Showing posts with label meetings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meetings. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Next Meeting March 17 2009

The next meeting will be on March 17, at 7:00 pm at the Canfield Prebyterian chrurch.

Some things we will talk about:
  • Vice President Dick Wilson will show off his new Flip Video camera.
  • I'm going to talk about using Google more effectively. More than any time before, the Google search page is usually the first place to look for stuff on the Internet. I think it is worth it to go back and look at how you are using Google, and how you can use it better. We'll look at simple things you can do to search better, then we will look at the more advanced things you can do with Google search.

Check our web site at http://mahccc.blogspot.com for additional items that are posted between meetings.

As always, we will also try and answer any other computer questions you may have. I hope to see you there!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Next Meeting February 17 2009

Next: This meeting we will try to operate with out our President he is taking some additional training out of town to help him do a better job at his work.

We will go a little deeper into a program that Joe talked about once before, but I find out this is one of those programs that is really great.

I will go into a little more in detail to show you how to really use this to your advantage: Windows Movie Maker.

See you Tuesday
Dick Wilson

Monday, October 20, 2008

Next Meeting: October 21st

The next meeting will be on October 21st, at 7:00 pm at the Canfield Prebyterian chrurch.
Some things we will talk about:

-- We will be showing some things you can do with your photos once you get them digitized on your computer. I'll be showing how to use Windows Movie Maker to make movies out of your photos. Windows Movie Maker comes free with Windows XP and Vista, and while it is not the most full-featured program, it is easy to use. And everybody has it!
-- Like making scrapbooks? You can make and share virtual scrapbooks online at http://scrapblog.com.
-- From Microsoft Labs, they have released a very interesting technology to the public called PhotoSynths. It is hard to describe, but it is essentially the next step beyond creating stitched together panoramas. You'll have to see the results to get a better idea, so go to http://photosynth.net to see photosynths that users have shared. (Warning, you will have to download one-time a big plug-in for your browser in order to view and create photosynths.)

-- We missed this the last time, so hopefully we'll take a look a web site/service that is very popular with the kids these days: Twitter! It's not for everybody, but if you want to see what the hottest place is on the web these days, head over to http://www.twitter.com.

As always, we will also try and answer any other computer questions you may have. I hope to see you there!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Sept 16, 2008 Meeting Announcement

I hope you all made it through the wind ok, and I hope you have power (so you can read this post!).

The next meeting will be on September 16th, at 7:00 pm at the Canfield Prebyterian chrurch.

Some things we will talk about:

-- Check out the web site for the new Youngstown Computer radio show at http://www.youngstowncomputer.com. You can listen live on Saturdays at 1:00pm with a replay on Wednesdays at 6:00pm. You can also download old episodes.

-- We will be starting our series on getting your photos on your PC so you can do neat things with them, like making a DVD slideshow, among other things. So first things first, we want to talk about exactly how to get photos into your computer: there are several ways to do this, and where do the pictures go when they are stored on your computer, and some tips to keep your photos organized so you can find them again. For users with Windows XP and Vista, I reccommend that you go to http://get.live.com and download the free Windows Live Photo Gallery. You may have some other program to help you organize your photos, that's fine. If you don't have any software like that, Windows Live Photo Gallery is totally free, and it makes organizing your photos pretty easy.

-- For your enjoyment, we'll take a look a web site/service that is very popular with the kids these days: Twitter! It's not for everybody, but if you want to see what the hottest place is on the web these days, head over to http://www.twitter.com.

As always, we will also try and answer any other computer questions you may have. I hope to see you there!

Monday, August 18, 2008

Club Meeting August 19, 2008

The next meeting will be on August 19th, at 7:00 pm at the Canfield Prebyterian chrurch.

Some things we will talk about:

-- Google Calendar. http://calendar.google.com/. In addition to the free email that Google provides that we mentioned last month, they have a very nice calendar service. We'll go through the basics of signing up, adding an event, viewing your calendar, and setting a reminder. You can view and print out different views of your calendar, from a daily agenda list to a full month view. Of course, it's free! I like free.

-- Tim Ryan is fighting for you! Visit our representative's web site at http://timryan.house.gov/. You can see the cheapest gas prices in the area!

-- We might have some nice reserves of oil in the northern United States, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation.

-- There is a new computer radio show on AM 570 at 1:00pm Saturdays.

-- Skeptical about Vista? Check out http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/ to learn more.

-- Anybody else having problems watching video on http://nbcolympics.com/. Perhaps you should try a new ZIP code.

As always, we will also try and answer any other computer questions you may have. I hope to see you there!

Monday, July 21, 2008

July 2008 Meeting Notes

File Associations
  • You “associate” a file type to the program that opens it in Windows.
  • Associations are usually made for you when you install programs. So if you don’t have an association already for a file type, that usually means you don’t have the software to view that file type installed.
  • How do you find out what software to install? Look up the file type on Google, or ask the person who sent you the file what software to use.
  • The file type is the last part of the file name; it is a period followed by three letters.
  • You can see the file associations that are already set up by opening My Computer, choose Tools -> Folder Options on the menu, then choose the File Types tab.
    If a file is being opened by the wrong program, you can change the association by right-clicking the file, choose Properties, then look for the Change button next to the “Opens with:” line.

Gmail
  • http://mail.google.com/

  • Free, web-based email. 6+ GB of storage. You never have to delete any mail.
  • Quickly search through all your old emails.

  • You do have to be on the internet to read your mail, but you can get to your email no matter what computer you are on as long as you can get to the internet.

  • Built-in spam filter, and other tools to help control unwanted mail.

  • Built-in converters for some file types, eliminates the “file association problem” mentioned above.

Cleaning Malware
How do users get malware?
They download apps that include adware and spyware
They click on misleading popups or banners
They visit sites that use exploits to inject malware
Many users still don’t patch or don’t use antivirus or antispyware

Why doesn’t antivirus and antispyware stop malware?
They are dependent on signatures (they can only defend against what they know about)
Malware directly attacks it

Malware cleaning steps:
Disconnect from the network
Identify malicious processes and drivers
Terminate identified processes
Identify and delete malware autostarts
Delete malware files
Reboot and repeat

Essential Processes needed to run Windows
System Idle Process
explorer.exe
taskmgr.exe
spoolsv.exe
lsass.exe
csrss.exe
smss.exe
winlogon.exe
svchost.exe - (There will be a few of these)
services.exe
By shutting down anything other than these processes, stand alone Windows should operate fine, however if any of these processes are shutdown, Windows will start to become unstable or unusable.

What are you looking for?
Processes that…
have no icon
have no description or company name
are unsigned Microsoft images
live in Windows directory
are packed
host suspicious DLLs or services

    July 2008 meeting

    The next meeting will be on July 15th, at 7:00 pm at the Canfield Prebyterian chrurch.

    Some things we will talk about:

    -- My experiences cleaning out an infection of malware. I had to clean out a bad infection of malware on a neighbor's computer, and I wanted to share what I had to do. I used all of those nice tools from sysinternals that I had shown before: Autoruns, Process Explorer, and Rootkit Revealer, and lots of searches on Google. I also had to use a built-in tool that comes with Windows, the Recovery Console. We'll talk about how you can tell if your computer has an infection, and how to prevent it in the first place.

    -- File associations. I had a question about how to view some unknown file that they got in an email. It says they have to set up a "file association". We'll take a look at what that is and how to set one up.

    -- Using Gmail, Google's web email program. Gmail is my primary email program now. I'll show you how it works, and why you might want to set up a Gmail account yourself. It's totally free! Gmail also has some neat tools that help you with file attachments, so you don't have to worry about the "file associations" I mentioned above.
    As always, we will also try and answer any other computer questions you may have. I hope to see you there!