August 2007

President's Message

Lean, Clean, Machine

One of the great benefits of being a member of PPGF is attending one of our monthly training seminars, listening to a great speaker, and then putting into practice the helpful knowledge or tricks they’ve shared.  I believe that over the past months we’ve had some wonderful photographers who have traveled great distances just to share with us the types of educational experiences you couldn’t get anywhere else.  Therefore, I’m dedicating this month’s Prez’s Message to all of those speakers.

I want to brag about one of our speakers and tell how his lecture has made a huge difference in my digital workflow.  Matt Radlinski.  Remember that guy?  He was our February speaker and his program was titled:  Geek Chic:  Pimp My PC Edition.  (Personally, I think Matt is a computer guru trapped inside of a photographer’s body).  Anyway, I took extensive notes during Matt’s lecture and for the first time I came to an acceptable agreement about the differences between PC and Mac. 

I walked away from Matt’s program with lots of new head knowledge, but one topic that piqued my interest was the viral dangers that Microsoft Internet Explorer posed to my operating system.   Without repeating Matt’s lecture details, he highly recommended these four applications: Firefox, Spywarebot, Ad-Aware, and Symantec.  He mentioned some others, but I want to briefly put a plug in for Firefox (www.mozilla.com) and Spywarebot (www.spywarebot.com).

Both programs are free downloads and are worth every megabyte of ROM.  If you want your pc to run hassle free while surfing the big “WWW”, then you have got to give these applications a trial run.  What I like about the programs is that they are exceptionally intuitive.  First, I’ll talk about Spywarebot, and then finish up with Firefox.

 Just watching Spywarebot launch is intriguing.   What you get is a mushrooming atomic bomb blast logo that stealth’s up on your screen.  Surely this is an omen to all spyware that their days are numbered.  The program runs quietly in the background and snags the nasty guys without taking up a lot of resources. You can set preferences to let the software do it’s own thing or you can do the managing yourself.  Just click on Scan Now and watch spyware get zapped into cyberspace.

 Firefox.  What can I say?  It makes Internet Explorer look like a bad hair day.  The program has a very clean interface that allows you to dive into it’s powerful features without spending a lot of tutorial time.  Two of my favorite features:  1)You can open and  surf multiple web pages at one time by simply clicking on a tab, and 2) You can add favorite web sites to a special bookmark toolbar for quick access.  There’s more I’d like to mention about the program, but space is limited, however I’ve got one tidbit I’d like to share.

 I did a Google search on the software to discover if there was any printed material available and found a wonderful website:  http://www.scsite.com/.  The site featured a book titled, “Mozilla Firefox: Introductory Concepts and Techniques.  You’ll find real-time scenarios and online exercises in the book to bring you up to speed.  Firefox software and some bonus software are also included, so the book is a great value.

Since adding these two programs to my system along with Ad-aware, I’ve noticed a huge difference in they way my computer operates.  I haven’t experienced any pop-ups and it’s screaming along because spyware is kept to non-existence.  It’s a lean, clean, machine.

Thanks, Matt.

Enjoy!

Willie Hill Jr., CPP

President

Inter-Guild Competition

The Inter-Guild Competition will take place on Thursday, August 16 in West Palm Beach. We need for all of our best shooters to enter prints so that we can bring to trophy home with us. The Palm Beach Guild meets at Cardello’s Italian Restaurant,1447 10th Street, Lake Park, FL. Phone: (561) 848-0123. Cardello's is located on the south east corner of Prosperity and A1A, just behind Shamrock Jewelers.

The deadline for entry is 7:00 pm. Entry forms and Print lables can be downloaded from here

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