The computer club meeting held on November 20 was well attended. We also had one new member, Kerry Riggio, and three visitors, Pat Rasmussen, Paul Barbeto and Ken Powell at the meeting. Welcome to them and we hope you’ll return.
Lon Hosford, the club president, said that the Christmas meeting will be held on December 18 and in the Board Room. There won’t be an official presentation on that date.
Q&A
Q: I tried to copy a DVD to a USB but it didn’t seem to work. Is there a way to tell if the DVD is copyrighted or protected before going through the whole process of trying to copy it?
A: Try to load the DVD on your computer to test it to see if it loads and then try copying it to your USB. Try transferring the files on the DVD to the computer. It that works, it will work on your USB.
Q: I would like to put my LP recording onto a USB. How can I do this?
A. Try using Audacity free software. Audacity is a digital audio editor and recording application. It supports uncompressed audio and can record and play sounds and import and export WAV and MP3 files. You can read more about this and download the software at http://download.cnet.com/Audacity/3000-2170_4-10058117.html
Another free software to help you record music is MP3myMP3. With this software you can record streaming audio from the internet, microphone or any other source for that matter. It works directly with your system’s sound card, so if you can hear it, you can record it. Find out how to use MP3myMP3 at wikiHow at http://www.wikihow.com/Use-MP3myMP3-to-Get-Free-MP3-Songs . You can download the software at http://download.cnet.com/MP3-My-MP3-Recorder/3000-2170_4-10369269.html
Q: When I print from my computer, I lose the edges of the page. How can I remedy this?
A: Printers have dead space and margins that limit the print area. One solution is to install CutePdf software. CutePdf Writer is the free version. Download the free software from http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp . Once your file is converted to a PDF, print it from your computer. For instructions on how to print, go to eHow at http://www.ehow.com/how_7158099_print-cutepdf.html . A Pdf document can be attached to an email and sent to others.
Presentation: Google Analytics, Lon Hosford, Presenter
Google Analytics is free software provided by Google to help understand and evaluate traffic to your website and its effectiveness. It helps you understand how internet users find your site, how they navigate through it and how they become customers. It allows you to track who is reaching your landing page and what traffic is directed to your goal page.
The software’s Dashboard screen gives a summary of the website. It lists categories that can be investigated to see where clicks are coming from and how long the person stays on the page. There is a flexible graphing tool that summarizes your results and then you can drill down deeper in the various categories for more detail. The content tab allows a drill down on what people did, where they landed, and content by title.
Information is available on the number of visitors to the site, how many unique viewers, time on the page, the bounce rate, how many exited from the site, return visits and what pages they visited. It also provides a geographic look on your site visitors, whether they are from the U.S. or international by city.
All of this information and much more assist the site owners to improve the site by selecting words that drive the visitor to the right goal page created as part of the marketing plan of the site’s owner. The objective of using the software is to provide very detailed information on who is coming to the website and to help convert site visitors to customers. For more detail and a tour of Google Analytics go to http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html .
It is startling to realize just how much information about the individual is tracked when that person clicks onto websites and reads content or clicks through pages. This software is a foundation to providing marketers with your interests, usage, location and even information about what type of browsers, service providers and search engines you use. Thanks, Lon, for opening our eyes and providing this excellent presentation to us.