On Computers

If you want to let your cat in and out without inviting in the whole animal world, consider the “Cat Flap,” $83 on Amazon. It’s as if each cat had his or her own door key.  A reader told me about it. Thanks to the Flap, he said, the raccoons immediately stopped menacing his pet. The cat is now “the neighborhood rock star.”  Here’s the high tech part: It works with a microchip implanted in your cat or in its collar, recognizing up to 40 cats. Hopefully you don’t have that many. The Cat Flap’s opening is 5.9” (height) by 5.5” (width). I wonder if fat cats can squeeze in.  The Cat Flap is a little hard to find because […]

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Filed under: art, blogs, Google, health, Internuts, presentation, security | Comments Off on HI TECH CAT FLAP

“Do you know of any free, easy-to-use blog-type websites?” my niece asked, before heading for Costa Rica. “Google Slides,” I said. That may sound like a funny choice. Google Slides is typically used for PowerPoint-type presentations. But there’s no reason it can’t also be used for travel blogs. The recommended blog-creation tools, even the “kid-friendly” ones, are far more complicated than they need to be. My niece agreed. “I know Google Slides,” she said, “but I didn’t think to use it as a travel blog. That’s a good idea.” On a computer, go to slides.google.com and click on the blank presentation at the top, or on the “photo album” template. If you choose the photo album, you’ll get a traditional […]

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Filed under: blogs, gadgets, PowerPoint, presentation, trends | Comments Off on GOOGLE SLIDES CREATES THE PERFECT TRAVEL BLOG

Topics in this column: Office politics, Losing the Internet, TED Talks, an app for Healthy Eating, Giving away a Kindle Fire, and the new Mac operating system.

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Filed under: Amazon, apps, business, career, Mac, PowerPoint, presentation, tech support, video | Comments Off on OFFICE POLITICS

For our history club, we selected the history of candy and used Microsoft’s PowerPoint for slides. But our niece tells us we are not as hip, fast-moving and aware as we thought, because these days all her fellow students use “Prezi.com.”

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Filed under: PowerPoint, presentation | Comments Off on NOW PRESENTING

Epson has a new projector that turns your wall into a giant iPad. Anything you can do on an iPad you can also do on the wall by tapping on a whiteboard projected onto a wall.

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Filed under: business, presentation | Comments Off on WHITEBOARD MAGIC

Just when we thought we’d heard every complaint about Windows 8 computers, we heard a new one. A friend wondered where in the world she should save her files, because now she sees two choices: “Skydrive,” and “This PC.”

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Filed under: PowerPoint, presentation, spreadsheet, Windows, word processing | Comments Off on GETTING A NEW WINDOWS 8 COMPUTER

Every time Joy picks someone to be a speaker at her woman’s club, they moan about the lack of a laser pointer for their PowerPoint presentation. We found one that’s so useful we may have to get it.

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Filed under: apps, gadgets, presentation | Comments Off on NOW PRESENTING

“Present Yourself,” by Seeborg and Meyer, $25 from OReilly.com, is about SlideShare, a free program used by 60 million people. They call it “the Youtube of PowerPoint presentations.”

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Filed under: books, business, PowerPoint, presentation | Comments Off on PRESENT YOURSELF

InPics.net teaches with pictures. They have tutorials for Microsoft Office, web coding (PHP, MySQL, and so on), and OpenOffice.org.

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Filed under: how-to, Internuts, PowerPoint, presentation, training, word processing | Comments Off on LEARNING THROUGH PICTURES

It seems like desktop publishing has been around since the Ten Commandments went viral. But we didn’t realize how sophisticated it has become until we tried the new “PagePlus x6” from Serif.com.

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Filed under: graphics, presentation | Comments Off on DESKTOP PUBLISHING