Guest Post: Editing Photos with Susan

Did you know that our beloved Susan is a genius? And that's she's perfectly willing to share her knowledge and expertise with a bone-head like myself? 'Tis true.


I was fooling around with my blog, which is usually a pretty bad idea. Don't get me wrong...I can write a post. I can even add pictures to it! I can add a widget (provided it's a widget that's right there on blogger and all I have to do is hit the "add" button). But when it comes to anything more technical than that, I'm lost.


I'll give you a good example. Editing photos for my Etsy listings. I recently downloaded Picasa (on Susan's recommendation!) and have been trying to learn how to use it. Trying being the key word there. And I thought I was doing pretty good! Here's what I would do:
*Take a picture.
*Upload said picture.
*Open up Picasa and click on picture.
*Hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
*Maybe crop, maybe not.
*Close Picasa.
*Open Paint.
*Resize picture.

See? I couldn't even figure out how to RESIZE a photo in Picasa!!


So, being a bone-head, I sometimes...well, forget that I'm a bone-head and I try to do things that I am perfectly UNcapable of doing. Like adding a Pin It button to the bottom of each blog post. Oh, I had a Pin It button. But it didn't actually pin anything! Who caught it? Susan. So I added her as an admin on my blog, because I trust her completely, and in the process of fixing it she realized what a bone-head I am and had me call her. 


And THAT is why I will get absolutely NOTHING accomplished today! She managed to cram about two weeks worth of graphic design tutoring into a one-hour phone call and I'm on fire to go back and make a collage! Oh yeah...I know how to make a collage now. I also know how to make an Etsy banner...FROM SCRATCH, Y'ALL...using my own photos! I also know how to resize photos in Picasa. 


I know a BUNCH of stuff.


So, do you have questions? Of course you do. We ALL do. Contact Susan Adams here on Handmade Jargon or at one of her many Facebook pages (see links below) and ASK her, for goodness sake. She'll most likely explain it to you and tell you how to do a bunch of stuff you never even thought about, too!!


To visit my Etsy shop, go here ---> Glitter Frog Designs on Etsy
To visit my blog, go here ---> Glitter Frog Designs Blog


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New Comments Editor on Facebook

Hey! You know when you comment underneath someone's post..in your News Feed, or your Profile page, or even a Group? and you make a mistake in spelling or something like that? Your first response is to type it over and then delete the the one above it that you goofed on.


Well, Facebook just made a script change on those Comments editor.  Now, you can click on the "x" to "delete" it and it will reopen the comment you just posted to let you change it! No more deleteing it and retyping.  And. No more notifications to others that go no where..cause you deleted it.


Why? Well, Facebook creators are trying to save cache space and scripting errors.


This works well if you are using Facebook under a non secure http://...connection.


"A non secure connection?" you might wonder..
Facebook, now connects us..under our security settings in our account..in a secure connection.  This keeps our comments and posts off of Google though.  You can see if you are connected securely on Facebook by the url bar in the top of your browser.  It will look like this: https://www.facebook.com/myfacebookpage....

You can find the settings for the security in your account settings


So, decide how much you want Google to see of your postings if you network on Facebook for your business.  If you want your latest posts and comments posted in Google search, make sure you don't have the secured setting. You also might want to make sure that anyone can see your posts and comments too..friends or no.

Google Disallowed Words! A Note from the Editor. Google Base Rejects ArtFire Listings!

This is a retype from our COO Tony Ford at ArtFire Chatterbox posted this morning at 8:24am Tucson time.  This is very important for all of us to note not just for our listings, but also our blogging, our posts and other Google searchables.  


I knew this was an issue from using an awesome cdrom tool I have called "Website Promoter" I bought off of Ebay for a couple of bucks.  


Here is what Tony had to say!  


"We received an email from Google base this morning that some of the  feeds from ArtFire.com have been temporarily removed.  This is because some of the items on ArtFire had "excessive capitalization". 

Google requires items to be grammatically correct with proper title capitalization.  Those folks using all caps to try to make their titles more attention grabbing may now have zero products in google base.  We see this kind of title on other venues quite often. 

The difference is that we will be auto-altering your titles to adjust to this guideline and sharing the information with you.   If you are using all caps on ArtFire.com you can start by changing those titles.  If you are using them on other venues with Google base, you should consider changing them there as well. 

We do not know how many accounts are affected at this point.   It is a good idea to use proper grammar on your titles and descriptions. 

This also suggests that Google Base (shopping) will continue to develop more sophisticated filters in the future.  For this reason it is important that you follow guidelines and not try to use hyphens or misspellings to try to work around prohibited terms. (wine spelled wi-ne or whine) for example.

In this case, it appears to be only some accounts that were inactivated, but google can and does ban entire websites permanently from google base for repeat violations.  That means that one or two sellers who attempt to "fool" google can cause all sellers items to be removed from google shopping. 

Thank you for your attention to this issue. We have already made the adjustment to auto-correct new items before submitting them to google.  

Here is the email we received from google:

"Thank you for submitting your products to the Google Merchant Center.

We've recently reviewed your items and noticed they contain errors.

Because of these errors, we've temporarily removed your items from the search results. Please correct the following problems with your items:

Issues:

- Excessive capitalization

-----------------

- Excessive capitalization: Some of your items' titles contain excessive capitalization. Please use standard spelling and grammar, and avoid all unnecessary use of capitalization. Please visit

http://google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160057to ensure your items comply with our Editorial Guidelines.

After you've corrected the errors, please upload your items again. If you're using the scheduling feature to submit your feed, we recommend that you upload the corrected feed manually before your next scheduled upload.

In addition, please know that your items are automatically re-evaluated.

Therefore, you do not need to reply to this email confirming that you've resubmitted your feed. We'll notify you if any additional corrections are needed. If you have any questions, please visit our Help Center to find answers to frequently asked questions.

Sincerely,

The Google Team"

This is extremely important as sites that are repeat offenders are permanently blocked from Google! If we don't change this phenomenon then we could all loose out.  If you see a listing on ArtFire that has some illegal spellings...such as "wine" or "free" or are misspelled, you can message the artisan and refer them to the forum or this blog.   If you are an Etsy seller, make sure you check those listings also.  Capital letters seem to catch attention, but in reality, all it does is get you kicked off of Google base. 

Disallowed Words

Special thanks to Popniculture an Artisan from ArtFire who wrote up disallowed words and pricing mistakes for you.

MyFathersGifts

MFGSocialNetworking

New Facebook Format Increases Spam Reports

The new Facebook Policies and format for Groups can not only bombard you with messages but also increase your reports from others.  The new Groups pages are even less secure than before.  You can not lock your group and then reset it again, you have to start over again with a new group page.  The Closed or "locked" groups are also hidden from search engines making is impossible for sellers to network under secure settings.  

Anyone can create a group, and what's worse, anyone can create a "hidden" group making it completely invisible.  Now, you could be added to a group without an invitation or knowledge and get bombarded with messages.  Everytime Facebook updates their format, new notification settings are acquired.  You see a change and all of a sudden your email box is flooded with notifications.  If someone isn't aware of the new policies and format, they automatically think you are spamming them and report you.  You will get a bunch of people screaming at you in messages at Facebook and many will just report you, locking you out of your account. 


The old Facebook Group format is still in place for the existing groups.  But the new Groups pages no longer have "share" options so that your posts in groups are viral, but 'subscribe' instead.  You will see that person's posts anywhere they post.  Making your News stream even more active.  This could be good if you want to follow that person, but bad when you are trying to network and broadcast your posts to a larger audience.  This policy is so that people don't complain anymore to Facebook for sharing to much info to their friends.  So only you see it. Good, and bad. People don't understand that Facebook is like a huge auditorium and you cannot expect to find a quiet place in the midst of a crowd!  ie...SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK. 


 Why create an account if you don't plan to socialize.  If you are not a people person, I don't advise you join the party.  If you are a seller and are still pretty shy, social media can be a learning and growing environment for you.  It is also a necessity to learn to socialize and to promote your business.  Otherwise, you probably should consider investing in Google ads.

Business pages are still pretty close to the same.  However, when you create a page you can adjust who see's it and who is blocked.  This includes search engines for that location as well as for Facebook directories.  So say you want to keep a certain geographic location from seeing your page, you can remove it from your list of who can see the page in settings for that page.  That helps with fire-walling unwanted viewers.  But I know that they will get smarter and eventually get around that by creating fake identities on Facebook with a different Geo-location.  


Facebook is getting bigger and bigger, making it's potential good and very bad at the same time.  Be very careful who you accept as friends, make sure your avatar has a proper picture(good quality above 300px) and make sure you reset your security settings to prevent anyone from grabbing your email address, your family name list, your location, your address, your phone number and your birthday(identity theft).  Keep your business page exclusive and don't leave a link to your personal profile on any of your business pages for security.  These are supposed to be separate identities from your personal profile. 

Still to come!  ...Why we have so many groups in our lists.