Flash Drives, USB’s, or Thumb Drives

Regardless of what you call them, the small portable memory that anyone can afford can be used for many things.  As an introduction to the possibilities, I would like to direct Masonic Technology readers to the article 10 cool things you can do with a USB flash drive by Greg Shultz over at TechRepublic.

In his article, Mr. Shultz touches upon usages ranging from using the drive as an MP3 player, to locking your computer.

Overall, the article does an outstanding job of introducing the versatility of portable drives, but do not limit yourself only to the article. A quick search on google will provide many other sites and articles that may just have the thing you were looking for all along.  I, personally, did a search using only the terms portable apps and found an outstanding resource on makeuseof.com entitled 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (Mac and Win).

You can purchase a flash drive from any electronics store, Wal-Mart, or through online stores such as ComputerGeeks.com or NewEgg.com.

Happy reading.

Masonic Technology or Technologist?

Masonic Technology has become….well…Masonic Technologist. The technology staff has been hard at work creating, preparing, and testing the next generation of technology to be sponsored by Freemason Information. Although I cannot reveal as of yet this new project, I do, however, want to take this opportunity to assure the readers of Masonic Technology that the articles will continue to be published shortly.

In the next edition of Masonic Technology, I will provide a basic tutorial, including files to be downloaded and used, on using OpenOffice to create form letters utilizing a database. This skill, once mastered, will save officers, and members alike, time and energy by filling in core information in a word document giving letters a personalized feel. Instead of, “Dear Brother,” impress your members by using their name without the tedious task of re-typing the salutation over and over.

As always, if you have any suggestions, comments, or requests give me an email at shane@deltalodge207.com and stay tuned to this site and the Masonic Central Podcast for announcements on the new project.

Wordprocessing and more….FREE

Who doesn’t have a need to type, or organize, information in a digital form? The problem for many is that the most popular wordprocessing suite (wordprocessing, database, and spreadsheet) is Microsoft’s Office. Office, however, comes with a lofty price tag of $125 or more. For this reason, I recommend Open Office Suite, “the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.” Open Office can not only do everything Microsoft can do, but it can also read most of the other office software formats, and of course best of all…it is FREE. In this article, I wish to provide to you the tools needed to install and begin using this outstanding software.

First, you can download the software HERE. Installation is simple, and the program itself does a nice job of walking you through the process. However, you can use this Step-by-Step Installation, to help along the way. Please note that although the process in the Step-by-Step is for version 2.4.1, the process is the same for the newest version.

Once the software is installed it operates like most any other wordprocessing program you may have already used. The following is a list of basic tutorials found on the Tutorials for OpenOffice website, which is a good starting point for those brothers who have little to no experience with wordprocessing.

• Writer (similar to Microsoft Word)
• Calc (similar to Microsoft Excel)
• Impress (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint)
• Draw
• Base (similar to Microsoft Access) —THIS IS NOT FOR THE BEGINNING COMPUTER USER!!

OpenOffice can be used by any Mason, or Lodge, to easily and freely document, organize, and edit any information needed by the craft. It’s usage can range from simple printouts of notices to more complex mail merges.  Create labels, fliers, and envelopes all while having the computer automatically fill in pertinent information such as name and address.

The overall rating for OpenOffice — 5 out of 5 stars (basic functions)/3 out of 5 stars (complex functions)

• 5 out of 5 stars for Masonic usefulness (basic and complex functions)
• 5 out of 5 stars (basic functions) / 2 out of 5 stars (complex functions) for ease of use for those brothers with less technology experience but willing to try

Please watch for future articles that will utilize OpenOffice. First of which will contain directions and files for merging of Base (database) and Writer (word processor) for pre-formatted letters.

Easy Masonic Reading

Do you visit many different Masonic blogs, news sites, or information  repositories? Today’s article can save you some time and energy. As we all know there are thousands of Freemason websites on the internet, some good some not, and visiting our favorites can become very time consuming. Thus, I would like to discuss the use of RSS in bringing all of the article feeds into one centralized place for your review.

Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a feed friendly format that bloggers, news organizations, or webmasters can utilize that allows their readers to “pull” their content into one place. This technology can be used to see which of your favorite authors have updated their site, letting you know which ones to visit on any given day. It is important that I state that I am not advocating using only RSS to do your reading, instead I believe it should be used as a starting point only. Afterall, your favorite sites need your traffic for search engine data and advertising revenue.

There are many RSS readers available both purchased and for free. They consist of locally installed software and also online services that require no downloads or installations. Most people already have a RSS reader on their computer and may not even be aware. Programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Firefox, as well as other email and web browsing programs, all contain the ability to subscribe to RSS.  Online, and free, services are plentiful, but some of the most popular are NetVibes, Pageflakes, Yahoo! (although I do not recommend Yahoo! for beginning technology users), and Google Reader.

To get started with RSS a person needs simply to enter in the URL (the web address) of the RSS feed of the site they wish to read into their reader of choice. I personally use Google Reader, so included in this article is a basic tutorial of using the service. If you choose to use a different reader, fear not, because the process is extremely simple, and by following the directions of your service you will be up and running in no time.

In our ever continuing desire to provide Masons with tools that can be used to further their Masonic growth, I have provided a pre-made list of a few Masonic RSS feeds that you can import into your reader. This list is for starting purposes, and Freemason Information does not officially endorse any of those sites included in the file.

To import the file please see your reader help section if needed. Most services have an import function that will take the file from your computer and convert it to a working feed.

1. Step one: download this file–masonic-rss-subscriptions. Do not forget where you save the file, because it is needed to complete the import.
2. Step two: follow the directions in your reader’s help section, or if using Google Reader follow the steps in the tutorial below.

RSS can be used by any Mason, or Lodge, to easily and freely keep up on Freemason information found on the internet. A lodge, or brother, can setup a public RSS account, and share educational pieces.

The overall rating for RSS — 4.25 out of 5 stars

• 5 out of 5 stars for Masonic usefulness
• 3.5 out of 5 stars for ease of use for those brothers with less technology experience but willing to try

Masonic Central on BTR Basics

Masonic Central can now be found on Blog Talk Radio, but unfortunately with any “new” technology there will be some minor glitches along the way, but rest assured that behind the scenes Dean and Greg are working diligently to give their listeners what they desire. Please feel free to contact either with questions, comments, or concerns.

However, since the user interface is somewhat different at Blog Talk Radio than at TalkShoe, we here at FreemasonInformation would like to provide to our users a tutorial on the basics of listening via the new technology.

You can find Masonic Central on Blog Talk Radio by either entering in http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Masonic-Central in your web browser, typing masonic central in the search feature on the Blog Talk Radio website, or following the link found on FreemasonInformation.

To insert the player into your own site, copy and paste the following code where you want the player to show.

[code]<code language="actionscript">Copy all of the EMBED code below the ----- and paste it within the code of your site
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<embed src='http://www.blogtalkradio.com/BTRPlayer.swf?displayheight=&file=http://www.blogtalkradio.com%2fMasonic-Central%2fplay_list.xml&autostart=false&shuffle=false&callback=http://www.blogtalkradio.com/FlashPlayerCallback.aspx&width=210&height=105&volume=80&corner=rounded' width='210' height='105' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' pluginspage='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer' quality='high' wmode='transparent' menu='false'></embed>[/code]

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