Any of you watch the BBC News programme called Click Online?

I've found it generally very good. Here is a link to the home page
of the website ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/


(click on the photo to enlarge it)

You can view past episodes (and check out their content),
by having a look at the programme's archive page ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7199940.stm

I've watched a couple of programmes that interested me

1. 11 April 2008 …

http://tinyurl.com/4duqma

This programme gives advice on choosing a video camcorder, plus a few
tips on how to shoot your video, and also a brief look at digitising
your old prints and slides.

2. 16 May 2008 …

http://tinyurl.com/5ywrpf

A look at some useful free stuff you can download off the internet …
eg AVG anti-virus software
Zone-Alarm firewall
Open Office for a variety of office programs
Adobe Photoshop Express

Helpful websites for Photography & Photo-editing

One of our U3A members, Bill Taylor, emailed me saying ...

"I pass on 2 websites I find useful for digital photography.
They both have the advantage that you are not flooded by emails.
They both send out a monthly newsletter (if you sign up).

They are...

www.photoanswers.co.uk
This is from Digital Photo magazine and includes short video lessons.

www.ephotozine.com
This has a techniques section so you get words and pictures (in some
detail)

Both these are free."

Thank you very much, Bill.

Have a look at one of this excellent video by Ben Turner of "Practical
Photography" magazine on how to take better landscape photos with a
digital SLR camera ... the October issue of this magazine will be on
sale for another 7 days.

http://tinyurl.com/538nhh

Enjoy! :)

Fancy having another email address?

Perhaps you are getting too much spam on your present email address,
and wish to make a clean break from all the rubbish (and ancient
emails you haven't got round to deleting)?

I can recommend Googlemail to you, just for corresponding with
family and friends.

http://mail.google.com/

Click on the above link, if you wish to try it out.

Advantages over other email providers?

Less spam, especially if you keep your old email address just
for business use (and don't give your new Gmail address to
anyone other than friends & family
Less intrusive adverts (I dislike the ads on Hotmail & Yahoo)
You can access Gmail anywhere
If your current computer crashes completely or is stolen, you
will lose all your email addresses on Outlook Express ...
... very annoying. Your address list on Gmail stays intact.
It's got the amazing Google search facility, where you put a
name like Ken into the search box and obtain a list of all
your emails from Ken, which you can then access.

Click on the next link for more info ...
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html

How about using a dongle?

I've just emailed our online members to ask if we could borrow a dongle
from anyone, to try it out at the U3A for an hour or two (possibly with
their laptop as well, if they have one). You plug a dongle into the USB
port of your computer, when you wish to access the internet.

Currently we are on BT Business Broadband in our office, with a low wi-fi
signal connection to Room 2.

Dongles use mobile phone technology and so are not dependent on BT copper
wires or Virgin cabling. However, those of you who have mobile phones will
know that signal strength can be patchy. One of my daughters has to go
outside our house to use her moblie phone. Dongles are best for light
users of the internet, as we are at Nottm U3A.

There is more info about dongles on this site (which I found on a Google
search)....
http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/types/mobile_broadband/

Scroll down to the bottom of this website page for more info.

So, how safe is online banking?

Touch wood, I haven't had any money stolen from my online accounts,
but a friend of a friend has had £2000 stolen from her account. It
was taken out of an online ISA account. There was no obvious theft
of her username or password, so it must have been via a trojan horse
... malicious software that can secretly infect anyone's computer.

Most of you will have had "phishing" emails, asking you to update your
bank details online ... I have had several of these, and they look very
convincing. I got a spate of emails about someone abusing my eBay account,
who was buying more and more expensive items in my name, including an iPod.
I was nearly "taken in" by these ... a fraudster was hoping I'd reply &
verify all my account details.

Coming back to the trojan horse concept... part of the malicious software
includes a key-logging device which records & relays all the keystrokes
you use when logging into a bank / building society website.

I don't know how accurate the next piece of info is, but I've been told
that there are two vulnerable areas on your internet page ... your
Favourites column and your Google search-box. It appears that these two
areas are being targetted by the key-loggers.

So if you use either your Favourites or your Google search box for logging
into a bank account, you might be at higher risk than if you were to simply
type in your bank's URL address into the address box at the very top of
your internet page. I wonder how long it will be before the URL box is
targetted too.

There are lots of articles on this subject on Google ... here's one of
them ...

http://tinyurl.com/44w69q

A time-saving tip for you....

If you're fed up with the time it takes to download your photos from
your digital camera onto the computer, using the camera's software,
eg Canon's Zoom-Browser (and find the software too fiddly to use) ...
how about uninstalling the software and getting a card reader instead?

Plug your camera's memory card into a card reader like the above one,
& then plug the reader into a USB port on your computer. Wait a short
while for a little window to appear on your screen & click on "Open
folder to view files" ...



(click on these photos to see larger versions)

... and access your photos with 1-2 mouse clicks.
Copy & paste them onto your computer (into Pictures / My Pictures or
into a new folder on your computer).

Click on one of your photos, and then ...

Ctrl + A .... to highlight all your photos
Ctrl + C ... to copy them
Ctrl + V .... to paste them.

I was in Curry's in the Victoria Centre yesterday, and spotted a
multiple card reader for sale for about £15. You could use this reader
on someone else's computer --- take it with you when visiting family
or friends, so you can download photos you've taken onto their
computer .... also handy if someone comes to stay at your house with
a different camera (& memory card), if he/she wishes to download pics
onto your computer.

Before you buy a card reader, please check that it will be compatible
with your computer and operating system (should be OK with a modern
computer and Windows XP/Vista).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


Free Capture Tool with Windows Vista (Home Premium)

I've found out that Vista offers a free capture tool, to capture parts of
your screen, so you can create presentations on Powerpoint, etc.

It's called the Snipping Tool and I used it to create the second photo above.

I found out about this on an excellent website called
www.graphicssoft.com.

Anyway, do a search for "snipping tool" in the search box on the
Start menu ...



... save a shortcut to the program on your Start menu or taskbar, and have
a play with it.

You can save your captures as gif, jpeg and png files. The latter are the
best quality. The middle photo in this post is a PNG photo. However, you
will find that you can't take a snip of certain things, eg the Start menu,
with this tool.

To create the above photo, I used the Print Screen button to take a copy of
Start menu, which I then pasted onto a blank white canvas in Photoshop. I then
used the Crop tool to select the area I wanted, and saved it as a jpeg image
.... quite a rigmarole.

During our Computer Club meeting today, the website entitled
“Say No to 0870” phone numbers (and the like) was mentioned.

Here is the website address, if you haven’t seen it before:

http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php

When I clicked onto the website a short while ago, I saw this
advertisement near the top of the page …

“Premium Rate Numbers
The Easy Way to Make Big Money from Premium Rate Numbers”
(Ads by Google)

By the way, I have a freephone number for the Alliance & Leicester,
which is printed on the back of their credit card. You can access
its Premier Current account via this number …

0800 0688 638

Please let me know of any useful numbers that you’ve found.

I don’t know why people pay for expensive phone calls to Directory
Enquiry phone services, when they could access the BT service (for
residential phone numbers) free of charge on the internet….

http://tinyurl.com/ynqwbt


… or use Yell dot com free of charge for business phone numbers ….

http://www.yell.com/ucs/HomePageAction.do

Searching Google is very good too, for finding out business phone
numbers (and cheaper business phone numbers).

Ken Bates (and Liz Howe) sent me a link to this Australian U3A website…

http://sites.google.com/site/u3asitedemo/

As you will see from the URL, it was set up on some free webspace
provided by Google … Google Sites. So a U3A member could set up a
small website like this to put on information about his/her group, or
a specific research project to which other group members could
contribute. You could set limits as to who can contribute to the site,
and who could see it.

A site like this could also be used to create a newsletter, the content
of which could be changed as and when. So it’s a bit like blogging,
except that the pages are static, and don’t form part of an ongoing
diary.

Here is the link to Google Sites,

http://tinyurl.com/6z5mqk

... and here is the YouTube video that’s on the site. If you’d like to
enlarge the YouTube screen, click on the tiny TV screen at the bottom
right hand corner.



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I've found a few articles reviewing Google Sites ... perhaps the
best one to read is the first one ...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2317341,00.asp

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9883496-2.html
~ problems with spreadsheets

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=329
~ problems setting up widgets.

However, if you'd like something that's basic and easy to set up,
Google Sites may fit the bill for you.

If you're thinking of setting up a wiki (like Wikipedia), then
PC Magazine recommends Wetpaint... and if you don't like the look
of Google Sites, then you could check out FreeWebs.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


The Australian demo site recommends using Jing to make short
educational videos, and for screen capture.

http://www.jingproject.com/

I'll have a look at this in due course.

LIFE BEGINS AT 50 ... discuss.

If you’ve opened your latest copy of the Nottingham Arrow, you’ll see some promotional information aimed at us, the over-50s.

Life Begins at 50 … it proudly announces, and to promote this idea,
Nottingham City Council has produced an eight page guide to everything
Nottingham has got to offer. The guide is available online.

Unfortunately the website info in the Arrow is incorrect, but searching
through the city’s main website I found a pdf file, which is easy to download
… possibly because there’s not a lot of content in it.

Here’s the link to the correct website information …

http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/arrow-elder-sept08.pdf

You can get discounts by showing your bus pass, but I think you’d need to
phone up the centre you’re going to beforehand, to check out if any
discounts are available and at what time of day.

When is free swimming for everyone coming in, I wonder?

It's a pity that Nottingham U3A didn't get a mention in all this?

*************************************************

Have you had a look at YouTube?

http://uk.youtube.com/

I mention YouTube, as I've found several useful videos on this site
on various technical matters ...

for example ...
how to put YouTube videos onto Powerpoint,
how to create online newsletters (feasible if you wish to spend £100+)
how to put an Ethernet card into the back of your computer
& how to improve your wi-fi internet signal (if your router is is
the other side of your house) ... and so on.

Just use the Search box for anything you're interested in.

Here's a fascinating video made by my neice, Zoe, who is a brilliant
portrait artist and a singer-songwriter too (ex Faithless). In this
video she makes a portrait of her son, Milo. You might have to wait
up to half a minute for the YouTube screen to appear in the space
below ....



Just below the little YouTube screen, you will see the volume control.
To enlarge the video presentation and make it full-screen, click on
the tiny box next to the volume control.

Click HERE for Zoe's main music site.

Windows

I’ve been busy in the past week or two setting up a Windows
XP machine … a PC which I bought off my son-in-law, Kris. The
PC is 4 years old, but I’m hoping that I’ll get several year’s
use out of it. Kris gave me a Microsoft wireless mouse and
a Microsoft wireless keyboard also, which I’ve very impressed
with … the younger generation are more into having the latest
gadgets than we are, I think.

I felt sad to give up my old Windows 98 machine, which I’ve
had for about 9 years … but it was getting left behind with
incoming new hardware and new software too … all requiring
more powerful machines and Windows XP or Vista … very annoying
as I was very happy to continue using Windows 98.

For example, most USB flash drives won’t work on my old machine
– I’ve only got one flash drive that does. I haven’t completely
abandoned the old fossil, until I’m happy with the new machine’s
performance, such as burning and copying CD-Roms, which I’ve yet
to have a go at.

I will probably extract the hard drive from the old machine, and
convert it into an external hard drive for extra storage.

If you’re thinking about taking an old machine to the refuse tip,
here’s some advice from Jack Schofield of The Guardian … that is
to extract the hard drive, wrap a tea-towel around it, and then
to wack it several times with a hammer to destroy it. It would
be a good idea to wear safety glasses at the same time. You can
leave a lot of personal info on your hard drive despite attempts
to wipe it clean of data, so it’s best to destroy it physically.

I’ve put free Avast anti-virus software onto the XP machine, and
so far I’m very pleased with it.

I also have a fairly new Sony VAOI laptop with Windows Vista on
it, with a wi-fi broadband internet connection. My wife Sue will
be using this one mainly, after her laptop’s motherboard died on
us after about 18 months’ use. Buying and fitting a new
motherboard would have cost us £400, which is more than buying a
new laptop these days. Our local computer expert, Gary of GB Micros,
told me that you have to regard laptops as being disposable items.
So, a cautionary tale for you all there.

I called Gary out to our house last week, to help set up both
the laptop and my “new” PC to the internet via the wi-fi unit …
something I couldn’t get my head around from reading all the blurb
and following the advice given on the CD that came with the wi-fi
unit… it was all Greek to me.

Gary set it all up in a jiffy – I was very impressed with the
DOS commands he typed up on the computer screens to link everything
up, and to set up some security (including a 10 character WEP
password) to deter hackers from getting hold of our personal
details. One tip Gary gave me is to use the word Network in
describing the make of the wi-fi unit, to keep any hacker
guessing for its make.

Another of Gary’s tips is to re-set the modem, if your internet
performance appears to be slowing up. We’re on Virgin Media
broadband here with a cable connection to the internet. Gary
unscrewed & detached the cable from the modem and powered it up
without the cable in situ … this resets the modem.
Put the cable back in again and power it up again, and this could
improve your modem’s performance.

Another piece of advice from Gary is to stick with Windows XP
until Vista’s problems are fully sorted out. Our Graham is of
the same opinion. I’ve got some bad faults on the registry of
my Windows Vista, dating back to my attempts to remove Norton
anti-virus software from our laptop and installing other
anti-virus software … the machine repeatedly crashed. I got
Gary to help me sort that problem out, and I now have AVG 7.5
Pro on the machine.

However, some of the downloads from Microsoft are not being
accepted by the machine, resulting in intermittent computer
crashes. I did have a go at reinstalling Windows Vista, but
my back-up DVDs wouldn’t work (which is b----y annoying also).
Sony didn’t supply these back-up DVDs, but advised new owners
to do an initial back-up onto several DVDs at the outset, which
I did.

As regards XP, I’ve just downloaded Service Pack 3 from Microsoft
onto my machine, which took up half an hour of my evening
yesterday – something you’re about to experience if you’ve got
Windows XP too.

Oh, what fun.

Here is a link to Gary’s website. Both Ken and I have used his
services, and can recommend him. He is based in Daybrook in
Nottingham, not far from Sainsbury's.

http://www.gbmicros.co.uk/index.htm

New sessions for Computer Beginners

Those of you who've seen our Autumn Newsletter will know that
we're starting something new and exciting for absolute beginners.

Yes, exciting if you're a nerd like me. :)

Ken, Graham and our new Chair, Christine will be starting a
rolling programme of sessions based on the National U3A's
booklet, Computing Basics for Seniors. This is available in
CD format from National Office (for U3A members only) at
£2.50 a copy. The CD comes with supplementary notes.

I've had a look at the booklet, and it's very well put together.
The course starts off with very basic tasks such as how to
turn your computer on and off. The course rapidly progresses to
more interesting stuff - on word processing, file management,
emailing and searching the internet.

These sessions will run from 10.15 to 11.15 on alternate
Thursday mornings, and will be followed by sessions for
intermediate users (except for the occasional time where we
haven't found a speaker for the session). The latter will
run from 11.30am to about 12.45pm.

The first session for beginners will start on 11 September,
followed by a talk and discussion run by Ken on how he put
together our current Newsletter. It was our recent editor,
Alan Williams, who suggested this idea in the first place -
many thanks, Alan - that we should dissect the Newsletter
to examine the layout and content, and in the discussion time,
ask for comments on how it could be improved.

We hope Robert Wignall will join us, as he has been the
Newsletter editor for some years, and is an expert on using
Publisher.

Thinking of trying out some new protection
against viruses and hackers, for your computer?

I've been looking at Martin Lewis' site for advice on this
subject as I've just bought a second-hand computer with
Window XP newly installed on it. I've got no anti-virus cover
on it as yet, and no anti-spyware either.

On my Sony laptop, I've got the professional version of AVG 7.5
on it, which I'm very pleased with.

Last April, AVG have since brought out a new version, AVG 8.0.
I've been thinking about installing the free version of this,
but I've read that several people have had problems with it....
see the forum below.

So instead of AVG, I'll go for the free version of Avast 4.0,
for anti-virus cover plus something like Spybot or AdAware for
anti-spyware, and I'll use the Windows firewall that comes with
Windows XP. I've used Avast in the past, and have been pleased
with it.

Here are the websites for the above...

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-anti-virus-software
.. a good read.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=10613365#post10613365
...the forum for the above
… includes advice on how to get rid of Norton if you so wish

http://www.avg-download-free.net/ .. the AVG site

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
... for the free Avast 4.0

http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php ...
for Ad-Aware – to remove unpleasant adverts & spyware hidden on your computer.

http://2008-search-destroy.com/index.asp?aff=103&camp=gg_spybot_uk&se=google
Spybot

A word of warning – only download stuff from legit. sites for obvious reasons.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

How about using programs from Open Office for your computer ...
for word processing, presentations and spreadsheets? They're free!

http://why.openoffice.org/

Well, you'll have little reason to do so, if you've already
got Microsoft Office installed. But as time goes by, will we
really wish to pay out for the latest version as the old stuff
becomes obselete? I doubt it.

I'm on the emailing list for Martin Lewis' Moneysavingexpert website,
and get sent an email about the latest money-saving deals about once
a week.

Here is one of the webpages from his site, showing deals which would
save you money if you wish to eat out / get a take-away. These deals
are being continuously updated. Currently there is a very good offer
this weekend on buying take-away food (and wine) from M & S.

If you wish to receive emails from Martin Lewis, just enter your
email address in the box on the upper right hand corner of this page.

If you're worried about giving out your email address to businesses
like this, then you could set up an email address for this specific
purpose (but don't use the same email address for online banking in
case someone starts sending you spoof letters from banks, etc, asking
you to give away your financial details).

As I've said before, I use Googlemail for family and friends, another
Gmail address for our U3A membership, Hotmail for business use, and
Yahoo for other stuff such as Nottingham Realcycle, outside U3As and
for Flickr use also.

Fancy a new email address with Yahoo or Googlemail?

I've just read in today's IT Guardian about Yahoo offering new email
addresses to everyone at ymail dot com.

So if you fancy setting up a shorter email address for say emailing
just your family and friends, you could follow this link to ....

http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/ymail/buzz.html

eg your email address could look like this ...

johnsmith @ ymail.com

I keep 10 email addresses going for various uses, and my wife, Sue,
has two on the go also. Of all the email providers I've used, I think
Googlemail is the best. However I don't use Gmail for business use, as
I don't wish spammers to get hold of it.

If you'd like to see 10 good reasons for signing up to Gmail, have a
look at this ...

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html

There is a link on the above page if you'd like to sign up to Gmail,
or you could click on the link below ....

http://tinyurl.com/4ymxy6

Happy emailing,
John

Internet broadband with a Dongle?

I've found an interesting article on this website ...

http://tinyurl.com/67vlah

... followed by lots of comments from other people,
discussing the pros and cons of using a dongle.

A dongle would be OK if your internet usage is low,
and if mobile phone reception is good in your
particular area. There appear to be problems with
online security ... so a dongle may not be suitable for
internet shopping.

A look at Windows Vista

There’s a lot of info all about Windows Vista on the internet, in the
PC magazines and in books (eg Windows Vista in Easy Steps), so
I won’t say much about it here.

From what I’ve read from various sources, it would seem to be a
good idea to wait until you need a replacement PC, if you’re
thinking of upgrading from XP to Vista.

I’d recommend you go for Window Vista Home Premium rather than
the Basic version, or if you do get the latter, get a PC which is
capable of hosting the Home Premium in case you wish to upgrade
to HP at a later date. I’ve read that a lot of PCs are sold as
“Vista friendly”, but which can only take the Basic version.

To see if your present computer (+ existing software + peripheral
equipment) is compatible with Windows Vista, have a look at the
Microsoft Program called Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor … you
can search Google for a link to this.

Vista’s “Welcome Centre” is packed with very useful info on
everything you need to get going with it, in video and text format.

I’ve found it more difficult to navigate around Vista compared with
XP. I demonstrated few ways about how to do this.

For example, I've found that the quickest way of accessing my
Pictures folder, is to hit the Start button to bring up the Start
Menu … you’ll see the Pictures button up on the right hand side.

All your most frequently used programs will be listed on the Start
menu.

A right mouse click on these > Send to > Desktop (create shortcut),
… will do just that … and will enable you to put more shortcuts
nto the Desktop … for Documents, Pictures, etc.

We had some Qs and As after my talk …

One member was having difficulty with his new laptop keyboard,
accessing the “numeric keypad”, which on a laptop are the tiny
numbers in the middle of the keyboard. To access these on my
laptop, you have to press down the Fn key (the Function key,
which is next to the Control key).

Some keyboards are set up for use in The USA or other countries …

to change the keyboard language settings …
click on the Start button > Help & Support > Manual & Specs
In the search box at the top of the menu, type in “change
language settings”, and then browse through the results.

For info on using your keyboard, search for this in Help & Support
as above.

Another question was about how to change the speed of a slide show
of your photos in Windows Vista.

To initiate the slide show, click on the centre button just underneath
the photo. Now with the slide show in progress, do a right mouse
click on the screen. This will bring up a menu which includes
the speed settings … slow, medium and fast, one of which you can
then select.

Our next Computer Club meeting will be on Thursday morning 24 July
at the ICC (10.15am start).

Christine Baxter will lead a Question and Answer session, to which
everyone is invited to attend … beginners are very welcome too.
If there is time at the end, I will give a very short presentation on
iGoogle (which enables you to fill in the huge white space on
the Google page with anything you fancy).

John Hollins

Computer Club Meetings

For the next few months, our Computer Club will be meeting up less often
… every 4 weeks instead of every 2 weeks (see the list of meetings below).

If more people would like to give a talk on a computer-related subject,
then we could meet up more often. We would be happy to give anyone our
help and support in preparing and setting up a talk.

We are currently thinking about starting up some classes for people who
are new to using a computer. These would most likely run on a Thursday
morning in the intervening weeks, starting on 2 October (provisionally).
We will let you know more about this in due course.


Here is the programme for meetings up to 16 October 08…


12 June 08 ..... no meeting

26 June 08 ..... A look at Windows Vista (John Hollins)

24 July 08 ..... Q & A discussion group (Christine Baxter)
(if there is time at the end, JH will talk briefly about iGoogle)

21 August 08 ..... Using Microsoft Excel – Part 2 (Graham Godfrey)

18 Sept 08..... Using Microsoft Word – Part 2 (Ken Bates)

16 Oct 08 .....Family History internet research – Part 2
(John Hollins)


Future provisional dates: 13 Nov 08, 11 Dec 08, and 8 Jan 09.

Creating an e-card.

Have some fun (& save yourself some money) by sending one
of your digital photos as an e-card.

Using photo-editing software, reduce the size of a photo to
700 – 1000 pixels across (in landscape view), and set the
resolution at 300 px per inch. Add some text with a font style
of your choice. Save the photo as a jpeg, & then attach it to
an email.

If you like to add some sound / animation, you could try
www.hallmark.com.

Hallmark has some ready-made designs with jingles, which you
can use free of charge. You can add your own photo to one of
its templates. Downloading a program from Hallmark is
time-consuming, but saves you the bother of using
photo-editing software. You can add your own words onto one
of its cards.

Remember to create a Restore Point on your computer, before
putting any new program onto your computer, so you can revive
your computer if it crashes.
(Start > Help & Support > set up System Restore).

(I’ll show you how to use Hallmark at a future meeting).

By the way, I’ve been on Martin Lewis’ moneysavingexpert site
this morning, and have found bargain prices for both 2 and 4
gigabyte flash drives. The 4GB ones are about £9 each from
Play.com. I recently paid £15 for another 4GB flash drive
PC World.

Here is the link to the Play dot com webpage ...
http://tinyurl.com/2agjyu

For those of you who like watching Martin Lewis in "It Pays To Watch"
but you missed an episode, click HERE for a link to his website.
JH

Here are the links to the websites, I referred to in my talk.

Free BMD
(birth, marriage & death records in E & W, from 1837 to 1983)

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/

Family Search
(for the 1881 E & W Census)

Click on Search > Census > British Census

http://www.familysearch.org/ (home page)

http://tinyurl.com/25pq

Ancestry

Ask a librarian at one of the Notts County Libraries, to show you
how to access this free of charge, to see the 1891 & 1901 E & W
Censuses.

If you’re putting records onto a flash drive, then book a
computer which has a USB port.

Remember to take your library card with you.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ (the subscription/paid service)

The General Register Office
… to order certificates online (at £7 each).

http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If you wish to have a go with the Print Screen button,
this is next to the F12 key on your keyboard. This makes
an excellent copy of your entire screen.

You can then paste this onto a Word document, a Powerpoint
slide, or a rectangle of white canvas in Photoshop.

The keyboard shortcut for pasting is Ctrl + letter V.

To rotate a Word document into Landscape format, click on
File > Page Set-up > select Landscape format.

To save your work, use File > Save As.

.......................................................

Here are a couple of chairs which were kindly donated by
a Nottingham Realcycle member. You can see that they're
being put to good use.



The back numbers of Webuser and Computer Active magazines,
which I brought in today to loan to you all, were another
brilliant gift by a Realcycle member.

Today’s talk was about organising your files & folders.

Think about labelling all your files with the
current day’s date.

I will save this article as follows:

080417 computerclub blog

08 is the year, 04 April and 17 the day of the month

I date my photo folders in a slightly different way

eg 0408photos … my April 2008 photos.

After saving several files / folders into My Documents,
go into My Documents, click View on the top toolbar, and then List.

You will see your files stacked up in date (and alphabetical) order.
Windows will do all the hard work for you, if you adopt this simple
way of dating your stuff.

***********************************************

Taskbar shortcuts (to one or more of your favourite folders) …

Right mouse click on the bottom toolbar > Toolbar > New toolbar
… browse for the folder > Select folder.



Click on the set of double arrows just alongside the folder name
on the taskbar, to reveal the contents of the folder … slide your
mouse up the list, to a sub-folder, to reveal the sub-folder’s
contents.

Remove a taskbar shortcut … Right mouse click on the toolbar
> toolbars
… and then untick the folder shortcut you wish to delete.

*****************************************


Here are the links to a couple of websites I mentioned in my talk
about hiding your files / folders, with password protection ….

Free Hide Folders on the PC World site … click HERE
(this site is not for Windows Vista users)

For another site which is said to be compatible with Windows Vista,
click HERE. I haven’t tried this one out myself, so I don’t know how
safe / good this site is.

Remember to create a RESTORE POINT before putting any new program onto your computer.

Start > Help & Support
> “Undo changes to your computer with System Restore”

If your computer were to crash during installation, then it would be
possible to restore your computer to its earlier state.


****************************************

One of our members asked about organising her photos which were
scattered around her computer.

I think that using the Picasa program would help locate
where all the photos are.

You can download this program free of charge … click HERE

Once you’ve downloaded it, Picasa will ask if you’d like to set
up a photo-gallery of all your photos … which it will do for you
at all levels in your computer. I’ve used Picasa twice in the
past (on a temporary basis), and have discovered photos which
I thought I’d deleted ages ago. The photos will be displayed as
rows of small thumbnail photos, so you will be able to look at
them all very quickly.

****************************************

Another member asked me about Nottingham’s Freecycle for
recycling some stuff.

The original Nottingham group recently reformed itself as
Nottingham Realcycle -- a splinter group.

Here is some info about Nottm Realcycle …

Here are a couple of webpages with some info about Nottm
Realcycle
... click HERE and HERE.

You will see that you will need to set up an ID with Yahoo, to be able
to access the Yahoo Group forum.

I use a Yahoo email site to post emails / adverts to the Group site.

(I don't usually bother looking at the forum page)

Here is the Yahoo email address for the group ...

realcycle_nottingham@yahoogroups.com

There is a hyphen or a short underline between the words realcycle
and nottingham.

You will need to apply to the group's moderators to be able
to join the group ... you have to state where you live in
Nottingham to be able to sign up ... they restrict membership to
people living inside the city boundary.

They have a strict protocol in how you should complete your emails
to the group, and they will tell you about this when you've been
accepted. Let me know if you don't understand what to do.

If you’re looking for a specific item, I’ve found it more effective
to put in a “wanted” advert, than wait for the item to turn up on
the message board.

You can also email the group with a digital photo of an item you
wish to donate ... I've found it difficult to sort out what to do,
but I have managed to do this a few times.

***********************************************

Googlemail

Another member was having problems using Hotmail's email address
system, which I have experienced also.

When you start typing someone's email address into Googlemail or
Yahoo email, the person's email address automatically appears,
together with anyone else with the same first name. So if I start
writing the name Christine into our Googlemail address box, up pops
a list of about eight Christines I could choose from.

With both Hotmail and Yahoo, I dislike the look of all the adverts
on the email sites, so I can recommend Googlemail to anyone who
fancies a change. Perhaps you'd like an extra site just for family
and friends? I've use Googlemail for family & friends, and Hotmail
for anyone/anything else.

Googlemail has a brilliant search facility ... put a name like
Ken into the search box, and all my email correspondence with Ken
will come up on the screen in date order.

Another good feature with Gmail is the fairly easy way of transferring
all your email addresses from say Hotmail to your Gmail site. Gmail
has a short video showing you how to do this. You would need the
Microsoft Excel program (or a similar program) on your computer to do
this, as you'd be creating a csv file.

Gmail also allows you to send out an email to a large group of
people, such as the 100+ online members of Nottm U3A. Hotmail and
Yahoo won't let me do this, but Outlook Express will. If anyone
in the U3A would like to know how to send bulk emails, please let
me know.

To sign up for Googlemail, click HERE for the introductory page, and
then select Create an account.