Program Notes and Reviews 2012
Holiday Party and Etc. – See the Presentation (PDF)
with Peter Hirsch, George Kornbluth
- Presentation on running a precinct in the last Presidential Elections
- Please plan to bring topics you would like to have discussed in 2013
Join us for an introduction to Windows 8. This workshop is designed for customers who are considering upgrading to or purchasing a Windows 8 device. We will walk you through demos and show you everything that you can do with Windows 8.
This workshop will include the key Windows 8 features that emphasize the benefits of Windows 8 for small-to-medium size businesses. You will be introduced to the new experience of touch/gesture, see highlights of the new Start screen, Live Tiles, and how the mouse/keyboard, along with the familiar desktop, remains an integral part of Windows 8. The workshop
includes discussions and demonstrations on the benefits of cloud-connectivity, amazing apps, and specifics on how small-to-medium size business owners, managers, and employees can be more productive with Windows 8.
Kahn Academy, by Peter Hirsch
The
Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created
in 2006 by Bengali-American educator Salman Khan, a graduate
of MIT and Harvard Business School.
With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,400 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and computer science. View presentation by Peter Hirsch.
Khan Academy is attended by three million users a month.
Land to Critical Mass
– by Peter Hirsch 
The “Land to Critical Mass” is a term defined by financial commentator, Bob Brinker. Critical Mass is the amount of money you need to accumulate for retirement. This amount would be different for each person and each life style. In addition, it is difficult to calculate since there are many unknowns, like how long will you and your spouse live, the inflation rate, your investment growth, etc.
We will discuss how best to calculate the Critical Mass and provide a spreadsheet to guide you in calculating your own Critical Mass.
Speaker: Phil Wolff
We'll start with the state of
the world's largest realtime social network as Skype reaches
its ninth birthday, its first at Microsoft. We'll look at Skype's
changing technical architecture, in plain English. And we'll
close with a forecast of what Skype will look like in a future
where everythng is talk-enabled. We should have plenty of time
for a few tips and Q&A. Trivia 1: Skype is nine years' old; how many presidents and CEOs has it had?
Trivia 2: How many times has Skype been sold?
Trivia 3: In what country was Skype declared an "enemy of the state"?
Pool: On Monday, 20 August 2012, how many people will be signed in to Skype concurrently at peak?
Phil Wolff wrote about Skype since its launch in 2003, with more than one thousand articles about Skype's technologies, business, strategy, competitors, usage, regulatory affairs, ecosystem and security. Phil is an alumnus of Compaq Computer, Wang Labs, LSI Logic, and Bechtel National with experience in technology marketing, operations research, software development, and business journalism.
Social Networking -- Web Based Services
Speaker: Peter Hirsch
Very popular are the Social Networking Web Based Services,
such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest and many
more. We will discuss the value and benefits of these Social
Networks.
Most of you use e-mail to correspond with friends and relatives
and many of you may also use one of these Social Networks.
View Presentation (PDF)
NEST Thermostat
Speaker: Peter Hirsch
You may not have thought that you need a computerized,
intelligent, thermostat, but perhaps you will rethink that after
the presentation? What could a computer do for you inside your
thermostat?
The NEST thermostat is a computerized, intelligent thermostat.
It has not just a temperature sensor, but also measures humidity
and senses if people are nearby. It learns the temperature settings
you desire for day or night use.
The NEST thermostat connects to the web via WiFi and gets weather
forecasts and can be controlled via an application on a smartphone.
The NEST can provide daily or monthly energy reports and can
save you energy.
The NEST thermostat was designed by people who helped design
the Apple iPod and iPhone, so it is a user friendly device and
installs easily where your existing thermostat
currently works.
Update to Picasa, New version Picasa
3.9
Speaker: Ralph Bernstein 
Google’s Picasa is a free photo and movie management
system that can transfer, find, organize, edit, print, and share
images. Picasa automatically organizes your pictures into elegant
albums by date. The program works with JPEG, GIF, BMP, PSD, and
movie files and is compatible with most digital cameras; it detects
your USB driver and imports pictures into albums.
Editing tools include cropping (standard or custom), automatic
removal of red-eye, and enhancing--switching from color to black
and white or sepia tone. Create slide shows set to your MP3s.
Integration with Picasa's free Hello instant picture-sharing
software lets you share hundreds of photos in seconds and chat
in real time. e-mail photos with Picasa's built-in client to
take the guesswork out of compressing images, and order photo-lab
quality prints, or print at home. You can make backups to CD
(or to other hard drives) of your photo collections, organize
your photos using labels and stars (just like with Gmail), write
captions for all pictures, and organize videos as well as pictures.
Face recognition and extraction is also a very nice feature.
New Picasa 3.9 features will be demonstrated:
Picasa 3.9 lets you share directly to Google+ and offers a much
richer selection of editing tools. You can download Picasa at
http://picasa.google.com. You can use Picasa 3.9 to share directly
to contacts in Google, they'll see your photos and videos in
their Google+ stream. There is a plethora of new editing effects
like Vignette, Duo-tone, Borders and more.
Two different photos can be compared side by side. Or compare
the original and edited versions of the same photo simultaneously
as you apply edits in Picasa.
Steve Jobs “One Last Thing” – PBS Documentary
We will show a PBS 1 hour video on former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs,
titled “One Last Thing”.
From Wikipedia biography of Steve Jobs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs :
Steven Paul Jobs; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was
an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known
as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple
Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic
pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential
career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs
also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation
Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The
Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar. Jobs
also founded and was CEO of NEXT corporation which was acquired
at Apple Corp.
In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered
one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers,
the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial
potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface,
which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and one year later,
the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would
begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the
introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker
software.
Five Industries that Steve Jobs changed,
1. Personal Computing, iMac
2. Animation, Pixar
3. Music, iPod
4. Mobile Smart Phone, iPhone
5. Mobile Computing/Tablets, iPad
Photo credit: Jonathan Mak
What is Cloud Computing?
By Peter Hirsch
We will define cloud computing, show different deployment models,
show essential characteristics of cloud computing, types of cloud
computing and show several examples of cloud computing.
Watch Presentation (PDF)
Quicker PC Start-Up, Speed-Up your PC
by Ralph Bernstein and Club Members 
Some of the techniques that will be presented:
- Using Msconfig, remove any unnecessary applications in startup which will improve PC Start-Up.
- Reducing memory usage using CC Cleaner and
Comodo System
Cleaner to clean temp files and cache thereby speeding up your
computer. - Checking Memory Utilization
Other PC Club members can also provide their
techniques to improve startup and execution of the computer.
View
Presentation.
New Computer Trends in 2012 and Beyond
Sue Kayton
Happy
New Year!!!
By popular demand, Sue Kayton will be back to talk about "New
Computer Trends in 2012 and Beyond."
Bring in your desktop or laptops that have problems and also bring in your new electronic toys that you got over the Holidays or recently, such as smart phones, book readers, tablet computers or desk top computers so we can all see the trends and directions of computing.
You can show everyone your new device and tell us what you like (and don't like) about your not-a-computer device.
Sue will also fix problems, as she did last year, with your desktop and laptop computers, as time permits.