March, 2002      Diablo Blue     Page 7

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New Business:

Freeware/Shareware: Once the hardware portion of the Board meeting was over (although with Nick in attendance we’re never really through with hardware discussions) the conversation turned to software. Something I can understand a little better. I mentioned having lost my Camedia CD. This software came with my Olympus camera late in 1999, and is used to download the pictures from the camera to my computer and to do some basic manipulation and viewing. What I like about it is that it will let you view all the photos (.jpgs) in a folder as thumbnails and as a slide show of full-screen images. Camedia was also the only software I had on my machine that had a Y2K problem. Pictures taken in 2000 were dated 1900.

Anyway, mentioning this started a conversation about equivalent software which in turn led to freeware/shareware in general. Ron suggested Photo Designer as a free replacement for Camedia. Site names were flying fast and furious, and I didn’t even have time to record what was to be found on some of them I noted. If you are feeling adventuresome, here are some of the ones I recorded:

              Ulead.com (Photo Designer?)

              Ilore.com (a search engine with neat features)

              Lavasoft.com (or maybe .de – a search engine in Denmark)

              Completelyfreesoftware.com

              Nonags.com

              Teoma.com

              Uselessknowledge.com

This last one is my kind of site. It has lots of trivia, quotations, odd words, answers to questions such as “What is a booger made of?”… The list of fascinating things goes on and on. Here are two tidbits to whet your appetite:

·          In 1908 a writer within the automobile industry proved that the wealth of the United States was insufficient to support more than 200,000 new cars every year.

·          Every day your nose makes approximately one cup of snot.

 

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