Conversations with CCC

Happy 4th of July!  We hope you enjoy time off and have a great time with friends and family.

Holidays make great memories and are usually an opportunity to take lots of photos.  For the basic family photographer using a digital, or point-and-shoot, camera there are some limitations.  This time of year one of the most elusive things to capture can be fireworks!

Here are some tips on photographing fireworks:

1. First, check if your camera actually has a “fireworks” setting.  It may be hard to find, to check the user manual.  If you’re lucky enough that your camera has a preset setting for this, your work is done!
2. Consider investing in a tripod.  You’re going to be using a longer exposure, so having a steady shot is important.
3. Stake out your spot.  Try and find a place that will give you a clear view, nice angle, and no heads popping up in your pictures.
4. Select the highest quality setting.  (Make sure your battery is full and memory card is empty so your camera lasts the night!)
5. Chose a low ISO. ISO 100 has an aperture range of ƒ/8 to 16.
6. Use manual focus.  Auto-focus can delay shots with many P&S cameras, so you’ll miss a lot of shots.  If your camera doesn’t allow you to turn Auto-focus off, use “landscape” or “infinity” mode.

Once you have the shots, consider using a photo editing program to enhance them.  With Adobe Photoshop, you can easily decrease the noise of your photo, enhancing the color and focus of your shot.

First, make a black frame during the shoot.  To make a black frame, place the lens cap over the lens and make an exposure using the same settings that you used during your shoot.

Then, in Photoshop:

1. Open the black frame file and the fireworks image with noise.
2. Shift + Drag the black frame Background layer over the noisy image workspace to create a new layer.  (Holding the Shift key ensures that the new layer maintains perfect registration.)
3. Change the Layer Mode of the black frame layer to “Difference”.

You can learn how to do this, and more with layers in our Photoshop Introductory course.

What happens when you ask your boss if you can take a software training class? Is it intimidating? Will your boss think you are unskilled or are jumping ship? While career training will help your personal resume, it also delivers a great benefit to your employer.

Your company and boss know that it is much less expensive to train a current employee than it is to hire somebody new. Studies also show that employees have a higher rate of job satisfaction when they receive training. Training makes you more efficient, boosts confidence and adds capabilities and skills to your company.

Being your own advocate means seeking meaningful training to help you do your job better and make you a more profitable company resource. During these difficult economic times, where certain positions have been eliminated and budgets are tight, your boss, manager or CEO may not even be aware of staff training needs.

So, how do you make the request? Identify examples of new responsibilities you have assumed and organizational changes that have been made due to our changed economy. Pose your request in terms of your new responsibilities. For example, “I’ve noticed I’m doing a lot more of my own sales reports since we reduced management. I’m excited about charting my own progress, but I know I’d be faster if I took an Excel class.” Or, “I know the board decided to wait on hiring support staff, perhaps we will benefit from Outlook training since we now manage our own email lists and calendars.”

Offering to help out by crunching your own sales numbers, taking charge of scheduling, or editing documents can definitely help save overhead. Training in Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, Outlook or Word can help you with many tasks. Being well trained on new responsibilities makes you more efficient, so your original obligations won’t suffer. Employees that do not know how to properly use the technology that is available to them are not contributing their full potential to the organization.

During these challenging times when human resource and training departments have been reduced in size, there may be nobody promoting these important requests. Framing your request in terms of your increased responsibilities will help your boss justify the specialized training you have requested.

Take responsibility for your job performance with training that focuses on your job. Seek training to advance your software skills and understanding. Take control of your career. Get trained, get ahead, and always be prepared.

When you take a class with CCC, you get free email support for one year after the class, on the topic you learned. Our clients and Alumni really enjoy this service. Recently, we received a question from a frustrated client who said that she was trying to create a new folder in her inbox and get rid of another one, but each time she typed in a name and hit create, the name disappeared. One of our experts knew the answer, and here is our solution:

Ever tried to change the folders on your Outlook Email account? Deleting a folder and adding a new one (with your own customized name) seems easy, but there is actually a trick to it. Follow these directions to get it right, the first time!

First, right click and choose New Folder.

Next, when the dialog box opens, you type in the name for the folder.

Now, here is the trick: Outlook does not remember where you right clicked to insert the folder! So you have to click on Inbox to get the blue highlight before clicking OK.

Learn more tips and tricks by signing up for class with us. Also, if you are a client or alumni and have a question, submit it to us via email at helpdesk[at]cccsolutions[dot]com or post it here and it might get featured on a future blog or newsletter!

Thanks for reading, hope this helps!

Computer Consultants Corporation is always looking for new ways to help and educate our clients on relevant IT and software issues.  Therefore, CCC is proud to present our newest course:

Description of course:
Assuming only a user’s familiarity with search engines, The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization opens up the world of using search engines to generate revenue. You will learn what searchers are looking for, how the search engines match those needs with websites, and what you need to do to be chosen.

Who should come:
Business owners, executives, directors of marketing, and managers who oversee Internet marketing practitioners or are responsible for selecting and managing SEO vendors; individuals who have been
assigned or want to assume SEO responsibilities; programmers and developers who desire a greater understanding of the principles of SEO

What people will walk away with:
After completing The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization you will be ready to oversee an SEO project or get started doing one yourself.

Mention this blog and get $100 off the price of the class!

Happy Thursday everybody!  Thursday is a great day for networking and we just wanted to update everyone on a great event taking place in DC tonight.

CCC is a subscriber (and advocate) of BizConnect (www.bizconnect.com). BizConnect is the first business to business matchmaking service in the DC area. Subscribers fill out a profile, and then “connections” are generated based on common interests, affiliations and the services/goods you buy/sell. These connections are emailed to you, and are WARM leads.  Many of our subscribers are already enjoying the benefits and doing business with each other.

BizConnect also hosts events, and tonight we will be at the City Club, (www.clubcorp.com).  The event starts at 5:30, but its not to late to register or walk-in.  We are looking forward to meeting new people and seeing old friends and clients!

P.S.  If you are on LinkedIn, please do us a quick favor and fill out our poll: http://polls.linkedin.com/p/88526/jtqdv

Compatibility Across Office Versions

How will you work with your members or clients when you have Office 2007 and they have earlier versions?  Follow these rules for Word 2007 to make it easy to share documents with your public!

Word 2007 users can open files saved in earlier Word versions.  When saved in the earlier version, however, several 2007 features do not transfer. Examples are:

• Word 2007’s headings, body fonts and margins are converted to static formatting or text.

• Word 2007’s Themes features are permanently converted to styles, and remain changed even if the document is re-opened in Word 2007.

• Office Equations, Diagrams, and Art become images or are limited to what was available in the older versions.  Upon conversion to a Word 2007 document, these features become available.

Train your staff on the great features in Office 2007 and they will know how to address compatibility.  Office 2007 presents unique opportunities to save time and collaborate.  Plan ahead and you will enjoy the benefits.

How do you find unique expertise and skills among your staff?    Knowing who has specific technical expertise or belongs to a particular organization becomes more and more critical as organizations grow.  When organizations have multiple offices, it becomes impossible.   MyStaffBook is an online searchable staff directory.  You can choose the information of your choice and then search on that information.   Let staff complete their own profiles and then access the data to identify key staff skills, experiences and knowledge.  Add photos so that you can attach a face to each name.

Gain instant access to your organization’s specialized resources.  Identify staff capabilities quickly and share them with your clients so that no opportunities are missed.  Use MyStaffBook to capture alumni information and to build long term alumni relations.  MyStaffBook is accessible 24/7 from the web browser of your choice.  Use MyStaffBook to showcase your employees, to enhance proposal preparation and to demonstrate your firm’s unique depth and technical expertise!

Do you frequently cut and paste favorite chunks of text from past email templates?  Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts lets you reuse text from past emails in future emails without retyping.  Create a Quick Part for repetitive emails and save time.

• To Create a Quick Part: Have the email message open.  Select the content you will re-use from the email.  On the Ribbon, select the Insert Tab.  From the Text Group, select the Quick Parts Button to save your selection.

• To Use a Quick Part: Select “Quick Parts” from the Ribbon again, but this time, select the instant preview of the content you previously saved

Using Quick Parts will allow you to utilize your best writing again and again while still giving every email a personal touch!

Welcome and thank you for visiting our blog.  We appreciate the importance of our clients and our team.   When our clients ask us to solve their technology challenges, we are excited by their requests and motivated to deliver excellent service.  Our specialists are our most prized possession, have superior skills, and take great pride in meeting your needs and building client relationships.

“Bridging the gap between computers and people” is our slogan, and that is what we do!  Day in and day out, we help our clients maximize their software use.  CCC delivers instructor led software training and builds online software applications to help clients manage their website content and organizational contacts.  Our newest course, “Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization” teaches what you can do to improve where your site ranks when your viewers search the popular search engines.

Managing website content and organizational contacts are two important functions for most organizations.  If you find it hard to change your website’s content or feel that your site has a tired look, our web publishing system will make it easy for you.  If you maintain multiple contact lists, our contact management software will centralize your records and organize your follow up with clients, members and prospects.

Our newest online application, MyStaffBook, is a searchable staff directory that will track recruits, staff and alumni.  Search for unique staff skills, expertise or specific information that is important to you.  Access MyStaffBook 24/7, update your profile, and locate the right staff for your next project or proposal.

Keeping up with new technologies is a recurring theme mentioned by our clients.  At CCC, that is what we do.  We hope you will call us when migrating to new versions of software, when your staff needs to upgrade their skills and when an online application will streamline your current work flow and manual systems.

Thank you so much for being great clients and friends.