Thursday, January 21, 2010

January 20, 2010 Meeting

Our attendance is growing so spread the word and bring your friends. We encourage folks of all levels of computer knowledge to attend as there is ALWAYS something new to learn. If you're an avid "user", we appreciate you being there to contribute your ideas and experience. If you're a "newbie", you are certain to go away with new knowledge. Come One, Come All.





The Club has a project we encourage everyone to try. We're going through the steps of taking our photos and turning them into a movie that you can share with friends and family. Bill Murr, Bryan Phillips, and Peggy Fetzer showed us the movies they each created using Photo Story 3. Their shows were so fun to watch. We thank them for sharing.


Our "assignment" (and I use that term loosely) is to play with Photo Story 3 and come up with some photos we would like to share. We all have cute or interesting experiences that would make a fun presentation to this group. When you're done with the project, you will have a wonderful gift to present to family or friends on either CD, or a website, or via email. Give it a try. There is nothing to lose, no money involved, you'll gain knowledge and most importantly.....have FUN. We strongly encourage all to participate. (no.....this does not require you to stand up and give a speech...we'll just plug in your CD or jump drive and show your presentation)


For those who are on Windows 7, go to your start menu and search for Windows Live Movie Maker. This free program is quite identical to Photo Story 3. If you don't see it on your computer, you can go to Microsoft's website and download it for free. We'll talk more about it at the next meeting.


We also presented an introduction to some fun computer games...different forms of solitaire, word games, and hidden object games. These games can be played on line, downloaded for a free hour of play, or can be purchased at a low price. Favorite websites listed are:

After the meeting, we showed basic video tutorials by Geeks on Tour. These basics included how to name and save files, create folders, backup to CD or jump drives, and how to navigate through Windows Explorer. To our "newbies", these tutorials are extremely informative and helpful. We'll be showing some after each Wednesday meeting compliments of Chris Guld at Geeks on Tour. If you wish, you can view numrous videos for free at their website or you can join their program for $39 for a full year and view the tutorials on all subjects as many times as you wish on your home computer.

http://www.geeksontour.com/

Next week's meeting will include a review and continuation of Photo Story 3 and Movie Maker. PLUS we'll have a valuable presentation on computer maintenance including disk cleanup, temporary internet files, cookies, backup, disk defrag, etc. by a new Palm Creek guest, Michael Salter. Mike has years of experience as a Computer Science instructor so will be a wealth of knowledge for us. He also has a website where 5th Wheel owners will find a plethora of information. Check it out. His personal website is even more fun .

Hope to see you at next week's meeting:

January 27, 9:30 in the San Tan Room.


Oh yes........one of our friendly club members gave this author a hard time (in friendly jest, of course) so I have a way of getting even...by posting his photo here. Ha Ha Jerry McDonald. Never underestimate the power of the pen (or keyboard in this case!)


2 comments:

Jerrymac said...

Is everyone at Palm Creek this good lookin'? Thanks Sue, BTW, in the interest of
accuracy, it's really McDonald rather than MacDonald.
The blog is great, helps me remember what we have done and what we plan on doing at the club meetings!

sue77 said...

Okay Jerry...spelling of your name has been corrected. I'll confess that misspelling your name was not my first mistake in 2010....and I was so trying to make it through the year being perfect. See ya at the next meeting. Sue Hepler