SPCUG President Milt Hull began the group's April meeting by reminiscing about where the technology we use has come from: 5 MB hard drive for $1,700 and PC Magazine being rather thick, filled with computer-related advertisements. Today, the magazine is thin and runs the occasional ad for booze. "Wow! Things have changed."
The Sacramento PC Users Group exists to educate and inform the public, especially our members, on the nature of and uses for computers. We deliver our services various ways: online, in person, at general meetings, and through our magazine, Sacra Blue. Editors Tom Anderson and Ken Hopkins gave their report regarding the current issue.
Tom queried the audience, asking how many had already downloaded April's issue. It was a trick question, since the issue had not yet been released for distribution. Unfortunately, due to activities that occur about this time of the year (taxes), time just wasn't available to keep Sacra Blue on the front burner, so to speak. The quantity of articles suffered this issue, but never the quality. This issue includes a collection of links for Web sites offering free products and services, a listing of Sacramento area Internet-friendly hotels, and other informative columns.
Brian Smither introduced the inexpensive program dbXtend, a utility for Outlook Express that can trim out unwanted elements of e-mails once they have been read. For those who rarely delete any of their e-mail, the size of the folders can become quite large. DBXtend can trim away HTML tags, leaving just the textual matter; discard attachments; and other activities. The size of the e-mail folders become much more manageable. The program can be ordered directly off the Web at $30.
Stan Morris reported on the newly acquired volunteers working for SPCUG. He reminded the audience that the concept of "burnout" is very real and that SPCUG suffers from it, as do volunteers in every other organization. We eagerly accept fresh energy and promise to make your efforts as rewarding to you as they are to us. Many of the positions we have require very little time but are essential for the smooth operation of the group and provide useful service and benefit to the membership.
SPCUG's current critical need is a volunteer to manage the SPCUG Lending Library, a collection of books and instructional videos on various computer topics. The current manager must reluctantly resign. If anyone is interested in volunteering, please read about our current needs. They are posted in all of our publications.
The SPCUG is honored to be able to provide scholarships to graduating high school students for their imminent college studies. Don Mongeau, the scholarship program director, introduced SPCUG's latest award winners. Quinn Martin, from Galt High School, made an outstanding contribution to that school's computer network. He essentially rebuilt it from the ground up. He is now a member of that school's paid administrative staff. He was also cited in the Future Business Leaders of America.
The other award will be forwarded to the other winner who could not attend the meeting.
SPCUG's Web SIG has been re-activated by Marty Harwell and Evelyn Kaehler. Last September, the SIG held one meeting, then disappeared. Marty has scheduled the SIG's next meeting on Monday, April 22, at Sacramento Training and Computer Facility Rentals on Auburn Boulevard. The meeting will cover current Web technologies, including PHP, Javascript, PERL, MySQL, Apache servers, and how to make it all work together.
Speakers scheduled for upcoming meetings include: Alpha Software showing their Alpha 5 database in May, and Microsoft showing digital imaging software in June. But tonight's speaker, flying in from Germany just for us, had last-minute problems obtaining a visa permit. Milt Hull, therefore, demonstrated the product, OLWorkgroupFolders, a client/server product permitting simultaneous, multiple-user access to your Outlook resources.
Serious Magic (resurrected from Play, Inc.) is showing Visual Communicator, a TV production studio for your computer. Ken will finish up, showing several pop-up killers and cookie washers.
Ken Hopkins made mention of the latest virus threats making the rounds. The "Bill Clinton" virus and a new variation of the KLEZ e-mail attachment are making a mess of people's computers.
The first line of defense is knowledge—be wary of unexpected e-mail attachments. Disable the e-mail program's preview pane (or at least disable its ability to show HTML-formatted messages).
KaZaA has several obnoxious elements, one that comes in unbidden and others that you can choose to opt out of (if you are aware that the choice was given to you). KaZaA is a file-sharing program, similar in concept to Napster, and installs without your knowledge an application developed by Brilliant Software. This unknown piece of software sits in the background waiting for commands from Brilliant HQ for the purpose of "distributed computing." That's where a million small problems are solved by a million different computers, the solutions collected by Brilliant, and the big picture problem is then solved. But you don't know it's happening, and that's the problem—it amounts to theft of your computer time.
Ken also mentioned that Yahoo is aggressively resetting all Yahoo users' accounts to receive advertisements and other promotional announcements. But you won't know about it. So starting today and every six months, go back to your preferences settings and uncheck all those boxes that say, "Yes! Send me SPAM!" A comment from the audience advised keeping one box checked, else Yahoo will close your account.
Ken finished with a report on the fact that SPAMmers have figured a way to include cookies with e-mail, the same kind of cookies accepted by your Web browser. Just one more bother to be aware of.
