How to Make a Sway Presentation - Part 2 How is Sway Utilized?

How to Make a Sway Presentation - 

Part 2 

How is Sway Utilized?

This is part two of a five part series on How to Make a Sway Presentation.  Here we will discuss the many ways that one can use Sway software in the working or personal world.  We will look at examples given by Microsoft such as Story Telling The Sway Way, Create a tutorial in Sway, and Create a Newsletter in Sway.  

We hope that you are enjoying learning with your friends at Computer Tutor 321, in West Melbourne Florida.  Visit us on our web site at www.ComputerTutor321.com  We are a local computer repair and tutoring facility that specializes in helping senior citizens.  

Story Telling The Sway Way

Learning about the structure of the Sway.  How to create emphasis on words and styling on paragraphs.  All that and more to come in future posts about this Sway software.  If you have a story to tell and information to go along with it Sway is the right place for you.  You will be able to post photos connect those photos to web sites and those to videos and other multi media to make your entire Sway and educational interactive story with your content, your flare, your customization to make it your own.  

Just as story telling can be made amazing so can learning.  Tutorials are a lot like story telling and here we are going to look at how to make tutorials  using Sway to teach just about any topic! 

Newsletters are also a great way to get information to a group.  Often times people from different locations collaborate to create one finalize newsletter.  With Sway all of the people involved can work together at their own time to create their own pieces of the Sway. Because Sway is an online software you can never 'loose your data'  you are always backed up and always protected from your own mistake.  Watch this video on how you could make an awesome newsletter using Sway.  

These are just a few ways that we have come up with for one to use this software.  I personally have found it to be useful to realtors who want to show their homes to perspective buyers.  By making a Sway i can get out all of the same information and presentations that I would want to show on a web site but I do not have to have a web site.  This is perfect for someone who needs a 'temporary web site among many other uses.  So what ideas do you have?  We would love to hear form your - contact us at ComputerTutor321@Gmail.com or visit us on the web at www.ComputerTutor321.com

We hope that you are enjoying learning with your friends at Computer Tutor 321, in West Melbourne Florida.  Visit us on our web site at www.ComputerTutor321.com  We are a local computer repair and tutoring facility that specializes in helping senior citizens.  

How to make a Sway Presentation

How to Make a Sway Presentation -

A Five Part Blog

This past July 2015, I went on a trip.  When I came home I had all these great stories to tell and these photos that I wanted to share with everyone.  At about the same time I was working on my email when I found a letter talking about a new software that Microsoft had released named Sway.  I clicked the link and investigated further to learn more.  This software was so much fun that I decided to take the photos from my trip and my stores and meld them together into one amazing piece of work now called a "sway" .  Here is a link to view the final release of my presentation:

Tonight I was working with a local realtor to organize some photos when i remembered this Sway software and I started putting the two together.  That is when I decide that I need to share this with others and show them how easy it is to create amazing presentations using Microsoft's Sway. I am a long time user of Office software and I have been using Publisher & Power Point since the 1990's. Sway software is much like software you've used before but then again it is 100 percent different.  This blog is going to be a five part series on how to create a Sway presentation. 

Our Five Part Series will Consist of this Blog and the following:

1. What is Sway - Learn what it is where to get it and how
2. How is this used? -  The different ways to utilize Sway software 
3. Making our Sway the basics - Start a basic layout, insert 5 - 10 cards
4. Customizing our Sway - Layout Design & Lingo
5. Sharing your Sway - Learn how to share your finalized presentation

We hope that you are enjoying learning with your friends at Computer Tutor 321, in West Melbourne Florida.  Visit us on our web site at www.ComputerTutor321.com  We are a local computer repair and tutoring facility that specializes in helping senior citizens.  

 "What is Sway"  According to a quick Google Search I find: "Sway makes it quick and easy to create and share polished, interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more. Add your content, and we'll do the rest. Bring your Sway to life with interactive content. Include a video to talk about your idea or add an interactive chart to let others dive into the details."

Sway is a free app from Microsoft Office that helps gather, format, and share your ideas, stories, and presentations on an interactive, web-based canvas that looks great on virtually any screen. You can easily create a new Sway by adding text, pictures, documents, videos, charts, or any other type of content, and Sway will make it look great in just a few easy steps. When you’re ready to tell your story, Sway makes it easy to share it with others.

NOTE   To use Sway, sign in at http://www.sway.com with your Microsoft account. If you don't already have an account, visit http://www.microsoft.com/account to sign up for free.

Once you have your Sway account.  Check back here for our next Blog where we will start to make our very first Sway together.  To create the first Sway you will need to have some text in mind, a creative side and a series of photos ready to be used.  These photos can be on your Microsoft One Drive or they can be on your local PC.  If you have learned something new today please share this with a friend!

Take a Picture of Your Screen

'This is a photo of my desktop, known as a screen shot.  Knowing how to do this can be key for those pesky error messages and other anomolies in tech life that cause alarm and make you want to ask for a friends advice. You know those boxes that pop up with messages like “imminent failure” and “contact your network administrator.”  Today's tip is about the fast method in Windows OS to share those error messages with others who might not believe what you’re saying.  Just take a "screen shot" and email it to them.  Here’s how it’s done: 

Simply press the Print Scrn/SysRq  in the upper right hand corner of your keyboard:

Next press the Start menu button on the keyboard:

Now without clicking on anything else simply type the word "PAINT" then press the enter key.  - What should occur is the MS paint program should open right up for you.  If this doesn't occur you did something wrong - add no extra steps to these instructions, they are - very simple.  At this point you've pressed 2 keys and written the word paint, then hit the enter key - 

Hold down CTRL and tap the V key - this is Paste and the screen shot will appear.  That's it that simple!  

Googles New Logo - Makes me feel weird!

Googles New Logo - Makes me feel weird!

OK, is it just me or do a lot of us feel strange looking at that new logo? 

 I mean all these years it's been out old faithful logo now it's different!  What does that mean for us?  Will Google become "different"?  A quick search of Google and you'll see I am not along in my feelings about the change:

Lucy Biggers (@LLBiggers) | Twitter

https://twitter.com/llbiggers?lang=en

New Google logo makes me feel weird. Like rearranging furniture in your house. Takes a while to get used to the new setup. #newgooglelogo. 0 retweets 1 

Google has changed its logo and we don't really like it

www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/.../news/.../google-changes-logo-...

Cosmopolitan

2 days ago - The search engine giant has revamped its logo with a brand new font, but users of the internet around the world have taken to Twitter to ...

How does the logo make you feel?  Did you even notice that it had changed?  Do you no even know what all the hub bub is about?  

You see some of us have been using the Internet since before there was a Google.  Once again to pull from Sara's article "When Google first appeared, in the late nineties, it distinguished itself with a combination of intelligence and friendliness. Other search-engine sites were as cluttered and garbagey visually as they were inefficient functionally, simultaneously trying to sell and inform and bamboozle. AOL, with its goofy mailbox, bulky structure, and overpriced hand-holding service for the terrified, was obviously up to no good. Others—Yahoo!, HotBot, Netscape, Ask Jeeves, and so on—seemed well intentioned but were harder to parse. 

Google’s design, in comparison, was a revelation. It had true confidence. It didn’t need to pretend to be the post office or a butler. The white glow of a clean, bare screen, the brightly colored, old-fashioned letters, the name that came from math and whimsy—it was all very promising, and its brilliance spoke for itself. The logo was a key part of this. The letters’ literary old serifs were subtly authoritative. The design, like the site, didn’t patronize or manipulate—it said, Relax, we’re reasonable geniuses"  (OK, the Logo change was one thing, please don't change the site design!) The entire article can be found here:  Why We Hate Google's New Logo

"You will very soon notice that Google has a new logo that’s sleeker, brighter, and for the first time, animated. And then, you probably won’t notice it at all." Starts the article written by Mark Wilson of fastCo Design.    Mark has a really in depth article showing the changes on the logo and talking more about the font type.  You should read the whole thing here: Google's new Logo - Biggest Change in 16 Years

Google went from being the way we find trivia to becoming the digital infrastructure of our lives.  And in turn, they’ve created a new logo and brand identity, out today. The bold new logo preserves the old logo’s most recognizable element—the famous blue-red-yellow-blue-green-red color sequence—but presents the company’s name in a bespoke typeface called Product Sans inspired by schoolbook letter-printing. The new word mark will replace the one that’s appeared above the search box since 1999.  I personally think it looks just like the G from the Golf Channel so I had to pull both pages up on my PC at the same time only to find out Golf Channel has changed to the NBC logo!

If you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com
 Some web sites even went as far as to say "Google's new logo was "ALL Wrong".


 You can always visit is on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Computer-Tutor/127115018991

Sara Larson's article on "Why We Hate Google's New Logo" helped explained to me why it was I hate the log each time I look at it.  She says of Google's new logo " it sheds the grownup curlicues: it now evokes children’s refrigerator magnets, McDonald’s French fries, Comic Sans. Google took something we trusted and filed off its dignity. Now, in its place, we have an insipid “G,” an owl-eyed “oo,” a schoolroom “g,” a ho-hum “l,” and a demented, showboating “e.” I don’t want to think about that “e” ever again. But what choice do I have? Google—beneficent overlord, Big Brother, whatever you want to call it—is at the center of our lives. Now it has symbolically diluted our trust, which it originally had for all the right reasons."

 Remember, if you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com

 You can always visit is on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Computer-Tutor/127115018991

The Computer and Your Car: The End of an Era

The Computer and Your Car: The End of an Era 

The Computer and Your Car: The End of an Era

Many people modify their cars, and many people repair their own car as it breaks.  There has never before been a question if this was legal.  A long list of car manufactures are trying to make working on your own car illegal.  Some of these companies include Ford, GM, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Volkswagen.  Even some luxury lines have joined the party such as BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, and Land Rover.  The obvious question is “why?”  The real answer is money.  What these companies say involves the DMCA.  What is the DMCA?  These letters stand for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and working on your car stands for copyright infringement.

Car makers claim that modifying the car’s engine control unit, or ECU, makes the car less safe, less secure, and although they don’t say it outright, less profitable.  At a glance, this may seem okay.  Just leave the ECU alone when you work on your car.  The problem with this is the ECU doesn’t just control a car’s timing pattern anymore.  A car’s computer monitors the wheels, the brakes, the steering rack, the engine temperature, the amount of air coming into the engine, the temperature of the exhaust, the catalytic converter, air bags, headlights, traction control, anti-lock brakes, and service periods.  The new laws will ban working on anything that can interfere with the ECU.  A new exhaust would change the ECU data.  A turbo would bypass factory Mass Air Flow sensors.  Big brake kits wouldn’t allow the ECU to monitor wheel speed.  The list goes on.

Cars and their computers have become inseparable.  Taking away the right to work on your car’s computer is the same as taking away the right to work on your car.  A person owns their car.  They do not license it like they would Microsoft Office.  A person should be able to change what they own and make it how they want it.  It is scary that unfortunate greed on behalf of car makers may one day change that.

Let's talk Electricity!

It can be your friend or your enemy depending on the situation, electricity. Today I had quite a few different people walk into my shop; Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904, and I had a few different conversations on the topic of electricity, that is the reason behind this days blog. First, we are going to discuss the different types of electrical cords your hardware may use. Next, we will discuss the many things that can do wrong electrically, these will be pulled from real world examples that I deal with everyday.   Lastly, we will discuss what you can do to protect yourself from electrical issues.

 If you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply Seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com   

First, we are going to discuss the different types of electrical cords your hardware may use.  I wanted to bring it to your attention that should you ever bring your computer, laptop printer or other electronics to your local repair shop it is not a good idea to just assume that they have the electric for your item.  If your item needs to be worked on it is always a good idea to bring all of the piece including the electrical cable.  Depending on your issue the electric may need to be examined as well as the hardware it'self.  I also mentioned that you should always bring your own electric cord for your laptop especially. DC jacks, (the place you insert the electric into the laptop) can be different within models made by the same manufacture.  If you look closely you can see that this photo shows one type of connector and it's size and design with a pin inside unlike the second photo, with the yellow connector; that one has no pin and is a very different diameter than the electric cable shown in the first photo.

Photo 1

Photo 2

Next, we will discuss the many things that can do wrong electrically, these will be pulled from real world examples that I deal with everyday.  The thing that drives me nuts is when the cord is wrapped up completely wrong and the worst part is the person had to usually work against doing it the correct way in order to wrap it wrong... how can you wrap up your laptop cord incorrectly?  Who even knew there was a right and wrong way? (me :-)  The typical method of wrapping the cable tightly around the power brick bends the wires inside, over and over again until they break. Even if the plastic casing doesn't break, the wires can. 

Perfect example of what NOT to do with your laptop electric.

Both are examples of the correct way to wrap your electric.

Other issues we see are frayed wires.  Take the time to examine your cord.  If the dog has been chewing on it - it might be time for a new one. Now, if the dog has been chewing on it you may be able to fix the problem with black electrical tape.  

Do yourself a favor and buy the scotch brand name product - the dollar store version of black electrical tape isn't the same thing. Use the tape to wrap any 'bite marks' and keep the wires safe for both you, your family and the laptop. 

Lastly, we will discuss what you can do to protect yourself from electrical issues.   Do you have your PC, television, or other expensive electronics plugged directly into a power 

outlet? You shouldn’t. You should plug your gadgets into a surge protector, which isn’t necessarily the same thing as a power strip.  Standard electrical outlets don’t have any protection against power surges and spikes. Surge protectors are generally made and sold in the form of power strips, although you can also buy single-outlet surge protectors that sit against the socket and provide a single, protected outlet.  

The surge protector has an on and off switch.

This is a Power Strip - not surge protection.

Remember, if you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply Seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com

 You can always visit is on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Computer-Tutor/127115018991

Windows 95 turns 20!

Oh this really hits home!  It makes me feel so old!  I just hit a mile stone birthday this year and I tell you suddenly everything seems to be 20 years ago... BI, Before Internet!

Windows 95 turns 20 years old this week!

Can you believe it? Where were you all this August 24th 1995 the day that Windows 95 was released? This software release change the world as we know it. When Microsoft unveiled Windows 95 they brought out stars they brought out rock bands they had a huge marketing campaign to release this new software. By the end of 1996 PCs we're taking over the market and suddenly everyone had to have one in their home. AOL Netscape became new words we all spoke about. Dial up 14 .4 modems 1 gigabyte hard drive and that beautiful turquoise background with those icon folders on your desktop and the very first ever start menu. Windows 95 was modified by using Microsoft plus suddenly geeks like myself could upgrade my computer change background and access utilities otherwise too difficult to even start to work with back in the dark days.

So do you remember where you were the day the windows 95 came out alright well let's not take it down to the day how about late 1995 what was life like how is it different than it is 20 years later I'll reflect on my own. Sunday afternoons we used to lay on the couch and watch PBS you remember the art classes with the fluffy clouds and the happy trees Bob Ross and his oil painting, or some sort of home improvement with the construction workers showing us how to saw and how to replace the roof. Tasks of which we would never take up on our own. Our only source of entertainment being our radios or are televisions. telephones actual court and telephones connected to the wall still graced our house.

My first computer was a hewlett-packard I purchase it from Service Merchandise on one of my very first credit card. It came with a printer monitor speakers keyboard mouse everything I needed. I brought my whopping 1 gigabyte hard drive home and I used it for a little while and then something went terribly wrong in the hard drive broke. It was a good thing because I was under warranty and hewlett-packard was kind enough to send a technician out to replace the  hard drive. I was freely upgraded to a 1.5 gigabyte hard drive I could hardly contain myself. I saved my college papers on three and a half inch floppies. I pack my backpack full of them because files took up space and many floppies would be needed to take up photos and things along those lines. Just to remind those who do not remember floppies held 1.44 megabytes of data. Today a simple photo can hold more data than that. The Hewlett Packard computer came with a stack of CDs software free software a bundle of software so to speak and this bundle of software was valued at $1000. One of my favorite softwares I spent hours in joint was the Encarta Encyclopedia. This encyclopedia had moving videos and pictures on the computer color photos you could interact and click on things that would take you to other things within the CD itself. This is long before the internet long before the web was needed in order to interact. Over the lifespan of that Windows 95 computer I spent many hours behind it chain smoking cigarettes and playing video games King's Quest is one I remember fondly. I spent many hours inside of Microsoft Word and Office 95 and I remember my friendly paper clip that helped me the whole entire way.

So if you remember Windows 95 take a moment to reflect upon that operating system and all the software that went with it and all the time you put into it the crashes in the curses. And take a moment to see just how far we have come in the last 20 years with this software. Way back when Linux was too complicated for me and today I'm a great fan of that software as well Microsoft has always been something that I have enjoyed using because it was well my first operating system Windows 95 I was right there with Leisure Suit Larry in the predecessor of Windows 3.1 and I spent many hours on the internet way before the Internet was what it is today. I look forward in seeing how this technology can evolve even further over time it sure has come a long way in just 20 short years. way back when Linux was too complicated for me into damn a great fan of that software is well Microsoft has always been something that I have enjoyed using because it was well my first operating system windows 95 I was right there with leisure suit Larry in the process server of windows 3.1 and I spent many hours on the internet way before the internet was what is today. I look 14 seeing how this technology can evolve even further overtime it sure has come along way in just 20 sure years.

 Remember, if you enjoy what you are reading here it was brought to you by your friends at Computer Tutor321.  Computer Tutor321 is located at 1510 S. Wickham Road, in West Melbourne Florida 32904.  Simply seniors Computer Tutor specializes in working with clients age 50 plus.  We understand the unique needs of seniors!  To learn more about us please visit www.ComputerTutor321.com

 You can always visit is on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Computer-Tutor/127115018991