How To

Here’s how we have been posting pictures and posts from Ethiopia…for those AWAA families who have been interested…

Most importantly, the electricity in the guest house has been on every
day since we arrived. They do have a generator, but I suspect that if
the electricity is off in the neighborhood, then the Internet is down
also. On top of this, the Internet has been working. It seems to be
about 10-20% of what you’d find in America…I think the download
speeds are between 4-6kb (vs. 200-400 in the US on highspeed).

Second, we were given an ethernet cable by the front desk to connect
our computer. Others were given the cable also, but it did not work
for them as well as for us. We are on the first floor in room 104–not
sure if it is luck of the draw or something else. We have not used the
wireless connection at all while we are here. I would bring your own
cable. If your room is like ours, then I would suggest a 12-foot cable
so you can have the most flexibility.

Third, we use Gmail, and that seems to be the most compatible with
Ethiopia’s internet situation here in the guest house. I know people
have gotten Facebook and Gmail to work. Some folks with Yahoo have
been able to read, but not send. Our blog is hosted through
wordpress, and that has been fantastic. We have heard through the YG
that wordpress worked best, and I think that is completely accurate.

If you use wordpress, there is a way to upload multiple pictures at
once in the new post page. We are using an older Dell laptop (~5yrs
old) running Windows XP home. We downloaded a program called “Image
Resizer.” This is a microsoft add-on to Windows XP that makes resizing
pictures very easy. If you searched for “Microsoft XP Powertoys Image
Resizer” you should find it. Once you install this tiny program, you
can right click any photo and in the menu you will see “Resize
Images.” Most digital cameras take photos at 2.5-4MB–or higher if you
have a digital SLR. We are resizing the pictures to the “large” size,
which drops them by over 90%, but still gets a decent resolution for
the computer screen. At this level, you can upload 30 pictures and
still not hit the size of one 3MB photo. I hope this is making sense,
we can talk on the phone when I return if you want.

One other thing we’ve done…Melodie and I have linked our blog to her
Facebook, my Facebook, and my Twitter account. You can do this in
Facebook through the Notes tab. This is a challenge in itself to just
find in FB. If you don’t see the tab that says notes, click the tab
that has a “plus,” this should bring you to the Notes page. On this
page you can connect your blog RSS feed directly to your Facebook
Notes. When you post on the blog, it will immediately grab the content
and re-post it on Facebook on your profile and on all your friends
profiles, etc.

We debated whether to buy a netbook (a very small laptop) or the Flip
digital video camera. I am beyond glad that we purchased the Flip. Our
old clunker laptop is charging along just great. And, the flip is just
an amazing little product. Much handier and faster than a video
camera. Unless you’re a real videophile (which we are not) then the
quality is sufficient. We bought the Flip Ultra HD for about $200. It
shoots 2 hours of video at 720p HD…which is really pretty good. The
editing program is great and the options for posting are incredible.
Unfortunately, that’s the one thing we were not able to get to work
from here.