George gets a Visa, I mean Vista

Actually, I think he got a Visa in order to travel to Israel, but he got Vista on his new computer. Our friend and blogging guru of Tioga and George is on his way to Israel for a non-RVing travel experience. Before taking this jaunt, he determined that he needed a new computer. He planned a layover in Miami and ordered a computer to replace his 3 year old laptop, 'Ms. GQ.' The new computer was shipped to our address, and we spent the day today with George and his new computer. It's more work than one might hope to transfer all the important stuff from one computer to another. After several hours, both Jim and George seemed pretty happy with the results - a good sign! Here they are, hard at work at my Mom's house. I was a little worried (hey! that's my job.) Getting a new computer before an overseas trip is kind of like getting new boots before a big backpacking trip .. you might be in for a lot of blisters. I get a real charge out of the comments on George's blog referring to his purchase of a computer with Vista. Apparently, you either love it, or you hate it!

1. I have a Vaio with VISTA. Love it. Works great with my programs. Easy to use.
2. .. get a copy of WinXP Home. Remove Vista. The only way to have compatibility. Vista is a bust.
3. ... Vista ... works sooo much better than XP. You need to learn how to use it.
4. ... I am back on XP after VISTA and now I am looking at UBUNTU but lets not get started there.
5. I love Vista. It really helps me, as I am not computer savvy!
6. Why not just get a MAC!? I'm somewhere in the middle. I accept Vista. I try not to get emotionally attached to operating systems - they keep changing! It still locks up on me about the same amount that XP did, but I know I can do things on my computer now that I could never have done before Vista. Like editing one video, viewing another video, working on a web page with Dreamweaver, receiving email, and entering data in an Access database, all at the same time. It's all a process. On to the next adventure! We'll be watching you George.

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Proud Teacher

Kinda like a grandparent is proud of the grandkids and wants to show pictures of them - that's how I feel about these blogs. I didn't have anything to with them, but my teaching did help in the 'birthing' process. Hmmm, does that make me a Blog-midwife? :-) These two bloggers sent me emails this week with links to their blogs ... so, I just have to show you.

Mike and Pat's Blog. Mike used my videos to master the art of map-making!

Travels with Lucy included their first video this week! Odie is SO proud of you Lucy!

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Blogger vs. Wordpress

WordPress is another, very popular, blogging platform. We teach people how to use Blogger because it is easier, but I like to keep checking in on WordPress so I stay informed on the alternatives. I just helped a friend get set up on WordPress and I'll stick to my original assessment ... Blogger is easier! I have my own blog on WordPress, http://www.wifisavvy.com/ and I find that I don't post very often. That's probably just because I'm lazy, but it's also partly because I'm not very comfortable with the structure. My weekly post to the RV.net blog is also done on WordPress. It is certainly not difficult, but it's clearly more difficult than Blogger.

So, why even consider WordPress? It has more features than blogger. You can create a complete website with multiple pages using WordPress.

There is one, very cool feature of WordPress that I had been meaning to try ... you can import entries from other blogging platforms into a WordPress blog. I'm always looking for a way to back up this blog effectively, could this be the answer? I gave it a shot. It only took a few minutes to set up the account and the blog. I went into the management area and clicked on Import and chose 'import from a blogger blog.' After identifying my blogger account, I saw this blog listed - all 962 posts. Certainly it's going to choke on this. Nope. It took about 15 minutes to import the whole thing. So, I now have a 'mirror' blog over on WordPress. How cool is that! You can check it out at odiesroadies.wordpress.com.

This method does not make a backup copy of the pictures, it just backs up the written posts, including the links to pictures. I teach another way to backup if your purpose is to be able to have your entire blog on a CD or some other offline backup. See my video on how to backup your blog.

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Diane beat me to the punch!

We had a great visit with Diane and Andy the other night, and I haven't even gotten the pictures out of the camera yet. Diane has already posted about it to their blog! So, I'll just refer you there. Thanks Diane!

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My Google Earth Video

"Hey Mikey! They LIKE it!" Remember that commercial? Well, I think people liked the Google Earth video I posted on the RV.net blog yesterday.

How do I know?

At the end of the post I suggest that people can see more video by visiting our website at GeeksOnTour.com. I checked my Google Analytics statistics page and see that visits to Geeksontour.com were double the normal number yesterday. hmmm - that last spike was exactly one week ago ... and I post to RV.net every Thursday ... interesting.

We also had a spike in Newsletter subscriptions yesterday. Instead of the 1-3 per day that come in when nothing is going on, we had 17. Cool! That brings our total to over 1300 now. The newsletter is free, but developing a following like that is what will enable us to charge small amounts for our videos and have it add up to something.

This spike in readers is still nothing like what we got when George mentioned us though. Speaking of George, we expect to see him next week as he passes through Miami on his way to Israel. I don't know if we'll recognize him without Ms. Tioga! He is leaving his motorhome in Mexico while he takes a trip to Israel for a few months. That George is such an adventurous guy.

Remember to use the shoutbox in the right sidebar if you have anything to say about this. It's so easy. Just type your name or nickname, add your website or blog if you'd like, type a comment and click on 'Shout.'

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