July 11, 2008
The meeting was called to order at 7:35 P.M. by President Chuck Horner. He welcomed new members and invited non-members to join.
SIG Announcements:
Del Parton reminded everyone that the Hardware SIG will meet tomorrow evening (as usual, the night after the Main Meeting) at the Smith’s. Starting time is 8:00 P.M., official ending time is midnight. Bring your hardware, software and as much documentation as you can find.
Bud Gallagher noted that for the last year or so there has been minimal participation in the New User SIG. As a result the SIG will go on vacation for several months, freeing up time for him to attend to some personal concerns. Reinstatement will depend on revived interest.
Jan Fagerholm announced that the Spectacular Linux SIG will meet as usual on the last Saturday of the month, July 26th, at 2:00 P.M. They will be looking at the new Mandriva release. And bring your own Linux projects.
Other Announcements:
Bruce Hevelin has resigned as Program VP. Needed: someone to arrange and coordinate monthly presentations for the Main Meeting.
Member Bette Leslie is at Kaiser Hospital in Fremont. Everyone please send her good thoughts.
Presentations:
Diane George noted that we have a new host for our website, allowing for more capabilities. She focused on presenting the new Forum, at www.forum.pcc.org. A discussion forum differs from a blog in that it is much more interactive. It’s like a SIG in that folks can ask a question, get an answer, and/or engage in online ‘conversations.’ With the help of George Kornbluth she demonstrated registration. New member Danny Richardson is the moderator. He has provided Diane with substantial help in getting the Forum up and running. He noted that it is based on Open Source so there are a large number of potential plug-ins.
Jan Fagerholm excitedly presented Google Pack, one of the best-kept secrets on the Internet. To find it, go to the Google home page, click on the More link, scroll way down to the Even More choice. At the bottom of that page, go to Pack, also at the bottom.
Google Pack includes the Star Office Suite, which turns a bare bones computer into a useful system. It adds many multi-media features. If you hate the Microsoft Office 2007 application ribbon ‘feature,’ you’ll like the Google Pack word processor menus. Jan demonstrated selecting and downloading applications. The main difference between Star Office and Open Office (a related Open Source productivity suite) is that Star Office some proprietary font technology.
The Draw program in Star Office is a basic vector graphics application. It’s not high-end professional graphics editing, but provides the simple scalable images, such as arrows, that are sufficient for many situations. And it’s easy. Impress, the Star Office presentation application in the suite, uses the same look and many of the same shortcuts that PowerPoint does. However, Star Office Base, the database application, is not interchangeable with other database applications (such as Microsoft Access). Database applications are generally not interchangeable.
Jan had some tips for enhancing the Google Earth experience and took the group on a tour, literally, of a few interesting local places. Picasa is a simple photo manager. It handles most of the basic photo correction functions. Try Google Pack for yourself!
Tonight’s tip:
Chuck had a hassle and a half trying to print a huge, humongous spreadsheet that someone had sent him. To get rid of the complicating formatting, he was told to Right Click and select “Paste Without Fonts or Attributes.” If that doesn’t work, Pasting into Notepad will remove all formatting. Then Select All, and you can Paste into any application as raw text. Notepad, the basic word processor included with Windows, strips all formatting from any document.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:39 P.M.
The next meeting will take place at the same location on August 1, 2008.
