St. Cloud Times from Saint Cloud, Minnesota • Page 31

St. Cloud Times JULY 9, 2001 5 i Digital photography 101 Jinny Gudmundsen GANNETT NEWS SERVICE Possibilities include cards, prints, scrapbooks BY JEFFERSON GRAHAM USA TODAY Photojam software turns digital shots into musical slide shows, such as this screen from "My trip to Prague." Wot all Disney titles dandy Disney is a name many families rely on to produce great entertainment for children. However, not all Disney software is fabulous. Cases in point are two new software releases that transfer movie environments to the computer for play. In conjunction with the movie release "Atlantis: The Lost Empire," Disney has developed "Disney's Atlantis The Lost Empire: The Lost Games," Cowgirl Jessie from "Toy Story 2" is featured in "DisneyPixar's Jessie's Wild West Rodeo." ummssmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmti i i Snap a picture and eat it too.

Clubphoto will place your digital photos on edible Rice Krispies Treats that you can share with friends or eat all by yourself. If you don't have access to a digital camera or scanner, most photo labs can make digital discs I and it's clear why so many photo-sharing sites have popped up. There, anyone with Web access can see your pictures without having to deal with attachments or suffer through downloads. A variety of password or e-mail invitation options can help limit the audience. Sites such as Photopoint "are great, because you also don't have to worry about taking up tons of room on your hard drive," Steinman said.

"The risk is when you've put all your pictures on a site, and Show of your digital pictures with Snapbooks from Shutterfly. Goto These sites help you your digital photos in print or online. www.shockwave.com www.ofoto.com www.shutterfly.com www.clubphoto.com www.woltcamera.com www.yahoo.com www.photopoint.com www.cnet.com www.kodak.com I share find out a few months later they've gone out of business." While the trend is toward charging for Net services, Excite, Lycos, MSN and Kodak offer limited free storage, and photo-sharing sites such as Clubphoto don't charge. Online photo labs Ofoto, and Shutterfly don't plan to charge, they said. Free storage isn't an altruistic service but good business for online lab sites.

Sharing is "a more efficient way to share your vacation photos," said Ofoto CEO James Joaquin. "Instead of waiting for the reprints to show up in the mail, friends and family can order directly from the site." Where does this innovation leave the traditional photo retail er? Digital phonography's mar-' ket share is around 9 percent, said Ted Fox, president of the Photo Marketing As sociation. "The overwhelming majority of people still use traditional film cameras and visit specialty dealers." For example, you can leave your digital camera's memory card at any of 550 Wolf Camera outlets and pick up prints in days. Or upload files to wolfcamera.com and have prints sent directly home. 131 nap.

Click. Now what? With digital photography headed for a record year 9.4 million digital cameras will be sold in 2001, up 55 percent the question for novices is what to do with the images once they've been shot. Choices are more abundant than ever. A host of innovations make it easier than ever to: Share your photos on your favorite Web sites, from Lycos and Excite to specialty destinations, such as Ofoto. Make the images come alive, as a moving, musical slide show with Atom Shockwave's free Pho-tojam software.

Turn them into edible treats at Clubphoto, which offers Rice Krispies Treats on a stick with your pictures printed on them. Go low-tech and produce a new kind of mail-order scrapbook with Shutterfly's Snapbooks for 10 spiral-bound, 4-by-6- or 5-by-7-inch photos with a cover and captions. "Photography used to be about capturing an image that got stored away, but the advent of digital has changed that," said Eric Steinman, CNet digital photography editor. "Ten years ago, somebody takes a picture of their dog, and very few people would have ever seen it," Steinman added. "Today, the num- BY ROBIN RASKIN FAMILYPC MAGAZINE Without a printer, a PC would be nothing more than a storage bin with no way out.

But connecting your PC to your printer is not always a cakewalk. Your printer and PC talk via a printer driver a small program that communicates between the two. With a bit of luck you'll follow a couple of prompts, and they'll be conversing. Here's a basic guide to how it's done. Regardless of what operating system you use, the first thing you need to do is physically connect your printer to your PC.

Most printers either use a parallel port connection or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection. USB connections are preferable because printers with USB connections are typically easier to install. Plus, USB cables are skinnier and less obtrusive. They are very different looking so you shouldn't have much trouble distinguishing what to plug into what. Parallel connections have male and moid2 Ml along with the prints they develop for you.

E-mail and share Sending photos electronically is as easy as clicking the "attach" button in your mail program, selecting the photo from your hard drive and hitting the "send" button. However, because even small photos can be large files, sending them to someone with a slow modem "could shut down your relatives' computer completely or take a long time to arrive," Steinman said. "Things like that make people really cranky." E-mail recipients also may need special software to view photos. Factor in the slowness of e-mail, attached to each PC so we'll focus on a local connection. In the "Local" or "Network" window, if you are given the option of choosing "Automatically detect and install my Plug and Play printer," choose it, because it will automatically build a driver.

Not everyone will have this choice, so after you have chosen "Local," click "Next," and the wizard will ask for your printer's manufacturer and brand. If your brand is not listed in the list of printer drivers, click "Have Disk" and insert the CD. If you don't have the CD or if it's damaged, you have two choices. First go to the manufacturer's Web site and download the driver from there. The ease of this task will depend on how user-friendly the Web site is.

If you can't find it there, return to the wizard prompt and choose a similar printer. Different models of a manufacturer's printer are often compatible. For example, if you have a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 3 150, but only the LaserJet 3 150se is listed, li This wizard helps you install you prrtei of make printer connections. This printer win be manaod by: f. jr- It JyC(nfc' Mv'i i ill bf jft end vr' i tvi wrsci I Ntjtwoik pmter server Connec(loapririiono(li9irMchrne.

AI settings for th prmtei are managed by a print server that has been set upty an administrator, ber of people seeing it is probably a hundredfold because it's sitting in more people's e-mail inboxes and on more photo-sharing sites than you can imagine." Here are some simple steps toward taking advantage of the digital photo revolution. Digitize First you'll need to get your pictures into the computer. For digital camera owners that means transferring files from its memory to your hard drive. For traditional printed photos that means scanning the images and saving them as files in any of several possible file types. These include PEG, the most common and compatible these days; GIF, an older format used often for Web page graphics; and TIFF, which can be of higher quality but results in larger files that are cumbersome to send and view online.

female ends, while USB ports look like phone plugs with a funny hightech hieroglyphic etched onto the end of the plug. Windows 95 and 98 Whether you're using Windows 95 or 98 OS, printer setup is the same. Windows includes a list of most of the major printer drivers on its disks, but if you have a new model printer it's likely they've supplied an updated driver. It should be on a CD-ROM that's bundled with the printer. It's important to have that disk in case your model printer does not show up on Windows' existing list.

To install the printer, click on "Start," then "Settings," "Printers," double-click the "Add Printer" icon, then "Next," and you will be prompted through the add-a-print-er wizard. You will be asked how the printer will be attached to your PC either through a local connection or via a network. Most home users have only one printer verify. The hoax you're referring to did in fact trick some America Online users into deleting a file that the online service needs to run. It is highly unlikely that there would be a legitimate reason for someone to send you an e-mail telling you to delete a file that is already installed on your computer.

If you do receive a virus warning that you're unsure of, check out the legitimacy of the message by heading to the Web site of an anti-virus company such as Symantec (www.symantec.com) or McAfee (www.mcafee.com). If none of the major anti-virus companies are talking about the threat, chances are it's a hoax. mm NlrttHHMMMM "The Lost Games" CD-ROM left kid-testers disappointed. "Disney's Atlantis The Lost Empire: The Lost Games" Children join the team of adventurers (from the movie) on their way to finding the lost city of Atlantis. Children can play four games set in the world of the movie.

Unfortunately, two of games are not exciting to play and don't challenge children to think. The games that do work are "Unroadblock That!" and "Machine Arena." In "Unroadblock That!" children lead a caravan of three trucks underground as they search for the entrance to Atlantis. On each level there are roadblocks to avoid or remove. Players need to decide the route and which vehicle to place at the front of the caravan to remove roadblocks. In "Machine Arena," children design their own vehicles to combat other vehicles.

The competition takes place in a ring where the objective is to knock your opponent's vehicle out of the ring, tip it over or cause it to stall. The two games that didn't work well shared similar problems: difficult or cumbersome controls and uninteresting objectives. In "Submergency Urgency," children navigate submarine pods through ocean waters to find the entrance to Atlantis. While there were obstacles to avoid, the pods moved slowly and were unresponsive to the controls (the arrow keys). 1 In "Air Escapade," testers did not like the unresponsive controls for herding enemy planes out of the way.

They found the objective of capturing King Stones too easy and uninteresting. Four games for $20 is pricey, but because two of these aren't very good, two for $20 is hard to recommend. 000 (Out of five stars) Best for ages 5-up. From Disney Interactive, www.disneyinteractive.com, (800) 900-9234 for $20. WindowsMacintosh.

DisneyPixar's "Jessie's Wild West Rodeo" Cowgirl Jessie is about as enthusiastic as one can get. Yet, even her enthusiasm can't overcome the limited and boring game play presented in this software. "Jessie's Wild West Rodeo" offers three games of 10 levels each. In the first, children herd little alien men from the corral back to their mother ship by moving Jesse behind the aliens. The second involves lassoing toys while riding a horse andavoidmg obstacles.

The third rcquiplayers to guide a horse in a circle around a series of barrels. That's OOC (out of five stars) Best for ages 5-up. From Disney Interactive, www.disneyinteractive.com, (800) 900-9234 for $20. WinMac. The add-a-printer wizard helps Windows 95 and 98 users walk through the process of connecting their printer to their PC through a series of prompts.

you should be able to use that one. You might not be able to use the printer to its full potential, but it will get you printing until you can get the correct CD. In the next window, you will need to choose an available port from the drop-down menu. LPT 1 is the default and should be your first Question legitimacy of e-mail instructions Today's Career Training i 8fA Cancel choice. Then click "Configure Port" to activate the connection.

Within that same box you should make sure the "Check port state before printing" box is checked off. The next window will ask you if you want to print a test page. Click yes, and if your set-up is successful, a page will print. College St. Cloud! 226 Park Avenue South 251-5600800-852-0460 www.rasmussen.edu riuiessiunais rui muays Train for your new I 3 I career at Rasmussen Medical Office Administrative Assistant Sale Marketing Travel Hospitality Child Care Specialist Medical Records Accounting Computer Networking MCSE E-Commerce Web Design 4 Business Management Legal Office Tamara E.

Holmes USAT0DAY.COM A couple of weeks ago my daughter almost fell for a hoax that was going around telling people to delete a computer file that turned out to be the AOL program, For future reference, is there a time that you can think of in which someone would send an e-mail telling you to delete a certain file and It should be taken seriously? Be skeptical of any e-mail messages bearing instructions, particularly those coming from people you don't know or originating from sources you can't Call, Click, or Visit Today!.