enhancing 'Bird-of-the-Week

[Fred Bellows]

Thanks Greg. That sounds do-able, I guess. The thing about pictures imbedded in
a single post is that they're not easy to look back up, later on. And they're
not hi-res, or able to be zoomed in on, to see detail. And those are some of the
key goals of this idea of enhancing the `BotW. >Hi-res photos (zoomable), >Good
captions, >Searchable by coach name, >and unique-page-linkable (an exposé of our
coach could be part of a collection of other coach showcases, but also have a
unique url-link that we could include in our forum signatures). After talking
about it with everyone, it donned on me that it doesn't need to be added to
`BotW at all. It can just be an additional way for us to share some aspects of
our `Birds with each other, and not just when we're trying to fix them!

And so, I've decided to try this as simply as possible, by just using an online
photo viewer like photobucket. Only I've decided that Google's Picasa is
slightly better for what we need.

So, this won't affect BotW at all, and we'll keep asking Mike to maintain that
really fun feature (and let's all remember to help him by sending in more,
better, photos, with some detail so that he can create one of his great
taglines)! This new feature won't have to be resident on the actual forum server
at all. And it won't be a weekly, or monthly-interval posting either. We can
just start posting albums right away, and in a few months, we could have
hundreds (how many `Birds are there, does anyone know?). `Sort of a showcase of
Blue Bird Motor Coaches, listed by coach name, in the form of a collection of
photo albums, that will highlight the coach, the lifestyle, the upgraded
features, and enjoyment/travel experiences of owning these terrific machines.
Each album will spotlight one coach, and may have as many, or as few pictures as
you would like. The easy to use captioning feature on Picasa will allow
descriptions for each high resolution slide, and comments can be left by
viewers. No sign up or membership is needed to view, leave comments, or even
submit photos for posting, since you can just email them to me, and I'll create
an album on the site with your coach's name on it, and you can add or edit
photos at anytime. Another great aspect of this is that you will have a url that
links straight to your album, that you can include in your forum signature. So,
it'll be like your coach is getting it's fifteen minutes of fame, over and over
again, anytime someone clicks on your signature link. And once they're there,
they can browse through all the other great `Bird albums. I just started it last
night. It was easy. I called it Blue Bird Zoom, since we'll be able to easily
search and zoom in on the album of the coach we want to see, and even zoom in on
the hi-res photos, and see how they "mounted that TV up there", or whatever.
Check it out at http://picasaweb.google.com/bluebirdzoom I created an album
for my coach first, as an example (remember, you can have as few as just one
photo if you'd like, and easily add more later), and you'll see one "album"
there that is just the explanation of the site and how to use it. This seems so
simple and handy to me. A great way to see other `Birds in detail, and share
favorite things about ours with the rest of the Blue Bird community! Am I
missing something? Let me know what objections some people might have about some
aspect that I haven't thought of, because I know there'll be something I missed.
I know there's a space limit, but I think it's huge, and by the time we near it,
we can move this to somewhere else. What do you think? You can send me your
ideas on this, and your photos and descriptions to nytexcel@yahoo (.com)

Fred
nytexcel@...

Fred & Wendy Bellows
90SP Queen Creek, AZ (basically Phx)
"Maunder Maximum"
http://picasaweb.google.com/bluebirdzoom...erMaximum#



--- In WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com, "timvasqz" wrote:
>
> Yes I only go to the forum and pull down the menu to the left "Messages". You
can go to the home page and look at a summary of activity just under the word
"Home" there you can see the latest content often hidden from threads (thus
emails).
>
> You can turn off the Yahoo feature that sends emails to your mailbox by
going to the link on any page of the online forum. a blue hyperlink "edit
Membership" (above the word Forum in the purple line) will take you to a page
where you can define your preferences for mail delivery for just that forum.
>
> when you go to a reply link of a message the screen that comes up is a text
entry screen for your reply/comments. Yahoo has a new text entry screen that you
can use called Rich-Text Editor you must first choose to use this 'Richtext
editor' then find images to add to your reply. It is best to have the images
loaded some place not password protected. The photos I use of Jays Bus are
password protected but that permission is the same that you need to view the
message as they are hosted on this forum in photos.
>
> I opened two windows in ie7 one to make the reply and one to look for photos.
made the reply in Rich-text and found photos in the other window. when I found
Jays bus by the lake. I simply ;clicked on the image ;left clicked to open a
submenu than picked copy. with the image now on my clipboard I went back to the
window of the reply placed the cursor in the document then right clicked and
press paste.
>
> the unique subject title other than Bird of the week is needed because the
term bird of the week picks up many old threads with that exact name. (Bird of
week) and a (1 to52 number of week) followed by (the year) "Bird of Week 35
2009" would prove only one unique thread
>
> Greg of Tim&Greg
> 94ptca



> --- In WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com, "Fred Bellows" wrote:
> >
> > Oh, I see them. When you go to the forum site, they show up. But I never do
that. Do most people use the forum that way? Open the site each day and read
messages there? I just see all the posts forwarded to my email, and I just read
them there and never really go to the site for anything, unless someone refers
to a photo they've posted or something (which is why I miss the BotW a lot).
> >
> > Fred
> > nytexcel@
> >
> >
> > Fred & Wendy Bellows
> > 90SP Queen Creek, AZ (basically Phx)
> > "Maunder Maximum"
> > http://picasaweb.google.com/geefred/MaunderMaximum#
> >
>