So what's normal?

Do the default settings on your computer work for you?

If you find that every time you start a new document in (say) Microsoft Word that you're driven nuts by the need to change the font, its size, the margin settings or whatever, you need to change what your computer sees as 'normal'. Often the manufacturer's settings won't be to your taste, or practical needs.

If what you get for each new document is Times Roman - or in more recent versions, Calibri - and you don't like that choice - change it. Change your computer's view of the world with a few simple clicks!

Check out this very straightforward set of guidelines - a set for each of several versions of the software - and reduce your time-wastage and frustration.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/291291

Oh, and if you would prefer help with learning about this stuff from a real, live person... just give me a shout.

Private by default?

I know that there's a lot of banging on about privacy, or the lack thereof, on Facebook. However, there's one small thing that may have slipped your notice.

Your original 'default setting' was probably to publish your posts to 'friends only', which is sensible. (You'll find the 'default setting' under the 'cog' icon, along to the right of your name on the upper toolbar, under Privacy & Settings.) However: do you realise that if you change the privacy of an individual post, you then change that setting for the next time you use it?

Let's say that you've been happily publishing updates to 'friends', and then along comes one that you want to share to a wider audience - perhaps you want to advertise an event you're involved in and don't mind who sees it. More likely, you've 'shared' a public post - one of those 'thoughts for the day', charity appeals or attractive or funny images - which comes as 'public' to start with. When you share it, you keep that public status - and change your own default status to public, too.

It's very easy to tell what the status is that you're using. Look at your last post, and look at the icon at the right-hand end of the post. Here are a couple of mine.

I've got a cold right now (a particularly nasty one). Hence my silly post. It's shared with friends: that's the little two-person icon on the right, after the date and location of the posting. (Not that there's anything very security-sensitive about the fact that I'm feeling like death warmed up at the moment, but it's only really meant as a flippant remark for those on my friends list.)

This one's a bit different. It's a sharing of a video that I found funny. I have no problem at all with the post being seen by friends, friends-of-friends, or total strangers. So the privacy setting after the date is the little globe: public.

The point here is that after I'd shared, to a public audience, the silly Cockatiel video, my default setting for posts became public. So when I published my next update I needed to remember to change it back to Friends. Like this.

Why on earth you'd want to publish a post as 'only me' - in other words, nobody else could see it - I really can't imagine. However, the other settings all have their uses. 'Custom' gives you the choice to include or exclude specific people, and Public and Friends are what they say.

Have a check back on your Timeline and see what is posted as Public and what is shared with Friends. You can also view your Timeline as a non-friend would see it. Go back to the Privacy settings mentioned earlier, choose Timeline and Tagging Settings, and click on View As under 'Who can see things on my timeline?' It will display as a non-friend would see it. This gives you the chance to change anything that's not as it should be.

Going forward, it's easy enough to control as long as you keep your wits about you: every time you post, look for the little icon and make sure it says what you want it to say.

Cutting an image down to size

Digital photography has come a long way in the quality stakes. The photos that can be taken even on your SmartPhone, never mind on a 'real' camera, can be of sharp enough quality (DPI, or dots-per-inch) to be printed to poster size.

However, this does have a drawback if you want to upload an image to somewhere on the internet. A photo that comes out of your camera as, say, 2500 x 1900 pixels, and as a result is around 3-4 MB in size, won't be appropriate if what you're wanting to do is to use it as your Twitter photo, or as a mugshot - which would be displayed at, say, 200 pixels wide. Some websites won't accept anything that large; and if you do upload it to your website at full size, it will take an irritatingly long time to download - especially for those (like myself) in areas where broadband is much slower.

So how do you resize a photo to a sensible size? Some sites will automatically do this resizing for you - Facebook does, for example. However, it's worth knowing how to do it yourself.

There are many excellent free options around, including Irfanview, Google Picasa and many more. [Just search for 'photo editor' and you'll find plenty to choose from.] If you want to get a little more creative about using your photographs, it's well worth investing a little time in learning how to use these valuable tools (and you know where to come if you need help!).

However, for a quick editing tool, online and without the need to install any software, there are loads more options. Try this:

http://pixlr.com/express/

It's very intuitive.

• Click on Browse; find the photo you want to edit; open it. 
• Choose Adjustment; choose Resize. You'll see the number of pixels used in your original photo. 
• Leaving Keep Proportions in place (so the shape stays the same), change one of the two dimensions to the desired size. Apply. 
• Click Save. Choose the quality you want (slide it to 100% to preserve the original image quality). The new file size will be displayed. 
• Finally, if you don't want to overwrite the original image, type in a new name. 

Abracadabra - a much smaller and more web-friendly image.

Facebook and the like-whores

Oh, no - not Facebook again. I'm sorry that so many posts on here seem to relate to this topic... but this blog seems the best place to put it.

I read an excellent article this morning, and shared it. It relates to the tedious problem of 'like-whores': folks who create pages specifically with a view to building up vast numbers of likes and shares, purely with a view to selling those pages. The sensible and well-informed Gary Moyers, inspired by an article by the equally intelligent Becky Worley, has explained this clearly and simply. You'll find Gary's article here and Becky's original posting here.

Briefly, you know those seemingly pointless but sometimes mildly amusing posts that you see appearing, asking you to like and/or comment on the post to see something happening? (If you've ever responded to one of these, you know that nothing happens - in which case, you've probably metaphorically shrugged your shoulders and moved on.) However, as Gary points out, something has happened: "Your activity has now spread this image and the page into the news feed of all your friends."

The  one doing the rounds at the moment is a jazzy prism image (the triangle & rainbow bit comes from the album cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, if you're one of those far too young to remember such things).

You are exhorted: “OMG it really works! Step 1: Click on the Picture. Step 2: Hit Like. Step 3: Comment “MOVE” Then see the Magic!!” There is, of course, no magic. Nowt. Nada.

It all seems harmless enough: but, as Becky and Gary both explain, you have essentially bumped up the price of that page when it later is advertised for sale. It's pure commercial gold.

Well, if you don't mind folks making big bucks by these rather sneaky means, and it's done no harm to you or anyone else, why not? Because frequently these 'like and share' exhortations are distressing and are harmful. They often make use of genuine photos of, say, suffering children (have you seen the one about the 'mermaid baby'?) - and then say that if you share this photo, or like it, Facebook will pay x dollars, or pounds, or euros to relieve the suffering of this poor little person. It shouldn't surprise you to know that no such payment will ever be made, not by Microsoft, Facebook, CNN, Richard Branson or any other super-rich individual or corporation. What will happen is that the child's genuinely tragic situation has been exploited and abused. Can you imagine what the child's parents will feel if they see their son or daughter's photograph going viral over the internet in this way?

***

I know: I'm re-writing what's already been done perfectly by Gary and Becky as explained above, and doubtless by many other intelligent folks. However, I just wanted to add one other thing.

You might read this, and feel so upset and horrified, so unable to trust anything you read online, that you immediately decide to cancel your Facebook account. You can't take part in anything where such unpleasant things happen. You don't know what to believe any more.

Please don't. The internet as a whole, and social media in particular, have (like most things in life) huge potential for both good and evil. It's up to us to keep our wits about us and understand the difference.

A friend of mine has (as have I) a father afflicted with serious dementia. In her case, her father has become so paranoid that he locks himself into his house; barricades himself into his bedroom at night; sits all day with the curtains closed and a large stick within reach. This desperate over-reaction means that he can't enjoy his life, and is missing out on so much. However, it's also true to say that not many of us would leave our doors unlocked while we slept. It's the difference between taking sensible precautions and becoming paranoid.

So with house locks, so with the internet. Shut out everybody, miss out on life; invite everybody in without caution, risk life and limb. It's all a matter of commonsense.

Check this stuff out: don't panic about it. You wouldn't drive a car without passing a test first; why should your computer be any different? Search. Ask. Question. Learn. And - before you click - THINK.

Thinking there must be an easier way? There is.

When I work with my clients - whether they need help with their home space, office space, clutter clearing, computers or whatever - one issue that arises time and time again is that we so often don't know what we don't know. We struggle with a process or a technique because that's the way we've always done it - not realising that a change of approach can make life so much easier.

My challenge is "If you find yourself thinking 'There must be an easier way', then trust me - there always is."

This is especially true when using a computer. A great example of this was when I was asked to help a colleague on a completely unrelated difficulty ("it won't print", I think), and discovered that he was keeping a grid of numbers in a Microsoft Word table - and then using his calculator to add up the totals. I copied and pasted the table into Excel (which he'd never used before ["only the Accounts department use that, don't they?"]), put in an extra row for the totals above his manual totals, copied in the automatic formulae, and hey-presto: all the calculations happened as if by magic. (Not only that, but he discovered that a large number of his own manual calculations had been incorrect.)

My colleague was flabbergasted by how much time he had previously wasted by trying to do the computer's job for it (and, in this case, doing it less accurately). As the office in question was at a local council, this was effectively tax-payers' money that was being wasted every time he took three times as long as necessary to perform this particular task.

The point was that it really wasn't my colleague's fault. He had never been shown how to use Excel as a tool; the fact that he'd discovered Microsoft Word tables on his own was quite an achievement. He didn't know that he didn't know. If he'd known that he didn't know, he could have asked the IT department to help him out. I only discovered the situation by mistake, and was able to save him time in the future that was vastly in excess of the time it had taken me to train him in the solution.

Does this apply to you? Are you struggling to operate processes that seem to be taking forever? Is it too easy to make mistakes?

If so: please let me help you. I can promise you faithfully that if you brainstorm a few regular processes that are causing you to struggle, in a fairly short time I will be able to provide solutions for the majority of them; and if I can't, I'm likely to know somebody who can.

Computer processes are the most likely area where this situation arises, but it's not unusual for the same to apply with the arrangement of furniture, storage, filing or any other objects in the home or office.

Remember: if you think there must be an easier way of doing something, there is. Just let me help you to find out what that easier way might be. Contact me today - and let's find it for you.