Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Check out the Raspberry PI

Interested in experimenting?

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It is a capable little computer which can be used in electronics projects, and for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.

You can find them on Amazon in various forms from components to kits.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/ 

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Mapping in Google Chrome

In checking for a route back to RI I discovered a neat shortcut in Google Chrome. Simply type "how far" and then the from and to locations, just the zip code will do. I typed "how far 42633 to 02920" (without the quotes) and here is what popped up:


Clicking on the down arrow under the above results in a step by step set of directions:


And click on the map and you get right to Google Maps and a drawing of the route:

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Office talk at the General Meeting 7-1-2014

The meeting started off with a reading of the revised by-laws and a vote to pass them. So I did not get into as much actual demos of the office suites we talked about. But we did cover the similarities and differences of Microsoft, LibreOffice, AbiWord, Windows Live, and Google Docs.

There were lot's of good questions both in the open forum before the meeting and during the Office talk. The class notes contain links for many of the program we talked about.

When we think of Office, most of us think Microsoft. They have done a great job taking over the Office Suites by including their trial package on new computers  from many of the hardware vendors. It is probably the best suite out there, but it is also a costly one. The least expensive is the Home and Student edition at $139. But it does not include all the programs in the suite, only Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Missing is the popular Publisher and Access programs and others. And you can only license it on ONE computer. If you have two computers in the household, you need to pay twice. You now rent their programs by signing up for Office 365.......

Click the Class Notes above to download the rest of the notes from tonight's talk.