catalina​​​​​​​
4. Albums
5. Sorting Albums

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They moved it! Using Google Photos and choosing to edit in Snapseed is still there.

Snapseed is my favorite way to edit photos on my phone. It’s a free app that you need to download and install on your phone. It’s available for both iOS and Android. Once it’s installed, you can use it with any photo in Google Photos.

The way to access it from Google Photos has recently changed, here’s how to get there now.

On iPhone, swipe up on the photo and you’ll see “Open in Snapseed” as an option below the photo

On Android, open the photo, tap the edit button, tap the 9-dot grid, then you’ll see Snapseed as an option.

Read More

Travel Blogs and Travel Maps go together

My blog is where I tell our travel stories, but I need the maps for the visual reference.

The map can even act as a kind of table of contents for the blog. Each marker is clickable and contains a link to the blog post where I have the story about that place.

We can teach you how to make both blogs and maps.

Read More

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Using Google Calendar to remind you before you miss appointments

Don’t you just hate it when you see your friend and they say, “Where were you last night? We missed you at the party.” When the only reason you missed it was that you forgot!

If you have your settings right, you will get a notification one hour (or 2 hours, or 1 day – whatever you choose) before every event entered on your calendar.

This article tells you how.

Read the Article

New Feature in Google Photos: Share photos with a conversation just like sending a text.

Have you ever shared a picture using Google Photos and the recipient says they never got it? Did they tell you to send it in a text message instead because they like how a text message keeps a running conversation along with the pictures?

If so, you’ll love this new feature in Google Photos – it makes sharing any photo(s) from Google Photos act just like text messaging. It’s rolling out now on iOS, Android and Web!

Read More

If you like this newsletter, please forward it on to your friends! If you received this issue forwarded by a friend you can subscribe to get your own copy delivered to your in box – it’s free. You can also visit the archives of past newsletters. If you’ve learned something from us along the way, we’d love a Google Review from you!

November 2019 | Issue 147  | Archives

What’s Up with Jim and Chris – the Geeks?

We finished our TOUR!

We started October in Chicago and presented our Google Photos seminar at 2 Chicago computer clubs.

We ended the month back home in Fort Lauderdale after a whirlwind 3 month, 5,000 mile tour. We loved every minute (well except when the RV broke down) of it. We presented 17 seminars over 12 venues. Some were RV rallies and others were computer clubs or Senior Centers.

In between gigs, we enjoyed traveling in our little Roadtrek camper van and staying at some beautiful places. We made lots of new friends and met up with many old friends – including one I hadn’t seen since high school – thanks Randy! If you hosted any of our seminars or met up with us anywhere along the way, THANK YOU!

The photo above is in Quad Cities/Moline, Illinois where we participated in a Scott Kelby World Photo Tour. See our October Google Photos album for lots more pictures.

Chris has been invited once again to Google’s Product Experts Conference, this time in Boulder, Colorado Nov 11. We’ll fly there.The recently opened Senior Planet in Denver wants us to present our Google Photos Seminar we did in NYC. We are planning programs there for a full day on Nov. 15th as we will be in Colorado for the Google event. Then back to Florida.

What Does This Button Do?

We delivered one of our YouTube shows from the road this month:

• 177 What is the Cloud? Using Dropbox.

What’s coming up – Our Calendar

• Nov 11-13 Google Product Expert Event in Boulder, CO
• Nov 15 all day Senior Planet Presentation in Denver, CO.
• Nov 25 7pm Valencia Reserve APCUG Presentation in Boynton Beach, FL.
• Nov 28 Happy Thanksgiving for our US friends.
• Nothing on the calendar for December. Happy Holidays!

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. More Picasa stuff
2. Merge two Google Photos accounts
3. Chromecast and Apple Albums
4. Password Manager update
5. Google Maps not speaking in background

Google Maps gives us arrows on a heads up display for walking directions.

This is augmented reality. Have you ever used Google Maps for walking directions and started walking the wrong way? It’s hard to tell which way is left or right until you start moving, right? So, you walk a block before you can tell if you’re walking in the right direction.

The new “Live” view fixes all that. We’ll give you a glimpse in Episode 178 of our YouTube show, What Does This Button Do? The Beginner’s Lesson is how to navigate with Google Maps and our Quick Tip is showing you the new Live View.

Watch Episode 178

Google Photos Memories

If you tend to forget about your old pictures and never look at them again, this feature is for you.

Just open Google Photos app on your iPhone or Android device and you’ll see round bubbles at the top of your screen representing the years of your photos. Click on one and enjoy.

Read the article

Auto-Rotate and your Phone

Sometimes you feel like rotating, sometimes you don’t.

This article explains how you can control it for both iPhones/iPads and Android devices

Read the Article

Google Maps Navigation Basics

How to navigate using Google Maps. That was the topic of our Beginner’s lesson for episode 178 of our YouTube show “What does this button do?” It only seemed appropriate after just navigating over a 5,000 mile tour around the Eastern US.

If you watch this episode, you’ll learn step by step how to use navigation on both Android and iOS devices. You’ll also see some of the newest features in Google Maps. If you are a Google Maps newbie, or a seasoned pro, you will learn something watching this episode.

Watch the Video

If you like this newsletter, please forward it on to your friends! If you received this issue forwarded by a friend you can subscribe to get your own copy delivered to your in box – it’s free. You can also visit the archives of past newsletters. If you’ve learned something from us along the way, we’d love a Google Review from you!

Monthly Issue #142 July, 2019
GeeksOnTour.com | Newsletter Archives | Become a Member

Geeks on Tour is member supported. This FREE newsletter is made possible by our paid (Premium) members.  Member benefits include access to over 500 tutorial videos, asking questions on ‘Ask the Geeks’ forum, Show Notes for our weekly show, “What Does This Button Do?” and all our eBooks including Mrs Geek’s Guide to Google Photos. Already a member? THANK YOU!

Geeks in June

The whole month of June we were home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  The photo is of one of the many Royal Poinciana trees in fiery bloom around our neighborhood. On June 19 we were guest speakers on Dottotech‘s Webinar Wednesday – covering Google Photos. The webinar is over an hour including lots of questions. Steve Dotto has an impressive following for his technology teaching channel and we were excited to be a part of it with 380 attendees viewing our live webinar! Here is our 24 minute recorded portion: Mrs. Geek’s Guide to Google Photos

We always continue to learn about technology! And, we share it with you on our weekly class, What Does This Button Do?

• 167. Video Editing with Filmora
• 168. Staying connected while traveling abroad – Guest Ron Brown
• 169. 5 Year Anniversary – Home Button Revisited

By the way, our pictures, Blogs, Photo Albums, maps, and videos are all examples of what we teach.  You can learn how to plan, navigate, and remember your life’s events.  It makes the experience that much more enjoyable to get creative and share pictures, maps, stories, and movies with friends and family. Check out our Learning Library of Tutorial Videos, just go to GeeksOnTour.com and click the menu for Tutorials. There are plenty of free videos in addition to our members-only content to whet your appetite for learning.

Calendar

Here’s our speaking request form if you’d like to have us speak to your group. We’re in Fort Lauderdale until August 10 or so, then heading up the east coast.

• July 3 5pm ET: Member Meetup with Premium Geeks On Tour members. It’s a Zoom video meeting where you can connect with us.
  July 4 Happy Independence Day! and Happy 21st Anniversary, Chris and Jim!
• July 14 – Episode 170 of the Button Show

No work travel is planned for this month. We’re concentrating on the website and local events.

What Does This Button Do? continues to improve.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for notifications of Live Streams from Geeks On Tour! Be sure to click the little bell to confirm delivery of notifications.

Like our Facebook Page for notifications to see us Live whenever we like.

See our Calendar

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Ask the Geeks Q&A Forum

Here are some of the topics that have been discussed recently. Anyone can read the forum, only members can ask questions. This is a valuable benefit of membership. Join Today!

1. Arranging Photos in Google Photos Albums
2. Photos, Shared and Blogger
3. Duplicate Photos
4. Naming Faces
5. Delete photos from iPhone, Google, and OneDrive?

If you are a member, ask a question! Go to GeeksOnTour.com then click the Q&A menu. Make sure you are logged in (there’s a form on the Q&A page), select a category (Photos, Maps, Blogs, Other) then click Add Topic. When finished scroll down to Submit Topic.

5 Years of What Does This Button Do?

Have you watched any of our weekly YouTube shows? We’ve been making them for 5 years now, and we feel like we’re just getting started. We call it “What Does This Button Do?” to indicate that we teach technology at a beginner’s level. That’s a pretty long title though, so we call it The Button Show for short. We keep a listing of all episodes on our website which you can access with the URL – TheButtonShow.com

Read More

Questions about how Google Photos and Google Drive are changing?

Google has announced that they are changing how Google Photos and Google Drive work together. See our YouTube discussion with Michael Daniels here. Don’t worry, this probably doesn’t affect you. Nothing is changing about how the Google Photos app works. Your photos are all being uploaded to Google Photos from your phone. That is where they are stored, for free, and they will continue to be stored there. But, if you had been using the features where Google Photos pictures showed up in Google Drive, and maybe even got synced down to your computer, then this is a heads up. That is changing on July 10.

Read More

Google Maps can show elevation changes

Steep roads can be dangerous, sometimes impossible. Does your engine have the power to get you up? Do your brakes have the power to slow you on the down side? There’s a simple trick in Google Maps to give you advance warning.

Read More

That’s all for now. We hope you learned something. Your next issue will be next month. Any questions, please visit our forum. If you like this newsletter, please forward it on to your friends! If you received this issue forwarded by a friend you can subscribe to get your own copy delivered to your in box – it’s free. You can also visit the archives of past newsletters,

Happy Computing!

The Geeks on Tour website is an online learning library for Travelers who want to learn to use their computers and mobile devices for managing digital photos, making blogs, using maps and other online resources. Anyone can get our free weekly tech lesson, read articles on our Technology Blog, sign up for our free newsletter. A small fee makes you a ‘member‘ and you can then ask us anything on our Q&A page, view any of our 500+ video tutorials on these subjects in our Learning LIbrary, and get written notes and eBooks of our lessons.