Milt Hull opened the meeting and welcomed those who braved the weather to attend. First off, he had some good news about our e-mail situation. He finally got the system working, but has not yet input anyone's name. He will get the list from Tom Anderson and get the names in so we will have our e-mail again. It is run by a different company and he is pleased with the results.
Ken Hopkins: This month's Sacra Blue is 40 pages and we got it out to 140 user groups around the world, Australia, Taiwan, and places like that. Within an hour of posting it, we had a request to reprint an article, and within two hours they had the article.
We're still looking for people to write articles. We can take care of the grammar and stuff, but we need you for the ideas. Whether it's a product review or how to do something—we'd love to get short little tips, a paragraph or so that you found on how to do something.
Tom Anderson: We need Chapter and SIG reports, also. We're not getting anything from you. If you put on a meeting, have your secretary drop us a note on what was covered. If you're in a SIG, see if you can find a volunteer to write it up. We can't print it if you don't write it.
We have a new column this month of reviews of software for Palm™ handhelds. We'll be including stuff for the Windows CE devices as well. We have a couple of pieces about broadband experiences, one with cable modem, the other with DSL.
Brian Smither: I'd like to make some comments as my role as Product Review Editor. I have the authority to ask manufacturers to send me free stuff to review and evaluate. I get to keep it. I get so much stuff I don't have time to review it all. Here is a case in point. It's called System Commander 2000. It lets you install not only Windows, but DOS and Linux and Windows 2000 Server and some other things, and every time your computer boots up you get to pick which of these operating systems you want to run. But, I don't have a computer I want to install this on. Not that this is a bad product, but they sent it and I won't review it. So I'm asking one of you if you'd like to review it. You have to use the product and give an honest, complete evaluation. You also have to give some sort of security.
When I'm happy with your review I give you back the security and you get to keep the product without spending one cent, other than the time you spent figuring out how well it would work for you and how well it might work for someone else. System Commander is published by Vcom. I will have other nice products for testing, some hardware, some software, and all I need is an honest evaluation, which we will publish.
Election Nominations: The floor was opened for nominations, but no one new was nominated tonight. We already have nominations for Milt Hull (President), Tom Anderson (Vice President), Brian Smither (Secretary), and Don Frieze (Treasurer) for the positions they still hold. Any member can be nominated or can self-nominate.
Stan Morris: Tonight we take some time to show our appreciation to our volunteer staff, who do a lot of work around here that doesn't get enough credit, even from those of us who do notice. For one person tonight we are going to show some appreciation for some of the duties he's done for us over a number of years. He's put a lot of hours into his work and held a number of positions.
Frank Leonard joined the PC User Group in June of 1988. Since then he's held the office of BBS Systems Operator, Vice President, President, Listserve manager, archive historian, and trade show coordinator. Frank has served on many subcommittees and been on the Steering Committee for all those years I've been here and longer. Back then we had a BBS instead of the Internet, and it was our main life blood in between meetings. As far as I know, Frank developed the system, and with parts we patched together, the system was installed in his home. Frank monitored that thing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It took a lot of maintenance and checks on the computer. He put in late hours, as I knew as a new member trying to learn the DOS system, and would find him there to help at 11:30 at night. Frank, would you come up here? I am happy and proud to present this plaque for all the work he's done for us all these years.
Frank Leonard: I appreciate the award for the work I've done, although I feel it was a time of camaraderie, a time to give back to the community for the help I got in the early days. It's a social experience, a professional experience, and a joy. I've made a lot of really neat friends and it's been enjoyable.
Milt Hull: I want to extend the thanks to Stan for coming up with the idea, and it seems this will be an ongoing thing.
Sunny Bishop: I'm the President this year of the Sacramento Chapter of the Society for Technical Communications. We're having a conference this weekend and would like to invite anyone interested in an introduction to technical communications and the Web. It's called "E-writer in the Workplace" and it's all about electronic delivery of information. We're doing XML, single-source publishing, Web usability, PDF, Flash, WebWorks Publisher, and all the newest ways to get content to the Web.
Ken Hopkins: Future Speakers- Next month we have elections and Intuit, featuring Matt McCann, showing Quicken, and Proxim to show us wireless networking. April brings Gyrations, to show us a gyroscopic mouse. This mouse is more intended for presentations, but it's a cool device. TechSmith will show us Camtasia, which is a moving screen capture program, so you can capture sequences of images, do a demo, send files. At our May meeting we have Franklin scheduled to show us their eBook. eBook is about the size of a paperback, is another PDA, so you see more of the book, and is intended to be a book application. You download different books and read them that way. In June Milt and I are going to punish ourselves and do another home-grown presentation, this time on handheld computing. For July we have zTrace scheduled, who make a laptop tracking software. It embeds itself into your computer and when you lose it and report it, the next time it's used to log on to the Internet, it tracks down where they are.
Milt: It goes right to the ISP, and the ISP can look up the account and find your computer.
Audience: Lojack.
Ken: Right. Lojack for a laptop. August and September are still open. In October we have an e-commerce presentation planned.
Milt: I have a whole bunch of 30-pin 4 meg SIMMs if anyone wants them.
