How to Add Images and Color to Your Holiday Letters

Word Tricks Makes Letters Merrier (updated for ‘the Ribbon’)

It is the Holiday time of year. (Is it just me, or did 2013 pass-by rather quickly?) Each year at this time, I post this article which demonstrates a few tricks to make your Season’s Greetings letters more joyous, and your documents more visually interesting. Many of you already know the A-B-C basics of manipulating fonts and formatting, and so this will be review.. and loyal readers may remember this one..

Tip of the day: Add some festivity to your documents with fonts and color. MS Word has a lot of features and options built into it that allows for some very creative elements to be added to your correspondence, and is not at all limited to cold, “professional” documents. I’ll use Word for this demo, but you can do this in most text editors, and e-mail programs. Today I’m going to use a hypothetical holiday greeting letter to show how to add some fun. By default, Word sets the font to Calibri at 11 “points” in height. I have typed in my text, to get things started, and will demonstrate using this letter’s “opener”. As it is a header, I have “centered” the text. As you can see, this font and text does not quite convey the joy and cheer and “best wishes” I am hoping to express. In fact, this may as well say, “Memo from Giganti Corp.” Yawn! So first thing I’m going to do is ‘tweak’ the font style, and make some word bigger (louder), to express a less formal tone.  I “highlighted” Season’s Greetings, and used the Font drop-down arrow and selected a cursive font– Lucida Handwriting (explore Word’s various fonts, and find the one you like best). I set the point size to 36. I repeated the process on the second sentence, but set the type smaller.. only 18. I think you’ll agree, this is much more “friendly” than the default’s look. But this is just not Festive enough! Let’s use some color and improve things some more.  I have again “highlighted” season’s greetings to select this font, and then clicked the Font Color button on the Home tab. I then clicked on the little red box in the color-picker. Now season’s greetings is red. I want to alternate letters in green, so I hold down the Ctrl key and use my mouse to “select” every other letter. I didn’t really like the greens available on the color-picker, so I clicked on “More Colors”…. … and selected a green that contrasted nicely with the red– as the box in the lower right corner shows. This is the result of these steps. Much more jolly! But, something’s missing… Let’s add one more thing– a picture of a candy cane. I went on the Internet and found a Royalty-free graphic (though a piece of Clip Art would do just as nicely) and…  Voila! I could ‘go crazy’, and get carried away with adding things here… but I hope you will be able to see by this little demonstration — using only two of Word’s functions — that you are limited only by your own creativity, and that it’s easy to personalize and ’spice up’ your documents. (I should have matched the greens… but ran out of time.. sorry.)

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Today’s quote: How ’bout some more Longfellow? “The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories. Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

A Gift For You

Folks,
To help celebrate this special weekend, I have a nice surprise.

PearlMountain Image Converter is a photo converter as well as batch image converter, which helps you convert images to other formats, resize, rotate, crop, add watermark, apply effects and add border to thousands of images at a time.

Some of the features include:

•    Convert thousands of files at once in batch mode.
•    Supports the most popular image formats: BMP, JPEG, TIFF, RAW, PNG, GIF, TGA, and PSD, and almost all image formats.
•    Save operations that you usually use as profiles and bring convenience to you in the future.
•    Convert between many different image file formats.
•    Resize image for any different use, such as for web, e-mail, photo printing, Facebook, MySpace, mobile phone, ipod/ipad/iphone, etc., with optimum quality.
•    Add image and text watermark for Image Copyright Protection
•    Adjust image brightness, contrast and saturation in batch to make your images look more special.
•    Apply borders to your images.
•    Crop photos, removing unwanted areas.

Product info page: http://www.batchimageconverter.com/image-converter/

Due to time constraints, I only had time to play with test this utility a little bit. So I can only tell you it worked, and that I enjoyed the animated GIFF feature (aka “no product review here.”) And for me, there was zero “learning curve”, as I have used this type of graphics program before. But even if you have not, learning how to make optimum use of this photo/image tool should not take long.. maybe, mere minutes. (The link above has a illustrated How To. Take a peek, and see for yourself.)

PearlMountain has generously donated ten licenses to me, and I have  had the pleasure to give them away – to the first ten people to leave who left a comment with a valid (not Facebook) email (so I can send you the license keycode). This software retails for $29.90.

Happy Mother’s Day! (And thank you, PearlMountain!)

*** Update: Sorry Folks, but that’s all the licenses I have to give away — for now. ***

You can download a full-featured “trial” version, here, if you’d like. It will put a watermark on any output files, but otherwise performs just like the paid version.

Copyright 2007-2012 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

 

Friendly, Festive Documents (A How To)

Font Trick Makes Letters Merrier

It is the Holiday time of year. Each year at this time, I post this article which demonstrates some tricks to make your Season’s Greetings letters more joyous, and your documents more visually interesting. Many of you already know the A-B-C basics of manipulating fonts and formatting, and so this will be review.. and loyal readers may remember this one..

Tip of the day: Add some festivity to your documents with fonts and color. MS Word (as do most text editors) has a lot of features and options built into it that allows for some very creative elements to be added to your correspondence, and is not at all limited to cold, “professional” documents. I’ll use Word for this demo, but you can do this in most text editors, and e-mail programs.

Today I’m going to use a hypothetical holiday greeting letter to show how to add some fun. By default, Word sets the font to Times New Roman at 12 “points” in height. I have typed in my text, to get things started, and will demonstrate using this letter’s “opener”. As it is a header, I have “centered” the text.

As you can see, this font and text does not quite convey the joy and cheer and “best wishes” I am hoping to express. In fact, this may as well say, “Memo from Giganti Corp.” Yawn! So first thing I’m going to do is ‘tweak’ the font style, and make some word bigger (louder), to express a less formal tone.

I “highlighted” Season’s Greetings, and used the Font drop-down arrow and selected a cursive font– Lucida Handwriting (explore Words various fonts, and find the one you like best). I set the point size to 36. I repeated the process on the second sentence, but set the type smaller.. only 18. I think you’ll agree, this is much more “friendly” than the default’s look. But this is just not Festive enough! Let’s use some color and improve things some more.

I have again “highlighted” season’s greetings to select this font, and then clicked the Font Color button on the Formatting toolbar (If this is not showing, click here to read how to customize your toolbars). I then clicked on the little red box in the color-picker. Now season’s greetings is red. I want to alternate letters in green, so I hold down the Ctrl key and use my mouse to “select” every other letter.

I didn’t really like the greens available on the color-picker, so I clicked on “More Colors”….

… and selected a green that contrasted nicely with the red– as the box in the lower right corner shows. This is the result of these steps.

Much more jolly! But, something’s missing…

Let’s add one more thing– a picture of a candy cane. I went on the Internet and found a Royalty-free graphic (though a piece of Clip Art would do just as nicely) and…

Voila!I could ‘go crazy’, and get carried away with adding things here… but I hope you will be able to see by this little demonstration — using only two of Word’s functions — that you are limited only by your own creativity, and that it’s easy to personalize and ’spice up’ your documents.

Like free software? Click here to see my article telling of three giveaways (not contests – giveaways!)

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Software Giveaway – novaPDF Professional

Folks, I Am Pleased to Announce My Latest Software License Giveaway Drawing.

The folks at Softland have generously donated 10 licenses for novaPDF Professional to me, to award to my readers. I sincerely thank them for that. So I am going to do a random drawing ¹ contest from those who “enter”. The contest will close at midnight (Pacific) Thursday, August 11th, and the winners announced Friday.

I am going to start this out by telling you that main thing I want to say about this software is – it delivers what it advertises (and merits the word “Pro”). At $50 retail, novaPDF will convert your document files into PDF format without making your wallet cry OUCH! (like Adobe’s product can..).

I have to also say that I agree with the reviews shown immediately below (the first is quite comprehensive). And that I am a fan of the “mail to” (email) and document security features. (A full list of features is available here. [It is too lengthy to post.]) I found the integration with Office 2010, and also Office 2003 – done during initial install – produced flawless output (on Vista and XP machines, respectively).

Read review..

Read review..

Read review..

From the publisher:

“novaPDF is a PDF creator for Windows that allows you to easily create PDF files (searchable and optionally PDF/A compliant). With novaPDF, everyone from novice users to professionals can create high-quality documents in industry-standard PDF format, by simply selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application.

Once installed, this PDF creator lets you: add PDF bookmarks, insert active PDF links, use it as shared network PDF printer, create public/private printing profiles, add PDF watermarks, reduce PDF file size, password protect PDF files, overlay and/or merge PDF files, convert to PDF any printable document and much more.”

One of my ‘competitors’, SpyOnTech.com, posted this video demonstration of novaPDF Pro on YouTube. (Their review is here.) They are showing available features.. you do not need to do that much clicking to use novaPDF! (In fact, I set my preferences, and haven’t gone back.)

novaPDF works quickly, and produces crisp (“sharp”), small (“compact”), PDF files. NovaPDF Professional includes the features businesses expect, and is affordable enough for the average consumer. The PDF (format) was suppose to create a “paperless society”; which hasn’t quite happened yet. With novaPDF you can take big strides in that direction.
(There are also “Lite” and “Standard” editions available. “Professional” is the top of the line. A comaprison of the editions is Here.)

How to enter? Residents of the US and Canada only may enter the contest drawing by simply clicking on “comment” (below), and entering a name and a valid e-mail (so I can send you a license key) in the form. Actually commenting is optional. And, I shouldn’t have to say this, but multiple entries will result in disqualification. (In this contest. Entry in prior contests doesn’t count against you.)

¹ All entrants will be placed into Random.org’s “list randomizer”, and the top 10 results will be the winners. A 30-day trial of novaPDF Professional Desktop can be downloaded here, Free 30-day trial. Try it out yourself. (And then leave a comment. You may just win one of these valuable prizes!)

Again, my thanks to the folks at Softland for making this Giveaway possible!

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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How To Rip Your CD’s To MP3

MP3 is the “universal” digital music format. By using this format, your music collection will likely play on any music player device, for many years yet to come.

The newer versions of Windows Media Player (v’s 11 and 12) come with the ability to rip (copy from CD) music to mp3 files. Many music players, including Apple’s iPod, will not play the default .wma format,  but by switching to the mp3 format, you ensure that you can listen to your music on any music-playing device.

With these easy steps, you can set Windows Media Player to always “rip” your music CD’s to mp3 files.

1) Open the Windows Media Player (WMP): Click the Start button, then All programs, and scroll down the list (Or, type WMP in the Search pane).

2) Click the downward arrow under the Rip button

3) Select More options. (It should open to the Rip Music tab.)

4) In the Format section, use the drop-down arrow to select mp3.

4a) * Optional: you can also user the “slider” to set the music Audio quality “bit rate” from lower quality+smaller file size to highest quality+larger file size.
(I have chosen “Best Quality”, as I do not have an extensive music collection, and the size of my library is not an issue for me.)

5) Now click the Apply button, and then the OK button to close out the Settings window.

That’s it. You’re done. Until you go back in and undo your changes, Windows Media Player will always copy your music CD’s to the more portable, and universal, mp3 file type.

Today’s free download: If you are on an older Windows computer, and have not yet “upgraded” your version of WMP to Windows Media Player 12, you can download it here.

Today’s quotable quote: Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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What You Need To Know About "Delete"*

Folks, today is a busy day here at Tech–for Everyone Headquarters, and today’s article is a re-posting.

I don’t know how long it was that I worked and played on computers before I truly understood that when I deleted a Word document from my My Documents folder it was not gone forever.

I believe it was only natural to think it was “deleted”. It was gone, as far as I could tell. It didn’t show up no matter how I searched for it nor how desperately I needed it back. And believe me, there was many a time that I wished I could get a deleted letter or homework assignment back. If I cannot see it…and my machine cannot see it…and my machine says that the space it took up is now ‘free’…it is gone, right? I certainly thought so.

I think it’s rather important that you understand, if you don’t already, that when you drag something into the Recycle Bin, it isn’t really erased. Instead, the name/path entry in the file allocation table (FAT. The directory used to locate and ‘find’ files) is altered in a way that tells Windows to no longer display the file and that this (memory) area is now available for future storage.

The same thing happens when you take the drastic step of formatting your hard drive — it isn’t “wiped” like taking an eraser to a chalkboard: the Master Boot Table and the file directory are similarly altered, and once that occurs the machine can neither find your files nor your operating system — the rest of the 1′s and 0′s are left in place.

It is because of this fact — that files aren’t erased, but their directories and names are altered — that undelete and unformat utilities can perform their miracles. Instead of ignoring or treating these altered entries as writable space, they (attempt to) deliberately seek them out and rename them back to a recognizable formula, which restores the operating system’s (Windows) ability to ‘see’, find, and display them.  (If you need to recover files, please see, How to recover your lost files)

Tip of the day: Never assume that your data has been erased.
In fact, I suggest thinking in an opposite manner: assume that no matter what proactive measures you’ve taken, your data is on that hard drive. Tell yourself that a knowledgeable person with the right tools, if they get their hands on your hard drive, can read it. (There are some people in this industry who insist that your files aren’t really gone until your hard drive has been melted in a blast furnace!) Particularly keep this in mind when the time comes to donate, or otherwise get rid of, your old computer.
[note: this applies to any device with “memory”, such as a cell phone.]

If you are security-conscious, and you want to ensure that when you erase something it’s really and truly erased (or you are about to donate your old PC) I recommend that, if you don’t already have one, you download a free file shredder utility (I will put one as today’s free link) and to choose one that offers multiple methods of shredding.

What a “shredder” does is it writes new data, and it does it in multiple passes. Typically writing all 1′s on one pass, all zeros on the next pass, and then a completely random pattern of 1′s and 0′s, and so on. It is generally recognized that your shredder should make 6-12 passes.

If you do this, you can donate your old PC comfortable in the knowledge that only a several thousand-dollar restoration, performed in a sterile lab, might render your personal information readable again. (If you are a corporation, and it’s time to throw out your old hard drives, and there’s highly sensitive data on those drives, melt them.)

Today’s free download: Zilla Data Nuker 2 (Please note: this program is an exception to my rule of always having run and tested the programs I suggest. I have not ever needed to download a file shredder as I’ve always had one bundled into the Utility Suites I have on my machines. However, this application is 5-star rated by Cnet, and I was unable to locate it on any “blacklists”. It is the one I would try first.) From Cnet, “This powerful program helps you shred important files & folders so that they cannot be restored & prevent attempts to recover sensitive deleted files from your hard drive by data recovery or forensic software. Shredder allows you to purge, wipe & erase data with methods that far exceed US Department of Defence standards for file deletion (DOD 5220.22). Easily automate the cleaning process with batch files, shortcuts and scheduler. Supports complete folder deletions including subfolders.“

*Original post: 6/22/07

Copyright 2007-2010 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Word Trick Makes Letters Merrier

It is the Holiday time of year. (Is it just me, or did 2008 pass-by rather quickly?) Today I’m going to demonstrate some tricks to make your Season’s Greetings letters more joyous, and your docs more visually interesting.

Tip of the day: Add some festivity to your documents with fonts and color. MS Word has a lot of features and options built into it that allows for some very creative elements to be added to your correspondence, and is not at all limited to cold, “professional” documents. I’ll use Word for this demo, but you can do this in most text editors, and e-mail composers.

Today I’m going to use a hypothetical holiday greeting letter to show how to add some fun. By default, Word sets the font to Times New Roman at 12 “points” in height. I have typed in my text, to get things started, and will demonstrate using this letter’s “opener”. As it is a header, I have “centered” the text. As you can see, this font and text does not quite convey the joy and cheer and “best wishes” I am hoping to express. In fact, this may as well say, “Memo from Giganti Corp.” Yawn! So first thing I’m going to do is ‘tweak’ the font style, and make some word bigger (louder), to express a less formal tone. I “highlighted” Season’s Greetings, and used the Font drop-down arrow and selected a cursive font– Lucida Handwriting (explore Words various fonts, and find the one you like best). I set the point size to 36. I repeated the process on the second sentence, but set the type smaller.. only 18. I think you’ll agree, this is much more “friendly” than the default’s look. But this is just not Festive enough! Let’s use some color and improve things some more. I have again “highlighted” season’s greetings to select this font, and then clicked the Font Color button on the Formatting toolbar (If this is not showing, click here to read how to customize your toolbars). I then clicked on the little red box in the color-picker. Now season’s greetings is red. I want to alternate letters in green, so I hold down the Ctrl key and use my mouse to “select” every other letter. I didn’t really like the greens available on the color-picker, so I clicked on “More Colors”…. … and selected a green that contrasted nicely with the red– as the box in the lower right corner shows. This is the result of these steps. Much more jolly! But, something’s missing… dpress.com/files/2007/11/9.jpg”> Let’s add one more thing– a picture of a candy cane. I went on the Internet and found a Royalty-free graphic (though a piece of Clip Art would do just as nicely) and…Voila!I could ‘go crazy’, and get carried away with adding things here… but I hope you will be able to see by this little demonstration — using only two of Word’s functions — that you are limited only by your own creativity, and that it’s easy to personalize and ‘spice up’ your documents.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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