Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

A few weeks ago I was getting ready for a business trip and I knew that I was going to be on a plane for many hours. I wanted to use that time to review some training videos that my department had created with Adobe Connect. The videos were .flv’s and I wanted to convert them so that I could view them on my Kindle and/or Samsung smartphone.

While I could’ve used Adobe Media Encoder had I been working on my own computer, I was working on my son’s computer and he didn’t have a converter installed. Since I didn’t want to buy an application, I did a search for a free video converter. After reading the reviews for Freemake, I decided to give it a try.

After downloading from Freemake’s website, I opened the program for the first time.

There was no learning curve at all for this application. You simply open it up and begin using it.  Click on the appropriate blue button from the top menu to begin importing the file you wish to convert, and then when the file shows up in the middle pane, you click on the button at the bottom of the window that lists your desired format or device. An Output parameters dialog box appears, which allows you to change the preset configurations if you wish. If not, you simply click on the Convert button and then sit back and wait.

According to the publisher’s description, you can convert from/to 250+ formats. You can also convert and upload content directly to YouTube or Facebook.

I have used this application several times now, converting videos for use on several different devices. So far I have been very pleased. All of the videos I have converted have been playable and the quality has been adequate for the selected device. The application has never frozen or crashed during the conversion process, and the conversion time was similar to what I have experienced with other, more expensive applications. In my opinion, this is a nice little app that is worth having.

Have you used this application? Do you like it? Do you have other free conversion software that you prefer? If so, leave me a comment below.

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In this episode, we’re digging into the new features of LyndaCampus.

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Several months ago I finally broke down and purchased a smart phone. I was out of town and my GPS stopped working, and I decided to take the plunge. Instead of buying another Garmin, I would buy a smart phone that included a navigation app.

Even though I am usually an “early adopter” and pride myself on keeping up with all the new devices on the market, I had never liked the idea that while you can do so many things on a smart phone, typically the phones are so small that you can’t really see what you are doing. When the sales person showed me the Samsung Galaxy Note II, I knew that this large mobile phone was perfect for me.

I have been using my Samsung now for approximately 3 months and I absolutely love it. I don’t know how I ever got along without it. No, it’s not a trendy iPhone, but the screen is large enough (5.5″) that I can actually read the email in my Inbox. I can follow the directions on my navigation app, read and edit important documents, and I even have enough screen space that I can surf the web and actually SEE what is there.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II is an Android device and so there are multitudes of apps available for use with it. As I mentioned earlier, I love the Navigation app and I use it all the time. The Samsung “Speak your destination” feature is fantastic, and it allows me to press a button, tell my smartphone where I want to go, and immediately see the route on my screen.

Since I don’t have time to explore the many applications that are available for my new phone, I thought it would be fun to put this topic out there so that you, the followers of our blog, could chime in and tell us about your favorite Android apps. Got one that you really like? Let us know. Add your comments below.

Posted in Business & Productivity, Communication Tools, Uncategorized

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One of the great things about Outlook is that Microsoft recognizes that users may need to access, read, and even manage others’ calendars, messages, and task lists. In our IT Training Outlook workshops, we cover a number of different ways that users can access, share, and manage multiple calendars, but because most users tend to want to maintain control of their own Inbox, we don’t do as much with the sharing of email. There are times, however, when this may be necessary.

Let’s say that you are an administrative assistant and you need to be able to open your own personal Inbox and your organization’s Inbox, too, and you need to be able to switch back and forth between the two very quickly. In situations such as this, you could add a second Outlook profile to your computer, but then you would still have to open each account separately. A better option may be to add a second Inbox to your Outlook account.

To do this, follow the directions below:

1. Open the first Outlook account.

   

2. Click on the File tab to move to Backstage view.

   

3. Look on the left side of the screen, and verify that the Info button is selected.

   

4. From the middle panel, click on the Account Settings button. A drop-down menu appears.

   

5. From the drop-down menu, click on Account Settings… An Account Settings dialog box opens.

   

6. Click to select the name of the first Outlook account.

   

7. Click on the Change… link that is located just under the tabs. A Change Account dialog box appears.

   

8. Click on the More Settings… button in the bottom right corner. A Microsoft Exchange dialog box opens.

   

9. At the top of the dialog box, select the Advanced tab. Directly underneath the tabs, you see a section that will allow you to open additional mailboxes.

   

10. To continue, click on the Add button. An Add Mailbox dialog box appears.

    

11. Type in the name of the additional mailbox, and click the OK button.

    

12. The new mailbox should now be listed in the Mailboxes field at the top of the Microsoft Exchange dialog box.

    

13. Click the OK button.
14. Click the Next button in the bottom right corner of the Change Account dialog box. You see a congratulations message in the Change Account dialog box.

    

15. To continue, click the Finish button.
16. Click the Close button. The newly added Inbox should now be listed at the bottom of your folders list. You can easily move back and forth between the two by selecting the appropriate folder from the list.

    

Posted in Business & Productivity, Communication Tools, Outlook

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If you watched the lyndaCampus information video, or attended the Personalize your Learning with lynda.com Webinar, you know that you can choose your preferred video player for watching lynda content. If you’re not sure which player to use, keep reading.

There are four players available on lyndaCampus:  Flash, QuickTime Standard, QuickTime Custom, and Windows Media. You can choose a player (after you’ve logged in to lynda) by going to My Account and then Site Preferences. You’ll see a list of available players and their features. Just lick the radio button next to the player you want to use and click Update.  Read the rest of “Choosing a Video Player in lyndaCampus” »

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In this week’s episode, we’re discussing the 2013 Summer Schedule at IT Training.

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Posted in Microsoft, Podcasting, SharePoint

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In the last article, Creating and Using Templates in InDesign Part 2, we talked about creating paragraph styles and footers. In this final part, we’ll cover adding an additional page size, adding pages to our file size and then saving our file in the template format.

When dealing with a magazine, you have to consider thickness of the finished product. This basically means that the cover of the magazine will be slightly wider than the inner pages to make up for the thickness of the contained pages. Since the page we already designed is 8.5” by 11” and it contains all of our ad guidelines, we know this is the size for our inner pages. Let’s define it as that by changing the name in the Pages Panel.

To change the name of the Master Page, in the Pages Panel, choose Master Options for “A-Master.”

Read the rest of “Creating and Using Templates with InDesign, Part 3: Pages and Saving” »

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In the last Creating a Template with InDesign Part 1 article, we covered guidelines extensively. In this Part 2, we’ll cover creating footers and paragraph styles.

Generally recurring published materials like magazines have such information as title, page number, and date as footer information. With our template, it just makes sense to add this now as opposed to adding it later when we actually use the template to put together an article or magazine.

Let’s start with the title. We’ll first want to place a guideline 1/8^th of an inch below the bottom page margin so that our footer isn’t right up against whatever content fills the page at a later time.

Read the rest of “Creating and Using Templates with InDesign, Part 2: Footers and Paragraph Styles” »

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Templates come in handy when working on design projects that use the same basic composition. Some examples are newsletters, magazines, or advertisements that have to maintain a certain size and layout.  InDesign allows you to create page layouts and then save those layouts as templates quite easily. Today we will talk about adding guidelines and paragraph styles to a page layout in order to really take advantage of what InDesign has to offer in this realm. We’ll create a template for a basic magazine page layout.

Here we have an example of what can be accomplished. 

Read the rest of “Creating and Using Templates with InDesign, Part 1: Guidelines” »

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In this episode, we’re making a huge lynda.com announcement!

Welcome to lyndaCampus!

http://ittraining.iu.edu/lynda

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