RON YOUNG, Speaker at Family History Day

It is a pleasure to introduce Ron Young as a speaker at Family History Day at the California State Archives.

Ron was first a Navy pilot and then a magnetic media engineer directing the manufacture of tape recording equipment, video tape and computer hard disks. Since retirement, his interests mainly focus on computer hardware and software and its application to genealogy. He has given presentations to local computer and genealogy societies on Google, Publishing Books on Lulu.com, Converting 35mm slides to Electronic Storage, Converting LP records to MP3 format and 10 Free Programs to Replace Microsoft and Adobe. He writes a series of columns on Computer Genealogy for the Nevada County Genealogical Society (NCGS) newsletter, Kith & Kin . Ron is the current President of the NCGS.

Ron Young will be presenting two classes:

10 Free non-Microsoft Programs: If you are loading a new computer with software or just haven’t wanted to pay the significant prices for the Microsoft Office Suite or the Adobe photo handling programs, Ron will introduce you to a set of programs to do the same job for a fraction of the price (FREE). These programs are Open Source so they may be used and distributed freely. Some are even available for both Mac and Windows Systems. A CD with the loading files and instructions for all the programs is available for $1.00.

Google - Searching in Depth: The simple appearance of the Google search window hides a browser capability of extreme power. Knowledge of how the search engine works and the few extra characters that can be added to modify the search function can routinely reduce millions of search results to the one or two you really want. We will go through these few commands and see how they function to get where you want to be. If required to read a search document, it can even translate to or from a foreign language.

Ron can be reached at ryoung9@pacbell.net