TPC meeting place (map). (1st Thurs.) Time: Doors open at 6:30 pm, meeting starts at 7 pm, presentation from 7:30 pm. Around 9 pm, after meetings, we go to a nearby Shakey’s.
All welcome! No reservation required! Meeting fee. 

The new “free” hands-on PC Help Desk (see below) will run concurrently.

With modern-day paint and draw software you can have a lot of fun and achieve quite a lot—even if you don’t have artistic talent!

Paint (bit-map) software like Photoshop Elements* is great for digital photo retouching—for adjusting color and fixing blemishes, and resizing digital photos for emailing to PCs or mobile phones—as well as for merging photos into panoramas or photomontages, creating picture postcards (with mobile phone QR codes, even!), and photo albums on the web.

Combination draw (vector) and paint software like Canvas* allows you to create vector images (with small file sizes) that scale without “jaggies”—simply by tracing bit-map images. You can also create slick logos using text and graphic fonts.

*PC and Mac versions. Free trial download allows you to try this software before you buy.

New Hands-On Help Desk: We hope to have several IT professionals supporting our concurrent hands-on help desk. Legal fine print: This service is provided on an “all due care taken, but no liability” basis—apart from the meeting fee, which goes towards room rental, there is no charge for this service. Pack your PC well to avoid damage in transit! 

TPC meeting place (map). (1st Thurs.) Time: Doors open at 6:30 pm, meeting starts at 7 pm, presentation from 7:30 pm. Around 9 pm, after meetings, we go to a nearby Shakey’s.
All welcome! No reservation required! Meeting fee. 

The TokyoPC meeting on Thurs. Mar. 2 will cover choosing and using digital & video cameras—bring your own to show us, if you wish—also photo-retouching and other photo-related software.

The new hands-on PC Help Desk will run concurrently.

To help in choosing a camera, we will describe web sites such as DP review and kakaku.com, camera features such as image stabilization, white balance, macro, display grid for alignment/panorama, 3CCD video, and accessories such as polaroid filters.

We will briefly show cameras such as the Panasonic FX8/FX9, the Canon A95, the award-winning Fuji F-10/F-11 compact, the Fuji S7000, and the Victor GR-X5 mini DV/still camera combo. Canon, with its EOS brand, is the export-market leader, followed by Nikon. Panasonic (e.g. FX9 & FZ7), Sony, and Fuji brands are also quite popular in the local market.

Some interesting new compact cameras that have just been announced, and should be on the market soon, include the Panasonic DMC-TZ1 (available locally by April) and DMC-FX01 (in March), and the Fuji F30 (available overseas in May).
The larger Canon S3 IS (a follow-up to the extremely popular S2 IS) also looks interesting.

We will also briefly cover photo-retouching software like Adobe’s inexpensive, easy-to-use, and versatile Photoshop Elements*—with photo album, web photo album, panorama and slide show features—and software for recovering images from corrupted flash memory. *Free trial download available.

New Hands-On Help Desk: We hope to have several IT professionals supporting our concurrent hands-on help desk. Legal fine print: This service is provided on an “all due care taken, but no liability” basis—apart from the meeting fee, which goes towards room rental, there is no charge for this service. Pack your PC well to avoid damage in transit!

TPC Meeting Location (Map). Time: Doors open at 6:30 pm, meeting starts at 7 pm, presentation from 7:30 pm (1st Thurs.)
All welcome! Meeting fee. 

Sluggish PC?  Hard disk full?  Virus/spyware/firewall worries?

The TokyoPC meeting on Thursday Feb. 2nd will cover basic PC troubleshooting and security—and there will be a new hands-on help desk that can operate concurrently.

The first part of the meeting will provide a very brief overview of how to improve the performance of your PC: 
*Worthwhile to add memory or upgrade to a bigger/faster disk? 
*Checking & defragmenting the disk with CheckDisk & Diskeeper.
*Using VCOM Fix-It Utilities 6 to diagnose and fix problems.

Next we will briefly discuss free and commercial antivirus and anti-spyware programs including Webroot Spy Sweeper, Microsoft’s free AntiSpyware Beta (vs. their Malware Removal Tool), Spybot Search and Destroy, and Trend Micro Virus Buster/PC-cillin. Avast!, AVG & AntiVir are available in free versions. 

Finally we will briefly discuss firewall software (like Zone Alarm), and hardware firewalls in routers.

You do not need to reserve in advance to attend the meeting, but—for people without a broadband Internet connection or CD writer—we may offer evaluation copies of some of these utilities for the price of the CD media (maybe ¥100). Email “president ( at ) tokyopc.org” to reserve a CD.

New Hands-On Help Desk: We hope to have several IT professionals supporting our concurrent hands-on help desk. Legal fine print: This service is provided on an “all due care taken, but no liability” basis—apart from the meeting fee, which goes towards room rental, there is no charge for this service. Pack your PC well to avoid damage in transit! 

Please note that this Jan. 12 meeting is on the second Thursday of the month.

Kevin Ryan — Associate Professor at Showa Women’s University, JALT Business Manager and JALT CALL SIG officer — will give a quick but broad-ranging look at the types of technology he uses to teach languages. We will briefly look at Course Management Systems (CMS) using Moodle, Language Courseware using Dynamic English, helpful web-based sites and reference materials, as well as life-like simulations (Façade and Second Life). A very brief look at technology helpful for learning Japanese finishes up the night. We will be using Beyond Question — a Classroom Response System (CRS) adapted from an Audience Response System (ARS) — to keep everyone on their toes.

Location (map): Usual Tokyo Union Church (TUC) meeting Location (map) and Time. Time: Doors open at 6:30 pm, meeting starts at 7 pm, presentation at 7:30 pm. All welcome. Meeting Cost.

This January meeting is Jan. 12 — but the February meeting will be on Feb. 2nd, please mark your calendar now!

Backup and disaster recovery… How to prepare for your next data loss now. A number of applications will be discussed including: Second Copy (for file backup), Acronis True Image (for image backup), R-Studio (for data recovery), VCOM Fix-It Utilities and BartPE.

You do not need to reserve in advance to attend the meeting, but for people without a broadband Internet connection or CD writer we may offer evaluation copies of some of these utilities for the price of the CD media (maybe ¥100). Email “president ( at ) tokyopc.org” to reserve a CD.