dacs.doc electric

Come and see the freeware/shareware that some DACS members, officers,the president and the ex-president have in store for you at the June meeting. Come and be surprised at the trove of treasures that members use on a daily basis to make their lives more enjoyable, more fun and more productive. Prez Jim Scheef says "A key part of the June program is the fact that each of the following presenter gets only 10 minutes. Can they do it? Can we keep things organized on stage? Will everything collapse in total confusion? Come and see the fun!" So far the line-up is as follows:

From ex-prez Allan who "will demonstrate some of the features of Snagit that help him capturing and editing images for use in dacs.doc." "Most PC users know the keystrokes Alt/Print Scrn, which lets them save the contents of their screen image to the Windows clipboard. But this technique only captures the visible screen, and to edit the image you would have to paste it into a paint program. TechSmith's Snagit is a versatile utility that lets you scroll down to capture the entire page, crop selected portions and save it as graphics file for editing, convert it to other formats, then annotate it and send it to friends. Other TechSmith products let you turn your images into a video presentation and add captions or sound."

For those interested in investing this site is one of the best as per Don Neary, who finds CBS.MarketWatch.Com practical "for providing in-depth financial news coverage, individualized stock portfolio tracking and extensive charting capabilities. The site is Free, if you want to personalize the site to match your needs you will be asked to become a member which is also Free. The site is easy to navigate and is broken down into 5 main areas; News and Commentary, Personal Finance, My Portfolios, Research Tools and MarketWatch TV and Radio coverage". At the meeting he will attempt to show us how he uses some of these capabilities.

Prez Jim Scheef will talk about WinStock Pro which "is a shareware program for retrieving and displaying stock quotes from the Internet. Automatic stock quote retrieval Free delayed quotes, Real-time quotes with paid subscription from quote vendor Portfolio management provides an instant snapshot of your portfolio value. Know from moment-to-moment how much you've made or lost. A Ticker Toolbar Familiar scrolling ticker-tape display can be placed at the top or bottom of your desktop". The program "includes color coding for alarms, it integrates with Quicken it supports 18 quote servers including foreign markets and displays graphs and news Multi-threaded operation."

Matthew Greger will demonstrate iPhoto for the Mac. "Digital cameras are revolutionizing the way people take pictures. Now, with iPhoto Apple revolutionizes the way people save, organize, share and enjoy them. iPhoto lets you import your pictures from your digital camera, organize them, edit and improve them, and share them in a number of different ways. Just plug your camera into Mac's USB port and iPhoto automatically imports your photos, catalogs them, stores them and displays them on your screen. iPhoto lets you create your own custom coffee-table books. This unique feature lets you tell a story about special times in your life < like weddings, social events and vacations < in your own pictures and words. It's easy to create an album and select a theme and a layout you like. iPhoto lets you add titles and text to tell your story or describe your pictures. iPhoto also lets you easily organize your photographs into digital albums --birthday, vacation, wedding, whatever--for easy retrieval. Sharing and enjoying them is a cinch, too: Push one button to watch them in a beautiful full-screen slide show, accompanied by your favorite music. Email them to friends. Print them on your ink-jet printer. Or order Kodak prints over the Internet."

Don Pearson of the LINUX SIG / AOS SIG will be contributing a demo of "WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator), but whatever it is, it allows you to run (many) Windows Apps in LINUX, such as Quicken."

Bruce Preston will contribute the following three utilities:

• "StartStop" - a "freeware program that controls which applications (visible or hidden) start when you boot your computer. It provides more functionality than MSConfig, which is found in only a few versions of Windows. This works in any 32-bit Windows;
• "X-Setup" - another freeware program that fine tunes many—and Bruce really means many—of the preferences on your computer. It also replaces and supplements many of the functions of the old Windows 95/98 "PowerToys" and "Tweak UI;
• "Mail Washer"—a "try-before-you-buy" anti-spam tool that previews your e-mail, identifies SPAM, and ‘bounces' it back to the sender. "This is NOT the same as clicking the "Click here to be removed from our mailings" which is a sure way to tell a spammer that he has a valid ID. Bouncing makes it look like an invalid mailbox."