Account - Connecticut Mac Connection

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CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, January 25
UConn Health Center
7:00 p.m.
TOPIC: TBA
(see page 11 for info & directions)
NEWSLETTER OF CONNECTICUT MACINTOSH CONNECTION, INC.
The State of CMC
and Our Commitment to You
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Last summer, as new CMC President,
I spoke about the health of our group.
In 2006, we plan on providing our
membership with the same and
expanded quality services. First, we
have some new initiatives and
improvements to our existing services
planned for this year.
JANUARY 2006
similar interests to draw from increasing our ability to offer more diverse
activities and to address different constituencies. In fact, it’s the only way to
expand our service offerings. We’d be
able to offer numerous special interest
groups and more specialized hands on
training sessions more often. Also, as
a larger group we could take advantage of bigger discounts, travel offers
and other services not available to us
at this time. Finally, a larger membership would allow you to connect and
network with a larger body for your
own personal or professional needs.
New Initiatives
2006 Membership Drive
We have many plans for 2006.
First, CMC is starting a membership drive and we need your
help! Though the Macintosh
has increased in market share,
CMC membership has
remained flat (139), not a bad
thing but we believe that the
many new Mac converts are the
ones who could benefit most
from our tech support, education and other services as well
as meeting and learning about
Macs from other Mac users.
Increasing membership benefits you,
our existing members, most. A larger
membership brings together more
people with similar interests and
that’s a huge plus. For example, we
tried arranging a bus trip to a digital
photo show this fall but couldn’t get
the 35–50 people necessary to break
even, even though digital photography is popular among our
membership. A larger membership
means a larger pool of people with
An Invitation to You
I’d also like to invite you to join the
CMC’s Board. Our board is amazingly
dedicated with many board members
having served since CMC’s inception.
We’d like to see new people join the
board and bring skills and new ideas to
help the group. The time commitment
is only one two-hour meeting each
month except January. So if you have
a talent, skill or just want to help,
please contact me. The Board has a
great deal of fun, we learn a lot and,
though we don’t get paid, our service
to you, our involvement in the Mac
community, and the knowledge
gained from such involvement
has benefited us in other ways
and is quite satisfying.
Bus Trip
Our most popular annual
event is the summer bus trip to
MacWorld Expo. Though that
event has been cancelled, we
are still planning a summer
trip. One idea is to return to
Manhattan to visit Apple’s
new 25,000 square foot flagship store that is planned to
open on 5th Avenue this
spring. The store will be graced
So please, tell your friends,
colleagues and any one you know who
owns a Mac or is thinking about doing
so about the many terrific benefits of
CMC membership. Or, if you have
expertise in the areas of marketing,
we could use your help. We want people to know that for $25 a year CMC
membership is a real bargain. (There
is a CMC application available on
page 10 of this issue).
1
Continued on page 2
The State of CMC .................................... 1
Group Therapy for iPod Users...................3
Review: Aperture ......................................4
Review: Canon PowerShot S2 IS ...............6
Vendor Offers ...........................................8
Take Control eBooks .................................9
Meetings and Club News .......................11
Continued from page 1
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connecticut Macintosh
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
West Hartford, CT 06117
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
We welcome submissions
from our members!
Please submit articles by
first of the month for
inclusion in our newsletter. All articles should be
submitted by email to
[email protected]
There is so much talent
in our group; it would
be great to have several
member articles in each
issue of the newsletter.
with a beautiful 32-foot glass cube
entrance (yes, it looks like that Cube).
The store and entrance have been getting rave reviews as beautiful works of
design. We thought we might have our
bus shuttle members between the 5th
Avenue and southern Manhattan
SOHO store located near Chinatown
and Little Italy. You may not be interested in visiting either store, but their
locations and the timing of our trip can
deliver our members, their family and
friends to a Broadway matinee, terrific
shopping, the world’s greatest museums
or finest restaurants. That’s one idea for
our summer trip and we are open to others–so please let me or our events
coordinator, Jack Bass, know.
New Website
In early 2006 we will be rolling out a
slicker and easier to use web site. Our
current site has grown over the years and
its design did not keep up with its function. As we added numerous functions
they were never really integrated into
the design. So we stepped back and started from scratch designing a site that will
better foster the transmission of information and communications among the
membership.
In our newsletters and at our
meetings you’ll find consumer information and our honest assessments of all
things Macintosh. We are beholden only
to our members. In our product reviews,
we don’t award Apple products a de
facto “4 and a half mice” (See the
Aperture review on page 4 of this issue)
and, CMC is not the Apple Store, we
have nothing to sell. Our only commitment is to you as we help guide you
through your selections and purchases.
We’ll continue to provide terrific free
tech and software support through our
member forum and email–and you don’t
have to drive anywhere to get it.
We plan on expanding social events
including a possible summer picnic and
our annual holiday party
As each year goes by, more and more
Macintosh user groups have fallen by the
wayside but CMC continues to thrive
because of you, our dedicated members.
The Board and I would like to thank
each and every one of you for your continued support. Please spread the good
word of CMC membership!
Richard Lenoce,
[email protected]
CMC’s Commitment to You
For 2006, we plan on continuing the
same quality services and doing so even
better. We’ll continue to provide:
A great monthly newsletter with
reviews, tips, hints, software recommendations and download links.
Monthly education meetings for a variety of levels including our popular “Back
to Basics” program. Programs will cover
a wide array of interests and we hope to
again offer our annual hands on training
sessions.
As the Mac transitions to Intel and to
OSX.5 Leopard, we’ll be here to educate and guide our members through
these new technologies.
2
Photos from CMC’s Annual
Holiday Party and Celebration of
Gadgets on
December 14
Group Therapy for iPod Users
by Steven Sande
<[email protected]>
Hi, my name is Steve S. and I have an iPod
problem.
Therapy Group: “Hi, Steve!”
Therapist: “Steve, now that you’ve admitted that you
have a problem, you’ve taken the first step to helping
yourself. Could you tell the rest of the group members
a little about your problem?”
As time went by I found myself using the calendar
function on the iPod as well, and then I decided
that I really wanted a Mac again so I bought a
PowerBook, and I reformatted the iPod to work
with it. That’s when I noticed the option called
“Enable disk use.” I found that I could actually
store a lot of my files from the PowerBook on my
iPod to back them up! At that point I was relying
on a single Mac, so I knew I’d be in trouble if I
couldn’t boot it up some day. I even installed
Panther on my iPod so I could boot from it if the
system on my PowerBook was corrupted.
Therapist: “This still doesn’t seem too bad. Go on.”
Well, I know I shouldn’t carry my iPod with me
everywhere, but it’s just so handy that I
find myself using it for everything! For
instance, last night my wife and I were
sitting at an outside table at a restaurant
and it was wobbling, so I used my iPod
nano as a shim under the table leg to
keep it from rocking. Yeah, I know
David Pogue already did that, but it was
one more way to use my iPod.
Therapist: “Okay, calm down, Steve. Just tell the
group about how your ‘problem’ with iPods began...
Breathe slowly, inhale... exhale... inhale... exhale...
that’s better.”
It started in 2002. This was during a short time
in my life where I didn’t have a Mac and was
forced against my will to use a PC. But that’s
another story. Anyway, the second-generation
iPods had just come out on the market and they
worked with Windows. I love music, so I
thought it would be a good idea to buy one so I
didn’t have to carry CDs with me on trips. As
soon as I got it out of the box and charged up, I
noticed that there was something in the instructions about moving my Outlook contacts to my
iPod. I did it. And I liked it.
Therapist: “That seems rather innocuous. I mean,
just storing a few addresses on your iPod isn’t too out
of the ordinary. What happened next?”
Because I could? No, it was a way for me to do
even more with my iPod. In fact, I’m hoping that
I can use it as a Web server soon.
Therapist: “Hmm. I’m beginning to think that this is
a deep-rooted problem. I’d better contact my colleague
in Vienna....”
According to the World Clock on my iPod nano,
it’s about 1:30 AM there right now, so I don’t
think he’d appreciate an unexpected wakeup call.
After all, he probably used the sleep timer on his
iPod to put him to sleep. Of course, if
you do want to call him I’ll use the iPod
nano’s stopwatch and time your call so
you don’t end up paying some ridiculous
amount to your long-distance company.
It would probably be a better idea just to
wait until his iPod wakes him up tomorrow morning, Vienna time, and then
call him.
Therapist: “Steve, your iPod problem is getting out of hand. I certainly hope you’ve
followed my advice and are keeping a journal so you can see how this problem is
affecting you.”
Therapist: “But Steve, isn’t the iPod just an
MP3 player? Why are you talking about
using it to do other things? Isn’t playing
music enough?”
You see, that’s exactly the problem - it
isn’t just an MP3 player, although it
excels at that task. Why, with a little
thought and effort, you can use it to do
just about anything! Who needs a Palm
or Pocket PC? You can use an iPod for
your calendar and your address book, you can use
it to read books or email....
Therapist: “You loaded Linux on your iPod?
Why?”
Finding out that I could move files easily to the
iPod started me down the path to my er, problem,
with iPods. First it was just backing up files and
using my iPod as a startup disk. Next, I started
grabbing text ebooks from Project Gutenberg and
reading them on the iPod. When the iPod photo
came on the market I knew it was the answer to
my wishes - I could store all of my photos on it
and view slideshows! I could even leave my
PowerBook at home on business trips and deliver
my presentations from the iPod photo.
Therapist: “But didn’t you want to have your laptop
with to do things like find directions or play games?”
Nope. I looked up a bunch of locations before I
went on my business trips and found directions
from my hotel to those places. Then I moved all
that info to my iPod so I could look it up! And my
iPod comes with games. Not many, but when I
installed iPodLinux on it I was able to install and
play more games - Minesweeper, Othello,
TuxChess, even Doom!
<http://ipodlinux.org/Applications>
3
Not only am I keeping a journal, but my
friends at TidBITS have published my
thoughts in an ebook called “Take
Control of Your iPod: Beyond the
Music.” It tells people all about how to
do the same things I like to do with my
iPod. The initial release had 128 pages of detailed
info and screenshots for only $10, and I’ve just
released the 1.1 update with 22 more pages to
cover the video-capable iPods and more.
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/ipodbtm.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0025-TB806TCNEWS
Therapist: “This has gone entirely too far! Now
you’re acting as an enabler, teaching other people how
to emulate your insidious iPod addiction. I want to
hear what the group has to say about this! Group?
Hello? Anyone???”
I don’t think they can hear you, Doc! I taught
them how to convert my ebook into audiobook,
so they’re all listening to it right now. See those
little white cables? Doc? Are you all right? Doc?
Reprinted from TidBITS#806/21-Nov-05
Aperture
Apple releases
a Turkey at
Thanksgiving
By Rich Lenoce,
The day after
Thanksgiving, I
received my preorder copy of Aperture and sadly, it
proved to be a holiday turkey. When
Apple proclaims their new photo software Aperture to be the first all-in-one
post-production tool for photographers, they have some mighty big
shoes to fill considering everyone will
be comparing Aperture to Photoshop.
Apple says Aperture doesn’t replace
Photoshop, but considering Aperture’s
included features one still can’t help
make the comparison.
To be frank, the $500 Aperture can’t
hold a candle to even Adobe’s $99
amateur-photo product, Photoshop
Elements, never mind the $649 full
version of Photoshop. Some reviewers
have said Aperture is “iPhoto on
steroids” and that is probably a good
description because it’s a very good
product, just one that’s limited.
What is Aperture?
Apple makes clear that Aperture is not
a replacement for Photoshop but is an
all-in-one “work flow environment” for
photographers working with RAW
images. RAW is a high-end digital
photography format produced by digital SLRs that records camera and
imaging data rather than a flat 8 bit
image that’s been processed and stored
in a tidy picture file like a TIFF. When
you open RAW data the image looks
terrible because it hasn’t been
processed for color, exposure, sharpness, etc. A RAW image is the digital
equivalent of a camera negative. The
data is “raw” and the photographer
using tools in Aperture or Photoshop
makes the adjustments that
would normally be done inside
the camera or in traditional photography in the darkroom. This
“work flow” method allows for
greater control by the photographer and higher quality as no
compression is applied. By working in RAW and keeping the
image in a RAW non-destructive
state during cataloging and editing,
image quality is maintained throughout all processes and only on output is
the image flattened and turned into an
output file such as a JPEG or TIFF.
As you can see, Aperture’s purpose is
quite specific. It’s geared towards a
professional photography audience
and isn’t meant for amateurs. Sure,
you can import other image types
such as TIFFs into Aperture but you
gain no benefits over iPhoto. In fact,
the editing tools are the nearly the
same with only a few more parameter
adjustments than iPhoto.
Photoshop has long been criticized for
weak RAW support, only via a plugin that is not an integral part of the
program. In fact, when Photoshop
imports RAW images they get converted and become destructive; only
Photoshop’s adjustment layer leaves
the
converted/imported
image
untouched and is non-destructive
during editing. It would seem Apple
might be exploiting a Photoshop weakness since RAW data is theoretically
maintained at the highest quality and
editing is non-destructive however, as
you’ll see, version 1.0 doesn’t always
deliver on the promise.
Requirements,
Installation and Interface.
Aperture requires a powerful Macintosh
and the latest OS. Minimum requirements are one gigabyte of RAM, a
1.8ghz G5 or 1.25ghz PowerBook and
Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.3). These steep
requirements are necessary to take
advantage of Apple’s core graphics
technology. This technology gives
Aperture the ability to perform imaging
tasks in real time.
When you first open Aperture, you are
asked if you’d like to import photos
and from where. I imported photos
from the iPhoto Library. I also imported several RAW image files from my
digital SLR. Like iPhoto there are a
variety of ways to catalog images but
Aperture allows you to have multiple
“libraries” available at any time and
within those libraries you can catalog
your photos and groups of photos in a
variety of ways.
My favorite feature is the ability to
create photo stacks, a powerful
metaphor for building sub-catalogs of
images by stacking images together.
Aperture allows you to edit names,
titles, and metadata, except for
imbedded camera/picture metadata,
and photos can be moved, duplicated,
organized and reorganized. This
browser is much more flexible, accessible and stylish than iPhoto’s library
or Photoshop’s browser.
Aperture’s interface looks more like
DVD Studio Pro than iPhoto or
Photoshop. It’s a dark bluish-gray with
black text. There are panes and editing tools available and all are
accessible from the main screen.
The biggest problem with the interface
is that all text is in tiny 8-point type. I
have a 20” Apple Studio Display and
20/20 vision and I found I was straining
to read the tiny text that sits on the
gray background. Apple also needs to
put tools on floating palettes and/or
give the user the ability to move or
turn the visibility of tools off to provide
for more screen space.
continued on page 5
4
continued from page 4
How’s it Work?
Aperture works as advertised. I
imported RAW and TIFF photos and
very much enjoyed playing with the
organization of 1100 photos.
Once I adjusted the RAW parameters
and changed metadata, the tools
became quite limiting. Image editing
and filters are not Aperture’s strong
suit. Aperture offers a limited editing
tool set: crop, exposure, saturation, a
4-point histogram, brightness/contrast and tint as well as Black and
White and Sepia Tone.
Aperture lacks some significant photo adjustment tools:
no channels, no image layers, no masks, no selections,
no Curves, no densitometer
and, most frustratingly, no
eyedropper to measure pixel
values. You also can’t work
or prep photos in CMYK for
print. For real image editing,
you’ll need Photoshop and
luckily you can launch
Photoshop from within
Aperture with just one click. In
launching Photoshop, you’ll loose
Aperture’s advantages because the
images are then destructively
processed. However, at this point
there’s no need to return to Aperture.
The problem I found also expressed
on many photographer forums is that
if you compare images imported using
Adobe’s RAW Photoshop plug-in and
the same RAW images in Aperture,
the Aperture images are noisier. That
was shocking considering Apple’s
claims of RAW, non-destructive
image editing.
At this stage, the question becomes:
what’s the point? If Aperture adds
noise to images and Photoshop/
Photoshop Elements have far more
image editing tools, are there any
advantages? As mentioned, the ability to organize and catalog huge
amounts of photos is excellent, but
there are many professional cataloging applications available such as
Extensis’ Portfolio.
I called a friend who is a high-end
wedding and fashion photographer to
get his opinion. He agreed with my
assessment for the most part but saw
some advantages. He feels Aperture is
a nice all in one package for photographers to quickly edit photos on
their laptop “on the fly” while on-site
for clients.
Photos can be processed and viewed
and approved by clients immediately.
This is the “workflow advantage” for
professionals Apple has been hyping
in their advertising and there is some
truth to it. However, the photo professional would need to further edit
and process those photos for output
later with Photoshop—a workflow
issue Apple also agrees with. He
believed there’s also something to be
said for being trendy in a highly competitive photo world—and Apple
after all is trendy. Showing up for that
fashion or advertising photo shoot
with an SLR, PowerBook and sleek
Apple software can look mighty
impressive especially when RAW
photos can be quickly imported and
viewed with only minor adjustments
needed.
5
Summary
Apple’s goof is in calling this an allin-one
photo
solution
for
professionals working in the RAW
environment. Clearly, if a photographer still needs Photoshop to perform
common tasks then Aperture isn’t all
Apple claimed. It would be understandable if Apple left out advanced
features but they leave out some of
the most basic tools.
As it stands now, in this reviewer’s
opinion, unless Apple can solve the
RAW noise issues and improve editing and filter features, Aperture is a
limited and grossly overpriced
product. If it were offered as a
$99 or $149 “iPhoto on
steroids” product it might have
more value but at $499 it’s an
expensive trendy turkey.
Aperture Alternatives
If you are interested in digital
photography and particularly
know your way around a darkroom, I strongly suggest you try
LightZone from www.lightcrafts.com (it is not available
on versiontracker.com). Download
the 30-day free trial. I’m hooked. It is
everything Aperture is and isn’t. It’s a
powerful all-in-one photo cataloging
and digital darkroom. The best thing
about LightZone is the Zonemapper
tool, with no equivalent anywhere. It
works based on Ansel Adams’ Zone
theory and allowed me to adjust my
photos quickly! Review to come…
If you’re looking for a free digital
image editing application try GIMP,
at ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/osx
It has all the power of Photoshop but
is open source and free.
It does however require the OS X
X11 environment to be installed.
You’ll find that as part of your
OS X installation.
Buying My Canon
PowerShot S2 IS
by Jeff Carlson
<[email protected]>
For an upcoming vacation, I wanted to buy a
new digital camera that
offered more features and
flexibility than my existing point-and-shoot model. Although
my aging Canon PowerShot S200 has
served me well for a number of years, I
knew it wouldn’t be up to the task of
photographing animals on safari.
Therefore, I faced a decision: upgrade
to a full blown digital SLR (single lens
reflex) camera, or find something in
between that was still compact enough
that it would not be a burden to carry.
Fortunately, at the same time my colleague Larry Chen delivered version
2.0 of his ebook “Take Control of
Buying a Digital Camera,” on which I
was the editor. With his advice as a
guide, I picked the right camera for me:
the Canon PowerShot S2 IS.
<http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/co
ntroller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=11368>
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/bu
ying-digicam.html?14@@!pt=TRK0015-TB807&cp=CPN51201HOL>
[The 2.0 version of “Take Control of
Buying a Digital Camera” is now available as a free update for current owners.
If you don’t yet have a copy, it’s on sale
for 50 percent off through Christmas, as
are our other consumer electronics
books: “Take Control of Digital TV,”
“Take Control of Your iPod: Beyond
the Music,” and “Take Control of
Buying a Mac.” The discount applies to
any one or more of these titles; use the
link above to load the necessary
coupon. -Adam]
Who Am I? Before I even started to
look at camera models and reviews, I
sat down to figure out what type of
photographer I am. In the past, I’ve
always been a “snapshooter,” more concerned with getting the picture than
with trying to eke out the highest quality of the shot; my little
point-and-shoot gives me plenty of
quality for just about any picture I typically need, and the small size makes it
easy to carry along. But in this case, I’m
Setting My Priorities — With a DSLR
off the table and a point-and-shoot too
limited, I waded into the crowd of midlevel digital cameras. To narrow my
search, I needed to figure out which
features were most important to me.
Obviously, I wanted more resolution.
These days, that means looking for a
camera with a resolution of at least four
megapixels. However, that didn’t narrow my search much.
headed
to
South Africa, where I’ll have the
opportunity to photograph sweeping
savannas, wild leopards and elephants,
and other subjects not found in Seattle
(including the wildest of them all, my
niece and nephew). In this respect, I
will be shooting more as what Larry
terms an “artistic photographer” than a
snapshooter, focusing more on the
quality of the image than the portability of the camera.
So, I began compiling a list. I wanted
some manual focus capabilities so I
wouldn’t be locked into using the automatic focus mode all the time. Tying
into that, I wanted good macro capabilities, so that I could shoot objects
extremely close-up without the lens
and camera processor choking on the
focus. At the same time, I wanted a
good level of zoom, since I’d be shooting animals and the like from a
distance. And I wanted good shot-toshot speed, a notoriously tricky
problem with most digital cameras,
especially higher-resolution ones due to
the time it takes for the camera to capture an image, save it to the memory
card, and be ready for the next image. I
can’t tell a lion to please hold still while
my camera digests its pixels, and kids
aren’t much more cooperative.
But the quest for higher quality usually
leads one to look at DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras, which can use
specialized lenses and shoot at much
higher resolutions (currently between 6
and 16 megapixels). DSLRs also
include many more manual controls for
setting aspects such as white balance,
ISO speed, and the like. “Take Control
of Buying a Digital Camera” version
2.0 includes a new chapter about
DSLRs that not only gives you an idea
of what you might spend for one, but
also talks about characteristics specific
to DSLRs that you may not run into
with point-and-shoot cameras (such as
focal length magnification factor and
dust spots on the sensor).
Although a DSLR was appealing, I
couldn’t justify the cost (at least $1,000
at the low end) and I knew it was too
much technology for me - I have no
training as a photographer and, quite
simply, want to get the best shot with
the least amount of work. I’m willing to
learn, but I don’t shoot consistently
enough to become an expert. Plus,
when you buy a DSLR, you invest in a
system - on most models, you’re buying
only the camera body, then purchasing
a lens or three and associated peripherals. I didn’t relish the idea of dragging a
huge photographic kit with me.
6
Size was also important. In fact, Larry’s
ebook sensibly encourages thinking
about size and usability before delving
into marquee features because you have
to carry and grip and manipulate the
camera’s controls far more often than
you press the shutter button. A camera
that frustrates you due to its onscreen
controls or poor ergonomics, no matter
how tricked out with features, is a camera that ultimately gets left at home.
After using my point-and-shoot for
years, I already knew that I wanted
something larger than a pocket camera
but small enough that I could stow it in
- and quickly retrieve from - a backpack
or shoulder bag.
The middle range of digital cameras is
also where manufacturers cram every
last feature they can dream up in order
to compete in their ongoing Marketing
Bullet-Point Escalation. So I also made
a short list of features I would ignore,
such as digital zoom (useless),
PictBridge compatibility (nice if I
owned a supported photo printer, but I
don’t), video capture (I own a small
digital camcorder), and built-in effects
(oh, please).
Lastly, some people swear by certain
camera manufacturers, but I’m flexible.
I started by looking at Canon models
because I’ve had a good history with
their products; my S200 is still working
just fine, and the S100 I owned before
it still takes decent photos, even after I
accidentally dropped it into a river.
ered, but it seemed like too much of a
good deal and spooked me.
Instead, I went to dealmac.com and set
up a notification for “S2 IS,” and a few
weeks later received an email message
that Dell’s online store was offering a
camera deal, a coupon, and free shipping that brought the price down to
about $350. I jumped on it, also taking
the opportunity to buy a pair of 512
MB SD memory cards.
<http://www.dealmac.com/>
Choosing and Buying — Like a good
geek, I took my search online. Web
sites such as Digital Photography
Review post extensive reviews of current models - enough to make my head
spin. But they’re also good barometers
of what models photographers are
interested in. That’s when I came
across the Canon PowerShot S2 IS.
<http://www.dpreview.com/>
<http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ca
nons2is/>
As it turns out, my office-mate,
TidBITS Contributing Editor Glenn
Fleishman, owns the previous model,
the PowerShot S1 IS, which let me add
a valuable dimension to camera buying: hands-on experiences from friends
and family. The S2 improves on the S1
on several fronts, such as increased resolution and better shot-to-shot speed.
Both share a body style that meet my
size and ergonomic requirements, with
a rounded grip on the right side that fits
my hand well.
Based on playing with Glenn’s camera,
reading the reviews, and viewing sample images taken from the S2 online, I
decided to buy it. Here, again, Larry’s
advice came in handy. Using a few
online price-comparison sites, I found
the camera offered by a vendor for half
the asking price of $500. However, I
became wary: I wasn’t familiar with the
vendor (though it had fairly good buyer
ratings), and most other stores were
either selling the camera for full asking
price (indicating to me that it was a
popular model, so price cuts weren’t
necessary to attract buyers) or listing
no current inventory. For all I know,
that discount vendor would have deliv-
Matching Priorities to Reality — So,
how did my wish list compare to the
final product?
The S2’s 5 MP resolution is probably
more than enough for my needs, and
the shots I’ve taken have been nice and
clear. (You can view some of them at
my Flickr site; the metadata stored
with each image includes the camera
used, so you can look at the right-hand
column on a picture page to see which
shots were taken with the S2 versus
other cameras.) I was surprised to find
quite a bit of noise in some of the shots,
but Larry’s ebook came through there,
too: noise can occur at high ISO settings; I had been shooting some
low-light tests and forgotten to reset
the ISO.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcarlson/
The manual focus controls, while not
as smooth as having a focus ring around
the lens barrel, are intelligently placed.
The manual focus button is located on
the left side of the lens barrel (lens protrusion is probably more accurate), so I
can press and hold it with my left hand
and use a four-way rocker switch on the
back of the camera with my right
thumb. Pushing up or down increases
or decreases the focal length, with a
usable (but still somewhat limited)
enlarged detail on the screen indicating the focus point.
The macro feature is, well, awesome.
When I engage the Super Macro mode,
it can focus on objects that are, according to the specifications, 0.0 inches
away. Canon goes out of its way to
make sure you understand that you can
damage the lens by bumping it against
7
the object you’re photographing!
The 12x optical zoom is wonderful,
especially compared to the 2x zoom of
my S200. On my Flickr site, the photo
of the Lenin statue near my office was
taken from almost a block away using
the maximum zoom. Another nice
thing about the S2’s zoom is that the
lens barrel doesn’t keep pushing forward as you zoom in; instead, when you
enter shooting mode it extends to a
fixed length, and the lens adjusts within the barrel as you zoom.
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcarlson/45674756/>
The shot-to-shot speed is impressive as
well, at 1.6 seconds. I made a point of
spending the extra money to get highspeed memory cards that can keep up
with the data flow. I’m going to have to
be careful with this feature, as I could
easily fill up a card without realizing it.
I also discovered a feature I didn’t know
I would love until I got my hands on
the camera. On my S200 and my wife’s
Canon PowerShot S50, the flash is
always activated automatically when
you power the camera up, but I find
that in most cases the flash is too bright
and either washes out the image or creates an unwanted high contrast
between foreground objects and the
background. Not only does the S2
have a setting for controlling the
intensity of the flash, the physical flash
mechanism must be raised by hand to
activate it. This way, I don’t have to
remember to turn the flash off before I
start shooting.
Final Thoughts — I’ve had the camera
for a few months and am very happy
with it. I’m also indebted to Larry for
writing an ebook that answered all of
my questions (one reason I volunteered
to edit the book in the first place). I’m
writing this article mid-flight on my
way to South Africa, so I’ll soon know
for sure whether my research and
experimentation so far will pay off.
Depending on my Internet access, I’ll
try to upload photos to my Flickr site
when I can. I hope you enjoy them!
Reprinted from TidBITS#807/05-Dec-05
VENDOR OFFER WATCH
January 7, 2006 Edition
MacAddict magazine - Up to 78% off
annual subscription; Exp. 6/30/06
Compiled by The MUG Center
http://www.mugcenter.com
MacConnection - Free shipping on
orders over $499 and special discounts; U.S. only. Expires 1/31/06
For the most comprehensive list of all
available user group offers, visit:
<www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/>
(see page 11 for your CMC password)
or subscribe to The TMC Vendor
Offers Newsfeed: <http://www.mugcenter.com/rss/vendoroffers.xml>
Exclusive Discounts
from The MUG Center:
Red Rock Software - $50 off all
products, excluding stand-alone User
Guides; discount applies to academic
pricing and upgrades; expires 1/31/06
More info: <www.mugcenter.com/
vendoroffers/redrock.html> MUG
coupon: 1USERGROUP50
Tropical Software - 10% discount on
all products, including TopXNotes
and TopXNotes iPod - More info:
<www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/tr
opical.html>
Other Offers for Mac User Groups:
(For details, including code acquisition, visit: <www.mugcenter.com/
vendoroffers/>)
Apple MUG Store - Discounts on
new and refurbished hardware and
1% back to your group; no expiration
AppleWorks Users Group
- Discount on Macintosh batteries
Audible.com - Free month of service
plus free gifts; no expiration
Emerging Telephony Conference
by O'Reilly - 20% off attendance;
available globally. Expires 1/24/06
Use discount code "etel06dsug"
iWork Users Group
40% off Business Stationery Design
Kit for Pages; Expires 1/31/06
macHOME magazine - $15 off annual subscription; U.S. only.
Macworld magazine - $13 off annual
subscription; no expiration
Max Your Macs - $12.49 discount on
Essential Learning CD; available
globally. Expires 12/31/05
MYOB - $25 off First Edge & $100
off Account Edge; No expiration
O'Reilly - 30% off all titles; available
globally. No expiration
Peachpit Press - 25% off all titles by
joining the Peachpit Club; available
Pressure Drop - 10% off zStand; U.S.
only; expires 3/31/06
Prosoft Engineering - 25% off Drive
Genius, Picture Rescue, Data Rescue,
Data Backup & Data Recycler; No
expiration.
Quickertek - 20% off all Quickertek
products; U.S. only; expires 3/31/06
Roxio - Toast 7 and The Boom Box
for almost 50% off; expires 3/31/06
TidBITS - 10% discount on Take
Control eBooks; No expiration
Offers in this article are complied
from a variety of sources, including
those developed by The MUG
Center, vendor contacts, various
company user group publications and
the Apple User Group Bulletin
<http:// homepage.mac.com/ugab/>
(see page 11 for your CMC password)
Macworld
Announcements
Apple made several major
announcements and product introductions at Macworld on January 10.
Look for reviews in next month’s
newsletter including a comprehensive
review of iLife ‘06!
Apple announced it’s first Intel-based
(Dual Core) laptop, the MacBook Pro
in two models and includes a built-in
iSight camera, IR Sensor, Apple
Remote, ATI Radeon x1600 video
processor, and a new, magnetic power
plug. Both configurations are available
in February.
1.67 Core Duo - $1999
(Available in February)
• 15.4-inch TFT display with
1440x900 resolution
• 1.67GHz Intel Core Duo processor
with 2MB shared L2 Cache
• 667MHz frontside bus
• 512MB (single SO-DIMM)
• 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300)
• 80GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hd
• Slot-load SuperDrive
(DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with
128MB GDDR3 memory
• iLife 06
1.83 Core Duo - $2499
• 15.4-inch TFT display
with 1440x900 resolution
• 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor
with 2MB shared L2 Cache
• 667MHz frontside bus
• 1GB (single SO-DIMM)
• 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
(PC2-5300)
• 100GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hd
• Slot-load SuperDrive
(DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• ATI Mobility Radeon X1600
with 256MB GDDR3 memory
• iLife 06
continued on page 9
8
MacBook Pro also features a fullsize backlit keyboard, AirPort Extreme
wireless networking (802.11b/g),
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, ExpressCard/34
slot, dual-link DVI video out, Gigabit
Ethernet, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and
optical digital and analog audio in/out.
I n N o v e m b e r,
Apple released
their two new 17”
and 20” iMac
models and has
already replaced
them at Macworld
with new Intel Dual
Core models running at 1.83 and 2.0ghz
respectively. Both models are available
immediately and have similar specifications to the models they replace.
• Mighty Mouse
• ATI Radeon X1600
• iSight Built in
• Front Row and Apple Remote
Apple announced an iPod FM
Receiver and Remote priced at $49
and allows users to tune FM radio stations through a new on-screen
interface on the iPod. The new
remote works with the iPod nano and
5G iPod and is available immediately.
On the software side Apple also
announced iWorks 2 and iLife ‘06.
iLife ‘06 has many significant
improvements including an update to
Garageband that adds all-in-one podcasting and live recording features.
iLife ‘06 also includes a new application called iWeb to easily create
websites, web pages and blogs.
Apple also posted record sales for the
fourth quarter 2005 causing it’s stock
to rise to an $81 all time high. With
these announcements, their financial
results and big expectations for 2006,
Wall Street and consumers have a lot
to celebrate.
New “Take Control”
eBooks Available
Take Control
of Podcasting on the Mac
Submitted By Robert Sawyer,
[email protected]
If you’re excited about the idea of
creating your very own podcast but
need help getting started or working efficiently, you can now hop on
the podcasting bandwagon with the
start-to-finish guidance in our latest
ebook, “Take Control of Podcasting
on the Mac.” Written by long-time
podcaster Andy Williams Affleck,
“Take Control of Podcasting on the
Mac” leads you along the path to
podcasting success from beginning
to end. Andy starts by helping you
think about your topic, format, and
polish; assemble the best audio gear;
and understand the pros and cons of
recording in four popular programs Audio Hijack Pro, GarageBand,
Audacity, and SoundStudio. You’ll
find step-by-step directions for how
to record in each of those programs,
along with instructions on how to
edit your recording by mixing in
additional audio and eliminating
any awkward bits. Andy also
explains how (and why) to encode
and tag your podcast file. Finally, he
discusses how to choose a podcast
publishing tool, offers essential
advice about bandwidth costs, and
gives you seven ways to promote
your podcast. The ebook is available on its own for $10 or in a
$17.50 bundle with “Take Control of
Recording in GarageBand.”
Take Control
of Mac OS X Backups
Backup is an important topic in the
Mac world today, since too many
people fail to back up regularly or
properly, and “Take Control of Mac
OS X Backups” is the best resource
available for individuals and small
businesses who need help with their
backups. The new version of the
ebook has more info about backing
up photos and video, comments on
using Apple’s Backup 3 with .Mac,
and a 20-page, step-by-step primer
to using EMC Dantz’s Retrospect. I
strongly encourage you to tell your
members about this ebook - it’s
helped thousands of Mac users
already, and the update makes it
even more useful than before.
Take Control
of Buying a Digital Camera
The second edition of “Take Control
of Buying a Digital Camera” is an
equally impressive update. Larry
Chen added more than 30 pages,
lots more illustrative photographs,
and a ton of details. In particular,
he gives more advice to people
interested in buying a digital SLR
camera. It’s an excellent
resource for anyone interested in buying digital
camera gear or helping others with their purchases.
If you have any trouble, check
out our Ordering Tips at:
www.takecontrolbooks.com/
faq.html#ordering0 or contact
Robert Sawyer at
[email protected]
9
2005-2006 Connecticut Macintosh Connection
Officers and Board of Directors
Yes, I want to join CMC!
CMC Benefits:
Monthly meetings, monthly newsletter, special events, discounted books, assistance with computer problem, network
with other Mac users, User Group Store discounts, and more.
President Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
860-347-1789
Vice President Chris Hart
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Secretary
Kyle DeMilo
[email protected]
Past President Don Dickey
[email protected]
860-232-2841
Ambassador Joseph Arcuri
[email protected]
860-485-1547
Editor Deena Quilty
[email protected]
860-678-8622
Design George Maciel
[email protected]
860-561-0319
Raffles Robert Sawyer
[email protected]
860-677-7787
Webmaster Brian Desmond
[email protected]
(860) 668-8728
Public Relations
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Download/Month Debbie Foss
[email protected]
860-583-1165
Date ________________________________________
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____________________________________________
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Annual CMC Family Membership
$25.00
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Make check payable to CMC and mail to:
41 Crossroads Plaza, PMB 1984
...or
Pay online with PayPal at www.ctmac.org
Special Events
Jack Bass
[email protected]
10
Parliamentarian/Historian
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
CMC Monthly Meetings
Discounted Books
FREE Raffle!
Monthly CMC Meetings are held on last
Wednesday of the month from 7:00 - 9:00
P.M. (except November and December when
the meetings are held one week
earlier due to the holidays).
Board meetings are held on the first
Thursday of the month. If you wish to
attend a Board meeting, contact an officer for time & location.
CMC continues to offer our current members the opportunity to
purchase any published book for
either Mac or Windows at a 20%
discount. All major publishers are
carried by our source.
Every CMC member who attends our
monthly meetings gets a raffle ticket.
This will give you a chance for one of
our free prizes every month! You
could win…t-shirts, toys, CDs, mugs,
software …there’s always something
we’re giving away! And don’t forget
the Free table at the back of the
room where everything is...FREE!
CMC Member Meeting
7:00 p.m.
UConn Medical Center
Topic: TBA
Back to Basics
6:00 pm
Topic: TBA
Contact a Board Member or send
an email to [email protected].
Provide the book title, the publisher and the ISBN number, if
possible, and we will check on its
availability.
CMC Passwords
The Resource Site for Mac User Groups
http://homepage.mac.com/
ugab/offers/vendorcodes.htm
Password: ugvendor
www.applemugstore.com
Valid:11/01/2005 - 1/31/2006
User ID: ipod • Password: nano
• CMC Web site username and password • Member expiration date
• Membership number (for free shipping at MacConnection)
...are now located on your newsletter mailing label.
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line of: ADD TO CMC EMAIL LIST
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11
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following issue. Display ads must be
submitted camera-ready in eps or pdf format with all fonts and graphics embedded.
Make check payable to CMC.
41 Crossroads Plaza – PMB 1984
CMC Monthly Meeting
UConn Health Center
7:00 p.m.
TOPIC: TBA
(see page 11 for info & directions)
CMC Meeting Location
A pdf document containing a visual direction guide to the location of our meeting in the UConn Health Center is available on our website: www.ctmac.org
Monthly meetings will be held at UConn Health Center in Farmington. When hands-on
programs require computers for attendees, we will be using Middlesex Community College
Directions to UConn Health Center, Farmington
From I-84: Take Exit 39 (if coming from I-84 West, Exit 39 is
after 39A). Turn right at first traffic light onto Route 4 East
(Farmington Avenue). At third traffic light, turn right to enter
the Health Center campus. Go around the main building to
the right (at a Y in road), then take a left when you get to the
Academic Entrance. The road becomes two-way there so you
should be able to tell where to turn. (Do not go on straight to
the two-way part). Then take the second right into parking lot
A&B. this is close to the building. Go past the police station
entrance on your left (small sign). You will see a continuation
of the building with its own entrance area. This is the new
research building. Enter on the ground floor, turn right and
enter room EG-013 on your right. This is the first room on
your right. The rest rooms are on your left as you enter.
12
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, February 22
UConn Health Center
Back to Basics: 6:00 p.m.
Main Presentation: 7:00 p.m.
Topic: File Sharing
(see page 11 for more information
on meetings and club news)
2006: The Year
of the Mac Attack
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
There was an old saying
back in the 1950s,
“What’s good for General
Motors is what’s good for
America.” Now we might
say, “What’s good for
the iPod is what’s good for
the Macintosh.” I’ve heard people
complain that Apple is too focused on
the iPod. The iPod is the key to
Apple’s computer success and it’s
working; in less than two years the
Mac jumped from 3% market share to
5%. Here’s the strategy.
A friend of mine just bought an iPod.
For years he had been frustrated with
PCs and would call me with every
complaint about viruses, spyware,
driver problems, the Windows OS
quitting, and all those other pesky
problems PC folks deal with each day
that we don’t. I’d try to convince him
to buy a Mac, but he wasn’t going to
buy a product no one else (i.e., a
majority) had. Let’s face it: most people are followers, not leaders.
When he wanted to buy a music player to use while jogging, he bought the
one that had over 70% market share,
an iPod. He was amazed at its quality,
style, simplicity and total lack of
problems. It was not an experience he
was used to with a computer or anything that hooks to one. He became an
iPod and iTunes addict. He bought
FEBRUARY 2006
one for his
wife, one for
his son, and
two for himself.
While on one of
these purchasing trips to the
Apple Store, he
b eg an p l ay i n g
with a Mac, saw
the tremendous
iLife software,
absorbed OS X’s elegance and simp l i c i t y, a n d w a l k e d o u t w i t h a
PowerBook.
It wasn’t the computer that convinced
him to make the purchase, it was the
iPod. The experience to him was the
same. He discovered his PowerBook
was as compatible with his digital
photos, video and Microsoft and
Adobe filesas his iPod was with MP3s
and CD audio. I wasn’t able to convince him before of the great quality
and compatibility of the Mac, but the
iPod did.
And, knowing that something like
70%+ of all music players sold are
iPods, he felt comfortable buying an
iPod, shopping in the Apple Store and
taking home a PowerBook. This compatibility zoomed the iPod from a 0%
market share to 70% in a matter of
months. Why shouldn’t the same
strategy of quality and compatibility
work with computers?
I predict that Apple will win back significant market share with the same
strategy. Not only are new Macs com-
1
patible with most every peripheral,
but an Intel Mac can potentially run
Windows making it compatible with
100% of all software available on the
PC. From all accounts, it’s only a matter of time until someone releases a
product to allow Windows to run on
an Intel Mac, just as it would on a PC.
In fact, the Mac is for all intents and
purposes (gulp) a PC . . . the best PC.
If people know they can run those few
Windows apps not made for the Mac
while other times working and playing on the most secure virus/spyware
free system with a superior OS and
digital lifestyle apps, why wouldn’t
anyone buy a Mac? At $499 it will be
a true bargain. No other computer system offers that much bang for the
buck. There will be no reason not to
buy a Mac and no excuses—and as
Mac users, you and I have heard all of
them!
Let’s not forget the great software
Apple makes. Apple is approaching
software development with the same
attention to quality, elegance and
compatibility as its iPods and computers. iLife 06 is leaps ahead of the PC
competition which sell for about $99
Continued on page 2
2006: The Year of the Mac Attack ... 1
Review: Starry Night.........................3
Review: iLife ‘06 ...............................4
Communications Convergence.........6
MUG Offers ......................................8
Book Review: Tiger Killer Tips..........9
Meetings and Club News................11
each. That’s a $600 value included on
each Macintosh sold. For switchers,
all of their photos, DV footage and
other files are compatible with iLife.
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
Please submit articles by first
of the month for inclusion in
our newsletter. All articles
should be submitted by email
to [email protected]
member articles in each issue
of the newsletter.
It will be evident to PC users that
iLife software isn’t a toy like most
similar PC software. Pro magazines
cover iLife like a professional product. Every pro I know uses iLife.
They won’t tell their clients but there
is no faster or easier way to rough-cut
a video, author a pro-looking DVD or
create a soundtrack than with iLife.
Now with iWeb, a professional looking website can be created in no time.
iLife 06 is either consumer software
with many pro features or is a professional software package for
consumers. Either way, every Mac
user has incredible creative power
and, let’s not forget, a lot of fun at
their fingertips.
I predict Apple will soon make the
same aggressive and strategic moves
into high-end media markets that they
made with iPods, and are now making
with computers,. Already Apple is the
leader in the medium pro-video market with Final Cut and Logic; most
independent filmmakers, corporate
video producers and the like use it.
These products have been designed
and marketed to independents and
small production facilities. Apple’s
biggest competitor has been
Digidesign, makers of Avid
video editing software and
Pro Tools audio software.
Apple has taken this medium
market away from Digidesign
by producing software that is
as good, if not better, for
sometimes 75% less. But
Digidesign’s high end versions of Avid and Pro Tools
still reign at the major film
studios, TV networks, recording studios and broadcast
2
stations where projects are large and
where digital content needs to be
shared across networks of professionals. Final Cut and Logic haven’t been
designed for that type of network and
group workflow but I believe Apple is
poised to make the next leap. And
again, compatibility will be key, relying on Intel processors, the ability to
fit into Windows and Unix networks,
terrific software, and, of course,
QuickTime—the most compatible
media software architecture available.
Apple has all that technology and I
believe they will release a higher-end
version of Final Cut and possibly
even Logic, and then the Mac will
replace many PCs and Linux boxes at
these locations. Of course, Steve
Job’s influence as the largest shareholder at Disney (the second largest
media conglomerate and owners of
Disney Studios and music, ABC,
ESPN, cable, etc.), will certainly help
in this area.
Apple’s fantastic financial results are
driven by the iPod, and following the
same strategy of success, will give the
Mac and all Apple’s products significant gains in market share. This is my
prediction for 2006 and beyond. Wall
Street sees it, but now it’s convincing
the consumer. And, with the iPod and
Intel Macs, their terrific quality and
compatibility, it shouldn’t be a tough
sell. 2006 will be the year of the
Mac.
Review: Starry Night
by Maria O. Arguello, MLMUG
Starry Night Pro Plus 5.7 and
Starry Night High School (New)
Starry Night Pro 5.7.2 will thrill the
avid amateur astronomer with its stunning realism. There is also something
for the hardcore astronomers as an
observation aid. It generates customized observation planners for every
night of the year. You can look at the
night sky on your computer from any
place and time without the blight of
light pollution interfering with stargazing. You will see the stars exactly as
they appear in your town in the night
sky. You can click and grab a star, dragging the heavens back and forth
wherever you desire, or type the name
of a celestial body and zoom to it. There
are also guided tours to learn your way
around the Solar System and beyond.
This program is simply sensational
with a spectacular interface giving you
the feeling of looking at the real night
sky. It includes a catalog of more than
55 million stars and a million galaxies.
If you’re invited to a stargazing party,
you can set the night-observation mode
that colors your display a deep red so as
not to offend your friends and insure
getting invited back. How cool is that?!
How I wish I’d had Starry Night High
School (or Starry Night Middle School)
back when I was teaching astronomy to
high school students. The school had a
wonderful classroom planetarium but
no curriculum. I was in charge of developing it. My students would have
marveled at Starry Night High School
software, as its computerized celestial
view would have been a source of wonderment and a great supplement to the
classroom planetarium.
everything the
teacher and
students would
need to delve
into the mysteries of our
universe.
Students will
be motivated to
learn more
about the universe while having fun.
The Lesson Plans are impressive in their
careful architecture to promote the students? interaction with the program.
The computer exercises help to reinforce key concepts. Students manipulate
time and location to view numerous perspectives of the universe.
The Teacher Guide also includes a section on what to look for when buying a
telescope. I would make sure the telescope was capable of working with
Starry Night to instantly center the eyepiece on whatever object you select.
The credentials of the developers are
impressive. They succeeded in developing interesting, provocative, and
challenging lessons addressing most
student learning styles and abilities. It is
the most “realistic astronomy software”
and worthy of the prestigious Best
Interface award and numerous other
awards.
A stunning program you will love!
Copyright © 2006 Maria O. Arguello,
MLMUG, <[email protected]>)
Starry Night Pro Plus 5.7 and
Starry Night High School (New)
Company: Imaginova
URL: http://www.starrynight.com/
URL: www.starrynight.com/education
Price: $249.95 and $169.95
System Requirements: OS X 10.3 or
higher, G4 800-MHz or higher
processor, 256 MB RAM (512
MB recommended) and 3.0 GB
of hard disk space for full install.
Will not run on OS 9.x or earlier.
OpenGL support requires a 64MB OpenGL-capable graphics
card. Minimum recommended
monitor resolution of 1024 x 768
pixels. DVD-ROM drive
required for installation.
Rating: 5 out of 5 apples
Manhattan Apple store
to be first 24/7 location
By Ryan Katz, Senior Editor
ThinkSecret
February 8, 2006 - Apple's upcoming
midtown Manhattan retail store will
mark a first for the company as
sources report the location will be
open 24 hours a day. The store, located in the underground retail plaza of
the General Motors Building on Fifth
Avenue between 58th and 59th Street
will also be among the first stores to
offer customers an iPod Bar.
The 25,000-square-foot store will
dwarf Apple's SoHo location and will
be capped by a 32-foot glass cube that
will stand in front of the building and
house the stairs and elevators that will
take customers underground to the
Apple retail store.
Sources report
that construction of the store
is on track to be
completed in
April, with the
store expected
to open by the
end of May.
Starry Night High School comes with a
complete Teacher’s Guide replete with
Lesson Plans, CDs, Assessments, and
3
Review: iLife ‘06
By Rich Lenoce
CMC President
iLife ‘06 is a major upgrade with enhancements
most anyone will find welcome.
Installation
iLife is only available on DVD; there is no CD
installer. iLife will run on any G4 or G5, however iDVD requires a 744mhz G4. A new
installation requires10gigabytes of disk space,
while an upgrade only requires a gigabyte or
two of additional space.
Before installation, back up your iPhoto
Library and other iLife projects before installation and I suggest move your iLife 06
applications into a folder so they don’t get overwritten-until you decide you are happy with
iLife ‘06. It is particularly important to backup
your iPhoto Library as the new version rewrites
the existing library data to a new format that
can’t be reversed.
iPhoto
iPhoto was the most problematic of the applications and since it stores photographic
memories, it’s the one we should pay closest
attention too.
As with iLife ‘05, the iPhoto ‘06 updates the
Library and the updated library will no longer
be compatible with iLife 05. During my update,
iPhoto stopped and said it found missing pictures not connected to the library and asked if I
wanted to import those pictures. Not knowing
what they were, I said yes, and in came 350 pictures into a “Recovered Photos” album. These
turned out to be trashed photos and duplicates.
What was scary was when I noticed a dozen
pictures in my library that were now black!
They are in the library, but can’t be seen. Also,
while editing photos on three occasions pictures just disappeared replaced by black
images. I wrote Apple and a support person said
it was a file permissions issue and sent me a fix,
but it must be applied to the iPhoto ‘05 Library
before updating.
Here’s the procedure:
• Select the iPhoto Library folder and type
Command-I
• When the Info window comes up, go to
the Ownership and Permissions section
and make sure you have Read & Write
permission and that the Owner and Group
have Read & Write also. Others should be
set to Read Only.
• Then click on the “Apply to enclosed
items...” button.
• Launch iPhoto with the Option key
depressed and open the new copy.
• I tried the fix on a backup of that same
Library and it worked. Thanks, Apple!
As Apple claims, iPhoto ‘06, is much faster
than ‘05. Navigating through 3,000+ photos
was instantaneous.
Enhancements include new full screen and
comparison modes. The Photo Podcasting feature, Photocasting, is unique and works well.
It’s easy to set up and easy to receive Photocasts
if you have a Mac with iPhoto ‘06. This could
be very handy for those tech-savvy families
spread who are across the country.
New book formats offer higher quality book
printing. There are now cards and calendars
available too. Some new book formats allow for
more pictures per page, which will save users
money and cards cost less than Hallmark! iPhoto
postcards start at $1.49, and greeting cards at
$1.99. Calendars start at $20 and look beautiful.
In the editing bar, there is a One-Click Effects
feature that adds vignette, antique-look, color
boost and soft edges to the existing black and
white and sepia effects. The effects are subtle and
look nice but there aren’t enough of them to make
someone run out and buy iLife for this feature.
Sadly, there were no improvements or additions
to the editing tools. To make iPhoto a photo editor, it cries for a mid-tone histogram adjustment
and/or shadow/highlights tool. One annoyance
is that the Adjust and Effects floating tool
palettes usually pop up where I don’t want them;
these tools belong in a drawer. In summary,
iPhoto has some welcome additions and speed
improvements, but in my opinion didn’t go far
enough, especially for the many people who
buy iLife strictly for iPhoto and who have no
interest in video or making music.
iMovie and iDVD
iMovie and iDVD get a spiffy new look and
many terrific new features. First, iMovie has a
new Themes feature that builds a new clip from
a variety of clips that you can use as an opening
to a show, a transition between scenes or a stylish way to present text information. These have
all the pizzazz of an ESPN show with flying text
and image montages twirling around the screen.
The best part is that the themes are very professional looking and easy to create. The bad news
is there are so few of them. There are six basic
themes with six variations on each theme.
Other additions include the ability to open multiple projects and drag and drop between them.
iMovie supports more video formats both on
import and export. There is a welcome audio
effects palette for graphic equalization, pitch
changing, reverb, delay, noise reduction and low
and high pass filtration. There are many new
titles and title choices, new transitions and video
special effects—too many to mention. Each has
more customization choices that iMovie HD,
and that means better videos. Titles no longer
have to be placed at the beginning of a clip.
Everything about iMovie seemed to get an
enhancement and in 12 hours of working with
iMovie, there were no crashes. However, iMovie
uses a great deal of RAM, so be sure to shut
down other applications or your Mac will crawl.
iLife is now integrated with all other iLife
applications and it really benefits iMovie. For
example, video projects can be sent directly to
iWeb to build video websites and video
podcasts with video format
conversion taking place
on-the-fly. iMovie
can now export and
import video to
GarageBand to use
GB’s powerful
audio editing
features to
enhance video and,
continued on page 5
4
best of all, create a synchronized musical sound
track. Anyone can be a John Williams! iMovie
can even export projects directly into iTunes to
upload to a video iPod. What’s amazing is all of
these once complex tasks can be done so easily,
usually with one-click, thanks to an enhanced
interface that makes iMovie easier than ever.
iDVD sprouted a new look and interface. The
new Magic DVD makes DVD authoring even
easier than before. Select movies and photos
and iDVD will create a project for you. This
DVD Wizard worked flawlessly.
As usual, Apple added 10 beautiful new themes
and now each theme has sub-themes giving the
same look, but not the same layout to other
menus within the theme. This makes for a more
professional approach to DVD design. If you
have a previous version of iDVD, those themes
stay installed. Themes also come in standard
and widescreen aspect ratios. The widescreen
aspect ratio has a cropped viewing feature that
shows you how the widescreen DVD would
appear on a standard screen TV. Slick!
Like iMovie, iDVD has many more customization choices then before. You’re no longer
locked into specific fonts, sizes and colors for
menu items and buttons . Menu volume can be
adjusted. A drop zone palette makes adding
music, backgrounds and drop zone objects easy.
Buttons now include beveled looks and shadows. Slide shows can now include titles and
comments. The map view is more flexible
allowing project reorganization right from the
DVD map. The DVD Project window has been
enhanced. Finally, iDVD supports both external
and internal drives, not just SuperDrives!
I created and burned a half dozen DVDs and
found iDVD to be much snappier than earlier
version and very stable.
GarageBand
GarageBand is a great program made even better. The ability to create synchronized movie
soundtracks and pod casts are tremendous additions. As a teacher I can see myself recording
lectures and making them available as podcasts.
It’s so easy to do that you really don’t have to
be an audio expert.
When the program opens you are asked what
type of project you’ll be creating: a Podcast,
Movie Soundtrack or New Music Project? Once
selected GB configures itself to the type of project you’ll be creating.
Open up a podcast project and GB creates multiple voice tracks, jingle and radio sound effects
tracks. There are sample sounds, jingles, music
and effects to use. When you’re done GB can
export your podcast directly to iWeb, which has
built in podcasting themes and even has a button for uploading to .Mac and registration of the
podcast at the Apple Music Store.
Open a Movie Soundtrack project and a
QuickTime movie video track is displayed.
Select a movie from the movie selection window
(or drag one in) and you can start editing or
manipulating the audio with GB’s wealth of tools
or start dragging music loops in to build a soundtrack. You can watch the video and adjust the
musical elements. This is a very powerful tool!
iWeb
The new addition to iLife ‘06 is iWeb, a web
design program. iWeb uses a themed approach
to web design, borrowing its interface from
Pages and Keynote. Select a theme for a web
page and begin editing the text, import iPhoto
images from within iWeb and publish the web
site to .Mac, or save to a folder for uploading
using an FTP program.
In typical Apple fashion, the 12 included themes
are beautiful and easy to edit. Each theme has
six templates for a variety of purposes: a welcome/home page, “about me,” photo gallery,
movie page, podcast page and a blog. Like other
iLife apps, there is a media browser to view and
select media for inclusion on a page. Images can
be edited from within iWeb using the same
adjustment palette found in iPhoto.
As you add pages, a toolbar gets built that’s
applied to all pages so that building navigation is
a no-brainer. The HTML code is very “clean”
and viewed correctly in every browser I could
throw at it as long as the browser supported
Cascading Style Sheets (all modern browsers
do). Creating web pages, particularly mediabased pages, could not be easier. Publishing to
.Mac is a one-click affair. The only downside is
there is no easy FTP feature for people without a
.Mac account. You’ll need any one of the many
free FTP programs available, but Apple could
have built a Claris Home Page-like FTP feature
into iWeb, since many ISPs offer free web space.
5
For the purposes of web creation and publishing, Apple makes web site creation as easy as
they have made video, music and DVD creation. Page template offerings are somewhat
limiting but pages can be customized. Don’t
expect to produce a complex website with
extensive navigation; this isn’t GoLive or
DreamWeaver. The biggest disappointment is
there are only a dozen themes. I wish there were
more and more kinds of pages for each theme.
iSummary
iLife ‘06 is definitely a step up over ‘05 and is
a rock solid product with many worthwhile
enhancements—too many to name here. What
became clear in doing this review was that
iPhoto and iTunes are the applications that need
the most attention. iPhoto could use some
updating as it has changed little over the years,
mostly fixing bugs like speed issues. The iPhoto
Library in my opinion is messy way to organize
photos. Look inside your library folder and
you’ll see what I mean. The Library’s file structure makes it impossible to find files. Also, the
question beckons, “just because a library can
have 250,000 items, should it?” iPhoto does
support multiple libraries but this feature is hidden. It shouldn’t; there should be a way to view
and navigate through multiple libraries like
Apple’s Aperture product. The program also
cries for more editing tools.
iTunes was available prior to iLife ‘06, but it
could also use an overhaul. Growing from simple
music organizer and player, its function seems to
have outstripped its design, I have thousands of
songs and hundreds of playlists and videos. With
that kind of quantity, iTunes lacks the flexibility
to organize large quantities of media. My fingers
get tired of scrolling to find playlists and songs.
iTunes needs to be redesigned to better manage
media and enhance the experience. Or, a separate
media manager needs to be created to organize
all media and projects.
If your are happy with iLife ‘05, and your primary focus is on photos and iPhoto, you can
feel comfortable continuing to use that very
solid product and not feel you are missing
much. But, if you want to stretch your creative
wings into new realms of video, audio music,
website and podcast creation, iLife ‘06 is the
product for you. At $79 for the many creative
enhancements and terrific new iWeb application, it’s a bargain.
Communications
Convergence:
Outstripping Wires
by Glenn Fleishman
<[email protected]>
reprinted from TidBITS#813/23-Jan-06
There was a day when telephone companies provided a dial tone, cable
companies offered television stations
and specialty channels, and Internet
companies offered service over telephone
line-based modems. Recent events make
it clear that those days are long, long over.
You know, of course, that many different
companies provide high-speed Internet
access over cable lines, phone wire, and
radio frequencies (Wi-Fi and many other
standards). You may know that telcos are
offering cable TV-like services in many
parts of the world and are jumping
through regulatory hoops to do so widely
in the United States using very-highspeed DSL or fiber-to-the-home (FTTH).
And you might even know that cable
companies can sell you phone services in
some parts of the U.S.
What’s probably unclear is how quickly
all this will change.
Cable Firms Go for Voice
Several major cable operators (called
MSOs for “multiple systems operators”)
recently penned a deal with Sprint Nextel,
the merged number-three cellular operator in the U.S., to resell cell service to
their customers. Any time you can put
more services on a single bill, you cut as
much as $20 in monthly service costs for
maintaining a separate billing account.
It’s easy for companies to find synergies
that work because of that.
<http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_
dtl.do?id=8961>
But it’s not just a single bill that’s in play.
The cable firms will license TV programs
they own to the Sprint PCS division to
stream over third-generation (3G) cell
networks to new cell phones on which
you can watch programming on demand.
And it goes further:
Sprint (among other
cell companies) will
likely start offering
handsets that have WiFi and cell standards
built in to provide
what’s known as unlicensed mobile access
(UMA), a form of voice
over IP and Internet
telephony. With
UMA, instead of a
cell phone hooking up with a nearby cell
tower, it senses a local (typically, an inhome) Wi-Fi network and connects, using
a bit of the Internet to then transmit calls
to the cellular operator’s gateway and off
into the phone system.
UMA can offer better-quality indoor
calls, still a plaguing problem for cell
service, and enable operators to offer
huge piles of minutes for calls placed
using UMA, which in turn can preserve
users who might otherwise switch to
Internet telephony at home via Vonage or
another provider. In Europe, some existing cell systems sense when a customer is
using their home network versus another
Internet network, and pulls minutes from
a home pool instead of a roaming pool;
this might also be the case with UMA, to
help a UMA-based plan replace a wired
phone line without increasing cost for
calls made in the house.
The Broadband Wireless Picture
– But wait, there’s more to wireless than
just that! Cable giant Comcast recently
invested in BelAir Networks via its capital
development arm. BelAir makes outdoor
wireless broadband equipment used to
build metropolitan-scale networks for
public and governmental access. BelAir
announced the investment the same day
that it revealed its latest products: wireless
mesh access points that can be plugged
directly into cable wiring and use the
power that already traverses cable lines.
www.belairnetworks.com/about_belair/
press_releases_view.cfm?p_id=73
With BelAir gear, a cable company could
add a Wi-Fi network to an entire city by
6
connecting wireless access points into
existing cable lines up on telephone
poles. There are a lot of “ifs” about this:
in the U.S., cable operators are governed
by thousands of local franchise boards
which tax and constrain the operators
with specific requirements in return for
rights of way on roads and poles. Some
franchise agreements may allow adding
Wi-Fi access points, some may restrict
this, others are likely silent about it.
Many cities are already far along in their
plans to have private firms build municipal-wide Wi-Fi networks, however, and
cable companies may want to use their
existing relationships and this new technology to offer these new networks
instead of allowing a third player - after
telcos and cable firms - to enter the local
broadband market. Current municipalscale networks will likely promise only
about 1 Mbps each way, somewhat less
the typical normal downstream speed of
DSL and cable, but price the service at
about the cost of dial-up today - $15 to
$25 per month. (1 Mbps is from 30 percent to 300 percent higher than the typical
upstream speed, incidentally.)
Metropolitan-scale networks will likely
employ some or a lot of mesh networking,
in which Wi-Fi access points aren’t individually connected to some form of
backhaul to a central network. Instead,
typically several access points are tuned to
the same channel and serve both as conduits for individual users and for data to
pass among each other. One of the access
points is plugged into backhaul that carries data to and from the network. The
disadvantage of most forms of mesh is
that every hop across the mesh network
until it hits backhaul repeats the same
data. If user A connects to access point 1
which connects to access point 2 which
connects to access point 3 which connects
to the backhaul, every chunk of data from
user A takes up air space for the entire
cluster of mesh nodes three times. This is
why mesh networks are typically used to
extend a network and for redundancy and
failover (when a node fails, access isn’t
cut) but can’t span huge areas.
continued on page 7
Two and a Half Billion Vibrations
per Second Can’t Come Cheap
Here’s where Sprint Nextel comes into the
picture again: the two companies didn’t
just merge customers and operations, they
merged their spectrum portfolio. The two
firms controlled licenses for the 2.5 gigahertz (GHz) frequency band that covers 80
percent of the country. This band, with a
starting frequency just above the tail end of
the unlicensed band containing Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth, was originally licensed for educational institutions and distance learning.
It’s a large swath of beautiful and mostly
unused space. (Licensed frequencies are
reserved to the license holders to use; unlicensed frequencies can be used by anyone
but only with equipment that’s passed certification by the FCC in most cases. Wi-Fi
gear has been certified, but can be used by
anyone, anywhere in the U.S.)
Several years ago, Congress allowed the
academic and non-profit entities that controlled the regionally allocated frequencies
to sublicense to commercial firms in the
hopes of jump-starting more advanced
telecommunications service. But many
telecom firms were uninterested, and the
licenses were quickly snapped up by
Sprint PCS and WorldCom, with
BellSouth and a fourth firm being lesser
players. (All four companies together
owned 90 percent of the licenses.)
Sprint and WorldCom nearly merged in
2000 partly to pool what were seen as valuable licenses. Nextel bought WorldCom’s
2.5 GHz licenses out of bankruptcy in
2003, and the Sprint Nextel merger was
partly seen as a way to consolidate two
smaller cell players and partly, again, as a
tool to consolidate those licenses. The 2.5
GHz band is exciting to these carriers
because it allows higher power to be used
than is allowed in Wi-Fi, thus increasing
range, and interference is impossible
because the carriers own all use of selected
frequencies in regions the licenses cover.
McCaw) had been experimenting with
broadband wireless over 2.5 GHz in small
markets around the U.S. Clearwire has started rolling out low-broadband-speed service
in places like my hometown of Eugene, OR,
and internationally in cities like Dublin,
Ireland - areas with little broadband choice
and small service areas from incumbents, but
a good demographic to pay for their service.
Confusingly, the 2.5 GHz band is in the
middle of a multi-year set of spectrum
reform negotiations among the FCC,
incumbent institutional holders who actually broadcast educational programming
on it, sublicense holders like Sprint Nextel,
and other interested companies. The 2.5
GHz band is inefficiently organized for the
digital era, being a vestige of analog broadcasting and early data services. The new
proposal would preserve some existing
licenses by moving them around, but open
up much more usage by other parties. This
band might wind up being critical for the
deployment of WiMax, a broadband pointto-multi-point wireless standard that’s just
starting to move into the market.
WiMax is seen initially in urban areas as a
replacement for leased digital lines used
by businesses, known as T-1 lines which
runs at 1.544 Mbps. With WiMax, a central base station at a high point can serve
many receivers in an arc that can be fairly
narrow. Some early pre-WiMax deployments - devices are just being certified as
compliant with WiMax standards now offer speeds higher than T-1s for much less
money. Putting in two T-1s typically doubles capital and recurring costs with wired
lines; putting in a broadband wireless con-
nect of 3 Mbps each way might cost just
10 to 30 percent more each month than a
single T-1 with less installation complexity, less capital outlay for hardware, and a
quick install. In rural areas, WiMax may
be used for basic broadband where a wired
infrastructure doesn’t exist.
Your Television Is Ringing
You’re probably holding your head,
thinking, “I just want to make phone calls
and surf the Web!” Don’t worry. You’ll be
able to, just in more ways, with potentially fewer bills, than ever before. Every
time a set of companies promises that
convergence will reduce costs, you start
laughing, right? But this time, the number of different kinds of firms involved in
competing with each other for your business might actually improve service and
reduce overall costs.
For instance, my wife and I have shaved
our combined local and long distance
phone and cell phone plans over the last
two years from about $300 per month
(that includes all my business calling)
down to about $160, while adding unlimited calling within the U.S. and to 22
countries at home, and a pool of minutes
on our cell plans that we rarely exceed
(and use rollover minutes from other
months to avoid overages). To accomplish
this, we switched long distance from per
minute to an unlimited flat rate voice over
IP calling plan, moved our cell phones
from Verizon and AT&T Wireless to
Cingular because of its rollover minutes
feature (unused minutes are banked for up
to 12 months), and got on the same plan
to reduce the cell cost, which also means
minutes used to each other aren’t counted.
The coming convergence will be weird,
confusing, and overwhelming, but it’s
likely to mean that most people in the
U.S. and many people worldwide will see
much higher downstream speeds for
Internet access without increased costs we’ve seen some of that already - and
with cell calls and long distance all coalescing into one flat monthly rate
substantially below what moderate users
pay today. And that’s a good thing.
Before the merger, Sprint and Nextel, along
with separately held Clearwire (a firm
bought in 2004 by cellular pioneer Craig
7
SPECIAL OFFERS – Apple User Group Bulletin – February, 2006
These User Group discounts are
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You must be a current Apple user
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For a web site list of all available
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group’s ambassador.
McGraw-Hill:
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Why would you need a book to use a
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8
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CMC User
ID & Passw
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02/1/2006
- 04/30/06
Located on
Page 11
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Anthro - 30 percent discount on most Anthro products;
expires 2/28/06.
Apple MUG Store - Discounts on new and
refurbished hardware and 1% back to your group.
AppleWorks Users Group - Discount on Macintosh
batteries; no expiration
BackJack - $25 Activation Fee waived, 3 months
free. Expires 4/30/06
Discover Your Mac - 2 copies of Spotlight movie for
the price of one. Expires 3/31/06
McGraw-Hill - 40% off select titles; expires 3/31/06
MacAddict magazine - Up to 78% off annual subscription; Expires 6/30/06
macHOME magazine - $15 off annual subscription
Macworld magazine - $13 off annual subscription
MYOB - $25 off First Edge & $100 off Account Edge
O’Reilly - 30% off all titles; No expiration
Peachpit Press - 25% off all titles by joining the
Peachpit Club; available globally. No expiration
Pressure Drop - 10% off zStand; expires 3/31/06
Prosoft Engineering - 25% off Drive Genius, Picture
Rescue, Data Rescue, Data Backup & Data Recycler.
Quickertek - 20% off all Quickertek products; expires
3/31/06
Roxio - Toast 7 and The Boom Box for almost 50%
off; expires 3/31/06
TidBITS - 10% discount on Take Control eBooks.
Offers in this article are complied from a variety of
sources, including those developed by The MUG
Center, vendor contacts, various company user group
publications and the Apple User Group Bulletin
Log in:
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers/vendorcodes.htm
Password: on p.11 of your mailed CMC newsletter
Book Review:
By Victoria Maciulski, CVMUG
I got this book hot off the presses, and I’m glad I did! It covers all of the
ins and outs of little things you want to do, like getting photos someone
sent you in an e-mail into iPhoto, or turning the several photos someone
sends into an instant slideshow.
Perhaps you want to get your Mac to quit asking you for your password
for everything, or add words to the end of file names, or stop Classic from
launching without permission (yes, Classic is still there in Tiger.) He
shows you how to use the same Widget more than once (handy if you want
to see what the weather is in several locations), copy something from your
Yellow pages widget to your address book with one click, and make your
address book display senior sized phone numbers.
Scott organizes the info into chapters with not-very-useful names, such as
“Fly Like an Eagle,” “Cool and The Gang,” and “Cheap Trick.” Luckily,
he has given each chapter a subtitle that helps you know what it is about.
Chapter 8 is called “She Drives Me Crazy,” with the sub-title “How to
Stop Annoying Things.” Beginning on page 177, it gives you really good
tips on how to customize your OS X to stop automatically doing things
that you don’t like.
I had no idea you could get Stickies to spell for you, create your own Web
Cam using Image Capture, uncover where web links are going before you
click on them, get definitions without launching Dictionary, or have iCal
send invitations to a scheduled event.
Kelby, doesn’t limit his tips to OS X. He gives you lots of tips on iPhoto,
iMovie HD, iDVD 5, iCal, iChat, GarageBand 2, Mail, Address Book,
Preview, Stickies and TextEdit. The book is easy to read and understand –
no technical mumbojumbo. I can recommend it heartily.
(c) copyright 2005 Victoria Maciulski
Conejo Ventura Mac User Group (CVMUG)Ventura, CA
Re-printed by permission
9
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10
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caricatures.
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Next CMC Monthly Meeting...
We always welcome your input and participation. Do you have an idea for a topic we
should explore? Perhaps there's a topic
that you would like to present yourself?
Email us at [email protected]
Contact a Board Member or send an
email to [email protected].
Provide the book title, the publisher and the ISBN number, if
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could win…t-shirts, toys, CDs, mugs,
software …there’s always something
we’re giving away! And don’t forget
the Free table at the back of the room
where everything is...FREE!
Upcoming CMC Programs – Here's just
CMC Passwords
a sample of what's coming up in 2006!
Microsoft Office – We'll have an expert in
Office show us all how to get work done
in this mammoth software suite from
Microsoft. Plus we'll be giving away a
copy worth several hundred dollars!
Password: xxxxxx (exp. 5/16/06)
Valid: 2/1/2006 - 4/30/2006
User ID: xxxx • Password: xxxx
eBay – Do you feel as though you're missing
out on all the buying and selling fun?
We'll explore how to join, buy, and sell
on the world's biggest auction site; plus
protect yourself from the sheisters.
All About Email – We constantly get questions from members about email and this
evening will answer all of them.
FREE Classified Ads
Sharing files between computers –
New Members!
CMC Members can Advertise For
items which they are no longer using or
upgrading. This is a FREE service
provided to our members. Send to:
[email protected]
What's the best way to share your files
between computers, especially between
Mac and PC? We'll explain it all.
Wireless network setup – While getting
an Airport network going is frequently
easy, there are those times that you run
into issues. We'll explain how to avoid
the pitfalls and protect your security.
Photoshop Basics – When you need to
touch up a photo beyond what iPhoto can
accomplish, Adobe Photoshop (and
Photoshop Elements) are the next logical
step. But learning to use it can be a hurdle and we'll help you leap over it.
Multimedia Mac/iPod – Ever wondered
how to get your iPod or your Mac connected to your stereo or TV? We'll
explain how.
Backups – We could all stand to backup our
computers more than we do. We'll
explain the best way to protect your data
and show you how to automate the
process to make your life easier.
We need new members! Have your
friends and co-workers join us for fun
and learning about OS X and the Mac.
Account Balances
Checking Balance..........$1925.44
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Display Ad Rates
Balances as of February 2, 2006
listed below.
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If you’re not getting them, please
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11
CMC Monthly Meeting
UConn Health Center
Topic: File Sharing
(see directions below)
A pdf document containing a visual direction guide to the location of our meeting
in the UConn Health Center is available on our website: www.ctmac.org
Directions: UConn Health Center, Farmington
From I-84: Take Exit 39 (if coming from I-84 West, Exit 39 is after
39A). Turn right at first traffic light onto Route 4 East (Farmington
Avenue). At third traffic light, turn right to enter the Health Center
campus. Go around the main building to the right (at a Y in road),
then take a left when you get to the Academic Entrance. The road
becomes two-way there so you should be able to tell where to turn.
(Do not go on straight to the two-way part). Then take the second
right into parking lot A&B. this is close to the building. Go past the
police station entrance on your left (small sign). You will see a continuation of the building with its own entrance area. This is the new
research building. Enter on the ground floor, turn right and enter
room EG-013 on your right. This is the first room on your right.
The rest rooms are on your left as you enter.
12
CMC president Rich Lenoce demonstrates iLife ‘06 at the CMC meeting January 25.
See Review: iLife ‘06 on pages 4 - 5 of this issue.
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, March 29
UConn Health Center
Topic: Essentials of Ebay
Main Meeting: 7:00 p.m.
Topic: Ebay Software Tools
(see page 11 for more information)
MARCH 2006
Now’s The Time
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
The most-asked question I get each
day from students, professionals,
friends, and CMC members is:
should I buy an Apple Intel Mac
now? Is the time right or should I
wait?
People then invariably run down
the G4, G5 and Intel Mac deals
they’ve seen. What do you think of
the $649 G4 iBook at the UConn
Co-op Bookstore? The $379 G4
Mac Mini on Apple’s Deals site?
The $1,199 deal on the new dual
core iMac or the $799 for a new
dual core Intel Mac Mini? The
answer is, those are all great deals
and, yes, now is the time to buy a
Mac whether it’s an Intel or a late
model G4/G5. It doesn’t matter.
I’m not saying that because I’m a
Mac proponent and sometimes
even a Mac evangelist. I’m saying
that because it makes good economic sense. Let’s start with the
late model G4s and G5 Macs.
Throughout most of February, the
UConn Co-op was selling new
1.2ghz iBooks with combo drives,
Firewire and Airport Express for
$649 to anyone, not just students.
That’s $350 off the regular price
and $400 less than a comparable
When you see the Universal symbol on Mac
applications, that means they’re made to run on
both Intel- and PowerPC-based Mac computers.
PC laptop. Given the features, software and warranty, you can’t
possibly go wrong.
How about the $379 G4 Mac Mini
direct from Apple? If you are looking for a cheap machine you’d be
nuts to pass up this offer. There’s
also the 17” G5 video iMacs that
have been floating around for
under $1,000. That’s a lot of computer and a gorgeous display for
very little money. These are all
great deals.
“Yeah Rich, but isn’t it old technology?” I have a 20 year-old
Mazda RX-7 convertible in my
garage. It’s no Prius, but it still gets
me from point A to point B in
style. That’s exactly what these
Macs will do for you. And, these
are not 20 years old computers;
they are 2005-2006 brand new
Macs.
These G4 and G5 computers are
not old technology and will be supported well into the future. Look at
it this way: if Apple intended to no
1
longer support this technology they
wouldn’t be offering three years of
Apple Care Extended Warranty
support. Even if Apple stops making the last G4/G5 Macs in
December 2006, Apple and other
hardware/software vendors would
still have to support these
machines until 2010. That means
Apple will have to develop future
versions of OS X+ and iLife until
then. Adobe and other developers
will also need to continue to support this technology as well
because these machines just aren’t
going to go away. That low-end
$379 Mac Mini sure is looking like
an even better deal with that kind
of longevity.
Continued on page 2
Now’s The Time............................... 1
Off the Beaten Path ..........................3
Guy Kawasaki is Back! .....................4
Download of the Month....................4
Review: iPhoto .................................5
MUG Offers ......................................8
You can feel secure in taking any one
of these great deals you see home.
Let me get back to the original
question; if you are considering a
new Mac should you buy an Intel
Macintosh now? The answer again
is “yes.”
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
of the newsletter.
A month ago I might have thought
differently, but I had the opportunity to do an installation of some
new Apple Intel iMacs and they
are one of the best, if not the best
Macs Apple has ever made. Maybe
it’s the best consumer computer
ever. The technology is hardcore:
fast system buses, dual core
processors, fast SATA drives,
128mb of video RAM, dual display capability and lots of great
software. Apple made these
machines to blow away the Intel
PC competition and they have, at a
much lower price point. These
machines even leave my dual
2.0ghz G5 PowerMac in the dust
and do so elegantly and much
more quietly. The Finder, OS and
iLife applications fly under Intel.
Even Adobe CS2 applications
seem to run just as well on my G5
even though they are running
under Rosetta emulation.
The processors must be so much
faster that the emulation speed
becomes negligible. The good
news is that unlike OS X and
Classic, there is no way to tell that
Rosetta is even running.
Unlike the move from OS 9 to OS
X, thanks to the ability to easily
develop Universal Binaries, the
software is quickly being adapted
to Intel processors. This month
Apple is re-releasing it’s professional software (Final Cut, Logic,
Aperture, etc.) for the new Intel
machines. Sometime between
October and the 2nd quarter of
2007, Adobe will release its CS3
suite for Intel. Many smaller software vendors have already started
releasing universal binary versions
of their software. Between
Universal Binaries and Rosetta,
and with the exception of Classic
software, you should be able to
enjoy all of your favorite OS X
software on an Intel Mac.
So whether you decide to hang on
to your old Mac, buy a new G4 or
G5 Mac, or make the switch to an
Apple Intel Mac you can feel comfortable you’re making the right
decision.
A Testimonial...
I sent an email 6 days ago stating how I had saved $13.34 in
shipping from MacConnection because I’m a member of CMC. Well,
I just placed another order with them and saved $11.63 in shipping
for a grand total of – $24.97 !!!
CMC is costing me a measly 3 cents this year!!!! (assuming I don't
make any more purchases at MacConnection for the next 9 months)
BTW, the order I placed last week shipped ground and arrived here
the next day. I expect this order to be here tomorrow.
“CMC is
costing me
a measly
3 cents this
year!”
“CMC, putting money in your pocket every week”... hows that for
our new tagline? – (see page 8 & 9 for more CMC member offers)
from
Joe Arcuri
2
Off the Beaten Path:
Hidden Gems For Your Mac
You Might Have Missed
by Kyle DeMilo
CMC Secretary
When you surf the web as much as I
do, you sometimes come across the
occasional diamond in the rough, so
to speak. This column points out
those hard-to-find freeware and
shareware items for your Mac that
you might think you don’t need, but
prove to be really handy!
Dashboard Kickstart
Our first item this month
is a cure for that
annoying lag that
occurs the first
time you launch
Tiger’s Dashboard,
after startup or a reboot.
It’s a small freeware application
called Dashboard Kickstart, and it
works by launching your Dashboard
briefly in the background at login or
whenever the Dock needs to be
restarted (since Dashboard is really
part of the Dock application). It
requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.
➟ Get it from here:
http://widgets.alwintroost.nl
iEatBrainz
Web Watch
Our second item this month answers
that age-old question:
“Now that I have
all these songs
in iTunes – how
am I going to
put ID3 tags on
them all?”
From: Chuck Joiner
[email protected]
compiled by The MUG Center
iEatBrainz is an add-on to iTunes
that will go through your iTunes
Library silently, listens to your
songs, then compares those songs to
an open-source database. If the
songs match, it offers to add all of
the tags to your songs: title, artist,
album name, and even track numbers. It’s not the fastest program on
my Mac, since it works with
AppleScripts, but it has fixed a lot of
the tags on my MP3s.
Although the iEatBrainz client is
free, it is suggested that you might
consider donating to the non-profit
organization MusicBrainz who
maintains the database and library
that iEatBrainz uses.
Links to cool, interesting and useful information
for user group members.
Mac 911: Bending iWeb to your will
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2006/01/
bendiweb/index.php?lsrc=mwrss
Use iWeb as a NetNewsWire Weblog Editor
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060128141
555462&lsrc=osxh
Easiest Way to Prepare Movies for Your iPod
www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/02/easiest_way_to_
prepare_movies.html?CMP=OTC13IV03560550&ATT
=Easiest+Way+to+Prepare+Movies+for+Your+iPod
Make iWeb create text instead of images
91313&lsrc=osxh
Set some hidden preferences in iPhoto 6
531616&lsrc=osxh
iPhoto postcards
www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/02/iphoto_postcards.
html?CMP=OTC-13IV03560550&ATT=iPhoto+postcards
Reduce iWeb and Pages disk space utilization
01519&lsrc=osxh
iEatBrainz requires Mac OS X 10.3
and iTunes 4.0 or higher.
Convert videos for iPod directly in iTunes
653382&lsrc=osxh
www.indyjt.com/software/
How to boot an Intel Mac from an external drive
257652&lsrc=osxh
Sheet Speed
Finally, our last item is a program will allow
you to change the speed that sheets move on
your documents and in your applications. Those
are the little “Save” or “Open” panels that slide
into place as you work. Sheet Speed allows you to speed them up, and make
your Mac feel youthful again; Slow them down, and marvel at the smoothness of Apple’s graphical interface. It’s free, but donations are accepted.
Upgrading RAM: FAQs
http://www.macworld.com/2006/02/features/speedram/index.
php?lsrc=mwrss
Modify graphics in iWeb templates
50250&lsrc=osxh
Create fully customized iWeb templates
chttp://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006020807
4338284&lsrc=osxh
Avoid a security vulnerability in Safari
126871&lsrc=osxh
www.ampersand-interactive.com/SheetSpeed/
That’s it for now. See you next month! Feedback? Find a hidden gem
that I missed? Email me directly at [email protected]
3
Boot Intel Macs from iPods and FireWire drives
428857&lsrc=osxh
never get around to doing what I’d
planned. Perhaps the constant nudges
from Guy’s blog will actually cause me
to think and act.
Guy Kawasaki Is Back!
by Adam C. Engst
[email protected]
reprinted from TidBITS#818/27-Feb-06
www.tidbits.com
As the Macintosh has matured over the
years, some people moved on, and the
Mac world was the poorer for it. But
one familiar face from the days of yore
has been popping up again lately: exApple evangelist Guy Kawasaki. Guy
is a managing director of the Garage
Technology Ventures venture capital
fund, and he was all over Macworld
Expo in San Francisco showing off
FilmLoop. It was great to see him back
in the Macintosh community again, and
thanks to the blog at the very end of
2005, I think he’ll once again be something of a public figure.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
In classic Guy fashion, this isn’t Just
Another Blog (its tagline is “Blogger. n.
Someone with nothing to say writing
for someone with nothing to do.”
Ouch). Instead, Guy’s blog is filled
with the kind of practical wisdom he’s
been dispensing in his books since the
days of “The Macintosh Way.” His
more recent books have, needless to
(And if you’re new to the Macintosh
world and haven’t the foggiest idea
who Guy Kawasaki is, pick up a copy
of “The Macintosh Way” and read it used copies are about $5 on Amazon
and the blog has links to all of his
books.)
say, taken a bit more of the venture capitalist point of view (hence the titles:
“The Art of the Start,” “Rules for
Revolutionaries,” “Selling the Dream,”
and “How to Drive Your Competition
Crazy.”) but they’re amusing, insightful, and useful for almost anyone
starting a new project, giving a presentation, or trying to figure out how to
stand out from the crowd. Guy’s blog
postings have exactly the same qualities, and the blog format may actually
be a more effective presentation
method for some of his ideas, since
they come in small, periodic chunks.
Much as I like Guy’s books, I find that
I read them, get all fired about implementing some of his ideas, find myself
snowed under by some project, and
One area in which Guy has long
excelled is in community building. He
was always a huge supporter of user
groups within Apple, and in fact, I chatted with him in-between our talks at the
User Group University (the attendees
were all user group leaders) the day
before Macworld Expo in San
Francisco. I’d just finished speaking to
the group - along with Chris Breen and
Bob LeVitus - on how user groups can
revitalize themselves and stay relevant
in today’s age, so it was particularly
interesting to see Guy’s recent post on
community building. Excellent points,
and the comments are also equally as
worthwhile for anyone interested in
user groups or just bringing people
together. [ACE]
<http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02
/the_art_of_crea.html>
Download of the Month
Submitted by Deb Foss
DropCopy 1.02
http://10base-t.com/downloads/DropCopy.zip
Easily and quickly send files and folders to multiple destinations across your LAN by simply dragging files onto
recipients in a popup window . . . the easiest way to get
things from one place to another quickly without dialogs,
passwords or confirmations. DropCopy is free for personal use (up to 3 machines on a network) and $25 for larger
networks (up to 10 users). You need to install it on both
computers. Note: DropCopy 1.02 is optimized for Mac
OS X 10.4.x but provides limited backward compatibility
with 10.3.9
4
An older copy is available for older OS X systems at:
http://10base-t.com/dropcopy.html#
iPhoto 6: Good, but
Not Groundbreaking
by Adam C. Engst
[email protected]
reprinted from TidBITS#818/27-Feb-06
www.tidbits.com
There are few programs whose capabilities I’m more familiar with than
iPhoto, thanks to the feature-by-feature
investigations I run through every year
when writing my “iPhoto for Mac OS
X: Visual QuickStart Guide” book. As a
result, it’s always fascinating to see
what Steve Jobs demos when he unveils
a new version of the program, as he did
with iPhoto 6 during his most recent
Macworld Expo San Francisco
keynote. But as much as I’m usually
dying to try the new features, I’m also
desperately curious to see if Apple has
changed any of the age-old annoyances
in iPhoto. The last few releases haven’t
helped much on the annoyance front,
but I’m pleased to say that iPhoto 6
tackles four of them, while unfortunately ignoring two others and introducing
new ones. But first, let’s look at some of
the slick new features in iPhoto 6,
which fall into two main categories:
editing and sharing capabilities.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/
Editing Enhancements – iPhoto has
long had three modes in which you
could edit photos: within the display
pane, in a separate window, and in an
external editor such as Photoshop
Elements. To that collection Apple has
added full screen editing, in which
iPhoto’s interface disappears entirely,
and the photo being edited appears at
the largest possible size on the screen; a
thumbnail pane appears at the top and a
toolbar pane is at the bottom, both of
which automatically appear and disappear like the Dock when you have
Dock Hiding turned on. Full-screen
editing, which you can set as your
default action upon double-clicking an
image, is extremely welcome, since
iPhoto’s other interface elements often
took up a lot of space that would have
been better used for the image, and
iPhoto’s separate editing window never
remembered its size or position.
The full-screen mode does require a
few changes to familiar interface elements. For instance, if you click the
Info button, a transparent Info panel
appears (since there’s nowhere for the
normal Info pane to display). And if
you zoom in, a transparent Navigation
panel appears to help you scroll around
in the image, since there aren’t any
scroll bars (but a scroll wheel can still
scroll the image up or down; press Shift
to scroll left or right with the scroll
wheel). My main complaint about fullscreen editing is that taking over the
entire screen takes additional time; on
my dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4, I have
to wait roughly 4 seconds before I can
edit a photo in full-screen mode as
opposed to 2 seconds in the main display pane. Plus, if you have two
monitors and accidentally click outside
of the full-screen view, iPhoto immediately returns you to organize mode,
without saving any changes.
saturated and more elegant. The Fade
Color and Boost Color buttons seem to
work roughly the same as the
Saturation slider in the Adjust panel,
removing and adding color intensity.
And then the three buttons in the bottom row of the grid all apply an oval
mask to the image, letting the photo
show through in the middle. Matte creates a white mask, Vignette uses a black
mask, and Edge Blur blurs the photo
underneath the mask. Apart from B &
W, Sepia, and Original, you can click
each of the buttons in the Effects panel
multiple times to apply it in increasing
amounts. You can also click different
buttons to apply their effects additively;
for instance, making a photo sepia, fading the color, and applying a vignette
mask. I can’t yet tell if I’ll end up using
the new effects, but it’s a little surprising that Apple didn’t include all of the
effects in Photo Booth. And I’d really
like to see someone figure out how
make all of the Mac OS X Core Image
effects available within iPhoto - BeLight
Software’s free ImageTricks provides
them as a standalone application.
http://www.belightsoft.com/products/
imagetricks/overview.php
Although the Adjust panel
remains the same from iPhoto
5, a new Effects panel with a 3
by 3 grid of buttons assimilates
the B&W (black-and white)
and Sepia buttons, offering six
additional effects that you can
apply to the current photo,
along with a ninth button that
iPhoto’s Effects panel and BeLight Software’s free ImageTricks
lets you revert to the original
look. The Antique effect looks much
continued on pages 6-7
like the Sepia effect, but is a little less
5
iPhoto 6 continued from page 5
The addition of all these transparent
panels creates one new annoyance.
Although you can see through them,
they still get in the way, making a second monitor especially welcome for
storage. Once they're placed on a second
screen, iPhoto remembers their positions for the session, but unfortunately
fails at that task between launches for
the Effects and Adjust panels.
There's one more significant aspect to
full-screen mode that's truly welcome:
the capability to compare up to eight
photos at once. Clicking the Compare
button while already in full-screen mode
displays the current photo and the next
one side-by-side at their largest possible
sizes. But if you select up to eight
photos in organize mode and click
the full screen button, iPhoto displays them all as large as possible in
full-screen mode. You can click on
one and use the arrow keys to display the next or previous image
that's not currently showing; more
interestingly, you can use all the edit
tools on each image or even delete the
current one by pressing the Deletekey.
Comparing images thus becomes a
great way to scan through your photos
after import to see which ones are worth
keeping; that’s especially true if you use
your camera’s burst mode to capture fast
action shots.
Because It’s Nice to Share – The other
place Apple significantly enhanced
iPhoto is in the sharing tools. The photo
books that were iPhoto’s marquee feature from the beginning have been
improved, with new themes, higher
quality printing, and lower prices. You
can also click a Play button when creating a book to display it as a slideshow.
But what’s really neat is that books
have spawned two new forms of print
output: cards and calendars, both of
which are laid out in very much the
same way as a book.
Cards come in two formats: folded
greeting cards and postcards. Greeting
cards hold a single image on the
cover, with text on one of the inside
panels. Postcards can have one image
on the front, with the back holding either
a normal text block or the standard outline for an address and stamp. They’re as
simple to create as you would expect,
since the only options are the image to
use, the text you enter, and the typefaces
you choose (assuming you want to override the defaults). Multiple designs and
backgrounds are available for each them.
Pricing ranges between $1 and $2 per
card, depending on card type and number ordered.
Calendars are more flexible.
Along with the usual slew of themes and
page designs within each theme, each
changing depending on the number of
photos showing, you can also drag photos to any day, making it simple to, for
instance, put a portrait of family members on their birthdays. You can even add
the photo title as a caption, but you must
choose an adjacent box for the caption; it
can’t overlay the photo itself. You can
also add any text you want to a particular day. iPhoto can create calendars of
between 12 and 24 months, add national
holidays from more than 30 countries
(exclusively, unfortunately, so you can’t
have both U.S. and Australian holidays
both showing), import calendars from
iCal (a workaround for the national holiday exclusivity, perhaps), and show
birthdays imported from Address Book.
The calendars are gorgeous and are
priced at $20 for 12 months, with each
additional month at $1.50.
6
Steve Jobs made much of iPhoto’s new
photocasting feature in his Macworld
Expo keynote, and it’s an interesting feature. The basic goal is to enable iPhoto
users to share photos - via a .Mac
account - with people using either iPhoto
6 or a photo-capable RSS reader (like
Safari). Photocasts must start from normal albums, not smart albums, but you
can have them automatically update
when the album changes. Photocasts can
be accessible either to anyone or to just
those to whom you provide the necessary username and password, but it
doesn’t seem as though Apple is publishing public photocasts in any sort of a
directory, so realistically, it’s unlikely
that anyone would learn the URL to a
photocast unless they were told by
someone else.
Although I’m not a particular devotee
of the popular photo-sharing site Flickr
(where do people find the time to look
at photos from random netizens?), others have put some effort into making
Flickr RSS feeds appear in iPhoto
(choose File > Subscribe to Photocast
and paste in a URL). Frankly, the connection between the two still seems
tenuous, but check out the sites linked
below for proxy services that provide
iPhoto with more than 10 images at once
and the largest possible photos from Flickr
based on usernames, sets, and tags
(Photocastr worked the best in my testing).
http://photocastr.com/
http://snosrap.com/photocast/
http://phlikr.3xi.org/
Photocast albums are just plain weird.
You can’t search in them or edit photos
in them, and even more oddly, you can’t
move a photo from a photocast album
to your Library. However, you can
move the photo to a normal album or
use it in a calendar or book, and having
done that, you can edit it. But it still
doesn’t appear in your Library. The
only way to have photocast photos
appear in your Library is to delete the
photocast album; iPhoto saves all the
continued on page 7
iPhoto 6 continued from page 6
photos you’ve “used” and prompts you
to save the rest by importing them into
your Library at that point (and deleting
photocast albums crashes iPhoto 6.0.1
about half the time for me). It remains
to be seen just how popular photocasting within iPhoto 6 will become.
Other changes in the ways you share
photos using iPhoto include the
replacement of the .Mac HomePage
integration with a connection to iWeb
and a Zoom and Crop option when
printing standard sized or full page
prints (it essentially does the necessary
cropping to get a photo into the right
aspect ratio).
Annoyances, Real and Imagined,
Fixed and Extant – At this point in
time, Apple’s inability to fix what seem
to be blatant problems with iPhoto has
me almost questioning my judgment:
am I the only one who thinks these irritations are worth fixing? Apparently the
clamor hasn’t been loud enough to jog
Apple into action, especially since I
wouldn’t think any of these problems
are at all subtle or difficult to resolve.
Most shockingly, iPhoto 6 still forces
you to title photos and film rolls by typing in the Title field of the Info pane or
panel. I’ve been incredulous for years
that the iPhoto team seems incapable of
learning from the Finder that it would
be far more obvious and easier if you
could double-click the title of the photo
or film roll as showing, and rename it in
place, just like in the Finder and everywhere else in the Macintosh interface.
I also remain surprised that no one
within Apple has seen fit to make
iPhoto more powerful than the Image
Capture utility that ships with Mac OS
X, at least when it comes to importing
only a select set of photos from a camera, rather than all of them at once.
Image Capture has had selective import
since the early days of Mac OS X, so
why is it that iPhoto, after five years,
has been incapable of mimicking this
obvious feature? (And while we’re on
the topic of Image Capture, wouldn’t it
make sense to enable iPhoto to control
the “hot plug action” preference that
launches a particular program when a
camera is plugged in, rather than forcing people to hunt around for Image
Capture to change it?)
photos and offered to “recover” them
after the rest of the upgrade process is
done. Take it up on that offer, since in
my 10,000-image library, there were
about 50 photos that needed recovery,
and about 35 of them were not duplicates (search manually on the filename,
using iPhoto’s Search field).
On the positive side, Apple has done
away with some truly unnecessary
annoyances. Most notable among these
is a preference in the Advanced pane of
iPhoto’s Preferences window that
enables you to import photos into
iPhoto from a folder on your hard disk
without copying the originals of those
photos into the iPhoto Library folder.
People have been whinging about the
way iPhoto takes over imported photos
since iPhoto 1.0, and now, five years
later, Apple has finally ceded the point.
Arguably, relatively few serious iPhoto
users have managed to hold out and
maintain a separate folder hierarchy in
the Finder for original photos, making
the feature a half-hearted concession,
but I’m sure some will still appreciate it
immensely. One note; although original
photos remain in their original folders,
modified photos are stored within the
iPhoto Library folder’s hierarchy.
Another common complaint was that
iPhoto could print contact sheets of
photos, but had no option for including
the photo titles, making the contact
s h e e t s a l m o s t entirely useless
for the traditional functions of contact
sheets. That’s now fixed; a checkbox
toggles titles on and off, and you can
choose the font used.
Speaking of the way iPhoto stores files
on disk, that too has changed. Many
people were thrown by the year-monthday folder approach taken by previous
versions of iPhoto, so with iPhoto 6,
Apple flattened the structure. Now
there are three top-level folders in the
iPhoto Library folder: Originals (for
original photos), Modified (for edited
photos), and Data (for thumbnails).
Within each one are folders for each
year, and within each year folder are
folders for each film roll, named for
that film roll (photos inside the film roll
folders retain their original names;
titles applied within iPhoto still exist
only inside iPhoto). iPhoto 6 deletes the
old hierarchy after upgrading your
iPhoto Library to the new technique;
however in the various upgrades I’ve
performed, it has missed a number of
7
Last, but by no means least, Apple fixed
another glaring mistake related to
entering text in books. Although iPhoto
has been a Cocoa application from day
one, and has always supported Mac OS
X’s built-in spelling checker, the Check
Spelling As You Type option has
always been off, and, if you turned it on
while entering text in a book, it has
maddeningly always turned itself off
again once you switch pages or leave
book mode. No longer; Check Spelling
As You Type is now on by default, as it
should be, and works wherever you
enter text in books, cards, and calendars.
Should You Upgrade? Whenever I look
at a new version of iPhoto, I’m considering the question of whether or not the
improvements make it worth upgrading
to the latest version of iLife. iPhoto 6
provides enough improvements and
new features that anyone who uses
iPhoto at all seriously will find them
worthwhile, particularly if any of the
other iLife ‘06 applications are of interest. That said, if you don’t edit photos
within iPhoto, and you don’t plan to
order books, cards, or calendars, the
new features in iPhoto 6 may not be
worth $80 on their own; iPhoto 6 simply isn’t all that different from iPhoto 5
in truly important ways.
SPECIAL OFFERS - Apple User Group Bulletin - March 15, 2006
Group Advisory Board and Tom Piper,
vendor relations.You must be a current
Apple user group member to qualify
for these savings. Not a member? Join
an Apple user group today to take
advantage of these special offers.
Discover Your Mac: Spotlight Movie
Double Your Order Sale
Discover Your Mac announces the
Spotlight Movie, a comprehensive
video guide to learning and using
Spotlight, the new technology for
searching, organizing and using your
Mac. Watch a demonstration of
Spotlight's powerful features, then try
them yourself. For more info, email
[email protected].
Discover Your Mac offers user group
members an automatic double your
order sale. Order 1 copy and get 2.
Order 5 and get 10. Current price
$29.99 per copy.
Enter "MUG member" into the additional comments field at the bottom of
the order page, and you will automatically be shipped double your order.
http://www.DiscoverYourMac.com
Offer is valid through May 30, 2006.
Wiley Books: Save up to 40 Percent
Wiley is offering special discount pricing on their technology books. Choose
from hundreds of invaluable resources
in bestselling series such as For
Dummies, Visual, Sybex and Wrox.
Whether you are looking for a title on
Mac OS X, Xcode programming, digital cameras or Photoshop, Wiley has a
how-to reference just for you. To
receive 20 percent off any Wiley title,
order online. Or, to receive 40 percent
off your bulk order of any five or more
books (same or different), contact Jeff
Parker at [email protected]. This discount is particularly valuable for
technical and trade books not normally
discounted by other on-line vendors.
Discount code: MACUG
http://www.wiley.com
Offer is valid through June 30, 2006.
The HardCover Case: 30% Discount
The intuitive design of this case helps
protect your investment by attaching to
your laptop with Velcro tabs, keeping it
safe from scratches, absorbing shock
and allowing you to carry and organize
loose papers, business cards and CDs.
The HardCover is made of padded
hand-stitched vinyl and comes in three
sizes: 12 inch, 15 inch or 17 inch, primarily for Apple laptops. However,
these sizes fit many PCs. Regularly
$40.00 (US), plus shipping and handling, user group members pay only
$28.00 (US).
Coupon Code: protect1
http://www.hardcovercase.com.
Offer valid until June 30, 2006.
Ashalii Puzzle: 35 Percent Discount
Ashalii is a unique and challenging
arcade puzzle game set in a trap in
outer space. While fitting shapes into
the board, players connect matching
pieces to remove them. To escape, they
must advance through increasingly difficult levels, each requiring more
adjacent matching pieces than the last.
The game features engaging space
backgrounds and attractive fractal
pieces. Ashalii is for Mac OS X v10.1
or later. The standard price is $14.95,
but this exclusive user group offer lets
you apply a 35% discount at checkout.
Coupon code: CPN8790758439
See if you can solve this puzzle.
http://curryk.com/ashalii.html
Case-mate: Premium Form-Fit
Leather iPod case at $10 Off
Rich Napa leather surrounds a specially-engineered impact-resistant plastic
shell making the Case-mate case a
must-have for your iPod. Each case is
lined with ultra-soft felt, securing your
iPod while allowing complete accessibility to all features. Each case comes
with a full-face screen protector, a
fully-removable belt clip and comes in
eight fashionable colors. Purchase an
iPod nano case for $14.99 or video case
(30Gb/60Gb) for $19.99, which is
8
$10.00 off the retail price.
Coupon Code: wizard
http://www.case-mate.net
Prosoft Products: 25 Percent Off
Prosoft is dedicated to creating professional quality software designed for
easy use by both novice and expert
users. They are data advocates, fighting
to preserve data and prevent data loss.
Prosoft is offering Apple User Group
members a special 25% off the retail
price of any of their software programs,
including Data Rescue II or Drive
Genius, usually $99 (US), for $75 (US)
and Data Backup, Picture Rescue, or
TuneTech for iPod for $45, a $14.00
savings over the standard $59.00 price.
Discount code: PRO247.
http://www.prosofteng.com
The MUG Store:
Let the MUG Store know if there is
something they can do to help. Your
user group gets one percent back on
everything your members purchase.
When your members buy from the
MUG Store, your group can get a lot of
cool stuff for free. The MUG Store also
offers free freight to members, RAM
rebates and aggressive pricing on new
and reconditioned Macs, plus the
largest selection of pre-owned Macs on
the planet.
http://www.applemugstore.com.
Note: CMC User ID and Password for
The MUG Store are located on page
11 of your mailed CMC newsletter.
Offer is valid through April 30, 2006
For information about vendor offers,
UGAB activities and more visit
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab
VENDOR OFFER WATCH - February 14, 2006 Edition
Compiled by The MUG Center http://www.mugcenter.com
Exclusive Discounts from The MUG Center:
“Take Control” eBook
Red Rock Software
$50 off all products, excluding stand-alone User Guides;
discount applies to academic pricing & upgrades; exp. 3/31/06
http://www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/redrock.html
User Group Discount coupon: UG30650
Tropical Software
10% discount on all products; expires 3/31/06
http://www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/tropical.html
MUG Center Premier Offers
Prosoft Engineering
25% off Drive Genius, Picture Rescue, Data Rescue, Data
Backup & Data Recycler; ongoing
Anthro - 30% discount on most Anthro products; exp. 2/28/06;
Apple MUG Store - (see pg. 8)
AppleWorks Users Group - Discount on Macintosh batteries
BackJack - $25 Activation Fee waived, 3 months free; exp.4/30/06
Discover Your Mac - 2 for 1 Spotlight movies (see pg. 8)
McGraw-Hill - 40% off select titles; expires 3/31/06
MacAddict magazine - Up to 78% off subscription; exp. 6/30/06
macHOME magazine - $15 off annual subscription
Macworld magazine - $13 off annual subscription; no expiration
MYOB - $25 off First Edge & $100 off Account Edge
O'Reilly - 30% off all titles; no expiration
Peachpit Press - 25% off all titles by joining the Peachpit Club
Pressure Drop - 10% off zStand; expires 3/31/06
Prosoft Engineering - 25% off (see pg.8); no expiration.
Quickertek - 20% off all Quickertek products; expires 3/31/06
Roxio - Toast 7 & The Boom Box for almost 50% off; exp. 3/31/06
TidBITS - 10% discount on Take Control eBooks; no expiration
For the most comprehensive list of all available user group
offers, visit: www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/
[email protected]
Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac
Keep Your Mac Running Smoothly.
Everyone agrees that regular maintenance is the
best way to avoid nasty problems and to ensure
your Mac runs at peak performance, but it’s hard to
know what you should do and when to do it, and
even harder to fit it into your schedule. If that
describes you, check out Joe Kissell’s newest
ebook, “Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac.” In
it, Joe applies his commonsense approach to the
task of maintaining your Mac. You’ll find out how
to start on the right foot; what you should do daily,
weekly, monthly, and yearly; and how to prepare
for Mac OS X updates.
Joe’s suggestions are based on hard-won experience, so he covers not only what you should do but
also what you should know about commonly suggested panaceas that seldom actually help. You’ll
also learn how to monitor your Mac’s health so you
can detect problems before they cause trouble, and
find out where to turn if trouble does raise its ugly
head. Of course, opinions vary on some of these
tasks, so the ebook contains conversations with
experts about what they do in particular situations.
The ebook even includes a one-page checklist you
can post near your computer to remind you of
maintenance tasks. Also, don’t miss Joe’s interview
with Chuck Joiner of MacVoices for additional
maintenance tips and utility advice.
All Current Offers in One Location:
Looking for information on a past offer? Tom Piper, Apple
User Group vendor coordinator, publishes a single page with
all current offers, expiration dates and codes.
Note: CMC Password for The MUG Center is located on
page 11 of your mailed CMC newsletter.
For questions or problems accessing codes for the above
vendor offers, contact your CMC Ambassador by email:
[email protected]
9
If you have any trouble, check out our Ordering Tips at:
www.takecontrolbooks.com/faq.html#ordering0
or contact Robert Sawyer at [email protected]
CMC Benefits:
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Secretary
Kyle DeMilo
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-232-2841
[email protected]
860-485-1547
Editor Deena Quilty
[email protected]
860-678-8622
[email protected]
860-561-0319
[email protected]
860-677-7787
[email protected]
(860) 668-8728
Public Relations
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-583-1165
Date ________________________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Special Events
Jack Bass
[email protected]
10
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
Discounted Books
FREE Raffle!
Monthly CMC Meetings are held on last
Wednesday of the month from 7:00 - 9:00
P.M. (except November and December
when the meetings are held one week
earlier due to the holidays).
could win t-shirts, toys, CDs, mugs,
software…there’s always something
we’re giving away!
Board meetings are held on the first
attend a Board meeting, contact an officer
for time & location.
Next CMC Monthly Meeting...
Wednesday, March 29
Essentials of Ebay
Ebay Software Tools
This month's meeting night is all about
eBay.
We'll kick off the evening at 6:00 with our
Back To Basics session on the “Essentials
of eBay.” You'll learn from Joe Arcuri how
to get started on eBay, effectively search the
auction listings, and how to bid and buy.
Plus, Joe will share insight on how to avoid
being taken advantage of in the world of
online auctions. Finally he'll explain how to
use PayPal in tandem with eBay for online
payment of your auction purchases.
Our full meeting starts at the traditional
7:00 p.m. with Deena Quilty's presentation on eBay software tools. Once you
start using online auctions on a regular
basis, you may find yourself wishing for
ways to make eBay faster and easier.
Deena will demonstrate a variety of inexpensive (and sometimes free) software
applications for Mac, that allow you to
maximize your eBay experience. Whether
you like to buy or sell, there's a tool that
will enhance your auctions.
Contact a Board Member or send an
email to [email protected].
Provide the book title, the publisher
and the ISBN number, if possible,
and we will check on its availability.
Bylaw Amendment
New Members!
The CMC Board has proposed an
amendment to the bylaws of the club to
be voted on by the membership at the
March General Meeting.
It is as follows:
Account Balances
Savings Balance ............$3993.07
Balances as of March 9, 2006
Getting CMC emails?
Amendment of ARTICLE III:
OFFICERS
Section 3.
The bylaw presently reads:
“No member can be elected to the
same office for more than two
consecutive terms.”
The proposed change would read:
“No member can be elected to the
same office for more than two consecutive terms. The Board may authorize
a one year extension of the term limit
when an office reaches its term limit
before the other elected offices.”
CMC User ID’s and Passwords
Password: xxxxx (exp. 5/16/06)
We always welcome your input and participation. Do you have an idea for a topic we
should explore? Perhaps there’s a topic
that you would like to present yourself?
Email us at [email protected]
And don’t forget the Free table at the
back of the room where everything
is...FREE!
Valid: 2/1/2006 - 4/30/2006
User ID: xxxx • Password: xxxx
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, March 29
UConn Health Center
Topic: Essentials of Ebay
Topic: Ebay Software Tools
A pdf document containing a visual direction guide to the location of our meeting
in the UConn Health Center is available on our website: www.ctmac.org
12
Joe Arcuri, CMC Ambassador, demonstrates File Sharing
at the monthly CMC meeting on February 22.
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, April 26
UConn Health Center
6 p.m., Back to Basics:
“Shopping for a New Mac”
7 p.m., Feature Presentation:
“Backups-Protecting Your Mac”
This Article & CMC
Will Save You Money
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Last month I talked about the
Macintosh being a great value, but an
even greater value is CMC membership
at $25. We don’t talk about it much, and
most people don’t take advantage of the
offers, but CMC offers great value with
direct savings in your pocket. For someone like CMC member Joe Arcuri who
buys a lot of computer related equipment each year, the savings adds up.
In just the last two weeks alone Joe
found that through User Group discounts, the savings paid for his
CMC membership. Joe saw a network switch at MacConnection for
$80. Shipping on the switch was
$13.34. Joe called MacConnection’s
toll-free number, mentioned his
CMC membership and the shipping
charge was changed to free. The
following week he placed another
order with MacConnection and
saved another $11.74 in shipping.
Joe’s CMC membership cost him $0
this year.
Just last week, I saved $40 at the Apple
MUG Store on a copy of Disk Warrior.
Not only did Disk Warrior save a failing
hard drive ($200 value), it paid for almost
two years of Mac membership. Over the
years, the MUG store has been my store
of choice for Macintosh items and discounts. Visit www.applemugstore.com/
As President of CMC, the comments I
hear most often are from members who
APRIL 2006
saved money by using our meetings and
tech support forums to resolve technical
issues. Has anyone priced tech support
for a Mac? Try $75 an hour. How about
training? $300 a class and few classes
are as Mac-specific as ours.
Taking advantage of the many offers available to Mac User Groups as well as the
savings in tech support and training, CMC
membership saves its members money!
Apple’s BootCamp
In other cost savings news, for those Mac
users who want to run Windows they
now won’t need a PC or an expensive
version of Virtual PC. On April 6, Apple
released BootCamp, an application that
allows Windows XP to run on a Mac.
Once installed and the Windows drivers
are loaded users can choose to boot into
either OSX or Windows. Obviously,
Apple knows the OS they’ll choose.
When Apple announced it was switching
to Intel, Apple V.P. Phil Schiller said
Apple won’t support Windows but wouldn’t stop anyone from running Windows
on an Intel Mac. With BootCamp Apple
still isn’t supporting Windows, just
encouraging it’s use. Why?
It’s clear that Apple is trying to win over
people who always wanted a Mac but
1
needed to run Windows apps for say
work or school. What they are really
doing is inviting a head to head comparison between the two. BootCamp does
not allow both operating systems to run
simultaneously like Virtual PC. For that
you’ll need a commercial product.
On April 7, the $49 Parallels Workstation was released that allows users to
boot in OSX and at the same time run
most any Intel OS including Windows
XP and other Windows OSs going as far
back as Windows 3.1. Linux and other
Intel OSs are supported. The makers of
VMWare another OS virtualization
product is also scheduled to release its
multi-OS application for the Mac.
Those products will run OSs in a window on your OSX desktop like Virtual
PC but unlike Virtual PC the processor
is not being emulated. Reports on both
Parallels and BootCamp demonstrate that
the Windows applications run as fast on a
Mac as they do on a similar PC. No matter which dual booting software you run,
users wanting to run the latest version of
Windows will need to purchase Windows
XP with Service Pack 2 for $194. That is
hardly a bargain but cheaper than buying
a PC. And, they’ll have all the fun of
Continued on page 2
CMC Saves You Money ................... 1
Interesting Web Sites .......................3
Digital Photography Superguide.......4
Web Watch .......................................5
Business Card Design Software .......6
New Take Control Ebooks.................9
having to run numerous Windows
virus and spyware software to keep the
Windows side of their Mac safe.
Luckily the Mac side is still protected
from such security threats.
Editor
Deena Quilty
With these announcements, Apple’s
stock price jumped 10% drove the
entire NASDAQ up. Obviously, people
other than us Mac lovers think this is a
positive move for Apple and will gain
them market share. And, best of all, hell
hasn’t frozen over.
Designer
George Maciel
Microsoft had no comment regarding the
release of these products. Enough said.
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
of the newsletter.
Speaking of Windows, two years ago
we did a CMC program on MS Office
replacements. I gave copies of various
MS Office-replacement packages to our
officers. They used the software for a
month and their results weren’t very
positive. I can report a lot has changed.
As a teacher, I find most of my students
are on PCs and can’t afford the $150-400
Office package, so they use whatever
their PC shipped with. This ranges from
Star Office, MS Works, Corel Word
Perfect and others. Each semester I
receive a dozen papers I can’t open in
MS Office. Thanks to Deb Foss and her
Download of the Month, I downloaded
one of her picks, NeoOffice, which, like
my expensive MacLink Plus, promised
to open most any file. I tried this package
a couple of years ago and found it slow
and very buggy. I’m happy to say they’ve
come a long way.
NeoOffice is an OS X open source
port of Open Office. It works very
well and, in fact, if you saw it running on my computer, you’d swear
it was MS Office. It has many of
the features of Office, like Mail
Merge, and has some features
Office doesn’t have, such as direct
PDF conversion and open database integration. It is also made to
work well with Open Document
and XML formats, which are
2
becoming very popular in government
and engineering offices.
NeoOffice perfectly converted every
document students have sent me.
NeoOffice was 100% Office compatible
opening and saving documents, templates and even old Corel WordPerfect
for Mac files. And, best of all, people
have been able to open the saved Word
Doc, Excel and PowerPoint files that I
create in NeoOffice with no problems.
There are some minor annoyances. The
program is written in Java and therefore
the Open/Save dialog boxes are very
Windows 95-like, which takes some
getting used to. It does a poor job of
exporting HTML and it has difficulty
formatting very complex Excel documents. It’s not compatible with
AppleWorks documents and an Intel
version won’t be available until this
summer. However, despite these minor
issues, to me it’s up to the task of being
an excellent MS Office replacement.
I’ve been using it daily for six weeks
with no problems. This article is being
written using NeoOffice.
And, did I mention it’s FREE?
Give NeoOffice a try at www.neooffice.org For me, I won’t have to buy
another copy of MacLink Plus, saving
$80. Add that to the $150 StudentTeacher version of MS Office and that’s
$230 savings.
See…this CMC newsletter just saved
you lots of money! 
NeoOffice v.1.2.2
To make it easier to follow these links I’ve
started using a new tag at del.icio.us called
“ctmac”. To see what links I think might
be of interest to CMC members at any
time just head on over to:
http://del.icio.us/joedavex/ctmac.
Interesting Web Sites, etc!
By Joe Arcuri
CMC Ambassador
The way I surf the web has steadily
changed over the course of time. When the
web was young, I’d only go to sites that I
knew about or was referred to by someone
I knew. With the advent of search engines,
you could type in a topic or phrase and
then find links to websites that had properly created their metatags to draw in
people interested in that certain topic.
Slowly over time Google became the predominant leader in search engines and
even managed to change from being a
noun to being a verb (“Let me Google
that question”).
Over the past couple of years though,
even that has changed with the advent of
three things, blogging, RSS and social
bookmarking.
For anyone unfamiliar with the terms let
me explain them (ha, you thought I was
going to say “go Google them”!).
Blogging is short for WebLogging; basically online personal journals that have
evolved in many cases to community-driven websites that focus on certain topics and
are updated numerous times a day.
A few interesting ones I read that will
have the widest appeal are:
■ BoingBoing.net:
It’s tagline says it all, “A Directory
of Wonderful Things”.
■ http://www.macosxhints.com:
Great for getting tidbits on how to
do things in OSX.
■ http://consumerist.com
Some shoppers-fight-back-type
posts that help you realize you’re
not alone when getting ripped off
by companies.
RSS is short for Real Simple
Syndication which makes up the underpinnings of newsreaders and PodCasting. With RSS and a NewsReader
such as NetNewsWire or Safari, you no
longer have to check a website for
updates. All the blogs you are interested
in automatically get updated in your
Newsreader when the site gets updated.
As a matter of fact if you are using, or
decide to start using, del.icio.us, you can
start tagging web pages with “ctmac” too,
and we’ll all be able to see them by going
to the main listing for the “ctmac” tag at:
http://del.icio.us/tag/ctmac.
I use NetNewsWire, available from
ranchero.com in a lite version which is
free, and a paid version.
Social Bookmarking is a term for keeping
your bookmarks online in a central repository and crosslinking them with other
people. This then allows popular links to
rise high and get exposure. This concept has
also matured and evolved to being a rating
system for articles and blogs.
My favorite is Delicious, available at
http://del.icio.us
The simplicity of del.icio.us is it’s real
beauty; you register for a free account and
then when you find a site of interest you
click a simple button in your browser’s
linkbar to post it to del.icio.us (they supply you with a javascript button to just
drag to your linkbar). A cottage industry
has evolved around del.icio.us to simplify
the use and expand the functionality,
(more on all that in another article).
Other sites that fall into the same category
are digg.com and reddit.com. For top
news stories visited by people, you can go
to newsvine.com, which is sort of a ranked
version of Google news.
Social bookmarking has also extended to
social photography at flickr.com. Upload
pictures, tag them, and see what others
are uploading.
All the above is just a background to
explain how and why I end up getting a
link that I think would be of interest to
CMC members.
3
Or, if you’d rather see them in your newsfeeds just drop this in your newsreader:
http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/ctmac.
Now on to the links:
http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/
Flagrant Disregard has a bunch of online
photo manipulation tools that work with
either your standalone pictures or directly
with photos in your flickr.com account.
You can create movie posters, trading
cards, calendars, magazine covers, and
the list goes on. Take your favorite photo
and get creative! To see what others have
done using these tools take a look at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/
fdsflickrtoys
http://www.stellarium.org/
Stellarium is an awesome piece of
astronomy software that is freely available. The developers have done a great
job of creating a real competitor to some
of the commercial astronomy software
out there.
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/
photography/how-to-take-great-digitalportraits-159432.php
Need a quick primer on taking portrait
shots with your digital camera?
Lifehacker put together a short and
sweet tutorial that should improve anyone’s picture taking skills.
These are just a few of the new sites I’ve
found recently. As the months go by, I’ll
highlight some of the best that I find, but
if you’d like to keep track of them just
take a look at my del.icio.us tag. You’ll
see the ones that I post here and plenty
more available there. 
New Take Control ebook:
Macworld Digital
Photography Superguide
[email protected]
mishap. Complete with a gorgeous layout and full-color graphics, not to
mention ebook goodness like bookmarks and hotlinks, we’re sure you’ll
learn a lot from the “Macworld Digital
Photography Superguide.” As usual,
you can purchase the ebook with a
10% MUG discount, and the link
below includes the necessary coupon
code for your discount. 
Book Details: “Macworld Digital Photography
Superguide” by Macworld Magazine
MUG ordering link:
www.takecontrolbooks.com/mw-photo.html? 14
@@!pt=TRK0033TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG
PDF format, 102 pages,
Free 15-page sample available
Publication date: November 29, 2005
Price: $12.95
New Take Control ebooks!
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com
The latest ebook from the Take Control
folks is a bit different, and in fact, it
was instead created by Macworld
Magazine. Because digital photography is such a huge topic, Macworld
assembled a dream team of authors to
contribute their years of knowledge to
the 102-page “Macworld Digital
Photography Superguide,” a collection
of the best of Macworld’s digital photography coverage. In 21 detailed
sections, they teach readers how to
take great shots, make them even better
with image-editing tools ranging from
iPhoto to Adobe Photoshop, move
them to paper, and protect them against
Opera 8.54 <www.opera.com>
Since Microsoft put the cabosh on Internet Explorer for
the mac (drat), I have been exploring other browsers. This
one is free and fast. I also like the sessions feature (it basically opens the exact same set of pages you have opened
previously and want to refer to again).
From the web site:
Surf the Internet in a safer, faster, and easier way.
The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market,
Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera\’s
ground breaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and
IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of
your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse.
Already regarded as the world’s fastest, most secure
browser, Opera speeds up your Web browsing with these
innovative features:
4
* Navigate quickly using intuitive mouse gestures
and browser tabs
* Start from where your last browsing session
ended or save your entire session
* Access downloaded files quickly with the
transfer manager
* Protect against identity! theft and phishing with
integrated security features
* Speak up: surf the Web hands-free using
voice commands
* Shop Amazon, browse Ebay, and search the
Web with Google right from the address bar
* Set reminders for Web pages you visit with
the notes feature
Requires
Mac OS X 10.2
or higher.
Web Watch – Links to cool, interesting and useful information for user group members
compiled by The MUG Center <http://www.mugcenter.com>
■ Adding radio streams to iTunes
Not satisfied with the 753 radio streams offered by iTunes?
Here’s how to add some of your own.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2006/02/itune
sstreams/index.php?lsrc=mac911blog
■ Dock on Top
The single handiest modification I’ve made to my Mac UI
lately: moving the Dock to the top of the screen. "Heretic!"
I hear you exclaim.
http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/03/dock_on_to
p.html?CMP=OTC13IV03560550&ATT=Dock+on+Top
■ Print documents in booklet form
I print quite a few documents, and even when I do them
double sided, I’ve found myself wanting a more compact
form. I found the solution in a short PDF Services script.
www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006022413125
0942&lsrc=osxh
■ Use headphones as a microphone on some Macs
I used my bud headphones from my third generation iPod.
Plugged them into a late model eMac’s sound-in port, opened
the Amadeus application, and was able to record audio with
decent quality.
211636523&lsrc=osxh
■ How to salvage OS X when fonts go awry
For weeks I have had Font issues. I must have either made
some mistake or chosen the wrong option with Font Book,
but a number of apps that relied on specific system fonts
were beginning to regularly crash, or display awkward...
201534331&lsrc=osxh
■ A script to convert an iWeb site into a template
I created this Python script to automatically convert a site in
iWeb into a template, and install it in the iWeb application.
091102170&lsrc=osxh
■ Effecting multiple iMovie clips
Applying one iMovie transition or effect after another can
be tedious. You can avoid that tedium by working in bulk.
http://video.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2006/03/imo
viemulti/index.php?lsrc=mac911blog
■ Set custom auto-away messages & timeout in iChat
iChat currently has an automatic auto-away feature that
automatically sets your status to away upon being idle for
45 minutes. However, there isn’t any apparent way of customizing the auto-away message.
185035270&lsrc=osxh
■ A script to use the Dashboard as a screensaver
There are a lot of widgets on my Dashboard that display
some information that I’m interested in (such as weather,
RSS feeds, application updates, daily comic etc.), but that
aren’t so important that I’m actually going to...
133500135&lsrc=osxh
■ Create Keynote/PowerPoint slides from image folder
I was looking for a way to do what should be a very simple thing: create a presentation from a folder or selection
of images, with a separate image on each slide in full size.
235205688&lsrc=osxh
■ TMO Quick Tip - Removing iTunes Artwork
For some, iTunes art work is a great feature. For others, it’s
just taking up hard drive space. If you want to remove
album cover artwork, you can delete the graphic files from
iTunes with just a couple of mouse clicks.
http://www.macobserver.com/tip/2006/03/31.1.shtml
■ Mac 911: Target Disk Mode vs. FireWire networking
There’s more than one way to access another Mac’s drive
via FireWire. All you need do is choose.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mac911/2006/03/fire
wirenet/index.php?
Boot Camp Blues
5
Comparing Business Card
Design Software
by Joe Kissell <[email protected]>
reprinted from TidBITS#824/03-Apr-06
When I began my duties as
TidBITS Senior Editor recently,
one of my first official functions
was to order some business
cards for myself. Although I
could simply have plugged my
contact info into the existing
TidBITS business card template, Adam and Tonya wanted
to come up with a new design
that incorporated information
for both TidBITS and Take
Control. So they sent me the graphics
and suggested that I see what I could
come up with in each of two business
card design applications: Business Card
Composer from BeLight Software and
SOHO Business Cards from Chronos.
<www.belightsoft.com/products/
composer/>
<www.chronosnet.com/Products/
sohobc_product.html>
Designing business cards is not exactly
rocket science. I’ve done it before without the benefit of any special software - and I fully expected that either of
these two applications would make it a
completely painless and speedy
process. While I found a lot to like
about both packages, though, I found
them to be surprisingly different. I also
discovered that first impressions can be
deceiving; SOHO Business Cards, the
more polished-looking program, was in
fact much less capable of producing
good results easily.
Business Card Basics
Both Business Card Composer and
SOHO Business Cards start with
roughly the same fundamental model:
choose a design from one of their many
premade templates, and then tweak the
colors, graphics, fonts, masks, and
other elements
to your liking.
(You can opt
to start with a
blank card,
too, if none of
the existing
designs meets
your needs.)
To o l s a r e a l s o
included for
drawing lines and
shapes, for aligning elements, and
for moving them
forward or backward with respect
to other elements.
The applications automatically fill in
fields such as name, address, phone
number, and email address from a contact you select in Address Book. When
you’re happy with the final design, you
can print it to business card blanks you
can buy for your own printer (both programs support a wide variety of brands
and styles), or create a PDF that you
can send to a commercial print shop.
Business Card Composer includes
about 420 designs; SOHO Business
Cards comes with more than 800 (for
each of several card sizes). Both applications also include libraries of clip art
that can be used for backgrounds,
logos, and ornamentation. On the
whole, I found the premade designs and
artwork in both packages to be
attractive and useful, a few lemons
notwithstanding - though Business
Card Composer’s designs struck me as
more creative and visually appealing,
even if there were fewer of them. In my
case, however, because I was starting
with my own logos and had fairly specific ideas about what I wanted, I
decided to start with a blank card in
both programs, and then return to the
templates later on to design cards for
my own company, alt concepts, inc.
Business Card Composer
The design process in Business Card
Composer was straightforward, albeit
with a few quirks. For example, one of
the first things I wanted to do was resize
a graphic I’d dragged in. I assumed that,
as in virtually every other application,
holding down Shift while resizing
would maintain the graphic’s original
proportions. But no: As I discovered by
trial and error, the proportions are kept
the same by default, and pressing Shift
turns off that constraint!
Similarly, a few features I expected to
see were bafflingly missing. You can
align elements with each other horizontally but not vertically. Although
alignment guides appear as you move
objects on the canvas, the alignment
applies only to the edges of an element’s containing box; in the case of a
text block, baseline alignment would
have been much more useful. Similarly,
I could find no way to put text in small
capitals. (SOHO Business Cards suffered from neither of these limitations.)
Despite these quibbles, Business Card
Composer was generally quite solid. It
helpfully separates your canvas into a
background layer, for elements common to multiple cards, and a foreground
layer, for information specific to each
person. In addition, you can have a single file that holds designs for both the
front and back of a card (which we
decided to use for TidBITS and Take
Control); you can switch sides with a
single click.
To add Address Book data, you choose
a contact and design your card with
actual data from that person’s record
(all of which is editable). If you then
want to use the same design for another
person’s card, you can select a new
Address Book record with a couple of
clicks. You should be aware, though,
that if you edit a piece of data (say, a
phone number) for a contact, switch to
continued on page 7
6
another contact, and then switch back,
your edit will be lost. Business Card
Composer’s Address Book fields work
best when Address Book contains
exactly the information you want on the
cards; otherwise, your best bet is to add
custom text manually.
After working up some sample doublesided TidBITS/Take Control cards
from scratch, I looked for a design that
might work well for my own company.
After finding one I liked, I plugged in
my contact information, changed a couple of colors, and was ready to print
within about five minutes. In short, the
happier you are with an existing design
and the less fiddling you need to do, the
easier the program will seem.
SOHO Business Cards
I thought I would like SOHO Business
Cards better, because it has a slicker
interface and comes with a much larger
library of graphics, fonts, and templates. But as I used it, I disc o v e r e d
t h a t i t s f r u s t r a t i o n s outnumbered its benefits.
For example, I quickly found it infuriating that in the Design pane - where you
can resize and reposition elements - you
can only see blocks representing where
text from my Address Book will be
placed, but not the actual text itself. You
have to switch to the (non-editable)
Preview pane to see what your design
will look like with its text. Because the
Design view gives you little sense of
how the final block will look when
filled with contact data, the design
process becomes one of incessantly
switching panes, a real annoyance.
SOHO Business Cards has a special
Fields palette that’s designed to give
you extra control over layout and
typography. You can specify, for example, what happens if the text in an
address field is too wide: the box can
expand to the left or right, or the text
can shrink to fit the block. The latter
choice sounded like just what I needed,
because one of the lines in my address
is much longer than the others. But to
my dismay, I found that when I
switched to the Preview pane, only that
one line of my address had shrunk; the
rest stayed at their full size.
In fact, SOHO Business Cards’s fundamental reliance on so-called smart
fields to hold and format Address Book
data is misguided. The idea is that you
choose a smart field with exactly the
combination of Address Book data you
want, set up its characteristics, and then
watch as it automagically reformats
itself to display the data of each new
c onta ct . Un fo rt u n at el y, S OHO
Business Cards provides no convenient
way of printing cards for multiple contacts at one time; you must manually
select the Address Book contact used to
insert data into any given card design.
Furthermore, you can’t edit data inserted from Address Book; if something is
not quite right, you must either change
the data in Address Book itself or manually insert a custom text field. In other
words, in one respect SOHO Business
Cards’s design is optimized for constantly changing data, but in another
respect, it assumes you’re working with
just one set of data. Those two design
imperatives are very much in conflict.
On the bright side, SOHO Business
Cards does have the full range of horizontal and vertical alignment options I
expect from a good graphics application, making layout of graphical
elements a breeze. It offers extensive
typographical control (unlike Business
Card Composer) and lets you adjust
attributes like drop shadows, transparency, and rotation of any element
with great ease. Unlike Business Card
Composer, which lets you adjust the
zoom level of the canvas only to a
handful of preset magnifications,
SOHO Business Cards has a slider that
instantly zooms to any arbitrary size.
In the end, however, it took too much
7
effort to get the result I wanted.
Furthermore, SOHO Business Cards
doesn’t support double-sided cards
directly, so each side had to be a separate file. And although many of the
templates provided were quite handsome, none of them was a good fit for
my own company’s cards.
Printing
Since my printer - an aging inkjet on its
last leg - can no longer be coaxed into
producing crisp text, professional printing was the only option I considered.
Both SOHO Business Cards and
Business Card Composer use the same
technique: choose File > Print Online
(SOHO Business Cards) or File >
Order Cards Online (Business Card
Composer) and you’ll be taken to a
Web page with instructions to save your
file as a PDF and send it to any of several recommended print shops. That
process worked, but I still had to visit
each of the printers’ sites, evaluate their
options and prices, and then manually
send in a file. I had been hoping for
more of a seamless printing process
such as the one iPhoto uses for making
photo albums and prints online, but no
such luck.
Final Thoughts
If you’re prepared to be happy with one
of the applications’ built-in designs,
and if the information you want on your
business card is identical to your
Address Book card for yourself, either
application should get the job done. But
if you want to color outside the boxes,
Business Card Composer will make
your job far easier. Business Card
Composer costs $40 for the boxed edition; the downloadable edition,
which I tested, includes fewer graphics
and templates, sells for $35 and is a
17.7 MB download. SOHO Business
Cards costs $30, and is a 17.7 MB
download. 
Copyright 2006 TidBITS: Reuse
governed by Creative Commons license.
Vendor Offer Watch from The MUG Center - April 15, 2006
MacFixIt
For the most comprehensive list of
all available user group offers, visit:
www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/
Offers Newsfeed:
www.mugcenter.com/rss/vendoroffers.xml
Discount on Macintosh batteries; no
expiration. Order from:
www.awug.org/shop/merchant4.html
25% discount on Guru Tools; expires
5/31/06. Subscribe http://www.macfixit.com/subscribe/mficd06ugab/
Avery
macHOME magazine
Various package discounts on Avery
signs; available in the U.S. only.
Expire s 6 / 3 0 / 0 6 . Down l o ad at :
h t t p : / / w w w. a v e r y. c o m / s i g n s
Coupon Code: xxxxxx
$15 off annual subscription; available
in U.S. only. No expiration. Call
1-800-800-6542 (code “xxxxx”), or
subscribe at: https://www.machome.
com/subscribe/mugoffer
BackJack
Macworld magazine
$25 Activation Fee waived, 3 months
free; available globally.
Expires 4/30/06. To order, go to:
www.backjack.com/usergroup.html
MYOB
Exclusive Discounts
Computer Systems Odessa
15% - 25% off
• ConceptDraw
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP
• ConceptDraw Project;
expires 6/30/06
http://www.csodessa.com/
Case-mate
$10 off iPod cases; available globally;
expire s 6 / 3 0 / 0 6 . S ee o f f e r a t :
h t t p : / / w w w. c a s e - m a t e . n e t
Coupon Code: xxxxxxx
Curry K. Software
Prosoft Engineering, Inc.
25% off Drive Genius, Picture
Rescue, Data Rescue, Data Backup &
Data Recycler; available globally.
Order Today: http://www.prosofteng.com Discount code: xxxxxx
Other Offers
for Mac User Groups:
For details, including code acquisition
35% discount on Ashalii Puzzle;
available globally; expires 6/30/06.
http://curryk.com/ashalii.html
Coupon code: xxxxxxxxx
Discover Your Mac
2 copies of Spotlight movie for the
price of one; available globally;
expires 5/31/06. Enter “xxxxxxx” into
additional comments field order page,
and automatically be shipped double
your order.
http://www.DiscoverYourMac.com
Hard Cover Case
Apple MUG Store
Discounts on new and refurbished
hardware and 1% back to your group;
available in U.S.; no expiration.
http://www.applemugstore.com
User ID: User, Password: Group
Note: ID & Password are on page 9
of your mailed CMC newsletter)
$13 off annual subscription; U.S. only
http://www.macworld.com/useroffer
$25 off First Edge & $100 off
Account Edge; available globally.
O’Reilly
30% off all titles; available globally.
Peachpit Press
25% off all titles by joining the
Peachpit Club; Coupon Code:
xxxxxxxxx (case-sensitive) Join the
Club: http://www.peachpit.com
TeamSoft
30% discount on web purchases;
available globally; expires 5/31/06.
http://www.teamsoft.com/products
Coupon Code: xxxxxxxxx
TidBITS
10% discount on Take Control
eBooks; available globally. Catalog:
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/
Coupon code: xxxxxxxxx
$12 off laptop case; available globally, expires 6/30/06. Learn more:
h t t p : / / w w w. h a r d c ove r c a s e . c o m
Coupon Code: xxxxxx
Wiley Books
MacAddict magazine
Coupon Codes for above MUG offers are
in your mailed CMC newletter. All current offers, expiration dates and codes can
be found at: http://homepage.mac.com/
(Enter password listed on page 9)
Up to 78% off annual subscription;
available in U.S. Expires 6/30/06.
https://w1.buysub.com/servlet/Orders
Gateway?cds_mag_code=MCD&cds
_page_id=13588
8
20% off any title or 40% off 5 or more
books; expires 6/30/06. Visit Wiley:
http://www.wiley.com Code:xxxxx
User IDs and Passwords
New Take Control Ebooks
Cover GarageBand 3
Password: xxxxxxx (exp. 5/16/06)
(All current offers, expiration
dates and codes can be found at:
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/
offers/vendorcodes.htm)
[email protected]
Valid: 2/1/2006 - 4/30/2006
User ID: xxxxx
Password: xxxxx
Check your Newsletter Mailing
Label for the following info:
• CMC Web site info:
www.ctmac.org
User name and password
• Member expiration date
• Membership number (for free
shipping at MacConnection)
ADVERTISEMENT– ADVERTISEMENT–ADVERTISEMENT
“Take Control of Podcasting”
Goes Live as a Free Podcast
If “Take Control of Podcasting on
the Mac” helped give you podcasting fever, be sure to tune in to
author Andy Affleck’s new “Take
Control of Podcasting” podcast to
learn more and stay up to date with
the latest developments in the field.
The first full-length episode covers
the new podcasting features in
GarageBand 3 (complete with
sound effects) and Monbots in
Sound Studio 3, and includes an
interview with fellow Take Control
author Kirk McElhearn about
iTunes, podcasts, and Skype.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.co
m/ mac- podcasting/>
You can hear even more of Andy’s
dulcet tones on the popular
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Joiner interviews Andy Affleck
about podcasting and his ebook:
<http://www.macvoices.com/
archives/ 2006/ 642.html>
Regardless of your musical experience, if you want to make the most
of GarageBand 3, follow along
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as he shows you how to work creatively with GarageBand and get
the most out of its features. In “Take
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using
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plan, edit, mix, and export a tune,
and in “Take Control of Recording
Music with GarageBand,” Jeff covers how to get the most out of
existing gear and what to purchase,
as well as real-world recording studio techniques, using a mic, and
applying effects. Both ebooks
include linked-in audio that lets
you listen to Jeff’s examples while
you read about them. If you own an
older version of one of these
ebooks, click the Check for
Updates button on the cover of your
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<http://www.takecontrol
books.com/garagebandmusic.html? 14@@!pt= TRK0007-TB821- TCNEWS>
<http://www.takecontrol
books.com/ garageband- recording.html?14@@
!pt=TRK-0016-TB821TCNEWS>
If you have any trouble,
check out our Ordering Tips at:
faq.html#ordering0
or email Robert Sawyer at
[email protected]
Take Control Ebook Catalog: http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/
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9
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10
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Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
Wednesday, April 26
Shopping for a New Mac
Our 6:00 PM session this month is on the
topic of shopping for a new Mac. We’ll discuss the specifics of the current models,
what you need to know about them, and any
potential snafus you may run into once you
get one. We’ll talk specifically about the
implications of the new Intel-based models
from Apple, and whether or not it’s the right
time for you to buy one. As always, Back
To Basics is presented in a relaxed forum,
where questions are encouraged.
Feature Presentation: 7:00 p.m.
Backups – Protecting Your Mac
If your Mac could speak, the first thing it
would say...well, OK the second thing –
after first pleading “Vacuum me once in a
while” – would be “Please backup my data.”
Performing regular backups is the most
important thing you can do to protect your
Mac and the data inside of it. Backups
provide you with a nice, warm security
blanket, and give you options – instead of
reasons to cry – when anything goes
wrong with your files or your Mac itself.
At this month’s meeting, CMC Vice
President, Chris Hart, will provide you with
all the information you need to confidently
backup your Mac. His presentation will
include discussion of the necessary tools
and software (some of which are free) and
how to use it. Whether you own one Mac, or
several, there’s a backup solution for you.
May CMC Meeting...Photoshop!
May’s meeting is your chance to learn how
to use Photoshop. CMC has partnered with
New Horizons computer learning center to
bring you a presentation on the basics of
Adobe Photoshop (and Photoshop
Elements). New Horizon’s instructor will
cover the essentials of this industry-standard photo editing program. Plus, you’ll
have a chance to win a copy of Photoshop
Elements in our dollar raffle!
Discounted Books
FREE Raffle!
Email us at [email protected].
is...FREE!
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CMC Members can advertise For
[email protected]
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Savings Balance ............$3995.27
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Balances as of April 6, 2006
listed below.
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Getting CMC emails?
CMC Meetings, Events, Notices, Etc.
Monthly CMC Meetings are held on last Wednesday of the month from
7:00 - 9:00 P.M. (except November and December when the meetings are
held one week earlier due to the holidays).
Board meetings are held on the first Thursday of the month. If you wish
to attend a Board meeting, contact an officer for time & location.
We always welcome your input and participation. Do you have an idea
for a topic we should explore? Perhaps there’s a topic that you would like
to present yourself? Email us at [email protected]
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, April 26
UConn Health Center
6 p.m., Back to Basics:
“Shopping for a New Mac”
7 p.m., Feature Presentation:
“Backups-Protecting Your Mac”
A PDF document containing a visual direction guide to the location of our meeting in the UConn Health Center is available on our website: www.ctmac.org
12
Slideshow movie of the eBay presentation from our March 29th
CMC meeting is available on our website at www.ctmac.org or at:
http://www.ctmac.org/slideshows/eBay%20Software%20Tools.mov
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, May 31
Location: UConn Health Center
• 6 p.m. Back to Basics:
Digital Picture File Formats
• 7 p.m. Feature Presentation:
Basics of Photoshop
(see page 11
for more info)
MAY 2006
First, viruses don’t infect computers through their processors so
moving from a G5 to Intel doesn’t
make someone any more or less
vulnerable to a malicious attack.
These security infections get
through using various vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities can exist in
the operating system or in a software application such as a web
browser, Office application or
system component such as
Quicktime. Users are also vulnerable and can be fooled into
installing malicious software
causing them to infect their own
computer.
Computers Don’t
Cause Viruses,
People Cause Viruses
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
In May 1998, I installed a new version of Quicktime, which offered
all types of great new features but
Apple failed to mention one: activating it's CD AutoStart feature left
the Mac vulnerable to a virus. In
July, I noticed my hard disk and
processor would kick in when no
activity was taking place. I began
losing disk space but couldn’t find
what was filling the disk. The virus,
officially known as a “worm”,
infected my computer causing
invisible files to be written that
were filling up my hard drive.
It was a pesky bug but it really didn’t do any damage and was easily
eliminated thanks to advise from Apple
and a free fix-it application developed by
a user. That 1998 worm was the last
known widespread Macintosh security
infection.
In recent weeks, the popular press has
been filled with stories about how the
Mac’s move to Intel will open up a new
world of Macintosh virus infections-and, of course, the press had the
evidence.
First, the press picked up on a story of a
new Mac user who discovered a Trojan
Horse, a malicious application that masks
itself as non-threatening file such as a
presented by
.jpg, that snuck into his machine and was
duplicating itself and filling up his hard
drive. It was reported that another user
installed BootCamp and caught a
Windows’ virus that wrecked his
Windows partition. Finally, the press
picked up a story from the SANS
Institute that said there was "Rapid
growth in critical vulnerabilities being
discovered in Mac OS X." The statement
goes on to say, "Its reputation for offering
a bulletproof alternative to Windows is in
tatters." Tatters?
When you look behind the stories and
read between the lines, you can see
where the issues lie.
1
Windows as an operating system is
inherently more vulnerable than
Mac OSX. Mac OSX requires
users to authenticate themselves as
an Administrator when an application is going to install something in
the system folder. Since an administrator
is the only person who can install system
level software applications or make
changes to the system folder, there’s the
assurance and hope that the administrator
knows what he/she is doing. Not so in
Continued on page 2
Computers Don’t Cause Viruses...... 1
Interesting Web Sites .......................3
Review: CarbonCopyCloner ..............4
Tech: Under the Hood.......................5
911 by Chris Breen...........................6
Take Control Ebook ..........................9
the Windows world. Viruses sneak into
Windows using a variety of techniques
that get by both the OS and the operator
with little or no warning.
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
Special Thanks
to Jerry Esposito for standing
in for Deena Quilty this
month as editor.
from our members!
of the newsletter.
The person who installed Windows
using BootCamp and found their computer infected should have known the
vulnerability issues surrounding
Windows and installed the necessary MS
security fixes, patches and anti-virus and
Spyware software to protect that partition. It wasn’t Apple’s fault the person’s
computer became infected and in fact the
Mac OSX partition was unharmed.
Second, though Trojan Horses attempt to
fool the user, the user needs to understand the rules of Mac security.
Rule #1 of Mac Security: if you don’t
know what the software you are
installing is, don’t install it.
Rule #2: When Safari says “This
Download contains an application. Are
you Sure you want to continue downloading?” you should think long and
hard about what you are doing. If you
are at all hesitant do some research
before hitting “OK” or “Continue”.
Rule #3: If after downloading any application you are asked to authenticate the
installation using your administrator
password, again think long and hard
about what hitting OK will do to your
machine. Even if it’s software from
Apple, some people wait several days
before installing to make sure there are
no problems or security issues and check
the many Macintosh discussion forums.
Apple quickly put out a security update
and the Trojan Horse was stopped before
it became widespread.
There have also been claims that
increased Macintosh market share will
increase viruses. The people who write
viruses want to do the most harm to the
2
largest number of people and Windows,
because of its popularity, makes it a big
target. However, Windows isn’t just popular its architecture and the way it
operates makes it the most vulnerable.
Apple has been very effective at releasing security updates as vulnerabilities
are discovered before anyone can write
software to take advantage of the security weaknesses. Although there are
weaknesses, Apple seems to be more on
top of security issues than Microsoft.
Also, we have to look at the motive of
companies like the SANS Institute making security claims about OSX security.
When I went to their website, it was easy
to see their motive. SANs is in the business of selling security software and
training security professionals. Their
claim is their gain so it’s best for Mac
users and journalists to listen to unbiased
studies, not studies from companies with
a vested interest in claiming Mac weaknesses with no evidence. Mac security is
hardly "in tatters."
Estimates are that there are well over a
hundred thousand Windows viruses and
dozens every day that actually infect
computers yet there have been only a
handful of known Macintosh viruses "in
the wild".
Will we one day have a widespread
Macintosh virus? The day may be coming but history seems to be on the side of
Mac users. The system itself and Apple’s
own attention to security issues, speedy
response and involved users and developers will, like in 1998, put a stop to a
virus attack quickly. The secret for all of
us is keeping on top of our systems and
what’s going on out there in the Mac
world. Support from groups like CMC
and websites like MacFixit, Macworld,
Versiontracker and Apple’s own support
forums can help us better understand the
world of Mac security and help us
through any problems. 
Interesting Web Sites, etc!
By Joe Arcuri, CMC Ambassador
Smart Shopping www.priceheat.com
This one isn’t a website you go to like you normally would, rather it’s
a website that you access via a bookmarklet that you put in the bookmarks bar of your browser. Now when you visit Amazon.com to
potentially purchase something, you can easily comparison shop other
sites for better pricing by just clicking on the PriceHeat bookmarklet.
Put a PriceHeat bookmark in your browser:
Safari, Firefox, IE and Opera
Cheapskate Is As Cheapskate Does http://frugalforlife.blogspot.com/
Don and I frequently compare notes on how to squeeze all the value
out of a penny but what Don and I consider a hobby some people have
made into a lifestyle. It’s great to read the tips available on Frugal For
Life, implementing just some of them gives you a feeling of satisfaction. Some of the suggestions go a little far for me, such as : The Many
Uses of Cereal Liners.
The Hive Mind Collected http://popurls.com/
As I mentioned previously the best way to have your finger on the
pulse of the Internet is to keep track of the social bookmarking sites.
Seeing what percolates to the top gives you a quick and succinct
overview of what’s currently happening. Of course keeping track of the
ever growing list of social bookmarking sites in itself is starting to
become a massive feat. Along comes PopURL, essentially giving you
the MetaData of the MetaData sites. If hitting the individual sites is
equivalent to having your finger on the pulse of the Internet, PopURL
is the cool bedside monitor tracking all the vital statistics of the patient.
Get the latest info that’s appearing on 19 sites ranging from del.icio.us
to google video.
PDFin’ Great!
www.iconus.ch/fabien/cocoabooklet/
On the CMC support list TomE was recently asking some PDF questions. Tom’s questions on PDF merging and my desire to print out
some ebooks led me do a little research on (free/cheap) tools available
to manipulate PDF files. The two programs that I found that best meet
my needs are CocoaBooklet www.iconus.ch/fabien/cocoabooklet/ for
printing and PDFLab www.iconus.ch/fabien/pdflab/ for document
merging. Both programs are donationware.
From the website: CocoaBooklet allows you to print a pdf document
as a booklet. A booklet is a book that is bound in the middle. Which
means that a booklet has four pages printed on one sheet of paper (two
on each sides). The bottom line is that you simply print your booklet,
staple it in the middle, fold it in two and you have a book.
www.iconus.ch/fabien/pdflab/
PDFLab lets you split and join PDF documents as well as insert
images and blank pages. You will also be able to easily create PDF
documents out of several images. PDFLab also ships with tools that let
you quickly split a document into many documents, (one document per
page or one document for odd pages and one for even pages), encrypt
or decrypt a document, add a watermark, interleave several documents.
3
Example from the website (left):
a PDF file with 8 pages, will make
a booklet that looks like this:
■ First sheet, first side:
pages 8 and 1
■ First sheet, second
side: pages 2 and 7
■ Second sheet, first
side: pages 6 and 3
■ Second sheet, second
side: pages 4 and 5
CarbonCopyCloner 2.3
FRESHLY SQUEEZED REVIEWS:
Happy Days Are Here Again!
by Frank Petrie
And then Moses rose up his arms. And
lightning bolts split the sky and the sea
parted. And there, standing on the other
side, was Mike Bombich with a new
release of Carbon Copy Cloner UPDATED for Tiger! Oh, Happy Day!
Etched in stone tablets were these words
from Bombich Software: “Have you
ever wanted a simple, complete,
bootable backup of your harddrive?
Have you ever wanted to upgrade to a
larger hard drive with minimal hassle
and without reinstalling your OS and all
of your applications? Have you ever
wanted to move your entire Mac OS X
installation to a new computer? Then
CCC is the tool for you! CCC makes
these tasks simple by harnessing the
Unix power built into Mac OS X.
In addition to the features that CCC has
provided in the past, version 2 offers
synchronization of the source and target
as well as scheduled backup tasks. Now
you can set up a regular backup regimen
that occurs in the background, even if
you are not logged in! Version 2 also
offers enhancements for lab administrators, including the option to run pre and
post-flight shell scripts, the ability to
modify the list of items to be removed at
the end of a clone, and the ability to create a disk image on the fly.”
Any questions? OK, OK. Simmer down.
Let’s look it over.
THE JUICE
Although not yet Universal Binary,
CCC has been rewritten to run with
10.4.2. Make a simple, complete,
bootable backup of your hard drive. It’s
also been updated with to play better
with Panther and G5s, as well,and several minor bug fixes.
You can also add and delete folders
from your backup. And naturally, you
can schedule your backup for when
you sleep. You can backup disk images
and iPods.
As for support, there’s Bombich
Software Forums, a place to discuss,
praise or cuss Bombich Software,
including CCC and an online manual.
THE RIND
Still can’t burn directly to CDs or DVDs,
but then again you may have Toast and
you most definitely have disk utility.
THE PITS
Nada.
THE PULP
With the cult following and that it has
grown, plus its solid reputation, I really
think that Mike should consider charging for this. It’s too good to not charge
for (also, check out DeLocalizer). This
is donationware. If you use CCC (and
who hasn’t at some point) you must,
ABSOLUTELY MUST, send Mike a
donation.
RATING: 10 out of 10 
©2006 Frank Petrie
Product: CarbonCopyCloner 2.3
Company: Bombich Software
www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Requirements: at least 10.4.2;
not yet available as a Universal
binary, however it does run via
Rosetta on the new Intel Macs
Price: Donationware
☛ DoubleBoth: This setting is not normally
available in the Finder. The full set of scroll
arrows are placed together at both ends of each
scroll bar.
☛ DoubleMax: This is the default setting in Mac
OS X. The scroll arrows are placed together at
the bottom and right of the scroll bars.
☛ DoubleMin: This setting is not normally available in the Finder. The scroll arrows are placed
together at the top and left of the scroll bars.
☛ Single: In this mode, the scroll arrows are
placed separately at the ends of each scroll bar.
Once a setting is chosen, Scroll Switcher
directs the Finder to quit and relaunch to apply
the new setting.
Scroll Switcher 1.0.3
I picked this simple, free application, when I realized that I was
putting it on every OS X machine
that I used. Twice this week I
downloaded on new Tiger installs
at work. This is such a time saver,
you just go to the top or bottom of
the scroll bar, and both arrows are
there. Great for lazy people, like me.
Product Description: Scroll Switcher is a small utility
designed to allow the user to quickly and easily change
the scroll arrow configurations in Mac OS X. There are
4 different arrow configurations to choose from:
Download it here:
http://www.fixamacsoftware.com/software/
downloads/ss103.dmg.zip
4
“Under
the
OS X
Hood”
by Joe
Arcuri
MySql: Updating from
3.x to 4.x
I recently updated MySql running on my
Powerbook (Panther 10.3.9) and ran into a
couple of issues which I finally managed to
resolve. I thought the solutions would help
anyone in a similar predicament.
I had been running version 3.23 of MySql
for a few years, it was rock solid and I didn’t require any of the features of the later
versions but I came across an implementation of David Allen’s “Getting Things
Done” system that required MySql 4.1. I
figured it’d be a simple matter of installing
MySql 4.1.18 (available at <http://dev.
mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html>).
The installation was extremely simple, pretty much a couple of mouse clicks and away
it went.
First, you need to run
mysql_fix_privilege_tables
from the command line. This updates the
MySql privilege tables to allow the use of
newer features in MySql. After running it
make sure to Stop and Restart the MySql
server (Easiest done if you install the MySql
PrefPane which comes with the package).
Still no luck running phpMyAdmin
though, same error that my client version
was outdated.
A little more research led me to a great site
that had the exact steps I needed to take and
why it was happening.
http://www.digitalpeer.com/id/mysql
Their explanation is that the newer version
uses a different method of storing passwords
and the solution is to either update the client
(pain in the butt) or convince the server to
use the old version of the passwords. I chose
the latter. From the command line login to
mysql as root:
mysql -u root -p
Remember that the default installation of
MySql has a blank password for root.
In Mysql run the following command:
After installing the latest version of
phpMyAdmin (2.8.0.3) I still couldn’t access
my MySql system. I kept getting an error
telling me that my client version was old and
I should check the host name, login id and
password in my config.inc.php file.
UPDATE mysql.user
SET password = OLD_PASSWORD
(‘password’)
WHERE user = ‘user’
AND host = ‘host’;
changing ‘password’ to your password,
‘user’ to your user name and ‘host’ to the
host name (presumably ‘localhost’).
Doing a little research I found that there are
a couple of things that need to be done after
moving to the 4.x versions of MySql.
After that reset the privileges with:
flush privileges
You should now be all set, at least I was.
Computer Recycling In CT
Looking for a way to dispose of those old
computers, VCRs, TVs, stereos, etc. in an
environmentally-friendly fashion?
Residents of many central Connecticut
towns can take advantage of the upcoming
electronics recycling days offered by The
Connecticut Resources Recovery
Authority (CRRA).
From the website:
The MySQL® database has
become the world’s most popular open source database
because of its consistent fast
performance, high reliability
and ease of use. It’s used in
more than 8 million installations ranging from large
corporations to specialized
embedded applications on
every continent in the world.
(Yes, even Antarctica!)
Not only is MySQL the world’s
most popular open source database, it’s also become the
database of choice for a new
generation of applications built
on the LAMP stack (Linux,
Apache, MySQL, PHP / Perl /
Python.) MySQL runs on more
than 20 platforms including
Linux, Windows, OS/X, HPUX, AIX, Netware, giving you
the kind of flexibility that puts
you in control.
Whether you’re new to database technology or an
experienced developer or DBA,
MySQL offers a comprehensive range of certified software,
support, training and consulting to make you successful.
• Saturday, June 3 - Torrington
• Saturday, June 10 - Hartford
You can find out specific hours and locations at www.crra.org. Don’t forget to check
with your town hall to find out if your town
is participating in this CRRA program.
Location schedules: http://www.crra.org/pages/schedule_electronics.htm
5
Mac 911
Solutions for your most
vexing Mac problems
by Christopher Breen
A cure for missing Key Caps
I’m trying to figure out how to
use special characters in specific fonts, but I can’t find Key
Caps in my Applications folder
or anywhere in Mac OS X 10.4.3. Font
Book doesn’t allow me to try the modifier keys. Please help! – Gail Goldyne
That’s what they pay me for, Gail. Go
to the International preference pane
(Apple: System Preferences). Click on
the Input Menu tab and select the
Keyboard Viewer option. Select the
Show Input Menu In Menu Bar option
at the bottom of the window, and a flag
representing your current keyboard layout (a U.S. or an Australian flag, for
example) will appear in the Finder’s
menu bar.
Click on the flag. From the menu,
choose Show Keyboard Viewer. A
small window representing your Mac’s
keyboard appears. When you type
characters, their corresponding onscreen versions appear highlighted in
this window. To view special characters, simply hold down any modifier
keys (the option key, for example), and
the onscreen keyboard will show you
the special characters available for that
particular key (or for that combination
of modifier keys if you’re holding
down more than one). To test other
typefaces, click on the Font menu at
the bottom of the window and select
another one. If you find Keyboard
Viewer too small, click on the green
Expand button in the top left corner of
the window.
The insomniac Mac
My Mac has trouble sleeping. What’s
going on? – Via the Internet
Nothing is more frustrating than a Mac
that you have to reset because it won’t
awaken or a laptop that sucks up the
battery charge because
it fails to sleep. I wish
this problem had a
single answer, but
regrettably it doesn’t.
Failure to sleep properly remains one of the
great bugaboos of our
favorite computer. If
your Mac is too sleepy
(or sleep deprived), here
are a few issues to consider.
System Preferences Settings. Most
people have trouble with sleepless
Macs. In that case, check a few settings
in System Preferences to see whether
they might be to blame. First, wander
over to the Energy Saver preference
pane. Click on the Sleep tab and make
sure that you don’t have the Put The
Computer To Sleep When It Is Inactive
For slider set to Never. Then open the
Classic preference pane (if you have it),
click on the Advanced tab, and check
the Classic Sleep setting. Again, you
want\ that slider set to something other
than Never if you expect your Mac to
go to sleep automatically while running
Classic applications. If you don’t use
your Mac to receive faxes, open the
Print & Fax preference pane, click on
the Faxing tab, and make sure that the
Receive Faxes On This Computer
option is disabled. Your computer could
be keeping a wakeful eye out for
incoming faxes.
If Internet Sharing is switched on, a
Mac running OS X 10.4 won’t sleep.
Go to the Internet tab of the Sharing
preference pane and click on Stop to
disable it.
Corrupt Files. If certain preference
files become corrupted, your Mac could
refuse to sleep properly. If you have
Bluetooth, turn it off in its preference
pane (this won’t show up on Macs without a Bluetooth adapter), quit System
Preferences, and give Bluetooth’s preference file the boot–you can find it at
/your user folder/Library/Preferences/
com.apple.Bluetooth.plist.
A corrupt PowerManagement preference file can also be a problem. Quit
System Preferences and toss these files:
/Library/Preferences/System
Configuration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and /Library/Preferences/
SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Auto
Wake.plist. Enter your administrator’s
password when requested, restart your
Mac, and reconfigure Energy Saver.
Peripherals and PCI Cards. Some
printers, scanners, Bluetooth devices
(mice, in particular), and third-party PCI
cards can keep your Mac from going to
sleep. Shut down your Mac and unplug
everything–including PCI cards your
Mac doesn’t absolutely require to
run–except for the monitor, keyboard,
and mouse (surely you’ve got your old
wired input devices around somewhere). Restart your Mac and see if it
behaves itself. If so, add devices back
one at a time, beginning with a PCI card,
restarting after each addition and seeing
how the Mac fares. When the problem
recurs, cock a suspicious eye at the
device you last added. Look for an
updated driver for that device. If no such
driver exists, you can try replacing the
device. In the case of an irreplaceable
doodad, you may just have to live with
your Mac’s sleep disorder.
If a Bluetooth device appears to be the
problem, launch System Preferences,
click on Bluetooth, and switch off the
Allow Bluetooth Devices To Wake This
Computer option. (Note that if a
Bluetooth device isn’t the cause, you
may create a new problem by turning
off this option, as you need to have it
turned on for your Bluetooth mouse or
keyboard to wake a sleeping Mac.)
An imageless Outlook
I often get e-mail messages that have
pictures and text mixed together. If my
wife gets one like that on her iMac in
Apple’s Mail, it displays just fine, but if
she sends it to me on my PC, on which
I’m using Microsoft Outlook, all the
pictures and text change to attachments.
We’ve experimented with the settings in
continued on page 7
6
Mail that claim to make e-mails PCfriendly, but nothing helps. Is this a
bug, and has a newer version of Mail
fixed it? – Merle Parks
Although I’m a little embarrassed to
troubleshoot what is partly an Outlook
issue, this one has stung enough people that I think addressing it is worth
our while.
If you use Microsoft Entourage (part of
the Microsoft Office 2004 suite, $499)
to embed an image in a message, the
image appears just fine when you open
it in Outlook on a PC. The same goes
for in-line images sent from Mozilla
Thunderbird (free). In-line images sent
to the PC as part of a Mail message,
however, appear as attachments. Yet if
you send that same message from Mail
on the Mac to Thunderbird running in
Windows, the image appears in the
message as intended.
This tells us there’s plenty of blame to
go around. Because Outlook doesn’t
expect to see the Rich Text Format that
Mail uses to send its messages, it refuses to display images in those messages.
On the other hand, more-flexible programs such as Thunderbird (and
Microsoft’s own Entourage) have no
qualms about displaying Mail’s images
in line.
While we’re on the subject of Mail,
Outlook, and attachments, I should
mention that if you add one of Mail’s
signatures to your message, Outlook
receives it as an additional attachment.
For example, if you create a message
that includes an image called test.jpg
and you also append a signature to the
message, the Outlook recipient will see
the text of the message along with two
attachments – test.jpg and
ATT00004.txt, a small text file that
contains the signature.
Old-school drives
I have a lot of old files stored on
Iomega Bernoulli cartridges. I have my
Bernoulli 230 drive. It’s a SCSI device,
so I purchased an Adaptec
USBXchange USB-to-SCSI adapter,
but I still can’t access the device. I can’t
locate OS X driver software for it anywhere. Any suggestions?
– Dan Colasacco
You’ve got at least two problems here.
The first is that, according to Adaptec’s
USBXchange FAQ, the USBXchange
adapter itself isn’t compatible with OS
X. But even if it were, it’s possible that
the drive wouldn’t mount on your desktop. Although some older drives that
use removable media–Iomega’s Zip
drive, for example–work without a
driver, others don’t. So what can you
do? Go old school.
Rummage around in the garage for an
old Mac with a SCSI port (and if your
garage doesn’t have one, look for a
garage sale or friend that does). This
Mac will likely run Mac OS 9. If you’re
lucky, you still have a driver for your
Bernoulli device that will work with the
old Mac OS. If you’re not so lucky, take
a trip to DriverGuide and look for it.
If and when you get the drive up and
running, copy the files to a piece of
compatible media–a CD-R, for example–or network the two computers and
copy your old files across the network.
Doing diagnostics
Your buddy next door won’t stop crowing about his hot new Mac. Feeling the
tiniest bit inadequate, you’d like to find
out how your Mac measures up. To do
so, you need a few tools to evaluate its
performance. Here are some of my
favorites:
■ Broadband Speed Test If your nextdoor neighbors are crawling to the
Internet with a slow dial-up connection,
who cares if their Mac boasts twice the
gigahertz rating of yours? To gauge
how quickly your Mac can sprint across
the Web, try one of the many free
broadband bandwidth tests. Seattlebased ISP Speakeasy offers just such a
test. Broadband Reports provides links
7
to Speakeasy’s tests, along with three
other testing sites.
■ Compare and Contrast If you’d like
a notion of just how much faster your
neighbor’s Mac is than yours (or vice
versa, if you’ve got the latest Mac on
the block), download Xbench (free).
This utility tests CPU memory and disk
read and write speeds. If you care to,
you can upload your Mac’s results and
then compare them to those from other
Macs of the world. Gloating optional.
■ Monitor Your Mac If you’re interested in what your Mac is up to – CPU
load, processor temperature, drive read
and write speeds, how full those drives
are, which applications are occupying
its RAM, and what’s taking place over
the network – grab a copy of the
Iconfactory’s iPulse ($13). iPulse is a
gauge that reflects all this data in colored bars, in a menu bar display, and in
pop-up windows that appear when you
mouse over particular parts of the
gauge. Using iPulse requires that you
memorize what all its colors mean, but
if you’re already fascinated by this kind
of arcane data, taking that extra step
shouldn’t be beyond you.
■ Aperture Able Apple’s Raw photoprocessing application, Aperture,
demands more of a Mac than just about
any other program on the planet. If your
Mac can handle it, you need bow to no
one. To find out whether your Mac is
up to the challenge, grab Apple’s
Aperture Compatibility Checker (free).
[Macworld Magazine’s Senior Editor
Christopher Breen is the author of
Secrets of the iPod and iTunes, fifth edition, and The iPod and iTunes Pocket
Guide (both Peachpit Press, 2005).
Find Chris’ books at www.amazon.com
and www.peachpit.com. Get special
user group pricing on Macworld
Magazine! Subscribe today at http://
www.macworld.com/useroffer.] 
Vendor Offer Watch from The MUG Center - April 27, 2006 <http://www.mugcenter.com>
or subscribe to TMC Vendor Newsfeed:
www.mugcenter.com/rss/vendoroffers.xml
Exclusive Discounts
Computer Systems Odessa
15% - 25% off ConceptDraw,
ConceptDraw MINDMAP and
ConceptDraw Project;
Expires 6/30/06. Complete info:
<http://www.mugcenter.com/
vendoroffers/cso.html>
To order, use this link:
<http://conceptdraw.com/
products/user_group.php>
and use discount code “7158758”.
MacTech magazine
Up to 60% Off Cover Price
Info: http://www.mugcenter.com/
vendoroffers/mactech.html
http://store.mactech.com/mugcenter
Free shipping U.S. Expires 12/31/06
NotePage Inc.
$5 off FeedForAll; expires 7/31/06
vendoroffers/feedforall.html
http://www.feedforall.com/
feedforall-mac-order.htm
Use the coupon code “mugcenter”
Other Offers
for Mac User Groups:
For details, including code
acquisition, visit:
Apple MUG Store
Discounts on new and refurbished
hardware and 1% back to your
group; no expiration
Discount on Macintosh batteries;
available globally, no expiration
Avery
Various package discounts on Avery
signs; expires 6/30/06
Case-mate
$10 off iPod cases; expires 6/30/06
MYOB
$25 off First Edge & $100 off
Account Edge; No expiration
O’Reilly
30% off all titles; no expiration
O’Reilly
15% off early registration for the
O’Reilly Open Source Conference;
Expires 6/5/06
Peachpit Press
25% off all titles by joining the
Peachpit Club; no expiration
Quickertek
20% discount on Quickertek products; expires 7/31/06
Soft Chaos
Curry K. Software
$20 off Webstractor; Available globally; expires 7/31/06
35% discount on Ashalii Puzzle;
expires 6/30/06
TeamSoft
Discover Your Mac
30% discount on web purchases;
expires 5/31/06
2 copies of Spotlight movie for the
price of one; expires 5/31/06
TidBITS
Hard Cover Case
$12 off laptop case; expires 6/30/06
10% discount on Take Control
eBooks; no expiration
Wacom
Up to 78% off annual subscription;
expires 6/30/06
Various discounts on Graphire3 product line; while supplies last;
expires 7/31/06
Peachpit:
MacFixIt
Wiley Books
35% off “Apple Training Series:
iLife ‘06” by Michael Rubin
Info: <http://www.mugcenter.com/
vendoroffers/peachpit0406.html>
Free shipping in U.S. Exp.12/31/06
Use code: MAC-SMP-CHT3
25% discount on Guru Tools;
expires 5/31/06
20% off any title or 40% off 5 or
more books; expires 6/30/06
macHOME magazine
ProSoft Engineering
Macworld magazine
25% off Drive Genius, Picture
Rescue, Data Rescue, Data Backup
& Data Recycler;
vendoroffers/prosoft.html
Order on ProSoft Engineering web
site and use discount code “PRO247”
$13 off annual subscription;
no expiration
Offers in this article are compiled
from a variety of sources, including
those developed by The MUG
Center, vendor contacts, various
company user group publications
and the Apple User Group Bulletin
All current offers, expiration dates
and discount codes can be found at:
offers/vendorcodes.htm
(Enter password listed on page 9)
MacAddict magazine
$15 off annual subscription;
no expiration
MobileJuice
$10 discount on MacSleeve; while
supplies last, minimum order
required. Expires 7/31/06
8
User IDs and Passwords
[email protected]
Take Control of Running
Windows on a Mac
“Take Control of Running Windows on
a Mac” – Pre-order. With all the press
coverage of Apple’s Boot Camp, many
people have wondered about the reality
of running Windows on Intel-based
Macs, but they’ve been hesitant to devote
the time and money to installing
Windows XP, especially since Boot
Camp may not be the best solution for
running Windows on a Mac. If you
haven’t yet installed Windows on your
Mac, or if you want to try the alternatives,
you can now take advantage of carefully
researched, real-world advice from
installation expert Joe Kissell (the bestselling ebook author of “Take Control of
Upgrading to Tiger,” among other titles).
The pre-sale version of “Take Control of
Running Windows on a Mac,” available
now for reading and comment in nearly
complete draft form, walks you through
the entire process of installing Windows
on your Mac. Notably, the ebook doesn’t limit itself to discussing Boot Camp,
instead looking at the pros and cons of
Boot Camp, Parallels Workstation, and
Q for Intel-based Macs. Then Joe dives
into what he does best: explaining solutions to the inevitable pitfalls you’ll
experience when installing and using
Boot Camp and Parallels Workstation.
And because installing Windows expos-
es you to an entirely new world, Joe also
helps you configure Windows to avoid
the nearly ubiquitous viruses, worms,
spyware, and adware. Lastly, if you
haven’t yet made the jump to an Intelbased Mac, an appendix covers
solutions for running Windows on
PowerPC-based Macs.
www.ctmac.org
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/
windows- on- mac.html? 14@ @ !pt=
TRK- 0034- TB828- TCNEWS>
As with our “Take Control of iWeb”
pre-sale, if you purchase “Take Control
of Running Windows on a Mac,” what
you download is the first page, which
contains the oh-so-important Check for
Updates button. Click it to load a Take
Control Updates page in your browser.
Along with information about the current version of the ebook, that Updates
page links to the QuickTopic
Document Review forum for the current draft, where you can read the
ebook and make comments while we
put the finishing touches on the content
and run it through our editing process.
Be sure to sign up for email notification
on the Take Control Updates page, so
we can tell you when you can download the final PDF for free.
check out our Ordering Tips at:
faq.html#ordering0
[email protected]
ADVERTISEMENT– ADVERTISEMENT–ADVERTISEMENT–ADVERTISEMENT– ADVERTISEMENT–ADVERTISEMENT
9
(All current offers, expiration
offers/vendorcodes.htm
Password: xxxxxx
(effective on 5/16/06)
Valid: 5/1/2006 - 7/31/2006
User ID: xxxx
Password: xxxxx
CMC Benefits:
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Secretary
Kyle DeMilo
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-232-2841
[email protected]
860-485-1547
Editor Deena Quilty
[email protected]
860-678-8622
[email protected]
860-561-0319
[email protected]
860-677-7787
[email protected]
(860) 668-8728
Public Relations
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-583-1165
Date ________________________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Special Events
Jack Bass
[email protected]
10
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
Wednesday, May 31
Back to Basics:
We start off at 6:00 with our Back To Basics session, on the topic of digital picture file formats.
Rich Lenoce will explain the differences
between the most popular formats, as well as
the pros and cons of each. So, if terms like
image compression and megapixels are confusing, and acronyms such as GIF, JPEG, and TIFF
leave you befuddled, this is the session for you.
Main Presentation:
The Basics of Photoshop
Our exploration of the digital imaging world
continues at 7:00 with our main presentation,
which is your chance to learn how to use
Photoshop. CMC has partnered with New
Horizons computer learning center of Windsor,
to bring you a presentation on the basics of
Adobe Photoshop. New Horizons' skilled
instructor will cover the essentials of this industry-standard photo editing software.
All of the information in this presentation is
applicable to Photoshop for Windows, as well
as the Mac version. Plus, most of the information also applies to Photoshop's baby brother,
Photoshop Elements for Mac and Windows.
Someone will win their very own Adobe
Photoshop Elements software (for Mac and
Windows) in our dollar raffle! Will it be you?
You can find out more
about New Horizons and
the classes they offer at:
www.newhorizons.com
June: Middlesex Community College
Discounted Books
FREE Raffle!
is...FREE!
FREE Classified Ads
New Members!
[email protected]
Account Balances
Savings Balance ............$3997.40
Display Ad Rates
Balances as of May 4, 2006
listed below.
Business Card ...................$10.00
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
Half Page .........................$30.00
Getting CMC emails?
This will be our annual visit to Middlesex
Community College for an evening filled with
Hands-On fun! We'll be offering three different
workshops to choose from. So watch this space
for details.
July: The Anatomy of a Podcast
Greg and Vicki of PodMusic 411 will show you
how to create a Podcast from start to finish,
using GarageBand. Even if you don't have a
desire to make your own Podcast, there is no
doubt that you will be fascinated by how these
virtual radio shows are put together. Check out
their Podcast at: www.PodMusic411.com
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, May 31
Location: UConn Health Center
• 6 p.m. Back to Basics:
• 7 p.m. Feature Presentation:
Basics of Photoshop
(see page 11
for more info)
presented by
12
Did you miss Chris Hart's April presentation on how to backup your Mac? We're
providing audio from the presentation as a podcast! You can listen on your computer, or download it to your iPod! Just go to our web site www.ctmac.org
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, June 28 • 7 pm
3 hands-on programs held at:
Middlesex Community College
1. Lighting & Composition
for still photography & videography
2. GarageBand for the Amateur
3. Learning iMovie
(see page 11 for directions and more info)
JUNE 2006
they don’t know any better. But much of
our digital age is like that. My father
built his house in 1960 and still has the
same telephones that work and sound as
good as the day they were installed–they
never drop a call and you can hear the
people on the other end loudly and with
FM radio clarity. The phones also “ring”
and don’t play a ringtone of “Play that
Funky Music” when a call needs to be
answered. And how long are today’s
phones meant to last?
Disconnecting
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Like many of our CMC members, I have
undertaken a project to digitally convert
family photos. My family primarily took
slides, some going back 60 years. Most
of these slides were shot using
Kodachrome film, which has an extreme
resilience to fading. I was startled by the
quality; the color, sharpness and lack of
noticeable grain was truly astonishing.
Taking these slides and projecting them
on a 10 foot wall allowed me to step back
in time. People long gone were projected
with amazing clarity. I could walk up to
the white wall, gaze into their eyes and
see with incredible detail.
When transferred to 8-megapixels and
projected on a large 36-inch CRT or
video projector, the digital pictures failed
to have that richness in color and detail
you could see on the original projected
image. Technically, the conversions were
perfect – the Photoshop histograms and
lack of compression artifacts and high
resolution of the images said so. But, my
eyes saw things differently. The pictures
failed to “snap” and lost their depth and
warmth. Maybe there’s something about
seeing grandma in her youth stirring the
Sunday tomato sauce as tall as she was in
real life and with such realistic clarity
that you could almost smell the sauce and
taste the cavatelli. The slides transcended
time, being caught in a time machine
called a Kodak Ektagraphic Carousel.
Press the forward and back button and
you really do move through time.
Though digital didn’t do the original
slides justice, the cheese on the sauce
was a different matter – for what was
lost, I was able to take these digital
images, organize them, include meta
data about the time, place and people in
each picture, create web pages and slide
shows and send them around the globe
to share with others. Yes, the resolution
by comparison to the slides was terrible
but rather than sitting on a closet shelf
these photos got the access they
deserved. The DVDs have fancy titles,
menus and buttons, Ken Burns effects
and music perfectly timed to the “slide”
show. iPhoto albums of these images
can be shared and prints, books or even
calendars can be ordered. Everyone
asks when they see the results, how’d
you do that? “It was easy,” I respond.
“On a Mac.”
With all of this ease and access, my heart
sinks when I think others can’t enjoy
viewing the pristine quality of the original, but since they can’t see those images
1
How many other digital “improvements”
really aren’t improvements at all, just
matters of convenience and access?
There was the CD which never sounded
as good as the LP and now the MP3
which never sounded as rich as the
CD–but you can get 10,000 of them into
something smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Next on the horizon is “digital
motion pictures”…if digital TV comes in
high definition, won’t digital movies just
be TV with expensive popcorn?
Right now, most young people have
never seen a real slide show, listened to
the Moscow Symphony live via shortwave, looked through a telescope at real
Continued on page 2
Disconnecting.................................. 1
Join the CT Mac Support Group.......3
Avoid Common Font Mistakes..........4
Release: Hot Deal from O’Reilly .......5
Image File Formats...........................6
Take Control Ebook ..........................9
NEWSLETTER OF
CONNECTICUT MACINTOSH CONNECTION, INC.
A USER GROUP SINCE 1986
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
be great to have several member articles in each issue of
the newsletter.
stars only NASA downloads, or
watched images appear on a sheet
of paper soaked in developer,
under a red light. They IM and
spend hours chatting on
myspace.com to people they’ll
never meet. We watch reality TV
but fail to participate in reality,
which in this digital age has
seemed to lose its definition.
May 31 CMC Meeting:
Photoshop Basics
presented by Amy Renaud, New Horizons
Like I requested last summer, now
may be a good time to take a step
back and disconnect. Like last
summer, my family and I are off to a
vacation where we have no phone (cell
or otherwise), TV or computer. We’ll be
looking at old photos, reading books,
fishing and swimming, cooking dinner
as a family and looking at the
moon, stars and Milky Way at
night. We’ll listen to birds early in
the morning and crickets before bed.
Last summer when I wrote about disconnecting from this digital life I got
15 emails from CMC members saying
“Right on, Rich.” I think so many
of us are so busy that we need to
take that time.
I hope you can enjoy these hazy,
lazy crazy days of summer. Read
a good book, enjoy a good meal,
and stop and smell the roses,
stare at the Milky Way and
maybe even do things the old
fashioned way. Don’t worry, if
you take a break from technology, believe me it will still be here
when you get back. Steve Jobs will
still be implementing his move to
Intel, there will be new iPods on the
market and Mac OS X.5 will be just
around the corner – and CMC will
still be here to help you with all of
these. Unplug the phone, turn off
the cell and don’t check the email.
Enjoy! 
2
hard drive that was available for under $150, he also sent this
reminder out regarding formatiing hard drives:
Did You Know...?
from the ctmac support group
“This is just a precautionary note, pretty much all hard drives
come formatted for PC. So when you buy an external drive, you
should make sure you use Disk Utility to reformat it to
MacHFS+ with Journaling.”
Did you know that CMC also hosts a Mac Support mailing list for
it’s members? It s a great place to ask questions and glean information for the balance of the month when we don’t have a meeting.
If you’d like to join, just submit your information at our website:
www.ctmac.org. You will need to use an email address that the club
has on file for you so that we can verify membership. Here are just
a few tips that were emailed to the CTMac Support mailing list:
Repairing Permissions from Chris Hart
Question, which may involve a technical response that I do not
understand: Why would I need to continue repairing the permissions? What are permissions, anyway? Shouldn’t one fix
do the trick? – TE
Free iPod ebook from Joe Arcuri
iLounge has put out a free book, “The Free iPod Book 2.0”
<http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/
download-now-the-free-ipod-book-20/>
From their description: The Free iPod Book
2.0, by iLounge.com! Weighing in at 194
pages, this revised and expanded second edition of our popular Book is your one-stop
answer to every major iPod and iTunes question… plus much, much more. Inside, you’ll
find 20 exclusive sneak peeks at new iPod
accessories from Atlantic, Belkin, Griffin, Monitor Audio,
Oakley, Sonic Impact, Targus, v-moda, and others, ratings of
over 900 accessories and iPods, plus extraordinary guides to All
Things iPod, All Things iTunes, and Beyond.
The answer to what permissions are is not a simple one. But it
has to do with the integral security features of Unix (the underpinnings of MacOSX). If the permissions are not set correctly,
the operating system and the software that you want to run, may
not be able to access the files and resources that they need to, in
order to function.
There are numerous reason why permissions get out of whack and
need to be corrected on an ongoing basis. For some people, they
may be able to go months and not have any permissions-related
issues. Others may have to make more frequent repairs. I would
suggest that everyone perform the permissions repair monthly.
If it seems like there is a long list of stuff that had to be fixed
when you do it monthly, then consider doing it more often.
Basically, it’s a fact of life with OSX. But the good thing is that
it’s easily fixed and doesn’t take more than 10 minutes. 
Formatting a New Hard Drive from Chris Hart
When Chris sent an FYI note about a hot deal for a large format
A page will open in your default web browser showing the
website. With luck, you will be taken straight to the map
you requested. However, you may need to confirm or
amend details before seeing the map.
DOWNLOAD OF THE MONTH
MappingService, v. 1.0
Some mapping sites allow queries other than addresses,
such as services available in an area (e.g “plumber New
York”). Experiment by selecting different text and seeing
what happens!
Maps from text via the Mac OS X Services menu
Just type in the address and find the map. Great and easy.
MappingService is a utility for working with mapping websites in Mac OS X. Select text (e.g. an address) in an email,
webpage or other document, then choose Map from the
Services menu to display a map using Google Maps
<http://maps.google.com>
I tested MappingService in 10.3.9 on a Mac B&W G3. The
product works great. However, as the documentation notes,
this service is not supported by Firefox 1.5 or Word 2004.
Other than that, it is a nice addition to services.
Mac OS X 10.4.6. It is likely to work with earlier versions
of Mac OS X, although it has not been tested with these versions. MappingService is Universal software, so it will run
natively on both Intel and PowerPC Macs.
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/
redir/lid/762945/MappingService.dmg
Select the text of an address in an application (e.g. a message in Mail, a webpage in Safari, or a PDF document in
Preview). Then select Service > Map from the application
menu. (The application menu is just next to the Apple menu,
and has the name of the application you’re working in, e.g.
“Mail”, “Safari”, “Preview”.) Select the mapping website
you wish to use from the displayed sub-menu.
3
Avoid the Most Common
Mac OS X Font Mistakes
by Sharon Zardetto Aker
The Mac OS X approach to fonts is something that can leave users baffled, and no
wonder: many different types are supported,
they can be stored in a multitude of places,
and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger installs some
duplicate fonts as a default... and that’s just
for starters.
In many months of font research for the
recently published “Take Control of Fonts
in Mac OS X” and its companion volume
“Take Control of Font Problems in Mac OS
X,” I trolled the Web and lurked on many
message boards, intrepidly experimented on
my own Macs, and served as the emergency
contact for graphic designer friends (and
their friends, and their friends’ friends). Of
the many misunderstandings and management mistakes users make, one stands out as
the most common: consolidating fonts into
a single Fonts folder.
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/
fonts-macosx.html?14@@!pt=TB831>
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/font-problems-macosx.html?14@@!pt=TB831>
I don’t know exactly what motivates people
to do this. (I’m not sure what motivates me
to dig into the details of using the Mac – I
just do, even when I’m not going to write
about it.) But many users explore their systems, change things, and sometimes run
into trouble. The Font Book application
included with Tiger is such an improvement
over its previous version that there’s seldom
any need to deal directly with Fonts folders.
(And graphics professionals who need more
than Font Book use third-party font managers that protect them from needing to
know about Fonts folders.) But perhaps a
user adds a font and wants to get rid of what
appear to be duplicates, or she comes from
a Mac OS 9 background where it was more
“normal” to manipulate font files manually.
Whatever the reason, when you first start
poking around on your drive looking for
where fonts are stored (perhaps by doing a
Spotlight search for folders named
“Fonts”), you may be surprised to find at
least three different folders, and perhaps
four, from Tiger:
In the System directory
(/System/Library/Fonts)
At the “shared by all users”
level (/Library/Fonts)
In your home directory
(~/Library/Fonts)
In the Mac OS 9 System Folder
(/System Folder/Fonts) if you’ve
installed Classic.
Installing Adobe’s Creative Suite adds
another Fonts folder (in /Library/
Application Support/Adobe/Fonts), and if
you have Microsoft Office, you get yet
another (in /Applications/ Microsoft Office
2004/Office/Fonts).
<http://www.adobe.com/creativesuite/>
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/
products/office2004/>
Many people, when faced with this seeming
mess, decide it’s ridiculous to have fonts
spread all over the place and start shuffling
the files around, combining them in only
one or two Fonts folders.
Despite the apparent simplicity, wholesale
consolidation is a mistake, because where
your fonts are stored controls what applications (and, on a multi-user Mac, which
users) can see those fonts. Most fonts are
stored in various locations for good reasons.
Here’s the scoop on each of the Fonts folders listed above.
System Fonts Folder – Tiger installs 30
fonts in this folder (/System/Library/Fonts).
Several of them are so important that if you
remove them, your menus and dialogs can
implode into gibberish and your Mac will
refuse to start up. These all-important fonts
are LucidaGrande, Geneva, Monaco, and
Helvetica. Only slightly less important are
Keyboard and LastResort, fonts that don’t
even show up in your Font menus. Whether
or not the two AquaKana OpenType files
are dispensable is a matter of some debate;
my considered opinion is that, since Apple
went to some trouble to keep them invisible
- they don’t show up in Font menus - you
should leave them alone. In fact, leave the
System Fonts folder completely alone:
don’t put fonts in it or take them out.
4
The System Fonts folder has its own unique
way of interacting with you when you try to
remove any of its fonts: drag a font out and
a copy is automatically made in the destination, with the original left in place. The only
way you can really remove a font from this
folder is to send it directly to the Trash: drag
it there, or select it and press CommandDelete, or Command-click or right-click on
the icon for a contextual menu and choose
Move To Trash. You’ll have to supply an
administrative password along the way. But
while that’s good to know in an academic
sense, all these safeguards against accidental removal of system fonts should remind
you to leave them all alone!
Library Fonts Folder – Fonts in this
folder (/Library/Fonts) can be “seen” by
all user accounts, so they’re available to
every user of the machine. On a singleuser Mac, there’s really no difference
between storing fonts here or in the User
Fonts folder. Tiger puts 35 fonts in this
folder; Apple’s iLife and iWork applications put their fonts here, too.
User Fonts Folder – Each user account on
the Mac has its own Fonts folder
(~/Library/Fonts); the fonts in it are available to only that user. Tiger doesn’t install
any fonts in this folder; Microsoft Office
puts its fonts here - Office X provides 15
fonts, but Office 2004 donates a generous
77 font files! If you’re the only user, this is
where you should put any fonts you install.
On a multi-user Mac, you might want to
keep some fonts private to a specific
account (so they don’t clutter other users’
Font menus); to share them with all the
users of a specific machine, they must be in
/Library/Fonts.
Classic Fonts Folder – If the Classic environment is installed on your machine, only
the fonts in the Mac OS 9 System Folder
(/System Folder/Fonts) are available to
Classic applications (they’re also available
to your Tiger applications). Unlike Tiger’s
wider choice of font types, only Mac
TrueType and PostScript Type 1 fonts work
in the Classic environment. Tiger automatically smoothes fonts on the screen in only
the Mac OS X environment, so if you want
continued on page 5
your Type 1 fonts to be drawn correctly on the screen (instead of with
the famous, dreaded “jaggies”) in
Classic, you need Adobe’s ATM
Light version 4.6.2 or later installed
in Classic.
<http://www.adobe.com/products/
atmlight/main.html>
Adobe’s Fonts Folder – As befits the
inventor of PostScript fonts, Adobe
provides a generous assortment of
fonts with its applications. But when
they’re in their default location, only
Adobe applications can access them
(/Library/Application Support/
Adobe/Fonts). If you want to use
these fonts in all your applications,
you must move them to the Library
Fonts or User Fonts folder. That
sounds like a good deal until you see
how non-Adobe applications handle
the plethora of typefaces for these
OpenType fonts: Warnock Pro, for
instance, has 32 different typefaces
that Word lists in about two dozen
entries! Moving a few of your
favorites, and turning them on and off
through Font Book, is a better plan
than indiscriminately moving all of
the Adobe fonts to another folder.
(Note that you won’t see these fonts
in Font Book unless you move them
to one of your Tiger Fonts folders;
Adobe’s folder “belongs” to Adobe’s
applications, so Font Book doesn’t
manage its contents.)
Another mistake users make in regard
to the Adobe Fonts folder is deleting
it after moving its fonts to another
Font folder. Adobe buried a subfolder in it (/Library/Application
Support/ Adobe/Fonts/Reqrd/Base)
that holds more fonts, ones that are
used by Adobe applications for things
like its tool palettes. Without these
fonts in that folder – in that specific
folder path - Adobe applications don’t
even open.
Microsoft’s Fonts Folder – This
folder (/Applications/Microsoft
Office 2004/Office/Fonts) is a red
herring that leads to quite a bit of confusion in the category of “a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.” If
you know that Tiger supports “application Fonts folders” such as the
Adobe one just described, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that this
folder holds fonts for Microsoft applications - especially because each of
the fonts in it shows up in your Fonts
menu. The confusion starts when you
take a font out of the folder and realize it still appears in your Font menu.
Or, you add a font to the folder, and it
doesn’t show up in your Font menu.
Or, you notice that all its fonts are
also in your User fonts folder and you
decide to delete one or the other copy
of the over six dozen duplicate files.
This folder is a mere storage bin; Tiger
doesn’t access it at all, which is why
altering its contents has no effect on
your Font menus. Microsoft Office
copies these fonts into your User Fonts
folder the first time you run it; the originals stay in place, to be copied for the
next user account that runs Office, and
so on. Tiger accesses only the copies in
the User Fonts folder.
Fonts, Fonts, Everywhere – Don’t
assume that just because Tiger uses
so many Fonts folders that it doesn’t
matter which one you use for your
fonts, or that the best approach is to
collect all your fonts together for
easier management. It’s better to
understand the differences between
the folders and store your fonts
based on how (and who) you want to
access them. 
[Sharon Zardetto Aker, who has written
about the Mac since its birth in 1984,
made her first foray into electronic publishing with her recent “Take Control of
Fonts” titles. Between them, the two
ebooks contain over 350 pages of this
kind of information about fonts.
See Page 9 of this newsletter for ordering
info and discount codes]
5
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Image File
Formats
sion, a loss-free technique of reducing file size, or lossy compression
using JPEG compression.
by Rich Lenoce
Compressed from the
Back-to-Basics
Presentation at the
May CMC Meeting
TIFFs offer terrific dynamic range and bit depth and exhibit no compression artifacts when LZW lossless compression is applied. TIFFs
support layers and alpha channel transparency. The exceptional
quality and acceptance of TIFF files means it’s perfect for archiving
and is the choice of the Library of Congress for archiving images.
This presentation covers the most popular bitmap (pixel-based)
image file formats universal to all platforms, RAW, TIFF, JPEG, GIF
and PNG. I won’t be covering proprietary formats such as PSD, vector-based formats such as Illustrator and CAD files, or files specific
to operating systems such as Windows Bit Map (. bmp), Windows
Media files or Apple PICT files.
TIFF file sizes are large and with older software (pre-OSX and
WinXP) there were compatibility issues between Macs and PCs.
Why use TIFFs?
For the highest quality images
If you don’t mind large file sizes
No compression artifacts
Excellent for image editing as it supports layers and alpha channel
transparency
Moving files between image editing software (Photoshop to Paint
Shop pro for example)
Print and page layout work (many service bureaus will not accept
JPEGs as printing accentuates compression artifacts.
Very compatible with image software
Supports meta-data
RAW
RAW is not a type of image file format! RAW is just the raw sensor
data stored in a proprietary file format. Obviously, RAW is inherently lossless. It offers maximum resolution, no compression
artifacts, has very wide dynamic range (white to black) and high bitdepth (24bit or more). The RAW camera data isn’t a picture until it
is processed further and then converted to an image file (JPG, TIFF,
etc. ). Though RAW offers the highest quality, there are many disadvantages for non-professionals.
Many cameras today have an option of taking TIFF images. It’s a
great option to RAW offering pre-processed photos without compression artifacts.
RAW files are 2-6 times larger than a minimally compressed JPEG.
Data is large and will take 2-6 times longer to write to the card slowing your camera down
You need to spend a great deal of time to process the image with your
computer. This includes exposure compensaton, color/white balance,
sharpness, etc.
It takes a powerful computer, sophisticated software and good quality monitor to work with RAW images
You have to know what you are doing.
Since RAW file formats are not standard, software manufacturers can
refuse to support your camera manufacturers file format in the future.
Or, you may find when purchasing a camera that software does not
yet support your cameras RAW data.
JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group)
JPEG or JPG (. jpg) was developed by professional photographers,
specifically photo journalists, in the 1980s to transmit scanned photos over phone lines. It originally just defined a compressed data
stream and there were initially many file formats that used the JPEG
compression. Today, we commonly refer to the file format and it’s
compression as JPEG and give it the .jpg file extension. It has
become the standard not only in professional photojournalism but
consumer photography and the World Wide Web.
It offers:
millions of colors (23 million) offering excellent color reproduction
high resolution to low resolution
good bit depth
scalable Lossy compression–from very high quality nearly indistinguishable from the original to low quality
JPEG compression offers tremendous savings in file sizes even when
only slight compression is applied.
For the amateur and even most professionals, it’s best to stick with
your cameras recommended file format (JPG, TIFF, etc) because
cameras process those formats in hardware much faster than your
computer can do it in software.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a file format for
mainly storing high quality images, including photographs and line
art. Originally created by the company Aldus, jointly with
Microsoft, for use with PostScript printing, TIFF is a popular format
for high color depth images and is compatible with all major image
editing and page layout applications. TIFFs support multiple layers
and pages. Tags in the header not only mean TIFFs are image files
but like Quicktime can act as a wrapper for JPEG images especially
when layers and multiple pages need to be supported.
Small file sizes have allowed JPEG to be used heavily on the web as
the photo standard and is supported in all browsers originally being
implemented in Mosaic v1. All applications that can accept images,
accept JPEGs. It is a worldwide standard.
This small file size has also allowed digital cameras to become much
faster as JPEG processing and compression is simple and fast. JPEG
images can be written quickly to camera memory and offloaded to
computers, networks and printers.
TIFF files can be saved with no compression, with LZW compres-
continued on page 7
6
Developed by professional photographers, for photographers, JPEG
is the file format of choice for people who shoot lots of photographs.
Applying JPEGs within the camera allows cameras to snap hundreds of pictures in a row and to store tens of thousands of
photographs on a hard drive.
JPEG uses Lossy compression meaning it throws data away in favor
of small file sizes. This compression is user adjustable. Whether in the
camera or in software, like Photoshop, the compression is encoded
based on a quality setting usually on a sliding scale of low to high (112) or as pre-defined quality settings (high, medium, low).
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
GIF is a bitmap image format for pictures with up to 256 distinct
colors. The format was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and
has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web.
GIFs are compressed files, and were adopted to reduce the amount
of time it takes to transfer images over a network connection.
JPEG Compression Ratio and Artifacts
Compression ratio can be varied according to need by being more or
less aggressive.10:1 compression usually results in an image that
can’t be distinguished by eye from the original. 100: 1 compression
is possible, but will look distinctly artifacted compared to the original. The appropriate level of compression depends on the use to
which the image will be put.
A GIF file employs lossless data compression so that the file size
of an image may be reduced without degrading the visual quality,
provided the image fits into 256 colors. The GIF format’s 256colour limitation makes it unsuitable for photographs, though
losslessly compressed photographs tend to be unacceptably large
for the web anyway. On the other hand the lossy JPEG format
does poorly on sharp transitions like those in diagrams or text,
producing highly visible artifacts and little file-size reduction.
Therefore GIF is normally used for diagrams, buttons, illustrations etc., that have a small number of colors, while the JPEG
format is used for photographs.
Those who use the World Wide Web may be familiar with the irregularities known as compression artifacts that appear in JPEG digital
images. These are due to the DCT and quantization steps of the
JPEG algorithm. They are especially noticeable around eyes in pictures of faces. They can be reduced by choosing a lower level of
compression; they may be eliminated by saving an image using a
lossless file format, though for photographic images this will usually result in a larger file size. Compression artifacts make low-quality
JPEGs unacceptable for storing vector graphics such as text, maps
or illustrations which will appear unacceptably blocky and soft especially along line edges–best to use GIFS or PNGs.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG is a lossless compressed bitmap image format. PNG was created to both improve upon and replace the GIF format with an image
file format that goes beyond the 256-color limitation.
The more compression that is applied beyond a certain level, the
more artifacts will appear. The image will become soft, blocky and
color will get washed out. How much compression to apply? It
depends on the use. Photoshop uses a quality slider scale of 1-12.
You can see the file size change as you move the slider–remember
to compare the compressed size to the image size located at the bottom left of the image window. A 10: 1 file size setting is about a “10”
on the slider. You notice no perceptible change to your photograph
other than the file size is 10-12 times smaller. A 10 megabyte file
will compress to under 1 megabyte. That’s pretty dramatic. This is
perfect for storing and archiving photos for printing.
Not only does PNG have the advantage of millions of colors like
JPEGs but has
excellent color depth
supports alpha channel transparency
uses lossless compression making it great for text, illustrations
and maps
supports interlacing so images can appear in a browser gradually
rather than waiting for the entire image to download
like JPEGs and TIFFs, PNGs support metadata information
Its lossless compression makes it ideal for image editing
Setting Photoshop’s JPEG compression to 5 reduces the file size to
20-40: 1 with little additional artifacts–if it’s a large photo you may
have to blow it up to an enormous size and look closely to see the
problems. This may be good for
snapshots but would be too little
compression for web photos unless
there’s only 1 photo per page like
in a photo gallery. However, going
beyond 5, or 50: 1 and above compression, artifacts will become
very noticible but may be perfectly
acceptable for the web. Why? Web
browsers display images in low
resolution, 72 dpi, which is acceptable for viewing on a small
monitor but unacceptable for
detailed viewing or printing
Jpeg artifacts appear as square
tiles along hard edges.
(150dpi is the minimum).
There are some disadvantages
Unlike GIFs, PNG does not support animation
Though image quality is excellent because of lossless compression, when used to compress photographs, file sizes remain larger
than JPEGs.
Not supported by all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and the
versions it does support features are missing such as alpha channel
Does not support camera-generated EXIF meta-data
Despite campaigns, PNG adoption on websites has been fairly
slow. GIF is still more widely used than PNG, partially due to the
fact there is limit Internet Explorer support on the Windows side
and the fact that many advertisers use GIF animation to deliver
product advertisements on the web. 
7
SPECIAL OFFERS - Apple User Group Bulletin - June 2006
These User Group discounts are brought to
you by the Apple User Group Advisory
Board and Tom Piper, vendor relations. You
must be a current Apple user group member to qualify for these savings. Not a
member? Join an Apple user group today to
take advantage of these special offers.
Apple User Group Advisory Board home
page: http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/
FeedForAll Mac: $5 Discount
FeedForAll Mac helps users create, edit and
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CMC special price is $34.95 electronic, or
$44.95 for CD, which is $5.00 off on either.
Coupon Code appug. www.feedforall.com/
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Offer valid until August 31, 2006.
Digital Media: Tutorials at 20% Off
Wirelessly answer calls on your Bluetooth
phone thanks to the built-in microphone,
which works with your Bluetooth-enabled
computer for VoIP calls as well. Reg.
$99.99, CMC members can purchase the
Bluetake Bluetooth headphones kit for
$84.99, a 15 percent discount.
Promo Code MUG2006
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Offer valid through August 31, 2006.
O’Reilly: New Discounts for CMC
(see page 5 for full news release)
CMC members can get a discount of 30%
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The MUG Store
PayCycle’s service lets Macintosh users
manage payroll in minutes. With a few
clicks, you can run paycheck calculations,
do direct deposits, make tax payments and
filings. Live payroll experts back you up at
no extra charge. As a bonus, PayCycle integrates with most small business Mac
accounting software. With a regular price
(for five people or less) of $42.99 per month
for PayCycle Plus, or $24.99 per month for
PayCycle Basic, CMC members can click
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three months free, which is a special 25%
discount. www.paycyclemacug.com
The MUG store has three main categories
for CMC members to browse: Specials,
Blowouts and Apple Product. The Specials
are new items that are particularly well
priced for MUG members, Blowouts are a
great “garage sale” assortment of every
Mac-compatible item you can think of, and
the Apple Product showcases great deals on
all the latest Macs, including free freight
and RAM rebates as well as other special
offers. When CMC members buy from the
MUG Store, CMC receives points toward
anything the MUG store sells - with enough
points that item could be free! The passwords to get into this exclusive site are on
page 9 of your printed CMC newsletter.
Offer valid through July 31, 2006.
Bluetake Bluetooth Headphone
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members can receive 8 issues of MacTech
Looking for information on a past offer?
Tom Piper, Apple User Group vendor coordinator, publishes a single page with all
current offers, expiration dates and codes.
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers/
vendorcodes.htm
Password for this site is located on page 9
of your printed CMC newsletter.
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8
CMC IDs and Passwords
[email protected]
Take Control of Fonts in Mac OS X
The 255-page “Take Control of Fonts
in Mac OS X: Tiger Edition” covers
how to get organized if your fonts are
already a mess: where they are
installed; why they are there; what to
do about duplicates; and how to handle
fonts from Mac OS 9 and from Adobe,
Apple, and Microsoft software. Once
that’s under control, you’ll learn
how to buy new fonts and the ins and
outs of a variety of font installation
methods. Then Sharon turns to using
the fonts: how to find them in menus,
type with a foreign language keyboard
layout, and take advantage of the
wealth of cool special characters hidden in modern Unicode fonts. Sharon
wraps up with font-related advice for
sharing documents with others, particularly people using Windows
applications.
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.co
m/ fonts-macosx.html>
Take Control of Font Problems
in Mac OS X, Tiger Edition
A companion volume, the 120-page
“Take Control of Font Problems in Mac
OS X, Tiger Edition,” begins with a look
at the different types of fonts you may
find on your Mac and where they are
stored, gives you advice on preventative
measures and a roundup of useful problem-solving tools, and gets you going
by teaching you how to perform basic
troubleshooting measures. Once that’s
out of the way, a table helps you determine if you have a specific sort of
problem or a general one. You’ll find
lots of solutions to specific problems, as
well as a colorful flowchart that
gives a visual overview of how to
troubleshoot a general problem (you
can also download the flowchart as a
stand-alone flier from our Web site; feel
free to share it with friends). The flowchart links to specific instructions for
carrying out each troubleshooting step.
If you have a font problem, know people who have font problems, or want to
be sure you’ll be on top of things if a
problem crops up, this ebook is for you.
We expect that most people will want
both ebooks, but if you plan to pick up
only this one, note that it assumes
you understand the basics of managing fonts and working in Font Book.
iPod and iTunes Superguide
Although listening to music and watching video on an iPod is usually an easy
and enjoyable experience, sometimes
moving media to the iPod takes considerable effort. Now, you can get expert
advice from the folks at Macworld
Magazine, with this 88-page collection
of articles, assembled into a handy electronic book. You’ll learn about ripping
music from tapes and LPs and converting video for the iPod, along with
advice on dealing with a massive music
library and on managing a large collection of classical music. Other topics
include viewing photos on an iPod,
extending iPod battery life, syncing
multiple Macs and iPods, backups and
troubleshooting, and finding useful iPod
accessories. The ebook has a gorgeous
color layout and the usual ebook goodness, including bookmarks and hotlinks,
and we think it’s a great item for any
iPod owner’s digital bookshelf.
You can purchase the ebook on its own
with a 10% MUG discount (use the
URL below), or you can buy the ebook
bundled with our “Take Control of Your
iPod: Beyond the Music,” which covers
all that you can do with your iPod other
than listening to music (use the URL
below, but click the Buy Both button in
the left margin; you’ll get a bundle
coupon that is slightly better than the
MUG discount). Please note that the
MUG discount does not apply to
Macworld’s $24.99 print version, available from the ebook’s Web page.
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/mwipod-itunes.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0038
-TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG
9
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for one of our free prizes every
month! Win t-shirts, toys, CDs,
mugs, software…there’s always
something we’re giving away!
[email protected]
Our annual workshop meeting is here
again. It’s worth the drive to Middletown to
take part in these instructional and fun
classes that allow you to follow along with
the instructor. Everyone gets to participate
and learn something new!
Take your pick from these 3 workshops:
“Lighting and Composition” for still
photography and videography with Rich
Lenoce. This is where you learn the essentials that will help your photos and videos
look better than ever. Learn about methods
such as perspective, framing a shot and
depth of field. You’ll also come to understand the impact that effective lighting can
have on the images you capture. Feel free
to bring your still or video camera.
“GarageBand for the Amateur Musician”
presented by with Don Dickey. Put your
musical knowledge to use as you learn how
to arrange a song in GarageBand. We’ll
start with a simple piano track. Then, we’ll
add a few other instruments so you’ll sound
like a small combo. The ability to sight read
music would be helpful, but you don’t have
to be an accomplished pianist to learn and
have fun. Feel free to bring in some sheet
music if you like.
“Learning iMovie” with Aaron Czarnecki.
Here is your chance to master the video
editing and movie-making part of the iLife
toolbox. Whether you’re working with still
photos, or high tech digital video, iMovie is
where you can tell your story and make
images come alive. This is place to go to
get started with making videos for DVD
and the Internet.
(Please be aware that, due to technical
restrictions, these iLife classes will be conducted using the ‘05 version. Everything
you learn will also be applicable to the ‘06
version.)
TAKE NOTE: There will be no Back To
Basics session for June.
And don’t forget the Free table at
the back of the room where everything is...FREE!
C L A S S I F I E D
New Members!
For Sale: Microsoft Office 2001 for
Mac OS 9 or earlier (or in “Classic”
mode on OS X). $25 or best offer.
Send email to [email protected]
for more info.
A D
Account Balances
Checking Account ........$1790.21
Money Market ..................$3999.62
Display Ad Rates
Balances as of June 8, 2006
listed below.
Business Card ...................$10.00
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
Half Page .........................$30.00
Full Page .........................$50.00
Getting CMC emails?
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, June 28 • 7 pm
3 hands-on programs held at:
1. Lighting & Composition
for still photography & videography
2. GarageBand for the Amateur
3. Learning iMovie
(See page 11 for info • Directions below)
Special Directions for June 28:
Directions for CMC Monthly Meetings
UConn Health Center, Farmington
From the Hartford area, take Route 9 South. A few miles
south of downtown Middletown on Route 9, take Exit 11
(Rt. 155, Randolph Road). At the end of the ramp (for
both N. & S. bound), turn right onto
Randolph
Road. Continue to the traffic light at the top of the hill
and turn left onto Saybrook Road. Go a quarter of a mile
and turn right onto Reservoir Road. Travel past the stop
sign, then take the first right onto Training Hill Road.
Your first left will lead into the Middlesex Community
College Campus parking area. When you arrive on campus, take a right onto Training Hill Road. Go to the
second parking lot entrance and take a left into the upper
lot. Directly in front of you will be Snow Hall. Enter
Snow Hall and go up the stairs to the 2nd floor and go to
the last room on the right, Room 509.
From I-84: Take Exit 39 (if coming from I-84 West, Exit
39 is after 39A). Turn right at first traffic light onto Route
4 East (Farmington Avenue). At third traffic light, turn
right to enter the Health Center campus. Go around the
main building to the right (at a Y in road), then take a left
when you get to the Academic Entrance. The road
becomes two-way there so you should be able to tell where
to turn. (Do not go on straight to the two-way part). Then
take the second right into parking lot A&B. this is close to
the building. Go past the police station entrance on your
left (small sign). You will see a continuation of the building with its own entrance area. This is the new research
building. Enter on the ground floor, turn right and enter
room EG-013 on your right. This is the first room on your
right. The rest rooms are on your left as you enter.
12
Keeping the Net Neutral .................... 1
Download of the Month .....................3
Unintelligible Garbage…Friend..........4
Software Review: Opera 9..................6
Apple’s New Store in NYC..................7
MAC OS X Routine Maintenance........7
CMC Member Discounts ....................8
Meetings and Club News .................11
Keeping the
Net Neutral
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Imagine if the Internet
were priced like cable
TV, using various tiers
of service with these
tiers being defined by content. Like
cable TV, there’d be basic, standard and
premium content, each offering more,
and more elaborate content choices.
Consumers would pay to sign up for a
tier while companies providing content
would pay for the ability to have their
content appear in these various tiers.
ISPs would have the power to block
companies who don’t pay to be in a tier
or may block content for financial or
political reasons. Cable also offers technical levels of service, standard and
high definition. Internet providers
might charge extra for Google or Yahoo
to allow their services to be delivered
on their networks at higher speeds.
This isn’t fiction.
If the giant telecommunication companies, which have gobbled up all the
small ISPs creating huge, high bandwidth networks, have their way, you
may see tiered Internet services based
on content and technology.
Controlling Internet Content
Imagine a world where Internet content
is controlled. Imagine paying extra to
access the popular Google search
engine or Google being forced to pay
AT&T or Comcast to be on their network. Imagine an ISP charging an extra
dollar from each iTunes song downloaded or imagine an ISP blocking the
JULY 2006
iTunes Music Store altogether
in favor of their own service.
Why would AT&T want
Skype Voice Over IP Internet
Services using their network?
Or, for that matter, why would
Comcast want AOL video
services over theirs? And,
what to do about those left
wing bloggers or people blogging against ISPs? Those of us who use
a lot of bandwidth each month need to
ask shouldn’t we be paying more then
those folks who just check their email?
Most importantly, why not charge
everyone on the Internet who serves
content to pay for using the network
and the more you pay, the faster your
content gets served over the network.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve grown
accustomed to a world of open Internet
access where the ‘net is neutral. Today
the issue of Net neutrality is in the forefront of hot techno-political topics. Two
bills are before Congress supporting
and hoping to keep the Internet neutral.
The question before Congress right
now is do we want Internet services to
look like cable TV?
History of the Net Neutrality Movement
The term Net neutrality was first used
by Columbia University Law Professor
Tim Wu as the name of a legal principle that regulators of broadband
operators should use to decide between
“permissible” and “forbidden” grounds
for discriminating among packets of
data on a network. In the two bills
before Congress, sponsors are asking
that the network owners not discriminate in any way with regards to
content, either in pricing or in letting
services use the network.
The Advantage Goes to ISPs and Telcos
ISPs appear to have the advantage as
restricting the Internet flies in the face
of free trade according to the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, as well as
Verizon, AT&T and Comcast.
The arguments against net neutrality
are sound. The original networks built
through the military and National
Science Foundation grants have long
since been replaced by the giant phone
and cable companies referred to as the
Telecommunications Companies or
Telcos who are today the major Internet
Service Providers (ISPs). Like a cable
TV provider that owns the cable wires,
the Telcos own these networks and
believe they should be allowed to make
a profit not only off of access to their
networks but off the content services
that use their network.
Net neutrality proponents have laid out
arguments including monopoly and
restricted First Amendment arguments
against the Telcos/ISPs. Given the current regulatory environment, these
arguments are weak. The 1896 monopoly argument doesn’t work here
because cable and telephone companies
have already been designated legal
monopolies so there is precedent. These
large ISPs might limit access and content and some might consider this a
restriction on free speech but that argument doesn’t work here either. Two
significant court cases, Chesapeake vs.
Potomac and FCC vs. Turner, ruled that
Cable companies and Telcos are themselves First Amendment speakers and
as such cannot be compelled to promote
speech they disagree with. ISPs certainly have the legal right to block websites
they don’t agree with.
Continued on page 2
1
NEWSLETTER OF
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
the newsletter.
Telcos/ISPs want their Share
The bottom line comes down to dollars
and cents. Despite it’s ubiquity, the
Internet as a content provider generates
only about $8 billion in content revenue
and the large Telcos claim that constant
building, maintenance and replacement
of these networks has yielded little in
the way of profit to them, though many
companies have gotten rich off access
to their networks. Right now Telcos are
only collecting revenues on supplying
the technical infrastructure, not the content. There are many profitable
content-providing companies like
Google, Yahoo and eBay that the ISPs
feel should pay something to them for
using their network.
John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice
president, represented his company at a
conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of
1996. At that conference earlier this
year, he expressed the belief that phone
and cable companies should charge
Internet firms additional fees for using
their high-speed lines. Thorne said,
“The network builders are spending a
fortune constructing and maintaining
the networks that Google intends to
ride on with nothing but cheap servers.
Google is enjoying a free lunch that
should, by any rational account, be the
lunch of the facilities providers.”
In addition, there are many, many more
companies, public and private organizations and citizens who use these
networks to either attempt to make
money (profitable or not) or as a form
of communications. The Telcos feel all
these content providers should pay not
just to have access to the network by
paying their monthly ISP bill but
should also pay to use the network to
provide content.
Let’s look at CMC. We’re a non-profit
organization using the Internet to communicate with our membership and the
public at large. The Telcos feel CMC
should pay something for that communication over their network. In the
analog world, we pay our printer for
2
producing our newsletter. We also pay
the Post Office to deliver our newsletter. In the digital world we pay the
company that hosts our website to
serve our web pages but don’t pay
Telcos to deliver that service. The
Telcos see themselves like the Post
Office and that we should pay for the
delivery of our messages and the price
charged should be based on both speed
and bandwidth used much like the Post
Office charges for size and weight.
Our #1 CMC expense is the printing
and mailing of the newsletter you
receive each month, which comes to
something like $20 of your $25 membership dues. A similar charge for
using the network for our website, PDF
newsletters and support forums could
be very detrimental for CMC. We don’t
have the wealth of Google, Yahoo,
Amazon, etc. Multiply CMC by the
hundreds of millions of other organizations, small businesses and citizens
who serve content and you see how the
Internet could become a huge revenue
generator for the Telcos perhaps surpassing the #1 media content generator,
television, that generates $90 billion in
revenue annually. On the other hand,
millions of Internet content providers
would disappear with this added
expense.
Promoting Net Neutrality
The proponents of Net neutrality are
well organized and are doing a great
job of speaking for the big businesses
and small organizations like CMC, as
well as private citizens. Their P.R. campaigns have been loud and effective
while the giant ISPs have been doing
expensive backdoor lobbying to House
and Senate members.
Bringing Back Competition
to the Internet
The problem is competition; there is
now little of it to keep the giant ISPs in
check. When I first signed on to the
Web 12 years ago there was a plethora
of small ISPs and the AT&Ts and cable
companies of the world weren’t interested in this niche form of
Continued on page 3
communications. All of that has
changed as those ISPs are all long
gone, being bought by the largest
Telcos. Today, a few large players control the network and lease access to the
smaller ISPs that are still left.
Should Net neutrality legislation not
pass the answer may reside in two
places: more competition and consumer choice. Municipal Internet
access offers the biggest challenge as it
would offer users an alternative to the
large, private ISPs.
The Internet as Common Carrier
The Federal Government could also
legally designate the Internet a
Common Carrier. A highway is an
example of a public common carrier as
trucks and cars use the highway for
commerce and personal use. Private
common carriers include trucking companies and airlines that carry “content,”
people and property, but don’t discriminate against the content they carry.
One scalable fee would fit all based on
whatever they designate such as the
Post Office charging for weight and
size, etc. The ISPs already act like common carriers as they already charge
web providers for bandwidth used and
charge consumers for access and don’t
yet on a large scale discriminate against
services. Such designation as a common carrier would move these ISPs
away from being considered telecommunications carriers to Common
Carriers, a designation they have long
fought against as they enjoy certain
legal and financial (monopoly) protections as telecommunicators.
Net neutrality is an issue that should be
of concern to all CMC members. First,
there are the issues of free speech and
access to websites. Large ISPs are
already throwing their weight around
blocking speech and inhibiting access.
In April, AOL blocked emails that mentioned the website www.dearaol.com
because that site opposed and advocates against AOL’s pay-to-send
e-mail scheme which allows companies to pay AOL money so their email
won’t be blocked by AOL’s spam filter. AOL didn’t like their political or
economic perspective so it blocked
the site to all members. ISPs like
Comcast which sell downloadable
content, Microsoft (MSN) which
sees the Mac OS as a threat and
AT&T/Yahoo which promotes
Yahoo Chat instead of the AOLbased iChat all would have reasons
to block Macintosh access of various services. Most importantly, the
blocking or tiering of content by ISPs is
just plain wrong.
Finally, there is the financial side. The
telecommunications industry claims
funds earned by charging Google,
Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and others to use
their networks could be used to lower
the cost of your monthly Internet bill.
What they don’t tell you is the price of
goods and services offered through the
Internet would go up and guess who
would pay?
If you believe in the First Amendment
and feel that the Internet should
remain neutral with regards to content
for free speech, technical, financial
and commercial reasons, write your
Senator or Congressman about the
Net neutrality issue.
A pre-designed form or more info is available on
the Internet. Search for “Internet Neutrality” in
your browser or go to one of the following sites:
<http://ga3.org/campaign/oppose_net_neutrality>
<http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm
?orgcode=dmwtn&hotissue=3>
<http://www.savetheinternet.com/?t=1>
Product Description: DoppleViewer is a resizable widget that displays Doppler radar images from the National
Weather Service. It includes all radar sites in the US and
will cycle through base reflectivity, composite reflectivity, and rainfall when clicked.
DoppleViewer 1.7
You know you do it. That secret guilty pleasure, that you
hide from even close friends. Yes, you! You watch the
Weather Channel, switching it to the WWF when people
walk in the room.
Well I have the app for you. DoppleViewer is a widget
for Tiger that puts a radar map in your desktop, for your
secret viewing pleasure. And it uses all the available
radar stations in the USA, so that you can see the conditions anywhere in the 50 states.
When the next hurricane comes, you will have at least
30 minutes notice. LOL. And you will be informed
when it is necessary to start building that boat in your
basement for the next flood.
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/redir/lid/783942/DoppleViewer.zip
3
Unintelligible
Garbage
Is Your Friend
by Derek K. Miller
<[email protected]>
I’m getting tired of reading frequent
news stories about laptop computers
lost, stolen, or left in the back seats of
cabs by company or government
employees, supposedly exposing
untold thousands of social security
numbers, insurance records, or other
sensitive, private information to identity thieves and other miscreants. What
those news reports usually fail to mention is whether the missing data files
were securely encrypted.
<http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/15/
news/companies/aig_theft/>
Making Your Private Data Useless
(Except to You) – Encryption is a mathematical method of scrambling
information - one the United States
government once tried to classify as a
non-exportable munition - so that it can
only be unscrambled with the correct
password. The best encryption methods
make it essentially impossible to
decrypt data without that password, no
matter what trickery or brute-force
methods are applied.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:
Cryptography>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?
tbart=01581>
If your Mac stores files you’d rather
keep from prying eyes - and chances
are it does contain financial or medical
records, credit card information, highly
personal email, and so on - it’s not hard
to encrypt that data to protect it when
you’re logged out or away from your
computer. Without the right password,
encrypted data is unintelligible digital
garbage, so even if someone were to
remove your hard disk or copy all your
files elsewhere, your protected information would be useless to them.
Better a Safe than a Vault – Apple
includes a feature built into Mac OS X
10.3 and later, known as FileVault, that
encrypts your entire home folder. But
most experts agree that FileVault is
overkill, because of performance
issues, the risk of data loss, backup
problems, and other reasons that Adam
explained in his recent appearance on
the MacNotables podcast:
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/
features/filevault/>
<http://www.macnotables.com/archives
/2006/655.html>
If Apple’s tool won’t do, what’s the
alternative? It turns out you can easily
use Disk Utility to create an encrypted
disk image that behaves just like - and,
importantly, can be backed up just like
- a regular Mac folder. You can even set
it to open automatically (with a password) whenever you restart or log in to
your Mac. Then you can protect only
those files you really need to, while
leaving your iTunes and iPhoto
libraries, browser cache files, and less
sensitive documents as they are.
Ten Steps to Scramble Your Stuff – I’ve
posted a step-by-step screenshot tutorial in the form of a photoset and
slideshow on the popular photo sharing
site Flickr, if you’d like to follow along:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/penmachine/sets/72157594167748426/
<www.flickr.com/photos/penmachine/
sets/72157594167748426/show/>
1 Figure out which files you want to
protect, and consolidate them in a single folder. Subfolders are fine, but you
want to make sure not only that you
have everything you want to protect in
one place, but also that you don’t miss
anything.
2
Launch Disk Utility (in your
/Applications/Utilities folder) and click
the New Image button in the toolbar to
create a disk image. (You could also
choose Images > New > Image from
Folder if you want to avoid the manual
copying in step 4 below.)
From the Format pop-up menu, choose
the Sparse Image format (which is only
as big as the data inside, so it doesn’t
waste any space); under Encryption,
choose AES-128 encryption (the only
encrypted option); and choose a maximum size from the Size pop-up menu
that makes sense - I chose 4.7 GB, so
even if I fill the image up, I can burn it
to a single DVD-R.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance
d_Encryption_Standard>
3 Name your encrypted disk image in
the Save As field and choose a location
where it will be stored on the hard
disk; I saved mine to ~/Documents/.
Click the Create button.
4
When the Authenticate dialog
appears, choose a password. Apple’s
Password Assistant (press the key button) can help you generate a good
password, which is strong, secure, and
unguessable, and which you will
never, ever forget.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password
_strength>
I know those two criteria are a bit contradictory, but anyone who can guess
your password will have access to your
files; on the other hand, if you forget it,
chances are that neither you nor anyone
else will be able to decrypt them. (I
suggest storing a paper copy of your
password in your safety deposit box, in
case anything ever happens to you and
your family needs to access it.)
I recommend leaving the Remember
Password checkbox unchecked,
because if you allow your decryption
password in your Keychain, anyone who
knows your login or Keychain password, or who gets at your computer
while you’re logged in, may also be
able to access your encrypted files.
continued on page 5
4
5
Disk Utility saves the disk image
where you specified and with the name
you gave (MyFiles.sparseimage, for
example), and also opens it as a virtual
disk (MyFiles) on your Desktop. Copy
your files into the virtual disk just as
you would into a regular removable
drive or folder.
6
Add the encrypted disk image file to
your login items. Choose System
Preferences > Accounts and click the
Login Items tab. Click the plus sign button, find the .sparseimage file, select it,
and click Add (or just drag the file into
the Login Items tab). Now, whenever
you restart or log in to your account,
your Mac will ask you for your decryption password and mount the virtual disk
on your Desktop. You can eject the virtual disk to protect the files if you’re
putting your computer to sleep, or even
just stepping away from your desk.
7 For extra convenience, put an alias to
the virtual disk where you used to keep
the unencrypted files, so it behaves just
like the folder it’s replacing. If you give
it the same name, other programs that
expect the unencrypted folder to be there
should still continue to work while the
volume is mounted. If your encrypted
volume isn’t mounted, trying to open the
alias will prompt you for your password.
8 Check that everything works. Eject
and try to remount the virtual disk. Log
out and back in. Open files in the virtual
disk to make sure they work properly.
9 Once you’ve confirmed your data is
safe, erase the unencrypted originals.
Choose Secure Empty Trash from the
Finder application menu to make sure
they’re really gone.
10
Finally, make sure you have a
backup strategy that includes regularly
copying the encrypted disk image to
other media, some of which are stored
offsite.
Not for the Truly Paranoid – This system
isn’t perfect. Paranoid users would point
out that AES-128 encryption isn’t the
strongest available, would recommend
other solutions such as PGP or GPG, and
they probably know of other flaws in my
process that could expose your secrets to
truly determined, crafty, and wellequipped adversaries - maybe. For an
introduction to more aggressive encryption techniques, I recommend two recent
podcasts (one video, one audio) from
host Leo Laporte, at MacBreak and
Security Now!
<http://www.pgpi.org/>
<http://www.gnupg.org/>
<http://twit.tv/mb10>
<http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-041.htm>
Thanks to Rich
Lenoce and
Middlesex
Community
College for
hosting our
June 28 meeting. Three hands-on
workshops were held: Lighting &
Compositon presented by Rich
Lenoce, GarageBand for the
Amateur Musician presented by
Don Dickey, and Learning iMovie
presentied by Aaron Czarnecki.
Encrypt that Data – Let’s return to the
back seats of those taxicabs. If the
nabbed social security numbers and
insurance records were encrypted, as
they should be, it’s not much of a news
story, because thieves can’t get at them.
And if they aren’t, the recalcitrant
employees (or the IT staff who provided
their laptops) should be fired. Laptops
are lost and stolen, but there’s no excuse
for private information to live on them
unencrypted.
For most Mac users, an encrypted disk
image is secure enough that if you lose
your new black MacBook, your despair
is lessened slightly, knowing that lurking
inside its stealthy case is a once-classified munition keeping your private files
out of the wrong hands.
[Derek K. Miller is Communications
Manager for Navarik, an Internet software company in Vancouver, Canada. By
night, he wears a wig and plays drums in
a classic rock cover band, and is also the
co-host of the Inside Home Recording
podcast. His blog, like his youngest
daughter, is six years old in 2006.]
www.navarik.com/
www.insidehomerecording.com/
www.penmachine.com/
5
Thanks to CMC
photographer
John Scott and
Chris Hart for this
month’s photos
FRESHLY SQUEEZED REVIEWS:
More Hits, Fewer Misses
by Frank Petrie
Product: Opera 9
Company: Script Software
<www.opera.com/>
Price: Free
Test Rig: G4 1.42 Ghz DP,
1.5 GB RAM
Review Date: 28 June 2006
Fortunately, no one has died in the
browser wars because they’re heating
up again. And with each new release,
the battle heats up.
“Opera 9 enhances the way you
access, share and use online content
by including innovative widgets fun, small and useful Web programs and support for BitTorrent™, the popular file distribution technology.
Even while adding these improvements, Opera 9 maintains the security
and speed millions of Opera fans have
come to expect.”
So ... does it?
THE JUICE
Installation is the standard drag-ndrop. Opera 9 is now FREE. No ads
or such. The revenue is derived from
service plans for their mobile connections. You can buy from a variety
of Protection Plans that cover either
your phone, pocket PC, or desktop.
Opera 9 comes with integrated bit torrent, your selection of search engines,
widgets that you can keep in you sidebar or run outside the
browser, a community site with 300MB
of storage space
from which to share
photos and files.
And, like Apple’s
widgets, there’s a
tutorial on how to
build your own.
Also, if you register
with Opera for free,
you get your own
web mail account [email protected].
THE RIND
This browser loads pages at a blinding
speed. By far, faster than any other
browser out there. Yes, faster than
Firefox or Camino. Without question.You can also set the size of the
browser’s cache and schedule it to
update the page in the background at
specified times. So, if you constantly
visit the same pages, as most of us do,
this browser becomes a real speed
demon.
As in Firefox/Camino, you have various skins and extensions to choose
from. And they have separate GUIs
tailored for Mac, Linux, and
Windows.
It’s handling of bookmarks takes
some getting used to. I really like the
way it handles tabs in the toolbar.
Click on the folder of choice and
right at the top you can choose to
open all items or just the bookmark
that you want. Plus, you bookmark
any page from within the folder that
you would like to file it.
Customization is Opera’s forte. As an
example, when I launch Opera 9, I
can get the home page, the last page
that I worked on, or several other
options.
THE PITS
Media. At first, a video stream
dropped out after about five seconds,
when I first installed it. Once I
relaunched Opera 9, the problem
appeared to have cleared up. Also had
a problem with java in a World
Without Borders chat room.
THE PULP
Browsers are falling behind development software. From authoring tools
from RapidWeaver to the open-soure
Drupal, I am finding that EVERY
browser that I use, be it Firefox,
Camino, Safari, et al., has flaws in
reading the new source codes.
But the developers of Opera 9 seem to
have given themselves a swift kick in
the pants and have placed themselves
directly in the center of the browser
wars. I’m going to try this for about
another week (I don’t get much play
time doing these reviews) but I
wouldn’t be surprised if I adopted it
and kicked out a couple of applications. Most definitely worth a test
drive.
RATING: 9 out of 10
©2006 Frank Petrie
Macsimum News contributing editor,
Freelance writer, Curmudgeon
Email: [email protected]
iChat: phranky Archive:
home.comcast.net/~phranky
Opera 9 comes with
integrated bit torrent,
your selection of
search engines,
widgets that you can
keep in you sidebar
or run outside the
browser
6
is my favorite. The theater presentations and basement classes
provide services not available at
the new store. I like the airy,
sunlight-filled space provided
by the skylight and the central
staircase.
Apple’s New Store in NYC
by Polly Bookhout
North Coast Mac Users Group
The wow factor is there. The blue
glass cube gets attention and invites
you to enter. Visiting on a Saturday
morning, I stepped into the elevator
with a teen and her family. “This is
the coolest elevator I’ve ever been in,”
was the verdict. Outside the round,
tubular elevator is a blue glass stairway curving down to the underground
level. Once you are there it may look
like many Apple Stores across the
country—blond wood tables, soft
round ball chairs in the children’s section, white walls, and stainless steel
girders.
There wasn’t as long a line for the
Genius Bar as for the one at the Soho
store. Maybe this was because it was
Saturday, a day when tourists take
over Fifth Avenue and all of Midtown.
The store was full of families in shorts
and tee shirts. Maybe Monday brings
workers in suits to the Genius Bar.
The Soho store serves the trendy and
the graphic designers. The Staten
Island store serves the suburban mall
folk. This new store must be intended
to brand Apple as upscale. The GM
Building behind it has FAO Schwarz
at the ground level and offices for
Estee Lauder and others above.
Across the street is the Plaza Hotel.
Down the street is Louis Vuitton,
Bergdorf Goodman, and Tiffany.
I will continue to consider my Mac
home as Tekserve. It is where I buy
my computers and have them serviced
by the friendly, knowledgeable staff.
Their new large store still has a collection of old computers, radios,
adding machines, the old-fashioned
Coke machines, and garden chairs.
After Tekserve, the Soho Apple Store
This new store does celebrate New
York, the city that never sleeps. The
store is open 24/7 and 365 days a
year. I wonder who is there at 4 a.m.?
TABLE OF CONTENTS (taken from the web site)
Tip of the Month: Mac OS X
Routine Maintenance
❶
❷
❸
❹
❺
❻
Randy B. Singer
<[email protected]>
Over the past few weeks I’ve
drastically updated my Web site:
❼
❽
❾
❿
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
It is a free, non-commercial, reference designed for ordinary Macintosh users (not power users) to tell you how
to do effective routine maintenance on your Macintosh
running OS X. It not only tells you what to do, it tells
you which utilities to use (with an emphasis on easy to
use and free utilities) and where to get them.
Repair Disk Permissions
Run Routine Maintenance Scripts
Clear Caches
Repair And Back Up Preferences
Do A File System Check And Repair Disk
Defragment A Hard Drive That Is Low On Free
Contiguous Space
Check S.M.A.R.T. Status
Clear Your Desktop
Reset Safari
Rebuild Spotlight's Database
◆ More on defragmenting your hard drive.
◆ Software mentioned on this site; where to get it.
Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions) Moderator of: The MacAttorney computer user group
I hope that all Mac users find this site helpful!
7
VENDOR OFFER WATCH – July, 4, 2006 – compiled by The MUG Center
Posted by: “Chuck Joiner”
[email protected]
Exclusive Discounts from
The MUG Center:
MacTech magazine - Up to 60% Off
Cover Price - Up to 60% off cover
price; Complete information: <lhttp://
www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/ma
ctech.html> To order, use this link:
<http://store.mactech.com/mugcenter>
Free shipping in U.S.; expires 12/31/06
NotePage Inc. - $5 off FeedForAll;
available globally; expires 7/31/06 Complete information: <http://www.
mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/feedforall.html> - To order, use this link:
<http://www.feedforall.com/feedforall-macorder.htm> and use the
coupon code “mugcenter” without the
quotes (it is case sensitive).
Peachpit - 35% off “Apple Training
Series: iLife ‘06” by Michael Rubin
from Peachpit - Complete info:
<http://www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/peachpit0406.html> - Free
shipping in the U.S.; discount available globally; expires 12/31/06 - To
order, use coupon code: MAC-SMPCHT3
ProSoft Engineering - 25% off Drive
Genius, Picture Rescue, Data Rescue,
Data Backup & Data Recycler; available globally; ongoing - Complete
information: <http://www.mugcenter.com/vendoroffers/prosoft.html>
To order, order through the ProSoft
Engineering web site and use discount
code “PRO247”
(For details, including code acquisition, visit: <http://www.mugcenter.
com/vendoroffers/>)
Apple MUG Store - Discounts on new
and refurbished hardware and 1%
back to your group; available in U.S.
& Canada; no expiration
AppleWorks Users Group - Discount
on Macintosh batteries; available
globally, no expiration
Primary Elements - 20% off royaltyfree production music; Available
globally; expires 9/30/06
Blue Essentials - 15% discount on
Bluetake Bluetooth headphones kit;
Expires 8/31/06; available in the U.S.
only.
Quickertek - 20% discount on
Quickertek products; Available in
U.S. only; expires 7/31/06
macHOME magazine - $15 off annual
n Pg. 9
subscription;
available
l N o ti c eino U.S. only.
S e e S p e c ia
No expiration
Macworld magazine - $13 off annual
subscription; available in U.S. only;
no expiration
Magnet Media - 20% discount on all
Digital Media Training Series lessons;
expires 8/31/06; available globally.
MobileJuice - $10 discount on
MacSleeve; while supplies last, minimum order required. Available in
U.S. only; expires 7/31/06
MYOB - $25 off First Edge & $100 off
Account Edge; available globally. No
expiration
Netopia - 25% Discount on Timbuktu;
Available in U.S. only; expires
9/30/06
Soft Chaos - $20 off Webstractor;
Available globally; expires 7/31/06
TidBITS - 10% discount on Take
Control eBooks; available globally.
No expiration
Tekkeon - $20 discount on mPower
for iPod; Available U.S. and Canada;
expires 9/30/06
Virtual Training Center - 10%
Discount for members of registered
groups on both online and CD training; expires 8/31/06; available
globally.
Wacom - Various discounts on
Graphire3 product line; while supplies last; Available in the U.S. only;
expires 7/31/06
Copyright (c) 2006 The MUG Center.
Odology - 40% off Launcher;
Available globally; expires 9/30/06
Omni Group - 40% off all Omni Group
products; expires 8/31/06; available
globally.
Offers Newsfeed: www.mugcenter.
com/rss/vendoroffers.xml>
O’Reilly - 30% off all titles; available
PayCycle - 25% discount on
PayCycle Basic and PayCycle Plus;
expires 8/31/06; available in the U.S.
only.
Peachpit Press - 25% off all titles by
joining the Peachpit Club; available
8
CMC password for this site is
located on page 9 of your
mailed CMC newsletter.
Special Notice!
[email protected]
Take Control of iWeb
“Take Control of iWeb” Helps
iWeb Users Work Creatively.
Apple’s new iWeb aims to help
you build a Web site quickly and
easily, but if you’ve found yourself
stuck on the basics or unhappy
with amateurish results, turn to
Steve Sande’s 123-page “Take
Controlof iWeb” for ideas and
assistance. Steve provides step-bystep instructions for building an
iWeb site and uploading it to .Mac
or to your own Web host, and you
can look over his shoulder as he
works in iWeb’s templates with
a designer’s eye. Steve teaches
you the best ways to make the
basic iWeb pages, including
blog, podcast, and photo pages
(via integration with the other
iLife ‘06 applications), but he
also offers special coverage
that goes beyond the basics.
You’ll learn how to create eyecatching graphical effects,
encode podcasts and videos for
use with iWeb, edit graphics so
your site loads faster, make
image maps, and even set up an
online store. For those with
multiple sites or multiple Macs,
Steve explains how to edit one site
on two Macs and how to store multiple sites in multiple iWeb files.
Pick up your copy today with the
10% MUG discount using the link
below!
Book Details
“Take Control of iWeb”
by Steve Sande
iweb.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0031TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG>
PDF format, 123 pages
free 28-page sample available
Publication date: June 5, 2006
Price: $10
macHOME has ceased publication with its June issue.
Created in 1993, the monthly
technology magazine was
written for Macintosh consumers. Editorial content provided practical
advice for those who used Macintosh computers for their personal needs, whether
playing games, creating music and art, or
running a home or small business. Each issue
contained technology tips, expert buying
advice and detailed how-to articles. For more
information, call 415-957-1911.
FREE Book Download
Great tip from Joe Arcuri
http://www.55fun.com/
You probably use Google
everyday, but do you know...
the Google Snake Game?
Googledromes? Memecodes?
Googlesport? The Google
Calculator? Googlepark and
Google Weddings? Google
hacking, fighting and rhyming?
In this book, you’ll find Google-related
games, cartoons, oddities, tips, stories and
everything else that’s fun. Reading it, you
won’t be the same searcher as before!
(From the author of Google Blogoscoped.)
You can download the full book as PDF (or
Word)... it’s free to share and remix and do
fun stuff with. The book contains over 220
pages and is available to buy at Lulu.com
for $16.50 or Amazon for $19.66.
Check your Newsletter mailing
label for the following info:
www.ctmac.org
Valid: 5/01 - 7/31/2006
User ID: xxxx
Password: xxxx
Valid: 5/16/06 - 11/15/06)
Password: xxxx
Note: Passwords for the above sites are located on page 9 of your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
2006 – 07 Connecticut Macintosh Connection
CMC Benefits:
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Secretary
Kyle DeMilo
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-232-2841
[email protected]
860-485-1547
Editor Deena Quilty
[email protected]
860-678-8622
[email protected]
860-561-0319
[email protected]
860-677-7787
[email protected]
(860) 668-8728
Public Relations
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-583-1165
Date ________________________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Special Events
Jack Bass
[email protected]
10
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
FREE Raffle!
Discounted Books
Wednesday, July 26
July is Podcasting Month
CMC continues to offer our current
members the opportunity to purchase
any published book for either Mac or
Windows at a 20% discount. All major
publishers are carried by our source.
Our July meeting is all about Podcasting –
perhaps the most significant development in the
evolution of communication since the Internet.
It equates to portable, on-demand radio programming. It’s easy to get involved, as Podcasts
allow you to automatically receive all the shows
you’ve subscribed to. And if you like, these
recordings can be automatically downloaded to
your iPod. You can then listen when and where
you want – pausing if you need to, or winding
back if you missed something.
Best of all, Podcasts are for everybody!
Whether you just like to listen, or you feel
compelled to share your creativity, there’s
nothing stopping you from trying it out. And
this month we show how to get started.
Back To Basics, 6:00 PM
Podcast Initiation
Jerry Esposito will talk about getting started
with Podcasts. He’ll demonstrate how to find
shows that interest you, how to subscribe to
them, and finally how to enjoy them. The
process is incredibly easy and usually free!
CMC Meeting, 7:00 PM
The Makings Of A Podcast
Greg and Vicki of PodMusic 411 will show
you, from start to finish, how a Podcast is
created. They produce their show each week
using a Mac, Apple’s iLife and some very
affordable accessories. You’ll see what it
takes to bring all the elements together and
release a Podcast out into the world. Even if
you don’t have a desire to make your own
Podcast, there is no doubt that you will be
fascinated by how the process works.
Give Greg and Vicki’s podcast a listen at:
http://www.PodMusic411.com
WANTED: Associate Editor
Are you good at grammar and punctuation?
Are you a good speller? Can you spend a little
time scouting out Mac-related news for us? If
so, we need YOU! CMC is looking for an
Associate Editor for our monthly newsletter to
round out our newsletter staff. If you feel you
could help out with a couple of hours a month,
please contact Deena Quilty at (860)678-8622
or [email protected].
the back of the room where everything is...“free”!
and the ISBN number, if possible, and
we will check on its availability.
FREE Classified Ads
New Members!
[email protected]
Account Balances
Money Market ..................$4002.09
Display Ad Rates
Balances as of July 4, 2006
listed below.
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Getting CMC emails?
Monthly CMC meetings are usually held on last Wednesday of the
month from 7:00 - 9:00 P.M. (except November and December when
the meetings are held one week earlier due to the holidays).
to attend a Board meeting, contact an officer for time and location.
for a topic we should explore? Perhaps there’s a topic that you would
like to present yourself? Email us at [email protected]
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, July 26
UConn Health Center
Farmington
Podcast Initiation
The Makings Of A Podcast
(See page 11 for info • Directions below)
Monthly CMC meetings are held at UConn Health Center in
Farmington. A PDF document containing a visual direction guide to the
location of our meeting in the UConn Health Center is available on our
website: www.ctmac.org. When hands-on programs require computers
for attendees, we will use Middlesex Community College.
Directions for CMC Monthly Meeting at
police station entrance on your left (small sign). You will see a
continuation of the building with its own entrance area. This is the
new research building. Enter on the ground floor, turn right and
enter room EG-013 on your right. This is the first room on your
12
Three workshops were held June 28 at our annual hands-on meeting
held at Middlesex Community College. See more photos on Page 5.
The Apple Image ............................... 1
AppleCare Provides...TechTool CD .....2
iPod/Auto Integration .........................4
Getting Things Done, Part 1...............6
CMC MUG Member Discounts ...........8
Take Control Syncing .........................9
The Apple Image:
Users and Losers
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
By the time you read this article, the
Intel transition should be over with the
introduction of new professional
Macintosh models. The transition has
not only been smooth, it’s been good
for Apple and the Macintosh. The Mac
is back to being the #1 revenue and
profit generator for Apple. More importantly, in the last quarter, 50% of all
Macs sold were to people who never
owned a Mac before! Macintosh computers and their users are well on their
way to being no longer relegated to a
“niche” market. The new mantra at
Apple might be “Not just different; better.” Every convert I’ve spoken to says
the new Macs are the best PCs they’ve
ever used and that’s what sold them on
the Mac, not whether it’s a Mac OS X
or Windows machine. OS X and the
great software included with every Mac
was the icing on the cake.
And I can’t let talking about a new
Apple mantra go by without commenting on the new commercials. Cute and
creative, Apple finally explains why
Macs and OS X are better – by using a
direct comparison to PCs. They’ve got
the message right. I have one nagging
issue with these commercials: if image
is so important in commercials: why
does the “I’m a Mac” guy look like he
hasn’t slept in a week or showered in at
least that long? I like the guy. He’s cool,
has a nice personality, and he never
offends his PC counterpart, but why is
he just so scruffy? He has unwashed
and uncombed hair, several days of
AUGUST 2006
stubble, and he slouches. His clothes
are wrinkled, and his shirt is unbuttoned. The image is one of a loser.
When his first commercial came on and
he proclaimed, “I’m a Mac,” my wife
said “Ewwww…”
If “I’m a Mac” represents the Mac, shouldn’t
he be more stylish looking? The kind of person
you want to be near and
to be like? You know,
kind of like all of us.
Apple has used negative
images of its users
before, especially during
the Switch campaign.
The most memorable
and annoying of the
I’m a Mac
switchers, and most
insulting to Mac users, was a 15-year
old stoner named Ellen Feiss who
said working on a PC that went
“beeepeebeepeebeepeebeeeeep” was
a “bummer.” She later admitted to being
“strung out on Benadryl” when the ads
were shot. When I saw those commercials I was left wondering: where was
the smart, executive Mac switcher? Or
the IT professional who converted his
corporation to Macs because it was the
answer to his company’s network hassles? Or the professional female,
successful and confident in her intellect, who creates killer presentations?
How about the “brainiac” student or the
innovative artist, filmmaker or designer? Instead Apple gave us Ellen Feiss as
their model Mac user and switcher and
decided to use her in several ads. Feiss
was a running joke in the media and on
late night talk shows for months. Worst
of all, Apple put her out there to represent us.
It wasn’t always this way. There was
the Olympian imagery of “1984” and
the wonderful kids in the schoolyard ad.
Remember the warm and fuzzy
“What’s on Your PowerBook” commercials? There were also the terrific “The
Computer for the Rest of Us” and the
“What is Power?” commercials featuring influential people like Spike Lee.
For several years, a company known
for making the most stylish computers
used by most pros to create beautiful
images couldn’t present a decent image
of its users in their ads, and still can’t.
These commercials came at a time
when Apple market share was at it’s
lowest and continued to hammer the
message that Mac users are weird, the
computer itself is very different and
intimidating and worst of all their commercials and print ads did nothing to
communicate the benefits of Mac use.
Apple has now gotten it half right
with messages that are dead-on. If they
can just bump up the image of us Mac
users a couple of notches, they’ll have
both the message and image nailed and
maybe, finally, a successful ad campaign that’ll boost Macintosh sales
numbers even higher.
You can find an archive of Mac
commercials at:
<http://www.esm.psu.edu/Faculty/
Gray/old-apple-ads.html>
An Ellen Feiss commercial
can be found at:
http://video.google.com/
videoplay?docid=
-7872 246776955336366
Ellen Feiss
1
My MacBook
By Rich Lenoce
NEWSLETTER OF
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
the newsletter.
A few weeks ago my first Mac with
“Intel Inside” arrived. It’s a base
MacBook, the lowest one on the totem
pole. I have to say this is one terrific
machine. It’s small, somewhat light, has
a beautiful screen and runs for 3+ hours
on a charge on the preset Energy Saver
settings. It’s a buy at $1099, compared to
its PC counterparts. The only negative is
that because the graphics processor uses
system memory (RAM) rather than separate memory (VRAM), the MacBook
requires more RAM than it ships with to
do any heavy work. I picked up 2 Gigs of
memory for $149 (you gotta love dealram.com) and my basic consumer level
MacBook was turned into a speed
demon. The MacBook was 20% faster
rendering the same iDVD project as my
AppleCare Provides
Bootable TechTool CD
Reprinted from TidBITS 840
by Matt Neuburg
<[email protected]>
Apple’s dependence upon
third-party software has long
been a major weakness of the
AppleCare Protection Plan. For
years, AppleCare purchasers have
complained that the package included a Micromat TechTool Deluxe CD
that either wouldn’t boot the computer for which AppleCare had been
purchased or (worse) would boot it
but, when run, would damage the
hard disk structure in such a way as
to make the data unrecoverable.
TechTool revisions have been few
and far between and have always
lagged behind major operating system and hardware revisions. Nor
does Apple communicate with purchasers to let them know of such
revisions (at least, they’ve never
communicated with this purchaser).
<www.apple.com/support/products/>
<http://www.micromat.com/index.
php?option=com_content&task=
view&id=37&Itemid=51>
2
dual 2 ghz PowerMac with the same
amount of memory. This PowerMac is a
current model G5 and a monster by comparison to this little MacBook. The only
other negative is that the MacBook runs
hot; I singed my top leg hairs when
wearing shorts. Calling it a laptop would
be a misnomer!
It’s a great machine, though I think
it would have been better to have
FrontRow and the remote control as
options, and instead included a more
useful VGA output cable. After using
this machine for several weeks, it’s easy
to see why Apple sold nearly 800,000
of these portable Macs last quarter.
Current AppleCare contract
holders will therefore be
happy to learn that Micromat
has furnished a new TechTool
version (3.1.1) that comes
in two flavors, one for
Intel-based Macs and
another for PowerPCbased Macs. It’s available as a
free download from Apple (in
exchange for the serial number of
your AppleCare-registered machine).
The download, which is about 200
MB, is a disk image; it can be used to
install the software on your computer
or to burn a bootable CD.
<https://support.apple.com/
techtooldeluxe/main?id=dl>
In addition to support for Intel-based
Macs, TechTool Deluxe 3.1.1 can
now perform Volume Structure testing of the startup volume, has
replaced Diagnostic and Rezero Unit
tests, and has added Drive Hardware
and Directory Scan options. A software updater is available as a 4.5 MB
download.
<http://www.micromat.com/index.
php?option=com_content&task=
view&id=166&Itemid=61>
iPod/Auto Integration
by Adam C. Engst
<[email protected]>
When it comes to listening to an iPod,
I find I’m interested in doing so only in
very specific situations. There’s an iPod in
the bedroom, which helps Tonya and me go
to sleep at night and wakes us up in the
morning, and I’ve become quite fond of listening to the iPod’s earbuds inside
protective earphones while mowing the
lawn. But even though living in Ithaca
enables us to spend relatively little time in
the car, that’s where I appreciate the iPod
the most.
I’ve considered some of the more permanent methods of installing an iPod in the
car, and as much as they’re attractive from
an interface and elegance standpoint, I’m
uncomfortable with many of them for three
reasons. First, they tend to be a bit expensive, with prices above $150, and that’s
before paying for professional installation.
Second, I have trouble committing to the
entire situation, since I strongly suspect
that some solutions might not be physically compatible with even near-future iPods,
and I don’t know how long we’ll keep our
Honda Civic (I hold out hope that the
automakers or conversion companies
might come out with a plug-in hybrid that
could run almost entirely on electricity for
the around-town trips that dominate our
driving). Third, we have an older Subaru
Legacy Outback that we use primarily for
winter driving, and since we almost never
drive both cars at the same time, it feels
wasteful to install something that would be
usable only in one car.
With all that in mind, I’ve been testing
a number of entries in the current crop of
car iPod adapters from Griffin Technology,
Belkin, and Small Dog. No doubt there are
others, but these are the ones made available to me for review, and I’ve had some
time to evaluate them on more than a cursory level.
Functionality & Design – The solution I
wanted to find has three basic functions:
• It should send sound to the car’s stereo
system through an FM transmitter or
via a cable connected either to a cassette adapter or input jack.
• It should provide power to the iPod via
the car’s electrical outlet.
• It should hold the iPod in a way that
makes it possible for the driver to view
and control the iPod without driving
unsafely.
It’s not essential that any given car iPod
adapter perform all three of these functions,
but if not, it shouldn’t prevent some other
device from adding the missing functionality.
Along with these technical requirements, industrial design turns out to be
paramount. A hinged arm that wobbles is
maddening, for instance. Plus, iPods come
in a wide variety of shapes and sizes even
now, forcing the manufacturers to come up
with a variety of ways of accommodating
the different form factors. Lastly, although
color would seem to be merely a matter of
taste, with an iPod and car adapter, I prefer
black, since the dashboards of most cars
are more likely to be dark colored and the
adapter/iPod combination will be less likely to stand out visually to a larcenous
passerby.
Small Dog Car Tune – The first iPod car
adapter I tried was the simplest and least
expensive, the $33 Car Tune from Mac
retailer (and TidBITS sponsor) Small Dog
Electronics. It combines a car charger with
an FM transmitter, but doesn’t hold an iPod
at all. The unit consists of a plug that fits
into the car outlet, and an articulated oval
head that provides an LCD display, two
tuning buttons, and a power button.
Although I was worried initially that I
wouldn’t be able to see the Car Tune’s
LCD display or reach its controls easily, it
turned out to adjust well. It connects to the
iPod via a dock connector on a thin,
springy cable, and although I
prefer being able to see the
iPod screen while I drive,
the cable allowed me to set
the iPod in an open slot in
the car’s dashboard. Even
still, some other holder like
Griffin Technology’s $10
iSqueez would have been
Griffin’s iSqueez
welcome.
<http://www.smalldog.com/product/38574/>
<http://www.griffintechnology.com/
products/isqueez/>
As an FM transmitter, I was a bit disappointed in the Car Tune. Although it was
easy to tune different stations, and the Car
Tune remembers the last one, its audio output level was quite low, lower than all the
other devices I tried, which forced me to
turn up the radio volume, increasing the
amount of background static noise and
exposing me to loud static whenever the
Car Tune wasn’t transmitting. And since it
takes about 8 seconds for the Car Tune to
start transmitting after receiving power, I
was continually diving to turn down the
volume when I started the car.
From a usability standpoint, the Car
Tune was extremely manual. It doesn’t
pause playback automatically when the car
turns off, and although it does automatically come back on, that 8 seconds of static
ensured that I not only had to press Play on
the iPod, I had to manage the volume on
the stereo.
Griffin Technology iTrip Auto – Similar
to the Small Dog Car Tune is Griffin
Technology’s $70 iTrip Auto. It too provides a car charger and FM transmitter, but
no method of physically holding the iPod.
Instead of mounting the interface on the
power plug directly, the iTrip Auto places
the chewing gum packet-sized control
module in the middle of the cord, between
the dock connector and the power plug.
Unfortunately this design proves rather
awkward, since I had to root around for the
control module whenever I wanted to
change stations. Plus, since changing stations requires pressing flush-mounted
buttons, seeing the change on an LCD, and
then pressing a Select button, it proved
more difficult to operate than the Car Tune,
with its raised buttons and no need for a
Select button.
products/itripauto/>
For the extra money, the iTrip Auto
provides significantly greater audio output
levels, eliminating the need to crank the
radio volume just to hear the music. Even
better, the iTrip Auto automatically pauses
music when the car turns off, and while it
doesn’t automatically resume when the car
turns back on, it starts transmitting silence
instantly so there’s no burst of static. The
continued on page 4
3
As an FM transmitter, the Belkin
TuneBase FM worked well. It ties into softiTrip Auto provides two modes - DX and
ware Apple put into the iPod for radio
LX - that supposedly provide different
tuning (recent firmware updates are necesquality levels, though I couldn’t tell much
sary), so the tuning interface appears on the
difference between them.
iPod screen. Four buttons store preset stations, and up and down arrow buttons select
Griffin Technology RoadTrip – Moving
different frequencies. Changing stations
from the two previous devices, which had
was easy, but even in Ithaca, finding clear
wires snaking around my dashboard and
frequencies wasn’t so simple, especially
required that I leave the iPod loose in a
since our hills change reception quality sigBelkin TuneBase FM -- The $80 Belkin
dashboard slot, I next tried Griffin
nificantly as we drive around the area.
TuneBase FM promised to meet all of my
Technology’s $90 RoadTrip, whose chargNotably, the TuneBase FM provided five
technical needs, and since it’s available only
er plug leads - via several articulated arms
different volume settings that controlled the
in black and works with most modern iPods
- to a dock that holds the iPod. Plastic
audio output level, which was particularly
(not including the iPod shuffle, the iPod 3G,
inserts enabled compatibility with a wide
helpful with the iPod nano, which has
or anything earlier), it seemed like it might
variety of iPod sizes. The dock is also home
lower audio output levels than other iPods.
be the ultimate solution. Physically, it proto an LCD display with two tuning buttons
It’s also possible to switch the TuneBase
vides a short, sturdy gooseneck that can be
and power button, the latter of which also
FM from stereo to mono, though mono is
manipulated into different positions.
gives access to four preset stations.
useful mostly for audiobooks.
Unfortunately, I could never quite get it into
From a usage standpoint, the TuneBase
the
position
I
wanted
due
to
the
stiffness
of
FM
stood out. It automatically paused
the
gooseneck.
The
iPod
slots
into
a
holder
products/roadtrip/>
playback whenever I turned off the car, and
at the end of the gooseneck; Belkin proit automatically resumed playback when I
vides eight plastic adapters to hold all the
I’m always amazed when I can get one
turned the car back on. Welcome as these
supported iPod models and it worked fine
of these devices with articulated arms,
capabilities were, they weren’t perfect. It
with my iPod photo and iPod nano. Belkin
complete with rotating joints and locking
took the TuneBase FM some time to start
also makes the TuneBase FM for iPod nano,
screws, to work. The first iPod car adapter
transmitting, which meant about 8 seconds
which has a longer, more flexible neck and
I tried, a DLO TransPod, used the articulatof static from the radio before the music
which likely addresses my minor comed arm design and was miserable. And
kicked in. And although the automatic
plaints about the positioning, though of
indeed, with the extender arm that I was
resume feature worked well, a few seconds
course at the expense of compatibility with
sure was necessary, I couldn’t get the
after music came in again, there was a brief
larger iPod models.
RoadTrip into a decent position. However,
pause while the TuneBase FM switched
when I removed the extender arm and
<http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProduct
from its tuning display to the top level of
played with the possible articulations, I was
Page.process?Product_Id=257270>
the iPod’s interface. Unfortunately, the disable to find a sweet spot that was in fact the
<http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProduct
play always reverted to the main menu,
best of any of the devices, blocking nothing
Page.process?Product_Id=257293>
whereas it would have been better to retain
but one of two cup holders in front of the
the previous spot in the intercenter-mounted gearshift
face, or at least the Now
lever. Your happiness with
b.
c.
a.
Playing screen. Finally,
the articulated arm approach
although automatic resume
will depend completely on
works well when only a sinthe dashboard layout of your
gle person uses the car, since
particular car.
Tonya and I share the car, I
Despite the unexpectedwould sometimes have to
ly good positioning made
find my place in a podcast
possible by the RoadTrip, it
because she had either lissuffered from some usabilitened to it or just turned off
ty annoyances. Although it
the stereo without first paushelpfully paused playback
ing the iPod.
when the car turned off, it
e.
d.
My main complaint with
not only didn’t resume playthe TuneBase FM, though, is
back when power returned,
that it prevents a connected
it required me to push the
iPod from going into deep
power button. As a result,
a. SmallDog Car Tune
b. Griffin iTrip Auto c. Griffin RoadTrip
sleep. That means that if your
the typical process for startd. Belkin TuneBase FM e. Griffin TuneFlex nano
trips are relatively short (such
ing the car went like this:
Turn the car on, swear at the
static on the radio, push the RoadTrip’s
power button, and then push Play on the
iPod. The swearing and powering up of the
car adapter are entirely unnecessary, and
soured me on the RoadTrip.
Audio output volume was good, better
than the Car Tune, but perhaps not quite up
to the iTrip Auto or the next product I tried,
the Belkin TuneBase FM.
continued on page 5
4
that the iPod doesn’t charge for long) and
you don’t drive for several days, the iPod
will drain its battery entirely. On the next
usage it reboots, having forgotten its position in a podcast, and sometimes refuses to
respond to input until it has acquired a
small charge. I don’t know that this is
actively bad for the iPod, but it proves
annoying on a regular basis, and didn’t
seem to affect any of the other adapters I
reviewed.
What about a Cassette Adapter? With
all of the car iPod adapters I’ve discussed
so far, nothing prevents the use of a cassette
adapter that plugs into the iPod’s headphone jack. The pros of a cassette adapter
are that it eliminates the burst of static that
plagues all the FM transmitters other than
the iTrip Auto and it provides better audio
quality than any of the FM transmitters,
particularly at the higher volumes necessary to drown out road noise on freeways.
Though my hearing simply isn’t very good
- or at all trained - I’d say that the sound
from the cassette adapter was less muddy
and provided more range than that coming
from the FM transmitters. Plus, since plugging into the iPod’s headphone jack
enables the iPod’s own volume control,
I’ve found that you can extract more volume from a cassette adapter than from any
of the FM transmitters that work through
the iPod’s dock connector. And no, I’m not
a semi-deaf head-banger, but in our relatively inexpensive (and thus not heavily
sound insulated) cars with factory sound
systems, the road noise at speed, particularly with the windows down, requires a fair
amount of volume.
But cassette adapters aren’t perfect
either. I dislike having a cable trailing down
the dashboard from the cassette player and
that cable makes both removing the iPod
(as we do sometimes when parked in public) and ejecting the cassette adapter
clumsy. Also, despite the fact that the cassette adapter itself provides better sound
quality, the two that I have both make a
noticeable amount of noise turning the fake
reels. They of course don’t do anything,
since there’s no tape to wind, but the fake
reels make much more noise than real ones
in a normal cassette. Of course, many new
cars simply don’t have tape decks at all, as
was the case with the rental car we used on
our April trip to the West Coast. Lastly, the
iPod nano, with its bottom-mounted headphone jack, can’t be used with a cassette
adapter in units like the RoadTrip and
TuneBase FM.
Nevertheless, for my uses, the cassette
adapter was the lesser of two weevils, to
quote the late Patrick O’Brian’s Jack
Aubrey character, and that enabled me to
bring a final iPod car adapter into this test.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey%E
2%80%93Maturin_series#Humour>
Griffin Technology TuneFlex nano –
Whereas the Car Tune and iTrip Auto provide charging and FM transmission, but not
a holder for the iPod, Griffin Technology’s
$40 TuneFlex nano offers charging and a
dock at the end of an 8-inch (20 cm) thin
gooseneck, but no FM transmission. And
since the TuneFlex works only with the
iPod nano, whose headphone jack is on the
bottom, next to the dock connector, it has to
work with a cassette adapter or by plugging
directly into an input jack. The trick is that
the headphone jack for this purpose is
located at the base of the TuneFlex, where
it plugs into the car’s electrical outlet.
Because the TuneFlex is connecting to the
iPod nano’s dock connector, that headphone jack is putting out line-level output,
making the iPod’s volume control irrelevant, but providing more than sufficient
audio output levels.
products/tuneflexnano/>
The TuneFlex’s thin gooseneck is far
less obtrusive than the TuneBase FM’s
thick gooseneck, and it’s far more
adjustable. Because the cassette adapter
plugs into the base of the TuneFlex, the
cable to the cassette adapter doesn’t hang
off the top of the iPod, reducing cable clutter and making it easy both to swing the
entire TuneFlex out of the way or to
remove the iPod nano to store it in the
glove compartment.
Like the iTrip Auto, the TuneFlex automatically pauses playback when the car
turns off, but does not resume when power
returns. I do prefer the way Belkin’s
TuneBase FM automatically resumes, but
I’m willing to put up with pressing Play on
the iPod nano, especially since it means
that Tonya and I have fewer conflicts with
positioning in podcasts.
5
Today’s Favorite – Although all these
devices provide basically the same set of
features, I was somewhat surprised to find
that my favorite ended up being Griffin
Technology’s TuneFlex. In large part that’s
not due to great technical engineering - the
TuneFlex’s is perhaps the simplest of the
devices - but to its excellent industrial
design and physical usability when combined with the svelte iPod nano. Belkin’s
TuneBase FM has the best set of features
overall, ranging from a good interface,
powerful audio output levels, and decent
physical usability, but the constant blasts of
static every time I turned on the car put me
off. It’s likely that Belkin’s TuneBase FM
for iPod nano is in fact the ultimate device;
it would depend on how it enabled a cassette adapter or direct cable to be plugged
in. I can’t really recommend Griffin
Technology’s RoadTrip; it doesn’t match
up to the TuneBase FM, and the need to
turn it on every time you start your car is
unnecessary effort. Although I may have
sounded somewhat dismissive of Small
Dog’s Car Tune and Griffin’s iTrip Auto,
they’re so small that they become easily
thrown into a laptop bag for a trip that will
involve driving in a random rental car.
Choosing between them is difficult, since
the iTrip Auto is better in every way but
ease of tuning, something that’s constantly
necessary on long car trips in unfamiliar
areas, and it costs more than twice as much
as the Car Tune.
One aspect of my testing that surprised
me was how much more I liked using the
iPod nano in the car in favor of my large
iPod photo. My iPod nano is black, so its
color and size make it harder to see against
the black dashboard from outside the car,
making me worry less about leaving it out.
Since it’s solid-state, I also worry less about
the heat and cold endemic to this part of the
world hurting the iPod. It’s a 4 GB model,
and although that’s significantly smaller
than the 30 GB iPod photo, it has proven to
be more than sufficient for the music and
podcasts and audiobooks we want to hear
in the car.
“...my favorite ended up
being Griffin Technology’s
TuneFlex”
Getting Things Done with
Your Macintosh, Part 1
by Jeff Porten
<[email protected]>
Longtime readers of
TidBITS and listeners of
MacNotables probably
recall Adam mentioning
that he and Tonya have
been users of David
Allen’s “Getting Things
Done” method of personal organization. For
those of you who are new to it, GTD (as it is frequently abbreviated) is not merely the
eponymous book, or an organizational method.
GTD is a cult, or at least it sounds like one if you
listen to many of the thousands of people online
who practice it. And like any self-respecting cult,
it aims to reorganize your basic life principles,
and even the way you think, with the ultimate
goal of making you happier - while funneling
some amount of your money to worthy product
manufacturers. I’m a very happy cultist myself.
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/
0142000280/tidbitselectro00/ref%3Dnosim/>
Most of you are already a member of a productivity cult which may be less than fully
functional – how many email messages are in
your inbox? finish your to-do list today? – and
GTD works very well for those of us with computer-centric personalities. Perhaps more
importantly, it’s one of the few systems which
makes it easy to fall off the bandwagon, and then
get back on.
This article will share some tricks I’ve
learned setting up my own system on my Macs,
but I’ll start by briefly summarizing the principles
of GTD, which is based on procedures rather than
specific mechanisms. Each adherent has his own
idiosyncratic way of setting up an implementation; I’ll talk about mine and a few other popular
methods. I’ll wrap up with an overview of the best
GTD-related resources on the Internet, so if you
choose to join the party you’ll have a regular supply of new ideas. As a companion to this article,
I’m posting a set of AppleScript scripts on my
Web site which provide me some of the mindless
automation that makes any GTD system hum.
GTD, the Short Version – The premise of
GTD is that we all fill our lives with “open loops,”
promises we make to ourselves to get something
done later on. The problem is that our brains
aren’t built for this kind of work; if you remember
you need milk only when your cereal is dry, or
you need to send an email message when you’re
in bed staring at the ceiling at 4 AM, you can’t
actually fix the issue at that moment. These open
loops create a sort of psychic backlog, since all
you can do at that point is worry about things, not
do them.
The GTD method has five steps: collect,
process, organize, review, and do.
• Collect simply means that you note these
items in specific places; i.e., a dry-erase
marker on the kitchen fridge, or a voice
recorder by your bed, for the examples I
mentioned above.
• Process takes all of the items you’ve collected and determines what needs to be done
next, such as “buy more milk.”
• Organize puts all of these actions into “contexts,” so you’ll complete them more easily;
when you buy your milk you can also buy
bread, but you can’t usually send an email
message.
• Review places these organized lists back into
your brain, at least enough so that you have
the lists you need, when you need them.
• And finally, you actually do the things on
these lists, when you’re ready to do them with
the least effort and the most effectiveness.
Simple, no? Note that this approach doesn’t
include saying that sending email is more important than buying milk and hence goes on the
Priority B list, and filling the gas tank doesn’t get
written down on the Tuesday calendar. Instead,
the benefit of this organizational process is that it
clears your mind of small items to allow you to
focus on important issues – a state Allen calls
“mind like water.”
Crucial to the system is the concept of the
“next action,” which is the very next physical
thing to do in order to get something done. I’ll use
a ridiculous example that other self-employed
people will recognize: let’s say the problem you
need to solve is, “I’m hungry and the fridge is
empty.” Most to-do systems would have you
write down, “decide on lunch.” But your next
action might very well be “put on pants,” unless
restaurants in your neighborhood are more
Bohemian than mine. I also find that I tend to
decide between Thai and a burrito automatically
by the time I’ve gotten to my shoes; in any case,
my next action after being properly dressed
would be “choose a direction to walk,” which
influences the choice of restaurant as well as the
next steps in my afternoon.
6
The distinction is between specific choices
and vague ones; thinking about a plate of pad thai
is likely to cause 15 minutes of daydreaming out
the window, which importantly has not moved
you any closer to eating lunch. A next action is
always concrete. More importantly, since next
actions are always very small and immediate,
they lead you to consider how one action might
impact multiple to-do items. “Have lunch” is not
a next action, because it requires more thought;
“go to the restaurants next to the post office and
see what the daily specials are” is a next action.
Listmania – The core of a good GTD system
is a stack of lists. These lists are organized and
frequently reviewed, and each task on them is a
specific next action which is usually connected to
some larger project.
The first stumbling block for Mac users is the
question of where to keep these lists. We’re so
spoiled for choice that this option can be paralyzing; any software that can accept text can be used
to make lists. It’s important to note that GTD can
be implemented with pen and paper, or with judicious use of TextEdit documents. But many GTD
practitioners want software that will sort and puree
their lists automatically. Here, therefore, are the
principles that I developed when choosing mine:
1 Quick processing: I want to use a system
that allows me to organize collected items
as quickly as possible.
2 Flexibility: sometimes it makes sense to
have everything in one place, other times I
want to break things down into separate
files and document types.
3 Self-categorization: whenever possible, I
don’t want to type in “Review Software X”
when it’s easier just to drag the application
somewhere and let it be its own reminder.
Likewise with URLs, documents, media,
or anything else I might come across.
4 Ubiquity: in addition to the ability to collect at any time, I want to be able to access
my lists at any time. In my case, that meant
synchronization to my PDA; for others,
that just means a good printout.
The core of your processing system is going
to be some kind of master list; you might have a
hundred different lists (especially if you’re primarily working with paper), but you need the
One List to Rule Them All. For example, I start
my day, every day, reviewing my Routine list;
most of these items are brainless but necessary
recurring tasks that are especially suited to when
I haven’t yet fired enough caffeine into my cranicontinued on page 7
um. I come back to this list throughout my day,
hopefully emptying it before bedtime.
My Routine list is also my master list; it
made sense to me because I routinely need to
“do work.” So “tackle the Work list” shows up
on a daily basis; in a similar fashion my Routine
list points me both to other lists I’ve made (such
as “geektime” projects that aren’t too important),
or to other places where things collect for me (a
reminder to check voicemail).
Over time, this becomes your trusted system; once you’ve added your tasks or projects to
the appropriate place, your mind allows itself to
relax, because your subconscious knows it doesn’t have to nag you about upcoming tasks or
events anymore. Anything can be made into a
GTD collection or review list, from your laptop
to your glove compartment; all you have to do is
have your master list remind you to look there,
and means of organizing what you keep there.
Software for The One True List -- This
review skips a crucial preliminary step to setting
up your GTD system, which is the point where
you take the existing mass of chaos in your life
and process all of it into GTD. GTD will fail if
you attempt to modularize only part of your life
into it; the psychological returns that fuel the
system only work if you have nothing outside of
GTD to worry about. Allen documents that
process in his book, and I suggest you read it to
get the idea of “putting everything into the
inbox;” once you’ve done that, you can take
advantage of these suggestions for using your
Mac to process it all.
If you haven’t read the book, the crucial
thing to remember as we discuss building these
lists is that we’re talking about processing,
organizing, and reviewing. Your collecting is
done elsewhere, and sometimes for you: your
email, your voicemail, your notes from Friday’s
meeting. Likewise, you don’t actually do these
things while you’re in these stages; it’s possible
to process 2,000 email messages and 400 files on
your Desktop, so long as you have a quick system for processing. The doing comes later.
I still use Life Balance from Llamagraphics
to manage my master list, which I reviewed in
TidBITS in 2004; its implementation of “places”
is very similar to GTD’s “contexts,” which is
how I narrow myself down to just my brainless
Routine list every morning. Life Balance also
has a Palm component, so anything that’s in my
master list is automatically transferred to my
Palm when I synchronize it.
<http://www.llamagraphics.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07529>
A popular alternative is OmniOutliner,
which may be the best outliner software available
for the Macintosh. One advantage it has over Life
Balance is its ability to accept any file that is
dropped into one of its document windows,
which is a great way of organizing and annotating a bunch of files into a project hierarchy. If you
use OmniOutliner Pro, you have the additional
option of using the freeware Kinkless GTD template. Kinkless GTD is a set of AppleScript
scripts which, like Life Balance, takes an outline
of your tasks and breaks it down into a flat list of
things to do. If you’re already a fan of
OmniOutliner, you’re likely to be quite happy in
this system; I might be using it myself were I not
already comfortable with Life Balance. But others comment that the Kinkless software feels
bolted-on to OmniOutliner (which, in fact, it is),
and not seamless enough to provide the best user
experience.
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/
omnioutliner/>
<http://kinkless.com/>
It’s also possible that both OmniOutliner
and Life Balance are overkill for your needs;
many people maintain their GTD systems with a
series of plain text files, and others set up all of
their next actions in iCal to-do lists. iCal calendar groups in Mac OS X 10.4 are a particularly
good way to organize your tasks by context. The
most common failing of these systems, though,
is their inability to create recurring tasks without
jumping through extra hoops; it’s much easier
using both Life Balance and Kinkless to say,
“I’ve done that now, but tell me again tomorrow.”
That being said, I still use iCal to-dos in addition
to Life Balance, which I’ll return to in part 2 of
this article.
Finally, you can bypass your Mac entirely
and set up Web-based methods of maintaining
your lists. This is most popular among people
who use multiple computers or devices; pick the
right Web service, and you can pull up your lists
on your laptop, office computer, cell phone, and
PDA. The obvious downside: good luck figuring
out what you can get done in 20 minutes on the
subway without your Internet connection. Many
people swear by 37signals’ Backpack service,
and its big brother, Basecamp; another popular
alternative is to use Tracks, a Ruby on Rails
application (which requires some geek fu to
implement). Others implement personal wikis so
they can interconnect their data using hyperlinks;
7
any wiki will do the trick for this, but if you want
a standalone system your easiest options are the
VoodooPad application, and the very clever
TiddlyWiki, which uses JavaScript to set up a
GTD environment right in your Web browser. If
you prefer the old-school pen and paper, I suggest
you check out the freeware D*I*Y paper templates by Douglas Johnston, and Merlin Mann’s
“hipster PDA.”
<http://www.backpackit.com/>
<http://www.basecamphq.com/>
<http://www.rousette.org.uk/projects/>
<http://www.flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/>
<http://shared.snapgrid.com/>
<http://www.diyplanner.com/>
<http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/
introducing-the-hipster-pda/>
I can’t make a recommendation for which
one will work for you; this is the most individualized choice in setting up your own GTD
system. All of the above options have free trials
(and some of them are entirely free), so go ahead
and kick the tires. The best suggestion I can make
is that you already have a model in your head for
how complex your life is; you want a system that
will accept your life model without using shoehorns and battering rams. Like the man said, “As
simple as possible, but no simpler.”
The danger to watch for is that most of us
find it more stimulating to play with our organizational software than to actually do stuff. In the
words of Merlin Mann, “Like a short-order cook,
you want to stay focused on making sandwiches,
not on putting the orders into pretty piles.” Pick a
system that works well enough to start; then, if
you wish, make improving (and perhaps radically revamping) your system a GTD project which
you can prioritize along with everything else.
That way, you won’t fall into the trap of making
pretty piles while the sandwiches are burning. I
can personally vouch that I’ve used dozens of
organization systems and software packages,
read four score and seven books, and have literally spent weeks writing custom FileMaker Pro
databases which I later abandoned. Try not to
waste as much time as I did being “productive.”
In part 2 of this article, I’ll dig into the specifics of setting up a GTD system on your Mac, using a little-known,
but effective, organizational tool: the Finder.
(Part 2 will appear in the September CMC issue).
[Jeff Porten is an Internet consultant in Washington, DC.
He practices maybe three out of seven effective habits.]
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brochures, greeting cards, catalogs,
microfiche and more from any Mac OS
X application. It will print files from
any application together or separately,
use up to 75% less paper, print 50 plus
custom layout styles, rotate, reduce &
realign documents automatically, and
work with any laser or inkjet printer.
Regularly $49.95, ClickBook offers
Apple User Group members a special
price of $24.98, a 50% discount.
Simply click on “Add to Cart” when
ordering by web or place your order by
phone: 800-403-0925
www.bluesquirrel.com/usergroup
Actoris Software at 25 Percent Off
Xpress Schedule is THE Macintosh
tool for preparing employee work
schedules. Create better schedules in
less time, print schedules and even send
them to your staff by email or text message. Food Cost Manager is a complete
back office solution for food service
businesses. Manage your inventory,
calculate recipe and menu costs, and
prepare nutritional information for your
customers.
Xpress Schedule, regularly $99, is
available for a special Apple User
Group price of $74, and Food Cost
Manager, regularly $249, is available
for a user group price of $185, a 25%
discount. Get the mug order form.
http://www.actorissoftware.com/mug
Email order: [email protected]
20 Percent Off Miglia TV Products
Miglia Technology offers Apple user
group (AUG) members 20% discounts
on its video and audio products. If you
are interested in watching, recording,
pausing or rewinding live TV on your
Mac, then Miglia’s TVMicro, TVMini
HD and TVMax are for you. If you are
more into audio, check out Harmony
Audio and Harmony Express! See special AUG discounts below:
8
• TVMicro: regular $99,
AUG Price $79
• TVMiniHD: regular $249,
AUG Price $199
• TVMax: regular $249,
AUG Price $199
• HarmonyAudio: regular $199,
AUG Price $159
• HarmonyExpress: regular $39,
AUG Price $31.
www.miglia.com/products/aug_list.html
The MUG Store:
Apple Certified Refurbished Macs are
in good supply at the MUG store.
Refurbished Macs are great values as
they are usually several hundred dollars
cheaper than new, but they have the
same one-year warranty and can be
covered by AppleCare. The MUG store
offers aggressive pricing for your members on all refurbs in stock!
Be sure to remind your membership to
give applemugstore.com a peek every
so often. When your members buy
from the MUG store, your group can
earn points to receive anything the
MUG store sells for free!
(Passwords on p. 9)
Offer available to U.S. user groups.
All Current Offers in One Location
Looking for information on a past
offer? Apple User Group Advisory
Board member, Tom Piper, publishes a
single page with all current offers, expiration dates and codes.
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers/
vendorcodes.htm (password on p. 9)
For information visit:
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers.html
Get involved. Join a user group near you.
http://www.apple.com/usergroups/
Subscribe to one or all of Apple’s
free newsletters.
http://www.apple.com/signmeup/
Alarm Clock 2.3.4
[email protected]
“Take Control
of Syncing in Tiger”
“Sync Different” with a new Take
Control ebook about syncing
data! If you’ve been frustrated in
your attempts to synchronize
data between your Macs, or with
other handheld electronic
devices, Michael E. Cohen is
here to help. With clear directions
and a humorous touch, his 135page “Take Control of Syncing in
Tiger” walks you through tasks like
syncing phone numbers between
your Mac and mobile phone, iPod,
or PDA; syncing files between
your desktop and laptop Macs; and
sharing Safari bookmarks, keychains, and other data via .Mac.
You’ll learn what gear you need
and the best ways to move your
data between devices, whether
your syncing software is built in to
Tiger, works through .Mac, or
comes from an independent Mac
developer. Michael also explains
how Apple’s syncing model works
under the hood, and if things don’t
work as expected, you’ll appreciate
his practical troubleshooting
advice. Use the link below to save
10% with the MUG discount, and
note that a coupon gives you 50%
off the purchase price of any syncing software from PocketMac.
Book Details: “Take Control of Syncing
in Tiger” by Michael E. Cohen
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger
syncing.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0040
TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG>
PDF format, 135 pages, free 24-page
sample available
Publication date: August 3, 2006
Price: $10, includes 50% off
PocketMac’s syncing software
PS: Take Control has also just
released a true ebook version of
Adam Engst’s “iPhoto 6: Visual
QuickStart Guide,” one of the bestselling books about iPhoto over the
last few years. It’s $15 and the
MUG discount applies to it as well.
www.takecontrolbooks.com/iphoto
6vqs.html?14@@!pt=TRK-0041
TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG
Electronic Books
The Answers You Need Now, from Leading Experts
Take 10% off your next
Take Control order!
Shop for your Take Control books at:
This handy little application runs unobtrusively in the
status bar so it won’t get in the way and it won’t take up
space in the dock. Use it to set as many alarms as needed,
either one-time alarms or repeating alarms. Then choose
anything in the iTunes library to wake to: songs, playlists,
even podcasts. The application takes care of the rest, even
waking the computer from sleep if needed.
When it’s this simple, why even bother with older alarm
clocks? With this little application you can wake up to the
sounds you want. You can configure your snooze duration
to the length you want. You can even increase/decrease
your snooze time right from the alarm window. Plus, if you
have an apple remote, you can even hit snooze without getting out of bed. And, if waking up to blaring alarms in the
morning isn’t your cup of tea, there’s an “easy wake”
option which will gradually increase the system volume
over time. And even this is configurable for you!
The icon changes to reflect the status of the application.
There are 3 possible icons, reflecting 3 different meanings:
1. Black and White icon - There are no alarms set.
(Alarms may be scheduled, just not enabled)
2. Blue icon with red bells - Alarms are set, but the application is not configured to wake the computer from
sleep.
3. Blue icon - Alarms are set, and the application is ready
to wake the computer from sleep.
It is simple, easy to use, and does exactly what it says it
does. Requires Tiger. Freeware.
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/redir/
lid/798770/Alarm%20Clock%20(2.3.4).dmg
Use coupon code:
xxx
check out “Ordering Tips” at:
[email protected]
www.ctmac.org
All current offers and codes:
Valid: Aug. 1 - Oct. 31, 2006
User ID: xxx
Password: xxx
Valid: 5/16/06 - 11/15/06)
Password: xxx
Note: Passwords for the above sites are located on page 9 of your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
CMC Benefits:
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Secretary
Kyle DeMilo
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-232-2841
[email protected]
860-485-1547
Editor Deena Quilty
[email protected]
860-678-8622
[email protected]
860-561-0319
[email protected]
860-677-7787
[email protected]
(860) 668-8728
Public Relations
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-583-1165
Date ________________________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
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State _________________________ Zip ___________
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Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
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Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Special Events
Jack Bass
[email protected]
10
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
FREE Raffle!
FREE Classified Ads
Monthly CMC meetings are usually held on
last Wednesday of the month from 7-9 P.M.
(except Nov. and Dec. when the meetings are
Board meetings are on the first Thursday of the
month. If you wish to attend a Board meeting,
contact an officer for time and location.
[email protected]
Money Market ..................$4005.19
Display Ad Rates
Balances as of August 2, 2006
listed below.
Business Card ...................$10.00
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
Half Page .........................$30.00
Full Page .........................$50.00
Book, Hard
ware and
Software
and Othe
Disc
r Perk
ounts
s for Our
You can purch
Members
a discount. ase computer books
thly Mee
through the
CMC memb
ground shipp
ers
Current topics tings
club at
ing from MacCare also entitled to
free
Macintosh
are presented of interest to memb
onnection,
vendor.
ers
a longtime
speakers. And by knowledgeable
meeting has almost every
a valuable
An Exclusive
tion and answ
ques"members-h
er session
elping
—a
Group Stor User
meets at UCon -members" featur
e
e. CMC
n Medical
The User Group
on the last
Wednesday Center in Farmington
Store
offers great
of each mont
deals for our
h.
Networkin
members on
g
all kinds of
The personal
Mac produ
cts:
and profes
peripherals.
the friendly
sional conta
New or refurb software, hardware
and objective
cts you make
offered at
and
ished! Some
CMC meeti
, and
below street
ngs and activi advice you receive
items are
cost! Save
at all
Macintosh
ties
are
big!
a
computer
great benef
users.
it to all
Visit
Compute
r Assistan
ce
Come early
to
other memb our monthly meeti
ngs to talk
ers for help
with
also hosts
with your
a Mac suppo
questions.
CMC
rt mailing
list for our
for $25
our
website:
www.ctma
c.org
I
FILL OUT
THE REVERS
MEMBERS
E SIDE OF
HIP AP
THIS
THE BENEFI PLICATION AND
START EN
TS OF TH
JOYING
E CT MAC
USERS GR
OUP.
•An annual
Mac-related auction of
products &
software
•Microsoft
Office program
•Lego Mindst
orm, Wacom
Tablet & Garage
Band
demos
•Hands-on
Middlesex meetings at
College for Community
Photoshop iPhoto,
& iDVD workshops
•Digital photog
raphy
•Making music
on the Mac
•Adobe InDesig
n demo
•Celebrity
David Marraguests such as
from Apple
•Migrating
to the Mac
•Maintaining
your Mac
PRESORTE
D
STANDAR
D
U.S.POSTAGE
PAID
PERMIT NO.
23
Unionville
, CT
Here’s a brief
listing
CT Macintos
h Conn of some of
recent meet
ings andection’s
events:
11
Monthly
New
The Connecticu sletter
t Macintosh
you about
Chronicle
our monthly
newsletter
progr
tells
mentary articleams, and includes comother inform s, how-tos, tips and
ation relate
d to Macs.
Mon
Got Mac!
Connectic
Now I want
ut Macintos
to get conn
h Connectio
ected with
Macintos
n. Here’s
h info, fun
my chec
and know
ledge I can’t k of $25 for a full
year of
get anyw
here else.
– Jerry Esposito, Public Relations
via email!
Our web site
bers-Only
Access
along with features lots of info
about our
up-to-the-m
club,
world. And,
inute news
of the Macin
a paid memb
ship entitl
tosh
eres you to
acces
our memb
ers-only area s
where we
post specia
l articles of intere
st
tion not availa and informable to the
eral public
gen.
Name
Many MUGs are shrinking in size or ceasing to exist. With
internet chat groups, FAQs and blogs (not to mention Apple
stores themselves) it seems that fewer and fewer Mac owners
are turning to their fellow Mac owners for advice and help.
I believe that there’s nothing quite like the camraderie and
Thanks for taking the time to read this
and now let’s all go out and recruit,
recruit, recruit!
ers; get help
Web Site
with Mem
The benefits
of
members
hip:
at our websit
e: www.ctmac.o
rg
The goal of our President, Rich Lenoce, is to build on that
number by adding new members.
one-on-one personal interaction of belonging to a group such as our CMC. If you
agree with me and want to see us grow,
then I’m asking all members to talk up the
benefits of our group and try to bring in
new members or friends to join our
monthly sessions.
Enclose a
check
Going into the mail in mid-September will be a new promotional flyer describing our club and the benefits of joining.
The headline “Got Mac” is aimed at Mac owners whom we
know either own or have a strong interest in our beloved
computer platform. We’re mailing out approximately 525 flyers to prospects in a variety of zip codes around Connecticut.
If you’ve
got a Mac,
the
the Conn
ecticut Ma n get connected wi
th
cintosh Co
nnection.
memb
The Connecticu
t Macintosh
Connection
is
1986 consis a user group since
ting of peopl
like you who
e just
enjoy using
learning all
and
there is to
know
about the
best comp
uter
operating
system availa and
ble today:
The Apple
Macintosh
computer.
and mail to:
CONNECT
ICUT MAC
41 Crossroads
INTOSH CON
NECTION
West Hartfo Plaza, PMB 1984
rd, CT 06117
Or sign up
Zip
Getting CMC emails?
Address
CMC Public Relations
Account Balances
City, State,
Quicken is the most popular personal
finance management software for both
Macintosh and Windows. And this month
sees the release of the full version of
Quicken Mac 2007. Apple includes a more
basic version with most of their computers,
so you may already have a free copy on
your Mac (look in the Applications folder).
All membe
rships are
family membe
family are
included for
rships (all
members of
one low price
your
of $25.00!)
If you’re still using a paper checkbook,
come learn about how to move your
finances into the electronic age! Presenter
Deena Quilty will demonstrate the basics of
using Quicken, as well as other methods to
ease your record-keeping drudgery.
New Members!
Are you good at grammar and punctuation? Are you a good speller? Can you
spend a little time scouting out Mac-related news for us? If so, we need YOU!
CMC is looking for an Associate Editor
for our monthly newsletter to round out
our newsletter staff. If you feel you could
help out with a couple of hours a month,
please contact Deena Quilty at (860)6788622 or [email protected].
Home Phone
Online Banking with Quicken
Email
This month’s session on the essentials for
Mac users covers Email and Web Security.
When is it safe to share information online?
We’ll discuss how you can determine for
yourself, as well as talk about what information is appropriate and what could get
you into trouble. As always, questions are
encouraged, so we hope see you at 6:00.
the back of the room where everything is...“free”!
Date
Wednesday, August 30
UConn Health Ctr, Farmington
Email and Web Security
Got Mac?
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, August 30
UConn Health Center
Farmington
Email and Web Security
Online Banking with Quicken
(See page 11 for more info • Directions below)
12
He Said – She Said! At our July meeting, Greg and Vicki of PodMusic
411 showed us, from start to finish, how to create a Podcast. Give
Greg and Vicki’s podcast a listen at: http://www.PodMusic411.com
Mac-on-a-Stick ................................. 1
Getting Things Done, Part 2...............3
Wacky Websites 2..............................6
Mac Security 101 ...............................7
CMC User Group Offers .....................8
Take Control eBook ............................9
Mac-on-a-Stick
and Shaving Sheep
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Twelve months from announcement to total conversion is all it
took for Apple to move its six models
to Intel processors. There were many
fearful skeptics but the plan moved
faster than anyone anticipated, arriving
months early.
The transition was incredibly smooth.
Thousands of software applications
were converted to universal binaries,
many being optimized to take advantage of the Intel Dual Core processors.
In August, Apple completed the transition to Intel with the release of the
MacPro and X-Serves – by far the
fastest most customizable Macintoshes
ever! The MacPros have quad processors and at a cost of $700 less than a
comparably equipped G5, it offers one
of the most powerful PCs in the world
at a tremendous value. The MacPro can
be upgraded to a maximum of 15 gigs
of memory, the most powerful off-theshelf graphics card in the world, two
optical drives and a couple of terabytes
of hard drive space which, when configured, also can make it the most
expensive Macintosh ever. But for those
scientists doing advanced work, animators doing 3D, or TV networks and film
studios needing networkable HD production solutions, they now have a
choice and power. They can also run the
few remaining non-universal binary
applications such as Photoshop under
Rosetta emulation at G5 speeds.
They can even run that other OS.
SEPTEMBER 2006
In my opinion, the new Intel Mac Minis,
MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs,
MacPros and XServes are the best
Macs ever, and great values.
The PowerPC is dead!
Long live the Intel Mac.
But did you hear that the
PowerPC isn’t dead,
and neither is Classic?
People thought the move
to Intel from both a software and hardware engineering standpoint was
astonishing. For my money, the open
source Mac programming community
has the Apple engineers and Apple software developers beat. Take this
astonishing feat: running Mac OS 1
through 7.5.5 off a thumb drive on an
Intel Mac, Windows or Linux! This is
called the Mac-on-a-Stick project using
the vMac emulator. Better yet, how
about Classic Macintosh OS 7 through
9 emulation on an Intel Macintosh,
Linux or Windows? This is called
SheepShaver.
Let me tell you, this kind of old computer emulation development is a lot
harder to do than getting Windows XP
to run on hardware that, for the most
part, was built to run Windows XP.
Many of us long-time Mac users fret
over loosing some very fine programs
with Classic’s demise. I miss many of
my Chooser tools such as HTML conversion of any document or fast batch
converting of PDFs using the drag and
drop PDF desktop tool. I also miss this
great Star Wars game I used to play on
a Macintosh Plus. How could we forget
the original MacDraw, MacPaint, or
MacWrite? You must have your own
favorite programs you miss too. Mine
1
was a video graphics generator called
Comet CG; there is no similar product
available today.
The Mac-on-a-Stick project using the
vMac emulator, pictured at left, is the
most interesting, the fastest and the
most stable. All you need is a thumb
drive, some easy to find software (links
provided in the instructions), the vMac
emulator and some basic skills. Point
your browser to the Mac-on-a-Stick
website and learn how you can carry
the old Mac OS (1 through 7.5.5) and
applications around with you on as little as a 32mb USB thumb drive.
http://nothickmanuals.info/doku.php?
id=minivmac
Once set-up, just plug the drive into any
OS X, Windows or Linux machine and
voila: an 8–20+ year old machine running on a new computer! I found the
installation fairly simple and it works
really well. But for some people, OS 7
doesn’t go far enough.
For those more modern Mac users
wanting OS 7 through 9.0.4 emulation
under Intel, take a look at SheepShaver,
a G4 emulator for Intel Mac OSX,
Windows and Linux.
http://www.gibix.net/dokuwiki/en:
projects:sheepshaver
If you’re comfortable with computer tinkering, you can get SheepShaver to run.
It’s not as stable as Mac-on-a-Stick and
is difficult to configure, but every few
months an update comes that is more
stable. It runs at about 50% native speed,
but it’s in very early development.
This then asks a big question: if Apple
works so hard to get their hardware to
Continued on page 2
NEWSLETTER OF
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
run a competing operating system, why
don’t they offer an emulation program
for their Intel Macs that would allow
them to run the Classic OS and its zillions of applications? This is an OS
their customers have supported through
the years and which they abandoned.
The open source community proved an
emulator can be created. Open Source
programmers claim this emulation is
pretty easy to do, but their problem is
Apple hasn’t opened up their older
operating systems to the open source
community so they need to try various
approaches until they get it right.
Apple would go a long way to make
their old support base happy if they
either developed such an emulator or
OSXplanet
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
the newsletter.
Ok, this is absolutely not needed. I don’t
need this, you don’t need this. But boy is
this neat. And free. Requires Mac OS X
10.3.9 or higher
Remember the spinning earth you used to
have on your desktop? Well, they updated
it. It is now dynamic. It shows the storms,
the clouds, the earthquakes. It updates
every 5 minutes. It is a plaything for the big
kids! You can also use ancient times, or
other planets. Including Pluto, if you are a
diehard like me, and are not willing to give
Pluto up as a planet, just because a bunch of
scientists told you to.
What’s new in this version:
I Multi-Monitor Support has been added.
I Complete Rewrite of the program.
I Universal Binary.
I OSXplanet now has presets.
I New interface with toolbar.
I Cloud maps now update without problems.
I Now there are both high and low quality maps of the Earth.
I The origin coordinates can now be set to an active city.
I Changes to preferences are now saved “on-the-go.”
I Live, Dynamic preview.
I Preview is now integrated into the General Tab.
I Many of the memory leaks have been removed.
I Interface is now much more responsive.
I Interface is now “smart.” (Many options are set
automatically depending on other options.)
opened up their ROMs and older operating systems to the open source
community. What are they afraid of?
Let’s face it, this is software just sitting
in their vaults doing nothing and it’s
certainly not going to hurt current Mac
sales, as you need a new Mac to run it.
One thing that is striking when you run
the vMac emulator under Mac-on-astick is how few resources you need: 4
mb for the ROM; 1 to 16mb for the OS;
and 1 to 20 mb for any software. That’s
not much but considering 512 mb is
needed just to get OS X to run decently maybe the answer is that Mac users
might look back and say "Wow, this is
really good!"
Of course we always knew that.
Put the image quality on low, so as not to
use up processor speed. It still looks great.
Pick your favorite cities. Have a ball.
OSXplanet is a cocoa program that is
based on the popular program, xplanet
(by Hari Nair). It is able to generate live
images of the earth as well as other planets in the solar system with additional
informations such as the current clouds,
storms, satellites, volcanos, earthquakes
and times and locations of cities.
I The cities interface has been touched up.
I The “Export...” button under the Cities Tab removed.
I Added the ability to Enable/Disable the download of Visuals Data.
I Added the ability to view Storm Paths.
I Magnitude Threshold Interface has had a touch-up.
I The Other Tab has had a touch-up.
I The ability to set desktop to the “OSXplanet Background”
on quit has been added.
I Manual Check For Updates has been added to the Preferences.
I Smaller, Sleeker Splash Screen.
I The colors for city labels can now be chosen using the
default Color Picker.
I OSXplanet now runs with low priority (aka nice).
I OSXplanet no longer supports Mac OS X 10.2.8 and earlier.
I The Cities List is now alphabetized.
I Volcanos are now rendered more nicely.
http://www.gabrielotte.com/osxplanet/main.html
2
Getting Things Done with
Your Macintosh, Part 2
by Jeff Porten
<[email protected]>
In part 1 of this article,
I introduced David Allen’s
Getting Things Done system, and looked at several
programs that could help
you implement that system.
Now, I want to go into more
detail about how GTD
works, specifically on a dayto-day basis on your Mac.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08614>
Mind Like Aqua Finder – Remember, the key to
GTD is to get tasks, vague plans, and random thoughts
into the right collection buckets and out of your head as
quickly as possible. Apple, in its Infinite Loop wisdom,
has provided us all with a collection bucket that is
always staring us in the face, but almost no one uses it
properly as a productivity tool. I’m talking about the
Finder Desktop.
So, what’s on your Desktop? If you’re like 95 percent of my clients, your Desktop contains the
following: aliases to frequently used documents and
applications; documents you worked on last Tuesday
with cryptic filenames; a few notes that might be relevant around Christmas; and most importantly, the files
related to whatever is the Project of the Week.
Here’s what I suggest you do: in your User folder,
create a folder called “Desktop Storage.” Drag everything on the Desktop into that folder. Voila, clean desk!
“But what about the Project of the Week?” No
problem. In your master list (which, as we learned in
part 1, can be anything from iCal to a TextEdit document to an outline in OmniOutliner), add a recurring
entry to “Review Desktop Storage.” The Project of the
Week should go on one of your lists. The other stuff?
You can process that later. But you can put your aliases
in the Dock (and clean out the ones you don’t need, regularly), file the cryptic documents, and have the
Christmas stuff come back after Thanksgiving (more on
this later). Most importantly, you don’t have to do this
now. Those items weren’t getting any more organized
while they were festering on your Desktop, so it won’t
do you any harm to have them sitting in storage for a
while, provided you have a trusted reminder on your
master list to bring you back to it.
Why do this? Because a clean desk is a clean slate.
Click on the Desktop (with no Finder windows open),
and go to View > Show View Options, where you can
set how your files appear. I prefer setting the font to 11
points, with small icons, label positions on the right,
and kept arranged by name; this creates a neat list in a
compact space, which I can usually see behind the win-
dows I have open. Over the course of my workday,
everything I work on, download, modify, or transmogrify is kept on my Desktop (with one exception: when
I’m working with files that are already neatly organized
elsewhere, I use aliases to those documents instead.) At
the end of my day, the files on my Desktop are a map
of where I’ve conceptually been today; rearrange by
Date Modified, and I can see the chronological order in
which I was there as well.
At the end of the day (or every couple of days,
more commonly), I process my Desktop. Files that I’m
done with - no next action, ever again - are either filed
or trashed, according to whether I might want them
again someday. Files that I need in the future are stored
in a tickler system or a “Someday” folder. Files that
have immediate followup are annotated and stored in an
appropriate task system.
I can hear you saying, “Nice. How?” It’s all done
with the Finder, and a sprinkling of iCal and
AppleScript.
Taglines and Ticklers and Softwares, Oh My!
Let’s start with the basics. You’re knocking off work and
processing your Desktop - which probably only has a
dozen or so files on it, since you regularly clean off your
desk. Do you ever need a particular file again? If not,
toss it. The Trash is your friend. The goal isn’t to save
disk space - we all have enough to save a bazillion URLs
for future reference. You’re saving mind space, and saying, “This never deserves my attention, ever again.”
Or perhaps you do need that file again. If the file is
part of an active project which you will likely need
soon, go ahead and put it in an Active Projects folder, in
a subfolder with a suitable name. On my desktop right
now I have this very article, and the Active Projects
folder is where it’s going to live at the end of the day.
But after this article is published, it’s no longer an active
project - and hence I’ll move it to the long-term filing.
Do you have a folder structure that looks like the
following?
Users > jporten > Documents > Writing >
Mac > TidBITS > In Progress > GTD > Drafts
So did I. What an unholy mess. Here’s what my file
structure looks like now (both active & archived locations):
Users > jporten > Active Projects > TidBITS
GTD Users > jporten > Archives > 2006-07
That’s it. I create a new folder every month, put it
into my Finder sidebar, and viciously file documents
there to get them out of my way. If I need a file, I can
generally recall when I used them last and go right to
the correct folder, or I let Spotlight do the work for me.
Sure, I could spend hours tinkering with my folders but life is too short. This system, where you file only by
the age of the document, is called Noguchi, and it works
nicely for paper too. Unfortunately, the original Web
page that taught me this system has been taken offline,
but this page points to some good secondary resources.
<http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2005/10/
noguchi_filing_.html>
3
So that’s how we deal with trash, current work, and
finished work. How about stuff we want to get back to
later? There are two categories of these: things we’ll get
to when we get to (and don’t much care when that is),
and things we want to look at again on a specific date.
For the former, I have a Someday folder in my
home folder. It holds things ranging from scraps of
notes I made about my cockamamie business idea for
2008, to URLs I want to visit, to software I want to play
with. These items have only two things in common:
none of them have deadlines, so they can all just sit
there forever; and all of them have been given a yellow
Finder label to tell me that there’s a comment attached
(in the Get Info window), to remind me what it is I
wanted to do with this file. Since it might be months
before I get to it, why spend time trying to remember
why I saved it? I fire up an AppleScript script that tacks
a few words into its comment box and colors it yellow
in one swoop; yellow is just my mnemonic for a “sticky
note” to remind me to read the comments. (And yes, the
script is on my Web site, along with another one that
randomly chooses an item in the Someday folder to
deal with. It’s just more fun that way - who wants to
work on the moldiest items first?)
<http://jeffporten.com/2006/07/31/tidbits-gtdapplescripts/>
But for stuff with deadlines, I want to be sure I see
it when I need it - and no sooner. So I have another folder that contains one folder for every day for the rest of
the year. When Adam tells me he might be interested in
my article on connecting a MacBook to a juice blender
sometime in October, I just drag my notes about that to
a folder in late September. Every morning, while I’m
sleeping and my computer is not, an iCal event triggers
a script that dumps that day’s files on my Desktop, and
boom, they become part of that day’s processing. That
script is also part of my download.
What works great about this for me is that it’s a
file-and-forget process, and I almost always have an
easy target. I’m looking at a Web site I want to get back
to later, so I drag the URL out of Safari to my Desktop.
When I’m processing it later, I either read it then, or I
tickle it for the weekend or attach it to some project or
task. In this way, everything gets captured, but most
often in a way that doesn’t require me to spend an hour
diddling around with deciding on where to put something.
So now do you see why you cleaned off your
Desktop at the beginning of this article? Your Desktop
is special - no other location on your hard disk gives
you a wide, always-available target. If you like, when it
comes time to process your Desktop Storage, go ahead
and dump them back on the Desktop for processing but put them away again later if you don’t finish. Your
Desktop is a workspace, not a catch-all for your entire
life. That’s what your hard disk is for, with your lists to
remind you to go back into its nooks and crannies.
continued on page 4
Linking Your Stuff to Tasks – We’ll stay with files
a little longer, since so much of what we work with ends
up being a file somewhere on your hard disk. If you
want to be compulsively organized (and if you’re still
reading this, you know you do), it’s key to be able to
pull up your support files immediately when you turn to
a particular task. With OmniOutliner, this is easy; just
drag the file or an alias into your outline, and you’re
done. What about task managers like iCal and Life
Balance, which don’t allow for importing files?
(Incidentally, I don’t intend to give Entourage short
shrift; Entourage has a nice system for linking tasks to
projects and files with internal linking. I used it for
years. In the long run, though, it wasn’t flexible enough
for my needs, so I abandoned it for this system. My
guess is that if you’re an Entourage user and you’re
building your system, you’ll be staying entirely within
that software and won’t need my help with its specific
tricks. I will mention, though, that if you’re not using
AppleScript utilities to help manage your data, you’re
missing half the power of your software.)
<http://scriptbuilders.net/cat.php?category_
list=2&act=show_cat&cat_id=2>
You may have noticed that iCal events and tasks
have a URL field, and if you paste in a URL that you
copy out of Safari, you get a nice “open this location”
button when you select it again. Very handy. But you
can also do this with your files, since every file on your
hard disk can be “URLified” to look like this:
file://Users/jporten/Desktop/gtd%20article.rtf
The problem is that these URLs don’t follow the files
when you move them to a new folder. So, I have another
AppleScript script (which you can download at my site)
that creates an alias and links the URL to that instead; the
URL always points to the alias, and the alias points to the
actual file no matter where it moves. If you need multiple
files linked, then link to a folder instead that holds them
all. Feel free to use the same trick with the URL field in
Address Book to connect files to people.
As for other applications that don’t have explicit
URL fields, a nifty Mac trick works in every Cocoa
application. (It’s not always clear which applications
are Cocoa; don’t spend time trying to figure it out, just
try it and see if it works with your favorites.) When you
paste a URL into a text field, it still looks like plain text,
but many applications will know it’s a URL. In Life
Balance, Command-click on it to open it; in TextEdit,
Control-click on it and choose Open URL. Now you
can connect pretty much anything you want to anything
else - for example, if you want to link one file to another file, go ahead and put the second file’s URL into the
Finder comments of the first one. It works there too
with a Command-click.
Dividing Current Stuff from Ongoing Stuff – In
case you didn’t notice, the process I just talked about
with your Desktop has the great advantage of focusing
your attention on a current set of files. If you need to
work with something, dump it on the Desktop. When
you’re done, put it away somewhere appropriate. Those
other 300,000 files on your hard drive? Not in the way.
Can we apply this method to tasks as well? Here’s how
I do it.
In your master list, no matter where you keep it,
you’ll have your life’s smorgasbord of things that you
want to do. It’s big, and it’s daunting, and that’s okay
because presumably you’ll have a few decades in which
to tackle it. The problem arises when it’s 3 PM and you
hear about a book you want to read on the radio, or that
funny noise comes out of your air conditioner, and you
just want to write it down and move on. Or you want to
make super-duper sure that you get back to it today, not
in two weeks.
Enter iCal tasks. I use my iCal task list the same
way I use my Desktop. The day starts empty, or with the
events that I’ve tickled a while ago to show up today.
iCal has a feature to hide events that aren’t due yet, so
don’t put the actual due date in that field; put in the date
you want to be reminded of it. If you’re properly breaking your work down into small, doable next actions, the
due date can always be the same day as the reminder
date; however, if you’re quickly noting a project for
review later, go ahead and write “Big report due August
31” with a “due date” - that is, your reminder date - of
August 7th, or however much lead time you’ll need to
do the big report.
Ideally, at the end of each day, all of my iCal tasks
have one of three outcomes: it’s done, it’s moved to my
master list and deleted from iCal, or I decide it’s not that
important and just plain deleted. (I’ve learned I save a
lot of time if I let every new idea incubate for a little
while; it takes time for silly ideas to ripen and smell
bad.) This way, my iCal to-do list is always short and
doable - and yes, there’s a recurring Routine task in my
master list telling me to do these things. I also review
the tasks that are done; sometimes they’re worth noting
in my master list, especially when I realize that this is
just the first step of an ongoing project.
One of the more important categories of tasks that I
add to iCal aren’t really tasks at all, but rather are “waiting for” ticklers. These are items that are out of my hands,
but I’m still invested in getting it done; for example, “WF
email from Adam re GTD article,” or “WF rebate from
Amazon.” It’s a quick method of noting that something
might need more action in the future, but not now. It’s
even quicker if you use Quicksilver, the DoBeDo
Dashboard widget, or your favorite iCal-integrated utility
to update your list without jumping into iCal.
<http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/>
<www.bluehenley.com/products/dobedo/>
By the way, if you’re still cringing in panic about
the idea of removing your Project of the Week off your
Desktop, I strongly recommend iCalViewer. It’s a fantastic utility that plasters your iCal events and tasks as a
transparent background across your Desktop. If, like
me, you want to be hit in the face with a regular
4
reminder that you need to do something - or get off your
butt in 30 minutes to get to that upcoming meeting - it’s
a life-saver. But don’t use your files for that; use iCal.
<http://www.icalviewer.com/>
Taming Your Email and Inbox Zero – You’ve
likely noted a trend; with both your Desktop and your
iCal tasks, I’ve suggested ways to keep your workspaces clean and fresh, so what shows up there for your
immediate attention is always manageable and relevant.
There’s one more place to do this: your email. I keep an
archive of approximately 650,000 messages, dating
back to 1997, but as I write this, my inbox has exactly
zero messages.
You do this by treating your inbox as an inbox, not
as a staging folder for reminders of stuff to do. You’ve
got your master list and iCal for that. And the way you
empty your inbox is to rip through your messages with
the following rule: read once, do it if it can be done
quickly (and I’m talking around two minutes here), or
file it and forget it. This process was memorably named
“Inbox Zero” by Merlin Mann, and I can no longer
imagine working with email without it.
I use Apple Mail, and my system for this uses the
excellent MailTags and Mail Act-On from InDev;
MailTags allows you to attach metadata to your email
messages, like tags and due dates, while Mail Act-On
lets you create fast keyboard commands for mail processing. Similar capabilities exist in Entourage; I don’t
know how Thunderbird, Eudora, or Gmail users would
do this, but I strongly suspect a Google search will turn
up ways to replicate these techniques.
<http://www.indev.ca/>
Again, you want to follow the principles that you
used in creating your Finder filing system - don’t spend
forever creating hierarchies of folders that you need to
manage meticulously. Go with the simplest possible filing system that covers your needs. I use a grand total of
seven categories when an email needs some action on
my part. The first five are priorities, ranging from
Urgent to Lowest. Urgent means exactly that - this task
will die screaming if I don’t do it today. I file most email
messages with either High or Normal priority. I’ve
learned that Low or Lowest priority messages might rot
unseen for months, so I take that into account when prioritizing my email.
The other two categories (which MailTags calls
“projects”) are ReplyTo or WaitingFor. I use ReplyTo
for things like email to friends, or general business correspondence that doesn’t really have a deadline; by
default, these acquire with priorities between High and
Normal in my review folders, but sometimes I notch
these higher or lower depending on what else is going
on. (My review folders are Mail’s Smart Mailboxes;
they’re named with leading numbers so they sort as I
like them: 20 High, 25 ReplyTo, 30 Normal, 99
WaitingFor.) WaitingFor just notes that there’s something I need to do with this email but can’t get to just
continued on page 5
yet, or an email I sent is waiting for a reply. Sometimes
I’ll use the MailTags notes field to remind myself exactly what I’m waiting for, if it wouldn’t be instantly
obvious the next time I review that email.
What I don’t do, however, is tag every possible
message with every possible project name to which it
might be connected. I’ve found that with Spotlight
searches, there’s almost no need to do this. On those
occasions when I might need a series of email messages
to review all at once, I’ll create a topical project and a
Smart Mailbox to collect them. But there’s a weekly
Routine task reminding me to cull these folders - I don’t
want 16,000 of them cluttering up Apple Mail; I want
just the five or ten I’m working on. When I’m done, I
delete the Smart Mailbox, write down the MailTag
somewhere for posterity in case I ever need the folder
back, and let the messages live quietly in my Read Mail
archive. The result is that my mailboxes, like my iCal
and Desktop, reflect a list of things I’m currently managing and don’t fill up with useless trivia and
distractions.
A new feature in MailTags allows you to connect
an email message directly to a task in iCal, so I have a
mix of older tasks that are noted within the MailTags
notes field, and newer ones that are connected to an iCal
task. I’m leaning toward using iCal tasks for Urgent and
High priority issues but keeping Normal and lower priority work solely in Mail - again, with the idea of
keeping iCal from feeling like a towering mass of stuff
that discourages me from doing it. Email messages that
are MailTagged to an iCal task can be opened directly
from iCal, using a clever implementation of the task
URL field.
MailTags is also great for filing, since it enables
you to apply Noguchi to your email. An email, after it’s
been read once, goes one of two places: the Trash or the
Read Mail folder. If it has a priority or a category, or if
it’s connected to an iCal task, it’s suitably flagged and
can be retrieved with a Smart Mailbox. When I’m done
with it, I just clear the tags and let it drop out of my
Smart Mailboxes; the email is already in the Read Mail
folder, which is where it goes for posterity.
Finally, there’s the action step in my Routine list
that makes all of this functional. I have a daily reminder
to check my messages in Smart Mailboxes, and all I do
is start with the Urgents and work my way down until
I’m out of time. Items I mark High priority generally
means that I should make time for them; items marked
Normal can wait a while, but should be cleared out regularly - so there’s an additional weekly reminder that
tells me to catch up on any I’ve missed. And last, another set of reminders come up weekly to review the
WaitingFors to see if I need to pick up any dropped
balls, which I generally do while doing my Smart
Mailbox and tag review cleanup.
Getting to Zero and Getting Things Done – So,
we’ve now covered the three key Zen concepts of “Mac
mind like water”: Inbox Zero, Desktop Zero, and iCal
Zero. It doesn’t matter how horribly overstuffed these
workspaces are right now; with judicious use of your
master list and backup lists, you can make these into
highly functional and low-stress places to organize your
work and stay focused. But that begs the question of
whether this actually helps you get stuff done.
Like all such systems, it’s only as good as you are.
My “clean” iCal list has a few items that have been festering for a while, so I’m proof positive that this isn’t a
cure for procrastination. You still need to actually do
what you need to do. Where I feel my greatest sense of
relief - and yes, my semblance of “mind like water” - is
that GTD gives me a way to deal with a problem I suspect many of you have: my “things I want to do” mind
has very little regard for “how much time I have to do
it.” I want to learn Italian (still!) and learn Python; I
haven’t done either yet, and both are stashed into various Someday folders. If I forget I want to learn Italian
and think of it again, fine; it’ll just be written down
twice. No big deal. This is the first system I’ve
discovered that honors my random and not-immediately-relevant ideas, but still moves them out of the
way of things that need to be prioritized.
Perhaps the best thing about GTD is that it’s easy to
get back on the horse after a few missteps. I didn’t
process my email properly for a few days and I had 150
messages in my inbox; when I had a chance, I sat down
for an hour and processed them and now I’m back to
zero. That could work for 750 or 2,250 email messages
if I had a really bad month; usually it just takes a few
days before I notice I’m slipping and get back into the
habit. But I have 4 GB of files waiting for me in my
Desktop Storage folder, from dozens of sweeps off the
Desktop I never finished processing; I know that most
of those files are low priority - after all, I never went
looking for them and haven’t missed them - but it’s nagging at me that I need to process them, just to make
sure. And that nagging feeling is the feedback loop that
keeps the system working.
GTD Resources – The procedures I’ve listed here
came about only after a great deal of error and trial. (I’m
deliberately reversing the order of that phrase; it seems
apropos when the errors so vastly outnumbered the trials.) There’s something about GTD that leads adherents
to tinker endlessly with it, and then to go to online
forums and meticulously document their tinkering. If
my ideas aren’t exactly your cup of caffeine, rest
assured, there are about 10,000 alternative methods out
there to borrow and make your own.
The first stop is the informative and entertaining 43
Folders weblog by Merlin Mann. This is possibly one of
the few weblogs where it is worth your time to go back
to the beginning of the archives and read it all. 43
Folders has spawned two discussion forums (one Webbased, one email), and a wiki, all of which are
refreshingly Mac-centric in flavor. If you’re interested in
learning some of the deep voodoo that is Darwin, there’s
a great deal of Unix talent on these boards as well.
5
<http://www.43folders.com/ >
<http://board.43folders.com/ >
<http://groups.google.com/group/43Folders >
<http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Main_Page>
Other good sources of GTD discussion are the
various blogs that are linked to Office Zealot; if the
only places you check are Office Zealot and 43
Folders, that alone should be more than enough content to ensure you’re spending too much time tinkering
with your system. The lineup at Office Zealot seems to
change regularly, but as I write this, they’ve highlighted links to Slacker Manager and Michael Hyatt, whose
blogs frequently show up in recommended reading in
the lists I read.
<http://www.officezealot.com/gtd/>
<http://slackermanager.com/>
<http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/>
Finally, there’s the “mothership” at DavidCo, home
of David Allen himself (or “The David,” as cultists
winkingly refer to him). I don’t stop here too often,
because the sales pitch for workshops, seminars, and
private consulting comes off a bit strong (although I’ve
frequently heard that these are worthwhile, if pricey).
But the archives here are definitely worth an afternoon
or two to look for good ideas, and I recommend the free
monthly newsletter of tips and tricks.
<http://www.davidco.com/>
And again, here are those AppleScript scripts I
repeatedly mentioned.
<http://jeffporten.com/2006/07/31/tidbits-gtdapplescripts/>
It took me a solid few years before I developed this
working system, and I have no doubt that a year from
now I’ll have incorporated a few new techniques and
discarded a few of these. I equally have no doubt that in
that year I’ll spend more time than I should playing
around with new software and making pretty stacks of
sandwich orders. Such is the nature of the beast for
most of us. For your own implementation, I suggest you
start by reading the “Getting Things Done” book, putting everything imaginable into your inbox for
processing, and creating a small, incremental system for
processing it.
It might take a few months before you really feel
comfortable, and a few more before you really feel productive. Most of us are very glad we made the trip.
[Jeff Porten is an Internet consultant in Washington,
DC, who practices maybe three out of seven effective
habits.]
PayBITS: Has Jeff helped bring order to your Mac?
Show your appreciation via a PayBITS donation!
<http://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=
civitan%40jeffporten.com>
Read more about PayBITS:
<http://www.tidbits.com/paybits/>
Wacky Websites #2
Reprinted with permission
by Peter P. Gladis
<[email protected]>
Why look at a boring regular old clock on
your desk or wall when you can access
www.HumanClock.com? In either digital or analog, once every minute, a new photograph comes
up from almost anywhere in the world with a
depiction of the actual time! Try it out! Pretty
cool – and Wacky!
With the current terrorism threat, let us not
forget that there are thousands of active nuclear
warheads still hanging around! Feel better? With
that in mind, visit www.Conelrad.com – a
Wacky (and a bit scary) site about “All Things
Atomic”. For you youngsters, CONELRAD was
a National Emergency Broadcasting System outlet available during the early Cold War at AM
640 and 1210.
There’s a famous line in 1948’s The Treasure
of the Sierra Madre: “Badges? We ain’t got no
badges…I don’t have to show you any stinking
badges!!! ” Since then, dozens of movies and TV
shows have used or paraphrased those immortal,
Wacky words. Read about it at:
www.Darryl.com/Badges
The “ACME Anvil”; the “ACME Doit-Yourself Tornado Kit”; the “ACME
Jet-Propelled Unicycle”; the “ACME RocketPowered Roller Skates”… Oh, that poor, Wacky
Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons! For the
first time, information and pictures of all ACME
products, specialty divisions, and services from
the Warner Bros. cartoons made by the studio
from 1935 to 1964, are gathered at: http://
home.nc.rr.com/ tuco/looney/acme/acme.html
Now here’s a website that is near and dear to
my heart! Without a good corkscrew, I can’t get
corks for my famous “Peter Gladis’s Two-Cork
Hand Manipulation Trick”! So, check out THE
VIRTUAL CORKSCREW MUSEUM at
www.CorkScrewMuseum.com w i t h o v e r
12,000 Wacky corkscrew pictures! Yes!!!
I found this site hilarious: www.rink
works.com/dialect/. The “Dialectizer” takes any
text you enter, or other web pages, and instantly
creates parodies of them! Try it out by selecting
a dialect, then entering a URL or English text –
Wacky!
When I first came across this site, I thought it
was a joke! But in fact, it’s a real (if not Wacky)
hotel chain called: FANTASUITE HOTELS! Go
to www.FantaSuite.com and select from
Hotels with themes like: “The Ancient Land of
Caesar’s Court”, the futuristic “Space Odyssey”,
“Arabian Nights”, “Cinderella”, “Indy 500”,
“Wild Wild West” and more! Yikes!
Remember a cereal called “WACKY’s”? How
about Sir Grapefellow? Cornfetti? Quangaroos?
Dinky Donuts? Fruity Freakies? Go back to the
olden days of cool cereals and goofy boxes at:
www.TheImaginaryWorld.com/cbarch.html
Some of you may remember getting milk
delivered in bottles to your door – you can
relive those wondrous, Wacky days at:
www.MilkBottleOfTheWeek.com
It’s hard to describe this Wacky site, but I
found myself spending quite a bit of time exploring it: www.InterestingIdeas.com. It has lots of
funny and interesting Roadside Art, Store Signs,
Roadside Ruins, Postcard Motels, Strange Store
Names, Bottle Cap Art, Prison Art, and lots of
other Wacky “stuff” – like a really interesting
discussion of “Why Life Is Better Now”.
I didn’t know whether to classify this website
as Wacky – or just plain fascinating! The
PENCIL CARVING site at www.Infofreako.
com/jad/enpitsu-e.html displays dozens of
examples of intricate carving work on common
wood pencils – you’ll just have to see it to
believe it!
I just said to myself this morning … “Self, I
wonder who invented the Coat Hanger? And
what is its history? And what developments have
occurred over the years? And, oh … I wonder
what innovations and new technologies have
been implemented in the past 50 years?” My
Wacky prayers have been answered! See:
www.Homepage.mac.com/marchesbaugh/
moch/intro.html
There’s something fascinating about watching
buildings imploding professionally. Watch all
you want at www.ImplosionWorld.com – the
Demolition industry’s worldwide source for
news and information on building implosions,
blowdowns and all other types of structural
blasting projects. Wacky huh?
The “Microfilm Gallery” has assembled a large
collection of old newspaper ads dating from
1915 through the 1960s – a fascinating, and
sometimes Wacky portal into American culture
and the free market: www.lileks.com/oldads
“Auction, Sunday Nov 7th – New & Used
Food”; “Hitchhikers May Be Escaping Inmates”;
“No Bicycle Riding In Subway Tunnel” – these
and 123 other Wacky Signs can be viewed at
www.FunnySign.com
Much happened from AD 1001 – 2000 that
changed history, and still affects us now! The
stirrup changed warfare; in 1879 the Scott brothers invented toilet paper! Interesting stuff at:
http://pw2.netcom.com/~rogermw/
millennium.html
Remember the Periodic Table of the Elements
from Chemistry Class? Totally useless information right? Well now, here is a Wacky Table that
we can all relate to: “The Table of Condiments
That Periodically Go Bad”: www.Backtable.org/
~blade/fnord/condiments.html
6
Hate throwing toasters out? Always think you
can make it work better (“I just need to shake the
crumbs out…”)? If so, there’s a Wacky site for
people like you: www.ToasterMuseum.com
– “The World’s Largest Online Toaster
Exhibition”.
Wise Mr. Miyagi said: “Man who catch fly
with chopsticks – can accomplish anything!”
Here’s your chance! Catch a fly with a pair of
chopsticks and put it on flypaper – Wacky fun!
WickedIntellect.com/flash/games/fly.swf
Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-Mail me at
[email protected]
© 2006 by Peter P. Gladis
Mac Security 101
Connecting to the Internet:
Put a Router Between Your
Mac and the World
by Kale Feelhaver aka:
Applemacpunk
http://www.applemacpunk.com
The days of dial up are gone. These
days everyone connects to the Internet
via high-speed cable or DSL connections. Though these connections are
much faster (and much less painful to
use), the pose a new problem. When
you plug your Mac directly into your
Cable/DSL modem, you are putting
your Mac directly on the Internet. This
article will give a brief synopsis of a
safer way to connect.
Before talking about ways to connect, let’s talk a little bit about what
actually happens when you connect to
the Internet. Every connection to the
Internet is given a number. Think of
them like addresses, or phone numbers.
These numbers are called IP Addresses
and each one is a unique string of 4
numbers (between 0 and 255), separated by dots (ie: 68.159.36.122). Every
Internet provider (AOL, Earthlink, etc.)
is given a range of IP Addresses that
they can distribute to their members.
IP Addresses on the Internet are
called Public IP Addresses. Local networks also use IP Addresses, but to keep
things from getting confusing, local network have 3 reserved IP ranges, called
Private IP Addresses. The ranges are
10.0.0.0–10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0–
172.31.255.255, and 192.168.0.0–
192.168.255.255. These IP ranges
designate internal networks and are
never used on the Internet. At any time,
you can check your Mac’s IP Address
through the Network pane in System
Preferences and see if you are connected to a Public IP Address, or a Private
IP Address. If you see an address like
10.222.8.189 (or any of the reserved
addresses), you are connected to a local
area network. If you an address like
157.62.44.101, you are connected
directly to the Internet.
One of the easiest and cheapest
ways to put a barrier between your Mac
and the Internet is to connect through a
router. A router is a hardware device
that sits between your Mac and the
Cable/DSL modem. The function of the
router is to translate Private IP
Addresses into Public IP Addresses.
Routers use a technology called NAT
(Network Address Translation) to
achieve this. A router has (at least) 2
interfaces. One is the external interface, which plugs into the Internet
(Cable/DSL modem). The other is the
internal interface, which plugs into
your Mac (or into your network if you
have several Macs). Basically, the
router takes the Public IP Address from
the Internet, and gives your Mac a
Private IP Address to keep it separated
from the Internet. The true function of a
router is far more complicated, but that
is a simplified overview.
Think of the router like a front desk
in an office building. If you are sitting
at a desk in the building, and you call
someone, the call goes out through the
front desk. If the person calls you back
at that number, they are connected to
the front desk and not directly to your
phone. The router uses a similar
method to secure your Mac from the
outside world. The router takes the
Public IP Address, so every time you
browse the Internet, you are using the
address of the router, not the address of
your Mac. If a hacker attempts to “call
you back” he gets the router, and not
your Mac.
There are several routers on the
market made by companies like
Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear. A decent
7
router will cost you less than $100, and
probably last for many years. The basic
setup is pretty simple. First, shut off
your Mac and shut off your Cable/DSL
Modem. Hook up the router, according
to the directions. A cord should come
out of the modem, and go into the
router. Then a second cord should come
out of the router and go into the Mac.
Once everything is hooked up, power
on the modem, power on the router, and
power on the Mac, in that order.
Now for the part that everyone forgets… go to the router configuration
screen and change the password. Look
in your router’s manual to see how to
get to the configuration screen. On
most routers, this will be accessed via a
web browser. Since the router is now
your connection to the Internet, you
want to make sure you are protecting it
with a password. Anyone who has ever
set up a Linksys router knows the
default password is “admin”. The same
is true of every manufacturer. Each one
uses the same default password on all
of their routers. A hacker is always
going to try the default passwords when
attempting to break in. Make sure to
choose a password that is complex, but
still easy to remember. You may need to
perform maintenance on the router at
some point, and then you will need the
password.
Connecting to the Internet through
a router is not going to guarantee security, but it should help to increase the
security of your Mac while you are on
the Internet. Fortunately, there are a lot
less Mac-specific hacks out there,
because most people target Windows.
However, this doesn’t mean Mac users
should get lazy and think, “it won’t
happen to me.” The Internet is a nasty
place and there are a lot of evils out
there lurking in the virtual shadows. Put
some hardware between your Mac and
the Internet… you’ll sleep better at
night.
Reprinted from macCompanion
September 2006
http://www.maccompanion.com/
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These User Group discounts are brought to you by the Apple
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To purchase, download Delicious Library, install and
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FastMac is pleased to offer a 100% plug and play compatible
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Get Offers From One Site
Looking for more offers? Tom Piper, Apple User Group
Advisory Board vendor coordinator, publishes a single page
with all current offers, expiration dates and codes.
CTMac’s Password is located on p. 9.
Be sure to subscribe to Tom’s new Apple User Group Market
for interviews and the latest news on vendor offers. Visit the
link on the Advisory Board’s home page.
For information about vendor offers and more visit
Normally $25.95, this CTMac special is $19.95, a 23 percent
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get the discount. 1-866-416-3278
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8
[email protected]
Take Control of Booking
a Cheap Airline Ticket
Use your Mac to find the lowest available price for your next airline ticket
purchase!
Did you pay more than you wanted
for your last airplane flight? Most
people do, thanks to the wily pricing
techniques of the airline industry. But
industry expert and blogger Sam
Sellers has a time-tested technique for
using your Mac to find the lowest possible fare efficiently. So whether your
next trip is for business or pleasure,
follow Sam’s advice to fly the route
you want for a fare you can afford.
You’ll also find advice for reserving a
good seat and preparing for low-hassle travel, as well as information on
using frequent flyer miles, mileageaward credit cards, and recommended
methods for tracking deals.
Appendixes provide links to major
airline home pages and flight-route
maps, an explanation of the pesky
taxes applied to your fare, and more.
Read this ebook to learn the answers
to questions such as:
• Which of the many travel Web
sites should I use?
• Why do flight prices seem to go
up as I check them?
• What sort of flexibility on my
part will save money?
• How can I best use my Web
browser to switch quickly
between travel sites while
researching cheap tickets?
• What's a smart way to bid for a
bargain on Priceline.com?
• Are there special ways of saving
money on international flights?
Table of Contents
• Read Me First
• Introduction
• Quick Start
• Traveler, Know Thyself
• Begin the Booking Process
• Book Domestic More than
2 Weeks Out
• Book Domestic Less than
2 Weeks Out
• Book International
• Pick a Package
• Buy Blind
• Win The Waiting Game
• Use Loyalty Programs
• Fly Right
• Appendix A: Links to
Major Airlines
• Appendix B: Resources
• Appendix C: Taxes:
An Explanation
• Appendix D: Rebate Web Sites
• Appendix F: Better Browsing
• Glossary
• About This Ebook
Electronic Books
The Answers You Need Now, from Leading Experts
Take 10% off your next
Take Control order!
Shop for your Take Control ebooks at:
Use coupon code:
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check out “Ordering Tips” at:
[email protected]
www.ctmac.org
Book Details: “Take Control of
Booking a Cheap Airline Ticket”
by Sam Sellers
airline-ticket.html?14@@!pt=TRK0039-TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG>
PDF format, 152 pages
2.2 MB download
ISBN: 1-933671-17-3
Published: August 11, 2006
Price: $10
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Password: xxxx*
*Note: Passwords for the above sites are located on page 9 of your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
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10
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Monthly CMC meetings are usually held
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holidays). Board meetings are on the first
attend a Board meeting, contact an officer
for time and location.
Wednesday, September 27
Web Browsers
This month our Basics session will discuss
the various web browsers that are available
for Mac and what’s good about them (as
well as not so good). You see Safari is great,
but it’s not the end-all be-all web browser
for Macintosh. So, we’ll compare the alternatives, tell you how to acquire them, and
help you to understand the differences
between them all.
the back of the room where everything is...free!
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Account Balances
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Main Presentation, 7:00 PM
Firefox Rocks!
What’s a Firefox? It’s perhaps the best web
browser program known to man. It’s free,
it’s fast, it’s rich with features, and very
importantly, it’s secure! Come learn about
all the things that Firefox can do and how it
will enhance your web browsing. It’s greatest asset is the expandability provided by
“extensions”, and we’ll demonstrate some
of the most useful, creative, and gotta-havethem extensions available.
Getting CMC emails?
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We always welcome your input and participation. Do you have an idea for
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present yourself? Email us at [email protected].
11
Are you good at grammar and
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speller? Can you spend a little time
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(See page 11 for more info • Directions below)
12
At our August meeting, Deena Quilty demonstrated the basics of using
Quicken in online banking to ease your record-keeping drudgery.
GoLive Booted! ................................. 3
Review: Speed Download...................5
Review: Little Mac Book.....................6
Review: Exploring Digital Video .........7
Apple’s iTV ........................................8
OCTOBER 2006
Fix the Finder
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
With all of the talk about OS X
Leopard and its many new features,
the one thing you never hear about is
the fixes that should be, but often
times aren’t found, in any new version
of OS X. Don’t get me wrong, OS X
is the best operating system available
but it’s not without it’s faults.
Please Apple, Fix The Finder!
You know what I’m talking about.
Let’s start with the “Spinning Beach
Ball.” It happens and I’d go so far as to
say it happens a lot. Navigate through
any network drive “share” or the iDisk
and you’ll see what I mean. Despite
all the talk of OS X being a multi-task
OS, the Finder gets into situations
where it can only do one thing at a
time. The spinning beach ball means
“I’m working, you’ll have to wait,”
and you do.
My biggest peeve is that the Finder
can’t find things. One of the Finders
main purposes is to keep track of
where files and folders are at all
times–not only for itself, but for applications too. This worked really well in
the Classic OS but under OS X that
purpose has gotten lost. Turn off an
application, move one of its associated files such as an MS Word .doc file,
a photo from the iPhoto Library or a
Final Cut video clip, reopen the app
and the application can no longer find
the file. Since The Finder was running
when you moved the file shouldn’t it
know where it is? Isn’t that the
Finder’s job? Spotlight knows where
it is. Shouldn’t Applications, and the
Finder work together like in the old
days?
There’s also .Mac and The Finder,
which was supposed to have seamless
integration. I’m constantly getting
errors when copying or moving files
to my iDisk and regularly my iDisk
doesn’t sync between all my computers. And, it’s incredibly slow. Finder
processes that seem simple and should
work flawlessly never seem to.
The Finder has this nasty habit of
scolding me. “The device you
removed was not properly put
away…” No kidding. And, why doesn’t Apple just allow us to eject
devices? Eject a drive with an open
file and you are told “The device is in
use, try quitting all open applications.”
I usually yell, “No, you do that, you’re
the computer!” If the Finder is so
smart, why doesn’t it tell me what
applications and files are open and
whether I want to save, save and quit
or just quit the application?
Oh…..I’m on a roll.
1
Apple keeps adding features to OS X
most of which I don’t use and can’t
turn off. Take Dashboard, please.
Dashboard is cute but I have no use for
it. Why can’t I turn it off? It’s always
on and using resources – memory, CPU
cycles, etc. There are other add-on
features I’d like to turn-off. Spotlight,
various server processes, Expose,
Bonjour, you name it. There should be
an Extensions Manager-like utility for
OS X? That was a good idea, but in an
old OS. Steve Jobs makes sure we
won’t be seeing any old ideas in OS
X’s Finder no matter how good.
Another good idea was the ability to
drop a file, folder or app to the bottom
of the screen and have it appear as a
tab. Gone. How about allowing us to
put tabs on the side?
I never liked the dock...never will. I
much prefer something akin to the old
Apple Menu Items, a feature that was
out of the way until I called it up.
Instead the Dock occupies valuable
screen real estate. Yes, I can hide it,
but when I do it always pops up when
I don’t want it to. Ever hide the dock
and then try editing a picture? When
you are working near the bottom of
the screen the Dock jumps up and
down and applications suddenly
launch and your picture doesn’t get
edited. How annoying!
The Dock also doesn’t have features to
help me organize the items I have in it.
My Dock is loaded with dozens of
Continued on page 2
NEWSLETTER OF
apps and files. Can I tell the Dock to
organize itself alphabetically? No, but
the old Apple Menu could do this by
default.
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
the newsletter.
Then there’s Software Update.
Software Update works fine for Apple
system, security and application
updates as long as they are Apple
applications and as long as you didn’t
move them, rename them, or put them
anyplace except the System
Application folder on the boot drive. I
have dozens of digital photo applications and utilities and would like to
put iPhoto in a folder called Photo
Apps and put it anywhere I like. The
minute I organize my apps, Software
Update thinks they no longer exists
and The Finder forgets where it is.
Also, never rename an OS X app
because its components may not be able
to find the main application. A fixed
Finder would resolve these issues.
And there are those installation
annoyances. Remember you used to
be able to install applications anywhere you wanted? You can do that
with most third party applications but
try that with any Apple application.
The only place an Apple application
can be installed is in the system
Application folder on the system hard
drive. This isn’t too big a deal with
small programs but with programs
like GarageBand and Final Cut Studio
that take up gigabytes of space, sometimes you want them on their own
partition or drive because you don’t
have the space on your main hard
drive. Final Cut Studio takes up 46
gigabytes of space! A program that
size doesn’t fit on my system hard
drive, because that hard drive is nearly full. But I have four external
Firewire drives and one empty SATA
internal drive on my Mac–perfect for
a large application like Final Cut
Studio with it’s plethora of component applications, loops, templates
and tutorials. Of course, I can’t install
them on those large empty drives, I
have to install them in one and only
one place. And, if I could install them
on another drive Software Update
wouldn’t know where it is.
I talked about these issues with an
Apple developer and he stopped me
in mid-rant. “You don’t understand,”
he said. “The Finder you are using
isn’t The Finder of OS7, 8 and 9. It’s
The Finder from the NEXT operating
system.”
It could be worse; I could be running
Windows XP.
Still, I wish Apple would fix the
Finder.
“Please
Apple,
Fix
The
Finder!”
2
GoLive Booted from
Creative Suite,
Acrobat 8 Released
Reprinted with permission
by Glenn Fleishman
[email protected]
Originally published in
TidBITS#847/18-Sep-06.
http://www.tidbits.com/
for more information.
Correction appended.
The fate of Web design and management tool Adobe GoLive has been
sealed: the program has been booted
from Creative Suite, Adobe’s bundle of
applications designed for print and
electronic production professionals.
Dreamweaver 8 will replace GoLive
CS2 in version 2.3 of Creative Suite,
which also has been updated to include
Acrobat 8 Professional, announced
today and shipping in November.
Adobe expects to ship the CS 2.3 bundle in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Adobe acquired Dreamweaver as part
of the Adobe-Macromedia merger last
year. Dreamweaver has long been
viewed as the tool of choice for creating interactive Web sites that
incorporate rich media, database content, and scripting with PHP. GoLive
was preferred by designers for its integration with Photoshop, direct support
for Acrobat internal linking and PDF
creation, and ease of use.
In June, I described a leak that had
occurred when an Adobe Europe product manager seemed to be saying that
both GoLive and illustration program
FreeHand would be dropped. After
further examination across three languages and a statement from Adobe, it
was clear that GoLive and FreeHand
wouldn’t be part of Adobe’s core programs, but would still be developed.
(Today’s announcements included no
news about FreeHand.)
Adobe says that
GoLive will continue
to be developed as a standalone program, although it’s unclear to
what audience it would appeal. Credible
rumors indicate GoLive may be
revamped to be a friendlier Web design
tool, with a focus on entry-level users.
The other update to the Creative Suite is
the refresh of Acrobat, now at version 8,
which is also offered in a variety of versions. New features are a grab bag of
miscellaneous items, many of which are
only of interest to users in particular
industries. Of note, however, is the
capability to remove any hidden metadata, layers, and other invisible
information that could reveal more than
you want, and “redaction” tools that
permanently delete text and images
from a PDF file. Acrobat 8 Professional
will also allow shared PDF commenting and mark-up among a workgroup.
Adobe has slapped the Acrobat name
on the latest version of Macromedia
Breeze, now known as Acrobat
Connect. Connect is a meeting tool,
much like WebX or NetMeeting, that
enables all kinds of media - PDFs,
images, video - to be pushed to all participants. The basic version allows
hosted meetings of up to 15 people with
limited media use; a Professional version can be installed on a company’s
own servers with no preset attendee
limit. The Professional version contains
a full suite of tools for media sharing,
voice over IP, and a variety of reporting
tools. The hosted version of Connect
ships in November, along with the rest
of the Acrobat suite; the Professional
version is expected in December.
Creative Suite 2.3 has a street price of
$1,200 for the premium edition, which
includes Acrobat 8 Professional and
Dreamweaver. Existing CS2 owners
can pay $160 for an upgrade. Owners
of any other version or edition of
Creative Suite can pay $550 for a full
upgrade. Acrobat 8 Professional will
cost $450, with upgrades for many previous editions costing $160. Acrobat 8
Standard runs $300, with a variety of
upgrades at $100. Acrobat Connect
will cost $40 per month per user for the
basic hosted version; pricing for the
on-site professional flavor wasn’t
announced. The basic Acrobat Connect
will have a free trial running from its
release through the end of the year.
Staff Roundtable — We’re trying something a little different with this article.
Rather than attempt to have one person
integrate into the article the kind of internal discussion that inevitably takes place
after an announcement of this ilk, we
thought we’d let you listen in on our
more trenchant thoughts and comments.
Glenn and Jeff have significant background with GoLive, having written
three editions of “Real World Adobe
GoLive,” whereas Adam has spent vast
amounts of time in Acrobat Professional
fiddling with PDF files for Take Control.
[Glenn Fleishman]: Despite an
extremely talented group of people who
have been developing GoLive since its
CyberStudio days before the Adobe
acquisition, the program faltered by
release 6.0 several years ago and never
recovered its position relative to
Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver outpaced
GoLive on integrated handling of scripts
and database results, while GoLive
could only marginally handle these
tasks. GoLive 6 included a lot of database integration and scripting preview
tools that were all abandoned in GoLive
CS, along with any hope of competing
directly with Dreamweaver. It’s been
clear since about 2002 that Adobe management was putting substantially fewer
resources behind GoLive than
continued on page 4
3
Macromedia was putting behind
Dreamweaver. GoLive was never a flagship Adobe product, while Macromedia
positioned Dreamweaver alongside
Director and Flash as a critical tool.
As for Acrobat, it’s becoming ever
harder for a mature product to learn
new tricks. Much of Adobe’s focus in
recent years has been the split focus of
improving workflow for print production, in which a PDF file is not just an
intermediate stage, but is the intermediate and end stage from which the
final piece is produced; and workgroup
collaboration, where comments and
markup are allowed within PDF files
so that groups never need to print anything out. Version 8 continues along
those lines but seems to offer little
that’s remarkable, other than perhaps
the improved security features.
One might call the “redaction” feature
the “oops, we thought it was a
Sharpie” feature. Many documents
have been converted from, say,
Microsoft Word into PDF and then had
black marks placed over sensitive
areas. But any Acrobat Professional
user could remove the black marks to
view the underlying text. No more.
Deleted items will now be entirely
removed from the PDF.
[Jeff Carlson]: I think GoLive is dead,
despite Adobe’s words. While Adobe
continues to claim ongoing development, pulling GoLive out of the
Creative Suite is almost certainly a
death knell for the program; most people are using it because it’s part of
Creative Suite (with some others
sticking with it from pure inertia).
That said, I’m sure some designers
will stick with GoLive (assuming it’s
updated and not turned into something
else) because they’ve developed a
familiarity with it, have built templates with it, and otherwise grok its
interface - a significant feat. But if I
were currently making my living in
GoLive, today’s announcement would
have sealed the long-pondered decision to switch to Dreamweaver.
[Adam C. Engst]: I’m uninterested in
GoLive and Dreamweaver, since I
decided long ago that learning one of
them wasn’t really any easier than
learning HTML and CSS and working
in BBEdit or the text editor of my
choice. What interests me more is the
announcement of Acrobat 8, since we
rely heavily on Acrobat for our Take
Control ebooks. From the sound of the
press release, Adobe has focused on
simplifying Acrobat’s interface and
enhancing its collaboration tools, which
sounds nice, but I’m reserving judgment until I see if they’ve exorcised the
numerous devils in their details.
[Glenn Fleishman]: Adam’s lack of
interest in graphical front ends to Web
page building and management highlights one of the key reasons why
Dreamweaver has done so well. Most
Web sites of any scale now aren’t a random collection of individually edited
pages. Just like TidBITS and our Web
Crossing solution, and, in fact, most
blogs, sites are constructed around
database-driven templates, which are
often extremely difficult to preview
outside of specialized tools or a Web
page used to edit the template and then
view the results. Dreamweaver has reasonable support for previewing scripts,
but it is also extensible. What a truly
useful Web editing tool would offer
now is not just the capability to write
and preview in templates - GoLive CS2
has some limited support for Movable
Type’s format - but the simplicity to
write one’s own modules to work with
programs like Web Crossing that aren’t
popular enough to warrant direct support. With that kind of support, you could
have the power of a visual editor that
manages Cascading Style Sheets and
helps ensure consistency across all the
pages in a site, while still having the
power of template-based page creation.
Using Acrobat Professional to work
with PDFs is largely an exercise in
constant irritation. For instance, to
add a line of linked red text to the
bottom of every page, as I do when
creating samples of our ebooks, I
can create a footer fairly easily, but
I must manually change the color of
each line to red (because Acrobat
doesn’t provide color controls for
footer text), and I must manually
paste and move a copied link into
place on each page (since Acrobat Unless otherwise noted, this article is
doesn’t allow footers to contain copyright 2006 by Glenn Fleishman
links, and since pasted links always <[email protected]>, published in
appear in the middle of the page, TidBITS 847, copyright 2006 TidBITS
rather than in the same relative Electronic Publishing, all rights reserved.
location as the copied source link).
Is it any wonder
people create such After publication,
lousy PDFs when Adobe informed
Correction:
t h e p r e e m i n e n t us that despite
tool for working language in their
with PDFs makes press release, Dreamweaver 8 would be included with
such simple tasks Creative Suite 2.3 when that ships later this year, but
so difficult? My GoLive CS2 will not be dropped at that time. Future
fingers are crossed major releases of GoLive will not be included in future
for Adobe to get it major releases of Creative Suite.
right with Acrobat
8 , b u t I ’ m n o t For the complete story, see this update for more details:
hopeful, given the The Future Beyond Tomorrow, Courtesy of Adobe
number of years by Glenn Fleishman <[email protected]>
t h ey ’ve g o t t e n i t TidBITS#848/25-Sep-06.
wrong so far.
http://db.tidbits.com/article/8684
4
Speed Download 4.0.3
.Mac iDisk integration
Pedro R. Schaeffer
auto-resuming file transfers all the time
Why pay $25.00 for a download application when OS 10.x
has one? Well, if you want to manage everything you download and organize them all, then, you need Speed
Download. Get it at: www.yazsoft.com
unlimited UNDOs throughout the entire application
smart folder technology, and much more!
I’ve been using Speed Download for a couple of years now,
and every time I get a new computer, the very first thing I
do install is Speed Download.
Besides it’s new interface and all the options it offers, it’ll
also speedup all your downloads.
Here’re some of the features available in version 4.0.3:
a gorgeous new interface, thanks to the great job done
by IconDrawer
a re-engineered ‘universal’ download engine
optimized for maximum performance
a powerful database to manage all your downloads,
uploads, and file transfers
a FTP client (with SSL) that satisfies the basic
FTP needs of most users
a secure, high performance P2P file sharing utility
(with encryption)
a high performance utility for downloading
web content for offline viewing
Mail Act-On 1.3.2
Mail plugin that attaches user defined
rule actions to keystroke.
Mail Act-On is a plugin for Apple’s
Mail (Panther & Tiger) in that allows
you to map specific mail rules or
actions to “Act-On” keys. When
viewing mail you can apply an “ActOn” action for a message by making
simple keystrokes.
Better than pointing
out all the features
of Speed Download,
I suggest logging to
their site and downloading a trial version.
Once you’ve used it,
you won’t want to
live without it.
reprinted from the
San Diego Mac User
group newsletter
unload your inbox. Here is how Mail
Act-On helps:
them and provide a reminder for
Mail-Act On.
In my Mail.App I create 5 folders at
the top level.
1. _1_Action
2. _2_Hold
3. _3_Respond
4. _4_Wait On
5. _5_Someday
Then with Mail’s Rules, I created 5
concordant rules (after I installed
Mail Act-On):
1. Act-On: 1 | Make Action
2. Act-On: 2 | Hold Message
3. Act-On: 3 | Flag for Response
4. Act-On: 4 | Flag for Wait
5. Act-On: 5 | Someday my
dream will come.
The _ moves the folder to the top of
the list and the # serves to both sort
Each rule will move the message to
the appropriate folder.
Mail Act-On makes use of Mail’s
existing rule engine, so if you have
ever created a rules, you already
know 99% of what you need to know
to build an Act-On action. Imagine,
no AppleScripts or other macros.
(Even if you haven’t ever created a
mail rule, there is very little to learn!)
Now When I read my inbox, I can hit
` (backtick - the Act-On menu key)
and hit the # corresponding to the
Act-On rule.
Even easier, I can hit ctrl-# to perform the action immediately and
bypass the menu.
Use Mail Act-On to “Get Things Done”
The book “Getting Things Done” by
productivity guru David Allen provides a lot of helpful strategies to
Mail Act-On is Free!
Download it here:
http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html
5
by Robin Williams
Book Review
by Shirley DeRose
Portland MUG
spaced repetition and self-testing in a
stress-free environment are ways to
promote efficient learning. Couple
those ideas with the illustrations using
her pet, Ratz, and it’s clear why this
book is translated into 13 languages.
I first met Robin Williams when she
taught a typography class at a Mac
Expo in the early 1990s. She was
already a noted expert on things
Macintosh, and she used her charming, humorous personality to
punctuate the class like she was the
personification of an eclectic typestyle. Her rapport with the class was
instantaneous. Her command of the
topic was obvious. And her love of the
things that could be done with typography on a Mac was simply
contagious. At the end of the 3-hour
class, she was mobbed with eager
questioners and occasionally poked
by a pen held by one of the many
autograph seekers. She took it all in
stride, smiling as she grabbed the
brass ring of fame and fortune.
In the end of the book, there’s “Extra
Stuff” like “What’s a Port? An expansion slot? And how do you use them?”
Then there’s “Tips and More Tips”
with pages listed if you want more
information on that tip. Then there’s
“Aaack!! HELP!” a catastrophe reference list that everyone hopes to avoid
but someday experiences. And if all
that is not enough, there’s the
“Addendum,” a few extra features that
are new and specific to Mac OS 9 and
9.1. And finally, yes finally, there’s
the “Index,” so extensive and helpful
it must have been written by Ratz so
that no reader could find a hole in the
cheese... uh, I mean book.
The Little Mac Book
Robin acknowledges that growth in
her typically humorous way on the
title page. “I know, I know,” she
writes in a tiny, handwritten script
near the bold title, “the book’s not so
little anymore. Neither is the Mac.”
Robin Williams, that phenomenal
teacher, composed the most respected
basic Mac book in the world. With
more than a million copies in print,
The Little Mac Book is a must-have
for newcomers and a sound reference
book for Mac veterans. It is written in
the same style and with the same subject command that I witnessed in that
class so long ago. Robin is simply a
Master Teacher, who warns that the
Mac is addictive and then gives
instructions on how to deepen the
addiction. Not bad for a single mom
who, as her sister claims, “can have
fun in a paper bag.”
So the user is clued in from the front
of the book that this will be a friendly
book, one that puts a real person
behind the words, and who just might
understand what’s in the back of the
reader’s mind as he begins to turn the
pages. Robin senses the needs and
puts anxiety to rest in the first words
of the “Read Me First” area as she
sets the tone for future pages of the
book. “If you’re intimidated or in a
hurry,” she writes, “use the tutorial
that starts on page 15. Then shut the
book and move on. Skip this part.
Skip the rest of the book. Come back
later if you get in trouble.” And she
means it!
As I put the second edition from my
library down on the table beside the
seventh edition, I discovered that in
the ten years between those two editions the book has more than doubled
in size-from 176 pages to a whoppin’
447 pages. It’s not that the Mac is
more difficult to use now; it’s just
there’s so much more to offer in the
Mac. A good reference book just
needs to expand to be complete. And
The Little Mac Book is not a book
that is to be read in one sitting, or even
many sittings. In fact it is to be read in
spurts. Use it enough to get up and
running, she implores. Then use it as a
reference. Get involved in a chapter
and then use the quiz at the end as a
test of learning-an open book test-so
you can really learn and retain the
learning. Robin understands that
6
So add this preventive medicine to
your Mac library and pull it out when
you’re frustrated by “geek speak”
terms. And when you finally upgrade
to OS X, you can be sure Robin will
be there to guide you through with a
new Edition. After all, she’s addicted.
reprinted from the Portland
Macintosh Users Group newsletter
Robin Williams is the author of dozens of
best-selling and award-winning books about
the Macintosh, including the groundbreaking
The Little Mac Book
and Robin Williams
Mac OS X Book. She
is an icon in the Mac
community. Through
her writing, teaching,
and seminars, Robin
has educated and
influenced an entire
generation of computer users in the areas of
design, typography, desktop publishing, the
Mac and the Web. Best-selling author Robin
Williams is also the author of Mac OS X 10.4
Tiger: Peachpit Learning Series and coauthor of The Robin Williams Mac OS X
Book, Tiger Edition
It is well organized by topics, and
includes a QuickTime CD. At the end
of each chapter are review questions
and exercises to reinforce learning.
Exploring Digital Video
by Lisa Rysinger
Book Review
by Maria O. Arguello,
NCMUG member
This is a must-have book for the video
professional or hobbyist. Lisa Rysinger
is the owner of VIDE Productions
<http://www.vide.com/> and a member
of the MUGSNJ (Macintosh Users
Group of Southern New Jersey) and
SJAUG (Southern New Jersey Apple
Users Group) groups.
The subtitle of this book, ‘A Definitive
Guide to Digital Video Technology &
Techniques Featuring Today’s Best
Pro Editing Applications,’ succinctly
captures its content. I should stop
there with my review because that is,
in a nutshell, what this book is about.
But what the subtitle does not divulge
is the clear and concise manner in
which this book is written and the
wonderful updated information in the
Second Edition.
Lisa Rysinger is a teacher by profession and has the gift of clear
communication with her audience.
She leaves no stone unturned when it
comes to finding ways to communicate a difficult topic in an easy and
unintimidating manner. She tackles all
the complicated topics relating to digital video technology with an enviable
ease of understanding.
For example, the topic of rendering
and outputting digital video is among
the most important concepts to understand and apply. After you take
wonderful digital video footage, you
need to know how to render the audio
and the video so that it looks and
sounds great for your audience.
Nothing is more disappointing and
discouraging than to have spent a lot
of time shooting video footage and
when it comes time to share it, finding
out that it looks terrible because you
didn’t know what you were doing.
Chapter 10 in the book, in a very precise manner, walks the reader through
what settings to use for each media so
the output is just beautiful.
The book contains lots of black-andwhite graphics to illustrate concepts.
Exploring Digital Video Product:
Exploring Digital Video, Second
Edition by Lisa Rysinger
Price: $24.97 Book with CD
(QuickTime needed)
Level: Beginner
Reviewer rating: 4.5 out of 5
Book Review by Maria O. Arguello,
NCMUG member Copyright © 2006
Maria O. Arguello.
Maria is president and vendor liaison
of the Main Line Macintosh Users
Group (MLMUG)
http://www.mlmug.org
She is the Apple User Group
Regional Liaison for the Northeast
United States, as well as the Liaison
for Online Groups
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• Mac OS X Backups
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• Sharing Files in Panthers
• Upgrading to Panther
• Users & Accounts in Panther
• Getting Started with Dreamweaver
• iPhoto 6: Visual QuickStart Guide
• iWeb
• Apple Mail in Tiger
• Email with Apple Mail (Panther)
• Customizing Microsoft Office
• What's New in Entourage 2004
• What's New in Word 2004
• Word ’04: Advanced Editing & Formatting
• Spam with Apple Mail
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• Recording with GarageBand
• Running Windows on a Mac
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• Your AirPort Network
• Buying a Mac
• Buying a Digital Camera
• Digital TV
• Booking a Cheap Airline Ticket
• Thanksgiving Dinner
It’s Not Your Parents’ (or
Even Your) Television
by Glenn Fleishman
<[email protected]>
TidBITS#847/18-Sep-06.
Moderately buried in Apple’s iTV
announcement last week was the peculiar
fact that the future streaming media
adapter offers only component and HDMI
(High-Definition Multimedia Interface)
video output. These two methods of
encoding video seemed a little exotic to
me, who only recently upgraded the family 19-inch tube TV (10 years old, and
failing) to a 20-inch Dell LCD with DVI
and what I considered standard video input
- a single round plug.
But I’m just out of sync with the rest of
the consumer video world, as I suspect
many of you are, too. HDMI, I knew, is
common on almost all high-definition television (HDTV) sets; it’s a superset of the
DVI (Digital Video Interface) standard
used for external displays. HDMI incorpo
rates comprehensive audio support that
DVI lacks, and using a separate standard, it
can encrypt digital video and audio to
transmit from one licensed device to
another, such as between a DVD player
and an HDTV set. This is a part of movie
studios’ and other video copyright holders’ digital rights management (DRM)
requirement for “allowing” digital
copies of their work to be distributed. (All
home entertainment equipment with
HDMI interfaces deliver the highest resolutions of digital content using encryption.
Non-restricted analog outputs are purposely downsampled or degraded to eliminate
copying. There are efforts afoot to block
unrestricted use of these analog outputs
from digital devices, too!)
Component video is analog, but considered quite high in quality. In consumer
component video, three separate video
cables carry the signal. One carries luminance information, which is a
combination of brightness (the amount of
light e nergy) and detail. Another cable
carries the red component without the
luminance values, and a third carries blue
minus luminance. Green is inferred from
the three components. Because of this
separation, images are crisper with more
accurate color.
Composite video is what we’re all
used to, in which chrominance (color)
and luminance are combined, forming
something that’s rather muddy in comparison, but which uses a single cable.
This encoding method is the U.S. NTSC
standard, which has long been referred to
as “Never The Same Color” for its erratic
fidelity. The other dominant standard
elsewhere in the world is PAL, which is
similar.
Although I purchased a relatively
recent LCD monitor designed to play
video, it turns out that I was already
behind the times (though in my defense,
my Dell is a computer monitor that I’m
using as a television, not a dedicated LCD
TV). I checked prices at Crutchfield, a
well-regarded online audio/ video store,
and their least-expensive LCD television
set - a $350 15-inch Samsung - supports
composite and component video, as well
as S-Video and VGA (listed as “PC
Input”). (S-Video uses a plug similar to
that found on the old ADB (Apple
Desktop Bus) keyboard and mouse
cables, and is better than composite but
not nearly as good as component.)
To check on pricing for a TV with
HDMI, I used Crutchfield’s link to narrow choices to just displays with that
interface; it must be a common search
request. Their least-expensive HDMIbearing set is a Westinghouse 27-inch
LCD HDTV for $700; it includes HDMI
and two separate component video
inputs, composite and S-Video, DVI, and
VGA.
While these aren’t expensive options,
if you already own a perfectly good TV
8
receiver or LCD monitor for video playback, why buy a new set? Wouldn’t a
converter work? Unfortunately, no.
There’s ostensibly no legal way to
unwrap the encryption from an HDMI
stream and extract the digital content to
encode in different ways, such as DVI.
Thus, you won’t find an adapter for that and any adapter would require a computer to handle decryption and re-encoding.
Component-to-composite conversion,
whether S-Video or the single-plug RCA
style, requires an NTSC or PAL encoder
to change out the video encoding. I’ve
found units for professionals starting over
$300, which makes little sense for home
users.
Apple has definitely aimed the iTV at
early adopters, and it will push some people with older sets over the edge to buy
newer ones with the appropriate inputs.
That will make consumer electronics
makers happy, too, and for all we know
Apple is planning an iHDTV that will
work directly with the iTV and other
products. Remember that most devices
called set-top boxes are also TV and cable
tuners.
There’s another factor at work here,
too, which is that component and HDMI
encod ing make it difficult for an average
consumer to extract and record digital
video outside of Apple’s DRM approach
in iTV. Spending some money enables
you to record from the component outputs at a decent quality - unless there’s
some kind of Macrovision or other watermarking code that will be sent out to
distort or prevent analog component
recording.
But iTV has encoded in its hardware
design the notion that, unlike audio, there
are a couple of approved and specific
ways of viewing video from the adapter.
Not including composite output is likely
Apple’s way of providing yet another sop
to the industry that they must simultaneously court and cajole into releasing more
digital content to a wider audience.
Unless otherwise noted, this article is
copyright 2006 by Glenn Fleishman,
published in TidBITS 847, copyright 2006
TidBITS Electronic Publishing,
all rights reserved.
SPECIAL OFFERS from the Apple User Group Bulletin
These User Group discounts are brought to you by the Apple
User Group Advisory Board. (Big thanks to Board member
and vendor relations coordinator Tom Piper.)
Elgato: TV on the Mac for less
Does Your Mac Do TV? The Ultimate Digital TV Recorder
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You must be a current Apple user group member to qualify
for these savings. Not a member? Join an Apple user group
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User group members can save $34 off the regular cost of
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Prosoft is dedicated to creating professional quality software
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Offer is valid through December 31, 2006.
Prosoft is offering MUG members their very best: 35 percent
off the retail price of any of their software programs, including Data Rescue II or Drive Genius for $64 (US), a $99 (US)
value, and Data Backup, Picture Rescue, or TuneTech for
iPod for $38 (US), a $59 (US) value. Use the special user
group code below to receive the discount.
The MUG Store: Redesigned
The Apple MUG Store has been redesigned to offer you
even more great deals. If you haven’t looked in a while,
check out the Apple Mug Store. You’ll find great prices, lots
of special offers, blowouts on Apple products and more!
Discount code: AUG126
Visit the Prosoft online store. http://www.prosofteng.com/
Be sure to remind your membership to give applemugstore.com a peek every so often because, when your
members buy from the MUG store, the store sets aside 1
percent of your group members’ purchases, which your
group can use to buy anything from the store!
Intriguing Development: 20 Percent Off iRemember
Turn digital photos into memories with iRemember Digital
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photo realistic embellishments. Sharing life’s memories
couldn’t be easier. Better yet, iRemember is compatible
with Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, Universal Binary.
User ID and passwod are located below in your mailed
CMC newsletter. Offer is valid through October 31, 2006.
That’s Easy: Get the Apple User Group Market
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Note: CMC User IDs and Passwords for the above sites are located in your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
New Members Wanted!
Have your friends and coworkers join us for fun and learning about OS X and the
Mac. Please give them this application form.
CMC Benefits: Monthly meetings, monthly newsletter,
special events, discounted books, assistance with computer
problems, network with other Mac users, User Group Store
discounts, and more.
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Secretary
Kyle DeMilo
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860-485-1547
Editor Deena Quilty
[email protected]
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Public Relations
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
[email protected]
860-583-1165
Date ____________________________
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Annual CMC Family
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of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Special Events
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[email protected]
10
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
Discounted Books
from 7:00 - 9:00 P.M. (except November and December when the meetings are held one week earlier due to the holidays).
We always welcome your input and participation. Do you have an idea for
a topic we should explore? Perhaps there’s a topic that you would like to
present yourself? Email us at [email protected].
CMC October Meeting
Wednesday, October 25
This month we’ll look at using Disk Utility
and what it’s good for. Most people don’t
use this utility very much, but when you do
need it, you’ll definitely want to know
what you’re doing. We’ll discuss how it
works, how it can benefit you, and when
you should be using it. Next time you buy
a new flash drive, new hard drive, or want
to dupe a disc filled with data, you’ll be
happy you attended this session.
Main Presentation, 7:00 PM
How to Run Windows on a Mac
The Mac platform is all about providing an
alternative to the Microsoft Windows
empire and many of us can get by in life
just fine without that “P.C.” operating system. But others of us find it a necessary
evil, in order to operate in the world of
business, or even to play the diverse range
of PC game titles. This month we’ll
demonstrate the two methods available for
installing and using Windows on an Intelbased Macintosh. For those who might
feel dirty after this presentation, handiwipes will be available at the door.
SAVE THE DATES!
November 15 • CMC Auction
December 13 • Holiday Party
FREE Raffle!
FREE Classified Ads
[email protected]
the back of the room where everything is...free!
9 New Members!
Account Balances
- Balances as of October 4, 2006 Checking Account ..........$709.07
Money Market ..................$4011.80
Are you good at grammar and
punctuation? Are you a good
speller? Can you spend a little time
scouting out Mac-related news for
us? If so, we need YOU! CMC is
looking for an Associate Editor for
our monthly newsletter to round out
our newsletter staff. If you feel you
could help out with a couple of
hours a month, please contact
Deena Quilty at (860)678-8622 or
[email protected].
Getting CMC emails?
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Did you know that CMC also hosts a Mac Support mailing list for
it's members? CMC members can join at www.ctmac.org
11
2006 Monthly Meetings
• October 25, 7:00 PM
Run Windows on a Mac
• November 15, 7:00 PM
Annual CMC Auction
• December 13, 7:00 PM
Annual Holiday Party
(Visit our website: www.ctmac.org for
more info • Driving directions below)
12
Rich Lenoce & Joe Arcuri demonstrated
how the web browser Firefox...Rocks! at
our September meeting. Inset: Aaron Czarnecki at our Back to Basics
presentation of web browsers for the Mac
A Macintosh Tip or Three.................. 3
Skype with a Wireless Phone.............5
History of CMC, Part 1.......................6
Take Control Ebooks ..........................7
Color Laser Printer Phaser 6120........8
20 Years and
Going Strong
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Happy Birthday, everyone!
How’s it feel to be 20 again?
Welcome to a special edition of our
newsletter celebrating 20 years of CMC.
For any “club” to reach the 20-year
milestone is quite a feat and something
we at CMC are very proud of. I have
heard rumors from our archivists that
CMC may be even older. In fact, the
group may have been meeting informally before the Macintosh’s introduction
as an Apple II support group. We may
actually be celebrating our 25th anniversary but we’ll stick with the official date
of being founded in 1986.
NOV/DEC 2006
• The Web hadn’t been invented yet.
• The Bears beat the Patriots in the
Super Bowl.
• The Mets beat the Red Sox in the
World Series.
• Oh, and there was Bill Buckner.
In Apple Macintosh News:
• John Sculley became Chairman of
Apple and then best known for ousting
the man who hired him, Steve Jobs
• Apple had 5,000 employees and $1.9
billion in revenue. By comparison
today they have 14,800 employees
and $13.9 billion in revenue.
To take you back and give you some
context, or if you weren’t born yet, here
are some of the things that happened
in world and U.S. history in 1986:
• The Macintosh had no hard drive,
only a single 800k floppy drive.
Loading the OS and software was
done by swapping any number of
disks. Hard drives could be connected through the serial or SCSI
connectors.
• Ronald Reagan was President.
• Aldus introduced TIFF on the Mac.
• On January 26 the space shuttle Challenger exploded,
killing all seven astronauts.
There were several important Mac
product introductions in 1986
• The Apple IIGS—the last Apple II
model.
• Apple discontinued the Mac512K
replacing it with the 512Ke.
• Apple repackaged the Lisa as the
Macintosh XL and then killed it
after 7 years.
• The new “expandable” Macintosh Plus
came with 1mb of memory expandable
to a whopping 4mb. It was the first
Mac to not have memory soldered to
the motherboard. Priced at $2599, the
Plus became the longest livedMacintosh model, not being replaced
until October 1990.
• SCSI and Mini DIN-8 connectors
came and would stay with the
Macintosh until the iMac.
• The Laserwriter II appeared becoming a workhorse printer that proved
hugely successful.
• Macintosh System 3 gave the Mac
disk cache and the HFS
filing systems.
• AppleTalk Personal
Networking and the Apple
Personal Modem at
300bps.
• On February 26 Ferdinand
Marcos fled the Philippines.
• On April 26 there was a major
nuclear accident at Chernobyl.
In other computer news,
two big events happened
in ‘86.
• Federal government spending
was a measly $990 billion.
• Intel introduced the
386 processor. The 386
operated at 16 mHz vs. the
Macintosh’s 8mhz.
• The median income was
$24,000.
• Stamps cost only 22 cents.
Continued on page 2
1
NEWSLETTER OF
Editor
Deena Quilty
Designer
George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
Printer
Budget Printers
1718 Park Street
Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
the newsletter.
• As we know in 1986,
Scully cleaned house by
politicking the Apple
Board to remove the
man that founded Apple
and hired him, Steve
Jobs—and they did.
In 1986, Apple had 16%
market share and was the
#2 manufacturer of PCs
behind IBM. Apple continued to introduce products that weren’t compatible
with PCs and PC peripherals. Apple
continued to build on its superior
graphical user interface over IBM/
Microsoft’s DOS but what Apple
found out was that user friendliness
wasn’t the key to success. Business
and consumers who work and interact
with businesses wanted compatibility
with those same businesses in removable disks, file formats, networking,
etc. Having a computer at work and a
very different computer at home that
were incompatible didn’t make sense
for a lot of people. Within 10 years
Apple would lose 10% market share.
I remember my first experiences with a
Mac were great, until I tried to use one
at work. I had a PC and a Mac—a Mac
on one side of my desk for PageMaker
and slide creation and a PC on the other
side for database management, mainframe interfacing and the like. They
couldn’t talk to each other and nothing
was compatible. Eventually, the PC
could do everything the Mac could, at
least in a business environment.
On the bright side, had Apple never
made these wrong moves, Steve Jobs
never would have founded NEXT,
where he realized computers need to
operate in a world of multiple platforms. NEXT built computers and
operating systems that look and operate more like the Macintosh of today
than the Macintosh of old. When Jobs
returned to Apple some would say he
merged the two platforms taking the
best from both and giving Mac users a
whole new experience with OS X.
2
Today, Apple has gotten
its footing back (we know
it never actually lost it)
and now is the second
largest platform behind
Windows, albeit at 6.1%
(up from around 3%), has
$10 billion in the bank, is
moving up the PC maker
list to #4, and is a major
innovator and seller of
consumer electronics. In
the world of electronics and digital
media, Apple now sets the industry
standards and the Mac, despite the
sales of iPods, is the company’s flagship product.
Though Apple has had its ups, downs
and ups, CMC hasn’t had any such pattern. We’ve always been here
providing support, a terrific newsletter,
great member-driven education programs while striving to be responsive
to our membership. We will continue
to meet your needs whatever they are.
Just let us know…
As a member for the last 9 years, I can
say that we have a wonderful group of
people I can call friends and colleagues, and a board and officers who
are really dedicated to this organization, its members and the Mac. The
success of any group over such a long
period of time comes from all of you.
I’m happy to report that a recent member drive and direct-mail flyer has
brought us many new members who
will enjoy the benefits of the club and
Mac ownership. We welcome them! At
the next meeting, please introduce
yourself to someone you don’t know
who more than likely will be new to
the club.
Wow, 20 years!
20 years ago the world was devoid of
the Web, iPods and Windows. How did
we survive? What will the next 20
years bring?
No one has a crystal ball, but if I had to
bet . . . CMC will still be here.
Doc_Babad’s Macintosh Tips
A Macintosh Tip or Three...
by Harry {doc} Babad
provider. Finding one that will work with
you to minimize your downtime is key to
maintaining your sanity. ~ Troy
From: MacFixit Late-Breakers
Simple Questions to
Help Troubleshoot Your Computer
Speaking with customers every day
brings issues to light very quickly.
Usually, once in every Mac OS series an
update causes issues. In Mac OS 10.2, for
example, there were issues with date and
time on G4 logic boards that required
another update to fix. For Mac OS X
10.4.4, I have taken calls from several
people who have lost the ability to print.
Using Old Disk Repair Utilities – DON’T
Apple changed details of the Mac OS filing system with the introduction of Tiger
(Mac OS X 10.4) and warned that versions of TechTool Pro earlier than 4.0.4
should not be used with it. Currently, no
version of the AppleCare CD has this latest version of TechTool Pro on it — most
have v3.0.3 — which means that no
AppleCare CD should be used to run
TechTool Pro on a Mac with Tiger
installed.
Sometimes being on the cutting edge of
technology makes you bleed is my belief,
so I tend to hang back a bit. When people
do run into problems, there are some general questions I ask to see if we can figure
out what went wrong and when it happened. Write those questions down. The
next time you get into a pinch, you might
save yourself a tech call and find that
there is a simple solution to your problem. {Doc asks, you do own a pencil and
paper, don't you?}
In general, the same kind of warning
applies to other ‘pre-Tiger’ disk utilities.
You should not use any version of Disk
Warrior earlier than v3.0.3, or any version
of Norton Disk Doctor whatever, this utility not having been updated for Tiger.
• When did the problem start?
• Can you reproduce the problem now?
• What is the last thing you changed or
added to your system?
• Does the issue disappear if you start
up the computer with all third-party
internal hardware removed?
• Does the issue disappear if you start
the computer from a known- good
system disk or external device?
• Is the problem isolated to one specific
application?
• Is the problem isolated to one specific
document or file?
• Is your computer producing any noise
or odors?
• Has it ever worked?
The answers to these questions should
help you isolate the issue. Once you get
the issue isolated, you can start planning
how to fix it.
Software issues can frequently be solved
by a safe reboot, running disk first aid, or
reinstalling the OS from your CDs.
Hardware issues unfortunately still need
to be addressed by an Apple service
From: AUSOM News, Melbourne, Australia
via Apple Barrel, Ridgecrest, CA,
Hints & Tips October 2006
Mac OS X’s Auto-Defragmenter
Unlike in Mac OS 9, most people don’t
need a disk defragmenting utility because
Mac OS X defragments your hard drive
as you work. When a file is accessed, it
checks to see if the file is fragmented
(split into several different areas of the
hard drive). If so, the file is copied to an
area of the hard drive that can hold the
entire file. It works on files only up to 20
MB in size because smaller fragmented
files slow your system the most.
An Application Transforms
To Document, It Won't Launch
Problem - Several readers have reported
an issue where application icons suddenly appear as document icons, also
assuming document creators and types.
This results in an inability to launch the
application.
Solution — If you are experiencing this
issue, you might want to try adding ".app"
(without quotation marks) to the end of
the file name of the Word application. If
that doesn't work, click on the Word icon
in the Finder, then press the Command
and I keys simultaneously (or go to "Get
Info" in the File" menu). Once the "Get
Info" screen is up, go to the "Name and
3
Extension" section, and make sure the file
is named "Word.app" or similar – the
important thing is that the end of the file
contains only the .app extension.
Failing this, you may want to try rebuilding the launch services database with a
tool like Cocktail. [Doc notes: I have used
Cocktail to trash impossible-to-remove
other documents. Although we've not yet
reviewed it for macC, it's a great tool.
http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.ht
ml]
From: Design Tools Monthly
Hints & Tips October 2006
Personalize Your Google Start Page
You can personalize Google for your start
page. Open Google and in the upper right
corner is a link, Personalized Home.
Click on it. On the page that appears, sign
in on the upper left corner of the page
(unless you already have a Google
account).
Fill in your email and a password of six
characters or more. An email will arrive.
Click on the link in it to authenticate your
password. Sign in and go to Google
again. Click on the “Personalize Home”
link. Click “Personalize Your Google
Home Page” at the left side.
A list of topics appears on the left side.
Add content until you are satisfied. You
can click and drag items on the right side
to reposition them to your liking. Each
item has an Edit and an X link to edit or
remove items.
When you are done, you can make this
page your start page by going into your
browser preferences and choosing the
page as your start page. If you like a blank
page as your start page, as I prefer, you
can quickly go to your personalized
Google page by simply typing “google”
in the URL text block and hitting
“Return.”
This article reprinted from MacCompanion
November 2006. ©2006 MPN LLC. Product and
company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Most, but not all of the Tips I share come from — Paul
Taylor's Hints&Tips column: http://www.mac-hintstips.com and are used with his permission. Where I
use any one else’s tips for this column, I acknowledge
both their source and their contributors.
• Previewing and subscribing to Web feeds: Users can
decide how to handle Web feeds (like this one), either subscribing to them via a Web service or in a standalone RSS
reader, or adding them as Live Bookmarks. My Yahoo!,
Bloglines and Google Reader come pre-loaded as Web
service options, but users can add any Web service that handles RSS feeds.
Download
of the Month
Firefox 2.0
Two months ago we had a
presentation on Firefox. I
hesitated to have the download of the month be
Firefox at that time, since
the new version, 2 was in
Beta. It has now been
released as a full version, so here it is!From the web
site:Firefox empowers you to accomplish your online activities faster, more safely and efficiently than any other browser,
period. Built with Tab browsing, popup blocking and a number of other seamless innovations, Firefox stands out ahead.
• Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker
enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered
into Web forms (like this one) without having to use a separate application.
• Live Titles: When a website offers a microsummary (a
regularly updated summary of the most important information on a Web page), users can create a bookmark with a
“Live Title”. Compact enough to fit in the space available
to a bookmark label, they provide more useful information
about pages than static page titles, and are regularly updated with the latest information. There are several websites
that can be bookmarked with Live Titles, and even more
add-ons to generate Live Titles for other popular websites.
What’s new in this version:
• Visual Refresh: Firefox 2’s theme and user interface
have been updated to improve usability without altering the
familiarity of the browsing experience.
• Improved Add-ons manager: The new Add-ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions
and themes, combining them both in a single tool.
• Built-in phishing protection: Phishing Protection
warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries,
and offers to return the user to their home page. Phishing
Protection is turned on by default, and works by checking
sites against either a local or online list of known phishing
sites. This list is automatically downloaded and regularly
updated when the Phishing Protection feature is enabled.
• JavaScript 1.7: JavaScript 1.7 is a language update
introducing several new features such as generators, iterators, array comprehensions, let expressions, and
destructuring assignments. It also includes all the features
of JavaScript 1.6.
• Extended search plugin format: The Firefox search
engine format now supports search engine plugins written
in Sherlock and OpenSearch formats and allows search
engines to provide search term suggestions.
• Enhanced search capabilities: Search term suggestions
will now appear as users type in the integrated search box
when using the Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search
engines. A new search engine manager makes it easier to
add, remove and re-order search engines, and users will be
alerted when Firefox encounters a website that offers new
search engines that the user may wish to install.
• Updates to the extension system: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to
allow for easier localization of extensions.
• Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will
open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each
tab will now have a close tab button. Power users who open
more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on
the left and right side of the tab strip that let them scroll
back and forth between their tabs. The History menu will
keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users
quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.
• Client-side session and persistent storage: New support for storing structured data on the client side, to enable
better handling of online transactions and improved performance when dealing with large amounts of data, such as
documents and mailboxes. This is based on the WHATWG
specification for client-side session and persistent storage.
• System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.2 or later
• Resuming your browsing session: The Session Restore
feature restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and inprogress downloads from the last user session. It will be
activated automatically when installing an application
update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to
resume their previous session after a system crash.
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/
redir/lid/909729/download.html
4
to use this phone without reading the
manual, but I always figure it is good
to read it to find out if there are any
things you need to be careful not to do
so you don’t destroy it. For example,
if one were to install alkaline batteries
and then use the USB cable to try to
charge the phone, you could end up
with a leaky mess and an $80 phone
that doesn’t work. (I once tried to
charge the wrong kind of batteries and
ruined my charger.)
Skype with a
Wireless Phone
By Linda Cameron
[email protected]
mcmugged
Have you ever used Skype to talk to
friends PC to PC over the internet? Or
even PC to phone? Use Skype to call
landlines and mobiles free in the US
and Canada until the end of the year.
You can download Skype software at
www.skype.com and try it.
I have used Skype many times but my
Mac G5 does not have a built-in
microphone. I bought an Apple
iSight video camera which has
a microphone in it, but I don’t
think the Skype software likes
my FireWire iSight because it
doesn’t always work that well.
The sound on my end keeps
getting cut off when I call
phones although I can hear
them just fine. A friend told
me he had no problems using
Skype with a USB microphone.
That made me want to try a USB
device. Keyspan has a wireless VoIP
(Voice over Internet Protocol) phone
that works with Skype and it works
through USB on a Mac or Windows
PC. For the Mac, you must have OS X
10.3 or later. The phone itself is about
the size of a one-piece cell phone, and
even looks like one. It comes with a
USB stick (Keyspan refers to it as a
dongle) which you plug into a USB
port on the computer. A CD contains
the driver to make the dongle work for
a wireless connection with the
Keyspan phone. Three rechargeable
AAA Ni-MH batteries are included
and need to be inserted into the phone.
To recharge the Keyspan phone batteries, you use the included USB cable to
plug the phone into the computer and
it takes about 5 hours for a full charge.
The batteries are then good for about
15 hours of talk time and can be
recharged hundreds of times before
you need to replace them with the
same kind of batteries.
When I first got the Keyspan
phone, I immediately followed
the QuickStart directions to try it
out. With the USB dongle inserted
and the driver installed, the LCD
display on the phone lit up and I could
see several tiny icons. The PDF manual included on the CD explains every
detail as to what they all mean. To
make a call, either push the buttons on
the phone as you would any phone, or
use Skype at the computer to dial the
number. I made the first call and put
the little phone to my ear and walked
away from the computer as I heard the
ringing. My friend answered. I was
astounded at how good it sounded. I
was able to walk all over the house
while having a conversation just as I
can on my cordless landline phone.
This Keyspan phone will work up to
100 feet from the computer using a
2.4GHz RF signal. Apparently, it
works up to 300 feet if you are outdoors—maybe using a laptop. I didn’t
test that since my Mac is a huge desktop model that I am not going to be
taking outdoors.
The PDF manual is 40 pages and
about half of that is for Windows
users. Most people can figure out how
5
Anything you can do with Skype at
the computer, you can do with this
wireless phone—and in my case—
better. I have had fairly long phone
calls without the sound loss I was getting using my iSight, so my theory
that Skype likes USB better than
FireWire is still pretty valid.
Conference calls can be made,
although I haven’t tried any of those.
One thing that keeps me from talking
too long is the small size of this phone
makes it hard to hold it to my ear for
long periods of time. My arm just gets
tired of being raised after a while. A
cell phone is the same way. A landline
phone can be rested on your shoulder,
but a small phone has to be held in the
hand or it will drop to the floor. This
keeps my conversations down to 20 or
30 minutes at a time, which is probably long enough anyway. The best
thing about the Keyspan wireless VoIP
phone is the ability to go into other
rooms while you chat. You might have
something on the stove to check on, or
just want to stretch your legs.When I
am not using the Keyspan phone, I
just unplug the USB stick and the
phone goes into the Power Saving
mode (or off).
The History of CMC, Part 1
by Connie Scott
The Apple II hit the deck in 1980s. It
was the first computer with its own
keyboard and monitor. People who
bought this revolutionary computer
joined groups for support and education. In Berlin, Connecticut, a group
was formed at Northeast Utilities. At
first it was only employees, then other
excited people joined the group. Then
the company made them move the
meetings elsewhere once non-employees joined the group, and it moved to
West Hartford.
In 1981, another group, the Hartford
User Group Exchange (HUGE), was
started by George Carbonell, and they
met in the East Hartford Library. In
1984, the Macintosh was introduced. It
had a disk drive included and used a
mouse. A Special Interest Group (SIG)
of Macintosh owners was formed. This
group grew in size until it was the
dominant faction within HUGE.
Eventually the group split as interests
diverged and some of the group eventually left and started another
computer group. Sam Steingiser was
one of the most active leaders in this
group. The Connecticut Macintosh
Connection (CMC) met in his house in
Bloomfield at first. They
were registered as a non-profYear
it club with the State of
Connecticut in 1986. Soon
1983
they obtained a sponsor in
1984
Marilyn Schaffer, PhD., at the
1985
University of Hartford and
1986*
held their meetings there until
1987
2003 when Professor
1988
Schaffer retired.
1989
For most of the first 10 years,
CMC was led by Sam
Steingiser. It was his unique
vision of the future of the
Macintosh that inspired and
gave direction to CMC.
While Sam was a graduate
student in the 1940s, he was
chosen to become a member
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
of the Manhattan Project. He worked
at the University of Chicago with other
young people and met his wife there.
He had many stories about the projects
he worked on related to the development of the atomic bomb. In 1949,
Sam was one of two people who
received the first PhDs in Chemistry
from the University of Connecticut. He
was the head of the Monsanto
Research Laboratory in Bloomfield,
CT. Close to the end of the first ten
years, Sam developed health problems
that decreased his ability to run the
club. The CMC of today owes a debt of
gratitude to Sam for laying the groundwork for the club we know today.
A constitution and bylaws were written and passed by the members. Dues
started at $15.00 and were raised to
$20.00 on January 1, 1989. The Board
had the usual offices – President, Vice
President, Secretary, and Treasurer,
plus four members at large, two of
whom were voted in yearly. The Board
met once a month in one of the member’s homes with the host providing
sandwiches as most members came
from work.
were discussed at the monthly meetings by members or invited guests.
Members had the opportunity to ask
questions about computer problems.
Members were able to buy disks and
computer books. MacAcademy videotapes were rented at $5.00 each.
Raffles were held periodically to raise
money for the club. The club saved
money and purchased a projector to
improve presentations. In 1993, a
PowerBook 165 was purchased for use
at club meetings.
SIGs were started for new members,
Hypercard users, and graphics users.
These groups met at the leader’s house
or any other place available that had
enough space. They met on a different
night from the general meeting.
Sam Steingiser ran the club’s electronic bulletin board, edited the newsletter
and was the membership director. At
first, the newsletters were printed in
exchange for 50 free memberships, but
finally another place was found that
printed the newsletter in exchange for
services. Eventually the club had to
pay for the printing. All club mail went
to Sam’s house.
The general meetings of the CMC
were (and still are) the last Wednesday
of the month. Various computer topics
Macintosh model
Lisa
128k
512k
512ke, Mac Plus
Mac SE,
Mac II & IIX
President
continued on page 7
No. of
Members
Dennis Chao
Jim Houle
Mac SE 30,
Mac II cx & ci
Mac Classic, Mac II si
& Mac LC
Mac Classic II
Mac II vi & Mac LC II
Mac Color Classic
& Mac LC III
Mac LC 550 & 575
Mac LC 580 & 630
*CMC began
6
Meeting Place
member’s homes
Univ.of Hartford
Mark Ballow
188
Univ.of Hartford
Rich Lemieux
Bruce Lockwood
215
210
Univ.of Hartford
Univ.of Hartford
Jim Lord
207
284
300
Univ.of Hartford
Univ.of Hartford
Univ.of Hartford
199
182
Univ.of Hartford
Univ.of Hartford
Bob Sawyer
The club was involved with Apple
User Groups. Sam was the Apple
Ambassador. When Macworld Expo
began in Boston, many members from
our club and other clubs met each
other and exchanged ideas. The User
Group breakfasts provided information exchange from Apple and prizes
for guests. At the early Expos, you
could watch people leaving with two
to three shopping bags filled to the
top. Later on, people left with smaller
bags with more expensive findings.
All had a good time finding new
things to feed their hobby.
New Take Control Ebooks
Help Readers Purchase
Macs and Digital Cameras
Submitted by Robert Sawyer
“Take Control of Buying a Digital
Camera,” now in its third edition,
helps readers sort out the latest
camera trends and marketing jargon
in order to find a camera that matches their budget, needs, and style,
whether they want an inexpensive
snapshot camera or a professional
digital SLR camera system. Written
by professional photographer and
instructor Larry Chen, the book
includes a printable, customizable
shopping checklist, specific model
suggestions for different types of
cameras, 25 color photos illustrating important concepts, and tips for
taking better photos.
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/buy
ing-digicam.html?14@@!pt=TRK0015-TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG
I wish to thank the following people
who assisted me in writing this history:
• Chris Hart for giving me the
minutes
• Bob Sawyer for his memory
• Jim Lord, former President, for
his better memory
• Jack Bass and Dan Arnold for
meeting with me and adding their
memories and information.
“The Connecticut
Macintosh Connection
(CMC)...registered as a
non-profit club with the
State of Connecticut in
1986.”
If any person finds a mistake or can
add information, please let me know;
I was not a member of this club for
most of the years of this history. I
hope to cover the last 10 years of
CMC in a 2007
newsletter.
Book Details
“Take Control of Buying a Digital
Camera” by Laurence Chen
Publication date: October 25, 2006
Price: $10
About the Author: Laurence Chen
is a professional photographer and
adjunct faculty member teaching
photography at Seattle Pacific
University. His work has appeared
in the New York Times, Sunset
Magazine, America 24/7, and many
other places.
Adam C. Engst's “Take Control of
Buying a Mac” helps readers decide
which Mac is right for their needs
and provides carefully researched
advice about exactly when to buy,
based on historical trends. The book,
now in its section edition, has been
thoroughly updated to cover Apple's
new Intel-based Macs and current
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An Affordable
Color Laser Printer:
the Phaser 6120
by Mary Jo Disler
I just knew it was coming:
the day when my 11-yearold Apple LaserWriter would
bite the dust. Actually, it
was still printing, but
“clanking,” and the toner was
thinning out. Time for a decision.
After prowling the Xerox Phaser
web site for about a year, requesting
sample printouts, and just plain wanting one, the time came. Xerox has had
various promotional discounts and
rebates for their line of office printers,
and I actually had my eye on either the
solid ink 8550 - much in favor by members of MacGroup - or a more
expensive laser printer that ran about
$1000 or so, depending on features.
The Phaser 6120 is the low end of
the Phaser line - the lowest end, in fact.
The specs indicate that it is slower than
the others, but the fact that Xerox offers
the option of “standard” capacity color
cartridges for considerably less cost
than the high capacity toners caught my
eye. My needs are “one person, one
office,” and not oriented toward high
quality color production. The sample
printouts indicated to my amateur eye
that the quality of the 6120 appeared
very favorable compared to the more
expensive ones. About 2 weeks ago, as
I was preparing materials for a convention, and the “clanking” was getting
more and more ominous in the old
faithful Apple printer, I ventured onto
the web once again. My budget was on
the low side, mainly because of some
other big needs this summer. The 6120
looked more and more appealing for
that reason. The current promotion by
Xerox offered it for $299, and catalog
sites were offering it at that price with
no rebate involved. On a whim, I visited a site where I’ve made prior
purchases: eCost. com. They specialize
in computer & electronics items. A
search turned up the 6120 for $266 plus
shipping. A no-brainer! I opted for the
cheapest ground shipping - about $28,
and it arrived in about 3 days. Just
under $300 total cost.
Printer setup
Setup was easier
than I expected it
might be: Follow
directions for
unpacking, install
drivers on the computer, select the computer
connection, open the
Printer Setup Utility to
add the printer [very
important, even though it looks
like the install has already put it there],
then print. (It has to be “imported” by
the Printer Setup Utility to make all of
the driver options available in the Print
dialog.) The 6120 offers 3 connectivity
options: USB, ethernet-RJ45, or parallel. I had intended to use Ethernet, but
the RJ-45 cable I had didn’t match the
printer’s RJ-45 port (??). (Because of
the choices, you must provide your
own cable.) Fortunately I had a spare
USB 2 cable and connected to a USB 2
powered hub that is plugged into my
desktop QuickSilver Mac. Works great.
Other than a few setup and Get
Started papers that came with the computer, all of the documentation is in
files installed with the driver. I couldn’t
find answers to a few questions, so
went to the Xerox support site. Still
couldn’t find the answers I needed, so
tried the Instant Messaging support that
they offer. Super! (And they offer to
email the text of your IM when completed.)
One big question involved the
capacity of the installed toners. Were
they just starter-capacity, or standard?
Answer: They are Standard, and Black
comes only in high-capacity. That
meant that I had purchased the printer
for LESS than the cost of purchasing
the 4 toners! A bargain in my world.
Just the facts, please
The print driver offers numerous
options for color and quality, which I
won’t detail here (because I am still
learning what some of them mean!)
The native resolution is 600 dpi, but
with an “enhanced” 2400 dpi emulation
as a choice in the driver. Actually, it
defaults to the higher resolution.
Selections can be made to print strictly
8
black/grayscale, or in color. It may be
the slowest in this Xerox line, but it is
MUCH faster than the old Apple printer. A second paper tray is available as
an option, but the included tray is just
fine. It is designed so that special print
materials (labels, etc.) can simply be
placed on top of the loaded paper as
needed, print side up.
The only disappointment is that
feeding envelopes is more complicated
and requires adjustments inside the
printer. I have not yet played with printing postcards or other odd sizes. It is
listed as accepting a variety of print
media, including transparencies and
photographic paper - as long is they are
specified for laser printing, not inkjet. A
duplexer is also an extra option - but by
the time the costs of 2nd paper tray
and/or duplexer are added to the base
price, you might as well get one of the
more expensive printers for which
these features are standard. Again to
my amateur eye, the print quality is
astounding, and the color beautiful. Just
before writing this article, I printed a
page that included a couple of images
“borrowed” from web sites. The colors
onscreen and on the printed page
looked virtually identical. (Is that
ColorSync at work?) Is it a friendly
companion in the office? I would say
so. It is so quiet in sleep mode that you
have to look at the panel light to be sure
it is on. Yet it accepts print jobs virtually immediately. Every hour or so it gets
noisy for 30 seconds or so; apparently
re-generating or some such thing. It can
be turned off without problems, since
there are no color sticks to be kept at
printing temperature. When turned
back on, it is ready to print in about 3
minutes or so. (I like to unplug all my
computer equipment when we go out
of town. This was an important consideration in my case.) However, at this
point, it is one purchase that has been
very satisfying from every standpoint.
Go to this site and take a look, then
prowl your favorite web merchant for a
good deal:
http://www.office.xerox.com/colorprinters/ phaser-6120/enus.html
Reprinted from MacNews, The monthly newsletter of MacGroup Detroit
SPECIAL OFFERS - Apple User Group Bulletin - November 17, 2006
These User Group discounts are brought to you by the
Apple User Group Advisory Board and Tom Piper, vendor
relations.
That’s Easy:
Apple User Group Market & Apple User Group Offers
User Group Advisory Board vendor coordinator, publishes a
Password is located on p.11 of your mailed newsletter.
You must be a current Apple user group member to qualify for these savings. Not a member? Join an Apple user
group today to take advantage of these special offers.
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group Market
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Apple User Group Advisory Board.
Recent Episodes
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- George Kopp, Apple User Group Regional Liaison and Victor
Marks of Miglia Technology
- Sandy Foderick, Apple User Group Advisory Board, and Jack
Herrington, noted author on podcasting and other topics with
O’Reilly Books
MacAddict Reborn: 40 percent Off New Mac|Life
The Mac market has evolved, and so has MacAddict. Starting
with the February 2007 issue, MacAddict will become
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and life, and will appeal to core Apple users. Features include
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This offer is for a one-time Apple User Group member charter
subscription rate of $14.95 (US) for 12 issues, a savings of 40
percent off the basic subscription price.
Subscribe today. http://www.maclife.com/mugsub
Offer is valid through February 28, 2007.
Audio Hijack Pro: Special Offer
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O’Reilly: New Discounts for User Group Members
O’Reilly Publishing is offering new and better discounts for
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Globalsat Technology Corp, the first GPS producer to support
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users. USGlobalSat, Inc. carries that torch for the North
American Market, evident by their dedicated Mac GPS pages,
continued development of Mac-centric products and introduction of the RouteBuddy mapping and navigational software
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Learn about GPS, Bluetooth and more.
The MUG Store: Redesigned for Even Greater Savings
The Apple MUG Store has been redesigned to offer you even
more great deals. If you haven’t looked in a while, check out
the Apple MUG Store. You’ll find great prices, lots of special
offers, blowouts on Apple products and more! Be sure to
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every so often: When your members buy from the MUG store,
the store sets aside 1 percent of your group members’ purchases, which your group can use to buy anything from the store!
IDs & password is located on p.11 of your mailed newsletter.
Offer is valid through January 31, 2007.
9
New Members Wanted!
Have your friends and coworkers join us for fun and learning about OS X and the
Mac. Please give them this application form.
CMC Benefits: Monthly meetings, monthly newsletter,
special events, discounted books, assistance with computer
problems, network with other Mac users, User Group Store
discounts, and more.
[email protected]
860-347-1789
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860-291-9393
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10
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We always welcome your input and participation. Do you have an idea for a
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yourself? Email us at [email protected].
CMC December Meeting
Wednesday, December 13
7:00 p.m.
Keller Auditorium
20th Anniversary Party
and CMC BINGO NIGHT
CMC Celebrates 20 years!
Celebrate CMC's 20th anniversary by
attending CMC BINGO NIGHT at our
December meeting. There'll be pizza,
refreshments, music and BIG prizes!
How big? Watch your email and in the
days ahead we'll announce prizes and the
Grand Prize! Visit our website
<www.ctmac.org> for up-to-date information on CMC meetings and events.
Directions to Keller Auditorium:
Follow signs for the main hospital
entrance (not the Emergency entrance).
Park in any of the lots near the main
entrance. There should be plenty of parking available. Once inside, take the
escalator downstairs to Keller Auditorium.
Back to Basics will return in January
FREE Raffle!
FREE Classified Ads
ticket that will give you a chance for
one of our free prizes every month!
Win t-shirts, toys, CDs, mugs, software…there’s always something
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room where everything is...free!
[email protected]
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Account Balances
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members? CMC members can join
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www.ctmac.org
Valid: Nov. 1 - Jan. 31, 2007
User ID: xxx
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11
Monthly Meeting
UConn Health Center
Farmington
Keller Auditorium
December 13, 7:00 PM
20th Anniversary Party and
CMC BINGO NIGHT!
(Visit our website: www.ctmac.org for more info.
See driving directions to Keller Auditorium below)
CMC Celebrates 20 Years!
Help us celebrate by attending
our CMC BINGO NIGHT at our
December 13th Meeting. There’ll
be pizza, refreshments, music
and BIG prizes! How Big? Watch
your email and in the days ahead
we’ll announce prizes and the
Special Directions to CMC December 13th
Meeting in Keller Auditorium
GRAND
PRIZE!
CONNECT
IC
12
CTION
NE
ON
Directions to Keller Auditorium:
INT
MAC OSH C
UT
Avenue). At third traffic light, turn right to enter the Health
Center campus. Follow signs for the main hospital entrance (not
the Emergency entrance). Park in any of the lots near the main
NIVERSA Y
entrance. There should be plenty of parking available. Once inside, AN1986 – 200R
6
take the escalator downstairs to Keller Auditorium.

Account - Connecticut Mac Connection

Transcription

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