George Ellis demonstrated several software and hardware devices. His digital camera is an Olympus D600L and it is easy to use. The pictures are saved to an 8 MB Smart Chip that can store from 8 to 97 pictures, depending on the resolution selected. You simply slip the Smart Chip into the floppy adapter and the floppy adapter into your PC's floppy drive. When the images are in the PC, you can edit them (the edited images made us look ten years younger!) using the included Adobe PhotoDeluxe image editing software.
    QuickStitch is a neat little program that also comes with a digital camera. QS "stitches" or merges photos to make one panoramic image! For example, you take several shots of the Grand Canyon. QS can merge them together to make one seamless picture of the Grand Canyon. This looks like it would be fun to play with!
    To present the demo, George borrowed an Infocus LP750 Projection Monitor from work. What a lovely display! Clear and crisp, the monitor also seemed easy to set up and use.

   After the digital camera demo, George gave us a quick marketing demo of his company (road and bridge engineers and contractors) using PowerPoint. PowerPoint seems to be the industry standard for doing presentations (based on my limited experience). We didn't get into the nuts and bolts of designing a presentation (perhaps at another meeting), but George said it is easy to use. In a class I recently took, the teacher used PowerPoint; it made for an easy-to-follow presentation.
    We also took a quick look at the Street Atlas map program, which offered excellent detail for plotting a trip. It can be used with a GPS (Global Positioning System) device for "real time" tracking/updating of your position while traveling in the vehicle!
    Thanks, George, for an informative demo.

—Tony Brower

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