This was our first meeting in our new location, the Jan Platt Regional Library, and we started at 6:30 PM with the Windows SIG. Mary Sheridan filled us in on the big Office XP roll out and a few problems at the Hyatt. She also requested that anyone with historical information on our group contact her. We have been around since 1984 and started out as the "IBM Users Group" (which has carried on in spirit in our "Bits of Blue" newsletter title), and Mary wants to preserve some of that history.

The General Meeting started at 7:00 PM with Officer Gene King of the Tampa Police Department's Firehouse Squad and Mr. Howie Taylor presenting their Computer Acquisition and Placement Program. The purpose of this program is to find computers that individuals or corporations are willing to donate for use in a computer lab in a low-income neighborhood. The labs are set up in the Community Center of a target neighborhood as a way to faster computer literacy in areas that have been experiencing a "technology gap".

The first program started in Oak Park when it grew out of a conversation with a local business owner and Ofc. King as a way to get the local community more involved in computer literacy and the effect it could have on the children who live in the area. The original program survived by volunteer effort and was called "Cyberworld" by the kids who participated. The growing pains of success forced the project to evolve into a non-profit organization now known as CAPP. CAPP is still accepting donations of computers that meet some very low standards: a Pentium class CPU, sound card, network card, 15' monitor, 1 Gig hard drive, CD, and head phones. They would also appreciate any assistance from technicians or tutors and general-purpose help with cleaning and painting.

Mark Anderson, a computer security specialist, gave a brief presentation at 7:35 PM. He passed along some security advice that may sound simple, but I guarantee everyone reading this forgets to follow his tips:

• Avoid e-mail attachments from unknown senders.
• Don't open anything ending in .EXE, .VBS, etc as these are executable programs.
• Use and keep updated your anti-virus software.
• Back up your hard drive or all essential information.

After this basic starter advice, Mr. Anderson talked about how the "tool" menu in Outlook can be used to filter out strange or unwanted e-mail by going to the "Message Rules" line and clicking "Blocked Senders List". A menu box pops up where you can set criteria to forward or delete either e-mail from specific people or things that would look like spam or contain personally selected key words. E-mail addresses and news groups can also be blocked out completely. Mr. Anderson then talked about another type of security program called a firewall. The two that Mr. Anderson uses are Black Ice (http://www.Networkice.com) and Zone Alarm (http://www.Zonelabs.com), which is one of my favorites. A firewall is designed to keep the nefarious types of computer users out there from getting into your computer without your permission. Zone Alarm adds a benefit that it will also not let programs or applications "phone home" from your computer without your knowledge or permission. Security programs such as firewalls usually offer three different levels of security preference, Low, Medium and (guess what) High, that the user can choose. As with any program, carefully read any documentation that comes with your security program before installation because the wrong combination of settings can render your computer sterile.

We then had our raffle where Wade Herman won a finger mouse, Joe Peck won Spell Checker Plus, Manuel Fernandez won an ink refill kit, and two lucky but unnamed members each won a T-shirt. The meeting ended at 8:21 PM. u