Volume 24  January, 2005  Issue No. 1

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENT
 Location:
Wentzville Crossing Expo Center
118 Mall Parkway
Wentzville, MO 63385
636-327-7220

Dates:
January 21-22-23, 2005

Hours:
Friday 12:00 - 9:00
Saturday 10:00 - 7:00
Sunday 11:00 - 5:00

NOT "OUR" COMPUTER SHOW, NO CLUB PERKS. INFO FOR INTERESTED PARTIES ONLY.

The Next Meeting

Progressive Raffle

Jackpot is up to $275.00!!

18 cards left 

 

Regular Meeting


 

 

Wednesday, January 19

Caseyville Township Bldg. 
10001 Bunkum Rd.
Fairview Heights, IL

Directions:      Map:

 

Board 
Meeting

Wednesday, February 2

Ponderosa Steakhouse

5 Eastport Plaza Drive 
Collinsville, IL
(618)345-5006

Directions: 

Meal starts about 6:00. Meeting starts at 7:00

Everyone is welcome
   

 

The Presentation

This
Meeting

 

Microsoft Rep

 

Next
Meeting

 

Undecided

 

 

Hello From The Pres...
Mike Taphorn

HOLIDAY PARTY 

As usual the Holiday Party was a big success. 

Thanks to everyone that helped out! 

It always amazes me how we always pull it together at the last minute and end up with good friends, good door prizes, great food and plenty of all the above... 

Thanks again for sharing your time with the club. We wouldn't be a club without all of you. Even if you've missed a few meetings, come on back and we'll welcome you with welcome arms.... Well, most of you anyway... 

MICROSOFT DEMO 

This month we are going to have an official Microsoft rep. at our meeting. He is going to make sure we know how to protect ourselves from the nasty programs that try to mess up our computers on a daily basis. We gave him an open invitation and he is going to put together a demonstration that I'm sure everyone will enjoy. Please attend this meeting and be on your best behavior (Dennis). If this one goes well, we may be able to get another demo in the future and that is always a good thing. Seriously, I think we all use Microsoft products on a daily basis and it is going to be great to have someone from Microsoft at our meeting. 

MICROSOFT DEMO's IN FUTURE 

I signed up on Microsofts Mindshare website, I'm going to try to get some software for us to demo at future meetings. If you or anyone you know would be willing to take some software home and right a short review and/or do a demo for the club, let me know and I'll hook you up with the software list. We can request whatever we want... 

PROGRESSIVE RAFFLE IS GROWING 

The Progressive Raffle Prize continues to grow. There are 18 cards left and the prize is up to $275 cash. I'm sure Carlos is going to be busy selling tickets this month, so get your tickets early and often. 

That's all for now.... 

See you at the meeting …

 Mike

 

The Computer Master
Jim Tomlinson, Vice President




See you at the meeting!
 Enjoy.....JT

 

 

The Treasurer's Report
Dianne White

TREASURER'S REPORT
Don Wold, Former Treasurer

Balance as of Dec 1, 2004: $5208.20

INCOME:
(All income for Dec 2004 received by or
furnished to Dianne White, newly elected
Treasurer. (See her report for income received
in December 2004.)

EXPENSES:
Miscellaneous Expenses:
Rm. Reserva. Exp. Ponderosa Jan mtg: $20.00
New GCC Chkg Acct Deposit necessary 100.00
to open new chkg acct.
Quicken Basic 2005 Program for new 31.92
Treasurer.
Xmas Gift Check for Mtg. Place Custod. 75.00
(Joanne Seaton)
Food for Xmas Party - Quiznos 138.27
Xmas Gifts (flashlights) for GCC Mbrs 1120.00
Transfer money from West Point Bank 3500.00
Chkg Acct to new UMB - Collinsville
chkg acct.
Total Expenses: $4985.19

Balance as of Dec 31, 2004: $223.01
(Note: Balance of $223.01 in chkg acct plus $100 in Petty Cash Acct
will be transferred to new Treasurer during January 2005.)

TREASURER’S REPORT

Dianne White, Treasurer as of Jan. 1st, 2005

BALANCE as of Dec 1st, 2004 $100.00

INCOME:

16 new mbr., 10 renewals: $390.00
CD sales: 00
DEC. Roll-over jackpot: $139.00
Check from GCC $3500.00
TOTAL INCOME: $4029.00 
$4129.00

EXPENSES:

Cable cord for comp. Show $9.00 $9.00

BALANCE AS OF JAN 1ST, 2005: $4120.00

Roll Over Jackpot now worth: $275.00 ***

 

The Secretary's Report
 Carlos Mariles

December 15, 2004 minutes,

The brand new president opened the meeting at 6PM. He dispensed with the previous minutes and went ahead and explained the order of the meeting. 


He then welcomed the new members and guests and proceeded to welcome Mrs. Kara Pritchard from the Computer Room store in Fairview Hts. Mrs. Pritchard was kind enough to donate a USB glowing mouse pad for the door prize drawing and also offered a free rubber key board to any member who visited her store that night. Many took her offer and went to visit her store after the meeting. 

Mike directed the membership to form a line and star sampling all the pizza, sandwiches, salads, cookies, pies, etc. and to start socializing.


Plenty of door prizes were donated and given to those lucky enough to win. 


The next meeting will be held on Jan. 19, '05 at the same time and place.

Till then,

Carlos

 

 

The Membership Chairman
JC Spelce

Number of Members in attendance last month:  
Total Membership Before last month's meeting  
      Number of Members renewing last meeting    
      Number Of Members  joined last meeting   
      Number of members dropped    
Current Total Membership   
     Number of Members in Good Standing  
     Number of Members on Probation  

 

The Web Master
Dennis McMurtrey

 


Librarian
Jason Whitener
Assistant  
Dennis McMurtrey

The Librarians

 

 

 

The Editor
 Chuck White

I know this sounds like a broken record BUT, I still have unnamed photos for badges. If your badge doesn't have a photo see me to have one taken or assign a photo already taken.

 

Mitch's Corner
Mitch  Graves

Make Mozilla/Firefox EVEN Faster

http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php

IF you MUST use IE....
Go to this link periodically and have IE auto scanned for 'scumware'.

http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/

It will not catch everything by a long shot but it could only help.





Later,

 

 
 
 

Miscellaneous
 Things Of Interest And Importance To Someone 

Review: Photo-Sharing Options Abound
Jan 13, 7:12 PM (ET)

By ANICK JESDANUN


NEW YORK (AP) - If you're like a lot of people, you've got a wealth of digital photos left over from the holidays that you'd like to share with family and friends. Thanks to the Internet, there are more options than ever. Some services even let you make images available to the general public.

But be forewarned: Expect a barrage of pitches for photo printing and other services. That's the tradeoff for getting free unlimited storage space, a hallmark of most of the nine services I tested.

Understanding the need for these companies to make a living, I don't begrudge them the pitches. But I am annoyed by services that make my friends register just to view photos:

So goodbye, Snapfish.

In my reality TV-style elimination, Webshots was the next service to get the boot.

You must install its software; others offer Web interfaces. Adding to the outrage, Webshorts' software replaced my desktop wallpaper with photos of palm trees and autumn leaves.

Though I consider the ads fair, it should be OK to simply ignore them. Not so with Ofoto.

I wanted to like Ofoto, the offering from Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) (Remember film?). Lately, many friends and relatives have used Ofoto to send me online albums of weddings and an engagement. They were relatively easy to call up - and save if you register for an optional, free account.

But the photos you share disappear if you don't buy something from Ofoto at least once a year. Sure, it could be a 29-cent print, but I don't like to be coerced.

See ya later, Ofoto.

(Snapfish has a similar policy, but it's already eliminated.)

Of the remaining six, Yahoo, America Online and Shutterfly all focus on the basics: Add photos. Share them. Order prints, mugs and other goodies.

Typepad, Streamload and Flickr do more.

But Typepad got the boot, despite its ease-of-use and packaging with a blogging service from Six Apart. Plans with photos start at $8.95 a month. You're not subjected to e-commerce, but you can't organize photos as easily.

Streamload is ideal for large files like video and music, but at $4.95 and up per month to get the decent sharing features, the service may be overkill for photos.

The final four candidates are all strong.

America Online's service supports several formats, including JPEG, TIFF and GIF. You and your friends can download hi-res versions of photos for free, and AOL's ads for photo-printing sales aren't as "in your face."

You don't even need to be an AOL subscriber - screen names from the company's free instant messaging service also work, as do ones from the Compuserve and Netscape access plans.

But I found the service slow (AOL says it may be my connection, but I didn't have problems with any of the others). The interface was also a bit clunky, and I had to hit tabs to switch between files stored on my computers, on my account at AOL or on friends' accounts. Most services have better integration.

Flickr gets good marks for innovation.

Besides adding captions, you can tag photos with keywords for easier searching and mark up photos with comments - for instance, put a box around someone's face so that when others scroll over it, "What an idiot" pops up.

Create a circle of friends from college, and any photo added by one can be automatically shared to all. Or make photos public and create groups on the fly - for instance, bringing together people who've posted public photos tagged "tsunami."

Alas, all that innovation makes the service confusing to use. Power users with a lot of patience may enjoy giving Flickr a ride but my attention span is quite limited.

Now, where was I again?

As for the remaining two, you can't go wrong with either.

Unlike AOL and Flickr, neither Yahoo nor Shutterfly offers free hi-res downloads and both limit you to the JPEG format.

But Shutterfly gets votes for:

_Unlimited storage forever. Yahoo accounts expire if inactive for six months.

_The ability to share a group of photos, rather than the entire album or a single photo only.

_Friends viewing large albums see small versions of photos, or thumbnails, 20 at a time. Yahoo and most others show them all at once - painful for a dial-up user.

_Optional software for organizing and adding photos online is available for Mac and Linux computers. Yahoo's drag-and-drop plug-in requires Windows computers using the Internet Explorer browser.

Yahoo gets votes for:

_You can send photos from a camera phone.

_You can share photos by sending an e-mail or instant message or by giving out a Web address. Shutterfly limits it to e-mail.

_With Yahoo, you can share photos with everyone, only those you specifically invite or those who appear on a list of friends. Shutterfly limits sharing to invites.

_Yahoo lets you edit or delete an album so subsequent visitors see changes. With Shutterfly, once an invite goes out - say, after a wild New Year's celebration - you can't recall it. Photos, however embarrassing, stay in the system forever.

_Yahoo also lets some people download hi-res versions of photos, though the photo's owner must be a premium Yahoo member, either by paying $5.95 a month or getting high-speed service through a Yahoo partner like SBC Communications Inc. (SBC)

It's a close vote, but Yahoo wins 5-4. 
---

 

 

The Lighter Side 
Of Computing


10 Ways To Tell If A Redneck Has Been Working On A Computer....

1. The monitor is up on blocks.
2. Outgoing faxes have tobacco stains on them.
3. The six front keys have rotted out.
4. The extra RAM slots have Dodge truck parts installed in them.
5. The numeric keypad only goes up to six.
6. The password is "Bubba".
7. The CPU has a gun rack mount.
8. There is a Skoal can in the CD-ROM drive.
9. The keyboard is camouflaged.
10. The mouse is referred to as a "critter".

If you have something you want to share, just send it to me using the above mailbox 
or catch me at a meeting.