KawarthaNet User Group: May 2005

Attendance:
Adam Panter, Bob Stevenson, Larry Muter, Dan Jackson, Mike Ricks, Bob Stokes, Bob Birkett, Bernie Fobert, Joe Groendyk, Pat Rafferty, Bob Skelly, Al Wright, Niesje Groendyk, Bill Potts, Don Jardine, Norm Bailey, Paul MacCauley, Anne Panter
Minutes of last meeting:
online
Financial report
(not included in online minutes)
As it was agreed at a prevous meeting to give $200 to Settlers' Village for the use of Henderson House in 2005, the funds in the investment account must be transferred to the chequing account. Anne will draw up a letter requesting this for Bill and Garth to sign.
Anne had ordered cheques, but the address on them was incorrect. They were returned to the bank and destroyed. New ones have been ordered.
New Business:
1. Settlers' Village
  Anne passed out membership forms ($20 for individuals, $30 family)
2. Internet News:
  Thanks again to Don Jardine for providing copies of the Internet News.Anne will take extra copies to Bobcaygeon & Fenelon Falls libraries.
'Round the Table
1. Windows Media Centre
  Paul described this new product from Microsoft which will support video transmitters, enabling you to watch movies / TV anywhere in your home.
2. CD's and DVD's
  Q: How to transfer data from a CD to a DVD.
  A: You can do so by copying the data - but you may not need to. You can play a CD on a DVD player. What matters is the format of the files. You need to check what file formats the DVD player can read. eg. Most will read .mp3 (music) and .jpg (pictures), but not .avi (movies from a digital camera).
3. Windows XP for demonstrations
  
  Everyone at the meeting is now using XP. The Nexicom laptop used for demonstrations runs Windows 98. There was discussion of the KIUG group buying a copy of XP to install on the laptop, and whether the group would qualify for an educational discount. Anne will ask Beth if the laptop will actually run XP.
4. Printing from a web page
  Q: When I print a web page, the right side is cut off.
  A: (Paul) The printer settings available to you are dependent on your printer, not the web page. Check the Print Preview to see if it will be truncated. If so,
  ·If there's a "resize" option in the Print box, use that
  ·Set minimum margin width
  ·Try using landscape rather than portrait mode.
5. Email signatures
  Q: How do you put a standard message at the bottom of all your emails?
  A: Use the "signature" feature in your email programme. In Outlook Express, it's under Tools / Options /Signatures.
6. Photo slideshows
  Q: I have scanned slides and negatives, and put together a slideshow, with background music. Can this be played on a DVD player?
  A: Refer to question #1 above. Many programs that create audio-video presentations (eg. pictures with background music, slideshows) use proprietary formats that cannot be read by DVD players. eg. You can't play a PowerPoint presentation on a DVD player. Some DVD players do support files created in Windows Movie Maker. Check the information that came with the DVD player.
7. Windows shut-down
  Q: Often when I shut down Windows I see a pop-up message saying to wait for a programme to finish. Why is this?
  A: Check the Task Manager (cntl-alt-delete or right-click on the task bar) to see what is running on your machine. It is possible that a spyware programme is running in the background. To be safe, run a "malware removal" programme (see next item)
8. Spyware / Malware
     Q: When I run Adaware, it "flags" several programs. How do I know which to remove? (eg. Comet Cursor, Data Miner)
     A: If a program is flagged, it's probably spyware, and safe to remove. If in doubt, just "quarantine" it. The programes mentioned (Comet Cursor, Data Miner) are definitely spyware: delete them. Paul commented that 60-70% of all internet traffic is now spyware.
     Regularly run a malware remover, such as Adaware (Windows 98 or XP) or Microsoft's new Malicious Software (Malware) Removal Tool (XP only), or Norton's spyware removal program.
     If you have downloaded the Microsoft remover, and have "automatic updates" set, the remover will automatically run in the background on a regular schedule (eg. every second Tuesday). You can also run it from the Microsoft site, or download a copy to run offline.
9. Webshots
  Q: Where do you get the handy calendars on the Windows "wallpaper"?
  A: www.webshots.com
10. Weather reports
  From www.weathernetwork.ca you can make the weather page your home page, or have a daily weather report emailed to you, or make it an icon on your desktop.
11. Increasing attendance
     Bob Stevenson suggested sending a notice of the meeting to the Kawartha Computer Club in Peterborough (Anne will follow up).
     He also suggested we get our own web page (ie. our own .com or .ca address) We do have a page at www.kawartha.net/~bobcom/knetuser.htm which is quickly found in Google. Nexicom donates the web space, and Anne updates the content. Also, it has a link on www.bobcaygeon.com
     Anne noted that a .com address has an advantage over .ca, because .com is the "default" address used by browsers. (eg. enter Bobcaygeon into the address line of Internet Explorer, and it will automatically look for www.bobcaygeon.com.) By the way, the Bobcaygeon Chamber of Commerce were offered the Bobcaygeon.com URL, but decided to use Bobcaygeon.org instead.
12. Blogging
  Q: How do you creat a blog (an online diary)?
  A: (Adam) Go to a blog site (eg. www.livejournal.com is one of hundreds) and follow the instructions
13. Searching
  Q: Searches (eg. Google) result in so many "hits". How can you filter out all the unwanted results.
  A: Search techniques would be a good topic for a demonstration! A couple of suggestions:
  ·Use a minus sign to eliminate words. Eg Sweden - USA will find articles about Sweden, eliminating any with USA in the text.
  ·Use quotes to search for an exact phrase. Eg. "malware removal tool" will find only results with that exact phrase. Without the quotes, the search engine will look for documents containing the individual words anywhere within the text.

Demonstrations:
Brief demonstrations of four programs.
- AudioGrabber www.audiograbber.com-us.net (freeware)
  (from the AudioGrabber Help file): "Audiograbber is a program that copies music and stores it on your computers harddisk. Its main purpose is to copy music from CD's. This process copies the music digitally and thus you will get perfect copies. It includes functions to check that the copies made are true to the original. Not all CD-ROM drives can however read digital audio so there is also an option to copy the music through the soundcard with a slight sound degradation. It is also possible to copy sound via the soundcard from an external source, like a turntable or a radio."
  
  If there is interest, we can have a demo of line-in recording (LP's, audio tapes) at a future meeting
- Irfanview www.irfanview.com (freeware)
  IrfanView is a compact, easy-to-use image viewer and editor. It is handy for viewing a variety of formats: if someone has sent you an email attachment which you can't open, try Irfanview. It is also useful for resizing (shrinking) pictures...eg. to view large pictures people have sent you, or to shrink pictures befores ending them by email (please!).
- BitTorrent www.bittorrent.com (freeware)
  This is a file-sharing programe for large files (eg. movies. TV shows). It has a large user base, and works by sending the file in small parts from multiple users.
- Art Rage (freeware)
  "ArtRage is a free painting package that lets you play around with realistic painting tools in a simple, intuitive environment. ArtRage lets you paint your own picture from a blank canvas, or load an image to 'trace' using any of its painting tools, letting you recreate your own images as paintings."
  1.6MB download

Next Meeting
Thursday, June 9, 2005, 7:00 pm
Henderson House, Settlers' Village, Bobcaygeon