It used to be that, if you wanted to stay in touch with your clients or your club members or even your family, you mailed them a newsletter. These newsletters were mostly text, maybe with a single photo at the end.

Nowadays, we want to include lots of pictures and maps and use fun fonts and colors. While these enhancements look great, they make the files really, really big.

If you are still snail mailing your newsletter, the file size isn’t an issue. But if you are emailing your content, it may be time to consider a new way to work.

Microsoft Word and Pages are great applications for designing and creating a newsletter if you are printing and then mailing your newsletter. And Pages makes it even easier with templates and simple ways to add pictures and wrap text around them.

But if you are sending your newsletter as an email, consider switching to an online email marketing program, like Constant Contact.

Constant Contact allows you to create a template and then just copy it each time, update the content and send it. You can add photos, jogs, even your own logo and signature.

Constant Contact has many templates to choose from, for newsletters, cards, flyers and more and it works with its own mailing lists so that you can choose who to send to.

For example, if you do the newsletter for your garden club, you may need to send some correspondence just to the board members while the entire membership receives your monthly newsletter. So you can create two different lists and only send to the selected list. You can even schedule your newsletter to be sent on a particular day.

No more struggling to line up your text in columns. No more sacrificing color and photos to get a reasonably sized file. With Constant Contact you can have it all.

The cost for this easy, efficient web-based email marketing program starts at $15.00 a month. For more information visit http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp

And of course, I can help you set it up, create your templates and master this amazing, easy-to-use program.

And, if you still snail mail your newsletters, I’m happy to help you learn the great features in Pages that will make creating and designing your newsletters much easier and more fun!

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Caps Lock

While there is no Caps Lock key on the iPad or iPhone keyboard, you can create one.

1. Click on Settings

2. Click General

3. Click Keyboard

4. Make your choices for several keyboard options, including Enable Caps Lock

To use the Caps Lock, double tap the Shift arrow and it will turn blue, indicating that the Caps Lock is on.

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iPhoto: Cropping Pictures for Printing

If you plan to print or order prints of your favorite photos, remember to first crop them to the desired size. Otherwise, the photo lab will crop them for you and you may be disappointed with the results.

To crop a picture in iPhoto:

1. In iPhoto, click once on the photo and click Edit from the toolbar at the bottom .

2. Click on the crop tool.

3. From the pull-down list of numbers, choose the size of the print you will be ordering. A rectangular box will appear on the photo.

4. Drag the corners to resize the rectangle to include what you want in the photo. You’ll notice that if you make it narrower it will also make it shorter–it is constraining the photo to the proportions of the size you selected.

5. You can reposition the rectangle by dragging in the middle of the rectangle.

6. You can also change it from a landscape to a portrait by choosing again from the size list–the last choices in the menu give you the option to make it tall (portrait) or wide (landscape).

7. When you have the desired area selected, click Done.

8. Now you have a proper photo of the desired size.

If you are ordering several different sizes of the same photo, duplicate the photo first (photos menu, choose duplicate) and crop each one to the desired size.

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Rearranging Icons, Grouping Into Folders

There are several ways to move and organize your favorite Apps on your screen.

First, press and hold on one of the icons to get them wiggling.

To move an App, just drag the icon to a new position.

To move an App to a different screen, drag it all the way to the edge of the current screen. If this doesn’t work for you, drag the App into the Favorites Bar at the bottom, slide to the preferred screen, then drag the App to where you want it.

To group similar Apps together, drag one on top of another and a Folder will be created that you can rename.

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Fast Finding and Searching

Every program on the Mac has a Search tool. Usually it’s a rounded rectangular box with a mini magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner of the screen. (If you don’t see it, try dragging your window wider to reveal it.)

Just type what you’re looking for in this box to save you time and aggravation.

In Mail, when you Search, you can limit where Mail looks and what it looks for by clicking on one of the choices across the top: All Mailboxes or just the one selected, whether the text is in the Entire Message, From, To or part of the Subject of the email.

To find a folder or document saved on your Mac, you can use click on the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner to open up Spotlight, which gives you a list of all items.

A second way to Find documents is to choose the Find command under the File menu in the Finder. Type in what you’re looking for and a list will appear. Click once on the item and at the bottom of the window, you’ll see the path listed, so you know where to find the item.

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Fast Searching

Looking for a person’s phone number? While you might think it’s pretty easy to click on your Contacts and scroll to that person’s name, there is a much faster way.

Slide to the screen to the left of the first Home screen to reveal the built-in Spotlight program. Begin typing the person’s name. Not only will their name appear next to the icon of the Contacts, but you’ll also see all emails related to that person, any iCal appointments. Click on any entry and you’re there.

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Typing Accent Marks and Foreign Language Letters

It’s easy to type foreign characters such as accent marks on a Mac. As an example, for the word Qué, The accent mark is an optional character above the e.

First type “qu” then,

Hold down the option key and type “e” to get the accent mark. It will appear above the text and create an empty space.

Then type the “e” that goes under the accent mark.

To see what other optional characters you can type, such as ˜ and ¿, you can look at the Keyboard Viewer.

Hold down the Option key in Keyboard Viewer to reveal some hidden characters.

Hold down the Shift and Option keys to reveal additional characters.

To actually type those characters, just hold down the corresponding keys when you are in your actual document.

iPAD and iPHONE TIP OF THE WEEK

Keeping Up With Software Updates

Be sure to connect your iPad or iPhone or iPod to your computer at least once a month. Apple often releases new versions of the software for your device and the only way to update it is when you connect via iTunes.

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EMAIL ATTACHMENTS

CLEARING CACHES

Your Mac stores references to all the sites you’ve visited on the Internet so that pages load faster when you revisit those sites. The Mac also stores all kinds of other files on the computer. To help maintain an efficient system, it’s a good idea to empty the caches (pronounced cashes.)

To clear the Cache in Safari:

In Safari under the Safari menu, choose Empty Cache

To clear the Cache in Firefox:

In Firefox under the Firefox menu, choose Preferences

Click on the Advanced Tab

Click on Network

Click to Clear Now

To clear out all of the cached System files:

If a message appears about a file being in use, press Continue until all but those files have been deleted.

ADJUSTING THE BRIGHTNESS OF YOUR SCREEN

ADDING FREQUENTLY USED ITEMS TO THE SIDEBAR

THE EASIEST WAY TO RENAME SOMETHING

RECENT ITEMS

To quickly return to something you’ve recently used:

1. Click on the Apple menu
2. Choose Recent Items
3. Follow the menu to reveal the list
4. Click on the item you want to open

COMPARING PHOTOS IN iPHOTO

Often you will have two similar pictures and it’s hard to decide which one is better. Instead of looking at one, then the other, you can compare them, side by side.

1. Click on the first photo

2. Hold down the Command key and click on the other photo

3. Click the Edit button in the bottom toolbar

4. They will open in the Edit mode, side by side

5. Now you can choose which one to keep or use in your project

Slow iPhone 3G

If you have a 3G or 3GS phone and you are experiencing a major slowing down since you upgraded to the new iOS4, try this:

Turn Off Spotlight:

1. In Settings, click General
2. Click Home Button
3. Remove the check Marks next to everything

You should notice a major improvement in the speed of things now.

ZOOMING YOUR SCREEN

Do you ever want to quickly enlarge your screen so you can see something bigger?

1. Under the Apple menu, choose System Preferences

2. Click on the Mouse icon

3. Click to put a check mark next to Screen Zoom.

4. Click the Options for more choices.

5. It is set to use the Control key but you can choose a different key if you prefer.

6. You can also change how the screen moves when you zoom. Play with the different choices to see which works best for you.

7. Click Done

Now, anytime you hold down Control key and scroll with the mouse button, you’ll be ZOOMING! Try it.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS IN SAFARI

Instead of using your mouse’s scroll wheel or dragging the blue scroll bar, you can move down the page by pressing the Space Bar. Move up the page by holding down the Shift key and pressing the Space Bar.

To go Back to the previous page, instead of clicking the Back Arrow, press the Delete key.

HIDING PICTURES IN iPHOTO

If you have your Desktop Screen Saver set to use all the pictures in iPhoto, you may have certain pictures that you don’t want to include. Instead of creating a separate album specifically for the Screen Saver, you can hide selected photos.

In iPhoto, click on any picture you want to hide from view.

From the Photos menu, choose Hide Photo. An X will appear in the top right corner, indicating it is marked as Hidden.

If you don’t want to see Hidden photos in iPhoto, under the View Menu, re-select Hidden Photos to remove the check mark.

The picture is still in your Library, you just can’t see it.

To Unhide it, first, from the View menu, choose to show Hidden Pictures

Then select the photo that has the X on it and choose Unhide from the Photos menu

For more great iPhoto tips, check out the new video training series, Maximize Your Mac.