Apart from Rick, is there anyone out there interested in joining this group when again. We have booked the room at Bradbury House on Wednesdays from 10-noon.
Are you researching family history? Although Ancestry.com is not available to us - other sites are. And you can get a couple of hours for about £2 including coffee. Cheaper than the library!
Syd has had a look at another of the beginners courses advertised in the latest U3A News - which Rick mentioned earlier and highly recommends it. It costs £6, available from National Office, I believe. If you fancy doing this we can get copies and help you through it.
We already have material for anyone wanting to know about the internet and email - as well as loads of other stuff collected over the years. Between us all we usually solve most problems.
Many of the present committee will have completed their 3-year term of office in November, so now would be a good time to hone your skills to take your turn helping out. Membership secretary, newsletter, business secretary, even the web page - all need people to help. Whilst computer skills are not essential they can cut down a lot of writing.
Whatever your interest, or skill (or otherwise) you'll be very welcome.
Anyone interested should contact Rick or myself (details in the July/August newsletter) asap.
If there are insufficient takers, the room will have to be cancelled.
Come on you bloggers from last year, what's keeping you.
Sandy
Monday, August 18, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
widening scope
Members:
Have you seen the U3A News magazine no. 82? There are several articles of interest to computer users - from yet another course for beginners, comments from other U3A computer users (or otherwise) and on line courses. There is also an opening for anyone wanting to help contribute to preparing on line courses.
For a copy of the magazine - give me a call, or get in touch with Doreen Woodward, the membership secretary (details in the newsletter) who lives in Nunnery Lane and receives the bulk delivery. She will still have yours if you have not got it yet.
A copy of the beginners course has been sent to all U3As - free. Ours is currently with Syd, our Groups Co-ordinator, but I hope to get hold of it soon and will share it with you all.
Enjoying the summer weather - I write this while it yet again pouring down outside.
Best wishes,
Sandy
Have you seen the U3A News magazine no. 82? There are several articles of interest to computer users - from yet another course for beginners, comments from other U3A computer users (or otherwise) and on line courses. There is also an opening for anyone wanting to help contribute to preparing on line courses.
For a copy of the magazine - give me a call, or get in touch with Doreen Woodward, the membership secretary (details in the newsletter) who lives in Nunnery Lane and receives the bulk delivery. She will still have yours if you have not got it yet.
A copy of the beginners course has been sent to all U3As - free. Ours is currently with Syd, our Groups Co-ordinator, but I hope to get hold of it soon and will share it with you all.
Enjoying the summer weather - I write this while it yet again pouring down outside.
Best wishes,
Sandy
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Sharing Documents
I have been looking at the new Google Documents facility and it looks really useful if you need to work on documents together with other people. At the moment most of us who collaborate on editing a document (e.g. magazine article) will pass drafts backwards and forwards until we agree on a finished version. One big problem with this as that multiple copies can exist at any one time and no one is quite sure which is the most up to date. The new application avoids this problem by keeping only one master copy, this being maintained on an online server. Anyone who wants to work on the document can sign in and work online - hey presto the online version is always up to date. Document types include text (like Word) spreadsheet and presentations and you can create folders to keep everything tidy. It is also possible to download some software which allows documents created on your own computer to be uploaded and then kept in sync every time you connect. Docs created with commonly used applications can be converted. There is a good video on Google's site which explains it all. The idea is part of the so-called 'cloud computing' technique and I think we are going to be hearing a lot more about this in the future.
Well, this seems like a great new idea and could prove useful to some U3A people. It will be interesting to see where it goes. Perhaps we should not throw all our office application software out just yet but who knows what the future may hold.
Rick
Well, this seems like a great new idea and could prove useful to some U3A people. It will be interesting to see where it goes. Perhaps we should not throw all our office application software out just yet but who knows what the future may hold.
Rick
Saturday, June 7, 2008
June is busting out
Poor Rick seems to be doing all the blogging. He's put up some useful tips which I have copied into a word file and will study more closely when I go "off-line". If you want to do the same - just highlight what you want to copy, copy (onto the clipboard) open a word programme and paste. The clipboard holds stuff from one file to another.
Back from holiday and now caught up on most of the jobs weekends can be devoted to some computing - it's cheapest at weekends. Using the help from Rick I am trying to put together a sort of instruction sheet to go into the book I am assembling to show others what we have achieved as a group this year.
As none of you have "posted" yet, is that you haven't read the blog since we left Age Concern? If you have read it but have got lost off somewhere do give me a ring on 384496. If I can't help, it will be back to the ever-patient Rick.
Someone else talk to us, please.
Sandy
Back from holiday and now caught up on most of the jobs weekends can be devoted to some computing - it's cheapest at weekends. Using the help from Rick I am trying to put together a sort of instruction sheet to go into the book I am assembling to show others what we have achieved as a group this year.
As none of you have "posted" yet, is that you haven't read the blog since we left Age Concern? If you have read it but have got lost off somewhere do give me a ring on 384496. If I can't help, it will be back to the ever-patient Rick.
Someone else talk to us, please.
Sandy
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Try, try again.
This blog is being posted using a screenheaded South Durham u3a Computing on Sunday 1st June. Will also try sending one from Blackwell Bodgers - a blog I set up for fun last week for Malcolm and I but which has nothing posted on it .... yet
Sandy
Sandy
Mashups
Hi,
Well, I promised to post a bit more often so thought I had best start as I mean to go on. This post is about a rather useful class of application which I have been looking at recently.
When you open the Google start page or the Yahoo start page you may not have realised that you can customise this page to show items which may be of special interest to you. In the case of Google this goes under the name of iGoogle and is accessed by clicking on the iGoogle link at the top right of the page. This will load up a page which brings together various applets showing news, weather, horoscope etc. etc. There are many to chose from and you can alter the layout by moving them round, deleting some etc. to suit your own preference. In this way, you build your own homepage. To save this setup so that it shows each time you go to the site you need to have a Google account and be logged in (but then you need one to post to this blog under your own name anyway!). If you use Yahoo as your home page and would prefer to customise this then use the My Yahoo link at the top right of the initial Yahoo page. This will offer the same type of applets and customisation options and I think you may be able to save this without needing a Yahoo account (but will probably need renewing if you erase all cookies).
This is only a very quick introduction (the final of the IPL T20 competition is about to start!). If anyone would like to know more post a comment to this post or send me an email.
Rick
Well, I promised to post a bit more often so thought I had best start as I mean to go on. This post is about a rather useful class of application which I have been looking at recently.
When you open the Google start page or the Yahoo start page you may not have realised that you can customise this page to show items which may be of special interest to you. In the case of Google this goes under the name of iGoogle and is accessed by clicking on the iGoogle link at the top right of the page. This will load up a page which brings together various applets showing news, weather, horoscope etc. etc. There are many to chose from and you can alter the layout by moving them round, deleting some etc. to suit your own preference. In this way, you build your own homepage. To save this setup so that it shows each time you go to the site you need to have a Google account and be logged in (but then you need one to post to this blog under your own name anyway!). If you use Yahoo as your home page and would prefer to customise this then use the My Yahoo link at the top right of the initial Yahoo page. This will offer the same type of applets and customisation options and I think you may be able to save this without needing a Yahoo account (but will probably need renewing if you erase all cookies).
This is only a very quick introduction (the final of the IPL T20 competition is about to start!). If anyone would like to know more post a comment to this post or send me an email.
Rick
Friday, May 30, 2008
Opening the Blog
Hello all,
As you can see, the traffic on this blog isn't exactly setting the world alight! Maybe it is just because we are in the summer break period but is everyone away? I have been as guilty as anyone else, my excuse being that I was away for three weeks but I will try to post more often now as I come across things on the net which could be of interest. I was wondering what the computing group think about opening this blog up to other members of the local U3A's. Perhaps it is too early, let me know what you think. I suppose it may be more useful if we made it more general rather than just for computing. In this case it would have been better to choose a different title - great hindsight there. Some time ago Malcolm and I discussed the possibility of setting up something which could allow members to raise questions which other members could then post answers or helpful comments. On reflection I realised that a blog could serve this purpose. We could maybe use the category attribute to flag various interest groups e.g. computing, gardening, art etc. etc. In addition it could be used to post event dates and reminders etc. If we wanted to go ahead with such a venture I will need to look into the possibility to change the blog title or maybe we will need to set up a new blog dedicated to this purpose. Now that most people are connected and somewhat net savvy it may be a useful facility which we as computing group could offer to our local U3A.
Please post your comments so that I will know what people think about this idea.
Rick
As you can see, the traffic on this blog isn't exactly setting the world alight! Maybe it is just because we are in the summer break period but is everyone away? I have been as guilty as anyone else, my excuse being that I was away for three weeks but I will try to post more often now as I come across things on the net which could be of interest. I was wondering what the computing group think about opening this blog up to other members of the local U3A's. Perhaps it is too early, let me know what you think. I suppose it may be more useful if we made it more general rather than just for computing. In this case it would have been better to choose a different title - great hindsight there. Some time ago Malcolm and I discussed the possibility of setting up something which could allow members to raise questions which other members could then post answers or helpful comments. On reflection I realised that a blog could serve this purpose. We could maybe use the category attribute to flag various interest groups e.g. computing, gardening, art etc. etc. In addition it could be used to post event dates and reminders etc. If we wanted to go ahead with such a venture I will need to look into the possibility to change the blog title or maybe we will need to set up a new blog dedicated to this purpose. Now that most people are connected and somewhat net savvy it may be a useful facility which we as computing group could offer to our local U3A.
Please post your comments so that I will know what people think about this idea.
Rick
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