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Our group's new president, Frank Leonard, honked his car horn to bring the
April meeting of the group to order. We had about 200 in attendance with about
10 visitors. Frank began the meeting by asking new members to join, saying, "It
will change your life." Frank cited our group's benefits, including a great
magazine, an e-mail discussion list, software and training media libraries,
chapters and SIGs, and mentors. Frank asked the audience to "compare the
response to your problems from our users group with the response from a
technical help line." Frank also supplied the meeting's laptop computer since
executive vice president Tim Cardozo couldn't get the stuck zipper case on the
group's computer open--Frank couldn't resist recommending the PKUNZIP utility
to solve the problem.
Frank also had some recognition to give to
several members. Before the general meetings we hold 45-minute tutorials on
Windows 95/98 and the Internet (the topic alternates every month), and Frank
thanked instructor Dennis Duffy and equipment coordinator Ron Lambert for their
fine work. Frank thanked Ken Hopkins for producing new officer badges for us.
(Ken said it was a great excuse to get a new color printer.) Don Mongeau, our
scholarship coordinator, reported that he had selected a winner for this year's
college scholarship, and he will introduce the winner at a future meeting.
Finally, Frank asked members to sign a large get-well card for
Sacra Blue
book
review editor (and former treasurer) Tom Anderson, who was recovering from
multiple heart bypass surgery. (Tom is doing fine at home as of this writing.)
Sacra Blue
Frank started the reports by called
Sacra Blue
editor Eric Butow to the stage.
Eric announced that eBlue had yet to come online due to some technical
glitches, but he was glad to see that people enjoyed the new version of
Sacra Blue. (There's mixed reaction to the blue ink, though.) Eric's last issue as
editor is in July and he asked for volunteers since time was growing
short--Eric would be giving his last report three months (to the day) after
this meeting.
Listar Report
Our group has a new Listar e-mail discussion service, but so far there's low
traffic. For those of you who aren't aware that we have such a new service,
you'll want to see Frank's "Prez.com" column on page 10 in this issue so you can
learn how you can sign on. It's a very simple process that requires about a
minute of your time (if that).
On some related questions from the audience,
Frank explained that we don't have
DSL access to our Web site yet. DSL, or direct subscriber line, is a high-speed
connection using existing phone wires to your Internet service provider (ISP).
You have to pay $80 per month and be within three miles of a telephone switch.
Currently only 60 percent of customers are that close to a telephone switch.
We're also looking at obtaining FTP access so we can download software library
files from our Web site. The Steering Committee will be discussing this matter
in greater detail, and as always, everyone is invited to come to the Steering
Committee meetings and participate.
Pep Talk
Past president Tony Barcellos offered some words of encouragement and
clarification. He referred to Frank's first impression of the officers of the
users group in his April column. Frank wrote that he held the group leaders "in
awe"; they were somehow a select, unapproachable group. Tony took Frank's
perception as a cue to clarify the meaning and purpose of the Steering
Committee, which has historically consisted partly of user group officers.
"There's one thing about the Steering Committee," Tony began. "It's made up of
those who show up! We'd like to have you there." Tony continued, "This group is
composed and powered by volunteers! Please come and share your ideas." (Of
course, we appreciate it when you contribute to the ideas you express.)
Tony concluded his brief pep talk with plug for the soon-to-be vacant
editorship. Do you have desktop publishing and writing skills? Do you get
irritated at the look and feel of some magazines? Well then, volunteer for
being the editor of
Sacra Blue
. "It's the best job in the group! Yes, it's time
intensive--and it's fun." If you're interested, contact editor Eric Butow.
Upcoming Meetings
We'll be showing a lot of good stuff in the next few months, and Frank called
program coordinators Milt Hull and Ken Hopkins to the stage to tell us all
about it. In May, we'll host Symantec with Norton Utilities 2000, and Buck
Bohac, president of the mail-order company Indelible Blue. Indelible Blue
specializes in alternate operating systems like Linux and OS/2, and Buck will
tell us about Linux and make us more "Linux-aware."
In July, we'll have
birthday cake, author Michael Hiltzik (author of the acclaimed book Dealers of
Lightning, which talks about the early days at the Xerox PARC research center),
and the FBI talking about computer crime. In August, we plan to have a
comparison of four high-speed Internet connection alternatives, including DSL,
satellite, microwave, and cable.
Programs for other months are still in the works. If you have any suggestions,
contact Milt or Ken; their information is on the inside back cover of Sacra
Blue and on our Web site.
Software Library Updates
Our software librarian, Brian Smither, was next up on stage. As software
librarian, Brian is always on the lookout for the best in freeware (which is
free to use) and shareware (where you can try it before you buy it). Every
month, we add new programs to our software library, and in April Brian had the
following additions.
Multimedia Explorer (shareware):
This volume presents all multimedia files (as
identified by their extensions) in Explorer-like interface for viewing and
other management. Uses its own built-in sound and image viewers, which is cool,
because you might not already have them.
ImpressionX (shareware):
ImpressionX is a great graphics manipulation program.
You supply the images and use ImpressionX to clean them up, create ink or brush
paintings, make black and white line drawings or even paint-by-number pictures.
From there you can go on to anything from T-shirt stencils to high-quality
enlargements. It's a great crafts tool.
98 Light (freeware):
The 98 stands for Windows 98 and the Light stands for
Windows 95. 98 Light makes the best of both worlds for your computer desktop.
It replaces the bulky Windows 98 desktop with the lighter, cleaner Windows 95
desktop
Drawing Hand Screen Saver (shareware):
An animated hand flies over the screen,
drawing or painting everything from cars to Van Gogh's to holiday themes. It
even teaches you how to draw!
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As Frank mentioned, we may soon be establishing an FTP access to download
software library files from our Web site. This would involve establishing links
to the storage location of the files, from which you could download them using
standard FTP. You can also visit our software library at each general meeting
and browse through the volumes to find exactly what you need and purchase it
for a nominal disk processing fee.
Enfish Tracker Pro
After the question and answer session and a brief stretch, Ken introduced Gary
Saxer, the evangelist from Enfish Corporation, decked out in a sharp Enfish
vest. Meeting veterans may remember Gary when he was the user group evangelist
for Quarterdeck products. Quarterdeck has now become another early PC company
that has either disappeared or has been bought out; Symantec completed its
purchase of Quarterdeck not too long ago. Though Quarterdeck has disappeared,
Gary, a true personality in the computing world, certainly hasn’t.
Gary started by pitching some questions to the
audience:
-
Do you have more e-mail this year?
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Do you spend more than a minute finding a file?
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When was hypertext invented?
Gary had one product to answer all of these questions: Enfish Tracker Pro.
Enfish, an acronym for ENter, FInd, and SHare, is a product that lets us
"forget the rules" about how we’re used to finding information on our computer.
That doesn’t just include your hard drive, but also information on the Internet.
To answer the first question about e-mail, Gary emphasized that Enfish Tracker
Pro is well-designed to find information about who wrote about what in your
e-mail database. All it takes, said Gary, is one word to get you started.
To answer the second question about finding files, Gary said that Enfish
Tracker Pro is a sophisticated indexer of your hard drive by indexing every
word on it. Then Enfish Tracker Pro acts as a search engine to find whatever
search parameters you enter, and Enfish Tracker Pro even lets you name and
reuse search criteria. For example, Gary saved a filter to show files that
only included the words actor and Titanic. You can also store search results
for future reference. Enfish Tracker Pro is much more flexible than the Windows
directory structure for finding files.
To answer the third question, Gary asked the audience to take guesses on when a
gentleman named Vandebar Bush invented hypertext. Was it 1994? 1984? 1964? No,
Vandebar Bush invented hypertext all the way back in 1945. "He realized people
were literally dying for lack of information," Saxer said of Bush, apparently
referring to the lack of communication media in those days. Hypertext wasn’t
Bush’s only creation—he invented a camera that could be placed on the head
for
faster recording, and he also invented text-to-speech technology. It’s easy to
see why Bush was the inspiration for Enfish.
Gary showed how Enfish Tracker Pro worked by presenting his daughter’s
challenge to find movie star Leonardo DiCaprio’s shoe size. Gary’s first
attempts were admittedly short of the mark. Enfish Tracker Pro yielded files
about Leonardo da Vinci, who, in the eyes of his daughter’s youthful eyes, was
just an ODG ("old dead guy"). To compare Windows Finder with Enfish Tracker Pro
Gary noted that Finder’s search produced only 19 files, whereas Enfish Tracker
Pro found 96 files. Gary said that, using the "text within files" within
Finder, it would take the Finder 45 minutes to return information.
Eventually, with refinement of the search string and use of the search filters,
there it was—Leonardo DiCaprio’s shoe size. The audience applauded in
appreciation for Gary’s fine presentation. You can learn more about Enfish at
their Web site, www.enfish.com.
Making Pictures with MGI's VideoWave II and PhotoSuite II
After a brief stretch, Ken introduced the second speaker of the evening, Dave
Whittle of Webworking Services. Dave was on hand to present MGI Software’s
flagship packages—PhotoSuite II and VideoWave II. Dave was one of the
founders
of IBM’s Team OS/2 division and recently released a book entitled
Cyberspace:
The Human Dimension
. He’s now a chairman of Webworking Services, a marketing
consultant firm.
Dave started his presentation by demonstrating PhotoSuite II. This package has
a simple, elegant interface which starts off with different mode options. They
encompass a range of photo editing from quality enhancement to photo collages
to slideshows. It even has an Internet guide mode for finding photography
resources on the Net. PhotoSuite II launches the Web from itself and lets you
pull in images you find there. Not surprisingly, PhotoSuite II has reaped high
marks from the industry, including Editor’s Choice awards from CNET and
PC
Magazine
, among other kudos.
For starters Dave showed how PhotoSuite II instantly removed redeye—without
subtracting out the gleam! He kept us all laughing with a image manipulation
feature as he made a complete facial "makeover" of a frowning baby. There’s
something about a frowning baby with gigantic ears that strikes your funny bone.
Then Dave went to work on a scan of an old photo, cropping it proportionally
for even margins and re-tinting it from a sepia tone to a straight
black-and-white appearance. He cloned a tree and the sky to fix an unsightly
crack in the old photo. For repairing a thumb print, PhotoSuite II offered a
color-selectable brush to paint over it with a show-through transparency effect
to maintain the original image pattern. The effect was quite striking and the
audience expressed its approval with many rounds of applause. "This is a lot
easier than Photoshop," he declared with obvious credibility.
Dave finished up the PhotoSuite II demo by showing some of its Photo Greetings
Magic, a companion program that offers border templates for dropping photo
images into. This feature means you could make neat postcards or calendars to
send to friends. In response to questions he said that it would sharpen focus
problems and correct tonal shifts.
After Dave’s PhotoSuite II demonstration, he wowed us with MGI’s VideoWave II,
a veritable TV studio that lets you capture, edit and produce videos on your
computer. Dave demonstrated its ease of use as he emphasized its aim to please
the non-technical, general business and home user. Its unique StoryLine for
video composition and real-time preview let you combine moving pictures,
animation, graphics, photos, sound, music, text, and narration to "tell a
story" in video.
Dave drew his material from clips of separate interviews of a skating couple
and some clips of the couple skating together. Dave overlaid and sequenced all
the clips, then turned to VideoWave's StoryLine feature. By putting the clips
(represented with icons) on the StoryLine, Dave was able to put the individual
clips into one continuous video.
To merge the interview with their skating in the background, Dave used the
chromakey feature, which effectively replaces the background color with the
moving image. Dave also merged the final video with an overdubbed imported
narration. As a finishing touch, Dave typed in the credit line text at the
beginning of the video, with text effects such as transparency, shadow, and
fade out.
The audience was properly impressed with Dave’s presentation, as well as with a
meeting that ended on time (after the drawing of tickets for several MGI and
Enfish products as door prizes, of course).
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Our first meeting of our group's new year included a new president, the return
of a computing personality, and video and photo software.
