NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
February 2007 Volume 7 Issue 1
Inside this issue: Page #
NASA & Google hold hands to bring us Google Space …………………………………. 1/2
Microsoft Office 2007 Review ……………………………………………………………… 2/3/5
PC Humour ………………………………………………………………………………….. 4
A Canadian Story …………………………………………………………………………… 5/8
Vista & Office 2007 available online ……………………………………………………… 6
Resolution Conflict & How to ensure that your computer is kept in “tip-top” form …. 7
Internet Explorer 7 – Q & A ………………………………………………………………… 8
With NASA, Google
Expands Its Realm to the The collaboration may also allow
the public to track space shuttle
Moon and Mars flights or the International Space
By MIGUEL HELFT – New York Times Station in real time.
The NASA Ames Research Center and The signing of a Space Act Agreement
Google announced recently that they formalizes a planned collaboration an-
had signed a formal agreement to col- nounced in September 2005. Still,
laborate on a broad set of projects that could Google and NASA spoke of possible
include virtual flyovers of the Moon and Mars, joint projects only in broad outlines.
and other initiatives that w ill make NASA’s vast
trove of space and w eather data w idely avail- Among them w as the possibility that, using
able on the Internet. data from NASA, Google w ill develop products
that w ork like Google Earth for the Moon and
“This is going to bring the excitement of space other planets. Google Earth is a softw are pro-
travel” to a w ider audience, said S. Pete gram allow ing users to view a three-
Worden, director of the Ames Research Cen- dimensional image of the w orld and then zoom
ter, near Google’s headquarters in Mountain in to specific areas for close-up views.
View , Calif.
Currently Google offers limited tw o-
Mr. Worden said that as the space agency pur- dimensional views of the moon and Mars.
sued new manned space missions, the tech-
nology-sharing agreement might enable peo- NASA is already know n for offering compelling
ple everyw here to feel the crunch of an astro- images from space on its Web site, said Chris
naut’s step as he w alked on the surface of the C. Kemp, director of business development at
Moon or even Mars. (Continued on page 2)
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
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NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
(Continued from page 1) Google may finance specific projects to make
Ames. The agreement w ith Google w ill allow a additional data broadly accessible and inte-
great expansion of the agency’s offerings. grated into its services, he said.
When Google and NASA first announced their
Mr. Kemp said the agency had already w orked
planned collaboration, Google said it planned
with several private-sector companies and w as
to build as much as a million square feet of
eager to w ork w ith more. “ Part of the message
space at Ames Research Center. A Google
here is that w e are open for business,” he said.
executive said that project w as still in prelimi-
Neither Google nor NASA w ould comment on nary planning stages.
specific terms of the agreement. But Mr.
Worden said NASA had funds to make some Sub mitted by: Y. Bulger
data and images available to the public.
An Office better left couldn’t see in previous versions unless you
clicked on a drop-dow n menu. Essentially, the
at the office! ribbon is like one of those old drop-down
Reproduced from the Globe &
Mail menus, but alw ays dropped – sidew ays.
For years, Microsoft Corp has blithely dis- Hover your curser over a specific item in the
missed criticisms of its Office suite as a victim ribbon, and a larger-than-before w indow pops
of the Pareto principle – that 80 percent of its up to explain w hat the item does, along w ith a
ow ners only use 20 percent of its features. keyboard shortcut.
That’s just the w ay people use their tools, What’s more, each ribbon is contextual. If you
they’d say. insert a pie chart, for instance, the ribbon auto-
matically changes to chart tools, and if you in-
It’s now obvious that the software giant has sert a table you get table tools. If you jump out
been stung by that criticis m. Almost everything of the inserted item, the ribbon w ill return to its
that’s new about Office 2007 has been de- “home” setting and w hen you go back into the
signed to emphasize as many of its features, item, the ribbon w ill change back.
new and old, as it can.
Another significant feature across most of the
The big change is the menu. Gone are the applications is SmartArt, the cute name for in-
drop-dow n menus in Word, Outlook, Access, serting fast visual aids into documents. Its
Excel and Pow erPoint; they have been re- great strength is its ability to turn information
placed by a tabbed ribbon running across the into graphics, and offer you quick preview s of
top of the screen. Get used to saying it – the how it could look in different formats – turn a
“ribbon” – because you’re going to use it a lot. list of bulleted items into a flow chart, for in-
The ribbon alw ays shows options that you stance.
It is a m iracle that curiosity survives form al education. Albert Einstein
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NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
(Continued from page 2) searches are fast and cut across
e-mail folders, contacts, tasks
A much more important change, how ever, is and calendar entries, a feature
Microsoft’s move tow ard open-standard file that has been too long in coming.
formats, w hich is the way Office stores work.
The new format is based on the industry stan- The main w indow in Outlook now manages to
dard, w hich means several significant shoehorn in a to-do bar, w hich imports stuff
changes. First, by dropping its proprietary for- from Access, Project and OneNote. The calen-
mat standards, Microsoft is allow ing other soft- dar function can now be available to everyone
ware manufacturers to w rite programs that can on the office team, including those outside the
handle files created by Office applications. office. A new scheduling assistant (it’s no long
And, the new format is not as friendly to mal- called a w izard, have you noticed?) helps
ware attacks as Microsoft’s ow n standards automatic calendaring tasks. Outlook also is
were. more easily integrated w ith the SharePoint
Server for others to see. The information han-
But there are a couple of problems w ith this dled by Outlook can also be colour coded as
move. First, though Office 2007 can work w ith well.
documents and files created by previous ver-
sions of Office, the reverse is not true. Older One truly w elcome feature is the installation of
versions will need an add-on before it can improved junk- mail filtering, as w ell as filtering
open Office 2007 files. How ever, the new suite of websites that specialize in “phishing” at-
has the ability to save files in the earlier Office tacks.
formats.
And oh, yes, one very important change. That POWERPOINT 2007
annoying Office assistant, the w retched paper- Pow erPoint 2007 has the lion’s share of the
clip w hose only redeeming feature w as its “w ow factor” in changes. It now picks up the
clever name. Clipit, has been tossed. Now SmartArt feature put into Word, and you can
there is a tiny blue button at the top left of the easily create themes (colours for a table, fonts,
screen w ith a question mark in it. Click on it bullet styles) to give a presentation more co-
and you get the help menu. Now how difficult herence.
was it to do that?? Select a theme, click one button and the entire
presentation changes. You w onder w hy you
OUTLOOK 2007 never had that ability before. Files can be
One of the worst features of previous versions saved not only as PPTs, but as XPS and PDF
of Outlook w as the inability to find things so they can be handled by people w orking on
quickly. One had to go to third party tools other platforms. You can also add a digital sig-
such as Google Desktop, Copernic Desktop or nature to prevent others from changing it.
a free but crash-prone add-in called Lookout. Pow erPoint also has better integration w ith the
Now , thanks to the XML document standard, (Continued on page 5)
Frustration is trying to find your glasses, w ithout your glasses.
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NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
The irony of life is that, by the time you're old enough to know your w ay
around, you're not going anywhere.
4
NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
(Continued from page 3) Document For mat ( PDF) as w ell as the XML
SharePoint server, allow ing it to have dynamic Paper Specification (XPS) Microsoft’s docu-
content that changes as the database ment format that allow s digital signatures and
changes, and allow ing other team members to digital rights to be applied to the documents,
make changes. and even reduces file sizes.
Bew are how ever, that once Word saves a
WORD 2007 document in another format, it loses all its abil-
About the only difference betw een Word 2007 ity to undo changes. Sad, but true.
and its predecessors is the menu ribbon: much
of everything else w orks as before, w ith some EXCEL 2007
smaller changes. And all the major differences The Excel 2007 spreadsheet has one really
are directed at offices and works flows, mean- perplexing improvement. It now displays more
ing there is little new in Office 2007 to give than one million row s and 16,000 columns a
home users an excuse to buy it. worksheet.
Word has a greater ability to insert illustrations, Excel now allows conditional formatting to col-
a feature more suited to professionals; 3-D our the backgrounds of cells based on their
shapes, flow charts, pie charts and such. It value, and inserts a colour bar in the cell w ith a
has also taken the clipboard, fed it some ster- length proportional to the value of the cell. It
oids and turned it into a “building blocks” set can also publish the results as
for boiler plate or predefined content that you HTML so it can be view ed as a
might w ant to put in a document; disclaimer Web page.
text, pull quote, cover pages and sidebars.
Sub mitted by: Alan Forrest
Word can now save documents in Portable
Beavers And Their January issue of Biological Conservation.
Dams May Help Surrogate species can indicate changes to the
Amphibians— environment or can protect a large number of
EDMONTON, AB, Canada (UPI) naturally co-occurring species.
The dam-building beaver may 'The concept of surrogate species in conserva-
be an ally in conserving w et-
tion planning offers simple, ecologically-based
land habitat for declining amphibian popula-
solutions to help conserve and manage eco-
tions, a University of Alberta study said. systems,' said Paszkow ski, a biological sci-
ences professor at the university.
The study identifies the beaver as a valuable
'surrogate species' for frog and toad popula- Beaver ponds appear to offer suitable breed-
tions, said University of Alberta researchers
(Continued on page 8)
Cam Stevens and Cindy Paszkowski in the
It's not hard to meet expenses, they're everyw here.
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NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
Microsoft to make Vista available Here's how
that w ill w ork.
online For consum-
By Brian Bergstein, Associated Press
ers, Vista w ill come in four flavors, Home Ba-
Microsoft (MSFT) w ill make its new Windows sic, which retails for $199, Home Premium
Vista operating system available for sale and ($239) Business ($299) and Ultimate ($399).
dow nload online, marking a new step for the Though consumers w ill pick one version w hen
software company, w hich has previously sold they buy a computer, higher versions w ill be
Window s only on packaged discs or pre- embedded on the machine's hard drive or
loaded on computers. packaged on discs that come w ith it.
A relatively low number of computer users are Anyone w ho wants to move up the chain —
likely to get Vista by dow nloading it from thefrom Home Basic to Home Premium for an-
other $79, Home Basic to Ultimate ($199),
Internet. But the mere availability indicates that
Home Pr emium to Ultimate ($159), or Busi-
Microsoft is fiddling w ith distribution methods
for the extremely profitable franchise at the ness to Ultimate ($139) — w ill be able to click
core of its business. a new "Window s Anytime Upgrade" function,
pay for the upgrade online and then receive a
The dow nload program, being announced late coded license "key" that w ill unlock the more
Wednesday by the Redmond, Wash.-based expensive edition.
software maker, w ill also include the Office
2007 line of software w hen both are released Microsoft also plans a promotion that w ill let
for consumers Jan. 30. At least initially, the buyers of Vista Ultimate get $50 copies of
huge dow nloads w ill be available in North Home Pr emium for tw o other PCs.
America only.
Bill Mannion, director of consumer marketing
Far more commonly, consumers w ill get Vista for Windows, called these three steps part of
already installed on new PCs bought after Jan. an overall effort "to give more flexibility to end
30. The dow nload process is targeted at peo- users."
ple w ho are running the prior operating sys-
tem, Window s XP, and w ant to get Vista with- Matt Rosoff, an analyst w ith Directions on Mi-
out having to buy a new PC. How ever, Vista crosoft, said the company likely w as hoping to
imposes hardw are requirements that not all increase the incentives for consumers to buy
Window s XP machines can meet. costlier versions of Vis ta. Indeed, much of the
marketing surrounding Vista w ill highlight fea-
For those w ho do buy Vista the normal w ay, tures available only in higher-end versions,
Microsoft is launching a new program that such as the new three-dimensional user inter-
makes it easier to upgrade from one edition of face and encryption functions.
the operating system to another.
Sub mitted By: Gord Bulger
Mediocrity thrives on standardization.
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NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
Complexity & Change wear and tear: conflicts. System conflicts occur
when tw o or more components fail to recog-
= Conflict nize each other.
S mart Co mputing
S mart Co mputing
Had Benjamin Franklin lived
today, he might have ex-
panded his list of life’s cer-
tainties to include death, taxes, and computer
problems. The fact is that such issues are as
inevitable as Mondays. Although you can
minimize the likelihood of an occurrence,
there’s not much you can do to stop them alto-
gether.
Moral of the story “Take your PC in for a
Conflict Resolution regular Cleanup” your computer expert
should be offering the follow ing as part of
PCs are susceptible to incidental damage and that service:
occasional malfunctions. A miniscule jolt of
static electricity, a splash of coffee, even dust 1 Spyw are, Malw are, Adware Removal
can cause serious problems. Regular mainte- 2 Window s Updates
nance and prudent behavior can minimize the 3 RAM & Hardw are checkup
effects of age and usage on a computer. 4 Defrag
5 “Dust” Removal
But a PC isn’t just another tool; it’s quite com- 6 Independent Anti-Virus check
plex. A properly functioning computer is an 7 Trojan Removal
intricate system of precision-designed devices, 8 “Startup” items cleanup
each of which relies on countless microsized 9 Updating of Anti-Virus & Spyware soft-
transistors, resistors, diodes, and capacitors ware (things change w ith the times)
working together to perform a specific function. 10 Advice on what is new out there
And that’s just the hardw are. Software is 11 A service that lets you know when it’s
equally complex, consisting of billions of elec- time to clean up your system again.
tronic bits that spell out in meticulous detail
exactly w hat all of that hardw are is supposed All of the above keeps your machine fast, and
to do. will ensure a long life for your computer.
Such complexity exposes computers to some- Yvonne Bulger
thing more har mful than the effects of daily
Blessed are those who can give w ithout remembering, and take w ithout
forgetting.
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NANAIMO COMPUTER CLUB NEWS
(Continued from page 5)
ing habitats for amphibians because of their 'The challenge w ill be to
warm, w ell-oxygenated w ater, w hich enhances promote modest levels of
development and grow th rates of frog and toad beaver activity even where
larvae, she said. The ponds may be less invit- conflicts with human inter-
ing to predators because dams usually are on ests might occur,' Stevens
small streams w here winterkill conditions are noted.
common.
Sub mitted by: Y. Bulger
Beavers may be useful as a surrogate species
in helping to conserve frogs and toads in re- Not a computer story …. Just a Canadian story
…..
mote parts of western North America.
ANSWER: When you install Internet Explorer
7 your current list of favorites in Internet Ex-
plorer 6 w ill migrate into the new browser so
you w on't have to redo your favorite w ebsites
when you begin surfing the Web.
QUESTION: Can I add other search
providers to the Search dropdown
Internet Explorer 7 menu?
ANSWER: The Toolbar Search Box makes it
QUESTION: How Ca n I Display the Menu quick and easy for you to search the web di-
Bar in IE 7? rectly from the upper-right corner of the
browser using your favorite search providers.
ANSWER: To show it continuously, right click Just enter your search words and choose a
one of the toolbars that is displayed, and click search provider from the drop-dow n list. To
to check "Menu Bar." Or you can display the add more providers, just click the drop-dow n
menu bar temporarily by hitting the ALT key. arrow and click Find More Providers... to easily
add more providers to your list.
QUESTION: If I install Internet Explorer 7 Sub mitted by: Greg Wilson
what will happen to my Favorites?
The End ...
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