Fire cleanup coordinating agencies are using the Discovery Center as headquarters, so the November Club Meeting will once again be at the Municipal Water District Building, 40524 Lakeview Drive, Big Bear Lake (Corner of Lakeview Drive and Paine). The meeting time remains the same: 5:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m.
There will be a potluck dinner at this meeting, followed by an open discussion of proposed meeting format changes planned for the new year.
Don’t miss out on the holiday potluck coming Thursday, November 15th at 5:30 pm. The door prizes will be given out every 20 minutes during the course of the meeting. We have great free door prizes for our members:
As the year comes to a close, Karen Tangeman, Harry & Nancy Hinz and myself are looking forward to attending the Association of Personal Computer User Group (APCUG) Conference, January 3 - 6, 2007 in Las Vegas. As a member of the Computer Club, you too can attend. This conference is where you can get the latest computer technology from Microsoft, Corel, AVG, Internet Security, CompUSA, plus many more vendors. The cost is only $150.00 for three days which includes all your meals, workshops, presentations, and door prizes from the vendors. There will be round table discussions on: User Group Management; Computer Technology and Consumer Electronics just to mention a few.
At the Conference, there are will be three contests: Best Newsletter, Best Website and a best photographs. Wish us LUCK, as we submitted our Bearly Bytes Newsletter, our website and two photographs by Rick Edwards. Check out the APCUG website to get more information and to register.
REMEMBER, WE ARE DARK IN DECEMBER - HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!
— Yomar Cleary
The 2nd Tuesday of the month in December is December 11th which is too close to the holidays, therefore we will go DARK. The next meeting is Tuesday, January 8th, 5:30 pm at the Discovery Center.
Thanks to our membership who conveyed their desire to have more training and less guest speakers at our meetings, we will plan training for every other month starting in January, 2008, and the odd months we will have guest speakers. Now what we need from you is what type of training do you want us to provide? We have received some suggestions, i.e. wireless routers, scanning, back-up files, Excel, and simple computer basics, which is a good start. If you have any computer topics you’d like to have discussed, call Yomar Cleary at (909) 878-5622 or email her at ycleary@charter.net.
I don’t know how many members are aware of how generous Microsoft has been with Big Bear Computer Club but I want you to know they have been very generous with us. In September Microsoft graciously sent us Vista Home Premium as a special drawing prize for our Christmas Party. As I promptly opened the package after delivery I noticed that something was wrong. It was in FRENCH. What to do, what to do? We decided to donate the program to Beth Renn and her French Class at Big Bear High School. In return Beth sent the Computer Club this very nice e-mail:
“Merci for thinking of us and on behalf of moi and my French students please extend a huge MERCI BEAUCOUP to the Big Bear Computer Club.”
You are very welcome Beth. And as far as our special drawing prize for Christmas; Microsoft sent us another Vista program, this time in English and it is the Ultimate Vista program. Can’t get any better than that. Thank You, Microsoft!
— Karen Tangeman
Thanks to Carole Allen for overseeing the Nomination Committee and providing us with the following nominees:
President — Yomar Cleary
Vice President — Karen Tangeman
Secretary — Rosemary Lloyd
Treasurer — Barbara Moore
Director-at-Large — Rick Edwards
Nominations from the floor will be accepted at the November 15th Potluck Meeting.
Bob Kopolow — Book, Computer Privacy Annoyances from O’Reilly
Jim Applebury — Notebook Backpack by CyberDefender
Karen Tangeman — 50/50 Winner ($19.00)
Ed Chrisman — WinDVD 7 by InterVideo
Rick Edwards — T-Shirt by Microsoft Mindshare
Adobe Captivate 3 is a program used for creating e-learning videos that can be viewed on the computer. The lessons can be saved as files that will play in Windows Media Player. They can be burned to DVD and played back on another computer. Also, lessons can be published on the web and viewed by going to a web site. Captivate 3 is best suited for computer Instructors, educators, business trainers and anyone else who wants to produce computer based learning videos. Of course, the class subject can be anything, not just computer related! (more…)
The other day I ran into one of our members at the grocery store. After we said our hello’s to one another she said to me, “you told us that if we want to review any program all we have to do is tell you and you will get it for us.” I told her that was true and asked her what program she wanted and she told me. Two weeks later, FedEx delivered Hallmark Card Studio 2008 Deluxe to be delivered to one of our members at the next meeting.
Now all this member has to do is use the program and tell us and Hallmark what she thinks about it. After that she gets to keep it. It’s that easy! I can’t tell you guys enough how easy it is to do a review. Why pay money for a computer program or book that you can get for free by doing a review? If there is any program or book that you are interested in reviewing, please email ktangeman@charter.net or contact me by phone or at the next meeting.
— Karen Tangeman
Word is very flexible. You can customize your working environment to your heart’s content. You can change menus, the toolbar, viewing and printing options, and many more variables. There may come a day, however, when you want to reset the Word toolbars structure to their default condition. When you do this, all the toolbar buttons and their order will be set to the same condition they were when you first installed Word. (more…)
Many people are faced with the task of updating workbooks inherited from other people in their offices. In fact, you may be faced with such a challenge. For instance, let’s say you inherit two workbooks which contain links to each other. You want to combine the two of them into a single workbook. When you try to do so, the links between the two are broken automatically by Excel. (more…)
WASHINGTON, DC - CTIA - The Wireless Association® President and CEO Steve Largent issued the following statement today in response to the House of Representatives passage of the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 2007: (more…)
We received an e-mail on September 8th from Marty Englert asking me if I would tell our members about a website called TheGimpyGirls.com. TheGimpyGirls.com is a Lifestyle Magazine for Aging Baby Boomers, the Disabled and the Just Plain Lazy of both genders.
TheGimpyGirls.com offers solid advice, respect, and a keen sense of the absurd to people with physical limitations, regardless of personal architecture. If you, or a loved one, need to choose the right cane or need to find the best cell phone for failing eyes and ears, then The Gimpy Girls have it covered. Please check it out at www.TheGimpyGirls.com
— Karen Tangeman
Club President Yomar Cleary welcomed all of the members. Kent introduced guests. Karen talked about the review program. Karen introduced Carolina Sanabria and Alan Wallace from Cyber Defender (cyberdefender.com).
Alan talked about the Cyber Defender software, a suite that includes anti-virus and anti-spyware. It will download necessary Microsoft Updates to your computer. The system is intelligent enough to possibly detect new exploits quickly, even if they have just been released. Cyber Defender is programmed to look for activity that acts like known viruses or spyware. Then the program can respond to it. (more…)
October 2007 was a very sad month for the Big Bear Computer Club with two of our members passing away, Everett Greenberg and Jack McCarthy. They will both be missed because they both contributed to the Big Bear Community in many ways. We extend our deepest condolences to their families.
