25th July 2002
Several of our friends seem to be suddenly finding themselves in "a family way." I just know that when the day comes (when I become a full-fledged father, that is), it will also be the day that my digital camera becomes permanently grafted to my hand. I'll be taking pictures all the time of my bundle of joy and, of course, I'll be sending them to friends and family all the time. Now I'm going to let you in on a little secret... you can use Moviemaker in Windows XP to share your own pictures. Just open up Moviemaker ,and drop your photos into a new movie. Now all your photos are in one easy-to-play file. On top of that, you can add music or audio commentary. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think sometimes a small story helps your audience understand what is so great about your photos. So now you have this great slide show that can either be loaded to the Web, on to a CD, or even just e-mailed out (depending on the size) and it literally just takes minutes. Of course you could take it even a step farther and add in clips from your digital video camera and come out with a personal masterpiece, but that is better left for another tip. Also, you may want to note that you may have to play with your pictures a bit to get them to display in a fashion that you'll be proud of because the quality will suffer slightly, but that is a small price to pay for viewing pleasure of your audience.