Help Squad Bob’s Blog

This tutorial is intended only for those with administrative rights to the blog, colleaguesforlife.blogspot.com.  It demonstrates how to post new items to the blog.

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If you sometimes have difficulty reading text on a Web page because it seems too small, did you know that you can enlarge the size of text in your browser? Web browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer offer both pulldown menu options and keyboard shortcuts that make this easy to do. Read this posting to find out how.

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If you haven’t visited the USC Retired Faculty Association’s Web site, here is a shortcut that will take you directly to it. Once you are there, you can bookmark the page so that the next time you visit all that is required is to click on the entry in your “Favorites” list.

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One advantage of browsers such as Firefox is that they make it possible to use tabs. This tutorial will illustrate how to use and save tab settings so that the Web pages you visit routinely are available when you open your browser.

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If the browser that you are using to access the Internet is not Firefox 2.0, then you should seriously consider switching. Firefox provides greater security than Internet Explorer and has many features such as tabbed browsing that older versions of Internet Explorer (such as IE 6.0) do not have.

This illustrated tutorial shows you the simple steps involved in downloading and installing Firefox 2.0. Subsequent postings on this site will demonstrate how to take advantage of some of the more important features of Firefox such as the use of tabs. Oh, did I mention that Firefox is free?

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Many USC retirees have e-mail addresses through their ISP (Internet Service Provider). For example, an EarthLink customer might have an address such as “mymail@earthlink.net”. At the same time, retirees may still have USC computer accounts with active addresses such as “mymail@usc.edu”. If they use their ISP-provided e-mail addresses for their daily correspondence, they may be unaware that messages are still being sent to their USC addresses. In addition to important messages going unread, such unchecked messages can fill up their USC e-mail Inbox, resulting in e-mail quotas being exceeded and subsequent messages being returned to their senders.

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The newly-formed Emeriti Center computer Help Squad is now up and running.

If you have asked your neighbor’s teenager to help you too many times and are looking for another source for (free!) help with a computer- or Internet-related problem, give us a try. Our Web site is:

www.usc.edu/org/emeriti_center/helpsquad/

There you will find the names of four initial “contacts” who will either try to assist you themselves or will identify another Help Squad volunteer that can do so. Even if we can’t solve your problem, we can recommend where you can turn for expert help.

Contact Bob at: helpsquadbob@rstallings.com .

This blog will share information with and answer questions from members of the USC retiree community related to their use of computers and the Internet. If you wish to reach Bob by e-mail, use the following address: helpsquadbob@rstallings.com.