This coming Tuesday (January 19, 2021), I have the opportunity to take you on a virtual tour of some more AMAZING cloud-based tools that you'll want to know about. This is via the ActiveRain Zoom Webinar series that happens every Tuesday at 2:00pm EASTERN.
My theme is "Leveraging the Cloud".
You may be aware of, or heard of ideas like "cloud backup" or "cloud storage" or "cloud docs" but maybe hadn't explored why these are useful. Part 1 of my presentation covered some of these basics. Hopefully you joined me back in December. I'd love to hear in the comments of anything you've had a chance to implement since we last met! My outline of the previous presentation is at the bottom of this post if you want a quick review.
This coming week, I'm going to explore 3 more aspects of how to Leverage the cloud in some other amazing ways!
One of my ALL TIME FAVORITE cloud apps is Google Photos. I literally use it EVERY DAY.
Google Photos
I want to take you on a tour of all if the main features Google Photos.
The subtopics and strategies I will cover include:
- Backup of your Photos
(lost or stolen phone, no loss of pics! Hard drive crashes, photos not lost!) - Sync to all your devices
(e.g. take a pic on phone, look at it immediately on your computer) - Single Library of all your Photos - how many different phones have you had through the years that you used to take photos? You can't save all your photo library each new phone, there's not enough phone storage! Yet what if you want to show somebody a photo from 2010. Good luck with that, unless you have a cloud based photo library (#gamechanger)
- Editing - Cameras on our phones just take better and better quality photos with each new generation of technology. However, even with these great cameras, it is amazing how a little post post processing tweaking can take the photo to a new level. We'll look at how to make your photos look better with some amazing post processing tools built into the app.
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Curating - you may take hundreds of photos every month. How can you organize your pictures so that you can easily locate the best ones in the future as well as make these shots ready for sharing
- Sharing - remember when we used to go on trips and got to go to fun places? (#sadtrombone #covidonhold) and you want to share your best pics with friends and family. How can you make online albums to share? (we'll be travelling again, hopefully soon, and sharing more memories via our photos!)
- Search & FIND! - Google has amazing artificial intelligence (AI) built into the app. It recognizes people and objects without you having to spend your valuable time tagging everything. This is a real super-power when you are trying to find "that photo" from so many years ago.
Communication
Email has for many years been the standard of digital conversations. However email is TERRIBLE for longer conversations. It is very hard to follow the development of a topic with each reply of the message. Email is better for asking a single question and getting a single response. What happens when there is more back and forth collaboration needed? Time to break out of email mode! Let's look at some of the terrific tools available now for better conversations.
Cloud-Based Notes
I have an amazing photographic memory and usually within a few seconds I can recall critical information that I need as I work on my projects. (Ok, truth... I really have a less than perfect memory but I do have a secret weapon in my arsenal and it is called OneNote and it is like having a photographic memory). This app is one of the most used apps in my toolbox and I want to share an overview of why it is such a beneficial tool for productivity!
Is your schedule free this coming Tuesday at 2:00pm eastern?
I hope to see you there
(cc: George Souto - Debe Maxwell, CRS - Kathy Streib )
Leveraging the Cloud (Part 1)
Outline from ActiveRain Zoom Webinar
Craig's Clasroom - December 15, 2020
Google One
- Free - 15 GB
- $19.99 yr - 100 GB (or 1.99/mo)
- $29.99 yr - 200 GB (or 2.99/mo)
- $99.99 yr - 2 TB (or 9.99/mo)
Microsoft
- Free - 5 GB OneDrive
- $1.99 mo - 100 GB
- $69.99 yr - Microsoft 365 Personal (or 6.99 mo)
- $99.99 yr - Microsoft 365 Family (or 9.99 mo) up to 6 people
Dropbox
- Free - 2 GB
- $9.99 mo - Dropbox Plus - 2 TB
- $16.99 mo - Family - share 2 TB 6 users
Apple iCloud
- Free - 5 GB
- $0.99 - 50 GB
- $2.99 - 200 GB
- $9.99 - 2 TB
Amazon Photos
- Free (with Amazon Prime) - unlimited photos, 5 GB video
- $1.99 - 100 GB
- $6.99 - 1 TB
File Backup
Hard drive fails - where is your backup?
Files on the cloud, you just need to get back on a working computer!
Files Wherever You Are!
- Primary Computer
- Phone
- Tablet
- Do you have secondary computer, laptop? At office + home?
Sharing Files
Email providers are different, but most max out with attachments around 25 MB.
What do you do if you need to send a bigger file, e.g. a video file?
Cloud storage you can right click a file, or whole folder and "get link" --> share the link
Then the recipient gets the link and DOWNLOADS the file from your cloud storage.
Files "On-Demand"
Your cloud storage is possibly/probably bigger than your hard drive on some devices.
Eg. Your laptop hard drive is 250 GB and your cloud is 1 TB
Files on demand will list all the files on your cloud in whatever folders you organized them into.
HOWEVER, all the files take ZERO space until you need them. When you click to open, THEN it downloads them.
Project Folder Collaboration
If you are working with somebody else on a document, revising, emailing back and forth can be troublesome.
How do you know you have the "latest" version? Difficult searching through your emails to even locate it.
Cloud folders can be shared with others. Store the files in the shared cloud folder.
Latest version is always just looking at the folder.
Web based documents
No app to install - work entirely in a web browser.
Google had the head start for web based editing (Microsoft is now catching up)
- Google DOCS (compare to MS Word)
- Google SHEETS (compare to MS Excel)
- Google SLIDES (compare to MS PowerPoint)
Ease of Multiple People Reviewing and/or Making Edits
If multiple people are collaborating, all can see latest revision IN REAL TIME.
Additional people can actually edit document or just leave "comments" about suggested edits.
Shortcut URLs to Know
- DRIVE.google.com - all your cloud docs
- DOCS.google.com - documents
- SHEETS.google.com - spreadsheets
- SLIDES.google.com - slides
Google Slides for COMPOSITION & COLLABORATION
The first thing thought of with slides is to make formal slideshow presentations.
Craig's favorite use of the app is NOT THIS AT ALL!
It is a great workspace to COLLABORATE with others on ideas being worked out (website design, inspiration, etc)
It is also fantastic for COMPOSITION for graphics (e.g. to use on websites, blogs, etc)
Add multiple photos, logos, text into a composite graphic that you can save and insert into your pages/posts.
SCREENSHOT SHORTCUTS
Collaboration and Composition as noted above …
Critical to have screen capture ability - Pro Tip - Know your shortcut keys
Windows and Mac both have built in snapshot ability (no addition app to install!)
Windows is WindowsKey + Shift + S
Mac is Command + Shift + 4 - sends to file on desktop (add Control key to go direct to clipboard)
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