Welcome
to this week's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter.
Today is Sunday, February 1, 2009
In this Issue:
Special Feature: A Bad Economy is
Good for Scammers: Phantom Mortgage Scams
Tips & Tricks: Twenty Five Most
Important Rules of Email Etiquette:
7. Send Plain Text Email, Not Fancy HTML
Featured Computer Term: Browser
This Week's Topic: Create and Save
Your First Spreadsheet
Question: The End Key
Websites of Interest: Facebook; Groundhog Day; Black History Month
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Special Feature: A Bad
Economy is Good for Scammers: Phantom Mortgage Scams
The
following is from http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com. Reprinted with
permission.
Rising
unemployment rates, sky-high fuel prices, a plunging stock market and falling
home values have landed many Americans in difficult financial straits. This
makes people psychologically predisposed to jump at a potential solution --
without stopping to consider whether this solution is truly as appealing as it
seems.
Here
is a recently reported scam that is designed to take advantage of America's
current economic problems...
A
financial consultant offers to help you save your home from foreclosure by
negotiating with your lender. All it will cost you is the consultant's fee,
which could be hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The
consultant pockets your fee, then sends you complicated
looking paperwork and encouraging updates from time to time to make it appear
that he is working on your behalf. He will not actually do anything to help you
save your home.
Self-defense:
Do not trust anyone who calls out of the blue to offer you help with a mortgage
problem. It often is a scam.
This
is the last article in our A Bad Economy is Good for Scammers series. We hope you enjoyed it. Please visit our Newsletter Archives for
previous articles on A Bad Economy is Good for Scammers
Unpaid
Fuel Bill
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/111608.html
Technicians
at your Home Scam
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/120708.html
Work-at-Home
Scam
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/121408.html
Gas
Saver Scam
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/011109.html
Mortgage
Scams
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/011809.html
Bait-and-Switch
Scams
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/012509.html
**************************************************************
Tips & Tricks: Twenty Five Most
Important Rules of Email Etiquette:
7. Send Plain Text Email, Not Fancy HTML
This
article is part of our ongoing series on Email Etiquette. With the help of Heinz Tschabitscher from about.com, we are taking an in depth
look at email etiquette. To read
previous editions of this series, please visit our newsletter archives:
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/etiquette.html
The
rules of email etiquette are not rules as much as they are guidelines that help
avoid mistakes (like offending someone when you don't mean to) and
misunderstandings (like being offended when you're not meant to).
These
core rules of email etiquette help us communicate better via email.
Send
Plain Text Email, Not Fancy HTML. Richly formatted messages are nice, but not
for everybody.
Sure,
using fancy formatting in emails is nice, and all these stationery (for Outlook
Express) and letter (for IncrediMail) creations are
fascinating. But not everybody can
or wants to receive rich text messages.
Some
email programs are not capable of rendering the HTML used for rich formatting
in email messages. Others try, but fail miserably (or crash), rendering your
message inaccessible to the recipient.
Other
recipients have email clients that can properly render HTML messages, but
despise rich formatting in email for various reasons (purity of the medium,
bandwidth issues, security and privacy among others).
When
in Doubt, Send Plain Text Email, Not Fancy HTML
So,
whenever you are not sure a recipient appreciates email communication using
rich and fancy HTML formatting,
* send plain text emails by
default, especially
* if
you have not previously talked to the recipient.
How
to Send Emails in Plain Text
Here's
how to send plain text only messages using various email programs:
Outlook
Express
http://email.about.com/cs/oetipstricks/qt/et082301.htm
Hotmail
http://email.about.com/od/hotmailtips/qt/et_plain_text.htm
Yahoo!
Mail
http://email.about.com/od/yahoomailtips/qt/et_plain_text.htm
Send
HTML to Users of Web-Based Email Services?
It's
usually safe to send HTML-formatted emails to users of web-based email services
like Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail.
To
read previous editions of this series, please visit our newsletter archives:
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/etiquette.html
**************************************************************
Featured Computer Term: Browser
Question: What is a Browser?
Answer:
A
Browser is the software that let's you move around
the Internet. It's the program that allows you to bookmark your favorite
resources, to download and view the text and graphics of a Web site, to browse
around the Web.
If
you're running Windows, a browser was included in that Windows package --
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). Its
the big, blue "e" icon on your desktop.
Because
IE is usually included as part of the package of a new computer purchase, many
people forget that browsers are actually software programs. But that's exactly
what a browser is -- a software program designed to locate and display Web
pages.
Browsers
are designed to read Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), which is the authoring
language that is used to write Web pages. Have you ever wondered what that
http:// at the beginning of Web site addresses stands for? It stands for Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol, or in English, the standard for how messages are
transmitted and formatted on the Web.
Is there a computer term or phrase that you'd like to see an explanation
of? Email it to
info@computerkindergarten.com and we'll put the term and its definition in an
upcoming newsletter.
**************************************************************
Today's Topic: Create and
Save Your First Spreadsheet
Question: Can you tell me how to make a
spreadsheet?
Answer:
You
probably have a spreadsheet program on your computer. While we'll be using Excel as an
example, the following applies to other spreadsheet programs as well, including
the spreadsheet module of Microsoft Works.
With
Excel, creating simple workbooks to record and calculate data is a surprisingly
intuitive process. Follow these steps to learn the basics of creating, saving,
and printing a workbook.
Open
Excel from the Start menu by selecting Programs/Microsoft Excel. When you load
Excel, the program automatically opens a new workbook that contains a number of
worksheets called Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3, and so on. You can browse these blank
sheets by clicking the tabs at the bottom of the Excel window.
Sheet1
is the selected sheet. It's divided into alphabetical columns and numerical
rows. The intersection of a column and a row is called a cell; each cell is
referred to by its column letter and row number. So the top-left cell is A1,
and the cell at the intersection of column H and row 8 is H8.
Click
in cell H8, type your name, and press Enter. Then click in cell B3, type your
name again, and press Enter. Click in cell B4, type the number 100, and press
Enter. You now have something to save and print in the next steps.
In
the next few steps you'll be using the New, Open, Save, and Print buttons on
your Standard toolbar, so take a minute to locate them. If you hold your mouse
over a button, a tool tip displaying its name will appear. Note: you can also
find these commands in the File menu.
Save
your file by clicking the Save button (or selecting File/Save). The Save As
dialog box appears. The drop-down box labeled "Save in" shows the
folder in which Excel is suggesting you save your file (usually the My
Documents folder). The drop-down box labeled "File name" shows the
name Excel is suggesting you use to call your file--generally something like
Book1.xls. Change the filename to My first workbook
and click Save.
To
print your file, click the Print button (the icon on your toolbar that looks
like a printer), or select File/Print from the menu.
To
close your file, open the File menu and select Close. If you made changes to
your file after you saved it, Excel asks if you want to save the changes you
made to your workbook. To save your changes, click the Yes button; if you want
to permanently discard the changes you made after you first saved, click the No
button. You will be left with a clear screen.
To
create another workbook, click the New button (or
select File/New and click OK). When you save this new workbook, give it a
different name from the previous workbook--for example, My
second workbook. (If you give a file the same name as another file in the same
folder, you'll overwrite the first one, so each workbook must have a unique
name.)
You
have now created, printed, saved, and closed a workbook. If you need to make
further changes to your workbook or print it again, you'll need to open it. To
do this, select the Open button, click the workbook's filename in the My
Documents folder list, and select Open. You can now print the file or make
changes to it.
Note:
Whenever you make changes to a file, be sure to save them by clicking the Save
button (you won't see the dialog asking you for a filename this time because
your file already has a name).
**************************************************************
Question: The End Key
What
does the End key do?
Answer:
Then
End key, usually located somewhere on the right side of the keyboard, does different
things, depending on the program you're working in. When you’re working online, press
End and you will go to the end of the page (press Home to get back to the
top).
Looking
at a list of your files in a folder, press the End key to get to the bottom of
the list.
In
some programs, like your word processor, press End to move the insertion point
to the End of the line. Hold down
the Ctrl key and press and release end to get to the end of the document.
Give
it a try. Remember, the Home key
will always bring you back to the beginning again.
Note: On some laptop computers, you may see
End on a key in either blue or yellow.
If so, hold down the Fn key (look over to the
left) and then press and release the End key.
**************************************************************
Websites of Interest:
Facebook
Question: My grandchildren want me to use Facebook. Can
you help me get started?
Answer:
Facebook is the new way to communicate and can be a
lot of fun. It is a social
networking website where users create profiles that contain photos and lists of
personal interests, exchange messages, and join groups of friends.
Look
up relatives and send a friend request, or accept a friend request from someone
you know, and those people get added to your friend list. When they post anything on their
profile, you will be able to see it, and they’ll be able to see whatever
you post on your profile. This is a
great way to share news and photos with all of your friends at once. If you have anything personal to say to
just one person, that you don’t want all of your friends to see, then you
can send a private message.
Old
friends can be found: list the high
school and college you went to, and you will see lists of people who you
graduated with. Send a friend
request and before you know it, you’re catching up with friends from
years ago.
Here
are some informational websites that will help you get going with facebook:
The
first thing you will need to do is set up a facebook
account. Visit this website for the
steps:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2081063_set-up-facebook-account.html
Now
that you have your account set up, learn how to create your profile:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4464690_set-up-facebook-profile.html
This
website has lots of instructional videos that will help you maneuver around facebook. Learn
how to find and invite friends, add photos, join groups, use applications and
much more.
http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/1261_facebook-use.htm
Groundhog Day
Monday
is Groundhog Day. Will Punxsutawney
Phil see his shadow? We hope
not! Catch up with Phil at his
official website:
http://www.groundhog.org
Black
History Month
This
website celebrates Black History Month with biographies, reference links, a
civil rights timeline, and much more.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhm1.html