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• Article1: Look Ma No Hands
• Article2: Microsoft Office 2007 Review
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• Thanks to Our Featured Presenters

Don't Miss !

The plain-English computing resource you've been looking for!

Smart Computing will be our featured presenter during the March 4th meeting.  There will be Goodie bags for everyone who comes, plus great door prizes!  Smart Computing always puts on a wonderful presentation, and if you have ever been in a jam and called them for free computer support, you know just how good they are.  Some of the presentation highlights will be:

-  FREE Computer Support

-  5 Magazines for the price of 1

-  Plain-English Writing Style

-  Searchable Article Archive

-  My Personal Library

-  Q&A Board

-  Online Tech Support Center

Mark your calendar,  come and join us, and bring a friend...

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KILANFest

John Henderson announced the upcoming, second running of KILANFest , the computer gaming event being sponsored by Hostaroo and KIPCUG.  Version 2.0 runs for 30 hours beginning March 8^th at 10:00 am thru March 9^th, until 4:00 pm.  As with the last KILANFest, KIPCUG has offered to man the concession stand. Previous volunteers agreed they had a great time, and many re-signed at the February meeting, but volunteers are still needed to man the 2-hour, 2-person time slots covering the full 30 hours. If you can help out at the concession stand, click here to access KIPCUG's KILANFest Volunteer Signup page.

Calling all Gamers KILANFest ver 2.0 coming March 8th to 9th, 2008       Hostaroo and KIPCUG are hosting their Second Running of a PC gaming weekend.  Registration opened February 1, 2008.   Check out more information at http://www.kilanfest.com - March 8th and 9th - 112 seats for BYOC   - 30 hours of nonstop gaming - Being held at the Clarion Hotel and Convention Center, Blue Grass Parkway, Louisville, Kentucky - Tournaments for Halo3, Battlefield 2, Counter-Strike:Source, Trackmania and more - All registered attendees qualify for door prizes donated from our great sponsors -  Sign up and test the Ideazon gear at our designated station and qualify to win $100 gift certificate from the Z store The Game Is On  Be A Part of It!

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2008

and

Convention Highlights

Our own Master of Ceremonies, Wayne Perkey, shared highlights of his recent trip to Las Vegas, attending both the APCUG and CES 2008 Conventions.  Wayne shared a slideshow and digital video that he and Brian shot while enjoying learning about what is new and upcoming in the areas of both software and technology.  Wayne did alert us to the fact that KIPCUG is not the only User's Group suffering from a lack of presenters in the past couple of years, and hinted that most user's groups would be seeing more interactive webcasts with vendors than live presentations.  With the up and coming hardware and software, these webcasts may be entertaining in their own right.. a multimedia event not to be missed!

A few items that impressed Wayne at both shows were:

Pinnacle Studio	Easy to use home video editing software for both the beginner and the digital movie enthusiast
Ai Squared	Magnification and reading software for the vision impaired
AMD	-  AMD Live™ - a suite of products and services that offer a secure way to access, manage and share entertainment experiences -  ATI Graphics - HD gaming technology through such platforms as ATI CrossFireX Technology
Reallusion	Make your own avatar or create master 3D real-time films with iClone2 or create talking pictures with CrazyTalk5
Firetrust	MailWasher Pro - stops spam and unwanted email, get free updates for life

Look for more information under the section, "From APCUG members."  During the CES convention, (2) items that Wayne brought home to play with were 1Boss which works like a router, but allows the user to set access criteria for each individual computer being hooked up to it and is recommended for monitoring children's internet use;  and Game Net which targets gamer audiences and can run as an alternative to wireless.  Wayne will be providing more information on these items as he gains a working knowledge of them.

BACK TO BASICS - "How-To Send Photographs without Overloading Mailboxes"

John Henderson instructed the audience on how to resize photographs in order to send them in emails (or place on websites).  Most digital cameras come packaged with software which allows for some type of photo-editing, or you can use freeware called Irfanview, or purchase more elaborate editing software as Paint Shop Pro (Corel) or Photo-Impact (Ulead).  Four (4) steps to resizing photographs after scanning or importing a large size photograph into your computer are:

1)	Shrink by cropping, if possible.
2)	Check resolution - if greater than 96dpi, you can reduce down to 72dpi or 96dpi.
3)	Shrink picture - use the "resize" edit feature and reduce to a maximum of 400 pixels wide, remember to make sure to check "maintain ratio."
4)	Optimize JPEG  by compressing it (in some programs, this is located under File/Export). Note that bitmap and tiff files do not compress.

Once you have saved your compressed and resized photo, it is ready to be attached to an email.  Remember that this type of attachment is for viewing online as the reduced resolution will not make it a very good print copy.

Additional Tidbit by John:  Be careful when sending forwards or multiple copies.  To protect your address book and your friends, drop all the names into "BCC" and for more protection, send the original to yourself.

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User-to-User

There were no specific questions brought to the meeting in February, so Tom Scanlan took the opportunity to visit the web browser "FireFox" by Mozilla. Tom suggested that a computer should have (2) two web browsers and that Firefox makes an excellent 2nd browser, and in some cases, Tom noted that Firefox is safer than Internet Explorer.  Tom said after downloading FireFox , you should go to the extension page and at least try out three (3) of his favorites::

No-Script extension - block flash ads

Ad Block Plus

Image Zoom

AND THE WINNERS ARE:

With all the "Goodies" Wayne brought back from both conventions, there were many prize winners this month.  Unfortunately, due to the bad weather, the photographs did not make it into this edition.  Check out KIPCUG's next edition for the "happy" winners of the February meeting. 

After many months of "no-show" winners, February drew a  winning name! James B. Travelstead won $60, and was also the lucky winner of one of the terrific drawing prizes.  James' picture will be featured in the next newsletter, and he has reason to smile!

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Listed below is a glance at the upcoming SIG's for the remainder of February. Please check out our current KIPCUG SIGS list. If you have any questions or would like to see us host a new or different SIG, please contact Charley May at sig@win.net

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By Bruce Jacobs, Phoenix PCUG newsletter editor
www.phoenixpcug.org 
Editor(at)PhoenixPCUG.org
 Obtained from author with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups.

This article was not typed. I dictated it using the speech recognition feature in Windows Vista Ultimate. I have been using this feature on and off for certain applications for a while and it has its good points and its bad points. .. more

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by Lynn Page, Editor, Crystal River User Group, Florida
www.crug.org
newsletter(at)crug.com

Obtained from author with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups.

Microsoft’s Office 2007 is the perfect suite of applications and is suited to all types of users. Office will aid you in being more productive and allow your documents, spreadsheets and presentations to be professional and attractive. Different versions of Office 2007 include different applications, from the Basic version with Word, Excel, and Outlook, to an Enterprise version including everything. This variety of suites may seem overkill but it provides an Office suite in complexity and price range for anyone. I have been using Microsoft Office Professional since Office 95. The only version that I skipped was Office 2000 and I still used it on the CRUG computers. After finishing my last Word 2003 class in late November I upgraded to Office 2007 Professional. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access and Publisher... more

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Special thanks to Linda Moore, Director, APCUG (www.apcug.org)

     After the 2008 APCUG convention, Linda compiled a current list of Presenters available for the upcoming year.  Although she does state that many of the sponsors will only provide presentations-in-a box, most will also be willing to provide raffle prizes and other information to the user groups. Linda suggested that before a user group contacts any of these sponsors, the user group writes and posts a product review on their user group's website.  Linda stresses that, "APCUG has been very fortunate in receiving a great deal of support from our sponsors but every user group needs to support each of these sponsors."  If you would be interested in helping KIPCUG review new products, please contact any member of the Board of Directors. We will be happy to provide the format for writing your review, and having it viewable on the website as well as printed in a future KIPCUG e-Newsletter.  There is also the possibility that one of the other APCUG members would pick it up for their publication. Your participation would be a great service to helping KIPCUG introduce new presenters into the schedule, and you would be strengthening KIPCUG's motto of "Users Helping Users."

If you are interested in more convention highlights, please go to APCUG's Presentation webpage.  There you can download and view powerpoint presentations of some of the sessions offered at the 2008 convention in Las Vegas.  Not quite like being there... but you can get a better idea of what was covered during the 2008 APCUG Convention.

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Special thanks to Brookdale Computer Users Group, Lincroft New Jersey (www.bcug.com).

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     The Kentucky-Indiana Personal Computer User's Group, from its beginning in the spring of 1983, has grown into a dynamic non-profit corporation, focused on educating and encouraging newcomers to computing as well as sharing technical information.

     KIPCUG is viewed as one of the leading groups in the nation by industry giants such as  Microsoft, Novell, IBM, and others. KIPCUG is a charter member of APCUG, the Association of Personal Computer User Groups, linking us with similar groups all over the United States.

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Special thanks to our recent Presenters:

December Presenter - Randy and Jeremy from Computers Plus, Hurstborne Lane

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January Presenters - Steve Pennington, CPA, for Intuit's Turbo Tax and Chris Jackman for H&R Block's TaxCut software