The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Gary Taig editor@melbpc.org.au |
 |
Have you ever wondered what the Affiliate Marketing people get up to in a day at the office? Glen Staiger has written a detailed report of one of the AM SIG meetings. It's on page 31 and if you read that in conjunction with Ash Nallawalla's article on the Search Engine Optimisers you should begin to gain an appreciation of what it's all about.
Erratum
A mistake managed to sneak into the first instalment of the AV Guide; video resolutions are measured according to the number of horizontal lines, not vertical lines. Apologies if that confused anyone. I had this ready to print in July but in the rush to get to the printer - it's always a rush lately - I missed doing that.
For Beginners
Today is a typical rush, there is never enough time to write a meaningful editorial when everything is Go! Go! Go! at the last minute and these days it happens far too frequently; I think age is catching up. Anyway for the benefit of our beginners, especially new members who are beginners to personal computing, I'm going to run the text part of Bruno Dik's piece about the beginners material that's on the monthly disc.|
The item Bruno wrote about was designed and written, and if my memory serves correctly that includes the artwork component, designed and written by one of our long time members Bob Thomas. It's a fantastic compilation of help, explaining the most basic activities associated with using computers and Bob did an expert job. There wouldn't be a beginner in the world who couldn't learn heaps with that article.
To all our new member beginners, you should buy the monthly disc if you don't still have the one you received free upon joining Melb PC and insert it into your DVD drive. When it loads onto the screen look in the Main Menu for the item titled "New Members", click on it, then lose yourself in all those new user essentials. Here's what Bruno Dik had to say about it some months ago.
Have you looked at New Members section on the Melb PC Monthly Disc? If not, you're in for a treat. There is a wealth of material on the disk, but the first menu item is labelled simply Melbourne PC User Group. When you click on that it opens what appears to be a list of fairly ordinary items. Among them are an Index of Shareware programs, information about the Group's Library and a book list, an Introduction, a copy of our Rules and several others, but there is no doubt the most significant item in that list is "New Members".
Vast amounts of valuable information can be found in there for anyone starting out with computers, When I looked at it for the first time, I was a little overcome; I thought to myself, "if only that had been available when I began using these things". Frankly it would have helped me gain a much better understanding of what can be done with a computer, I would have learnt the computer jargon a lot faster than what I did, and would have felt a lot more comfortable using the computer. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this is worth several years of hard learning by practical experience.
My suggestion is for all of our members to have a look at this "New Members" tutorial and then pass on the CD or DVD to a new member beginner, or even buy the disk for someone you know, someone who could use the help. As I write this I can actually think of a few people who could have a use for it; people who have been members for some time and are still struggling with many of the concepts.
Bruno Dik is an active Melb PC member and you'll always find him helping somebody, somewhere. He is the founder and co-convener of the Yarra Ranges group, he is co-convener of the Genealogy SIG and has a history of Melb PC SIG and Sunday workshop activity that covers almost a decade of membership.
Reprinted from the August 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
 |