(Image: Club Logo) HCC

HALIFAX AREA PERSONAL COMPUTER CLUB


In The October Newsletter

Feature Presentation for the October general meeting

Ivan Munn - Building and Using an Address Book

General Information

A word of thanks to guest speakers

Newsletter Information

Meeting Schedule for the year



Feature Presentation

Due to unexpected problems the first meeting of the 99/00 season our feature presentation will again be on the Y2K problem. There should be something for DOS, Win 3.x, Win 95, Win 98; and include problems of BIOS, and applications. And the concept of a silent failure will be discussed. As this is being posted that is the plan so drop by.

We have all heard of the problem, from the gloom and doom to silly things like this:

Please take time out of your busy life , to check your toilet paper stockpile. Make sure it's Y2K compliant!!! Word has it, if it isn't, come Jan 1, 2000, it will roll back to 1900, then turn into Sears Catalogs.

The meeting will be divided into three parts:

1. Introduction by David Potter -- An over view of the problem
2. Hardware by Rob MacCara -- Different kinds of computer. 286, 386, Pentium etc. Our Y2K disk. Present Urls, where info can be obtained.
3. Software by Bill Marchant -- problems with application software. More places to get specific data.

This meeting is to be advertised. A Charge of $15 will be made for all non-members, who will thereby become members. Our Y2K disk will be given to all members, old and new.

Also if you are one who likes reading a novel, there are several good stories out on your local book store's shelf plus all 'the what is going to happen' on December 31 at 23.59.59 before it rolls over to 00.00.00

The HAPCC general meeting is on the last Sunday of each month. Please note changer from forth to last Sunday of each month. The next general meeting will be Sept 26th meeting time 7:00 - 9:00 pm. For this month we have official approval to use the classroom facilities at CFB Halifax (Stad) for our regular meetings. New Place! Building S-37 room B18.

Go in the main gates of Stad on Gottigen street and either stop and ask the fellow in the gate house for directions or: Proceed straight through the gates and down the little hill and keep going straight till you come to a stop sign. Go past the stop sign and down the little hill and turn right at the bottom of the hill. The long building facing the soccer field is Numbered S-37 and the sign out front says that it is the home of the Naval Engineering School. You've reached the right place. Find a parking spot and go in the far set of doors (South doors) - Go Straight in the building and down the stairs to the next level and turn right. The classroom we'll be using is B18 and it's right next to the stairwell. The new facilities boasts a room with 25 computers as well as a projection system that we can use. See you all there at the next meeting!

In this issue



Building and Using an Address Book

Managing your address book can be very simple or quite involved, depending on how many names you have in it. I use Netscape 4.6 for email and find it works well for my needs. I have about 420 addresses in my book, including three major mailing lists with about 150 names in the largest, 125 in another and 75 in the third.

Most people deal only with family and friends, but some of the same principles are involved. You add a new contact by opening the address book in the communicator menu, clicking new card and typing in the name and email address and then clicking ok. Or if you receive mail from someone you want to add to your book, with the message open, right click on the 'from' line and choose, 'Add sender to the address book', from the drop down menu. The new card will pop up neatly filled in and you can click ok to accept it. The cards also have room for other information such as phone numbers or notes if so desired.

When addressing your message, you can type it right into the 'To:' field, but I find it's easier to click on the 'Address' button right above that field, especially if its going to more than one person. This opens the 'Select Address' dialogue box. Start typing the address in the 'Show names containing' box and netscape will jump to the one you want. You then have a choice of 'To', 'CC', or 'BCC'. Once you've made the appropriate choices, click ok and you're ready to go.

If you want to set up a list to send messages to a group of people at once, open the address book and click on 'New List'. Pick a simple name so you'll be able to open it quickly later. Now use your mouse to drag addresses into the list. They'll be copied there and when you have all the people you want in the list, click 'ok'. Now you can reach all those people at once .. just start a new message, click the 'address' button and start typing the list name and the program will anticipate you and move to the group. Click on 'To' and 'OK' and then carry on in the normal way. When you send the message it goes to everyone on the list and all the names will be visible to everyone. If you later remove a name from your address book, it will be removed from the list automatically.

If you're dealing with a very long list then you might want to use the 'BCC', blind carbon copy feature. Otherwise your list of addresses may be far longer than the message itself. Some mailing systems get upset with a very long list of addresses. If I put one of my longer lists in the 'To:' line, some of them always bounce with comments like, 'ridiculously long list of addresses'. There's never a complaint when I use the 'bcc' feature. To do that, put your own name in the 'To:' line and the list in 'BCC'. There are many refinements available and you can learn more by going to the Communicator help menu. Choose index and type in the feature you're looking for and read the possibilities.

Netscape is not the only e-mail program capable of the above, Outlook express will do the same thing. As well as Eudora . All support the To, Bcc and Cc features too.

In this issue

General Information

Executive:

Chairperson David Potter
Vice-Chair Bill Marchant
Treasurer Rob MacCara
Web Librarian Thayne MacLean
Newsletter Editor Diane Smith
Membership Promotion Pat Conen

and the following members who assist in planning our monthly meetings: Norman DeForest, Henry Hill, Ken Gilmour,and Colin Stuart.

A message from the Vice Chairman

The HAPCC has two kinds of meetings. Firstly the regular Sunday night meeting which most members attend regularly, secondly the monthly (approximately) planning meeting which organizes the business of the Club, including what happens on the Sundays. The planning meeting is held on Monday, a week after the regular meeting in which all members of the Club are urged to attend. At the planning meeting, we discuss feature speakers for regular meetings, finances, membership, training, and other computer related subjects.

....Bill Marchant

A word of thanks to guest speakers and the their web suites.

Our guest speaker at the March meeting was Mr. David Baxter, Product Specialist at MT&T for the MpoweredPc service. His multi-media presentation showed us how far the service has come, and in which direction it is heading. MpoweredPc was being officially launched on April 7, 1998 and it promises to be a serious contender in the high-speed internet/software on demand arena. More info can be found here: Mpowered. Once again, thank you to MT&T and David Baxter.

Our guest speaker in February, 1998 was Sgt. Bill Cowper, Internet Communications Officer of the Halifax Regional Municipality Police Department. He gave a history of how and when the police department started using the Internet. They were the first police department in Canada to be on the Internet. Sgt. Cowper is continually receiving calls from all over the world looking for assistance. The presentation showed how well the department and the officers in the patrol cars are versed on getting the criminals off the streets. If you would like to check-out their web site the address is: Halifax Regional Police Service gives an idea of what an "Internet Cybercop" is all about.

In this issue

Newsletter Information

Newsletter Articles.... We are almost always in need of good articles. If anyone has something that they feel would make a good article, an interesting story to tell, or even a good meeting topic, please don't hesitate to pass it on. Articles can be submitted in almost any format, ASCII text, AMI Pro, MS Word, Windows Write, WordStar and of course WordPerfect.

The news letter is mailed to all paid up members and to anyone who has attended a meeting within the past three months. Yearly membership dues are $15.00.

Club Mailing Address -
P.O. Box 29008, Halifax N.S., B3L 4T8.

In this issue

Future meeting dates

We decide the meeting dates for the upcoming year at the last planning meeting of the season. The dates for these are listed below. As in previous years, the December meeting is moved to the early part of January due to Christmas Eve being near the fourth Sunday of the month. 
The planning meetings are normally held on the second Monday (8 days) after the general meeting. They are currently held at a members home and the address is announced at the meeting prior to the planning meeting. Anyone is welcome to assist in the planning of future meetings or events.

Dates for the meetings starting in September are based on the LAST Sunday in each month. Note that this is a change from previously, when we met on the fourth Sunday.

October 31,    November 28,     January 9,    January 30,     February 27,    March 26,     April 30,    May 28,     June 25.

Note:    There is no meeting in December. Remember also, we are now using the LAST SUNDAY of the month, except for the exceptions as noted above.

Any changes to the scheduled dates will be announced where possible at the regular monthly meetings and/or in this newsletter.



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