TES ND BY BITS A The Newsletter of the Midland Computer Club May 2009 The President’s Corner I thought I’d take a few minutes this GENERAL CLUB MEETING 7:00 P.M. month to unload one of my biggest pet Meets 4th Wednesday of the month at the peeves – that is those who think they Midland Community Center have to be continuously connected to the 2001 George St., Midland, MI Internet and share the most arcane details of their lives. I got a real kick out of a http://mcc.apcug.org/ comic strip in the newspaper on May 6. I don’t know if you read Pickles in the This month’s date: May 27th daily newspaper or not, but I got a big kick out of Opal’s comments. Opal says, “You’ve got bloggers blogging, Googlers googling, and THIS MONTH’S TOPIC: Investing Web- twitters tweeting,” and in the next pane, she says, “Those sites demonstrated by Bill Tower aren’t serious journalist. Those are sound effects.” There is a time and a place for blogging, googling, and tweeting PROGRAM COORDINATORS (need I include cell phones, pdas, e-mail, etc.?). But most of what I see and hear is just that… sound effects. I have- Contact : Co-Chairpersons n’t succumbed (and don’t expect to) to the urge to share Larry Piper [email protected] all of the things that I do (tooth brushing, hair combing, Joe Lykowski [email protected] etc.) with my life. I do spend a fair amount of time with e- mail, but that is mostly newsletters keeping me up-to-date on technology. At this point in time, I still don’t have a What you missed! cell phone! When I travel, I don’t pull out the laptop at In Apri l, Larry Piper gave a very informative presentation each rest area to check up on the world. The world will do on “Free & Open Source Software.” During the presenta- just fine without me. How about you? What are your im- tion, Larry gave some very good examples of replacement pressions of technology today? software for some of the big name commercial packages — Howard Lewis along with a list of sites where these packages could be (The above comments are the opinion of the author and downloaded. do not necessarily reflect the views of the Midland Com- puter Club.) Upcoming Activities The May meeting will have Bill Tower giving a presenta- tion on “Investing Websites.” He will demonstrate ways to investigate funds and stocks so that you may find the op- tions best suited for you. There will be no meeting in July, and June will have Laura Hammel giving a presentation on August will feature our annual club “Where do I look for news now?” With many newspapers picnic at the Community Center. curtailing publication, people are increasingly turning to the Internet as the source of their information. The presentation will cover local, national and international news long with how to find items that satisfy your interest. 2009 MCC OFFICERS Shadow 4 POSITION EMAIL: NewTech Infosystems, Inc. President Howard Lewis [email protected] Review by Howard Lewis Vice Pres. Bill Tower [email protected] Treasurer Laura Hammel [email protected] It’s been 2-1/2 years since I last reviewed Shadow Membership Gary Ensing [email protected] by NewTech Infosystems, Inc. At that time, I re- Editor Jan Ensing [email protected] viewed Shadow for use on my Windows XP ma- Webmaster Frank Koenig [email protected] chine and I am still using it on that system to make http://mcc.apcug.org/ sure that I don’t lose any data. Shadow 4 has since been released and I am running it on my Windows S I G pecial nterest roups: Vista Ultimate machine and find it to be a very good CLUB PROGRAM COORDINATORS file backup system. Co-Chairman Larry Piper [email protected] Co-Chairman Joe Lykowski [email protected] I was happy when I installed my copy of Windows BOARD MEMBER Vista Ultimate and discovered that it had something Mary Branson [email protected] called “shadow” versions which allows Windows to INTERNET SIG make backup copies of your user files as necessary. It didn’t take me long to discover that this “shadow” Terry Brown [email protected] versioning only worked with the high-end version of PUBLICITY Windows Vista and wasn’t an option with Vista Kathy Bohl [email protected] Home Premium . Needless to say it did save me sev- eral times when I inadvertently over-wrote an older document when I meant to save the document with a new name. Recently I learned that the Vista “shadowing” is not truly dynamic in that it does not Board Meeting save the previous version after each save of a docu- ment and it is possible to lose a version that has The next board meeting will be been saved earlier in the same day. 7 p.m., June 9th, 2009, at Chapel However, Shadow 4 from NTI now allows me to Lane Presbyterian Church, 5501 keep dynamic backups of my documents so that I can recall a version that I created earlier in the day, Jefferson Ave., Midland. but have subsequently over-written. My earlier (Continued on page 3) Membership Enrollment form NAME _______________________________________ PHONE___________________ ADDRESS ___________________________________________________ CITY __________________ ZIP _______________ EMAIL ADDRESS ____________________________________ Membership dues FAMILY ($20) STUDENT ($15) NEW Member ____ renewal ____ Please fill out the above form and mail it along with payment of check or money order to : MIDLAND COMPUTER CLUB Attn: membership chairman P.O. box 132 Midland, MI 48640-0132 you may also pay for membership at a regular club meeting (Continued from page 2) Tips, Tricks & Techniques write-up on NTI Shadow listed many of the positive virtues of the package: 1 – the data is backed up in “raw” format Convert A Row To A Column or Vice Versa (i.e., a Word document is backed up as a doc file, not some (Microsoft Excel) compressed format); 2 – individual files can be restored If you have data in a row (or a column) that you very easily simply doing a copy; and 3 – it is dynamic in want to change to a column (or row), you can that it backups up your documents each time you save your manually move the data one item at a time. To document. Another feature that I had not tried out at that speed up the process, you can use the Paste Special time of the previous review is the “versioning” feature. I’ve command. used this feature with Shadow 4 and have found it very useful as I can now keep two versions (or more) of each of my documents. To accomplish this: I have been very satisfied with Shadow 4 and have now 1. Copy the data in the row (or column) made it part of my standard recommendations for any Win- 2. Next, right-click in the cell where you dows system. At $39.99, Shadow 4 is a good deal and wish to data to begin and select Paste Spe- gives you great confidence that if you overwrite one of cial your documents, you can recover the original. 3. In the Paste Special dialog box, click on Transpose . Useful, useless and strange (in no particular order) Web Sites: The data will now be pasted into the column begin- ning with the cell selected. One special note: the http://whatshouldireadnext.com column and the row areas cannot overlap. If it does, Looking for a good book to read? This site asks for a you will receive an error message. book that you like and then suggests others that you might find interesting. Quickly Create a Photo Album Using Power- http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ Point National Geographic has one of the best online jigsaw puzzle games on the Internet. Select a picture from their You can use Microsoft PowerPoint to quickly cre- hundreds of options and time yourself while setting it. ate a photo album of your digital pictures. To create a photo album: http://preview.tinyurl.com/yco9tl I’m sure you’ve never been frustrated with your computer! 1. On the Insert tab, click Photo Album If you’ve never been frustrated with your computer, this 2. In the Photo Album dialog box, click video is for you. File/Disk under the Insert picture from section http://preview.tinyurl.com/lg4dt 3. Select the pictures to be included in the Here’s a fun mind game that will give you something in- photo album teresting to do when you are bored. Try to fill all of the blank squares. 4. When finished, click Create to generate the photo album www.garden.org Are you planting a garden this year? Here’s a site with some information you might find useful. (Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 3) titled (sic) “95 great free sites and downloads you’ve From the Photo Album dialog box, you can edit probably never heard of” (tinyurl.com/95free-utilities). the pictures, add captions and customize the pic- From the feedback I have received from readers of ture layout and framing format if desired. When this column, there is great interest in totally free com- the album is created, it will use the standard Of- puter utilities, especially in these pressing economic fice theme. After it has been created, you can times. change the theme to any theme you wish. The article categorizes the free software into 12 cate- gories including productivity software, music utilities, security tools, web enhancers, phone utilities, photo Import Photos From A Camera Into Photo and video managers, social networking, PC perform- Gallery (Microsoft Windows Vista) ance enhancements, file synchronization, and busi- ness applications.