Craig's Classroom

What Size Should My ActiveRain Featured Image Be? [2025]

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 29 May 2025 14:52:36 -0700

There was a question recently in Q&A that asked what the ideal size for featured images should be? I saw a lot of different answers there (700, 640, 1800, 1450). And while every one of those answers was not "wrong", none that I saw hit the bullseye.You see, whatever size that you do upload, it is going to be automatically sized in CSS rules to 100%. That means that it will either resize your image bigger or smaller to match the available space in the given container on the page. The container width in our layout is 901 pixels. So the most optimized feature photo will be sized to 901 pixels wide.Does it matter if you upload a 640 pixel image or an 1800 pixel image instead?Both will work! 640 image will grow and 1800 image will shrink to fit. The 640 image will not be as sharp as using a 901 pixel image, but the difference is probably indistinguishable to most people except for the most discerning eyes. The 1800 pixel image will look great but the file size will be about twice as big as it could be if it were downsized and optimized. By not being downsized, it will make the page load time somewhat slower. It's just something to be aware of.So if you are on an image download site (pexels, pixabay, etc) and they offer you 1080 or 1200 width downloads. Those are a pretty close match and would be a good choice without further intervention. Don't download the 3000 or 5000 pixel width options because that will make a huge file size (page load time) difference.If you are using your own photos and they are huge widths, use your favorite resizing tool to save a downsized copy to use instead.There is one other consideration on featured images to note. If you upload a vertically oriented image (height is bigger than width). ActiveRain will resize the image to match the content width, but at that point anything outside a 700 pixel frame height will be chopped off. This means the top and bottom of your photo will be cut. Sometimes that's ok, often it's not (in other words it may crop off the part that you wanted to see). It's best to pre-crop any vertical images before you post it as a featured image so that way you have full control of the cut.Anyway, I have to run now. I wanted to say hello and a quick Craig's Classroom tutorial seemed like a good way to say hello.Here's my video!.. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Embedding Videos and Shorts in ActiveRain

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 07:09:33 -0700

This week on YouTube Thursdays, let's look at a very practical how-to type of post. How to Embed YouTube videos and YouTube shorts in your ActiveRain blog post. I have written posts on each of these before. But today is going to be more of a show rather than tell. You'll see the how-to video at the bottom of this post so you can watch.In the video shown on the right, that is a YouTube short from Emily Berdon (who was featured in an earlier YouTube Thrusdays post, see that link if you want to go check that out). But as you can see with a YouTube short, that it is in a vertical orientation because these are primarly viewed on mobile devices. However, they are NOT exclusive to mobile devices. What if you want to share a good YouTube short within a blog post. There are a couple of things to know and you can do it!The first thing to know is that you cannot simply get the video URL and then use it with the "insert media" button on the ActiveRain blog toolbar. The video will not show up. Instead, you will need to right click on the YouTube short and in the popup menu, choose "copy embed code". When you come back to the ActiveRain post editor, go into the source code view and paste the embed code. This will give you an iframe container. In my how-to video that you see below, I'm going to show you how to style that iframe container so that the video is "right sized" and also that it has the other text wrapping around it like you see in my example above.The code that you can use in your YouTube shorts is here:style="width: 370px;height: 657px;float: right; margin-left: 30px"Also, in today's how-to video, we'll look at embedding regular YouTube videos. In the blog editor there is the insert media button and all you need to do is paste the video URL into that source field when you click that button. You could stop there, but I'm going to show you a HTML "hack" that will make it even better. You see, the embeded video by default comes in at 560 pixels for the width. That's okay, but our blog post content area is 837 pixels wide. So there is some extra width that is going unused!In the source code view, I'm going to show you how to add the following code into the video iframe to make the video go all the way across the content area. style="width: 100%;height: 471px;" A quick explanation on the above, instead of 560 pixels or any other "fixed" width, we are going to set it to a responsive value of 100%. That means whether you are looking at it on desktop or mobile, the video will always show as big as it is able to. Ideally, I would set the CSS aspect-ratio: 16/9 property so that the height would be automatically calculated, but the active rain blog editor does not allow that setting in HTML mode. So my next best workaround is to fix the height at 471 pixels which is optimized for desktop view and will work also in mobile view.In our YouTube Thursdays series, we are looking at inspiration videos of what others have done and asking the question "could you do that too?" Here's an example video in that regard explaining 10 Real Estate Words. This is more oriented to new agents, but could you do the same kind of video for first time home buyers? And notice also this video embed is full width of the blog content area. We're using all the pixels available for a nice big view!Now that I have described what we want to accomplish, now you can watch how to do this in this how to video that I have created. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Rambling on Pi Day

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 05:31:13 -0700

This has been an extremely hectic week and I didn't have time to put together any new lessons for video editing. However, I have a few random/rambling kinds of things to share so the week won't be a total silence 😄The first thing on the rambling list is AI and SEO - With all the prolific content being produced by AI, it is harder to determine what is real or computer generated. However we still want and need the human element in the basis of the information that we consume. YouTube is still a medium (and will remain so) that is very much "human-centric". What I mean is that if you see a real live, breathing human sitting in front of the camera and sharing their personal knowledge with you, you know it's source. It is our life experience being shared. People watch, like, and CONNECT. As Charlie Dresen has told us with his videos: "when people call me, they say, you don't know me but I already feel like I KNOW YOU."Here's a video talking about that subjectThis next video is not real estate related but I felt it was just an excellent job of presenting a company where you could get to know and trust them. They are somebody that if you are in their area, it would be kind of a no-brainer that you would choose to work with them. Are you creating that level of trust with your videos?bonus video: Behind The Scenes/Bloopers of Making of the above video(don't you love a good BTS/bloopers video? I do.)And finally, the last ramble point is a video in my discovery feed from this morning. It shows the rise and fall of different websites over the years of the internet being a thing in our lives. Watch how YouTube pokes up from the bottom and makes a meteoric rise and stays at the top of the charts. People want videos. Are you producing videos yet? I'll leave you with that question. See you next week on YouTube Thursdays. (PS - follow that link to catch up on previous week's posts) Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Photos In Videos

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 03:45:49 -0800

In this week's post of our YouTube Thursdays series, we are going to get back into video editing. The last few weeks we diverged a bit from editing so we could be inspired some from fellow members and their YouTube channels. We also took a look at YouTube channel banner artwork. You can see all previous week's posts via the link above if you want to catch up.This week we are going to take a look at another one of the resources that we have to include in our video projects. When we have photos related to our subject, we can drop them into our timeline. Ideally with our business video projects, we will not simply be creating "video slideshows" because the value of doing that is only marginally better than just posting an online photo album. However, if we are doing video projects composed mostly of video clips and we have the ability to supplement with an occasional photo, then you have used a good resource.But for this week's lesson, we are going to make a video slideshow. I'd like if you went back into your camera rolls and pick out several photos (and short video clips if you have them) and compose a new project. Maybe you'll want to highlight a particular family member or remember a certain family vacation that you took. What you might create could look something like this one that I just composed. It is looking back at fun beach days with my son over the years. Take a lookNow in this video, I also include background music for the finished edit. I'll be talking about that next week so be sure and come back to learn that aspect. This week we are just looking at the visual parts.When you drop a photo into your timeline, you can have it display for as many seconds as you want by dragging the end of the clip to the left or right to shorten or lengthen it. By default it will come in for a duration of 5 seconds. Once we introduce the background music, you will want to coordinate the cuts with the beats of the music. But for today, we won't be concerned with that quite yet.Here's a peek at the timeline that was used to produce the above video. Some of these things we'll learn today. Others, will be for future discussions.One of the things that you will discover before long is the concept of aspect ratio. In videos now, the standard is a 16:9 ratio for the video frame. That means for 16 units of width, there is 9 units of height. For math geeks, that translates to a ratio where the width is 1.77 times wider than the height. Older TV productions used to be in a 4:3 ratio or the width 1.33 times the height. Now we watch programs in wider format. Some cameras take photos in a 3:2 format. If you take a vertical photo, that usually is a 9:16 (inverted from the 16:9 horizontal). In any of these cases where the aspect ratio does not match the video frame, you are going to end up with black bars where the two do not match. We call these bars either letterboxing (if they go across top and bottom) and pillarboxing if they go on the left and right sides (like vertical pillars).When you insert a photo that is not in 16:9 aspect ratio, you will want to scale the image up so that it fills the whole frame. In the CapCut editor, scaling up an image is as simple as dragging one of the corner handles outward to make it enlarged. One of the consequences of enlarging however, is that two of the edges are going to be clipped (or cropped) off as they fall outside the frame boundary.The final concept to cover in this week's lesson is called keyframing. Keyframing allows us to set a start and stop point of a change in one or more of the properties of the video clip. So let's say you want to zoom in over the duration of the clip. You will set a start keyframe where it is scaled at normal size and then a few seconds later another keyframe where the image is scale up. The result is that the scene will zoom in over those few seconds. Little animations like this will add a whole level of making your video presentation more interesting.Enough talking about it. You'll learn about all of the above in today's video editing lesson:As always, I hope that we get some that not only are curious about watching all these things but are willing to give it a try! Consider some theme for your project (a person, place, event) and then pick a set of photos from your archives (and short video clips if you have them) and compose a short 1 to 2 minute video like I demonstrated. Once you have that, we'll add music to it next! Stay tuned. See you next week! Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Banner Images

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:22:31 -0800

In this week's post, we'll talk about one aspect of setting up your YouTube channel. Be sure and read to the end of the post to learn about something that you may be doing that is hurting another person when you thought that you were helping them.Depending on your YouTube readiness level, this week's post may be a little out of sequence for you. In our YouTube Thursdays rebooted series, we've been looking at how to start from scratch with video creation. If that's true in your case (starting from scratch), then you aren't quite ready yet to worry about your YouTube channel. However, many reading these posts will already have put some videos on YouTube and so this post will be a good topic to consider: YouTube Banner Cover Images. In last week's post, I created a list of other ActiveRain members who have established their YouTube channels. Hopefully you had a chance to go check out their channels. Since I had made my rounds on all these various channels, it was a good opportunity for me to snapshot the banners that I saw and thus in turn be able to share some good examples that may inspire what you want to do with your banner. See these examples:Here's a video that demonstrates how you could use Canva to create a new YouTube banner graphic. In the video, you will learn about "safe zones" where you want to keep your most important text and images. Items out side the safe zones will get cropped off depending on the resolution of the device that you are viewing it on (e.g. desktop vs. mobile vs tablet)To wrap up this week's post, let's talk about how we can help each other with our YouTube channels. Of course, it is great to get new subscribers. This is especially true when you are first starting out and have very few subscribing so far. So if you want to support fellow ActiveRain members subscribing is a good choice so you can see when they post new videos and support them.Secondly, when you watch these videos and you feel like they did a good job. You should click the like button on the video. Finally, if you have the time for it, leaving a comment on the video page not only encourages the creator, but it also indicates engagement to the YouTube algorithm. Engagement in views, likes and comments can help push a video higher in the search results and discovery pages in the YouTube algorithm. YouTube wants to promote the better quality videos over the lesser quality videos. Engagement is a big way of determining who gets shown and who doesn't.Finally, one last but very important point to mention! YouTube uses another metric to determine if a video is quality content, and that is the watch time. In other words, if people come to a video watch 30 seconds and then leave, what is that telling YouTube about the video? It says that it wasn't valuable and thus worth sticking around for. So if you, by being curious about another AR member video, come in for half a minute and then leave, you aren't helping them and in fact could be hurting them. So if you come to watch. Stick around for a little while. And here's a bonus tip for watching informational videos: you can speed up the video. In fact, I watch most all informational videos at 1.5x or 1.75x speed. (click the gear in the bottom right on the video to get to the speed setting) You can even crank it all the way up to 2x speed. This is not recommended for a video that you are really trying to absorb the material, however it will help you add some substantial watch time to a member's video that can help them.There's so much more to talk about in video creation. We're going to get more into filming and editing, setting up YouTube channels, picking good topics based on SEO. So to help not miss future posts, be sure and click the follow button on my blog. See you next Thursday! Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - AR Video Peeps

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 04:09:34 -0800

Have you been following along in this rebooted YouTube Thursdays series? You can use that link if you want to catch up on the previous posts.We are going to take a break this week from teaching new editing skills. Have you started your homework assignments yet? You can use this week to catch up.Meanwhile, this week, let's take a look at the group of ActiveRain members that have been trail blazing a path in the video world. I may have missed some, and I'd like you to chime in by making a comment if I have!I also wanted to highlight the "Honorable Mentions" because that means there is at least some beginning important steps taken to promote yourself via video creation. Sometimes a YouTube channel is just a collection of listings videos that you get from the photographer that you pay for the shoot. While these are important, it hasn't helped us to get to know YOU better. For that, if you stay tuned each week in this series, we'll get you to that goal.

Name	Location	AR	YouTube	Subs	Top Vid	Shorts
Andrew Mooers	Houlton, ME	profile	channel	17.4K	374K mountain top log cabin 2023-10	shorts
Ben DeHaven	Lakeland, FL	profile	channel	212	8.5K reasons not to live in Lakeland 2023-06	-
Charlie Dresen	Steamboat Springs, CO	profile	channel	4.1K	431K winnebego revel review 2020-02	-
Craig Daniels	New York, NY	profile	channel	131	6K customizing google maps 2011-05	-
Debb Janes	Camas, WA	profile	channel	198	6.4K charming downtown Camas 2012-01	shorts
Donna Taylor	Madison, MS	profile	channel	593	6.5K why not move to Jackson 2023-09	shorts
Jeff Dowler	Carlsbad, CA	profile	channel	291	22K video tour of Carlsbad 2008-06	-
Joe Manausa	Tallahassee, FL	profile	channel	8.7K	171K about Joe Manausa 2018-05	shorts
John Henry	Orlando, FL	profile	channel	540	11.4K French Chateaux ideas 2016-05	shorts
Dr. Karen Lewis	Fort Lauderdale, FL	profile	channel	233	179 change your behavior 2024-02	shorts
Khash Saghafi	Cleveland, OH	profile	channel	1.46K	2.9K clear to close 2023-03	shorts
Laura Cerrano	Locust Valley, NY	profile	channel	1K	105K Feng Shui Bathroom Tips 2011-05	-
Mimi Foster	Colorado Springs, CO	profile	channel	734	116K tenants from hell 2020-05	-
Nick Vandekar	Downingtown, PA	profile	channel	81	10K history of antique candlesticks 2016-03	shorts
J. Philip Faranda	Westchester, NY	profile	channel	14	121 list your buyer clients 2024-02	-
Ray Henson	Elk Grove, CA	profile	channel	585	5.8K get your house ready sell fast 2021-06	shorts
Ritu Desai	Sterling, VA	profile	channel	186	2.7K 5 things about Sterling, Virginia 2021-12	shorts
Rob Spinosa	Marin County, CA	profile	channel	257	2.6K divorce buyout refinance 2021-12	shorts
Rocky Dickerson	Las Vegas, NV	profile	channel	175	1.8K Las Vegas housing crash 2022 2022-06	-
Sam Miller	Mount Vernon, OH	profile	channel	790	50K atlantis resort ride 2012-04	shorts
Thomas J. Nelson	San Diego, CA	profile	channel	32	497 the power of team 2012-01	shorts
Toby Barnett	Marysville, WA	profile	channel	324	68K Submitting Permits 2022-06	shorts
Victoria Ray Henderson	Washington, DC	profile	vimeo	-	Fannie Mae Freddie Mac 2023-01	-

Honorable Mentions

Name	Location	AR	Featured Videos
Andrea Bedard	Silver Spring, MD	profile	aerial tour
Debe Maxwell	Charlotte, NC	profile	taxes for home buyers
Dorie Dillard	Austin, TX	profile	about Dorie
Eileen Burns	Fort Lauderdale, FL	profile	Kaluz Restaurant
Ginny Gorman	North Kingstown, RI	profile	client testimonial
Sheri Sperry	Sedona, AZ	profile	why list with sheri
Steffy Hristova	Tempe, AZ	profile	Jan 2024 market report
Wanda Kubat Nerdin	St. George, UT	profile	about Wanda

When Debb first started the YouTube Thursdays group, one of the goals she had was to draw attention to the work other members have done. When you see the links above, you can jump over into the YouTube environment to interact there. Subscriptions, likes, and comments are a big deal in the YouTube world to help promote the content of a creator in the search and suggest algorithms on the platform. A few clicks of your mouse can be a big boost.Andy and Charlie are the leaders of the pack (no surprises there). But both of them in true AR spirit are truly givers of their time to assist the rest that want to learn. Both have spent their time on special sessions of the weekly zoom call to help all who attended. Did you make it?To wrap up this week's post, I'm going to introduce you to Karin Carr a real estate agent in Savannah, Georgia. In 2016, Karin started making YouTube videos to help her real estate business when she had recently moved to a new city. The videos were a dramatic success. She afterward started teaching others about YouTube for marketing themselves. She has written books and has a paid course. But whether or not you choose the paid offerings, she offers a whole lot of great advice if you subscribe to her video channel. Here's a recent video that Karin shared. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Adding Text to Videos

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 05:20:09 -0800

Have you been following along in this rebooted YouTube Thursdays series? You can use that link if you want to catch up on the five previous posts.I'll be demonstrating editing techniques using the CapCut video editing app. This is a free app that works on both PC and Mac. Even if you aren't using this app (for instance you may be using iMovie if you are on a Mac), the principles of editing are still applicable.In this week's post, we are going to look at adding text to your video. In the previous post, the homework assignment was to shoot 4 or 5 video clips on your mobile phone camera and stitch them together in the editor. You learned also how to trim the clips down in length so that they were about 7-10 seconds each. That composition video project will be the basis for what we do today (and in upcoming weeks also).You can see in my sample project video how text can be added to your video project. I shot several clips on my morning commute to my Manhattan office. Starting from the Staten Island Ferry, I take the subway uptown and come out at Madison Square Park and walk along Madison Avenue. In this sample clip, I overlay the text with the matching clips. You'll see that this elevates the quality of the video from last week. Take a look:Besides just captioning the different scenes, did you see what else I did? It is good to try and engage the watcher. I use text to pose a question that is answered on the clip that follows.Now, let's take a look in the editor how we add text. In the top left panel, this is where we had the media assets that we imported and used in the last lesson. Now if you click the text tab over that same panel, you'll see a large selection of various preset text styles. We'll start with the default text and then we can adjust the properties of the text we put in afterward. Say for instance, you want to change the font or the color, these and all the other formatting properties that you can imagine can be edited. Additionally, in the preview window, you can drag the position of the text to be where you want it in the frame.Take a look at the timeline below after you put your text in. Note that in video editing, you not only specify what to say, how to format how it looks, but you also have to place it in time, WHERE you want it to appear and for how long to be visible.Once you place the text in the timeline, you can drag the left and right edges of the bar representing the text to control the starting and ending points.In video editing, you have a stack of tracks that you can compose elements onto. The text goes into a track above the video track. As you will see, there will be many tracks in a composition. There can be several text tracks, multiple video tracks (e.g. A-roll and B-roll), several audio tracks (e.g. music and sound effects). This is where video editing really starts to get interesting! Don't worry, you won't have to edit anything nearly as complex as a video timeline in a motion picture! Take a look at the timeline shown below for the movie Top Gun: Maverick as shared in the YouTube Video by Eddie Hamilton how he and his team edited that movie.You'll have a new appreciation, after a few of these lessons, just how much goes into producing any sort of video production.In this short video tutorial, I'll show you the basics that you will need to know to add some text into your own video projectIf you are doing the homework assignments, I'd love it if you'd come back to this post after and add a comment with a link to your video. I show you in the tutorial above how to create an "unlisted" YouTube video so that you can share a video via a link.I know that video editing will not be for many. There are challenges to this, but it is certainly not out of reach for anyone willing to put in the effort. And if you are looking for a differentiator between you and "everyone else", video is something that can definitely do that. Also, a couple of reminders to all you following this YouTube Thursdays series. If you are creating and using videos in your blog posts, be sure and include your post in the YouTube Thursdays group. Visit the group page from time to time and see who else has been posting videos so we can encourage one another. If you enjoyed this post, please click the like button so I know that content like this is giving value. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Your First Videos

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 04:45:51 -0800

Have you been following along in our YouTube series? A quick recap, we have gained inspiration video creators like Charlie Dresen and Emily Berdon. We can learn from both in their quality of work and their successes. In last week's post, we looked at some essentials of video editing. First of all, you will need to pick the editing app that you want to use (my suggestions are CapCut or iMovie). In that post, we also did our first very basic composition of 5 video clips that we downloaded and trimmed down into a 35 second video.Now, for today's post, we are going to start thinking about getting video footage from our own phones. I titled the post "Your First Videos" - however, I know these are not really your first videos. You most certainly have taken video clips of some fun family times or some other moments in time that you wanted a video of. However, this quite likely may be the first videos that you will take with the intent to compose a project in the video editor app.Throughout the series we'll tackle more complex topics but we're still in the basics to get us started. You may know some of these things, other points you may not know, but we'll try and get everyone up to speed together.When you record a video, you will have various settings on the camera that will require some experimentation to get comfortable with the settings you want to use. For instance, let's start with resolution. I'm going to recommend that for now you set your video camera at the 1080 resolution setting. It's true that your phone probably can shoot also in 4K resolution but for now 1080 is going to be better for learning.

One of the things you will discover VERY QUICKLY in video creation is that video files are huge

One of the things you will discover VERY QUICKLY in video creation is that video files are huge and in 4K they are outstandingly huge. This means your phone's storage fills up fast! When you transfer your files to your computer, your computer's storage will fill up fast! Any way you look at it, video storage is going to take space. 1080 resolution videos will still look excellent, but they won't attack your storage space quite so aggressively.Next, we need to consider the video file format you will be using. If you are using an iPhone, you will have the choice of a "high efficiency" format (HEVC) or a "more compatible" format. While HEVC (also known as H.265 encoding) might be better on file size, we have to look at whether the app that you are using to edit videos can use it. If you are on an Android phone like I am, your video files will be in MP4 format. So with an iPhone, do a very simple first test video in high efficiency format and see if you video editor app can open it. After that, you can feel more confident about taking lots more videos in that same format.Now is good chance to talk about another option that you have while doing video recordings and that is frame orientation. When I watch people casually shooting photos and videos, I feel like more often than not, they leave their phone in the vertical orientation. Now that you are raising the bar on your own skillset, it's time to have an awareness of the choice you have to make for composition. Vertical orientation photos and videos may have a place in social media posts and reels, but when you are serious about video production for YouTube, you will want to know when to turn your camera to take horizontal orientation shots.If you give little thought to orientation and all your videos tend to be in vertical orientation, you will regret this choice when you start trying to compose a video project. Regular YouTube videos (not shorts, which is exception) are in horizontal orientation. When you are in the video editor app preparing a video and you import your phone videos, you are going to see that the vertical rectangle doesn't play well with the horizontal frame that governs the output ratio. So while vertical video has some validity now with shorts and reels, I still have to laugh at the phrase in this video PSA "just say no to vertical video"Now for the next homework assignment, your task will be to record between 3 - 5 video clips with your phone, upload them to your computer and assemble and trim them down to a short output video. The goal here is to start to experiment with recording and also to be able to upload them to your computer to edit a project. I call this the "moments of your day" assignment. It doesn't have to be anything planned out, but just spontaneous parts of your day where you quickly grab your phone and do 15 to 20 seconds of footage.Here's an example that I created from footage I took a couple of days ago on my commute to my office in Manhattan.After you have your footage, you will need to upload it to your computer so that you can use it in your video project. There are different ways to get videos transferred to your computer, but the simplest way is to plug a cable between your phone and the USB port on your computer. Once connected, you can locate the files on your phone and copy (or move) them from the phone to the hard drive on your computer. (in the video below I show how to transfer files from iPhone or Android to Windows PC. If you want to transfer from phone to a Mac, you can see this video) From there you can use them in your video project. I demonstrate this whole process in the following tutorial (runtime 22:59). So if you are interested in video creation yourself, the time you spend on these assignments will help you get going on your own project!If you are doing the homework assignments, I'd love it if you'd come back to this post after and add a comment with a link to your video. I show you in the tutorial above how to create an "unlisted" YouTube video so that you can share a video via a link.I know that video editing will not be for many. There are challenges to this, but it is certainly not out of reach for anyone willing to put in the effort. And if you are looking for a differentiator between you and "everyone else", video is something that can definitely do that. Also, a couple of reminders to all you following this YouTube Thursdays series. If you are creating and using videos in your blog posts, be sure and include your post in the YouTube Thursdays group. Visit the group page from time to time and see who else has been posting videos so we can encourage one another. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Let's Begin to Edit!

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 04:17:41 -0800

In our rebooted YouTube Thursdays series, we've had a few weeks of inspiration from other video creators. I hope you've been inspired for what potential there is for what is possible in creating video. Have you been thinking about your own YouTube channel? Creating video is NOT going to be for everyone. But if I can nudge even a small percentage beyond the "thinking about it" into "giving it a go" mode, then this series is successful!Now it's the time for action phase of our project. If you want to lose weight you can't just watch a series of exercise videos, you've got to get up and follow along. So if you want to create videos, you can't just watch others do it. Time to step up! Don't worry, the goal line comes after a whole series of baby steps.The two fundamentals for video creation are: (1) recording content and (2) editing your clips into a final composition. We're going to leap frog over into the editing topic as the focus for this post. We'll come back to the other fundamental point in other blog posts.It's true, you could have a YouTube channel without ever doing a single edit. Press record, press stop, and upload. But if you look at any content creator that you enjoy watching, there are edits involved. The more complicated that you want to make it, the bigger the obstacle to the goal, and the less likely that you'll hit that goal. Let's start with some very helpful and useful BASICS. Trimming and cutting your footage is the first fundamental skill that you'll want to know. Consider recording yourself on a brief talking video. Won't you want to trim a little from the start where you walk from your camera to your seat? And the same applies to the end of the clip where you get up from your seat so you can hit the stop button. You don't want those parts in your uploaded video.

You are three minutes into a short explainer video, when your phone rings. Do you have to record the whole thing from the beginning again?

Also consider that you are recording a talking video that's a couple minutes long. Right in the middle, your phone rings because you forgot to silence it. You think "but the beginning part of this video was going so well, I don't want to lose what I already recorded!" So what you do after you silence your phone is roll back in your mind to the last sentence that you finished before the interruption. Recompose yourself in the shot and then begin speaking right where you left off. In post production, you can split your clip into parts and simply delete the part that you don't want!So for this editing process, we need to work with a video editing app. If you are on Mac, you've probably heard of iMovie. It's built in and ready to use with no additional installations. For Windows, we for a long time had the Windows Movie Maker app. That has since been discontinued and now Microsoft is including the ClipChamp app. I have done a little experimentation with ClipChamp and it has potential. However, I recently became aware of another app called CapCut that works both on Mac and PC and it's the one I'll feature in this series. We can put it through the paces and see how it performs. In order to recommend an app, I look for a good set of tools that we'll need for both simple and advanced edits and yet the interface should not be overly intimidating for beginners (like looking at the systems panels on in the cockpit of an airliner). Whether you choose to do your edits in CapCut, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Davinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, or very long list of other options, the concepts that we mention will remain the same.You'll see in the snapshot below, the interface is a really good balance. It's not too simple where you wish it could do more. It's not too complex where you don't know where to start. The bottom of the window is the timeline where you assemble your clips and trim them as needed. The top left is the bin where you assemble all the media (video clips, music, photos) that you want to use in your video composition. The top middle is the preview window. The top right is the properties panel where you can make adjustments to whatever element you currently have selected.For the purpose of your first homework assignment, we're going to skip over the part of recording your own videos. That comes next and that's a whole new discussion. For now, let's get some video clips and see how we can assemble them in to a little composition. Let's head over to pexels.com for some free and royalty free video clips. For the homework, use one of these two links to get some source videos. Here's a link for animal clips and here's one for cooking clips (and you could also search for eating if you wanted a mix for a food theme) Pick one the two themes above and download 5 clips.Next you will need to decide what video editing app to use. If you want to use CapCut, you can click that link to go to the download page for the desktop app This app is free to use. They have a subscription paid tier, but all the editing we need to do is in the free tier.For the purpose of the homework assignment, you should assemble and cut all 5 of your clips down to the same length of 7 seconds each. That means if your downloaded clip was 12 seconds, you should scrub through each video to find the best 7 seconds and trim off some from the beginning and/or end to get it cut down. If you follow this pattern for each of your videos, 5 clips times 7 seconds and you will have a 35 second video that you should export to mp4 file once completed. If you have a YouTube channel, upload the mp4 and mark it as "unlisted". This means that you can get a link to the video to share with us but that anyone following your channel won't see your practice video. Come back to this post and share your link to your unlisted video in your comment. Will you take on this challenge? I hope so!Meanwhile, you say, "Wait! I have no idea how to use the video editing app!" I'm so glad you mentioned that. Here's a getting started video by Jamie Keet from the Teacher's Tech Channel on how to use CapCut. Here's a sample that I created by composing 5 different animal shots. I trimmed each clip down to 7 seconds. So the total runtime here is 35 seconds. We're not getting fancy quite yet with transitions, background music, adding text, and more edits like that. If you can get these 5 clips assembled and trimmed, then you took a fantastic first step into the world of video editing!Now whether or not you plan on creating business videos on a YouTube channel, having a video editing skill is a fun and useful thing anyway. Perhaps you want to assemble some clips into a highlight reel from a vacation or some special day. Now you are on track to being able to do this!Also, a couple of reminders to all you following this YouTube Thursdays series. If you are creating and using videos in your blog posts, be sure and include your post in the YouTube Thursdays group. Visit the group page from time to time and see who else has been posting videos so we can encourage one another. Also, you won't want to miss the next ActiveRain Zoom scheduled for Tue Feb 6 at 2:00pm eastern. In this call, our presenter will be Charlie Dresen who you can learn more about in my post linked above from a couple weeks back. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Featuring Emily Berdon

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 04:00:07 -0800

Have you been enjoying the reboot of our YouTube Thursdays series? If you missed the previous posts you can see post featuring Debb Janes and Charlie Dresen using those links.In this week's post we are going to head down to the Thousand Oaks, California which is just a little ways Northwest of Los Angeles. Let me introduce you to Emily Berdon a real estate agent there. I had not heard of Emily prior to last week, but as soon as I watched a couple of her videos she immediately got a +1 subscription from me and I knew who I would be highlighting in this weeks post (hat tip to Andy Mooers who posted a link to one of Emily's videos in a comment and was the breadcrumb I needed to find her)In last week's post, I showed example videos of various types so that you could be inspired to all the different kinds of videos that you too could create. Let's go through some of these types with Emily.Introduction VideoThe video that tells a little bit about yourself sets the stage for a person "getting to know you" and in turn seeing that they are somebody that you'd want to call or message for real estate.Local Information VideoThese localism videos are good for those searching for area information. You are bound to get high view counts if you do these well. Emily has done great. In one year online, this video has gotten over 15,000 views! Emily also has a fun video creation style of leaving some of the bloopers right in the main run of the video. Other bloopers she puts in the end reel. It shows her personality and sense of humor.Market Report VideoThis video has over 3,000 views in six months. She has a great style for this type of video. If you just read the numbers of your market, you'll quickly get people's eyes to gloss over. Tell them what that means for them (WIIFM concept). Also, notice how she overlays text onto the screen with key stats because with numbers it is easy to miss hearing a stat if your mind wanders for a split second.Informational VideoAre there things that you are frequently explaining to your clients. We know from blogging that these are the seeds of blog posts. Well they are also the seeds for informational videos.Property TourIn this next video, Emily gives us a brief walk through tour of one of her listings. Her friendly conversational style in this video is just the right balance for this type of video.YouTube ShortsShort form video gives you one minute or under to make a presentation. These shorts can be day in the life funny clips or informational clips like this one that Emily has made. This short was posted last October and now has over 44,000 views!PS - I recently did a post about how you can embed your YouTube Shorts in an ActiveRain blog post. You can follow that link to read more because there are a couple of things that you will need to know since these embeds are different than regular video embeds.I hope that you gained some inspiration today watching these videos from Emily Berdon. Are you ready to start making your own videos soon?Coming SoonComing up on February 6, on our weekly zoom call, we look forward to hearing from Charlie Dresen. (If you want to check out Charlie's videos, see the link at the top of this post.) He can tell us from firsthand experience how well video marketing works in his case. In fact, he reminded us with this comment last week:Also, coming soon in this weekly series, lets look together at some of the more technical aspects and tips that will help you in creating your own videos. You've had some good inspiration in these last few weeks, next let's look at some of the behind the scenes to make these things work.And as always, a timely reminder: If any of you are creating videos and include them in your blog posts, please join the YouTube Thursdays Group (if you haven't already) and include your post in the group. And... don't forget to visit that group often to see what others have posted! Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Featuring Charlie Dresen

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 03:00:11 -0800

If you are interested in doing videos and doing them well, you need to invest a decent amount of time watching and learning from what others have done. Ask yourself what it takes to make an interesting video. If you watch a video for a few seconds and then click away, that is when you learn what NOT to do.However, when you watch Charlie Dresen real estate videos, these are videos that you can truly draw inspiration from. Charlie lives and sells real estate in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.In the upcoming weeks on YouTube Thursdays, I want to showcase not only people doing a great job of doing videos, but we will look at the different types of videos that you could be making. Here are some of the types to consider: An Introduction Video (a.k.a. "About Me" or "Profile video"), an Informational Topic Video (a.k.a a "FAQ"), a Localism Information video, a Listing Video, or a Market Report Video.Charlie checks all the above boxes and he does it so well! Let me show you what I mean.Introduction VideoCharlie's video was done a few years back but is still a great example of how to do an introduction video.Informational Topic VideoThe informational topic is your ability to share something that will benefit your viewer in regards to something they should be aware of or something that will help them in the process. In many times, you can think of the conversations that you often have with many of your clients over the years. What points do you often teach where they have a light bulb moment. If you capture these brief teaching points in videos, you can draw in new clients as they see your skill and knowledge.Market Report VideosMarket report videos show show stats and trends. The trick is to make it as useful and informational as possible so that the viewers perceive value. Don't just read numbers, tell what that means. I love the way Charlie cuts from the view at his desk to a closer screenshot of the chart he is talking about.A few years ago, he did a humorous (informational and humorous) version of a market report. The person who normally joined him on those videos was not able to do the video that month and so Charlie had a conversation with himself. Nice editing work Charlie!Localism VideoIn this localism video, Charlie gives 10 insider "secret" tips in 4 minutes. It shows he really knows the local area well and it gives you a glimpse at his personality. Localism videos are good ways to bring in viewers just searching YouTube for general area information. Your goal is that a small percentage of these viewers will also be timed for an upcoming real estate transaction need. This video has over 23 thousand views so any small percentage of calls that come from it is a great thing.Listing VideosCharlie has several different styles of listing videos and they are all great. However the first one I wanted to highlight a simple style that would be easiest for somebody starting off creating their own videos. He strings together a series of room scenes with some basic camera movements and adds a background music track. The total run time is less than one minute.In the next sample video, Charlie uses a storytelling method. The voiceover track is from the home owner giving various insights and background stories to the home being sold. This style would work in very special listings like the one in this video.If you watched any or all of the above videos and then I am quite certain that you came away inspired about what potential there is in video creation! There is not only the mechanical nature of video production (press start and stop, edit your clips together) but there is also an art to it. Are you having a conversation with your audience? Did you find the right balance of b-roll cutaways, did you find the right length of overall run time? Was your audio clear, your lighting well lit?Doing exact copycat imitation of someone never goes well because people will perceive it as a wannabe mimic effort. However, if you pick up a style idea or two or three that gives you inspiration from not just one person but from a whole list of different people, then the resulting outcome is something that you have made truly your own style. Thank you Charlie for giving us some truly great inspiration ideas!If any of you are creating videos and include them in your blog posts, please join the YouTube Thursdays Group (if you haven't already) and include your post in the group. And... don't forget to visit that group often to see what others have posted! Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

The BEST way to Reply

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 04:00:10 -0800

Getting comments on our blog posts is a refreshing thing. If you have ever done blog posts on your own website, you will quickly see how many spam comments accumulate quickly. These comments are not genuine and probably created by spam bots. When you post on ActiveRain, you'll see the community members jump in and leave comments about what they have read in your post. That's a great feeling.Part of the expectation in this community is that you will reply to the comments you receive. It is this conversation exchange that may not happen on other sites as much, but it definitely happens here!When you make a comment on someone's post, they automatically get a notification (which is important, because if you left a comment that was never viewed, it would mean we would quickly tire of leaving comments!)Now here's the teaching point of this post. When you click "Reply" and then reply to the person that left you a comment, that person will NOT be automatically notified. In order to notify them of your reply, you need to tag them in your reply.So right now on the site, you will see 3 different methods of replying. Which way is your method?1. You will see somebody using the reply link and tagging the person.2. You will see somebody using the reply link but not tagging the person3. You will see somebody making a reply as a separate comment and tagging the person.Option 1 above is the BEST WAY TO MAKE A REPLY.In times past, you could tag a person in a reply but the system would NOT notify them (that was a system bug). This meant that you had to REPLY as a SEPARATE comment somewhere further down the comment stream. Because in the separate comment you could tag the person and the system would notify them. While that worked, look how disconnected that made the conversations! Not to mention how much of a pain that was when you were the one replying. There was lots of up and down scrolling as you read and then typed and then scrolled back to read again.Some habits die hard. There are still people doing it this way. If this is you, maybe you just "missed the memo" that this feature was fixed. So hopefully this post will nudge you. I know some old habits die hard, but the Reply link option is better for everyone, really!Note: There is one other variation of replying that some might do. They will use the reply link but not tag the person. However, they will LIKE the comment which also serves to notify them that you saw it. This requires a little reading between the lines: because you got a like, you probably also got a reply and you should go back and check it. You might liken this method to something like putting up the flag on your mailbox when you are sending a letter.And if you are a newbie on the site, hopefully you see now that tagging the person in the reply is the best way. When you do so, they will realize you spent the time to say something in return (otherwise it is not likely they will come back to check).Finally, the way to tag someone (in case you haven't already discovered) is to type the @ symbol and then the first few letters from their name. When a list pops up with matching names, choose their name from the list. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

YouTube Thursdays - Featured Debb Janes

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 03:00:22 -0800

ActiveRain Groups have lost the limelight in recent years with only a handful of active groups remaining. The potential of a group is to rally and inspire one another around some focal point. Debb Janes started the YouTube Thursdays group back in 2011 and gathered over 400 members to the topic over the years. If you are at all interested in using video, you should subscribe to this group (link above) and then keep an eye on this group's page for new posts. Additionally, if you have any posts that feature videos that you have created, please add those posts to the group so we can see what you have created.Video in your marketing toolbox has remained an ever powerful asset that you do well to consider. It is at the same moment super easy to do and a little challenging to do well. It is this barrier to entry that means when you conquer it, you are truly standing out above the crowd.In order to do it well, you need to follow in the footsteps of those going ahead of you. Debb sets a really good inspirational example in this regard.Here's a video where she introduces herself to us:In another video that has gathered thousands of views, she found a local attraction that people were searching for. And she was there to provide some informationWhat makes a video successful in my eyes is one that establishes the creator as both knowledgeable and amicable. In a services industry, these two facets are going to draw people to you and when they need what you provide, they will reach out to you.You can see Debb's YouTube channel here, be sure and subscribe.Debb has taken a little break from ActiveRain posting because of circumstances and that whole work-life balance thing that we all strive to attain. Meanwhile, in her posting absence, I'll try and pick up on the Thursdays posts to help encourage you to keep looking at video for something you could start doing. And for those that have already started, how you can raise the bar.PS - tag Debb in your comments and let her know we are thinking about her Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Embedding YouTube Shorts in Your Posts

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 16:27:42 -0800

Short-form media content is a very popular format these days for people to watch. These are short videos ("snack sized", under 60 seconds) and when done right are interesting and informative. If you want to be able to share some of this content in a blog post, how do you do it?If you have created a YouTube Short, this is something that you are able to embed it in a blog post. However, it will be slightly different than how you embed a regular YouTube video. If you try to take the URL of a YouTube short and use the insert media button on a post, then paste the URL into the media source box, it will NOT display the video. (The ActiveRain insert media tool was before shorts videos existed, so this tool is not able to use those URLs)However, you can revert back to "old school" method and that will work! If you get the embed code from the YouTube shorts page, you can insert that into your blog post. To get the embed code, you need to right-click on top of the YouTube short video and in the pop-up menu, choose "copy embed code"In the above snapshot, you will see the default frame size for the embed is 458 x 815. The problem with this size is that if somebody is looking at your blog post on their mobile device, in most cases it will be too large. (This is a limitation of using an iframe with fixed size parameters.) So by reducing the size just a little, it will work well both on mobile and desktop devices while viewing your post. I recommend setting the width to 370 and the height to 657.As you can see in the illustration below, this is how it will appear on desktop and mobile devices.Notice though that because short form videos are vertical videos (designed for mobile devices), in a blog post on desktop, the video frame can look a little lost. We can easily fix that by adding a couple of css formatting instructions. We will wrap the text around the video frame.That's better!Ok, now you say, "what about Instagram Reels or TikTok videos?". For those, we have a little problem because embedding these (at the moment) in ActiveRain, the content will not show. I've tried several different things and haven't yet found anything that works (AR is not compatible with the script file in the embed). The best I can suggest if you want to still share these media formats is to do a snapshot of the video you want to share and then insert the snapshot in your post as an image file. Then hyperlink to the page where the video will play. Here's a couple of examples of that method. If you would like to see a general discussion comparing the different sites typically used for short form videos, this Android Authority article gives a good overview.If you want to see examples of YouTube Shorts, check out the posts Sam Miller has been doing lately. Sam does an excellent job of short explainer videos. (He is the one I featured in the illustrations above). Another ActiveRainer Khash Saghafi is very good on YouTube explainers, you can see his shorts page here.This post was inspired by several questions in recent history in Q&A and so I thought a post on the topic would be timely. (People Tags: Sam Miller , Andrea Bedard, Ray Henson, Andrew Mooers | 207.532.6573)Finally, this is a chance to remind everyone about a group that you will want to definitely be part of: YouTube Thursdays. If you are doing a post (any day of the week, not just Thursdays) where you are featuring one of your own videos in the post or that you are talking about using videos in your business, please add the post to the group to encourage others wanting to learn about this most interesting topic!Other video related posts that you might enjoy: How To Embed Video into Your Blog Post (2022 Version)Pro Tips for YouTube Watching Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Your ActiveRain Stats

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 06:56:20 -0700

Once you have been blogging for a while, you will have accumulated a fairly long list of blog posts. Hopefully you've been mixing your topics. If so, you might have a mix of localism posts, market reports, and answering frequently asked questions for your audience. How well are your posts performing?If you monitor your stats page after you post, you'll be able to know. The stats page will show you how many views, comments, and likes on your posts. Ideally Google will pick up on some of your posts as well and over time some of these posts may take off more than others. What were the topics that did better than others? That would be a useful thing to know.Sorting Your StatsIf you click a column heading on your stats page, it will sort the page by that metric. So if you click the views heading, your posts with the most views will come to the top. How many views do you have on your most viewed post? (leave a comment below and let us know!)Exporting Allows a More Comprehensive ReviewIf you are a data geek like me, you really love to dive in and analyze data to learn from it. Exporting your data from ActiveRain is easy to do. On your stats page, at the top right of the chart, you can click on the "Export Results" link and download a CSV file. (CSV stands for "comma separated values" which basically means it is a format that you can open in your spreadsheet app like Excel).Formatting Your Raw File to Make It ReadableOnce you open your file in your spreadsheet, it will at first be hard to read. You can adjust your column widths as necessary to be able to read the data. I also often adjust the font and font size settings. Excel and other spreadsheet apps have a tool to take a block of data like we see above and make it easier to review by commands like sorting and filtering. The command in Excel is "Create Table". If your any cell inside the data is selected, you can then press Ctrl+T (for Windows, Command+T for Mac) to convert to a table. In addition, tables by default are styled with alternate row shading which makes the data more readable as well.A Comma CaveatAs mentioned above, a CSV export type is where excel splits the received data into cells based on the commas in the received data. One problem with this file type becomes obvious if you have commas in your data. Take a post title that says Themes, Signatures, and Profile Pages (like you see in my post below)Excel will split this title up into separate cells instead of keeping the title in a single cell. This is a pretty easy fix once you have opened the Excel file. I'll show you how to fix the row of data in the video at the bottom of this post.What You Can Do With TablesBy clicking the button in the header cell of any column, you can sort the data by that column (such as to show the posts with the most views). You can also create a filtered list where it shows only posts with a certain keyword. See my example below, filtered by the word "profile"Conditional Formatting Helps Visualize MagnitudeSeeing a large set of numbers can be hard sometimes to comprehend magnitude of scale. Excel has conditional formatting preset rules to help quickly visualize data sets. In the below snapshot, I did conditional formatting on my views column for my posts. The "Data Bars" rule will show bars of varying lengths to illustrate the value. The longer bars quickly pop out as posts to take note of. You can also use the "Color Scales" formatting. Magnitude is represented by differing colors (in this case, red for lower performing and green for higher performing)Saving Your FileRemember how we started off with a CSV file. Since we have done all this work in formatting our file, we'll need to use the "Save As" command and change the file type from CSV to Excel (.xlsx) format. This way all of our formatting will be retained (which a CSV type cannot store).Making the URLs ClickableNow that you have a master list of all your posts, it would be helpful to be able to click on the URL and jump straight to the post. Initially, the URL cells are not clickable. If you double click any URL cell to go into "editing mode" and then select the URL text, you can jump over to a browser window and paste to go to the page. Not ideal, but that gets the job done. For the more advanced Excel geeks out there, you can insert a new column and use the hyperlink formula in this format=HYPERLINK(B2, "Link")This will make every row in the whole list show a link that you can click to get to the post. You can use the text "Link" to make the column nice and narrow (compared to seeing the long URL). Hide the B column afterwards, leaving just the C column visible.And if there any super ActiveRain Data geeks (raises hand), you can go further and use the formula that shows the specific post ID number as the link text=HYPERLINK(B2,TEXTAFTER(TEXTBEFORE(B2,"/",5),"/",4))So instead of saying "Link" it will show 5792456 as an example link text. This formula parses the URL text between the 4th and 5th slash characters to get the post number. Okay, there's probably about 0.3% of you reading this that will go that far, but I thought it was a neat twist. 🤣 My first post on the site in 2010 was 1,796,177 and my last one was 5,792,456. That's nearly 4 million posts (by us) added to the site in those 13 years! #datageekWhat We Have Learned TodayOk, so I took us beyond the case of the ActiveRain stats to dive into a little more Excel training. But it was a good case study. You learned about some neat features like Tables and Conditional formatting. Instead of stats data, perhaps you could imagine downloading the CSV transactions for the past year from your checking account. You could turn that into a table. You can then sort and filter just in the same way. For example, you could filter all your transactions to show just a particular utility company or other payee.The How To VideoIn case you learn better by watching than reading, or if any of the above wasn't clear enough, here's the how to video.(pro tip: after video starts, press F key to view in full screen) Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Excel Fundamentals

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 12:11:40 -0700

In last week's ActiveRain zoom, we showed a couple different case studies to illustrate how using a spreadsheet could be a very useful tool. I have recorded one of the case studies, "Shopping for a Laptop" so that you can playback the tutorial when you have a little time to watch. The video tutorial is 20 minutes long.In this video tutorial, we look at some very useful Excel essentials. After we fill in the item description and price, then we look at how to add the sales tax. This requires using a formula. Don't worry, it's very easy once you see how. In formulas, we can add/subtract/multiply and divide to get results.In the case of sales tax, we'll create a formula to multiply the price times the sales tax rate.Once you have the formula created, you can quickly replicate it to the other adjacent cells by dragging the cell by the fill handle. That's the square in the lower right hand corner of a cell.Besides that, we'll look at hyperlinking inside of the spreadsheet so that you can bookmark the shopping pages that you want to come back to later.Finally you may learn a thing or two about shopping for a new computer. I show you my own setup and why I chose the components I did. (NOTE: in the video one of the components we look at is a laptop stand. I see in hindsight, the page I was looking at was for laptops up to 14" and so may not be a good choice for the 15" laptop, so you'd want to make a different size choice if you are actually shopping for one.)Here's the video (pro tip: after starting the video, you can press the F key if you want to view fullscreen). I hope you learn something new today! Leave me a comment (and a like) if you do!Please also be sure and subscribe to my YouTube channel! Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

How To Create a Desktop Shortcut

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sat, 13 May 2023 13:21:44 -0700

Tech Snippets - this series of short posts shows helpful tools and methods that could easily be missed or overlooked yet are extremely helpful!Do you know this one?...How To Create a Desktop ShortcutIn Microsoft Windows, it is very easy to create a desktop shortcut for a website or a specific folder of your files. All you need to do is find the little icon to the left of the URL in your browser (or the little icon next to the address in your file explorer window). Use your left mouse button to drag and drop this icon onto your desktop (note: you'll need to have the window not maximized so that you can see a portion of your desktop to drop onto)Once you have dropped the icon onto your desktop, you'll have a shortcut all ready for future use! This will enable you to quickly get back to the web page (or folder on your computer)Note in the illustration above how shortcut icons have a little arrow symbol in the bottom corner of the icon. This is how you know that it is just a link (or shortcut) to the folder and not the actual folder itself. Whenever you see this arrow symbol you can delete the icon and be assured that you are not deleting the actual folder or files in the folder.How To Create a Desktop Shortcut on a MacIf you are working on a Mac, creating shortcuts for a web page works just the same as the above (drag the icon or the URL text to your desktop).If you want to create a shortcut to a folder, in Mac you will create what is called an "Alias" (just another name for a shortcut) One way to make an Alias is to right click on a folder (or file) and choose "Make Alias" from the pop up menu. The alias will be listed alongside the original folder (or file). From there, you can drag and drop the alias to move it to the desktop.Another way to make an alias is to press Option + Command keys while you drag and drop the original item to another location (like your desktop). When you release the mouse, you will have a shortcut.This article from lifewire shows more specific details if you need more help on Mac.Keeping Your Desktop CleanI'm a big proponent of keeping a clean desktop! So let me mention that even though I'm showing you how to make desktop shortcuts, I don't suggest you clutter your desktop with tons of shortcuts! I will often make shortcuts to web pages that I don't have time to read now but want to come back later. Once I do come back, I will do one of two things with that shortcut. If it is a very useful page that I might refer to again in the future, I will MOVE the shortcut into a special folder I call "bookmarks". For other pages, once I come back and get the info I was looking for, I will simply DELETE the shortcut. So in the end, my desktop is NOT cluttered with icons! I highly suggest that methodology as one that works very well.Did you know this tech snippet already? Or did you learn something new today?Be sure and like this post if you learned something new today.If I didn't teach you anything new, stay tuned, I'll get you on the next one!Here is a listing of my tech snippets posts where you can check out previous ones in this series.Be sure and follow my blog if you want to see future posts like this one. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Tech Snippets: Toggle Your Folders

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 06:51:40 -0700

Tech Snippets - a new series of short posts showing helpful tools and methods that could easily be missed or overlooked, yet are things that are extremely helpful once you know!Do you know this one?...Toggle Your Folder Views(On a Windows PC) Depending on the content of the folder that you are looking at, there are two view types that you can toggle between to best show you the files. If you are looking at a folder of images, the thumbnails view is very useful. If it is a folder of miscellaneous documents, then the details view is usually preferred. With details view, you can see file size and date/time saved. There are different ways to switch views, but in my opinion, the best way to toggle between the two views is to use the toggle buttons down in the lower right corner of the window (they are extremely easy to overlook... which is why I'm pointing them out to you!)When you are in thumbnails view, there is not just a singular thumbnail size. You can size the thumbnails up or down to better see more details in each of the thumbnails. Hold the Ctrl key down while you roll the wheel on the mouse to size your thumbnails to the size you like best!Toggle Your Folder Views(On a Mac) On a Mac finder window, notice the toolbar across the top. That is where you can choose the view type that you want (icons, list, columns, gallery). In icons view, you can set your icons to be larger using the Command-J options popup and set your icon size. Another option is to turn on the status bar (view menu or Command + / ) and then use the slider bar at the bottom. Here's a link to a video on the macmostvideo channel that you might find helpful for working with folder views.Did you know these tips already?Or did you learn something new in today's tech snippet?Be sure and like the post if you learned something new today.If I didn't teach you anything new, stay tuned, I'll get you on the next one!Follow my blog if you want to see future posts like this one. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Tech Snippets: Show the Desktop

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 15:22:03 -0700

Tech Snippets - a new series of short posts showing helpful tools and methods that could easily be missed or overlooked, yet are things that are extremely helpful once you know!Do you know this one?...Show the Desktop - On a Windows PCHow many app windows do you have running simultaneously? 3, or 5, or 15? (they easily add up). The quickest way to "minimize all" is by using one of the following two shortcuts to show your desktop again. If you are a Windows user, you can use the Windows Key + D shortcut to do this. There's also another way that I think is even easier. Drop your mouse cursor all the way into the bottom right corner and then click. This is a special spot that is designed to activate the "show desktop" command. Quickly just move your mouse far enough right and far enough down and it will be in the corner (don't sweat being precise about it, since once you have moved far enough over and down, it will have reached the limit). Click & Done! (click that spot again later if you want all the previous windows restored)Show the Desktop - On a MacIf you want to show desktop on a Mac you can use Command+F3 (Mission Control) keyboard shortcut. See this howtogeek.com article to read more and to set up customized shortcuts.If you like the mouse in a corner technique noted above, you can do something very similar by programming your "hot corners" on your mac. See that linked article to read more.Did you know it already? Or did you learn something new?Be sure and like the post if you learned something new today.If I didn't teach you anything new, stay tuned, I'll get you on the next one!Follow my blog if you want to see future posts like this one. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Craig's Classroom - Blog Feed March 2023

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 14:24:39 -0800

People will find our blog posts in various ways. One way is when we share it with them for example in a link on our email signatures. Another way, when we do SEO right, people will drop in "out of the sky" and land on the specific post. From there, we'd hope that they want to read more of your blog posts.Today, if they jump to our blog feeds on ActiveRain, they will see a listing of text, a wall of words! While that is adequate, it is not ideal. That listing has not gotten the upgrade (yet) to the same visual format as the AR home page or the site's main blog feed. I will keep nudging the dev team that this update on our own blog pages would be VERY appreciated. Meanwhile, I thought a specific example of some of my own posts would illustrate this point. Perhaps, you've newly subscribed, or you've been a long time subscriber. Thank you! Here's a visual feed of some posts that you might want to go check out. How To Create a Post For a Facebook Page FEBRUARY 11, 2023 Adding posts to Facebook pages is made easier when using the Meta Business Suite tool. You can preview exactly how your post will look. It is also helpful to schedule the post for a future time that you specify. Conversations--In Facebook Messenger NOVEMBER 25, 2022 Conversations via back and forth emails can get cumbersome. Switching to chat makes for better conversations. Facebook messages is one chat platform. Many never realize that there is a much more useful "messenger view" (on desktop) that makes the conversation much more readable. Smile - Your Hard Drive Just Crashed NOVEMBER 14, 2022 When your hard drive one day fails to operate, will that be just a nuisance or will that day be a disaster! That depends on what you do NOW. This is not something you should procrastinate on. Your precious digital files are at risk! Creating and Using Screenshots FEBRUARY 11, 2022 Taking snapshots of what you see on your screen is just a simple shortcut key away. Let's look at how this is useful in all sorts of cases. Besides that, let's see how you can take a marker or highlighter pen to add annotations when you need to do that. Tech Tip Thursday - Shortcut Keys JUNE 18, 2020 If you invest just a tiny amount of time memorizing a few special key combinations, it can make frequently used tasks much faster! Shortcut keys are very useful for repetitive commands. Let's explore a few favorites that you can add to your repertoire if they aren't already there. Pro Tips for YouTube Watching APRIL 25, 2020 There are few people who use the internet who don't spend some time on YouTube. However, in this post, I reveal a few tips that many people don't realize what can be done. Let's dig a little deeper and reveal some very useful pointers. Are You Using GOOGLE PHOTOS? OCTOBER 2, 2016 I have thousands of them, so do you! Photos! Curating, Editing, Sharing are a triple set of tasks that allow you to better enjoy your library. Backing up your photos is also a critical component. Google Photos is hands down my favorite tool to do all of the above. Come take a closer look with me! - Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

How To Create a Post For a Facebook Page

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 16:43:13 -0800

Do you like to use Facebook for posts related to your business? It's a good way to stay front mind with your audience (clientele). It's also a good way for people to discover what you are about and what good information you can share with them.By having a Facebook Page, it enables you to differentiate your personal life from your business life. On your personal Facebook profile, you can post photos of your family, trips you've taken, the amazing dinner that you cooked last night, and things like that. That's great to share with friends and family. If people want to connect with you, they send a friend request and you approve it if you want them in that circle of communication.For a Facebook Page, on the other hand, you can share interesting content about what you do for work. For real estate, this could mean sharing posts about recent listings, local information, links to blog posts that you just wrote, and things like that. It doesn't mean that you never share personal information, in fact, it is good to mix some personal things in once in a while. That give people a sense of who you are as a person. But the frequency of these posts and exactly what you share is measured.I haven't been doing much on Facebook personally in the last couple of years. But in consulting with Aura Alex on her new Wordpress website and her new Facebook Page, I found it was an excellent opportunity to see what the latest methods were available for creating posts in Facebook. Wow, I made a great discovery in a new tool for doing this! Have you heard about "Meta Business Suite" - kudos to Facebook, this is a nice tool. Let me show you a little about it. PS - this tool is for both Facebook Posts AND Instagram Posts. I haven't yet tried it for the latter but plan to soon!How to get to Meta Business SuiteIn order to manage your Facebook page, you need to use the profile switcher tool at the top right of the Facebook window. Click on your avatar circle and in the menu below, you can choose which page you want to switch to in order to manage. When you are then on your Facebook Page, you'll see the manage page panel on the left. At the bottom of that panel, is where you can choose "Meta Business Suite". My preference to get there even faster is to bookmark the URL business.facebook.comCreating a New PostIn the new post creation screen, you'll see a very useful layout. On the left is where you compose, and on the right is a preview of what it will look like when published. After you have finished composing your new post, you can decide if you want to publish immediately, or schedule it for a later time. For instance, you could compose several posts and have them go out once per day. Also, there is the factor of what is a good time to post (i.e. better when people are online and looking at Facebook). So if you are composing at 6:30 am with your morning coffee, you may want to schedule it later for when more eyeballs will be looking!Choosing HashtagsUsing hashtags effectively can elevate your post view count dramatically. A hashtag is a clickable link that people add to their posts. If somebody is interested in a given topic, they can click the hashtag link and find other posts related to the topic. In other words, they go exploring and discovering what else is on the web. That's where your post comes in. You want them to discover you! (and there's a chance that you'll add new followers after the discovery, if you've done your job well)Brainstorm a little about hashtags that people may connect with. When you use the search box, you'll get a list of what you typed and related keywords. You'll see the stats for each one so you'll know how popular (or not popular) the keyword you thought of using will be.Asking Questions to Raise EngagementFacebook uses an algorithm to decide which posts become visible in people's feeds. So just because you post something, doesn't mean it will make it to the feeds of others. However, if your post is getting lots of engagement, Facebook is more likely to push it out to be seen by more people. Likes and comments are what it tallies as engagement. In Aura's post about hummingbirds, I pondered what questions could engage comments. Maybe asking about "Where do you live and have you seen hummingbirds in your area?" or maybe something like "What is the funniest thing you have seen a hummingbird do?" If you can engage comments on your posts, Facebook will count it as more worthy and hopefully get you even more views.Reviewing Your Post AnalyticsAfter your post has a chance to be seen, you'll then want to come back and review your analytics. How many people liked it, commented on it, clicked on it? How do the stats for your latest post compare to other posts that you've done? Which posts get the most interaction? This is where you are doing some A/B type testing. Find what works best, and REPEAT the formula!As I mentioned earlier in this post, I was providing some of these tips for Aura in managing her new Facebook page "Written by Aura Alex". Aura is getting closer to her retirement date. It is her goal to take up writing more fully at that time. There's even a book likely in her near future! Do me a favor before you forget to. Go to her page (linked above) and follow it. Let's see if we can't get her follower count a nice rocket boost! (and then you can enjoy her stories as they come out)I had recorded a short video for Aura to demonstrate how to use the Meta Business Suite for creating new Facebook posts. After I was done with it, it occurred to me that this same demonstration may help YOU also with your Facebook pages, and thus this blog post was born! (PS - in this video, we get a nice unplanned cameo appearance from our own Dorie Dillard Austin TX 😎... be sure and watch for that!)video tip: after starting video, press F key to watch in full screen Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Conversations - In Facebook Messenger

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 14:36:12 -0800

If you have worked with me on any sort of project, you'll know that I like to bounce out of the email medium pretty quickly. Emails are fine for a single question and response types of exchanges. Maybe you even go back and forth in emails a couple times and email still is ok. But beyond that, emails get messy for longer conversations. First of all, I hate tripping over all the email signatures, their signature and then your signature, repeatedly, as you trace back down through the conversation. It's like driving down a perfectly good road that has been ruined by a series of speed bumps that is just one huge jarring experience.Additionally, back and forth email conversations are in reverse order as you try and play them back to the start. Moreover, each reply includes the original text duplicated, so you have to skip over that dual text as you scroll down and down and down.You often find yourself typing in a different color so your newest thoughts stand out over the older thoughts.Does any of this sound familiar? I find all of this terribly inefficient and cumbersome. Messaging apps (aka Chat apps) therefore are much more conductive to conversations. There's a back and forth exchange in chronological order (can you imagine that? how novel!)Messaging apps enable conversations in real time. When you see a note "so-and-so is typing" then you realize the next message is coming soon. In this "instant messaging" mode, you go back and forth sharing ideas in quick succession. The conversations are oftentimes asynchronous. What I mean is, that you share a thought but you realize it may be a few hours before you get a response. But that's okay too. You'll see the little 'message read' indicator has not appeared yet so you know they haven't seen it. Or even if they have seen it, they are quite likely busy on something else and you just have to wait a bit. Some people are a little more patient than others for waiting. Just because they saw it instantly doesn't mean they have time to reply instantly. Not being impatient for the instant reply is the desired etiquette here.One of the other key components that makes any particular messaging platform successful is being able to pick up the conversation both on your computer and on your mobile device. I can type far more rapidly and accurately on a computer keyboard, so I'm always happier to be able to do that in messaging apps. In contrast SMS messages are much more oriented around typing on your phone! (note, there are exceptions like having iMessage on your Mac or the Microsoft Phone Link app to get your android phone paired to your Windows PC. If either of those cases are true, you can send messages into the SMS world via your computer keyboard)Recently, I did an informal poll to see what messaging platform people liked when they moved out of email mode. I also wanted people to share what they use when they move beyond the SMS/iMessage style communicating. (because of the important consideration of being able to message also beyond just on a mobile device).The top result of that poll indicated that quite a few utilize Facebook Messenger.I also use Facebook messenger often. It meets that criteria for me of being able to switch between mobile app and desktop. The other thing that makes this successful is that most people are already in Facebook so there is nothing more to sign up for or install. That is a slight barrier for some for otherwise better messaging apps (i.e. requiring that the people you want to talk to need to sign up for and/or install something new)Notice the snapshot below. This is probably the way most people do Facebook messages and I rather detest this communication interface. Notice how small and cramped the messaging area is!However, the good news is, you don't have to stay in this cramped interface. The trick is knowing how to break out of it and once you do, it changes the whole perspective! Notice how this looks below:In this "messenger view," the conversation area gets a nice expansive area in the middle of the window. You can switch conversations to different persons (or groups) in the left side pane. On the right side pane, you can opt to view all the media/image files that have been shared back and forth with a person. This is helpful in reviewing an image you wanted to see again.So how do we get to the "messenger view" shown above? There are a couple of ways you can do this. One way, is while you are in the regular Facebook news feed, notice the messenger button at the top right of the window. When you click that button, a secondary button appears below, "see all in messenger." This is one way to get to the expanded conversation view. The second way to get there is my favorite way to do it, just open a new browser tab and go to messenger.com. How simple is that?If you find yourself utilizing Facebook Messenger for conversations, the next thing on your checklist should be to get the app for your mobile phone. This is important so that you can get notifications of new messages and you can choose to reply to them at that moment, or just be aware that there is a new message waiting and you can reply to it when you have more time. If you aren't aware of a new message and you don't go to your Facebook feed very often, this will be a deterrent to others wanting to use messenger to communicate with you.Finally, we might rightly bring up the privacy issue. We can question whether or not we should let Facebook be privvy to what we are saying to others. To that, I reason the following way. How much do I pay for Facebook? oh right, $0 per month. Does that mean that these companies are providing a free service? Not at all! They benefit financially primarily by serving ads to us. Not only ads, but targeted ads. That means that advertisers have the ability to choose an audience that is more likely to buy their product or service. How can they provide targeted ads? We give them permission to see what we like in our newsfeed and they see what we talk about in our conversations and can use those interests to target ads that match our tastes and interests.Quick example: We just adopted another cat (his name is Seamus 😺). I've noticed recently that many of the ads shown to me have migrated to include pet supplies. I'm ok with that! In fact I found the most amazing litter box that I may have never discovered otherwise. Now, to me, that's better than showing me ads for instance for a new car (which I am not in the market for right now). I'm ok with targeted ads. I'm not ok with paying Facebook $9.99 a month to get rid of ads. So seeing ads is a fair price in my mind. That is the cost.Anyway, that's how I reason. Your opinions may vary but maybe that adds a little perspective to the topic.So Facebook messenger then... A good place to have conversations? I think so. There are other apps and services that also I recommend for having conversations. But that's for another day! Meanwhile, I hope you learned something new today about Facebook Messenger. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Smile - Your Hard Drive Just Crashed

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:46:11 -0800

It just happened again last Friday: the type of support call I hate to get. First came a desperate message from a friend saying that his computer wouldn't boot. He reported the screen had some kind of a message like a "hard drive error."Has that ever happened to you? Your computer won't boot because of some hardware crash?It's a dreadful moment. Your digital life passes before your eyes in a second.You mind races as ponder all the project files you've been working on lately. Oh no! your important client information, where is that now? Your tax filing information that you had all neatly organized and saved, is it gone?? And then the big bomb hits, your precious photos and videos, precious memories, they can't be gone!!! ARE THEY GONE???Then you take a deep breath. "Oh wow," you say, "I'm so glad I paid attention when I was encouraged do have proper backups of my data!"And that's when the smile comes. You know that getting your computer repaired or replaced is going to be a bit of a pain, but you are not going to lose your precious files!Don't Be That Person You've been admonished before to have backups of your data. I know you've heard that and probably many times. But what have you done to follow the counsel? Don't be that person that says, "that's good, I need to do that... then you never get around to it."If you are on a Mac, there's a fairly good chance you have an external drive plugged in and Time Machine is running. That's terrific! But I have two thoughts on that, have you checked it lately to make sure that it is successfully backing up? Secondly, how old is your time machine drive? If you've been running it for years and years, you may want to invest in a newer external drive. The older the drive the higher the likelihood of failure.If you are on a PC, you can also use an external drive for backup using the built in system tool called File History. If you want to learn about either of these backup methods, use the links above to watch short explainer videos.Traditional hard drives (HDDs) are pretty amazing mechanical devices. If you could look inside the sealed case, you'd be reminded of a record player. There's a disc (or several discs) spinning and at the end of a long arm there's a special tip to read (and write data) from the platters. However, unlike your 45 rpm single that you used to play, these discs are spinning at (crazy) high speeds, typically 5400 rpm or even 7200 rpm! I find it so incredible that these devices last as long as they do before failing with that kind of intense and constant activity going on in there!Meanwhile, SSD (solid state drive) technology has become increasingly more popular in recent years. There are no more spinning platters inside this type of storage drive. There is some equally impressive engineering going on here. Data on these drives is stored electronically on flash memory, leveraging the technology of special transistors. One primary benefit of these drives is that they are significantly faster the traditional HDD drives. Their prices have come down over the years and most new computers have these types of drives now. Arguably, SSD drives can fail less often than HDD drives, but the point to underline is that they still CAN and do occasionally fail. Will you be the one looking at the dreaded boot error message on the screen without your data backed up?The Cloud Can Be Your GuardianThe solution that I recommend to everybody is to use cloud storage for your data files. When you install a cloud app onto your computer such as OneDrive or Dropbox, you'll have a special base folder that you can then start putting all all your important files into. You will want to create various category subfolders under that base folder as needed to keep everything organized. Everything you put into that base folder and all of its subfolders will be instantly backed up to the cloud for you. Further, any edits you make to files in the future will be instantly backed up. Should your hard drive ever crash, you just have to get the cloud app installed on your repaired (or new) computer, and you are right where you left off!There are various cloud storage providers, but the one I recommend is Microsoft OneDrive. You can start with 5 GB for free just to give it a try. That's a pretty decent amount of storage to get you started and to see how it works. Noteworthy point: If you are already subscribed to Microsoft for the office apps (e.g. Word/Excel/Powerpoint), then you also have OneDrive already in your bundle! The Microsoft subscription bundle gives you 1 TB of cloud storage.Microsoft subscription plans are these: a 1-person subscription is $69.99/yr a family subscription (up to 6 people, each person gets all the apps and 1 TB each) is $99.99/yr If you don't need all the apps, you can step up from the free 5 GB to 100 GB for only $19.99/yr Cloud Storage is More than Just for BackupsBacking up your data by using cloud connected folders is not the only advantage you'll benefit from. Another helpful aspect is that you can have the same files available on multiple devices. The files you are working on can be available to you on your phone and tablet as well. I have a desktop computer at the office and a laptop at the home office. My files are available to me wherever I am at.Cloud files are also easily shared with others. You can share files and whole folders of files with others. (with the option to also edit those files if you want to give them that privilege if you are collaborating on a project together). Hopefully the above benefits have you intrigued. When you are ready to learn more, this video by Kevin Stratvert gives a good demonstration of how to setup and use OneDrive.Photo (and Video) BackupsWhen it comes to backing up a photo library on the cloud, Google Photos remains my go to choice in this category. When you install the app on your phone and turn on the backup option for the camera roll, your photos will be uploaded automatically for you. Using Google Photos means that you have easy access to your photos on whatever device you are on (phone, tablet, computer). The editing tools in the app are fantastic. Curating your best shots into albums and sharing with friends and family couldn't be easier. I highly recommend it. You can see my blog post on Google Photos to take a deeper dive. (*note: Google Photos has a free starting tier of 15 GB with your google account. Beyond that, you can ramp up in progressive steps of $19.99/yr to $29.99/yr as your library grows. As important as photos and video memories are, to me this is a small price.)Two Factor AuthenticationThe more we come to trust the cloud with our valuable data, the more important security becomes. If some hacker learns your username and password, this is obviously bad news. For any important accounts, and cloud drive files are certainly important, you want additional security. The best thing to do to better secure your data is to add two-factor authentication mode on your account. This means that once you have entered your username and password, your phone will get a code (or pop up message) asking you to verify that it is you attempting the sign in. The hacker (who does not have your phone) would then be blocked from entry (because they don't have means to get the 2nd factor). Here's a short video on that topic to explain a little more.The Predicament You Don't WantIf you choose to procrastinate having data backup and it turns out you have a hard drive crash, you are put in a very uncomfortable situation. Not too long ago, I had a workmate in this dilemma and came to me to help seek out a recovery service. I called around a bit to various recovery companies, but was not happy with much that I was finding. A fellow IT in my network suggested a well known company out in California and we shipped the drive out there for an analysis and quote. We were shocked at the price tag on the recovery. I knew it wasn't going to be cheap, but this was shockingly expensive.In the meanwhile as we were waiting for that quote to come back, I had been doing some YouTube surfing because my technical mind wanted to know what was involved in a hard drive recovery and specifically a drive head replacement. I came across this terrific video that explained the whole recovery process. The video instantly elevated the trust factor that I needed with this company. When I called them on the phone, I talked to the owner of the company and we had a down to earth conversation about the drive fail and what the probabilities were of different crash scenarios. He gave me a quote over the phone of the worst case scenario head fail, and though expensive, it was much closer to the amount I expected to hear. I was also quickly gaining confidence that this was a company valuing integrity and if it proved to be a lesser tech issue causing the fail, they would charge only for the services rendered and not price gouge the consumer in a vulnerable situation. The company I discovered is called ACS Data Recovery.Well the story ends happily. The drive came back to NY from the first company in California and we immediately shipped it out to ACS Recovery in Texas (this drive was earning some serious frequent flier miles!) ACS did their recovery wizardry on the drive and after replacing the heads, they were able to recover the majority of the lost files. A small percentage of the files could not be recovered because the failure was from the read head crashing into the platter causing a portion of it to become unreadable. My colleague was extremely happy to have the vast majority of her photos and videos back again. These were precious memories of her daughter from infancy through toddlerhood that should could not bear to have gone forever.If you follow through on any of my above suggestions about having backups, you will never need a drive recovery service. And I hope that is your case!! However, you may want to bookmark this post to be able to help out your friends and family with a good referral in case they ever end up with this scenario on their hands. A Second ChanceSo my friend, the one that I mentioned at the outset, what happened in his case? I'm happy to report we had a successful outcome. The hard drive fail message turned out to be a system hiccup and we got the computer back online for him. But he had the momentary panic that I want none of you to have! We immediately got his important files setup on the OneDrive cloud service. Should his hard drive again give him any trouble, we have our insurance policy in place.Now it's your turn! Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

BREAKING NEWS: AR Threaded Conversations

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 09:19:32 -0700

BREAKING NEWS:Threaded Conversations in ActiveRain finally work as they should!Way back in time (Sept 2015), ActiveRain team introduced the ability to do threaded conversations. In other words, when you wanted to reply to someone's comment, you didn't need to start a separate comment way down further (and very much disconnected). You could click the "reply" link under the comment and keep it linked together on the page, also known as a comment thread. This allows you (and everyone else) to see both sides of the conversation and it is so much easier to follow the two sides of the conversation.Well, for best intentions, even if you tagged the person to notify them, the system did not actually send them a notification. So it was quite likely that the person never would go back to see what you wrote in reply. Therefore, most ActiveRainers chose to keep on doing replies to comments the OLD way, because at least you could notify them. The tradeoff is that the reply was often way down the page (scroll/scroll/scroll) and disconnected.So the news from our current dev team is that reply notifications is now FIXED.(thank you dev team!!! do you know how huge a fix this is for us???)You can reply to someone directly underneath their comment, when you tag them in the reply they WILL get a notification. (Reminder: to tag someone, you'll need to type @ followed by the first few letters of their name, when the list pops up, click on their name. You can tag anyone that you are subscribed to and/or anyone that has commented on the post.)So to recap visually...This is the workaround that people have been using until now. You'll see the reply to a comment in a new separate comment (so the notification would send). But there is usually a big separation between the two parts.So, now that notifications work in replies to comments, notice how much more clean the conversations become! The reply is connected to the original comment and when you @tag the person, they will get notification!Also, I understand that when you tag somebody in the body of your blog post, those notifications are now again working (they had stopped working for a while... you thought they got a notification when you tagged them, but they never did). Let's test a few people to see if this notification works now... (please let me know in a comment)Kathy Streib - Liz and Bill Spear - Aura Alex - Debe Maxwell, CRS Finally, here's a pro tip for you. When you are making a comment on a blog post, you do NOT need to tag the author of the post. The system automatically notifies the blogger that their post has a new comment. It is cleaner in your comment to not do the tagging. This may fall on many deaf ears, but at least maybe a few will adjust accordingly. Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)

Stepping Up to the March Signature Challenge

Craig Daniels, Technology Instructor/Project Consultant (Tech Training for You!) — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 10:32:39 -0700

Hasn't it been great seeing all the participants in the March 2022 Challenge! I'd say we have some real transformations going on here!!I wanted to do a single post capturing all the hard work. Even if you weren't able to participate in the challenge month, it is still time well spent to look into a blog signature refresh! Hopefully this post will inspire you.You can see my post about the challenge instructionsRefresh Your Blog Signature - March 2022 ChallengeAnd you can also see my posts about creating a signature, adding snapshots, and adding social media iconsHow To Create an Effective Blog SignatureSocial Media Icons in Your Blog SignatureCreating and Using ScreenshotsNow here's a visual recap of what we saw this month!Andrea BedardAnna Banana KruchtenAura AlexBen DeHavenBob TimmBrian EnglandDebb JanesDebe MaxwellDorie DillardEd SilvaEileen BurnsElyse BermanGeorge SoutoGrant SchneiderHannah WilliamsJeff DowlerJeff MasichJoan CoxJohn MeussnerJoseph DominoKat PalmiottiKathy StreibLorrie SemlerLynn FriedmanMargaret GossMargaret RomeMayra EspinosaMimi FosterNorberto FabreRocky DickersonRuth VogtScott SeatonSharon TaraShayne StoneSheri SperryTammy LankfordThomas NelsonTracy Lee ParkerWanda Kubat-Nerdin Follow My ActiveRain Blog See when new posts come out! Read More Blog Posts My YouTube Channel About Me Email Me I appreciate every new subscriber to both my ActiveRain blog ANDmy YouTube Channel! Craig DanielsThis blog is all about technology and helping you to use it smarter! Your digital footprint is your chance to attract new clients. What kind of impression are you making via your website, blog, and social media? We’ll be talking about that! Are you as productive as you can be? What apps might help you out? Do you know how to use all the best tools inside the apps? I enjoy photography and videography, you can expect to see those topics also on this blog. Are you ready to learn? Welcome to Craig’s Classroom! PS - get ready for some homework… :)