President's Message

If last month’s staid pre sentation on the latest from Silicon Valley left you in Napa Valley, wake up! Richard Katz is coming back to town. Remember--the Quicken guy with the rubber chicken? Richard earned his wings as president of a Bay Area user group, and then hitched a ride with Intuit to sell their user friendly home accounting package to his old buddies in his own unique audience friendly way. He’s been a fixture at InterGalactic and other user group gatherings for about a decade, and he knows what both nerds and newbies need to know and want to hear.

But don’t come expecting another version of Quicken--he’s since been plucked ('down'-sized?), and along with fellow traveler and doppelganger, Matt McCann, has started an independent software marketing group that offers "creative ideas that are so far 'out of the box,' they’re close to escape velocity!"

This time around, Richard will be demonstrating ULEAD Software’s latest bundle of digital photography applications, PhotoExplorer 7.0 Pro, PhotoImpact 7 and VideoStudio 5.0, DVD Edition. You may think you’ve heard the last word on video apps, but if Richard lives up to past performance, you’ll learn a lot more, and may even walk away with the bundle, still wondering if a chicken really does jump out of the box.

Say it isn’t so, Shirley!

From the time I first met Shirley Fredlund more than ten years ago, she has been "Shirley, Goodness and Mercy." That’s because during all those years, Shirley Fredlund has personally helped hundreds of ALS patients in Connecticut and nearby states to speak and otherwise communicate using computer technology.

Lou Gehrig’s disease is the common name for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative condition of the nerves that leaves victims totally paralyzed. With technical assistance from DACS--but even more with personal energy and determination--Shirley, her husband, Frank Ruiz and countless volunteers, have distributed specialized systems that enable victims of ALS to use simple switches to control a computer and a voice synthesizer, even if they can only move a single finger, twitch, or blink an eye.

In a few weeks, Shirley and Frank will be moving to North Dakota to be with family down on the farm. Shirley plans to keep Voice for Joanie going from her new home, and has been assured support in our area from the Connecticut chapter of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Foundation. She would love to have some dedicated volunteers from DACS to help. In the last year, Medicaid has come forward to fund equipment and special services needed by ALS patients; so there is no longer a need to travel. Volunteers are needed primarily to maintain equipment and process requests. Look for future announcements in dacs.doc.

Writer’s block

The following message arrived in my e-mail:

"I happened across a DACS web page describing cable modems and just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated it. The article was by Richard Chernock (IBM Research). I loved the piece specifically for covering the subject so thoroughly and yet simply. I decided to see what it would take to join up but found that the geographical distance was rather far for me. I live in Tennessee. Just the same, I wanted to congratulate you on a fine article and hope you will keep up the good work. Thanks."

Rich Chernock had to suspend his column on video media in dacs.doc some time ago, due his incredibly busy schedule at IBM. With a little prompting, he has launched a new series, which starts in this issue. He says sometimes he gets writer’s block drafting technical reports, and fills the time doing articles for DACS. Welcome back, Rich!

–Allan Ostergren
dacsprez@aol.com