Would you like a brief look at the latest gadgets, goodies, software, and services available for the digital home? Would you like to have software that takes your digital photos and video footage and almost magically transforms it into a movie on DVD or CD that is a surprising delight to watch? Do you want to easily but dramatically show all of the digital photos in any given folder while the song of your choice plays in the background? Ever wish you could rise above ordinary flat snapshots of those special places you visit and have an immersive, 3-dimensional picture of the place so you can revisit the scene looking in any direction? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you won't want to miss Dave Whittle's presentation at our next monthly meeting!

Dave will introduce some of his favorite technologies, products, and software that solve real problems for real people and can help make life a little bit or a lot better for each of us. "Whittle's Picks" are hidden gems from companies large and small, old and new, with outstanding, innovative offerings -- including ( muvee™ Technologies), ( 3D-Album), ( iSeeMedia), and (Zip*Linq ). See exciting new possibilities from these companies and learn how the digital revolution can enhance your life. You will come away from this meeting entertained and informed. Dave will provide time for questions and will bring valuable door prizes, informative handouts, and actual product for sale at significantly discounted prices arranged exclusively for user groups. If you'd like to take advantage of these special prices at the meeting and take product home with you, remember to bring cash, check, or a credit card. See you then!

Remove Program From Add/Remove Programs

If you have uninstalled a program but it remains on the list in Add/Remove Programs, you can manually remove it by navigating to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Uninstall.

You'll see a list of all the programs available in your Add/Remove Programs Control Panel. You can simply select an entry from the list on the left, press the Delete key, and confirm to remove it. Close the Registry Editor and restart Windows; the item will be gone from your Add/Remove Programs list.

Remotely Control Your Computer

Have you ever needed to operate a PC when you're not sitting in front of that particular computer? You can, using free software called VNC (Virtual Network Computing). Once you install the VNC server on a computer, you can control it from any other computer on the LAN (local-area network). If you have a full-time Internet connection, you can even access that PC from any other computer on the Internet. You can use VNC to adjust the computer in the den from your office or to retrieve an important file from your home computer when you're out of town. The two computers don't even need to run the same operating system: You can access your Windows PC from a Mac, Linux PC, or even a PDA. Download the free software from RealVNC.

Stop Highlighting New Programs

In Windows XP, after you install a new program, it is highlighted in your start menu and a little bubble window will show up telling you there is no software. It's a waste because you just installed it - of course you know there is new software. You can disable this feature easily:

1. To do this Click Start, right-click at the top of the Start menu where your name is displayed, and then click Properties.
2. In the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box, on the Start Menu tab, click Customize.
3. Click the Advanced tab, and then clear the Highlight newly installed programs check box.
4. Click OK, and then click OK again.

Pause on Restarts

If you need to turn your PC off and then turn it back on again, it is best to wait at least 30 seconds before hitting the power button again. The reason for this is to allow your hard drives time to spin down and park their read/write heads before they receive their wake-up jolt. Doing so will increase the lifespan of your hard drives.

On the general subject of powering on and off, it is best to leave your PC on for longer time periods. If you need to use your PC several times throughout the day, leave it on all day rather than turning it on and off each time. This will avoid the cooldown/heating of the PC's hardware and prolong the lifespan.

This month is all about change for the FPCUG! We will be voting on board members, so be sure to mail in your ballot to arrive before the meeting on February 6, 2006, or bring it to the meeting and submit it before 7:30pm. In addition, the newsletter will be posted to the web in HTML format instead of PDF format. In order to accomplish this, Ronnie Ugulano has been assigned to care for the compilation, layout and uploading of the newsletter, in cooperation with our webmaster, Chris Myers. Ronnie's immediate goal for the first RAM Pages under her care, is a visually clean layout and fast loading time to accommodate our dialup members. All FPCUG members are encouraged to contribute topics, articles and other tidbits that can be used in the newsletter. Contact Ronnie for further information.

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a-squared (a²) Free edition 1.6.1

Requires: Win All

a-squared (a²) is a complementary product to antivirus software which is specialized in protection against harmful software. Antivirus software often features an inadequate protection against Trojans, Dialers and Spyware. a² fills this gap.

AOL Explorer (Formerly AOL Browser) 1.2.3.7

Requires: Win All

AOL Explorer (formerly AOL Browser) puts the power of the Web at your fingertips like never before. It is a stand-alone browser featuring tabbed browsing, thumbnail tab popups, and many more special features. The beta version is available to anyone with an AOL membership or an AOL Instant Messenger Screen Name. Some of the additional features include Desktop Search, Tabbed Browsing, Clear My Footprints, and Thumbnail Previews.

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Autoruns 8.31

Requires: Win All

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor (A starting list of auto-run locations was obtained from David Solomon's "Windows Internals" seminar), shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

CHK-Mate 1.0

Author: DIY DataRecovery
Date: 2004-01-22
Size: 1.3 Mb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All

The Windows Chkdsk and Scandisk utilities are designed to verify the file system, and (if required) to return the file system to a consistent state. File system inconsistencies can for example occur after an operating system crash.

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Codec Pack All In 1 6.0.2.8

Requires: Win All

Codec Pack All in 1 is a collection of codecs for playing DivX movies. All you need to see DivX movies: DivX, XviD, AC3...

Color Seizer - Pick colors from the screen

A colour tool for programmers. It allows you to pick a colour from anywhere on the screen. Colours selected or picked are displayed in HTML, Delphi, Visual Basic and C++ formats to be used in those languages. Also in RGB and HSL.

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DBF Viewer Plus

DBF Viewer Plus is a portable DBF table viewer plus some additional features for editing and searching

Device Info

A simple spin off utility from System Spec. It lists all your PC's device drivers and their provider and version.

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Drive Manager 3.16

Simply the coolest way to manage your drives.

Introduction to Drive Manager

If you have lots of drive letters of different types of drives, such as mapped network drives, thumb drive (USB memory sticks), smart media and compact flash, CD-ROM and DVD then this utility is perfect to help you manage them.

Email Link Encoder

This antispam software utility enables you to encode your email links on your website so they can't be extracted by rogue internet spiders looking for email addresses to add to junk mailing lists. This will help prevent you from getting huge amounts of spam.

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Erunt 1.1j

Requires: Win All

ERUNT - The Emergency Recovery Utility NT will help you Backup, restore and optimize your NT/2000/XP registry.

FileZilla 2.2.17

Requires: Win All

FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.

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Font Frenzy 1.0 Build 74

Requires: Win All

FontFrenzy™ tames the frenzy of fonts that can clutter and slow down Windows XP. The DeFrenzy function removes and stores all fonts except those that were present when Windows was first installed. In short, it cleans up your font folder so that Windows boots quicker and runs smoother.

Free & Easy Font Viewer

is a freeware utility that allows you to view the fonts installed on your system.

Supported platforms: Windows XP/ ME / 98 / NT / 2000

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FreeUndelete 1.0.443 Beta

Requires: Win NT/2K/XP

FreeUndelete is a freeware data recovery program for deleted files.

In case of accidental deletion of files on a NTFS file system (used by default in Windows XP, 2000 and NT) FreeUndelete is the utility to help.

Gmail Notifier 1.1.164

Requires: Win XP/2K

The Gmail Notifier is a downloadable Windows application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.

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Ideal Calorie Intake Calculator

This calculator will work out your Basic Metabolic Rate which is the amount of calories you burn per day without doing anything. It then works out the energy burnt in a day which is your Basic Metabolic Rate plus the calories you burn at work. Finally it works out what you target calories should be to loss 1lb (0.5kg) of weight per week.

IncrediMail Build 2131

Requires: Win All

IncrediMail lets you take full control over what your emails look like. Select from hundreds of email backgrounds that fit any mood or occasion. The people you send IncrediMail emails to don't need to download anything in order to see these backgrounds!

ISP Monitor 5.3.0

Requires: Win All

ISP Monitor will tell you about your current bandwidth usage but will also show the bandwidth stats recorded by your provider. These stats are gathered from your providers website, where supported.

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MDB Viewer Plus - Version: 1.01 beta

MDB Viewer Plus is a freeware viewer plus an editor for Access MDB files. It requires no install to run provided that MDAC is installed on your PC (In most versions of Windows this is the case).

PC Inspector File Recovery 4.0

Requires: Win All

PC INSPECTOR™ File Recovery is a data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems.

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Restoration 2.5.14

Requires: Win All

Restore files which are deleted from the recycle bin or deleted while holding down the Shift key by mistake.

Rootkit Revealer 1.56

Requires: Win All

RootkitRevealer is an advanced patent-pending root kit detection utility. It runs on Windows NT 4 and higher and its output lists Registry and file system API discrepancies that may indicate the presence of a user-mode or kernel-mode rootkit. RootkitRevealer successfully detects all persistent rootkits published at www.rootkit.com, including AFX, Vanquish and HackerDefender.

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SectorSpyXP/98 2.1

Requires: Win 9x/ME/2K/XP

Examine all data on a hard drive or diskette, at the sector level! Use SectorSpyXP/98 forensically to find and retrieve incriminating evidence! Append text information evidence to a text file. SectorSpyXP/98 will not write any information to the media, avoiding contamination! You can override this with a key. Retrieve lost information, text that has been deleted and removed from the recycle bin, like e-mails, Word documents, notepad and WordPad documents, Excel spreadsheets, database text data, and any text data that has been written to the hard drive, and not yet overwritten by the operating system! Search for a list of keywords! Navigate the sectors with the mouse or keyboard! Supports the following file systems: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and diskettes. SectorSpyXP/98 is 100% free. Pass it around!

System Spec 1.50

Requires: Win All

The self contained EXE lists a no nonsense specification of your machine without listing lots of useless memory address and unnecessary information.

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Unstoppable Copier 1.99

Requires: Win All

This program is great for recovering files from scratched CD's or defective floppy/hard disks. Normally when your computer is unable to copy a file from a damaged disk it will abort and delete the portition of the file it has copied. This program however will continue to copy the file right to the end. Any data that is not recoverable after many retries is replaced with blanks. This will allow you to truely recover every byte of information that is available for recovery. The program allows you to specify a single file, a group using wildcards (* and ?) or if you wish, select a starting folder and the program will copy all data from it and any sub folders it may contain. This program doesnt just need to be used for copying files form defective disks, it can be used to transfer any files!

Viewer & Slide Show 4.2

Requires: Win All

WildBit's Viewer is an easy to use image viewer with built-in slideshow features all packaged in and "explorer" like GUI. It supports most popular image image formats.

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Weight Watchers Points Calculator

How to find Weight Watchers points for food items.

This software version of the Weight Watchers Points Calculator can be downloaded for free.

This points calculator is for anyone who is on the Weight Watchers diet. The Weight Watchers diet is essentially a low fat, low calories diet. The lower an item of food is in fat and calories the more of it you are allowed to eat per day. When you start the Weight Watchers diet you get a points allowance per day depending on your current weight, age, height and daily exercise.

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Winamp 5 Full 5.111

Requires: Win All

Winamp is an audio player that can handle audio CDs, MP3 audio files, and streaming audio broadcasts. It combines extensive functionality with an intuitive interface. Winamp features a playlist editor and a 10-band graphic equalizer with user-definable presets that can automatically load specific files. It also includes Windows Media Technology 4.0 input/output support and the industry-standard Fraunhofer MP3 decoder. This download no longer includes VIS/DSP plug-ins; you can download them separately.

Winamp 5 Lite 5.111

Requires: Win All

Nullsoft Winamp is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity music player for Windows. Winamp supports MP3, CD, Audiosoft, Audio Explosion, MOD, WAV and other audio formats, custom appearances called skins, plus audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins. The Lite version does not play Windows Media or M-Juice audio, nor contain Winamp Visualization Studio.

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WinGuard Pro 2006 6.03

Requires: Win XP

With WindowsGuard 2005 you can password protect your programs, windows and web pages in one easy to use program. It lets you lock features of your system so that nobody can use them while you are away. The program lets you specify a password and then choose from a variety of options - what features to lock, for example, the find tool, backing up, desktop, etc. All the options are listed within one window and they are self-explaining, so there is no need to wade your way through dozens of sub-folders and weird registry key values.

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How many icons do you have on your computer screen--10, 25 or more?

Or is your screen completely covered with icons?

Wouldn't you like to have your computer screen back?

The Quick Launch area (which is to the right of the Start button) is the key!

Make sure the Quick Launch toolbar is displayed (IT MUST BE UNLOCKED). To unlock the Taskbar, move your pointer over any open area on the taskbar and right click it. Check the dropdown window to make sure that the "Lock the Toolbar" has NO check mark before it. If it does, remove the check mark.

Now you can drag any shortcut that you use most often to the Quick Launch toolbar. You do not need to hold down the CTRL key when you drag your short cuts down to the Quick Launch toolbar. You can have as many icons as you need because this area can be increased in size to hold your most used shortcut icons. It can become two icons high. This can be done by placing your pointer on the top edge of the taskbar so it becomes a double-headed arrow and drag it upward. The taskbar must be unlocked to do this. After you have finished moving the icons down to the taskbar, you can lock the taskbar.

AFTER YOU HAVE IT ALL SET UP, LEFT CLICK ON THE PROGRAM TO ACTIVE IT.

Now the Quick Launch area becomes your Desktop. Then you can remove or hide all of the icons from your computer screen. To delete the icon(s), just right click the shortcut and click delete. To hide the desktop, move your pointer over any open area on the desktop and right click it and move the pointer over. Arrange icons. Then move over to the Right hand dropdown list and uncheck "Show Desktop Icons." This will clear the desktop of icons in a short period of time.

NOTE: I did this with XP ONLY. If you use ME or 98 give it a try.

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The following items were discussed or decided upon:

• The Treasurer Report was read and discussed.
• It was decided at this meeting that there was a need for the FPCUG to have a mission statement in order to give direction to the group. Each board member was asked to create and submit ideas for it.
• The raffle prize for February will be a 4-in-1 Power E microscope with a metal stand and computer interface.
• Ideas for door prizes will be investigated by Laura Barnard.
• The RAM Pages Newsletter will be integrated into the FPCUG website as an HTML page. Ronnie Ugulano was assigned as editor.

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The Fresno PC User's Group (FPCUG) is a non-profit organization run by and for users of IBM compatible computers. The only membership eligibility requirement is an interest in computers.

This newsletter was prepared using Macromedia HomeSite 5.5.

Contributions.While there's no guarantee that submitted material will be used, contributions to the FPCUG Newsletter are appreciated. Articles of 2-500 words should be submitted in MS Word doc or rtf format. Screenshots and photos should be sharp and high resolution, and sent as jpgs, bmp, or tiff files, not gifs. Contact Ronnie Ugulano for further information.

Reproduction Rights. Original articles may be reproduced by other computer users groups for internal, non-profit use, provided credit is given to the Fresno PC Users Group and the author(s) of the reproduced articles. This notice does not supersede the rights of authors whose copyrighted material is used by permission.

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Disclaimer. Trademarks used in this publication are hereby recognized and acknowledged. The information provided in this newsletter is believed and intended to be correct and useful. However, the Fresno PC Users Group cannot assume responsibility for errors contained in the articles or misapplications of the information provided. Unless specifically stated otherwise, opinions expressed are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the opinions of, nor endorsement by, the Fresno PC Users Group. The Fresno PC Users Group is an independent, non-profit users group and is not affiliated in any way with any vendor or equipment manufacturer.

Vendor Notice. Only review products that have been obtained by the product review coordinator and received through the FPCUG address shall be considered the responsibility of the FPCUG, unless otherwise indicated by the Board of Directors and with the full knowledge of the review coordinator.

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