OpenSUSE Artwork Sharing

Hello again and thank you for stopping by!

In this how-to I’m going to describe the new avenue openSUSE has established for people to share their artwork with the organization and community. At some point the head honcho’s at SUSE felt it was best to provide an outlet that was public, easily accessed and easy to use so that we may draw from a larger pool of artists to help contribute to the artwork supplied into each release. The establishment is not only provided for wallpapers or boot splash screens, it is a repository of sorts where other fans and users of openSUSE can share and collect artwork provided by others from around the world.

Contribution to the artwork pool is completely voluntary and only requires a Flickr account and the acceptance from the artist that any donations to the pool be completely released from all creative rights so that there are no lingering legal issues. It is also stated that all contributions should be free from sexually explicit material, images portraying racism, hatred or graphically violent material. With that said, the following is a basic explanation of how to set up a Flickr account to share images with the openSUSE-artwork community.

The first thing to do is to set up an account with Flickr powered by Yahoo. There were a lot of reasons why Flickr was chosen and please don’t ask me why. Without going into a long explanation, the best I can say is that it is already well established, there is already a large following of community contributors and the engine for group sharing works really good.

As this shot shows, there are a few ways to create a Flickr account. The easiest ways are to either use an existing Facebook or Google account. If one of these buttons is selected, Flickr will detect the ID from that account automatically and ask for the password to that account which will then be the standard way users are signed in. Everything is kept confidential so there is no worry of having the password harvested. If the user doesn’t have a Facebook or Google account then a Yahoo account will do or a Flickr account needs to be created.

After the account has been created, I always strongly suggest that users take the time to created or upload a buddy icon. Doing this creates a level of identity so that group members can separate one person from another. Of course there is always the account name and other data that can relate the artwork back to the donor, but it’s nice to be able to have a visual representation to correlate to. Once the buddy icon is done, fill in all information that a person is comfortable sharing. Some people like to be very private about this kind of thing and that is completely understood.

When all account data is filled in to preference, then it is time to connect the new account to the openSUSE-artwork group account. This can be done in a couple of ways, either use this link: http://www.flickr.com/groups/opensuse-artwork/ or in the search box type in openSUSE-artwork. Unfortunately, Flickr is case sensitive so it can be challenging if the spelling isn’t just right. Once at the openSUSE-artwork account, click on the button to the far right just under the group title that says “join this group”. Now we are a member of the openSUSE-artwork group and when we upload images we can have them shared into this group which we will cover next.

Flickr has made uploading a very easy process. At the top of the account is the “upload” tab found at the right of all the selection tabs just above the account details. Click on this and a new window will open that is kind of a stark dark grey color and looks like this.

Read and follow the directions that are just below the large blue box. At this point, I believe openSUSE-artwork is only accepting images for donation to the pool, so for this example we are going to stick with that. Click on the large blue button and surf your drives and folders for the image(s) to be donated. Once the image is selected, the screen will change and we are presented with options to apply to our image.

By clicking on the box just below the newly uploaded image, details can be added such as program used to generate, location where taken, what camera was used and so on and so forth. In the left hand column are some selections that can be added to each image individually. In this area is where licensing is selected. I suggest selecting the second button which is the NonCommercial, ShareAlike,  CreativeCommons which releases the openSUSE team to apply our design to the organization if they feel there is a good place for it. Remember, the whole idea is a collaborative effort in sharing to create something awesome that works for everyone.

Go through each of the other attribute boxes and apply tags so other can search keywords and find the design or other attributes. The most important one for this example though is the “Add to groups” button. This is how we share uploaded photos with the group so everyone is able to view everyone else’s work and use or apply them to help promote the use of openSUSE everywhere. Clicking on this button should bring up this screen if our join groups selection earlier went well.

After selecting all the attributes to each image, remember to click on the blue “upload photo” button in the upper right hand corner. This button is how Flickr processes the photo adding all the attributes and making sure it gets added in all the right places.

Now we created our Flickr account where we can upload artwork to share with the openSUSE-artwork community. We then joined the openSUSE-artwork group where we can view work created by users and contributors from all over the world, and were contributing our skills and talents to help build something really cool and fun for everyone!

Visit the openSUSE-artwork wiki for more information: http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Artwork

Google Calendar Invitations

Many people use the Google Calendar every day. No doubt, it is obviously the most popular collaborative calendar available on the internet with all of its functionality and sharing capabilities. There are no fees for it and every GMail account gets one totally free of charge with all the bells and whistles.

In this "How -To" I'm going to describe how to use the schedule event and invite others feature. This is one of the most handy functions of the calendar in my opinion. If I am scheduling an event, say a party or meeting or whatever, then obviously I will want to invite guests. With Google Calendar, this is a breeze and the recipients don't even have to be Google users to receive their invitations with selections of going or not. Follow along as I walk you through a simple event invitation process.

Obviously we want to open our Google Calendar which is associated with our common E-Mail address that we share with all of our friends and family.

This is a snaphot of one of the calendars I use. In this example, I will be using Saturday as a potential meeting time for my university team to be getting together for a meeting. With the calendar open, I simply click on the day I want to schedule the meeting and a new window open to begin my scheduling.

This simple pop-up box asks exactly what it shows here. Since I am creating an event to take place on this particular Saturday, then I will want this to be an event. In the "what" field I put in a short description of what the event is about. I have seen some people fill in multiple sentences into the "what" field. This is ok, however, there is still more to come with the scheduling event so I strongly suggest keeping this particular field short and to the point. Details of the event can be added later. Once the simple "what" is filled in then select "Edit event" to add more options including those we wish to invite.

As can be seen from the photo above, when we select "Edit event" a new dialog opens that allows for a lot of data input for the particular event we are scheduling. On the left hand side we can see the "Description" field where all the pertinent gata of the event will be input. For those people who want to shove all the data of the event in the description field, this is really where you want to let loose on all those details.On the right, is the area where we get to add all those people who we have in our contacts database to our event. For security reasons, I only added myself, but if a person begins to type in a name or email address in this field, Google will show 5 or 6 of the top matching persons or addresses from your contact list to add to the guest list. As seen below I added myself to the guest list for this event.

Once all the selections have been made for the event including guests and reminders, the remember to click on the "save" button up in the top left corner. This wi;; make sure the event is registered into the calendar as a scheduled event. Believe it or not, this is a very important step in the entire operation. Google Calendar does not have an "Auto-Save" function like many of their other featured products so it is imperative to click on this button to save the event.

After the save button is clicked, this pop-up will show. Since we obviously want to send our invitation to our team members for the event I selected to send the invitation to their email addresses. This is the last step in the event scheduling process. Once this is complete, Google will send us back to our calendar where we see the next screen.

What we see here is our event that was scheduled on Saturday on our calendar. I selected red for this particular event because that is the primary color of my university. Using colors to designate different events is a good way to distinguish one type of event from another just by a glance. If a person clicks on the event in their calendar thay will see all the details of the event or can make changes to that event. This is the calendar side of things, now we will take a look at the email side.

This is just a cut of the email invitation to my inbox showing that I have been invited to an event scheduled by me. Obviously this is just for example purposes. When a person opens the email they will see the image below and be provided a number of options to choose from pertaining to the event. Mainly these include whether or not they will be able to attend the event and any notes involved with their answer as to their participation to that event.

As seen in the photo above, the options are simply available by click on whether or not the invited people will be able to attend the event. There is also an area for recipients to explain why or why not they will be able to attend the event. This system is perhaps the very best and most popular available today for social calendar event scheduling. It's fast, easy and works in all major email handlers.

This has been a basic explanation of how to schedule a shared event from the Google Calendar. This has only been a basic explanation and of course there are many alternatives and variables available including adding attachments and sharing Google Docs with the scheduling of a calendar event. My hope is that others find this writing useful and informative.