How lucky am I? While discussing with a client what screen-capture software to use, I was contacted by another blogger about possibly linking to a blog post he’d written about … get this … Best Screen Capture Software!

The best part of being a creative service provider is knowing that I don’t have to have all the answers – especially to technical issues or products. I prefer to defer to others who have the expertise to investigate and review such things.

Joseph Gildred has is the blogger that I’m speaking of, and his very informative and easy-to-read blog post appears here.  On his post, you’ll find several different brands of screen capture software as well as what is great about each brand.

What is screen capture software? It’s software that is installed on your computer which you can access to capture an image, a webpage or even a video. What you capture can be edited or used as is.

Clients have found it easier to explain issues, dislikes and likes as they browse the web, when speaking to me about services that they need. Showing me what they are talking about is often easier than trying to find words for some things that might have their own language as items often do on the Internet.

Screen captures are also excellent for creating Featured Images for blog posts when you can’t find what you need. (Always be aware of capturing work that is copyrighted and carries licensing fees.)

Here are some other ideas you can draw from when using a screen capture tool:

1. Pausing a video to capture a specific image that is within the video.
2. Capturing a snapshot of a website page to use as an image within a blog post to enhance the reader’s experience when referring to a public figure, news agency, etc.
3. Snagging a portion of an image to use in a blog post (you can select how much of an image you want to capture and customize your results)
4. Capturing a moment in time as it happens. A news story, or a Live Streaming video that has information in it that you’d like to remember.
5. Capturing notes that you’ve written that you want to post, but not have others copy the text in a text editor. Quotes are often shared this way.
6. Capture an image and edit it in the software’s editing tool by adding arrows, text, highlights, etc. This is extremely helpful to me when I’m teaching a client how to use various online tools, or sharing with them any changes made that they needed to know about within their website.
7. While creating presentations in PowerPoint, or videos, I will often use a screen capture tool to create an image that I want to be included in the presentation.

Every computer user really needs to have a screen capture tool on their computer – and even though computers come with the ability to capture screens, they are not as user-friendly or as flexible as the stand-alone software provides.

With screen capture software, you get to see immediately what you’ve just captured and then have an option to edit it. My favorite software is Snag-it. It’s awesome that Joseph has collected other brands for you to choose from.

Check it out …

Whether for a presentation, writing a cloud storage review or saving someone’s daft social media post for posterity, the ability to image your screen comes in handy. While computers have a built-in screenshot function, dedicated screen capture software advances that capability considerably.

Continue reading …

No need to keep searching for free clipart or free photos!

Here’s a nifty list with many various resources and websites that provide free clipart and photos for your blog posts.

Note that I mentioned “for your blog posts”. Not all clipart or photos are free for anything you want. After all, the artists and photographers deserve to make a living too, especially if you’ll be making money off of their work!

When visiting these sites, you’ll see, in addition to advertisements, other images offered in response to your search inquiry. Usually, the images that have a watermark on them, are images that you’ll need to pay a license fee for.  The images that are free of watermarks can be used for blog posts.

Be sure to read the requirements on each of these sites because some allow you to use their images carte blanche while others may request that you sign up for their newsletter, or pay a fee for any image that you’ll be using for print or marketing purposes, or other endeavors outside of blog posts.

What you need to know is that when you pay a fee to use images – whether artwork or photographs, you aren’t actually buying the image outright. You are licensing the image for a particular use.

Or this informative article regarding copyrights on clipart, written by Bobbie Peachey, Clip Art Expert on About.com.

If you can’t find what you are looking for, then you can always contact me personally and for a small fee for clipart, or a licensing fee for custom illustrations, I’ll create just what you need!

Cartoons, clipart, and illustrations are used for not just blog posts, but marketing material, presentations, branding, book pages,  book covers, websites, products, trade show booths – you name it, an illustration, cartoon or clipart may be just what you need.

How to make the Google Birthday Calendar disappear in 6 easy steps

* (updated 4/9/2015) Whoot! Whoot!  FINALLY Google updated this so that we can hide the Google Calendar birthdays. Have no clue what took them so long, but … they finally listened. 

Go to their help section here, to learn how to do this. 

You can read the rest of the blog if you like … or not.

… well, sorta …

When I originally wrote this post, the calendars completely disappeared. When I went back to my calendar today, I saw that the cake pieces still remained. At least it doesn’t look as cluttered as it did before, and I can see my other dates better. Needless to say, this just takes the cake! Why, Google, why?

Just when you think you have them all individually deleted, or down to a minimum, Facebook, Google + and who knows who else, syncs the birth date once again on your calendar for every person in your friends list … successfully cluttering up your calendar.

Researching on how to delete this annoyance earlier last year, I ran across a way to unsubscribe from the Birthday’s Calendar.  But with this last update that Google did – all of those Google Birthdays are back – and more obnoxious than ever!  There is no way to unsubscribe to this calendar.

Now, tell me WHY would Google think that having EVERYONE’S birthday (even “friends” you don’t know) on your calendar, beats me. But on my smart phone, it makes it nearly impossible for me to use my calendar.

There are options for the Google Calendar app – and Google has provided that information. However, they do NOT address how to get rid of this pesky clutter within your main calendar, short of just not using your calendar anymore. (Really Google?)

Once again I went to my favorite search engine … yeah, yeah, … it’s Google … and found a forum discussion on how to delete your Google Birthday Calendar. One person suggested unchecking the color scheme for the Birthdays’ calendar, so I immediately tried that … and the color can’t be unchecked.

BUT … your Birthday Calendar can be changed to a custom color.  That gave me an idea … and it worked.

How to make the Google Birthday Calendar disappear

1. Go to your Google Calendar (making sure that you are logged in, of course) … and look to the left of your window where all the Calendars are listed and where you can pick a color for each of your calendars.
2. Scroll down to the list of My calendars
3. Click on the Birthday calendar to make the sub menu drop down
   
4. Click on the EDIT COLOR link at the bottom of the sub-menu
5. Now highlight the color code and replace it with six Fs, like this … (#ffffff)
6. Click OK when you see that the color has turned to white … and voila! Your Google Birthday calendar is now hidden from view.

The calendar text and background color are now white, and appear invisible on your calendar days.

Whew … now you can get back to business! If you need further help with your creative needs, contact me for more #CreativeHelp with your WordPress website, cartoons and illustrations, graphic recording or … Creative Visual Coaching