Hunterdon Computer Club

Our computer club meeting was held at the Hunterdon County Medical Center on Saturday, September 17. John Gbur took charge since Lon Hosford was out of town. Paul Glattstein reported that 28 members and 16 guests attended. We were happy to see so many new people. Most were invited by David Deutsch and came to hear his presentation.

John explained the basics of our club to the guests. We meet at 9:00 on the third Saturday of each month at the Medical Center in Flemington. Dues are $25 for an individual membership or $30 for a family. The club is open to any one of any age and any computer level. A presentation by a club member is part of the meeting each month. Many of our members teach classes at the local senior center and offer their services to club members at the meeting to answer questions on computer problems. At times members also bring materials they wish to give away to the meetings for club members to look at and take if they can use it. Club communication is done through a group on Yahoo.com or the club blog.

The October 15 meeting will be the club’s fall breakfast meeting to be held at the Country Griddle, 190 Center Street in Clinton. Breakfast is free to members. Those guests who join today and pay their dues are invited to join us at 9:00 in Clinton.

Q. Do you have a recommendation for a back-up drive?
A. Mozy offers online backup for home or business use. MozyHome is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, XP and Mac computers. It is automatic and they offer real time support and tutorial videos. Pricing is $5.99 a month for 50GB of space. MozyPro is offered as online support for businesses. Go to their site http://mozy.com/ to learn more about home and business backup. It was suggested that if you have critical info on your computer to back it up on external hardware and even have a second external backup to store somewhere outside your house or office.
Other suggestions were to use Sugarsync https://www.sugarsync.com/ , and Carbonite http://www.carboniteaddon.com/ .

Q. What causes a computer crash?
A. A crash can be caused by a mechanical defect or corruption in the software on your computer. Hard disks have become more and more reliable, but software is not as reliable. If you decide to dispose of your computer, remove the hard drive before you sell or trash it. You can also drill a hole through the hard drive to stop anyone from securing any data on the disk. If you use software to erase the hard drive, overwrite the disk several times before getting rid of it.

Q. I’m waiting to buy a new computer. When will Windows 8 be out?
A. Windows 8 should be out late next year.

Q. How can I get my laptop data to my Droid?
A. You can use Dropbox, https://www.dropbox.com/ . Dropbox is a free service that is designed for this purpose. Any file you save to Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers and phones.

Q. Should you use your computer during a thunder and lightening storm.
A. No, shut down your computer. You can also buy an uninterruptible power supply for your computer which allows your computer to continue to work for five minutes. It allows your computer to save your files and back up the disk. This gives you time to shut down your computer. It can also be set to shut down the computer automatically if you lose power for a few seconds.

Presentation: Why Fear Social Media, David Deutsch, Presenter

David Deutsch is a Social Media Consultant who is a member of our club. He has consulted with clients on how to use social media for several years and is hoping we will understand this type of communication and become comfortable with it. Visit his website http://www.synergisocial.com/ to learn more about what he offers.

David said that the social media websites are driven by interactivity and narcissism, or self interest and will be the way of the future. On these websites you can do what you can’t by phone or in person. First of all, become educated and learn how to use social media. Determine your objectives, whether for personal or business use, and develop a strategy.

Common concerns are privacy and security, not being allowed to use social media at work, and not wanting to share personal information. Use common sense when putting anything on social media websites and understand who will see it and read it and what consequences there may be by expressing negative information. Be sure to use antivirus software and keep it up to date. If your company policy does not allow use of social media, don’t use it.

Facebook allows you to control who sees the content you put on the site. You can add photos on Facebook and can tag a photo so it will appear on another person’s wall. Negative comments can be removed from your wall, but you cannot remove comments on someone’s else’s wall. Create a Facebook Fan page for your business. Use Wix, http://www.wix.com/ which offers templates to help you create and customize a Facebook page. David suggested various ways to draw attention to your Facebook Fan page to provide good information and to connect with your customers.

Twitter is a microblogging site which allows comments of 140 characters. This is another app to connect with your customers by sending out frequent messages. Bitly is a service which allows URL shortening so a link can be added to your Tweet. Bitly also provides tools to view statistics related to users that click on those links. Go to the Bitly website https://bitly.com/ for more information.

Linkedin is the top professional website. It is frequently used for job seeking and reputation management. You build a profile of current job held, past experience and education. The site helps you search for people you can connect to to help build a network. All these contacts are used to gather recommendations and information and to make contacts with others in your industry for introductions and leads to available jobs.  Your contacts are part of groups and information and comments can be sent to them.

Google + (plus sign)
This is a new social website supported by Google that is in limited field trial now. This website concentrates on developing your “circles”, friends in one circle, business or family contacts in others. It provides a “hangout” area where you can see which of your contacts are on line and can be contacted. The “Sparks” area brings in a feed of just the information you tell it you are interested in seeing. Right now you need an invitation to join since it is not yet open to everyone while Google works out the kinks. This website will be similar to Facebook and Twitter.

David did an outstanding job and was generous with his time. He provided plenty of detail about each of the different social media sites and answered extensive questions from the members and guests.

At our Saturday August computer club meeting, Lon Hosford, President, welcomed everyone. Twenty-five members and three guests attended. Lon brought us up to date on the club’s functions and referred us to an article in PC Magazine on how to tune up XP, Vista and W7.

David Deutsch, http://www.synergisocial.com/, will present the September program on “Why Fear Social Media?” He will cover the history of how social media came about; how social media is different from everything else on the web; basic walk-through on using popular apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Yelp; address the issue of security in social media; and show a concrete example of how an organization can use social media to help them achieve their organizational objectives. His website is www.synergisocial.com. The site uses Flash Player.

The October meeting will be the club’s fall breakfast meeting to be held at the Country Griddle, 190 Center Street in Clinton. More information on this will be provided at the September meeting.

Perry Snyder brought up the problem that the Flash Player’s cookies cannot be cleaned by CC Cleaner. Flash Player stores cookies from the web sites you visit and that information is used to place ads on web sites that you visit of things that attracted your interest. There is a way to manage the cookies stored by Macromedia’s Flash Player. To protect your privacy and delete these Flash Player cookies, download the Flash Cookie Cleaner. This software allows you to select which cookies you want to delete, save those you need, schedule automated cleaning in the future and, best of all, it is free. Download the Flash Player Cookie Cleaner at http://www.flashcookiecleaner.com .

Q: A member said he was doing research on his computer and he received a message that he had a virus on his computer.  How can viruses be stopped?
A.: Keep virus definitions up to date. Have the anti-virus software update automatically daily or at least weekly. Set your anti-virus to update automatically rather than doing the updates manually.

Some members are afraid to order items from internet websites. But several members bought items from Amazon and found the site to be reliable. Some items were shipped directly from China and arrived quickly and in good condition. One time when an item was received damaged and the buyer reported the damage, the item was replaced quickly without a problem. Be sure to deal with reliable, well-known companies and web sites and you can be sure you will be satisfied with the results.

Presentation: Google Picasa, Paul Weeks, Presenter

Picasa is Google’s offering to manage digital photos. Since memory cards used by new digital cameras can now store thousands of pictures, it’s important to have a way to organize and manage these photos. The Picasa software can be downloaded free from Google and offers photo editing, facial recognition, albums, and much more.

After downloading the software, you will have to select where you want Picasa to look for your photos, such as on your computer, your external hard drive, flash drive, or elsewhere. These photos are then scanned by Picasa. Picasa can then categorize the people, after you identify who they are, and group them by individuals or groups. People are treated as an album and the pictures are sorted by date. Picasa does not move your pictures into Picasa; it is basically an index of where your photos are and helps you find them without having to search all the folders on your computer or elsewhere.

Geotagging on smart phones can tag the location of where the pictures were taken. This information gets sent along with the picture when it is loaded on a computer unless it is removed before loading to the computer or internet. So remove this data if you do not want others to be able to see it.

Picasa is very handy when you want to design photo gifts or put together group composites of certain people.

You can access his entire presentation though our Yahoo group messaging. The link to access his message in Yahoo Groups with his  presentation is http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/hunterdoncomputerclub/message/888

You can also link to his presentation here.  It uses Open Office Impress software. http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/12001552/920975708/name/GooglePicasa%20Presentation_modified_for%20HuntCompClub.odp

Thanks, Paul, for another very interesting presentation on how to use the features of Picasa.