Get Your News VIA RSS Feeds

      by Troy Segler, President    November 2006

Your computer club had another fabulous meeting on the evening of November 16th. Eric Johnston did a great job in discussing his favorite method of setting up his computer to obtain and enable a read of RSS feeds. He discussed some of the tools available and sources of information, thereby one to capture news feeds from virtually any environment, e. g. financials, government, hobbies, etc

Eric searched ASK.com for available RSS Readers and established his automated news room. He likes MSN as a home page for inviting information onto his computer. He said MSN can be easily customized to obtain just those news feeds or blogs you might wish to have available. At the bottom of the MSN page is a box that permits editing the content feed. RSS is used by several persons who provide daily or weekly information about the use of computers and support for eliminating problems. He explained that Office 2003 could be configured to handle XML formats. I have not mastered that setup. One of the web sites that Eric viewed was “Trek Today”

NewsGator is an online web based RSS news Aggregator that permits you to directly save any RSS feed directly to your hard drive. A folder can be opened for this purpose. Other RSS feeds typically require you to perform a copy and paste in order to save content to your computer. You would paste any data you wished to retain into a folder of your choice, created for that purpose.

Eric suggested that we should not be in a hurry to download IE 7.0. Known problems have occurred for those persons using Norton Utilities and/or HP scanner/printers.
He commented that you should not leave IE 7 on your computer for more than about a week if your encounter problems. If it stays resident on your computer longer than that, it can place some undesirable (unwanted) routines on your computer. I personally downloaded it and encountered difficulties receiving my email. Apparently there is a firewall or spam protection embedded within IE 7 that caused problems with my Cox account. In addition, when I select the print command my computer now displays a banner under HP depicting my print review screen. Once that happens, I cannot select the pages I wish to print. I must inform you that I have not investigated via the HP setup any method to turn off this preview pane.

Oh, yes. Eric left a CD with a large number of utility programs that can be used to improve the function of one’s computer. For instance, one of the programs will remove the prefetch file from your computer. EasyRead is a program that places icons on your IE window which allow you to magnify/reduce the size of web page images with the click of your mouse. He discussed many of the other utility programs on the CD.

One of Eric’s comments toward the end of the evening was that in his opinion Zone Alarm was one of the best firewalls available insofar as compatibility with DSL and cable ISP providers is concerned.

You have to be present to gain the information rendered at our general meetings. Time doesn’t permit me to provide all pertinent information. In many cases, it is because I am not experienced in using many applications discussed by our presenters.

At the conclusion of the meeting, we held our usual drawing for door prizes. Our visitor, Zack Botkin, was the winner of a free membership in the CCOKC. That membership will render him eligible to participate in future drawing for member door prizes. Another visitor, Margerite Ike received a package of 10 R/W CDs. T. J. Stuckey was a repeat winner in the membership drawing. He took home a wireless mouse and keyboard. Member, Herb Roddem received a HP Desktop 5640 Printer. Who knows what might be given away at the December meeting.

Prepare for the new year. Help someone learn to use their computer with greater efficiency during the coming year.

Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas to each of you. Plan to enjoy being with your family and friends during this time of celebration.

Troy Segler, Scribe


Winners:

Zack Botkin	T. J. Stuckey	Margarite Ike	Herb Roddem