This month...

• Showcasing Your Images
• Web Hosting & Other Services
• Thought for the Day

Showcasing Your Images

As a Virtual Assistant, I love exploring new programs but am sometimes skeptical towards a few until I hear from others of their own personal experiences. Free programs I view warily until proven otherwise as I don't want to get caught with something I wished I hadn't downloaded.

However, recently my team were discussing a photo storing program called Picasa which is a free download from Google and it is worth checking out. It does a full scan of your computer for images but you can tell it not to catalogue images if you don't want them included. It doesn't move any images, but rather collates the information of where they are stored on your computer and will also locate duplicates.

Once it's collated all that information you can view them in year order or alphabetical order and sort them into categories, or whatever. You can edit the images and write captions for them and so on. Lots of fun for those who like sorting through photos and creating albums. It has this great facility for collecting your chosen pictures for emailing them, or create an html file which you can upload to a webspace (your own webspace that is) for sending out to anyone. It has 3 different background colours (grey, black and white) and 2 different layouts. You can also reproduce them in different sizes and resolutions. Since it converts the file into html you can fiddle with the images and captions afterwards and make changes which I've already done on a minor basis.

This program could save you a lot of time if you work with images for clients and need to quickly upload images in a suitable format for viewing. If you work with photo blogs or other sites that have a lot of images in it, this would be a worthwhile tool to work with. In fact my husband and I saw a photographer's website the other day that uses this program very effectively.

Different scenarios I can think of immediately that this could be applied to would include weddings, new baby, birthday events, travel, sporting competitions, and so on. In fact my husband was recently in a mountain bike competition and I did just that for his team to view the photos I'd taken. I've included some samples of others I've done to give you an idea of what can be done.

Sample on my site

Mountain Bike & Scenery at Lysterfield
(There were over 200 participating but I didn't take all their photos)

Family album for a daughter overseas

Web Hosting & Other Services

Around 1999 I was rather stunned and upset to find that someone had hacked into my website and defaced it - not a pleasant thing to be faced with. I contacted the company that was hosting my site back then to find that a disgruntled ex-employee had logged into their system and defaced a number of client sites. Needless to say I left them - their security was lacking (the passwords should have been changed when the employee left) and I sought out another service which I found in Perth, WA.
I asked questions about their security and other services available and found them to be very reliable, to the extent that I referred all clients who asked me for assistance in getting their sites hosted.

That was the start of a new service for "A Clayton's Secretary". I first offered website design and maintenance and then began to register domain names on behalf of clients who had gotten 'burnt' when previous webhosts or designers had registered domain names in their name, instead of the client's name. In a couple of cases it meant the domain names were not available to the client if they changed web hosts. And as I began to refer more and more clients to the web host in WA I was offered the use of a dedicated server to maintain and monitor so that new accounts could be set up quickly and maintained from my own office. Today that also includes installing blog software (Wordpress), setting up mail list access and many other items. I still have the backup of this webhost should something be beyond me, but most items can be managed from this office in a short timeframe.

You can find these services listed at www.acswebservices.com and I've now added a blog to keep current web clients (and other interested parties) informed of software updates, information on how to access to their accounts online and other services that are available when they have the need.

Have a great month everyone!

Kathie M. Thomas

Thought for the day:

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them."
- Henry David Thoreau

About Our Organisation…

What is a Virtual Assistant?
It's a term for home-based secretaries, administrative and secretarial support, and others who supply remote or virtual support.

We are as close to you as your computer and can do almost anything traditional support staff do - except virtually. You don't need to provide office space, equipment, software or furniture - we have our own!

Location no issue as the work is carried out 'virtually' no matter where you are!  However, if you need someone locally we can supply. See our list at VA Directory