CyberKen

Want a lean, fast, and FREE program to view, sort and tag your photos?  Try IrfanView.  Here are some of IrfanView’s great features:

• quick to launch and quick to display photos
• reads Raw files
• edits IPTC information
• offers basic photo editing tools, plus special effects and borders
• creates .ico (favicon) files
• handles batch operations
• exports photos by ftp and email

This post explains step-by-step how I use Irfanview in my photo processing.  If you would like to follow along, download Irfanview and make sure to install the plugin package, because you will need that for IPTC editing.  Although IrfanView performs many photo editing functions, you may want to use another photo editor instead.  To set up that external editor to work in conjunction with IrfanView, in the IrfanView "Options" menu, select "Miscellaneous" and then under the "Set external editors" section, put the path to your chosen graphic editing application, (for example, Photoshop) in the #1 window, by navigating to that application with the "browser" button.

Briefly, these are the steps in my photo processing procedure, using IrfanView:

1. Download pictures from my camera to a folder on my computer, then, disconnect the camera.
2. With Irfanview, view each picture and delete the ones I don’t want to keep.
3. Edit the keepers, either with IrfanView or an external editor.
4. Write IPTC information to the photos using IrfanView.
5. Export the photos for safe keeping to an external hard disk or a web server.

Now that you’ve had a preview of the major steps, here are the details:

1.  Download pictures from your camera to a folder on your computer, then, disconnect the camera:

IrfanView works on the photos in a particular folder, which you designate.  Make sure that you do not choose the folder on the camera, because when you delete photos IrfanView would in that case delete your original photos on the camera. Instead, set up a working folder on your computer. Here’s how I do that:  Create a new folder to receive the photos from your camera.  Name it and place it wherever you choose.  In the Pictures library is a good place.  Then, click on “Computer” in the Start menu, and in the window that opens find the folder of your camera.  It will probably bear a short name for your camera.  Double click on that folder icon, and then double click on the DCIM folder (stands for “Digital Camera Images”).  There may be one more folder below that to open.  Finally, you will see the icons for all the pictures on the camera.  Hold down the control key and press the "A" key, which selects all those photos.  Drag and drop the whole lot into the new folder you created.  Now you have a full working folder for your photo processing.  Disconnect your camera to safeguard your original photos.

2.  With IrfanView, view each picture and delete the ones you don’t want to keep.

Open Irfanview.  Click on the icon of the yellow folder in the top left corner of IrfanView’s window.  This opens a file browser.  Navigate in that browser until you reach the working folder you created.  Click on that folder to highlight it and then click on the "open" button.

Now you will be looking at thumbnail images of all the photos in the folder.  Double click on the first icon (top, left in the window). You are now looking at the full view of the first picture in the folder.  If you choose to keep this photo, edit it (e.g., crop, sharpen, color or exposure correct it, etc.) using either IrfanView’s editing commands under the "Image" menu, or by opening the photo in the external editor you designated in the options>miscellaneous>set external editor step.  You can most easily open that external editor by holding down the shift key and pressing the "E" key.

When you have finished editing your keeper photo, save it (in its current place, not another folder) and then proceed to viewing the next photo in the working folder by pressing the right arrow on your keyboard or by clicking on the right arrow at the top of the Irfanview window.

If you do not want to keep a photo you are viewing, press the delete key on your keyboard, or click on the "x" at the top of the IrfanView window.  Note:  When you delete a photo it will not disappear in the full view unless you have tweaked a setting in the options menu. Here’s the tweak:  Under “Options” select Properties/Settings and then File Handling.  In the File Handling window check the little box beside the words “Jump to the next file after deleting/moving”.  Then click the “OK” button to save that setting.

When you have finished viewing the last photo in the folder and try to view the next one, IrfanView notifies you that you have reached the end of the folder and asks whether you want to work in another folder.  Choose instead "use current folder".  This will return you to the view of the first photo in your working folder.

3.  Write IPTC information to your keeper photos, using IrfanView.

At this point, you are looking at the full-window view of the first photo in your working folder.  Now, press the "T" key.  This brings up a new window showing thumbnails of all the photos in the folder.

You are now ready to write IPTC information to a batch of photos in your working folder. Entering IPTC information is tedious, but very worthwhile.  It will help press agencies find your photos, and it will enter valuable tags into the meta-data of your photo files, so that they will retain that information.  This insures that the tags will be visible for searches on your local computer and on whatever hosting server is equipped with search capabilities.

To save time in IPTC editing, write to a whole batch of photos at once.  Here’s how to do that:

When you are looking at the thumbnails of your photos, select a continuous series of them by clicking on the first thumbnail in the series, holding down the Shift key, and then clicking on the last thumbnail in the series.  Or, to select a discontinuous batch, hold down the Control key and then click on the thumbnails you want included in the batch.

Now that you have selected the thumbnails for a batch operation, right click on any thumbnail in the batch and then select "JPG lossless operations" and then "Set IPTC data to selected files".  This opens the IPTC editor.  You may want to fill in copyright information to protect the photographer’s rights.  If you fill in the caption window and upload the photo later to a photo sharing site, like Flickr, that caption will show as a title for the photo.  Fill in the headline window if you want to suggest to a press agency a title for an article that would accompany the photo.

To tag the photo click on the "Tags" tab in the IPTC editor.  Enter a tag and then press the "Enter" button.  Enter another tag on that new line, then press the "Enter" button.  Keep entering new tags, each on its own line.  Do not include multiple words within quotes.  Do not separate tags by commas or semicolons.  The Enter button is the way IrfanView separates tags.  Any words entered on a given line will be recognized as belonging together.

Continue to enter IPTC information using the tabs in the editor.  Of these remaining tabs, for your purposes you may need to use only the "Origin" tab. You will probably want to indicate where the photo was taken.  If your camera reports GPS, you might want to enter the GPS coordinates in the "sublocation" window under the "Origin" tab.

When you have finished entering all the IPTC info you desire, click on the "Write" button.  This will save your IPTC entries to all the files which were included in your batch.

Next you may wish to write IPTC information to a particular photo instead of a batch.  For instance, maybe may you want to enter a tag for a person who appears in one photo, but no others.  To write IPTC information to a particular photo, open that photo in the full view mode and under the "Image" menu select "Information" and then click on the "IPTC info" button.  This opens the IPTC editor to operate on just that one photo.  When you have finished your IPTC entries, click on the "Write" button.  This writes to just that particular photo.

4.  Export the photos for safe keeping to an external hard disk or a web server.

Now that you have perfected your keeper shots and tagged them with IPTC information they are ready for storage.  I upload mine to Flickr, where I can continue to catalogue them by using Flickr’s many collection and set organization tools.  When you upload photos already tagged with IPTC information to Flickr, Flickr retains that information.  An IPTC caption becomes a Flickr photo title.  IPTC tags become Flickr tags.  Very handy!

If you want to FTP your photos to a web server, in the thumbnails view select the photos you wish to send, right click on any thumbnail in the batch, select "Transfer selected files by FTP" and then fill in the FTP information to complete the connection.  You can email one photo or a batch by again selecting the batch in thumbnails view and then right clicking by any photo in the batch and selecting "send selected files by email."  If you use a web-based email service, like Gmail, this command will not work without some tinkering.  It requires a designated email application on your computer.

In closing, a note to Photoshop users:  You may wonder why I didn’t write about how to edit IPTC information using Photoshop, or Photoshop’s sub-program, Bridge.  I didn’t because I tend to report on free programs, and Photoshop is costly!  Also, I find that for viewing and sorting photos IrfanView is faster than Photoshop.  I love Photoshop for photo adjustments, but IrfanView has become my favorite program for viewing, sorting, and tagging.

And, a final note to IrfanView newbies:  Do learn the keyboard commands.  They make a fast application even faster to use!

"Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards." That’s the subtitle of Patrick O’Keefe’s 295 page book for would-be internet forum managers.

Before I review O’Keefe’s book, however, let me explain what he means by "online forums." My introduction to online discussion was through the multi-denominational Christian online community, Ecunet. In the late 80s I connected by a very slow modem and dial-up connection to that quickly growing community of Christians who had already organized themselves into hundreds of discussion groups. This was before the advent of the World Wide Web, before sharing pictures and videos and podcasts. It was even before email was widely used. Participating in Ecunet went like this: One dialed in and downloaded all the comments in groups to which one had subscribed. One then disconnected and replied offline to a recent post or started a new thread for discussion. One then reconnected to synch one’s offline contributions to the server’s data. The slow pace of this protocol made for more thoughtful posts than one finds in many internet conversations these days.

Short and casual messages certainly do have their place, as is evidenced by the popularity of Twitter and Facebook. However, for people seeking a deeper and more meaningful conversation, a well managed and moderated forum is likely to be more satisfying. Although telecommunication has beome more techologically glitzy in recent years, there is still a demand for thoughtful composition.

That’s where online forums come in, or as O’Keefe calls them, online communities. He is writing about the offspring of the early bulletin boards, such as Ecunet. There are other forms of online textual conversation, such as UseNet groups, chat rooms, and listservs. How do these differ from forums? Usenet groups are generally not moderated, which can can make for wild and unruly, sometimes even cruel conversation. Chat rooms are for real-time text talk. The logical train of chat room chatter is sometimes hard to follow because of the varying keyboard skills of the participants. Listservs, or email discussion groups, bear most resemblance to forums. They are usually moderated, and the posts can be archived, as in forums. But, an active listserv can clog one’s email inbox, which forums do not do. One has to go to a forums web site to participate in the discussion.

As I see it here are the advantages of forums for online textual conversation:

• Forum administration software is more intricately configurable than other online discussion tools. This gives the managers and moderators of forums the ability to monitor and enforce the guidelines of the discussions.
• Given these more intricate managing tools, forums provide a better means for reaching out to the public and attracting newcomers. Listservs have many of the characteristics of forums, but listservs often consist of people who already know each other. Forums, on the other hand, are designed deliberately to invite strangers into the conversation.
• Because forums grew out of early online bulletin boards which were moderated, forums these days continue to attract users who expect a moderated discussion. Provided the moderators have been well trained, this makes for conversation that stays on topic and remains respectful.
• Forum management software provides an easy means to begin a new topic of discussion when the train of thought in a given conversation seems to demand it. If a listserv discussion reaches this point, a completely new listserv is required, and there is no way to link the posts of the new listserv to the prior one. With a forum, however, the branches in conversation are readily apparent in the interface, and users can explore the history of conversation at any point by clicking on the appropriate branch. Forum management software thus lends itself to a community whose conversations are evolving, allowing the community to delve into new topics while still preserving every word of their prior conversations.
• Forums do not clog your inbox.

O.K. now that you have an idea of what forums are, let me recommend to you Patrick O’Keepe’s book on how to organize and manage them. This book is a must read for anyone who is considering launching an online forums web site. The author covers the following topics:

• Laying the groundwork, by deciding what your forums will cover, whom they will serve, and how they will be financed. (Yes, even with free software, there are still costs to maintaining an online community.)
• Choosing software, registering a domain, acquiring a look to brand your community.
• Developing guidelines for user behavior in your community.
• How to promote your online community so that it grows in membership.
• How to manage your staff (consisting mostly of the moderators of various forum topics).
• Banning misbehaving users and dealing with occasional chaos.
• How to create a good climate for discussion.
• Tips for keeping the discussions interesting. How to make money with your online community.

You will not find in O’Keefe’s book a step-by-step manual for configuring forum software, but you will find cogently expressed advice from a seasoned forums manager about how to weather the storms of managing public discussions. Having read O’Keefe’s book, I have decided to put my toe in the water only, by running some private discussions first, so that I can get used to the software (I intend to use phpBB, a free, open source bulletin board management software.) Then, after I feel comfortable with managing the permissions I’ll be ready to manage public forums. Being able to reach out to strangers appeals to me. That’s a primary benefit of the internet, after all. But, doing so in a way that protects participants in the community from abuse is also of great concern to me. Much of O’Keefe’s book deals with that challenge. I highly recommend it to you.

So, let’s say you have an email address at home, and an email address at the office, and maybe even several others, and you’re tired of having to visit several sites to read and respond to all of your messages.  This post will show you how to have all your email forwarded to one location, your Gmail inbox.  And not only will you be able to read all your email there, but you will also be able to send email from there to any of the sending email addresses you choose. 

Here are step-by-step instructions for setting all this up:

1.  If you haven’t already done so, register with Google.com and open your free Gmail account.  When you open your Gmail account you will be looking at your Gmail inbox.  Bookmark this page in your browser because you will need to return to it later in these instructions.

2.  Go to the administrative control page for one of your existing email accounts.  If you get your internet connection through Verizon or Comcast, you or a family member are likely the administrator for that account, so you will already have the login information.  Login, and then go to the email settings, and in those settings look for the link that permits you to edit the "forward to" setting.  Enter your Gmail address in the "forward to" window.  Then, save that setting.

In the case of some email addresses, you may not have administrator access to your email settings.  For instance, if you have a university email address, or a business email address, the administrator of your email settings is likely to be a university or business colleague.  Find out who this is, and ask him/her to enter your Gmail address into the forward to window of the email settings and then save that setting.

3.  When steps 1 and 2 are accomplished you should start noticing email from your other addresses showing up in your Gmail inbox.  So, now you can read all your email in one place, but what about sending from Gmail so that you can choose your sending-from address?  Follow the remaining steps to achieve this.

4.  Go back to your Gmail inbox, the page you bookmarked in step 1. 
5.  Click on the "settings" link in the top right corner.
6.  Click on the "send mail from another address" button (second section down from the top).  You are about to set up a sending-from address in your Gmail controls, so that you can compose a message in Gmail but have it appear to the recipient as if it were sent from another of your email addresses (besides your Gmail one).
7.  In the window that appears, type your name as you want it to appear in messages from that other address, and the email address you are now configuring.
8.  Click on the "Send through Gmail" button, and then, the "next step" button.
9.  Click on the "Send verification" button.  When you do this you will receive, almost immediately, an email message in your Gmail inbox that will contain a link to verify and configure this setting.  Click on that link in the email message. 
10.  In your Gmail inbox window, click on the "Compose mail" button (top left).  This will bring up a compose message window.  At the top of that window you will see a "From" window, with a little black triangle to the right.  Your Gmail address will appear by default in this window, but if you click on the little black triangle you can access other email addresses which you have set up, following steps 4-9 of these instructions.  In the drop-down menu click the address you want to send from and compose your message.  When you have finished composing your message and click on the send button your email will go out with the sending address you chose.

Voila, you have configured Gmail to be your one-stop reading and sending-from site.

Want to catalogue your photos without spending a bundle?  Then this CyberKenBlog post is for you.

What’s cataloguing?  Organizing and labeling photos for safe keeping and easy retrieval.  Let’s say  you have a couple thousand photos and you have a vague recollection of one that you took a few years ago which showed a certain person or scene.  Now you want to lay hands on it.  But how to find it in that huge collection?  Well, if you didn’t label, or as the accepted lingo goes, tag that photo with some key words, your search will be difficult.  However, if you took the trouble to tag the photo, or at least put it in a folder with other photos of like kind, then your search will be much easier.  Cataloguing software does the tagging and grouping. There are some terrific cataloguing programs on the market, perhaps the best known, Adobe’s Lightroom.  But, as you may have already discovered, these programs cost a lot, often a couple hundred dollars or more.

Here’s a much cheaper way to get the job done:  Get a $25/yr. account at Flickr.com, download and install the free photo viewer, IrfanView, and finally, download and install the free Flickr backup program, Bulkr.  Here’s how these three tools can be used together to create backup for your entire photo collection and a speedy retrieval system for particular photos:

1. Tag each of your photos with IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council)information, using IrfanView, an open source program written by the brilliant and generous young Austrian, Irfan Skiljan, pictured at the right.
2. Upload your photos to Flickr.com.
3. Back up your Flickr.com collection by running Bulkr, which downloads your Flickr pictures to your local computer (or better for protection against a disk crash, an external hard disk attached to your computer).

That’s all there is to it!  Why did I recommend these particular tools?

• IrfanView is free, very speedy, easy to use, opens even RAW photos, reads and writes to numerous graphic formats, and most importantly for the purpose of cataloguing, reads and writes IPTC information.
• Flickr is a huge photographers’ social network with numerous organizing and sharing tools.  An annual membership entitles you to unlimited uploads, and a file size limit of 10 MB–very generous indeed! Because Flickr is one of the older photo social networks there are many free third party applications and plugins to use in conjunction with it;  to whit:
• Bulkr, a fast, free synchronization program to clone your Flickr photo stream.  Flickr has many security measures in place to protect your treasure of photos "in the cloud."  However, should the Flickr server fail and erase your treasure, it’s nice to have a second copy on your own local disk.

You will find that when you enter IPTC information into photos and upload them to Flickr the tags are retained as Flickr tags and the captions are retained as Flickr image titles.  Therefore, labeling and grouping tasks are largely accomplished as soon as you upload.  You can, of course, add whatever other tags you may wish at the Flickr interface.  But remember that the only information which sticks with photos is the IPTC data. If you tag photos other than by the IPTC method and then you move your photos off the server where you tagged them, the information will almost certainly be lost.  That’s good reason to get in the habit of entering IPTC data routinely as you process your images.

Finally, you will want to know just how to use IrfanView for editing  IPTC data.  Here are the specifics:

1. Make sure you have installed the plugin package for IrfanView.
2. Open a .jpeg image with IrfanView.
3. Under the Image menu, click on the IPTC info button.
4. Enter information in whatever fields you wish, but be sure to fill in the caption and keywords windows.
5. When you have finished entering information, click on the "Write" button.  This records the information in the metadata level of the file.
   Upload your image.

Now, you may be thinking:  Yikes, do I have to go through this process for every single photo I upload?  No!  You can write IPTC information for a whole batch of .jpeg files at once.  Here’s how:

1. Press the "t" key when you are in a folder of .jpeg files.  This will bring up thumbnail images of all the .jpegs in that folder. 
2. Highlight all the thumbnails of the images you want to edit for IPTC info.
3. Then, right click on one of the highlighted thumbnails, and then in the drop-down menu which appears select "JPG lossless operations", and finally, "Set IPTC data to selected files."  This brings up the same set of tabs that you viewed before. But this time when you click on the Write button you will write the information to every one of the highlighted images.  If later you want to add more tags to a single photo you can do that by going to the Image>information menu as previously explained.

This post covers how to synchronize a narration track with slides using  Windows Movie Maker.  In a video editor it’s tedious to adjust the length of still images so that they change in synch with the narration.  But if you make the visual track first, and record the narration as you watch the video track playing, and then place this recorded narration into the music track of Windows Movie Maker, you will have a story line perfectly synchronized to the images which appear on the screen.

Movie Maker is part of Microsoft’s free suite of programs called Essentials.  When you download the Essentials suite you can choose which programs you want to install.  Check Movie Maker to install it. 

After installing Movie Maker, download all the clips and pictures from your camera and place them in one folder.  This will be your Movie Maker project folder.  Do not move this folder to another location on your computer once it has been stocked with resources, because Movie Maker makes a map to where those resources are located, and if you move the folder Movie Maker won’t know where to find them.

Next, in Movie Maker’s home window, arrange the clips and still images in an order that best tells your story.  Video clips often have speech.  You may want to incorporate that speech in your story line, as I used the students’ self-introductions in my movie.  Your still images, of course, will not have a narration track yet.  Don’t worry about that yet.  Concentrate on the arrangement of visuals.  After you have arranged the clips and images in an order that suits your story, trim the undesirable portions from each clip and set the number of seconds you want each still image to play, imagining the words that you will speak to accompany each image.  Next, save your project and play it back.  Make sure that visually it tells the story that you want to tell, and also, that the tempo of the still images fits the narration that you have in mind.

Next, set up a program to record your narration.  For this step you will need a microphone of some kind, and a recording program that produces mp3 files.  A digital field recorder is very handy, but not required.  Test your setup to make sure that your microphone’s volume is set high enough to record clearly.  Play back what you have recorded to confirm that you have a good volume. 

Now, here comes the crucial step:  Get ready to start your recording with a click of your mouse or a push of a button.  Set the cursor of your movie project at the very beginning of Movie Maker’s time line, and click it to play the movie.  As the movie plays, speak into the microphone the words which you to want say pertaining to each image. When the movie stops, stop recording.  Save your recording as an mp3 file.  You may need to trim off empty space at the beginning and/or end of the recording if you did not start or stop the recording precisely.  You can do this with Audacity, a free sound editor.  When you have completed this step you will have input for the audio track that will accompany the still image portion of your movie.

Next you will plug this input into the movie.  Here’s how:   Open the Movie Maker home window.  Click at the point in your story line where your first still image appears (the one that begins the series of stills which you have narrated).  Next, click on the "add music" icon at the top left of the Movie Maker home window, and select "add music at the current point."  This will plug in your narration at precisely the right point to coordinate with the slides portion of your movie. Note:  Movie Maker doesn’t care that you are adding words instead of music.  The "add music" button is for adding sound of any kind.  

Now go to the top and far left portion of the Movie Maker home window and in the pull down menu there select "save project."  Play your project back to make sure you have achieved the desired result.  If so, select "publish movie". 

As a photographer I like using stills in my movies to tell a story.  To clue the viewer in on who is telling my slides story I have found it’s artful to start my movie with video clips (motion pictures) so that the viewer connects a voice with a face.  That way, when I cut away to the stills portion of my movie, the viewer remembers the voice and knows who is telling the story. Ending a movie with more video, as I did in the movie of this post, is a pleasing symmetrical way to structure the work, but not absolutely necessary.

Friends sometimes compliment a photo that has captured a decisive moment, I suppose because they think that my reaction time was extraordinary.  What they may not realize is that reaction time has little to do with capturing just the right  moment in photography.  What counts—I learned this from reading about Cartier Bresson– is anticipating an event that is about to unfold, noticing something in the offing, and being ready when it comes.

Out of the corner of my eye (the one aware of action outside the finder as I peer through my rangefinder camera’s viewing window) I see my grandson about to leap across the gap.  I have already figured I’ll need a 1/1000 second shutter speed to capture the leap with clarity.  I’ve set my camera for the right aperture at that speed.  I start pressing the shutter button as I sense he is going through with it.  Got him!  Right in mid air.   Not so much because I had extraordinary reaction time, but because I planned the whole thing as I saw the event unfolding.

Another example:  In the woods I see a leaning tree, a sinuous path, an inviting composition. All it lacks is a walker, a rivet for the eye.  I focus on the point in the sunshine where I want him to pass, and I wait patiently for a walker to make his way to me through the woods and down the path ahead.  Eventually he arrives, and when he steps into the right spot I gently depress the shutter.

Third example, one that took more than a year of anticipating:  I see how nicely the classical church spire compliments the modern sky scraper.  But my vision for the composition requires a dramatic sky, and just the right light.  I wait for those conditions to arrive, but I have many months to wait.  Then, on a windy Spring morning the sky and the light arrive and I am ready.  Clever to have captured just the right moment?  No– imaginative, and patient.

I

In doing some Web research today I stumbled upon a new information storing program called Evernote, which enables you to quickly store text highlights, PDF files, picture files, and whole web pages, and sync these stored bits of information in your own account at the Evernote server, which can be accessed on the Internet from any computer. 

To make all this work you download an Evernote program for your computer from their website.  If you use Firefox or Internet Explorer you can install an Evernote add-on which enables you to select portions of a web page, or entire pages.  Don’t know how Evernote does this, but you can even select and store text bits that are parts of images.  My techie son notes, however, “What I find wacky about Evernote is that you can take pictures of (some) handwriting, and search to locate the words written on that page, but there’s no way to retrieve the text from the note once you’ve found it.  Not nearly as useful as it should be.”

Well, there probably are some improvements to be made, but still, it’s really handy to have a means of storing a broad array of information quickly, and then be able to retrieve the bit you stored a month or two ago by means of a search string (or at least, in most cases).
 
Check out www.evernote.com. 

Promote Your Website!

Once you have created a website, you want people to visit, and keep visiting.  The most important quality of popular websites is fresh and useful information. Weed out notices of transpired events.  Keep the new content coming!  This can be a tedious task over the long haul, which is the reason for a having a Telecom team instead of one Web techie, and being on the lookout for future team members too. 

In addition to maintaining timely and useful information, here are some other inexpensive ways to promote your website:

Study "search engine optimization".  Most Web "surfers" will find their way to you via search engines.  You must learn how to get your website included in the first page of a Google search report, that is, near the top of the Google (or other search engine’s) stack.  If your site doesn’t make the first page, chances are the seeker won’t find it, because he or she won’t take the trouble to look on subsequent pages.

How to get your site ranked near the top of the Google stack?  Here are some techniques that have worked for me:

Choose search terms that few other content providers are likely to have already picked. My photography "handle," TCDavis (just so, with no spaces) was devised by this strategy.  Google "TCDavis" and you will find me at the top of the Google stack, in part because very few other content providers are using that handle.

Throw your line in where the most fish are.  Join large social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, and promote your site by posting information there with links back to your website.

Contact other site maintainers and tell them that you are providing a link at your site to their site, and ask them to reciprocate.  Search engines assign a higher rank to web pages to which many other web pages point (by hyperlinks).

Write a product review for Amazon.com (a HUGE social network, in effect) for a product that has newly been released and therefore hasn’t been reviewed much yet.  Write a detailed review which will be useful to readers seeking information about this new product.  Amazon gives each reviewer a profile space, free.  In your profile space, take advantage of your high visibility:  Promote whatever websites you wish by noting their urls.  Your early review is likely to get lots of "hits," and grateful readers may very well click on those links in your profile.

People love to look at pictures.  If you take good pictures, display them at the photographer’s social network, Flickr.  Once again, take advantage of your visibility there to place links in your photo comments to sites on the web you want your fans to visit.

People love even more to watch videos.  Produce good ones and stream them at YouTube, a hugely popular video site, and in your profile there you will have another platform for promoting the Web links you want them to see (besides your video ones).

Of course, you can also pay a fee to companies which will list your site with various search engines so that it gets included in search indexes.  Make sure to check the effectiveness of such companies.  A good way to check on the honesty and quality of products and services advertized on the Web is to type "review" into a Google search window, followed by whatever you want to investigate.  You will often find reviews by customers who are either very happy or unhappy with the product.  Middle of the roaders don’t usually bother to report. 

Please visit my Web literacy blog and leave questions/comments:  www.CyberKenBlog.com , Rev. Tom Davis