This week’s tech tip was about a free alternative image editor. This tip is also directed more towards those of you who have taken, or are currently taking Photo classes here at Thomas, or those of you who are interested in using Adobe Photoshop. Instead of having to pay hundreds of dollars for the latest version of Photoshop, try the GIMP, which is a free alternative. You can download it at www.gimp.org/windows/. It acts a lot like Photoshop, and will even open Photoshop files, which means you can work on your Photo projects at home without having to buy the program. If you’ve used Adobe Illustrator, a vector image creation program, here at school and you want a copy for home, try Inkscape, a free alternative to it (the Titan Tech Tip logo was made in Inkscape…) You can download it at http://www.inkscape.org/download/, and make sure to click on “Windows – .exe installer”. Picnik is another free, online image editor, which is very user-friendly and makes it easy to add effects quickly and effectively to your photos… you can access it at www.picnik.com. Enjoy!

This week’s tech tip was about online calculators. If you’ve ever used the excuse “I left my graphing calculator at school” to explain how you didn’t have your homework done… well… I’m sorry, but I’m about to kill that excuse once and for all. CoolMath.com has an online graphing calculator which does most of what the TI graphing calculators do, but for about a hundred bucks cheaper. (Free!) Make sure you have Java installed (if you see a pink rectangle below with your Java version, you’re set to go. Otherwise, go to www.java.com/getjava ), and go to www.coolmath.com/graphit/, and give it a try. Also, some others to try are:

http://www.gcalc.net/ – Also uses Java, works great!

http://www.webgraphing.com/ – Various different levels of graphing calculators, from basic ones to advanced ones. Requires free registration, though.

http://my.hrw.com/math06_07/nsmedia/tools/Graph_Calculator/graphCalc.html – from Holt McDougal, a textbook author. Uses Flash, works nicely!

This week’s tech tip was all about Google and the mobile services it provides. Ever stuck without a computer, away from home, and needed to look up a phone number for, say, your local Panera bread location? If you have a cellphone, which many people today do, or even access to a regular landline telephone, you have nothing to worry about! Simply dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-4664-411). It will ask you what business name and city, and even call the number for you for free. Now, if you have text-messaging, you can text GOOGLE (466453) and get information on a plethora of other things, such as movie listings, weather, sports scores, and pretty much everything else Google normally provides on their website.

Examples of commands for Google text-messaging:

score bills will get you Buffalo Bills scores.

w 14580 will get you the weather forecast for zipcode 14580.

pizza 14580 will get you a list of pizza restaurants in Webster. (Thanks Mike!)

See more examples at http://www.google.com/mobile/sms/index.html