Kaboodle is a great tool for organizing shopping lists, connecting with other shoppers with similar interests, and comparing prices/watching for sales.  It makes finding items easy to do away from home (like when I’m visiting mom) and cuts back on impulse buying when you can consider your budget and prioritize your shopping dollars.  It’s a great tool but only if you actually use it.

It occurred to me today that I hadn’t even looked at my Kaboodle page in weeks…maybe months.  It would be an awesome way to get my shopping organized for National Scrapbooking Day though so I logged in and found the mess of links I had accumulated over the last few months.  Some designers had changed stores, some kits I bought and haven’t removed yet, and I had non-digiscrapping items all mixed in.  So how did I get my Kaboodle working for me?

1. The first thing I did was delete items I no longer wanted or already owned. 
2. Then I created additional lists to organize the other items. 
3. Finally, I clicked on the items I do still want to buy and found some of the links broken.  I was able to quickly locate one item at a newly reorganized store and reset that link.

Now my wish lists are organized and I’ve set priorities on some items I truly need.  I may not have my family up to speed on sharing wish lists via Kaboodle yet but at least I can be organized when it comes time to shop for myself.  Compared to my mess of bookmarks, Kaboodle is a much better way to shop!

Let’s get ready for National Scrapbooking Day with a little cleanup around the tools you use to digital scrapbook with!

by Heidi

Firefox has the ability to add plug-ins and themes to customize it to do what you want to do.  But when was the last time you went and looked at what was installed?    Did you know that having a lot in there could cause firefox to hog memory, slow it down, and possible even stop working?  So periodically it is good to revisit your plug-ins and themes and delete what isn’t used and make sure everything is updated.

Themes:

Have a theme that you like?   You can only use one theme at a time. 

1. Go to Tools | Add-ons,
2. Click on Themes.
3. Leave the default to be safe.  But delete any unused old themes.

My Favorite Theme:

• Noia 2.0 (eXtreme)

Plug-ins:

Delete old unused plug-ins:

Go through your plug-ins and un-install things you don’t use.

Check for latest plug-ins:

I automatically have Firefox check to make sure my plug-ins are up-to-date, each time it starts.

1. go to Tools | Options
2. Advanced Tab
3. Update Tab
4. Check Installed Add-ons
5. Click OK

If you don’t want to do that:

1. Go to Tools | Add-ons,
2. Click on Find Updates

Some of my favorite plug-ins that apply to digital scrapbooking:

• Download Statusbar

• ColorfulTabs

• CuteMenus - Crystal SVG

• DownThemAll!  I like the dtaOneClick setting because then it remembers my download folder.  (I save digital scrapbooking downloads in one place and other kinds of downloads in other places so I can’t have one default folder. 

• IE Tab  — for those sites that will not work in Firefox, I click on the little firefox icon in the bottom right corner, and it loads it in Internet Explorer as a tab inside of Firefox.  I don’t even have to start IE. 

• FoxClocks — add clock in the bottom right.  Add your TMZ and any of your friends timezone around the world. 

Yes, back by popular demand (ok a couple of requests…lol) here are five more favorite ways to customize ACDSee Photo Manager.

5. Let’s start off with fonts again.  Or at least my favorite way to find my system’s installed fonts.  It used to be a dig through my C drive and Windows folder but I created a shortcut in the favorites pane.  Now it’s right at my fingertips.  You can also add a shortcut to your ‘new downloads’ file to make it easy to keep up with unzipping and tagging new downloads.  Have a go-to file of favorite elements or a favorite designer you search for a lot?  Add a whole folder to your favorites or individual files from all over your collection and create a folder to put them in.  Here’s a tutorial showing you how to do it!

4. Get rid of those Auto-Categories you never use.  That’s right, you don’t have to scroll endlessly through that long list of auto categories.  Just right-click on one of them and then click on the ‘Remove from Commonly Used’ option that pops up.  I decided to only keep Author and Keywords in the Commonly Used list since I actually use those and I keep the Photo Properties set collapsed.  And don’t worry, the information is still there in the properties pane and can be restored to the Auto Categories lists by right clicking on them in the properties pane.

3. Customize your workspace.  I like to keep the Preview Pane closed…with PM10, the pop-up preview is all I need.  If I want a closer look than that I double click to see it in the viewer.  I like to have my file tree go from the top to the bottom of the screen and I close the Image Basket to tag and browse and only use it when I’m pulling stuff together to create a page.  With ACDSee, there are lots of panes to choose from so seeing your images clearly and the tools you use the most often is easy to do.  And anything you want to see that you closed is available in the View menu…you can even Reset Layout to return to the default workspace layout.  Each pane has a stick pin icon in the corner that lets you auto-hide that pane when you’re not using it and the little drop-down arrow next to that allows you to float panes so you change where they are docked.  (I keep my calendar pane on the left under the files, favorites, and search panes.)

2. Set up your default editor.  I have used a variety of scrapbooking programs and am currently using ACDSee Photo Editor Beta 2 for most of my scrapping.  But it’s not the only editor on my computer.  Go to Tools|Open in Editor|Configure Editors… and then you can add editing programs, set the default editor, and check the box if it supports opening multiple files at once.

1. The most important customization this week: Set your database to remind you to back up weekly!  You can set it for other time spans such as monthly or yearly but why would you want to do that?  Take it from a veteran of computer crashes, you can’t back up too often!  Just go to Tools|Options and find the Database options in the list.  Check the reminder box, and pick a time interval…that’s all there is to it!

I hope you have fun this week playing with getting your workspace set up nice and comfy and get your back-up habit going.  Don’t forget to check our calendar to the left…and sign up for our newsletter if you haven’t done so already.  We have some big chats coming up that I know you won’t want to miss!

Happy Tagging!

So yesterday, I noticed my backup of my files (I use a synchronization) to Backup EHD didn’t work.  I didn’t have time to look into yesterday.  Today, the backup fails again.   Two failed backups in a row is not a good sign.   During the backup today, I started getting I/O errors.  I can browse my Backup EHD but it still looks okay.  So far so good.  So I use Western Digital diagnostic to do a quick check.  It has a big red failure on it.   Hmm, that’s not good.  I tried to run Western Digital’s repair tool and it hung.  Uh oh.  Ran ChkDsk and it reported bad sectors (bad spots on the disk) and tried to fix them and hung.  Definitely looking bad.  In the meantime, I start shopping to see the latest deals.  I am now in the process of reformatting the EHD and hoping to salvage the drive itself  (during a reformat it can detect the errors and stop using them)  that’s assuming that more bad sectors aren’t created.   We’ll see.  I am not very optimistic.

Did I lose anything?  Nope.  The EHD that is failing is my Backup EHD.   Which means it only contains the copies of everything from the my main EHD and my laptop.  What it does mean is right now I am not currently backed up.  Now that scares me!  If the format fails, I will be being a new EHD tomorrow. 

Because of this, I do want to share a few things. 

Pay attention to your computer errors.  I noticed one failure and then a few I/O errors.  If this was a hard drive that had important things on it, I would be busy copying files off of it.  In this case, I actually could browse the drive and could have gotten all my files off if I wished.  I am guessing that complete utter failure wouldn’t have happened for a few days.  (By formatting I am pushing it to work or fail.)  Of the hard drives that have failed in our household, most have been a slow death (start getting more and more errors) and I was able to get files off that I wasn’t sure were backed up. Only one drive failure was a spectacular crash of it just not working that day or ever.  So pay attention to those errors and you might just have a chance to salvage something.

Backup, Backup, Backup!  If this was my main EHD drive or my laptop drive, I wouldn’t be quite as calm but at least I know I would have backups and it would just take some time to resort things out. 

Shopping

Oh and I just had to share, check out these colors from Western Digital:

They must know that there are digital scrappers that love EHD’s.

All my EHD’s have been Western Digital with 2 of them failing now.  So I think I am going to branch out and try a different brand.  I saw a 500 GB Seagate EHD for sale for $99 at Office Max and I have in store coupon for $15.  That’s a nice deal! 

I haven’t checked out the rest of the sales, so I gotta go do that. 

As for how that formatting is going??  Well, let’s just say, it sure looks like I am going shopping tomorrow for a new Backup EHD.

Chat at Hummie’s World

Friday, May 2 9 pm EST

http://www.hummiesworld.com/Chatroom.html

Chat at Digitals

May 4 8 pm EST

Digitals - Digital Scrapbooking

1. Select a bunch of photos or digital layouts.
2. Tip:  If they are all over your hard drive, open the Image Basket and put all the ones you want to go into the screensaver into the Image Basket and then select them.
3. Choose Tools | Configure Screen Saver…
4.  
5. You will see the images it will display.  You can Add and Remove to remove any images. 
6. You can also click on Configure and change some effects, speed and other options.   When done click OK
1. 
7. When done click on Set as default screen saver

Let your computer sit for a while and you should see your new screensaver show up!

If you want to see it sooner or test it:

1. Right click on your desktop and choose Properties
2. Click on Screen Saver tab
3. 
4. For the screen saver choose "ACDSee Screen Saver" it isn’t already set.   Click on Preview
5. You can change the wait time if you wish. 
6. and click OK

I’ve been playing with setting up my categories, my preferred desktop layout, and other goodies in ACDSee Photo Manager and thought I’d share my top five ways to customize ACDSee.  So let’s get started!

5. Changing the font display text:

4. The minty-fresh background of my PNG thumbnails:

3. Speaking of thumbnails, I love my custom thumbnail information display:

Just click on Tools | Options and find the Thumbnail Info option under File List.  Click on Choose Thumbnail Info… then customize it to your liking.  I like mine with designer and kit names…of course, you have to fill in that information when you’re organizing.

2. Generated file listing details.

It’s the same options settings dialog we just looked at…just use Details View instead.   Generate a listing of your Image Basket to make giving credits easy.

1. My number one favorite thing to customize is setting up Photo Manager to start where I want it to start:

Yes, same box…Tools | Options again…click on Browser then pick a starting folder or have PM start wherever you left off last time you were using it.

Once you get your workspace all set the way you like it the tagging, searching, and crediting all goes pretty fast!  So what about you…what’s in your ‘Fave Five’?  Post a comment here and tell us what customizations you like best.

Some of you may enjoy these sites.

I browsed some of the brushes & there certainly is a broad range.

Enjoy! 

Digitals - Digital Scrapbooking

Sunday May 4

8 pm EST