Managing HealthCare Information with HealthVault

Taking a Holland America cruise to South America and need to find your immunization records? Want to maintain a healthy weight by keeping track of your exercise regimen? Just need a safe place to store all of your medical records and information that could be accessed in an emergency? HealthVault from Microsoft might be the solution for you.

What is HealthVault?

HealthVault is a trusted place for you to organize, store, and share your health information online. And it’s free. HealthVault is accessible through your Windows Live Login and password on a 24/7 basis.

What HealthVault can do for you:

1.You can use it as a safe and secure place to store all of your medical records, including prescriptions, and X-rays.

2.It’s a great way to keep all of your records up to date. This can be most helpful in case of an emergency. You can even print out an emergency card to carry with you.

3.Important information can be shared with caregivers and others you need to consult with about important health issues.

4.You can use this tool to improve your health and fitness by linking it with record keeping devices like a pedometer, that can send data directly to your HealthVault account on a daily basis. How far do you walk on a daily, or monthly basis? How many calories do you burn? Now you will know.

How Secure is HealthVault?

It’s yours and its private; You, decide what goes into it, who can see, use, and share your info, and which health apps have access to it. Take a look at our security policy by going to the link below:

https://account.healthvault.com/help.aspx?topicid=PrivacyPolicy

Online Health Apps help you manage your information;

Use online health apps – these websites offer features that help you get more out of your health information. Some help you add information to HealthVault. E.g. pharmacies, labs, hospitals, and clinics that connect to HealthVault let you update your medical information. Some help you analyze your health information. Some apps offer recommendations to keep you at your best. There are over 270 apps online today and more are being added.

How do I get started?

Getting Started Simply go to the HealthVault website at www.healthvault.com and register or use your windows live ID and password. It is that easy.

 

for the Holland America Digital Workshop, powered by Microsoft Windows, I am Frank Barcelona, Techspert MS Nieuw Amsterdam

Play It Safe: Back It Up

You probably play it safe in many areas of your life. You drive carefully (hopefully), you secure your valuables, you don’t take unnecessary risks and you have insurance protection. But what about all the data on your computer? I always like to ask people in my Digital Workshop sessions: “What would happen if you lost all the information on your computer right now? Would you go straight for the razor blades or would you be able to restore it from a backup?”

Much of the data on your computer is irreplaceable. I keep decades of my life on my computer and I would be most vexed if something happened to it, so I back it up on a regular basis. The risks could be from things like malicious software, but could also be from a catastrophic hardware failure or even “user failure.” In any case, you probably don’t want to lose those files.

Think of backing up as insurance for your data. Hopefully, you would never have to use it, but it’s good to have the peace of mind from knowing that it’s there. Backing up is simply a matter of making a copy of your information—your documents, photos, archival data and any other personal information—onto some destination outside your computer such as an external hard drive. That way, if something unfortunate happens to what is on your computer, you will be able to restore it once the problem is corrected. An external drive is an excellent option because there would be no intervention necessary. You can easily find large-capacity USB drives available for cheap.

Windows 7 has a nice backup utility built right in. It’s simply a matter of specifying when you would like the backup to occur, what should be backed up and where it should go. The first time you run a backup, all your data is included. Then, typically, on subsequent runs, only the information that has changed since the previous backup will be included, so it will be much faster. This activity can be scheduled to happen automatically whenever you want, such as at night if you leave your computer on, or you can initiate it manually.

If you have a high-speed broadband Internet connection, there are many on-line backup services available. This provides the added benefit of off-site storage. These web sites are in the business of keeping your data safe and secure and the procedure is the same: just specify when to back up and what to backup. These sites are surprisingly inexpensive. Go to www.onlinebackupsreview.com for evaluations of the many on-line backup services that are available.

However you do it, just do it. You may be very glad you did.

- John Busey, Techspert, ms Maasdam

Reach For The Cloud

Hi Everyone,

Rob here on board the Eurodam as we make our way up North to the Baltic.

One of our most popular classes at the moment is the “Introduction to Cloud”, discussing a fantastic way of storing and sharing your files from literally anywhere in the world!  Here we have SkyDrive, Microsoft’s complimentary cloud service.

Now for those of you who haven’t yet heard of Microsoft’s Skydrive this it how it works:

Get yourself a Windows Live ID, simply go to www.WLonHAL.com, enter a few details and you are good to go!

After getting your ID go to www.skydrive.com, log in with your information and from then on you are free to store, access and share any information you want from any computer in the world.  Yep, this means you are not bound to your own PC, you can access your own personal SkyDrive from your friends PC, Smart Phone, Tablet and even a Mac! It’s just like having your own personal online hard drive.

Now to make SkyDrive even more accessible Microsoft have a variety of Apps for all your different devices.  Visit https://apps.live.com/skydrive to see what’s on offer.

Try the “SkyDrive for Windows” application to quickly and easily add files and documents to your SkyDrive straight from your desktop, it also automatically syncs up your files so if you make changes to your Word files it directly backs up online.

Also make use of the great Office Web Apps which allow you to not only create but edit certain office documents online also, just in case you need to make some last minute changes and don’t have a PC with Office installed.

So if you don’t have your own SkyDrive sign up right away and and get the most out of Cloud!

Safe travels,

Rob

ms Eurodam Techspert

What Does This Button Do? Digital Camera Questions Answered

 

Hello There!

This is Techspert Mollie reporting from the ms Zuiderdam! We are currently finishing up our repositioning cruise from the Caribbean to Alaska. Along the way I have had quite a few classes on the “Camera Basics” and I always seem to come across a lot of the same questions from guests. I thought it would be a perfect topic to blog about so that everyone can have these questions answered J Hopefully these questions will be helpful in learning more about your digital cameras as well!

So the majority of the time I have guests coming up to me and saying, “I think when I was playing with my camera a pressed something and now [ insert issue here  ] has happened”

Most of the time these little issues are a quick fix so I’m going to present some easy solutions and hopefully ease the stress of working with your digital camera!

 

• If your screen is showing multiple pictures on your LCD Screen

This means that while you were viewing the photos taken in your camera, you may have zoomed out by mistake. The more time your zoom out of your pictures, the more photos you will see. This is helpful if you want to jump from one picture to another one that way taken previously.

In order to go back to just viewing one photo, you simply press the zoom in button

 

•  If you are seeing extra “stuff” on your screen such as icons, numbers, or a histogram

This means that you may have pressed the DISP button on your camera. Each time you press it, information is “Displayed” on your screen. You can usually press it about two or three times until the information will go away. Sometimes pressing this button may also make your entire screen go black; however, pressing it a second time will bring your screen back to normal.

• If you have different letters on your camera and are unsure what they are

 

ADEP-Automatic Depth of Field Mode

 

M-Manual Exposure Mode

 

Av-Aperture Priority

 

TV-Shutter Priority/Action Shot Mode (Time Value)

 

P-Program Mode-Exposure and Aperture set automatically

 

• IMPORTANT NOTICE:

 

If you click an option to “format” your card, all of your pictures will be erased!

 

There is an internet site called http://www.piriform.com/recuva that you can get your pictures back but just in case, stay away from formatting your card unless you are trying to get rid of your pictures!

 

Hopefully this information will help alleviate some of the questions you may have about using your digital camera! Now go take some pictures!

 

~Techspert Mollie

Ms Zuiderdam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spectacles of the Orient

     Hi there folks, Kristin here reporting from the Zaandam that’s making her way to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  I am near the end of my contract here on this lovely ship and boy what a time it has been.  The Zaandam has been making its way around Asia since December and we have seen some of the most spectacular sights and cities along it’s route. We have recently just transitioned over to Alaska from Kobe, Japan and were able to experience the amazing cherry blossoming all along the itinerary.  I wanted to take this time to share with you some of my pictures that I have taken while aboard the Zaandam, all of which have been edited using the program Windows Live Photo that we teach here aboard all HAL ships.  For those of you who are thinking about taking a cruise with HAL to the orient I cannot think of a better experience and be sure to stop by the Digital Workshop when you do. 

Cheers from the Zaandam,

Kristin

THAILAND

The giant reclining Buddha of Wat Pho, Bangkok

 

The Grand Palace, Bangkok

CAMBODIA

Getting a Tuk Tuk in Sihanoukville

 

Taking a traditional Kymer Cambodian cooking class

VIETNAM

Vistas of Halong Bay, Vietnam

The lovely village of Hoi An, Vietnam

Hotel de Masion in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam

The lush countryside of Nha Trang, Vietnam

CHINA

The Great Wall of China, near Tianjin, China

Nightime shot of the Zaandam in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

SINGAPORE

Colorful Chinatown District

The also colorful district of Little India

JAPAN

The Golden Pavilion of Kyoto, Japan

Shinto Shrine in Kyoto, Japan

Beautiful cheery blossoms, Kyoto, Japan

Osako-Jo Castle amoungst the cherry blossoms

The vibrant Dontonburi District of Osaka, Japan

The hypocenter of Nagasaki where the A-bomb dropped in 1945.

 

 

 

Using Tags More Effectively

Descriptive Tags are a great way of organizing your photos, but quite underused. This organizing technique is a way to digitally label your photos so you can find them at a later date. Have you ever asked yourself, “I wish I could see all my photos of _______?” The most common of theblankstends to be things like ‘sunsets’ or ‘flowers’ or cities you may have visited around the world. If you have placed a Descriptive Tag on those pictures, a simple search on your computer for that word will bring up all those pictures.

A simple program to use to add Descriptive Tags to a photo is Windows Live Photo Gallery. With you Tag and Information Panel active on the right side of the screen, simply click on ‘Add Descriptive Tag’.

What you may consider doing is organizing your Descriptive Tags, which can be done very similar to the way we’d organize folders. On the ‘Home’ tab’s ribbon, you’ll notice a button that says ‘Descriptive Tag’. If you click on the words (instead of the icon) a drop-down list will appear with the option ‘Manage Tags’. This brings up a separate window where you can organize your Descriptive Tags by adding a new one or by dragging and dropping one tag onto another (just like you may have multiple sub-folders inside of a parent folder creating a tree).

For example, I have a Descriptive Tag that says ‘Places’ and inside it are the seven continents, and inside of those folders are the countries I’ve visited on those continents and then the cities are inside those. It’s a nice way to organize because I can then search my computer for any of the wordstreeand it will pick up all those pictures. If I was looking for pictures from Vancouver, I’d be able to search for the word ‘Vancouver’ or ‘Canada’ or even ‘North America’ to find what I’m looking for.

Try making your own Descriptive Tag tree to see just how easy it is to find what you’re looking for later on!

Craig Louis
Techspert on the ms Volendam as we cross the Pacific, heading to Vancouver…

Snipping Tool: A practical use

Hi everyone!

Many guests that I interact with assume that because I’m a techspert I know everything there is to know about computers.  Though I wish I could claim that, it’s simply not true.  The things I know I’ve learned from practical experience, Microsoft training guides for my classes, other techsperts, and the occasional (ok, very frequent) search for the answer on Bing.com.  But sometimes, just like some of you reading this post, I have no idea what to do when something weird happens on my PC.  Absolutely. No. Clue.

I say that to encourage you.  Don’t get discouraged if you don’t know.  It happens to everyone. When I come across situations like this I’ll often go to Bing.com and search for my issue.  As someone once told me, “You’re never the first person to have the problem.”  Many times I can find the solution online written in an article or on a forum like answers.microsoft.com.  If it’s not there, I might write my own post on a forum about my problem to see if someone can help me, or I might e-mail someone I know who might know the answer, like another techspert or even my dad (He’s an IT professional, so he helps me out quite a bit actually).

The only problem with asking for help, particularly when you’re not sure what’s going on, is that it can often be hard to identify the problem for the person assisting you.  Have you ever experienced something like this?

Me: I’m trying to access some folders on my PC, and I can see them, but they’re kind of greyed out at the moment.

Person who is  SUPPOSED to be Helping me: What?  the folders are grey?

Me: Yeah, well not grey.  More like… they kind of look like a ghost or something?

Person: Umm… you have a ghost on your computer?

Me: No, the folder looks like a ghost.

Person: Like a white sheet with eyes?  That’s not possible.

As you can see, this conversation is going nowhere.  I’ve done a horrible job of explaining my problem, they don’t understand what I’m saying, and now they don’t even believe that what I’m talking about is actually happening.  Talk about frustrating!

Luckily, when I use Windows 7 I have a really easy way around problems like this one.  The snipping tool!

Note: The snipping tool is available to use in all versions of Windows 7, with the exception of Windows 7 Starter.

The snipping tool allows me to select a portion of the screen and then, essentially, take a picture of that selection.  I can then save or e-mail that selection if I want.  I can snip absolutely anything that I can see on my screen!

To use the snipping tool, first click on your start button in the bottom left corner of your screen.  Then type in “snip.”  You’ll notice your start menu changes to a list of search results, click on “snipping tool” at the top of the list.

Once the snipping tool is open you can simply place your mouse in the upper left corner of the item, left click and hold, and then drag your mouse down diagonally to the right, creating a box around your item.  Release the mouse once you have the box at the size you’d like. 

For example:  Here’s the snip I created of my problem I mentioned in the example:

I even wrote on the snip with a pen tool to point out my specific issue (see  how this folder is greyed out or “ghosted” compared to the other folders?).

Once I have my snip I can just select the e-mail option to send this to the person who is helping me.  Now that they can see what I’m talking about, it will be a lot easier for them to help me.  And, more importantly, my snip acts as proof: this really DID happen on my PC, or else I would not have been able to snip it!

The snipping tool can be used for a lot of things, but next time you come across something you’re unsure of, snip it, and then someone will have more information when assisting you!

For a video demonstrating the snipping tool, click here!

-Techspert Krista, ms Statendam

Document your vacation with Panoramas!

 

These panoramic photos were created in the free program, “Windows Live Photo Gallery” which can be downloaded at: http://download.live.com

Rotterdam Techspert – Trevor

Microsoft Helps Fight Phishing

Have you ever received a suspicious email that wanted you to provide sensitive information? You were most likely the target of a phishing scheme. Phishing is an attempt to acquire information from an email recipient such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as trustworthy entities, such as a bank or government agency.

It is a problem on the rise. Worldwide, phishing attacks increased 37 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the security firm RSA. Last year, RSA estimates, one out of every 300 e-mails included some kind of malicious link or phishing attempt.

In an effort to combat the problem, Microsoft recently announced that they are teaming up with Facebook, Google and others to provide a new specification to streamline how email providers figure out whether messages lead to phishing attacks and stop them.

Called DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), this new specification offers a way for senders to be verified, and it creates a system that’s built on reputation. Ultimately, DMARC can block suspicious e-mails, based on certain levels of authentication, before they ever hit the inboxes of intended recipients.

To learn more about how you can protect yourself from phishing schemes and other online threats, be sure to check out our session, “PC Security” on your next Holland America Line cruise in the Digital Workshop Powered by Windows.

John Roberts – ms Noordam

It's OK to play with your camera settings!

Reblogged from :

When you walk into a store these days, there are so many different kinds of cameras that are sitting there waiting for you to purchase. And then when you FINALLY decide which one to get, based on price and information provided by the sales associate, you get home open the box and now you get a manual on a disk, not actually in a pamphlet book anymore.

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