January Thaw - Connecticut Mac Connection

Transcription

Download of the Month .......................3
Review: Photoshop Blending Modes...4
Review: Sorenson Squeeze v.4.5 .........5
Trip Down Memory Lane .....................6
Take Control of Domain Names ...........7
The Mac ReviewCast............................8
CMC User Group Offers .......................9
Meetings and Club News ...................11
NEWSLETTER OF CONNECTICUT MACINTOSH CONNECTION, INC.
JANUARY 2007
whole family can’t easily gather around
the computer screen to watch a threehour movie. That’s what living rooms
with TVs are for. iTV resolves this problem by moving the computer’s media
“player” to where the TV is, but that’s
all it does; the computer and hard drives
are still running and active. An average
iTunes movie eats up about 20-60 times
more hard drive space than a compressed CD.
January Thaw
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
It’s late December and I have to write
this article prior to the January
Macworld Conference & Expo. I can
easily predict some of Apple’s
Macworld announcements. There will
be a new killer version of iLife with
probably some major enhancements to
iWeb. A new version of iWork, perhaps
with a spreadsheet application. There
will be some faster Macs announced,
though I would guess the improvements
will be pretty small. Steve Jobs will
probably spend most of his Keynote
reviewing OS X Leopard and its fantastic, eye-popping new features.
Microsoft will likely announce a new
version of Office.
As I write this on December 20, those
are all just predictions, but what we will
definitely see at Macworld is the introduction of Apple’s iTV media device
that Steve Jobs previewed last August.
iTV allows people sitting at their TV to
access and control media from their
computer and have that content
streamed wirelessly to their TV. iTV
allows video content purchased from the
Apple Store to be played on a TV since
it can’t be burned to DVD, only played
from a computer.
It’s hard for me to get excited about iTV.
iTV follows a media philosophy called
“convergence,” the combining of computers, the Internet and TV for the
distribution and playing of video content. It’s not a philosophy I fully buy
into, even as a media professional. I see
computers and TVs as different devices
with different purposes and until relia-
bility and price issues can be resolved,
I’m sticking with DVDs for now.
The Personal Computer. My computer is my personal computer. I use my
personal computer to surf the Internet,
write email, edit my photos and videos
and do other computer tasks especially
those related to my job. My TV is my
TV, and, unlike my Mac, it is a community device for family and friends to
gather and watch movies, TV shows,
news and sports. It’s connected to an
antenna, VCR and DVD player, which
are hard-wired from a spot one foot
below the TV, while my computer is at
the other end of the house. iTV is supposed to act as this magical convergence
device, but as I see it we use computers
and TVs for different purposes.
Music has had some success being
“converged” because by nature it is very
different from a movie or TV program.
We can listen to music while working
on a computer and can even run speakers and music sharing around the house
easily and someone can still work on a
computer, as audio isn’t very demanding on a computer or network. But we
can’t watch a video and do work on a
computer at the same time and the
1
Frankly, I don’t want my personal computer running the many hours the TV is
on, especially when I’m away from it. I
also don’t want the family accessing my
hard drive while I’m busy working or
video editing and either slowing down
my work or having to hear the complaints about the video stream being
interrupted due to my use of the same
computer.
What’s Wrong with DVDs? I have this
DVD player underneath the TV, which
lies dormant for days at a time. Why
can’t I play my iTunes video content on
it? iTunes does burn DVDs as it does
burn purchased CDs, it just doesn’t burn
purchased video content. It’s not
Apple’s fault. The mega-media conglomerates, which include Disney,
Universal, Warner and Sony, as the owners of the content, define how and on
what devices the content will be used.
They want you watching their content
either (1) over the air TV, cable and
satellite, (2) from a purchased or rented
DVD, or (3) while sitting at your computer. The ability to burn a DVD from
purchased computer content competes
with their own DVD business and affiliated DVD distributors and retailers.
Continued on page 2
Continued from page 1
NEWSLETTER OF
CONNECTICUT MACINTOSH CONNECTION, INC.
A USER GROUP SINCE 1986
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.
The music recording companies allow
iTunes CD burning because they lost
much of their CD retail business to
Internet pirates which hasn’t happened
to the movie companies . . . yet. iTV not
only will move purchased video content
from the computer to the TV, it will also
do so wirelessly.
WiFi for Video and Reliability. So
how well is this wireless video stream
from a computer to iTV going to work?
If iTunes music sharing and my house is
any example, not very well.
I’ve had marginal success streaming
music from my computer to an Airport
Express connected to my stereo at the
other end of the house. It works fine for
a while but at some point the signal gets
dropped; either the stream needs to
reconnect and “rebuffered” or it shuts
down all together when the Airport
Express or the computer storing my
media decides to take a nap. If someone
else accesses the network, such as when
my wife checks her email on her iMac
while I’m listening to music, the music
stream becomes one intermittent mess.
That’s using a simple music stream
which theoretically should be reliable,
but isn’t.
Given iTunes Music sharing reliability
which has forced me to put my music
on an old G3 iMac and hard wire it to
my stereo, I can only imagine what
watching video on iTV would be like.
Video by nature is far more demanding
than music in terms of file sizes, processing and network bandwidth.
Streaming video requires high and consistent bandwidth. Even if iTV uses a
more robust WiFi standard, would it be
consistent enough for video, especially
when the WiFi network is being used
for other functions? I would doubt if a
family sitting down around the living
room TV to watch a movie on a
Saturday night would tolerate the inconsistencies I’ve experienced with Tunes
music sharing.
2
Other Issues. There are many unanswered questions. Will iTV and iTunes
stream DIVX, AVI, FLV and WMV
media content or just Quicktime? Will
iTV and the new WiFi standard handle
high definition content, which requires
more than double the bandwidth of
standard-definition DVD quality video?
Since iTV is designed to connect to
today’s flat screen HDTVs, it would be
disappointing if both the WiFi standard
it uses and the iTunes Store remain standard definition-only.
As of today the jury is still out on these
questions. Steve Jobs will probably
have answered these questions at
MacWorld.
The Price. Finally, the more I think
about iTV the more I think it’s grossly
overpriced. $299 is a lot to pay for a
device that just connects a computer to
a TV. The hard sell to me is that a
respectable DVD player can be purchased for around $29, one-tenth the
price of an iTV, which needs a $600
computer to work. The total iTV system cost not including the HDTV is
about $1,000.
Like the iPod when it was released, iTV
will be up against less expensive competitors. Wired media servers that can sit
under the TV start for as little as $100.
For people with a cheap Mac Mini or
old G3, the Macs can be wired to a TV
with a $19 S-video/component video
connector and still provide the same
results as iTV: that’s $19 vs. $299. For
those wishing to go that route, there are
several Mac media center software
options available, some are even free,
and several wireless remote controls
that can be connected to USB port.
Mac users don’t need Front Row and
an Apple Remote to control iTunes
content, and these solutions can play
any video format a Mac can play, not
just those supported by the more
restrictive iTunes.
continued on page 3
For those on the Windows side, a PC
with Windows Media Center software
can be bought for the same price as iTV,
$299 and yes, it can play iTunes content
as long as you have iTunes.
So what’s the big deal about iTV? The
big deal is it’s from Apple. Lately, it
seems everything Apple touches turns
to gold. There were many other MP3
players available before the iPod, but
Apple seems to understand what consumers want and delivers a tremendous
product. If a product from Apple is
good, people don’t seem to mind the
cost. Other companies may produce
products similar to iTV and Apple’s
Front Row, but you can be sure few can
do it as elegantly or get as much hype in
the marketplace as Apple. Other
devices just won’t seem as cool.
As for me ... Despite the adoration this
device will receive in the press and from
the techno-elite, I’m not going to be
rushing out to buy an iTV. I could be
wrong, but I’m sure many of you feel the
Where’s th
I just watch e Mac in Macwo
ed
rld?
have to ask the Macworld Keynote
an
: Where is
the Macinto d I
Macworld?
sh in
You’d think
Many minute
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s
ures on iPod were spent running dow ist.
n fi
sa
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the iTV/App and
and iPhone
le TV
announcem
ents
some Window
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It seems to me that eventually the
tu
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d to
was little
movie studios and Apple would M
menti
acin
have to come around to letting are al tosh in a Macworld keyn on of the
l the anno
ote! Wh
iTunes video content be burned to
features and uncements about Leopar ere
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DVD like they do with iTunes
iLife ‘07, iW lease dates? Will there
be an
ork ‘07 and
maybe a glim
Music ,or Apple needs to offer a
glimmer or
pse, a
hin
Oddly you w t at anything Mac re
less expensive option such as a
lated?
on’t find info
Macintosh in
rmation abo
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ut
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pple TV an te.
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M
Either way, it will be interest- M acworld for the in but I tune in to
fo about
acintosh.The
the
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ing and exciting to watch how ann
ounced that al blow came when Ste
ve
th
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this new convergence device
the word “c
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r”
plays out in the marketplace.
from it’s off
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The day when we can watch
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wind out o
what we want when we want
f Macworld emed to take the
’s sails. Hec
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k
nounce at
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M
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sage to Stev
here this January… I’m not
show.
e
Jo
b
s: next time
keynote ad
you give a
quite sure. 
dress at
an event
Macworld,
call
sh
Macintosh? ouldn’t you talk abou ed
t the
Maybe just
a li
rant for 1/9/0
7. Rich Leno ttle? That’s my
ce
same way. To me the cost is too high
to watch movies I can rent, and other
content I can get free over the air.
Also, I am suspect of the WiF’s reliability to deliver consistent results. I
am also not thrilled with using my
Mac for family TV viewing.
Download of the Month
NeoOffice 1.2.2
Submitted by Deb Foss
Well it is the start of a new year. And my project for all
Connecticut Macintosh Connection members is that they
all write an article for the newsletter. On what, you might
say? Well anything Mac related. How you use your Mac,
why you use your Mac, funny stories, just anything, so
long as it is G-rated. Our editor does not want to bleep
you out. So, if you don’t have Microsoft Office, I am
giving you a link to a free program that works like it (it
even opens word documents). So that you can start typing away, to entertain your fellow members. So install
NeoOffice and get started creating!
Minimum Machine Requirements for NeoOffice 1.2.2
To install, you must have the following:
■ Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
■ 384 MB of memory
■ 400 MB of free disk space
To download NeoOffice 1.2.2 (129MB) and Patch-0
(2.8MB) go to:
http://www.fanfiction.net/oo/
Product Developer: www.neooffice.org
Note: this release will not work on Apple’s Intel machines. A Beta version is available through the NeoOffice Early Access Program.
3
able to improve your photos in no
time. Working with the book
Photoshop
Blending
Modes
Cookbook for Digital Photographers
may help you go farther.
Photoshop Blending
Modes Cookbook for
Digital Photographers
Reviewed by Dr. Eric Flescher
Reprinted from the Macintosh
Professional Network.
macCompanion newsletter,
January 2006.
Author: John Beardsworth
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/
photoblend/index.html
Released: November 2005
Pages: 176, $30 US
ISBN: 0596100205
Novice/Intermediate/Advanced
The author, who is an consultant, web
designer, writer and photographer
brings all of his skills into play by
showing step by step instructions for
achieving distinctive photographs. As
the name implies, this book has a
number of recipes cooked up for you
in the form of tutorials, helping you
complete a wide range of image laden
special effects and graphic maneuvers.
Strengths: One of the nicest books I
have found .Easy to read yet comprehensive and stimulating visually as
well reading wise. Covers some complex topics in an easily read manner.
Uses brilliant photos, color screenshots and short yet helpful step by
step instructions.
Weaknesses: None found.
Many computers who want to transform their pictures and graphics think
about using Photoshop. Many don’t
understand that you can do some of
the graphics related work and slowly
build up to more intensive operations.
In other words, one does not need to
learn the “whole package” to become
acquainted with and get started with
graphics and picture design. Better
yet, if there is good book to start
learning Photoshop skills and making
your pictures better, then you may be
We wish to thank all our
generous donors who
contributed to the success
of our 2006 auction!
This book is one of the nicest books I
have seen. Some books have the same
staging on pages but this one is different. Each page is distinct in itself with
different patterns on the pages which
at the same time inspires harmony yet
creativity. Brilliant photos, color
screenshots and short yet helpful step
by step instructions draw you into the
learning process. The pastels and light
colors set the different parts of the
pages apart which makes for easy yet
compelling reading even for graphic
intensive topics that the book covers.
The author manages to start off with
“Blending Modes in Detail.”
Instructions detail information about
dodging, use of light, saturation,
luminosity and much more. Learn as
you go is the motto here.
Then the tutorials called “recipes,”
provide learning about sharpening,
Peachpit Press
O’Reilly Press
Wiley Publications
SketchUp
Webster Bank
Bare Bones Software
Focal Press
Microsoft
Circus Ponies
Allume Systems
Design Tools Monthly
4
use of lens flares, reducing noise, posterization, adjusting lighting, creating
surface textures and effects, adding
effects to city and landscapes and
offers learning about unique methods
and techniques that can transform
your photos. Finally an appendix
deals with blending mode keystrokes,
a glossary, index, further sources and
acknowledgments.
Conclusion I can’t say enough about
this book. Not only does it have great
information, it reads easily, yet covers
easy to unique topics. The coloration
of the book is one of the nicest graphics oriented books I have encountered
and review. Pleasing to the eye, the
author excites the mind with new possibilities for making your digital
photos better. Have a look. You will
find this book a great one for your collection. 
MacSpeech
SmileOnMyMac
Avondale Media
Total Training
And these CMC Members
who donated stuff:
Jack Bass
Rich Lenoce
Jerry Esposito
Don Dickey
George Maciel
Freshly Squeezed Review:
You’d Have To Squeeze the
Money Out of Me
by Frank Petrie
Sorenson Squeeze PowerPack v4.5
Sorenson Media
www.sorensonmedia.com/
Requirements: Power PC with G4
processor or greater or Intel processor
Mac OS 10.3 or later
128 MB of RAM
90 MB available hard disk space
QuickTime 7 or later
Universal Binary: Yes
Price: $499.00
Review Date: 24 December 2006
The future of media is digital and it’s here.
But until we all have T3 lines, there will
have to be compression tools. One problem: is there a one-stop shop solution for all
the formats for the iPod, Playstation,
mobile phones, et al.? “Sorenson Squeeze
Suite 4 is the industry-leading video encoding tool, enabling users to efficiently
re-purpose video content for web, CD or
DVD applications. Includes Sorenson
Video 3 Pro, Sorenson Spark Pro, Sorenson
MPEG-4 Pro and Sorenson AVC Pro video
codecs. Supports the On2 VP6 Pro Encoder
plugin (sold separately). VP6 is included as
part of the Squeeze Compression Suite
PowerPack.” This is entry level. Does it do
its big brother proud?
THE JUICE Simple to use, but more than
enough customization for the most particular producer. Dozens upon dozens of
presets for all compression situations, all
customizable. The GUI is laid out very
intuitively. It’s probably this application’s
finest feature. It leads you through the flow
of the four step process logically. Here is a
list of their export formats: AAC,
AIF/AIFF, ASF, AVI, DV, MOV, MP3,
MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA
and WMV. Sorenson also states Squeeze
performs batch processing.
THE RIND Support seems weak (but then
again, the review copy comes without the
training CD). It would be nice if there was
an onsite forum. I sent an email to support
almost a month ago and still no
response. The speed I can’t comment
on from personal experience, having
never
used
Sorenson before.
But
having
trolled several
DV forums, the
speed upgrade
seems to be only
in comparison to
Sorenson’s previous release. I
found that it took
approximately
the same time to
compress
my
video as iMovie.
THE PITS I set
Sorenson up to
compress my weekly videocast to the same settings that I use
with iMovie’s codec. I found there to be
more artifacts than using iMovie’s codec.
In fact, if you increase the resolution any
higher than actual size, it was a mess. Even
worse, it lost my audio 1/3 through the
show. So, the next week I used Sorenson’s
512k preset. When played back at double
size, it was every bit as soft as iMovie.
Strike three. I used their Hi iPod preset.
Picture was excellent, even at double size.
But guess what? it lost my audio 2/3 of the
way through. I’m not happy.
THE PULP I was really looking forward to
trying this application. A couple of friends
were saying that it would be a big leap for
The Video Sandbox (technologically, at
least). But after trolling a number of DV
forums not connected with Sorenson, I
don’t feel alone. Though I feel very disappointed. I have a G4 1.42 GHz dual
processor with 1.5 GB RAM and a 7200
RPM hard drive. That’s a big enough rig to
run this app, according to Sorenson. You
want a good-looking picture at a reasonable
size? Spend $40.00 and buy QuickTime
Pro 7. Then take the $450.00 you saved and
put it to your MacBook Pro fund or
upgrade to FCE HD or FCP HD. Or better
yet, buy a decent hard drive(s) for your
editing. Or send it to me. 
5
Sorenson Squeeze
PowerPack v4.5
RATING: 4 out of 10
©2006 Frank Petrie
Macsimum News contributing
editor, Freelance writer,
Curmudgeon
Email:
[email protected]
iChat: phranky
Archive:
home.comcast.net/~phranky
A Trip Down Memory Lane
(or Summary of the 1988 Boston Expo).
By Don Rittner from MUG NEWS SERVICE
Reprinted from the CMC Newsletter,
August 1988
Submitted by Connie Scott
CMC Historian
Well. I couldn’t wait to get to Boston this year. I
booked my room in July and often looked at my calendar for the countdown. Now that I have recovered
(my back and feet are still sore), I can sum it up in one
word - HO-HUM (or is that two?) Actually it wasn’t
bad, just ah, boring. To put it another way, it reminded me of the ending of most Star Trek episodes.
Know what I mean? Kirk looks at Sulu and says “Full
speed ahead. Steady as she goes.”
The Mac has grown up. Expo was just another
trade show! Sad for all us old timers who were
there from the beginning. Jubilant Apple. The Mac
is finally recognized as a legitimate business tool.
Companies, new and old, pulled out the bells and
whistles, songs and dance, slick booths, all in an
effort to empty your wallets.
Having it at THREE locations was barely manageable
for those of us staying all four days and a disaster for
the one-day attendants. Morning discussions (Scully,
Atkinson, Gates, etc) delivered their speeches at the
Wang Center, a beautiful theater on Tremont Street
(with a walk by the panhandlers), next to Boston
Commons. The Traditional Bayside had all three
rooms full, and a large section of the World Trade
Center, near the Harbor, also had a room full of
exhibitors. Apple had booths at both.
Friday morning, Apple sponsored a User Group
breakfast with host Ellen Leanse and Bill Atkinson.
The breakfast was great and we learned that it was
actually the celebration of two birthdays (Hypercard (one year old) and Ellen (30). A large
cake was wheeled out to celebrate both. A few raffles were also held.
BMUG, BCS and NYMUG had booths. In fact, if the
hadn’t, there would be no funkiness at all at the Expo.
BMUG had their long-awaited PD-ROM disk for sale
(over 250 megabytes of goodies) and of course their
huge newsletter. This issue was one of the best collections I have ever seen.
MacWeek’s bag was the best looking, but
MacWorld’s was the sturdiest (70 pounds max) of all
the bags at the show. The plastic handle on
MacWorld’s bag made my fingers numb for three
days. Next year someone should hand out gloves.
Just as you thought the death of “Macintosh
Today” would be a signal, plenty of publications
filled the void: Copies of Hyperlink, Macintosh
Business Review, Mac Publish, CD-ROM, The
Macintosh Buyers Guide, Macintosh Horizons,
Wheels of the Mind, InfoWorld, Computer
Currents, Byte, MacWeek, MacBusiness Journal,
and others were available.
Special thanks to Adobe for providing bottles of
Indian Springs lime flavored spring water. The bottle
labels were designed using Adobe Illustrator 88. The
booth was popular on those hot days and I hear many
of the food vendors were complaining because the
water was taking away business.
Richard Brandow, the Canadian responsible for the
MacMag virus was seen bopping around. Also seen
were a number of people with a rope looking for him.
Ok, on to the goodies. 1200 booths (and 300 pounds
of press releases, my fingers are still numb)! Apple
introduced a flat bed scanner capable of 300 DPI and
4 bit/16 levels per scanned pixel of grayscale. Ok,
nothing exciting. Apple Scan comes with the scanner
and allows you to save in the various formats like
PICT, TIFF, or Paint. The suggested retail price of
$1795 is quite affordable.
This is obviously not the whole Expo but various
things that grabbed my attention. There will fill in the
gaps. Overall it was a good EXPO. The diversity of
products at this show proved that the Mac is here to
stay. Apple Computer continues to lead the way in
personal computing and third party developers continue to show their imagination with a wealth of new
and useful products.
Many USA companies were offering products. Other
companies came from Germany, Belgium, Austria.
Full speed ahead. Steady as she goes. 
6
From Connie Scott
At one of the recent
Board Meetings it was
suggested that I might find
an article or two from old
CMC Newsletters to put
into
our
current
Newsletters. This article
made me think back to my
first MacWorld Expo in
1987. I thought it was
wonderful. Many small
companies were there
beside the bigger companies. Smaller companies
became fewer as the
booth rents increased.
Prizes and free “stuff”
also decreased. As the
author said, it was
becoming just a “trade
show.”
In looking at the CMC
Board Minutes of 1987, I
found out that CMC
offered to sponsor a bus to
Boston, but was unable to
do it because not enough
people wanted to ride the
bus. I was not a member
of CMC at that time, but
being from the Boston
area, I drove to Boston
and stayed with friends
for a couple of days and
enjoyed seeing the sights
in Boston.
It is interesting that when
the Expo moved to New
York, CMC’s offer to
sponsor a bus was accepted and repeated for
several years until the
New York Show was discontinued. We even had a
bus for the smaller Boston
Show the last two times
the show was on the east
coast.
I guess that I can go on
dreaming about going to
another Expo show in the
EAST in the future.
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[Communication Design]
Art Direction, Graphic Design, Advertising
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
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CD Packaging
>
Editorial & Publication Design
>
Logos/Marks/Identity
7
>
Image Tweaks
>
Posters
>
Print/Web
>
More
07
Urly
http://www.zenonez.com/urly
Urly does one thing only but one thing well. It manages
all those URL links you have saved open in your dock and
rather then just seeing a whole line of URL icons in your
dock, Urly puts them all in a list so when you click on the
icon for Urly you see the exact URLs listed in a popup
and they can be easily clicked on and visited rather then
keeping them all in your dock. It’s probably easier to see
then to explain, so head over to the website and see for
yourself. It’s a great idea.
Mac Freeware http://www.macreviewcast.com and
http://www.surfbits.com
Copyright (c) 2007 Tim Verpoorten
By Tim Verpoorten - January 2007
SlideSaverMaker
http://www.omiware.com/slidesavermaker
A slidesaver is like a screensaver that uses your pictures.
Creating slideSavers has never been easier. Drag and drop
your pictures from iPhoto, or a folder of pictures from anywhere on your computer directly into SlideSaverMaker.
Imagewell
http://www.xtralean.com
ImageWell is a small, but powerful, image editing application that lets you quickly resize, crop, watermark, edit your
images and then upload them to the web, save to your computer or email them to a friend. Overall you get a ton of
editing, importing and exporting features. If you don’t need
an expensive, overbearing image editing app, then
Imagewell freeware is just what the Doctor ordered.
iRemindU
http://www.theapplegeek.com/iru
iRemindU is designed to be the perfect little reminder application. Fill in the information and when it needs to alert you,
iRemindU will jump to the top and make sure you get the
message. It works by a timer which is handy when you need
a reminder in 15 or 20 minutes rather then at a specific time.
OnyX
http://www.titanium.free.fr
OnyX is a multifunction utility (maintenance, optimization,
and personalization). It allows you to run misc tasks of system
maintenance, to configure certain hidden parameters of the
Finder, Dock, Safari, Dashboard, Exposé, Disk Utility, to
delete cache, to remove a certain number of files and folders
that may become cumbersome, to see the detailed info of your
configuration, to preview the different logs and CrashReporter
reports, to check the Preferences files and more.
Inquisitor 3
http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari
It’s like Spotlight for the web. Start typing and websites pop
up immediately, along with ideas to refine your search. It’ll
auto-complete your words and you can add more search
engines to Safari with customized keyboard shortcuts. So if
you’ve ever been to that website where you just can’t
remember the name, but you know part of it or what it contains, start typing in Inquisitor and let it do the work for you.
BackityMac
http://www.whimsplucky.com
Have you ever wanted an easy way to backup all the important files in your home folder? Are you tired of sifting
through the Library directory to find the folders you need to
backup? Let’s say you just want to backup your Apple Mail
database file, not all you have to do is click the “Apple Mail”
checkbox and click “Backup.” This is not some proprietary
system. All backups are placed in a read-only disk image,
which ensures you can access it on any Mac.
AP Grapher
http://www.chimoosoft.com/apgrapher.html
AP Grapher is a freeware program for Mac OS X that searches for nearby wireless (i.e., Wi-Fi, Airport) access points and
graphs the signal strength as a function of time for the base
station to which you are currently connected. So if you’re
having trouble with a wireless connection, try AP Grapher, it
will optimize the positioning of your wireless.
That’s it for this month, we’ll see you again in the next
issue of the macCompanion, but while you wait, check out
the MacReviewCast podcast each week at
http://www.macreviewcast.com.
dead.licious
http://www.malarkeysoftware.com
dead.licious is a tool for verifying that all of your bookmarks in your del.icio.us accounts are still valid and gives
you the option of removing those dead links. If you’re using
DeLico.us for bookmarking, this tool is a great asset.
Reprinted from the Macintosh Professional Network
macCompanion newsletter, January 2006.
8
SPECIAL OFFERS - Apple User Group Bulletin
These User Group discounts are brought to you by the
Apple User Group Advisory Board and Tom Piper, vendor
relations.
No Starch Press:
40 Percent off all No Starch Press Books
Check out the new paperback version of the bestselling
Cult of Mac, a celebration of all things Mac. Also available: the hardcover edition of The Cult of Mac, Apple
Confidential 2.0, The Cult of iPod, Just Say No to
Microsoft, Steal This Computer Book 4.0 and many more!
User Group members can visit the web site and view the
complete online catalog, then use the voucher code to
receive a special 40 percent discount on all No Starch
Press books.
Voucher code: 500375983
View the online catalog: http://www.nostarch.com
Offer is valid through March 31, 2007.
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.
Softpress & Have | Host:
25 Percent off Freeway 4 and Hosting
Softpress and Have | Host have combined their efforts to
offer great discounts for Apple user groups to get Freeway
4, the award-winning web design application and firstclass Mac-friendly web hosting. Design your site visually,
let Freeway 4 write standards-compliant code and upload
automatically to your web space.
Members pay only $210 for Freeway 4 Pro, $75 for 4
Express, and get a 25 percent discount off all full-priced
hosting contracts from Have | Host. To purchase, get the
relevant codes from your User Group Leader and enjoy
one or both offers; it’s up to you.
Freeway software: http://www.softpress.com
Have | Host services: http://www.havehost.ca
That’s Easy:
Apple User Group Market & Apple User Group Offers
Looking for information on a past offer? Tom Piper, Apple
User Group Advisory Board vendor coordinator, publishes a single page with all current offers, expiration dates
and codes. Also, be sure to subscribe to Tom’s Apple User
Group Market Report podcast, a great source for information about Apple user groups, vendor discounts, special
events and more.
Current offers:
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers/vendorcodes.htm
Password: ****
Apple User Group Market Report Podcast:
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/resources.html
Migilia:
25 Percent Off Miglia TV Products
Miglia Technology offers innovative audio, video and
communications 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’d like to leverage the power of Internet telephony and make free worldwide phone calls, the Dialog
products may interest you. For those into audio, check out
the HarmonyAudio, Microsound and Diva products!
Migilia offers user group members the following specials,
each at 25 percent of regular prices:
• TVMini HD: regularly $199, user group price $149
• TVMicro: regularly $99, user group price $74
• TVMax: regularly $249, user group price $187
• HarmonyAudio: reg. $199, user group price $149
• Microsound: regularly $29, user group price $19
• Dialog: regularly $79, user group price $59
• Dialog+: regularly $99, user group price $74
• Diva 2.1: regularly $99, user group price $74
Order: http://www.miglia.com/products/aug_list.html.
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 remind your membership to give applemugstore.com a peek every so often. When your members
buy from the MUG store, the store sets aside one percent
of your group members’ purchases, which your group can
use to buy anything from the store!
User ID: ****
Password: ****
http://www.applemugstore.com
Offer is valid through January 31, 2007.
For information about vendor offers and more visit
http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers.html
****Note: CMC User IDs and Passwords above are located in your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
2006 – 07 Connecticut Macintosh Connection
Officers and Board of Directors
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.
President Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
860-347-1789
Vice President Chris Hart
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Acting Secretary
Jack Bass
[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
Yes, I want to join CMC!
Date ____________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
Areas of special interest: ________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
Make check payable to CMC and mail to:
41 Crossroads Plaza, PMB 1984
...or
Pay online with PayPal at www.ctmac.org
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Special Events
Jack Bass
[email protected]
10
Parliamentarian/Historian
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
CMC Meetings
FREE Raffle!
Discounted Books
Monthly CMC meetings are held on
last Wednesday of the month from
7:00 - 9:00 P.M. (except Nov. and
Dec. when the meetings are held 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 and location.
Every CMC member who attends our
monthly meetings gets a raffle ticket
that will give you a chance for one of
our free prizes every month! Win toys,
t-shirts, 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 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.
Email us at [email protected].
Provide the book title, the publisher
and the ISBN number, if possible, and
we will check on its availability.
CMC January Meeting
Treasurer’s Report
FREE Classified Ads
Total Membership: 122
CMC Members can advertise For
Sale, Swap, Trade, Giveaway or Want
to Buy Items. This space can be used
by members to advertise non-business
items which they are no longer using or
upgrading. This is a FREE service
provided to our members. Send to:
[email protected]
Wednesday, January 31
Main Presentation: 7 p.m.
UConn Health Center
Farmington
January’s meeting is chock full of
information! We’ll be presenting fun
video segments featuring MacWorld
Magazine’s Senior Editor Chris
Breen. Recorded specifically for Mac
User Group’s, these special “Breen’s
Bungalow” videos showcase Chris’
wealth of knowledge of all things
Mac. Topics include iPhoto, iTunes,
iMovie, Garageband, Photography
and Podcasting. Chris makes stuff
easy to understand and doesn’t get
hung up on complex technical details.
In between these segments, we’ll be
answering your questions on the concepts and procedures that Mr. Breen
has described, as well as any other
questions you may have. Take advantage of the collective knowledge of
CMC and bring a list of questions
with you!
Back to Basics 6 p.m.
Watch for an email notice or log on to
our website: www.ctmac.org for upto-date information on this month’s
meeting schedule and topics.
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].
Account Balances
- Balances as of January 3, 2007 Checking Account ........$1713.54
Money Market ..................$5736.54
Getting CMC email?
Display Ad Rates
We always send out advance notice of
the meetings, and sometimes for big
news or special events.
Any business item or service can be
advertised at these low monthly rates.
If you’re not getting them, please email
us at [email protected] with your
current email address and a subject line
of: ADD TO CMC EMAIL LIST
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
Did you know that CMC also
hosts a Mac Support mailing list for
members? CMC members can join
at www.ctmac.org
Business Card ...................$10.00
Half Page .........................$30.00
Full Page .........................$50.00
Submit all ad copy to the Editor on a disk
(with nothing else on it) or e-mail it to
[email protected] for insertion in the
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.
CMC Passwords/IDs
Check your Newsletter mailing label for the following info:
• CMC web site info:
www.ctmac.org
User name and password
• Your CMC
Membership
renewal date
• Membership number
(for free shipping
at MacConnection)
The Resource Site for Mac User Groups
www.applemugstore.com
Valid: November 1, 2006
January 31, 2007
User ID: **** Password: ****
All current offers and codes:
http://homepage.mac.com/
ugab/offers/vendorcodes.htm
Valid: 11/16/06 - 5/15/07)
Password: ****
11
41 Crossroads Plaza – PMB 1984
Monthly Meeting
UConn Health Center, Farmington
January 31, 7 pm
“Breen’s Bungalow”
Videos
iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, Garageband,
Photography, Podcasting and more!
(Visit our website: www.ctmac.org for more info.
See driving directions below)
CMC Meeting Location
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
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
To help celebrate CMC’s 20th
Anniversary, Bingo caller (and CMC
Vice President) Chris Hart donated a
1986 MacPlus as one of the many
prizes awarded during our December
Holiday Party and Bingo night.
Daylight Saving Time ...........................3
Product Review: ColorIt .......................4
Product Review: Pzizz..........................5
Safai Bookshelf ....................................6
Take Control of Mac OSX Backups ......7
FEBRUARY 2007
Service with a Smile
CMC
WANTS
YOU!
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
It’s that time of year again when CMC
members elect their Executive Board.
Elected Board positions can run a maximum of two years and surveying the
Board landscape it seems all of our
terms will be expiring come mid-year.
Our nominating committee headed by
Connie Scott is accepting nominations
and self-nominations for Secretary,
Treasurer, Vice President and President.
I’d like to ask for your assistance by
considering a position on the Executive
Board. I know what you’re saying,:
“Rich’s pitch is going to be like one of
those CPTV/CPR beg-a-thons.” Well I
might surprise you.
The time serving on the Executive
Board is minimal, only about two hours
a month plus whatever duties an officer
might be responsible for. Besides the
expected Mac-banter, meetings help the
group decide what monthly presentations to offer, special events to hold and
how we might better serve the membership. We’re a collegial group with
diverse opinions that always brings us
to friendly consensus at the end of each
meeting. Our Board meetings are held
the first Thursday of each month, usually at the UConn Health Center or
sometimes at someone’s home.
There are also opportunities for people
to serve on the Executive Board as
appointed board members. These positions are task oriented and are
appionted by the President. Most
recently, Aaron Czarnecki joined the
Board as our Web Designer, taking on
the task of our website overhaul.
If there’s a skill you feel you can contribute to the membership; we’re all
ears. Of course, if you’d just like to
come to a Board meeting and see what
it’s about before committing to an elected or appointed position, you are
certainly welcome to do so.
There’s the old saying that everyone
complains about politics but no one ever
does anything about it. That’s not true
here; our membership by all indications
and surveys seems happy with the group
and the direction it’s taking. As I’ve said
before, we are financially and operationally healthy. That’s part of the
problem, as the current Board would
like to keep CMC’s 20 years of momentum moving forward,d and we need
people to step up to the plate as some of
us step aside.
Rewards of Serving
Over the last six years, I’ve moved up
through each elected position and I can
attest to the many rewards I’ve received
personally and professionally—some
I’ll bet you haven’t thought of:
■ Knowledge: As a Board member, you
have instant access to a brain-trust that’s
1
second to none. Technicians, business
owners, landlords, writers, designers,
scientists, professors, photographers and
more, serve on the Board and you have
instant access to their expertise that can
prove invaluable. If you really want to
know the Mac and its many uses, take
my word for it, you’ll know it after a
couple of months serving on the Board!
■ Access: You’ll have access to forums
and information not available to the general public. There are not only many user
group specific websites all members
have access to but places in those sites
accessible only by user group leaders.
There are also events such as special
classes and parties at Macworld and
other computer and creative shows available only to user group representatives.
■ Freebies—for a price. There is no
such thing as a free lunch and as a Board
member you won’t be showered with
free products and offers from Mac manufacturers wanting to get their products
into your hands...it doesn’t work that
way. However, publishers, developers
and manufacturers are always looking to
get their products reviewed sometimes
even prior to release, and they’ll gladly
send you copies of their books, software
or hardware to evaluate for our newsletter or at one of our monthly programs.
This is something we haven’t taken as
much advantage of on the board as we
should, but we do plan on filling up our
newsletter with monthly reviews and
articles written by Board members.
We’re also always looking for Board
members to demo their finds at monthly
meetings.
■ Professional benefits and contacts:
Last year, when I came up for promoContinued on page 2
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.
tion to full professor, my involvement
with CMC was a deciding factor in getting that promotion. Most businesses,
education institutions, etc., like to see
their employees involved in community
service organizations, not just as members, but as contributors and even
leaders. It makes them look good since
you represent their organization, and
makes you look good being involved in
a community group. For many of us,
Board membership also counts as
“Professional Development,” since you
are not only learning important knowledge helpful in your job, but developing
and using your leadership skills to guide
a high tech organization forward. As I
like to say, “CMC Board membership
looks great on the resume.” This leads
to contact with 120 members and
DasBoot 1.0.1
Needed by all of us that forget to back up!
Do you have a shiny new iPod in your
pocket? Or perhaps a flash drive or
small portable hard drive? Now you
can turn it into a Mac OS X diagnostic, repair, and maintenance tool.
DasBoot™ allows you to take any third
party boot CD (such as those shipped
by SubRosaSoft.com Inc, Prosoft
Engineering Inc, Alsoft Inc, or
Micromat Inc) and quickly create a
bootable diagnostic device that contains any of your own utilities you
may wish to install. SubRosaSoft
DasBoot™ helps you build a pocketsized toolkit for your Mac – just the
way you want it - and it’s totally free
!! Just plug it in and all your tools will
be at your fingertips.
You can use your iPod to boot and
repair Mac OS X computers as needed without erasing it and removing
your ability to play music. With the
help of DasBoot™ you get to carry all
the tools you’ll need with you. But
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/
redir/lid/993362/DasBoot.dmg.zip
2
dozens of other outside organizations,
all involved in a wide range of personal
and professional activities making for a
great Rolodex of professional contacts.
■ Self fullfillment: Yeah, there are all
the perks above, but feeling good about
myself and what I do, is why I serve. I
like the camaraderie, my cherished
friends on the Board, and the fact that
I’m contributing to others knowledge
and experience about something that
I’m passionate about. At the end of the
day, if I’ve helped one person solve a
frustrating problem, learned a little
more about the Mac or its software, or
helped a member discover that by using
the Mac their creative skills have no
bounds, I can sleep with a smile.
Join the CMC Executive Board; you’ll
be smiling too. 
unlike expensive third party alternatives, you’ll have plenty of space left
over in case you need to recover data.
DasBoot™ devices run software much
faster than a CD/DVD repair disk. In
addition, you can re-configure the
device at any time to add new utilities,
updated versions of software or newer
versions of Mac OS X.DasBoot™ has
been tested with the following disk
utilities and data recovery tools, but
will also run many others: CopyCatX,
FileSalvage, MacForensicsLab,
VolumeWorks, Drive Genius, Data
Rescue II, DiskWarrior, TechTool Pro.
(Users of DasBoot™ must have purchased licenses to install the various
disk utilities, and own an appropriate
disk utility bootable CD/DVD to use
as the source disk. Users who wish to
have a forensically sound bootable
device should use MacForensicsLab
as their source disk.) Requires Mac
OS X 10.3 or later.
Daylight Saving Time
May Bite the Out-of-Date
Beginning this year, Daylight Saving
Time in the United States begins earlier
and runs later than in prior years. Under
the new rules, Daylight Saving Time
begins on the second Sunday in March
and ends on the first Sunday in
November. Previously, it began on the
first Sunday in April and ended on the
last Sunday in October. This change was
signed into law as part of the Energy
Policy Act of 2005. http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005
This change means that any device
which automatically changes its clock to
match Daylight Saving Time, such as a
VCR, either needs to be updated with
new rules, or must have its clock
changed manually on the affected dates.
Apple included the new rules for Mac
OS X 10.4 Tiger in the 10.4.6 update:
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.
html?artnum=303411> ( T h e 1 0 . 4 . 5
update also updated the Daylight Saving
Time rules for changes in Australia and
other locations.) Currently Apple has only
released updates for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Turning the Hands – Unless updates are
issued for prior releases of Mac OS X, the
clocks on computers running 10.3 or earlier will not show the correct time for
three weeks in March and one week in
November, in perpetuity. During those
weeks, a number of things might go
wrong. Messages created in Apple’s Mail
client (and probably others) will have the
wrong timestamp, possibly resulting in
users’ messages being missed by their
recipients. Events in iCal will display
incorrectly, possibly causing people to
miss appointments. Similarly, anyone collaborating on documents, and resolving
changes based on timestamp, will be
thrown askew. Authentication to networkbased services (email, file servers, etc)
might fail, as servers may refuse connection attempts if they appear to be too far
outside the norm. (Kerberos servers, such
as those available in Mac OS X Server,
behave in this manner.)
In order to avoid these problems, folks
using older releases will have to change
their computers’ clocks manually to the
new “correct” time when Daylight Saving
Time takes effect on 11-Mar-07, and then
again on 01-Apr-07 (when those earlier
versions of Mac OS X try to change it
based on the old rules). Users will similarly have to adjust their computers’
clocks on 28-Oct-07 and 04-Nov-07.
There are two options for updating
clocks. If your computer uses a time server to set the date and time automatically,
you can simply adjust the time zone (in
the Time Zone pane of the Date & Time
system preferences) to a zone that is an
hour earlier or later, as appropriate. If
your computer does not use a time server,
you can simply adjust the time in the Date
& Time pane of the Date & Time system
preference. Either way, there may be
problems with software that calculates
time internally using Coordinated
Universal Time (UT, also known as
Greenwich Mean Time or GMT).
Apple’s Responsibility – We hope Apple
will issue updates for Mac OS X 10.3
Panther and 10.2 Jaguar, else users will
have to adjust their computers’ clocks
every year, twice on every Daylight
Saving Time start and end date, for a total
of four manual adjustments per year. An
Apple representative declined to comment on “future plans or possible future
software updates.”
Unlike other operating system vendors,
including Microsoft, Red Hat, and Sun,
Apple has not posted sufficient information regarding how the change in
Daylight Saving Time affects their products, nor which products are patched or
unpatched. This situation is sadly familiar, for they likewise do not post life
cycle support schedules for Mac OS X
(again in contrast with Microsoft, Red
Hat, and Sun), leaving customers to
guess whether they can expect patches
for security vulnerabilities. In this case,
it’s a simple matter of making sure the
clock is right, and Apple’s silent, de facto
message of “upgrade to Tiger” is woefully inappropriate.
3
Other Software – Some calendaring software may also require an update, as did
Microsoft Entourage. The recent
Microsoft Office for Mac 11.3.3 update
fixed Entourage 2004’s Daylight Saving
Time rules. Microsoft told TidBITS that
Entourage X would not be updated for
the new Daylight Saving Time rules. In
other words, if you use Entourage X for
calendaring, you’re really going to want
to upgrade to Entourage 2004. (If you
use Entourage with a Microsoft
Exchange server, you should coordinate
updates with your Exchange administrator, as Exchange must also be updated
with the new rules.)
Happily, a fix for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
(Panther-TZ-2007a.dmg – both the desktop and server versions) has appeared in
the form of an unofficial installer from
Ian Ward Comfort of Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu that updates the
necessary zoneinfo files and the ICU data
archive to enable Cocoa applications like
iCal to function correctly. You can also
see Ian’s shell script if you’re concerned
about running the installer. Finally, a
Web site – http://dstpatch.com/ – has
sprung up to track available vendor
patches; any system administrator or network administrator would do well to
check it out.
If you’re wondering why we bother with
Daylight Saving Time at all (and different parts of the United States, along with
various other countries, do not), you’re
not alone. The main rationale in the
United States is energy conservation, but
other stated benefits include increased
opportunities for outdoor activities and
fewer traffic injuries. 
Reprinted from TidBITS 864
(2007-01-29).
button. The application is self-modifying - preferences are kept inside the
application bundle, not in your
Preferences folder, and if you want to
install plug-ins, you have to put them
in the application bundle, not in your
Application Support folder; in a world
of multiple users and restricted permissions, that’s totally unacceptable. It’s
as if the Digimage Arts people have
had their heads down so deep in the
carbonization process that they’ve had
no time to learn just what Mac OS X is.
Color It!
Carbonized Crudely
by Matt Neuburg
<[email protected]>
For over a decade, the painting and
image-manipulation program Color
It! has had something of a cult following. (The exclamation point is part
of the official name, but I’ll drop it
from here on.) It has always been in
financial trouble. When we first wrote
about it in TidBITS (“Get Some
Color,” 1993-10-25), it cost $150 and
wasn’t selling, so the developers,
MicroFrontier, were temporarily giving it away for free. Later, the price
came down to something more reasonable, but even then, the program
seemed always to be sinking beneath
the waves for the last time, and by
2000, the last official version, 4.0,
was already getting old. Still, Color It
has always attracted a small but rabidly enthusiastic core base of users, as
we were scoldingly informed when
we omitted it in a poll about graphics
editors (“Poll Results: They Come in
Colors,” 2000-02-07).
Subsequent rumors of a Mac OS Xnative version were dismissed by
many as vaporware; the vapor, however, has now solidified, and the new
version, 4.5, is available from a breakaway company, Digimage Arts.
Paint Your Wagon – As a paint program, Color It is full-featured, and is
noteworthy for its innovative interface
and flexible power. For example, you
set brush size in a pop-up pane
through an oval that responds to
mouse movements. You can draw a
selection as a bezier curve. A selection can be converted to a mask,
which appears as a separate document. A “zap” tool lets you eliminate
individual selection regions.
Gradients can be created by dragging
the eyedropper from one color to
another. There’s an air brush tool, a
clone tool, tools for blurring and
sharpening and darkening and so on,
and lots of paint modes, along with
responsiveness to tablet pressure.
Many convolutions (such as Unsharp
Mask) are included, and you can even
create your own.
On the other hand, Color It also wants
to be an image manipulator, like
Photoshop Elements; and here its
place amid the competition is less
secure. Certainly, just about every
action you want to perform is easier
with Color It than with Photoshop;
but Color It lacks features. It has no
layers. It can’t open RAW files. It
doesn’t correctly run any of the
Photoshop plug-ins that I tried. And
even where Color It has a feature, it is
often numerically insufficient or overly gross. For example, selection
feathering stops at 64 pixels (I need at
least 200 pixels for subtle vignetting
effects I sometimes use), and JPEG
export has just four quality choices
instead of a slider. Furthermore,
although Color It is often touted for
its speed, I found that, against the
heavily processor-optimized
Photoshop Elements, Color It was a
slug; a simple action such as creating a
gradient sent it into spinning-cursor
mode for so long that I ended up having to force quit. Thus, although I tried
very hard, I could not find any place
for Color It in my workflow when processing a recent set of digital photos.
The program has been carbonized, but
only barely. An unsaved document
lacks the dot in the title bar’s close
4
The manual has been carelessly
adapted from the existing 4.0 version,
and is full of mistakes (spelling errors,
repeated pages). I had no trouble finding bugs in the program: as I went
through the tutorial, Color It’s main
window started flashing uncontrollably, and even after a normal quit, I
found that Color It had altered my
monitor’s contrast settings.
Conclusions – The long wait is over;
Color It is carbonized. Existing users
can breathe a sigh of relief: Color It
lives, and those migrating to an Intelbased Mac (thereby losing Classic
support) can continue using it. Color
It is also a welcome addition to the
repertory of Mac OS X-native paint
programs. To compete effectively, it
must comply better with Mac OS X
conventions, but that should be trivial
compared to the already accomplished hard work. Whether Color It
can catch up in the modern world of
heavy-hitting image processing is
another question. Still, it’s not impossible, especially if the developers can
leverage the tremendous image-processing power already built into Mac
OS X. Stay tuned.
Color It 4.5 requires Mac OS X 10.1
or higher. It costs $60 (slightly less if
upgrading from an earlier version).
There is no Intel version (it runs fine
under Rosetta). Currently, no demo
version is available. 
reprinted from TidBITS 860 (2006-12-18)
Freshly Squeezed Review:
Better Living
through Technology
by Frank Petrie
Product: Pzizz 2.1
Company:
Brainwave Limited
<www.pzizz.com/default.asp>
In today’s lightning paced, modern
day, a go-go world, do you ever get
any down time for yourself?
“Pzizz Energiser Module Graphic Stressed out? Tired? Not enough energy to see you through the day? You’re
not alone...
...Simply find a place to relax and plug
yourself in to your iPod or other MP3
player and experience a boost that’s
been compared to a good night’s
sleep. Remember that you’ll never
hear exactly the same thing twice - an
absolute miracle for people who have
tired of listening to repetitive relaxation CDs!”
“Pzizz Sleep Module Graphic - Do
you have trouble getting to sleep at
night? Is it difficult to switch off at the
end of a busy day? Does your mind
keep racing even though you’re
exhausted?
Or you can buy the software, either
per module or in a bundle at a special
price. The software can be installed
into iTunes, so that you can listen to it
either at your computer or on your
iPod.
For those of you who have been
involved with the likes of yoga or
transcendental meditation, you will be
familiar with the process. Soft, gentle
sounds and music play in the background, as an instructor talks you
through the relaxation process.
The demos are only 15 minutes long,
but you can (with the purchased modules) set the time duration up to sixty
minutes. I found the demos to be a fair
and effective trial of the media. In
fact, while listening to the “Energizer”
module, I naturally slipped into my
meditation.
THE PITS
The price is right at the “Ouch!” point
for lots of consumers (this is just the
hardware configuration). But as for the
software modules, wouldn’t you be
willing to pay a one-time fee of $29.95
or $49.95 to treat yourself? :-) It’s
cheaper than pills and a lot healthier.
THE RIND
Nada.
The Sleep module is designed to help
you switch off, calming your thoughts
and allowing you to enjoy hours of
restorative sleep, no matter what kind
of day you’ve had.”
THE JUICE
(This review is based on the two 15
minute software demos that they have
on their site.). There are several configurations that you can purchase
combining software and hardware.
You can purchase the whole shebang
(hardware and all) to take with you,
wherever you go.
5
THE PULP
I have been meditating for over thirty
years now. I can honestly say that
Pzizz worked far better than I had
expected. I personally would love to
put the “Energizer” module on my
desktop and set a timer for
And if the hardware didn’t cost so
much, that would have a place on my
night stand. But then again, if you
have a lot of trouble sleeping soundly,
and your taking medication to aid you,
this may just be what the doctor
SHOULD have ordered. 
Pzizz 2.1
Review Date: January 25, 2007
RATING: 9 out of 10
Requires: iPod or optional hardware
Price: Software modules $49.95
bundled; separately $29.95
Optional hardware $149.00;
also an Education Discount
Test Rig: PowerMac G4/DP 1.42Ghz/
1.5 GB RAM/OS 10.4.8
©2007 Frank Petrie - Macsimum News
contributing editor, Freelance writer,
Curmudgeon
Email: [email protected]
iChat: phranky
Archive: home.comcast.net/~phranky
value from this way of working without being a programmer or IT guy.
Safari Bookshelf:
Virtually Better than Books
by John Hershey, NCMUG member
Lately, I have become a collector of
technical books, mostly about topics of Mac OS, Photoshop, Digital
Photography, Graphic Design, and
like subjects. The photography and
graphics books are lushly illustrated
in color and the glossy cover stock
completes the tactile sense one gets
with books of this flavor. Of course,
you can’t judge a book by its
“color.” The information, technical
and subjective, is why one buys.
Here’s the rub. The books often
seemed to become obsolete before I
can make it through all the information in them, no matter what the
topic: software applications, photo
hardware, terminology, or trends.
All things considered, sometimes I
am lucky the ink is dry before
something changes.
It was becoming too much of a habit
for me to “clean out” my office of
outdated books, no matter how
beautifully printed, colorfully illustrated, or recently insightful. I have
been accumulating donations of my
books and hauling them to
NCMUG’s librarian, Tom Brown, to
add them to the NCMUG lending
library. I’m not so sure Tom is
always happy to see me lugging a
big box when I appear at a meeting.
Enter Safari Bookshelf. I’ve poked
around at this online library subscription service for some time, and
finally took the plunge. I have to say
that now I no longer have to deal
with a shelf full of almost-up-todate volumes.
Safari Bookshelf is simply a better
way to quickly access current technical information from thousands of
books. It includes publications by
O’Reilly, Addison Wesley, Prentice
Hall, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press,
Peachpit Press, New Riders
Publishing, Macromedia and Adobe
Press, plus several more. You can
search for books on a topic, check
out sample chapters and contents,
and decide if you want to add that
book to your bookshelf.
The least expensive subscription is
$19.99 a month and gets you ten
slots in your Bookshelf to assign to
ten books. You can swap out a book
for a new one in 30 days. You can
read these online, and even download PDFs of chapters to save on
your hard drive or print out. Chapter
downloads are limited under this
plan to five a month.
Using Safari Bookshelf, I was
brought up to date on the new features of iWeb. I added knowledge of
new capabilities of iPhoto version
upgrades. I studied color management in digital photography, and in
general, prevented myself from
becoming obsolete.
Although Safari Bookshelf is marketed as “the e-reference library for
programmers and IT professionals,” I
would add that as a photographer and
multimedia producer, I get a lot of
6
By switching my personal R&D
function from analog books on my
physical bookshelf to virtual books
on my virtual bookshelf, I get information fast and current. If it seems
expensive, remember what you
spend for a single technical book.
Of course if your tactile senses are
only satisfied by holding a real live
book in your hands, this may not be
for you. As far as I’m concerned,
Safari Bookshelf is great for me. 
There is a trial subscription good
for 10 days or 50 page views.
Go to this link:
http://safari.oreilly.com/promo
and try it out!
Reprinted from
North Coast Mac Users Group
NCMUG News, December 2006.
Other Take Contol Books Available at
www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/
Mac OS X
Take Control of Mac OS X
Backups, Second Edition
Submitted by Robert Sawyer
Is your data safe? What if your hard
disk fails? Or a burglar ransacks your
office? A backup is essential, but not
all backups are created equal. You need
a rock-solid backup strategy that
ensures you can restore quickly and
completely.
The second edition of the best-selling
Take Control of Mac OS X Backups,
provides the straightforward advice
you need to go beyond the false security of copying a few files to CD.
You’ll find an at-a-glance comparison
of different backup strategies (lowcost, easy, safest) for backing up and
restoring data, including digital photos
and video projects. You’ll learn the
pros and cons of each type of backup
media, including hard disk, recordable
disc, tape, and more; discover how to
pick the best backup software for your
needs; and find time-tested recommendations for setting up, testing, and
maintaining backups, complete with
instructions on how to restore after a
crash. Important lessons you’ll learn
along the way include the utility of
having both a duplicate and an archive,
the necessity of testing backups, and
the role of offsite backups. Includes
over 20 pages of step-by-step directions for Retrospect!
New coverage includes:
■ How the forthcoming Time
Machine feature in Mac OS X 10.
5 Leopard might work in your
backup strategy.
■ Backup-related advice for people
who are running Windows on a
Mac.
■ Recommendations for how to
back up while traveling.
■ Significantly expanded information about SAN and NAS.
■ Info about offloading seldom-used
data to recover drive space.
■ Advice on setting up an easy-touse backup system for a relative or
friend.
■ Discussion of issues associated
with creating command-line backup systems.
■ Using Amazon S3 for inexpensive
Internet backups.
Includes coupons worth $30 off Data
Backup, $25 off BackJack, and $5 off
backup hardware or software at Small
Dog Electronics!
Book Details:
“Take Control of Mac OS X
Backups, Second Edition”
by Joe Kissell
PDF format, 176 pages,
free 33-page sample available
Publication date: January 25, 2007
Ebook Price: $10
CMC members save 10% off the
book’s price right now with the MUG
discount embedded in the link below.
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7
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Take Control of Mac OS X Backups
Take Control of Passwords in Mac OS X
Macworld Mac Basics Superguide
Take Control of Syncing in Tiger
Take Control of Fonts in Mac OS X
Take Control of Font Problems in Mac OS X
Take Control of Permissions in Mac OS X
Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger
Take Control of Customizing Tiger
Take Control of Users & Accounts in Tiger
Take Control of Sharing Files in Tiger
Take Control of Switching to the Mac
Take Control of Customizing Panther
Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther
Take Control of Upgrading to Panther
Take Control of Users & Accounts in Panther
Macintosh Applications
■ Take Control of Getting Started
with Dreamweaver
■ iPhoto 6: Visual QuickStart Guide
■ Take Control of iWeb
■ Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger
■ Take Control of Email with Apple Mail (Panther)
■ Take Control of Customizing Microsoft Office
■ Take Control of What’s New in Entourage 2004
■ Take Control of What’s New in Word 2004
■ Take Control of What’s New in Word 2004:
Advanced Editing & Formatting
■ Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail
■ Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand
■ Take Control of Recording with GarageBand
Hardware & Technologies
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Take Control of Your Domain Names
Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac
Macworld Digital Photography Superguide
Macworld iPod and iTunes Superguide
Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac
Take Control of .Mac
Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac
Take Control of Your iPod: Beyond the Music
Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security
Take Control of Your AirPort Network
Take Control of Buying a Mac
Take Control of Buying a Digital Camera
Take Control of Digital TV
Lifestyle
■ Take Control of Booking a Cheap Airline Ticket
■ Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner
Mac 911
Solutions to your most
vexing Mac problem
Follow the same procedure if Word
and PowerPoint documents are just as
clueless about the application that
should open them.
by Christopher Breen
Posted by: “Chuck Joiner”
[email protected]
Smarter Mail filters
Terminating test drive
My Power Mac G5 was running slow,
so I decided to run a maintenance utility that does things like throw out cache
and log files. A couple of days after
doing this, I tried to open a Microsoft
Excel document by double-clicking on
it. When I did, the test-drive version of
Excel launched rather than the real one.
What happened, and how can I make
things go back to the way they were?
–Damon Tee
It’s likely the utility reset OS X’s
LaunchServices database, which
keeps track of your Open With preferences. When you reset it, your
preferences are gone, and OS X then
has to guess about what should open
your documents. In this case, it
guessed wrong.
To set it straight, first go to
/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/
Additional Tools/Remove Office, and
run the Remove Office application.
You should see at least two
options–Remove Microsoft Office
2004 (Including Test Drive) and
Remove Microsoft Office 2004. (You
may see even more if you have other
Office installations.) Select Remove
Microsoft Office 2004 (Including Test
Drive)–which will, confusingly
enough, remove just the Test Drive
version. Once you’ve done that,
empty the Trash.
Now select that Excel document and
press Command-I. From the Open
With pop-up menu, choose Microsoft
Excel. Click on Change All, and all
Excel documents will be again associated with the full version of Excel.
I get a lot of e-mail from marketers
and PR firms. Because these messages come from both new senders as
well as usual suspects, there’s no way
to build an Apple Mail rule that’s
based on senders that will automatically route the messages to a separate
PR mailbox. Any suggestions for
building a reliable filter?
–Via the Internet
I once handled this problem with a
Mail rule that directed messages from
known flacks to a special Marketing
mailbox. Whenever I received a promotional e-mail from a new source, I
added the portion of the address after
the symbol (so the rule would catch
all e-mail sent from that PR firm) to
the rule. But this rule became
unwieldy because it had way too
many conditions.
What I needed was a way to define a
class of senders and then use that definition in my rule. And the best way to
define a group of senders is to create a
group
in
Address
Book.
Unfortunately, adding the name of a
Mail message’s sender to an Address
Book group is a pain. It requires opening the message, clicking on the name
in the To field, adding the name to
Address Book, opening Address
Book, and then dragging the contact
into the group.
Entourage (which is now my main email client) makes the whole process
much easier. First, I created a new
Entourage Address Book category,
Marketing Flack, and a rule that tells
Entourage to move any messages
from individuals in the Marketing
Flack category to my Marketing Flack
mailbox. When a previously unknown
8
marketer flings a press release my
way, I select the message and press
Command-= (equal sign) to add that
individual to my Entourage Address
Book. I then go to the Categories popup menu and add that contact to the
Marketing Flack category. When I
close Entourage’s Address Book window, that person joins the ranks of
marketers, and any future correspondence from him or her will be
automatically shunted to the
Marketing Flack mailbox.
Tip of the month
Smarter Smart Playlists: I was trying to
create an iTunes smart playlist that
would contain all of the house, techno,
and dance tracks in my iTunes library
that had ratings of three stars or higher.
But iTunes doesn’t support the Boolean
operators AND and OR in defining a
playlist. Then it dawned on me that I
could solve the problem by using one
playlist as the basis for another.
I first created a smart playlist called
Dance Music that contained all tracks
with the House, Techno, or Dance
genre tag, using the conditions Match
Any, Genre Contains House, Genre
Contains Techno, and Genre Contains
Dance. I then created a second new
smart playlist with the conditions
Playlist Is Dance Music and My
Rating Is Greater Than 2 Stars. With
those two playlists, I got the results I
was after. –Drew Long
[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.]
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
PocketMac Products: 40 Percent Off
PocketMac makes a variety of productivity tools for PDA
and Mac connectivity including syncing your Mac with
BlackBerry, PC or Pocket PC Phone, Windows Mobile
Smartphone and PSP handhelds. In addition, with
PocketMac GoBetween you can sync Entourage to your
iSync Phone or PDA, or use any of the PocketMac’s 15
other products for additional business functions. Use the
coupon code below to receive a 40 percent discount from
PocketMac’s website.
Coupon Code: USERGROUP40
http://www.pocketmac.net
Offer is valid until April 30, 2007.
The MUG Store:
A Resource for Old and New
The MUG Store has some great specials and blowouts
your membership should be sure and scour through every
so often – it’s like an online garage sale on Mac odds and
ends, as well as special offers and deals! In addition, the
MUG store consultants are available to talk about the latest and greatest Apple products, including everything
introduced at the Macworld Expo. Tell your people to
give them a try – with one percent of member purchases
going to your organization, everyone wins!
Valid: 01/31/2007 -04/30/07
User ID: xxxx • Password: xxxx
http://www.applemugstore.com.
Offer is valid through April 30, 2007.
Fascinating Arctic Quest: 40 Percent Off Most Products
In Arctic Quest for Mac, your quick wits can stop the
coming of a new ice age. The malicious Snow King has
chained tropical islands into solid ice, and you must not
let him expand his ice kingdom. Break his mighty spell
by solving 60 absorbing puzzles and bringing warmth to
every island. You will enjoy the superb visuals and variety of bonuses in this fascinating game. Regularly
$19.95, the company is offering an exclusive user group
price of $11.97, a 40 percent discount. Be sure to purchase using the direct link in this offer. The key will be
delivered electronically. Order here.
<https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi
?item=11295-5&ss_coupon=MUG-I080-AQ>
That’s Easy:
Looking for information on a past offer? Tom Piper of the
Apple User Group Advisory Board, publishes a single
page with all current offers, expiration dates and codes.
Also, be sure to subscribe to Tom’s Apple User Group
Market Report podcast, a great source for information
about Apple user groups, vendor discounts, special events
and more.
Password: xxxx
Current Offers...
MacAddict Reborn: 40% Off New Mac|Life.
Audio Hijack Pro: Special Offer.
USGLOBALSAT: Mac GPS Users 25%.
Softpress & Have/Host: 25% off Freeway 4 & Hosting.
No Starch Press: 40% off all No Starch Press Books.
Migilia: 25% Off Miglia TV Products.
O’Reilly: New Discounts for User Group Members.
Actoris Software: 25% Off.
AppleWorks User Group: Batteries to Power Your Macintosh.
Join the Peachpit Club: Save 25%.
MacWorld Magazine: Special subscription offer.
Take Control ebooks: 10% Discount.
Spamfire: More than 20% off the regular price.
Mobilejuice MacSleeve: 10 Percent Off
Bring your year to a wild start with MacSleeve Jungle!
This funky sleeve is targeted at fashion conscious people
who want to protect their MacBooks in style. The
MacSleeve Jungle features lightweight, water resistant
material, with double padding for added protection.
Available now in four designs, stained, bold, wrinkled
and crinkled. Usually priced at $24.35, you can buy
MacSleeve cases for only $21.90, a ten percent user
group discount.
Coupon Code: Mobilejuice
Use this link for ordering this offer.
http://www.welovemacs.com/macbookcases.html
Visit the Mobilejuice website to see more of their fine
products! http://www.mymobilejuice.com
Apple User Group Market Report Podcast
9
New Members Wanted!
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David Gerstein
[email protected]
Acting Secretary
Jack Bass
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Jerry Esposito
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[email protected]
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Special Events
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10
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Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
CMC Meetings
FREE Raffle!
Discounted Books
is...free!
CMC February Meeting
FREE Classified Ads
[email protected]
Wednesday, February 28
UConn Health Center
Farmington
CMC’s February meeting is all about
that friend of the Macintosh,
Google.com. Well, perhaps its more
appropriate to say “Friend Of The
Internet User,” because Google is not
specific to any one computer platform.
But many of us have become so used
to, and reliant on Google’s services,
that we’ve come to think of them as
extensions of our computers.
We’ll be discussing and demonstrating
Google features you already know and
love and some you didn’t even know
existed! You’ll learn tips and tricks that
will enhance your online experience.
We start at 6:00 with our Back To
Basics session on Google search techniques. There are all sorts of ways to
get this ubiquitous search engine to
give you search results that are more
specific to what you’re looking for. Joe
Arcuri will go through the possibilities
in detail and demonstrate how to use
them to best effect.
Did you know that Google offers an
online spreadsheet application, a word
processor, a collaborative writing tool a
calendar and 3D modeling software?
It’s true. Plus, all of it is free! Our
presentation at 7:00, by Rich Lenoce,
will explore all these features and show
how to get started using them.
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at MacConnection)
Valid:
1/31/07 - 4/30/07
User ID: xxxx Password: xxxx
Valid: 11/16/06 - 5/15/07)
Password: xxxx
11
Monthly Meeting - Feb 28
GOOGLE
6 pm - Back to Basics
7 pm - Main Presentation
We’ll be discussing and demonstrating
Google features you already know and love,
and some you didn’t even know existed!
You’ll learn tips and tricks that will enhance
your online experience.
12
Steve Jobs introduces iPhone during his keynote address at MacWorld
San Francisco-2007. See the video-on-demand (VOD) event exclusively
in QuickTime and MPEG-4 at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/
Review: Roxio Toast 8..........................2
Cult of Mac Book Review.....................4
Canning the Spam................................5
Peter’s Hometown Computer Corner...6
Review: On The Job .............................7
In Praise of Geeks
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
There’s silence in the
Macintosh World. No
Leopard, no iLife ‘07. No
new Mac models or even updates.
We’re all waiting for Cupertino to
drop some Mac news. I’ve been holding off writing this column waiting for
some news to write about.
In the mean time, I’ve been spending
time doing other winter activities. In
January, I took my train-loving son to
the Amherst Railway Society’s big
Model Train Show. It was an amazing
event. This was a only a regional show,
yet there were four aircraft hangersized exhibit halls at the Big-E filled
with model railway landscapes. There
were hundreds of miniature worlds created with the finest details that only
people who love and are passionate
about their hobby can create. Tens of
thousands of people attended. My son’s
face showed awe and represented what
I was feeling: this wasn’t the tiny train
set circling the Christmas tree.
While I was in line waiting to get into
another train-filled building, a woman,
clearly dragged to the event by her husband, whispered to a friend, “Do you
believe all these geeks?” My heart
sank. How can people, so passionate
about what they do be labeled with
such a derogatory term?
According to Webster’s Dictionary, the
etymology of the word geek is proba-
MARCH 2007
bly from English
dialect geek, geck
meaning fool. At
one time it meant a
“carnival performer
whose act usually
includes biting the
head off a live
chicken or snake.”
Luckily that specific definition is passe. Today, the word geek,
according to Webster’s, has been adapted to mean “an enthusiast or expert
especially in a technological field or
activity.” However, Webster’s also lists
a more derogatory meaning in that
Geek also refers to a person with an
“an intellectual bent who is disliked.”
Ouch.
As a child I caught a wicked disease,
which in the eyes of that woman at the
train show, would classify me as a
mega-geek. I have more hobbies than
time in a week, month or year. I built
model planes, launched model rockets,
called “good buddies” on my CB, had
a darkroom in the basement, took piano
lessons for eight years and tuba lessons
for four, raced slot cars, made 8 mm
movie epics, built crystal and shortwave radios from scratch, and wrote
primitive word processing software.
The difference between successful
geeks, like Wozniak and Jobs, and me,
was that I had so many interests, I was
never really great at anything, just good
at a lot of things.
Like me, CMC members have a wide
variety of interests: iPods, iMoviemaking, digital photography, computer
1
graphics, music, and just about anything else someone can do with a
computer. We have our own technical
jargon: IEEE1394-Firewire, USB 2.0,
802.11N, and speak glowingly of “The
Finder” and its related attributes.
In the woman’s eyes at the model train
show, we’d also be considered geeks.
Why not throw in photographers,
pilots, space scientists, and antique
hunters in the mix too? If someone’s
passion is not shared or even understood by others, because of their own
ignorance, people feel they must apply
a negative label and geek is the label du
jour.
It’s the interest and passion of geeks
that have made our world what it is.
Without the people she classifies as
geeks there’d be no telephones, television, light bulbs, video games,
photographic film, and we wouldn’t
have gone to the moon. And, let’s not
forget those two guys working in a
garage who built the first personal
computer in a wooden box from used
electronics.
The world needs more geeks. Just like
the geeks of yesterday, Bell, Marconi,
and Edison, and those of today, Gates,
Wozniak and Jobs, the next generation
of geeks will most likely solve our oil
dependence and related world problems. It will be a geek who’ll find cures
for cancer and even one day will go to
Mars. We should be encouraging geeks
from day one out of the womb.
So here’s to the geeks. 
Review:
Roxio Toast 8
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.
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
enhancement and level adjustments for audio CDs borrowed
from Toast Jam.
Toast’s New Look
In 1993, I bought my first
CD recorder. The $900
textbook size device was
large, heavy and had a
giant SCSI “scuzzy”
connector hanging off the back. If I was
lucky, one out of every three $10 disks
actually burned correctly, making it
playable in a CD drive. The only good
thing I had to say about this first recorder
was the included software, Toast 1.2.
Toast’s interface was easy to use and it
never crashed or seemed as challenged as
the CD-burner it was running. Not much
has changed in Version 8; it’s still a great
product. But if you have Toast 7, should
you upgrade to Toast 8? This review
should guide you through that decision.
Toast History
Toast was developed by Dr. Markus Fest
at his software company Miles Software
in the early 90s, and was distributed by
Astarte. Adaptec purchased Toast in 1997
and transferred the product to their Roxio
division, which is now part of Sonic
Solutions. Though the product has moved
through these various companies, it has
remained the best optical disk creation
software on any platform. Though you
can do all of the things Toast does with
OS X and iLife or with any number of
shareware and freeware products, no
product does what Toast does so well in
one application. It is the Swiss Army
Knife of optical disk creation with its
data, audio, video and disk copy tools.
Version 7 of Toast added attractive DVD
menus, Universal Binary support, data
spanning across multiple discs, Bonjour
sharing and a host of handy tools that
made the purchase price worth every
penny. Version 8 adds some very specific
tools that may not be for everyone.
Major feature additions added in Toast 8
are Blu-Ray disk burning, TiVo integration and, what I think is its most
exciting additions, track mixing, sound
2
Aesthetically, Toast has always
been somewhat bare,
almost devoid of
color. The first thing
you notice when you
open Toast 8 is its
new graphically-enhanced look with
smooth fonts, attractive colors and beautiful animations as you flip through
screens and burn discs. It’s the same simple interface Toast users have come to
appreciate over the years, but now features are organized in frames within the
familiar Toast window.
Features
As with other versions of Toast, the simple interface belies the many features
that reside under the surface. The excellent manual and help menu can guide
you through what’s new and where and
how to access these features. Other software developers add complexity to their
products as they add features, but Roxio
has always stayed true to the Toast tradition of keeping it simple with the more
advanced and specialized features hidden but there if the user wishes to
explore Toast to it’s fullest. One nice
interface addition is a small button that
launches a Media Browser, identical to
what you find in iLife and iWork, that
allows for easy accessing of files, iLife
libraries and Spotlight searching without
leaving the program.
I was unable to try the Blu-Ray burning
feature. Aside from one electronics catalog selling the device, I haven’t seen
Blu-Ray burners in the mass market yet.
When I find one at Staples for $60, I’ll
buy it. Until then, on the DVD front, I’m
happy to report that Toast has further
enhanced its DVD creation features; features that have progressed nicely from
version 6 to version 7, and now to 8.
DVD themes, menus and navigation in
Toast has been rudimentary but Toast 8
adds “Director’s Cut” custom compilacontinued on page 3
tions, which customize disks with specific video, audio, multiple languages and
extras like photos and DVD ROM content. You can even drag iMovie projects
directly to the DVD Window and burn
them without exporting to QuickTime. In
typical Toast style, adding all of this new
content to a disk is as easy as drag-anddrop. Toast’s DVD encoding quality is
superb and as a video professional, it’s
the only sub-$500 software that allows
me to fully customize encoding settings.
Custom encoding is a feature sadly missing from iDVD. Like Toast 7, Toast 8
compresses double-sided DVDs to 4.7 gb
single sided disks and outputs to DIVX,
PSP, and now the video iPod.
Creating audio CDs has been enhanced
by bringing the cross fade features over
from Toast’s sister product, Jam. This is a
long awaited and I would guess muchrequested feature. I think people who
create CDs regularly were getting tired of
paying an additional $100 that should
have been included in Toast in the first
place. Toast provides many cross fade
options and can even create custom cross
fades. Toast makes anyone a DJ.
Another feature that stands out can be
found in the Disc Copy window; it’s
called Disc Recovery. Disc Recovery
attempts to recover data from a damaged disc and then make a new, repaired
copy of the disc. I was able to try this
feature since my children tend to use my
discs as either teething rings or
Frisbees. I can happily report that it
worked. One disc was damaged so
badly, no CD player would recognize it,
while computers would see the volume
and mount it but would do little else.
The repair took a couple of hours, but
the new disc plays flawlessly.
Finally, my favorite feature, called Disc
Spanning, has been enhanced. Disc
Spanning takes a double-layered disk and
makes a copy that spans across two single
layer discs. This is great for backing up
large software installation discs such as
iLife ‘06 or DVD Studio that come on
dual layer DVDs or large video projects.
This worked great in Toast 7 but was
Mac-only. Toast 8 is now cross platform.
New Software
One way Roxio has kept the complexity
out of Toast is by moving sophisticated
features to small applications that come
with Toast. In the past, this has included
Discus for creating disc labels, CD Spin
Doctor to transfer LPs to CD, Motion
Pictures HD for creating animated slide
shows with more features than iPhoto,
and Deja Vu, my backup software of
choice. Each of these mini applications,
like Toast, have been high quality and
intuitive. Toast 8 adds Disc Catalog, TiVo
Transfer for transferring video from a
TiVo to DVD, iPod or other video format,
and finally a slick media player, Toast
Player. Though many people may not
need this software, it’s thoughtful on
Roxio’s part to not add them to Toast,
thereby making it more complex. This is
high quality software and their separate
value alone is worth the price of Toast. I
tried Disc Catalog, which easily cataloged about 85 CDs and DVDs. I also
tried the version of Motion Pictures HD
and the new Toast Player and found them
a joy to use. I don’t have a TiVo, but am
aware that the TiVo to DVD/iPod/Video
capability has been much anticipated by
Macintosh-TiVo users even though those
capabilities are free on the Windows side.
All of these applications are now accessible from the Toast menu.
The Downside
The downside to the new features is that
system requirements are a G4 running
10.4.8. In practice, running Toast 8 on my
dual 2.0 ghz G5 has really pushed the
machine and performance has been
affected compared to Toast 7. Toasts’
screen animations stutter on my G5,
which is annoying but doesn’t
affect the performance.
However,
processor intensive functions
such as DVD
encoding were
3
20% slower on my G5 from that of Toast
7. On a hunch, I did a side by side comparison encoding a DVD on my Power
Dual 2 ghz G5 and Intel 2 ghz MacBook
Core Duo, both with 2 gb of RAM using
Version 8 and the differences were
equally striking: the Intel MacBook was
about 22% faster than the G5. Some of
this may have to do with inherent benefits of Intel’s Core Duo technology, but
given the differences between v7, v8 and
Intel, I would guess that Roxio, like
Apple and other software developers, is
beginning to optimize their software for
the Intel processors.
Should you buy?
If you’re new to Toast, have an Intel Mac,
or could use the new features, Toast 8 is
an impressive product. If you’re thinking
about upgrading and don’t need the new
features (TiVo and Blu-Ray compatibility) or the additional software mentioned,
the move to Toast 8 isn’t compelling
enough to spend the $80 street price ($99
retail) to upgrade. If you don’t already
have Toast you can still pick up copies of
Toast 7 for under $50, which given what
it offers is still a great buy.
Conclusion
Toast 8 isn’t a radical upgrade but like
previous versions it is an excellent product worth its price if you need the new
features. Yes, you can do most of Toast’s
task with OS X and iLife. There are also
a dozen shareware products that when
totaled equal what Toast does. None of
these are a Swiss Army Knife answer to
optical disk creation with all of the features in one simple, straightforward,
dependable application. Toast is worth
every penny of what Roxio charges
whether you purchase Toast 8 or find an
older copy of Toast 7. 
I enjoyed the aside with Bill Atkinson,
the developer of HyperCard, who
muses about the potential of his software and how he “missed the mark”
by not developing HyperCard as the
first Web browser.
The Cult of Mac
Book Review by Mary Norbury,
NCMUG memeber
The Cult of Mac, by Leander Kahney,
is a beautifully designed book clearly
meant as a “coffee table” volume. It
has tabbed covers (to mark your
place, of course), two column pages
chock full of photos, creative use of
color and font, and a glossy, sleek
design (in contrast to the less than
glamorous Mac GUI shots that highlight each chapter page).
The book is separated into five parts
running the gamut from Mac fanatics
(Macintosh Madness) to iPod world
domination (New Frontier). In
between, the author takes the reader
for a stroll through weird and wonderful examples of Mac devotion and
the influence Apple products have
had on society.
Macintosh Madness chronicles the
obsession most Mac users have come
to experience: the desire for newer
models (no, we don’t need them) as
they’re introduced, the admiration for
Steve Jobs for energizing Apple and
lifting the company out of the Dark
Ages, physical displays of Mac love
(tattoos, haircuts), the act of
Macspotting (Macs on CSI!!!), Mac
evangelists like Guy Kawasaki, and
the highly addictive nature of Apple
rumor sites.
Part 2, Gatherings of the Clan,
describes the need for Mac fans to
come together in a group hug at
MacWorld. The author gives a realistic portrait of the conference, the
myriad personalities that attend,
and the atmosphere of anticipation
and excitement. Included in this
part is a very entertaining chapter
on Japanese Mac fanatics. Kahney
laces his description of the
Japanese love affair with the Mac
with a number of fascinating cultural references and oddities.
The newest part included in this edition of The Cult of Mac is New
Frontiers and includes a chapter on
the phenomenal impact of the iPod on
technology as a platform agnostic
device with universal appeal. The
iPod exceeded everyone’s dreams as a
market success and surprised many by
becoming a cultural icon.
Modding the Mac is the topic of Part
3: Incessant Tinkerers. The venerable
Macquarium is described in its many
iterations along with a variety of hardware mods and the unusual paper
Macs. Kahney also includes a beautiful photo array of fantasy Macs, many
of which have appeared on the
Internet as fake “leaks” prior to major
hardware announcements. Although
gorgeous mock-ups, when comparing
some of these to actual released models, it’s clear the Apple design team
has the edge on originality.
The final chapter in the book is an
amusing introspection on what makes
Mac fans so loyal. It’s not so much a
dive into individual or mass psychology as it is a meandering stroll through
the musings of a variety of gurus who
make a living trying to make sense of
such things. Kahney treats this lightheartedly and without bias.
Part 4 details the hoarders and collectors in the Mac community. The
author highlights the habits of several
Apple collectors who have dedicated
huge amounts of cash and time to
their obsession. The ease with which
they were consumed by their addiction to all things Mac is only a little
surprising. Any Mac fanatic would
feel sympathetic to the cause.
While not meant to be read cover-tocover, the reader can easily get caught
up in this book by sheer virtue of the
compelling nature of how extreme
people can act. In many ways, the fact
that so many people are driven to outlandish and creative displays of love
for the Mac is a natural extension of
the sheer simple beauty of the Apple
product line. Where else are people
moved to covet and hoard the packaging of the product? Mac loyalists are
moved to admire and adore the entire
experience from box to device. They
have a social relationship with their
computers.
Also included in this section are
chapters on antique Macs like the
Color Classic, SE/30, Plus, and the
Apple I. OH! And the Newton. This
book would not be complete without
a discussion of the Newton and
those who still use the handheld
device. HyperCard and Mac interface revivalists are also covered here.
The Cult of Mac is a cultural examination of a particular (and peculiar)
aspect of society that is not confined
to the American nation. The Mac phenomenon extends around the globe
and these displays of fanaticism are
very humorously chronicled in
Kahney’s book. Ordinary people are
portrayed here. The creativity and
4
extent of their obsession makes them
extraordinary. Leander Kahney has
captured the breadth of the phenomenon in a compelling and visually
appealing volume without taking the
subject or himself too seriously. This
is not a “we are cooler than you are”
book. This book will entertain anyone
interested in how one corner of technology and design has influenced
society. Even devoted PC users will
find the Mac culture described here
amusing and enlightening. 
The Cult Of Mac
(2006) Leander Kahney
No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593271220
280 pages
List: $24.95
The Cult of Mac was originally published
in 2004 in hardcover. This 2006 paperback edition includes a new chapter on the
iPod as well as some minor updated content and photos.
Reprinted from the Feb. 2007
newsletter of the North Coast Macintosh
Users Group.
Leander Kahney, managing editor at
Wired News, and the author of two books
about technology culture: Cult of Mac
and Cult of iPod.
Canning the Spam
By Joe Arcuri
I haven’t received a piece of spam in
my inbox for the past month.
Doesn’t sound like much, but realize
that I get over 300-500 emails a day
(from personal, to business, to mailinglists) and regardless of how much
training I did with my spam filter, about
20-30 spam messages would end up in
my inbox every day.
On the positive side,
Mail.app manages to capture the bulk of my spam
using the junk mail feature. For example, on 2/6
Mail.app successfully
categorized 314 emails as
junk. Unfortunately, it
missed 42 of them–which
would have ended up in my inbox if
not for my secondary spam trap.
That’s almost 12% missed, meaning
that my junk mail filtering is only 88%
effective. But, by using my primary and
secondary spam/junk filtering I’ve
managed to bring that average up to
100%.
The method that I use for secondary
spam trapping is to set up two new rules
in my mail program. (To add/edit rules
in Mail.app you go to Mail Preferences abd then select Rules.)
The first rule is the tricky one to set up.
Its purpose is to capture one of the latest types of spam which is called
“image spam.” It basically embeds an
image in the email and normal spam filtering doesn’t capture it.
To set up this rule, add a new rule with
the condition (the last option) of Edit
Header List, then add a new item to the
list called “Content-Type”. Next, “Ok”
out and then use Content-Type as your
criteria. Select “contains” and then type
in “multipart/related”. Click the “+”
choose “Sender not in my previous
recipients”. This will make sure if
any of your friends send you
one of these types of emails
you will get it.
My choice for dealing
with these messages is to
put them into a unique
folder so that I can review
them at my leisure. There
for my action is “Move message” to mailbox “Image Spam”.
The next rule is very simple. It has 2
conditions:
1) Sender is not in my address book
2) Sender is not in my previous
recipients
The action for this rule is to move the
message to a mailbox called “Unknown
Sender”. I tend to review this folder
more often because it has a better of
chance of catching emails that I want.
Using the combination of Mail.app’s
spam filtering and these two new filters,
I’ve relieved my inbox by quite a bit! 
A Special Date... A Special Place...A Special Guest!
CMC April Meeting: Friday, April 20, Middlesex Community College
Next month, CMC brings you a special guest on a special
date. Lesa Snider King is a graphic designer and Photoshop
expert, well known for her work with David Pogue and her
husband Shawn King. With David she helps produce his
series of Missing Manual books and with Shawn she cohosts the weekly internet ‘radio’ show, “Your Mac Life.”
demonstrate the iStockPhoto service, which allows everyone
to download stock photos (for brochures, presentations,
school science projects) for very little money. Before the
night is over, she’ll also give away some valuable items!
Take note of the special date and location for this meeting:
Friday, April 20th at Middlesex Community College in
Middletown. Until then, you can keep up with Lesa’s adventures at www.graphicreporter.com
Lesa will share tips and tricks for Adobe Photoshop
Elements that will help you improve your photos. She’ll also
5
Peter’s Hometown
Computing Corner #84
© 2007 by Peter P. Gladis
[email protected]
We all know the big Travel sites like
Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, Travelocity
.com, Priceline.com, and others – so
this month here are some GREAT…
UNUSUAL TRAVEL WEBSITES!!!
■ www.JohnnyJet.com
If can only investigate one site from
this article, www.JohnnyJet.com
should be it! This is an Amazing &
Unusual Travel site! It has the best collection of links to all kinds of Travel
Websites – including ones to overcome
fear of flying, getting a passport fast,
finding a trip for single parents, converting currency, cheap Travel, and
much, much more. At last count, it has
134 categories of Travel-related websites – and hundreds & hundreds of
actual, useful links!
■ IgoUgo.com
Provides “real” unbiased Travel info,
reviews, and advice from everyday
Travelers. Members give opinions on
places, restaurants, hotels, must-see
attractions, and day trips. And writing
your own reviews or Travel experiences
earns you points redeemable for gift
cards & frequent flier miles!
■ www.ShawGuides.com
Want a Cooking Vacation, a Writing or
Golf Weekend? www.ShawGuides.com
lists 5,800 different Programs, including Tennis & Golf Camps, Arts &
Cultural Trips, Language Vacations,
Wine Schools, Photography Vacations,
and more!
■ www.TravelChums.com
A Travel companion-matching site. If
you don’t want to Travel alone, it’ll
help you find a companion. If your
spouse/partner can’t get away, it’ll
help find a person to Travel with. If
you have a date & destination for a
trip, it will help you find a person with
the same Travel plans. Or, if you have
a special interest, say Golf, Painting,
or Bird Watching, etc., TravelChums
will help you find a buddy who shares
your interests, enthusiasm, and experiences.
■ www.TheBathroomDiaries.com
When you gotta go – you gotta go!
Finding a restroom while Traveling is a
challenge. The answer ? www.The
BathroomDiaries.com. This site has
reviews and maps of toilet locations
worldwide that you can print out and
take with you!
■ www.CouchSurfing.com
If you are looking to “couch out” while
Traveling (that is, sleeping for free for a
night or two on someone’s couch!),
then www.CouchSurfing.com is for
you. Believe it or not, there are over
150,000 people shown who are willing
to help!
■ www.OneBag.com
Devoted to giving practical tips and
tricks on Traveling Light – with the
focus on how to pack for Travel anywhere – with only One Bag!
■ www.WhatsOnWhen.com
Lets you plan Travel based on your
interests, and makes sure you don’t
miss an important event. Plan your
journey
around
Festivals,
Performances, even Meteor Showers –
in locations across the globe. You can
search by location and/or date. Just a
few of the event topics are: Adventure,
Classical Music, Clubs & Parties, Film,
Food & Drink, Heritage, Jazz, Kids &
Family, Literature, Music, Natural
Phenomena, Opera, Performing &
Visual Arts.
■ www.Imaginative-Traveller.com
Designs unique Vacations focused on
the heart of a country, staying with
locals, visiting places you never
thought you’d see, and doing things you
never thought you’d do. It’s a leading
6
Operator of small group Adventure
Tours. Vacations are designed in 5
Themes: Worldwide – Holidays to
Africa, Asia, South & Central America,
India, etc. Family Adventures – for parents & children. Escapes – Short breaks
“with a difference”. Volunteer –
Holidays with real, worthwhile, “hands
on” work in local communities around
the world. Honeymoon – Special occasions to romantic/memorable locales.
■ www.GeckosAdventures.com
If you want a normal, pre-planned, touroperated Vacation with every waking
minute
planned
for
you,
www.GeckosAdventures.com is not for
you! What it does offer are grassroots
adventures (179 trips in 49 countries),
including Travel on public transport,
eating like the locals - with the locals,
and staying in small family-run hotels
or home stays.
■ www.Kropla.com
Steve Kropla’s “HELP FOR WORLDWIDE TRAVELERS” at, helps plan an
international trip. It has a comprehensive listing of worldwide electrical and
phone info. You can search for information like: International City Codes,
Electric Plug Types, Television
Standards, Mobile Phone Guides and
more.
■ www.HotelChatter.com
A daily web magazine with uncensored
hotel reviews from all over the world –
The Good, The Bad, and The
Disgusting. It covers hotel deals,
reviews, tips, hotels to avoid, and great
hotels you should stay in. It’s updated
daily. They welcome Traveler input. If
you have something to say about a hotel
stay; have a tip on finding hotel deals;
have photos of a top-notch hotel; or
know the perfect place for that weekend
getaway – become a member and submit your story, or just comment on the
current published stories.
continued on page 7
continued from page 6
Review:
On The Job
■ www.Airtroductions.com
By Chita Hunter
What a Country! For only $5, this
service will match you with a special seatmate on your upcoming
flight. You can choose, “Find a
Date”, “Find a Friend” or “Find a
Job.” And matching isn’t limited to
onboard seating; you can also search
for Travelers who will be at your airport at the same time. So if you’re
looking for a date in LA, a business
partner in Tokyo, or just someone to
share a cab to Midtown,
AirTroductions is there for you!
Now that all the
November and
December holiday
family
frivolity is over,
it’s time for some
to get back to work.
One group that probably
didn’t bother to and rarely stops working
long enough to take a much needed
break, are the entrepreneurs of the world.
■ www.WikiTravel.org
A free, up-to-date, and reliable
world-wide Travel guide. So far,
they have 13,360 destination guides
and articles written by Travelers
from around the globe. Share your
own expertise about a specific destination or check out what other
Travelers have to say about places.
■ Peter’s “WACKY SITE
OF THE MONTH”
Things that make you go…
“DUH!” or maybe… “WHA”???
Example: on a TV Remote Control:
“Not Dishwasher Safe”; on a
clothes iron package: “Do Not Iron
Clothes On Body”; Portable
stroller: “Caution: Remove Infant
Before Folding For Storage”;
Orange Juice Can: “100% Pure AllNatural Fresh-Squeezed Orange
Juice From Concentrate”; on a
Hammer: “May Be Harmful If
Swallowed”; Bottle of dog shampoo: “Caution: The Contents Of
This Bottle Should Not Be Fed To
Fish”. See the rest at www.
Dumb.com/ProductWarnings.htm
Keeping track of … Whatever entrepreneurial endeavor you might pursue, there
is one constant experience: Keeping
track of your billable time and invoicing
for it. Typically, that process may go
something like, “Let’s see, I worked a
few hours on this Tuesday, eight hours
on that yesterday, five hours on this
today…” Then out comes the pencil and
paper. Or there’s the looking around and
under items for those scrap pieces of
paper with the hastily written information. Sound familiar?
Keeping track of work hours is a lot easier if you have some type of automated
tracking system. “On the Job” by Stunt
Software may fit that bill nicely.
On the Job is a time tracking and invoice
generating program that is very straightforward, easy to use and made for the
Mac. To keep track of the time spent on
any project in On the Job, simply create
the Job, create the Task and press the
start button. On the Job will then run a
time clock to keep track of your work
time. There are predefined columns for
Time, Cost, Date, Notes, and
Description relating to the Task or Tasks
you create.
Questions? Comments?
Ideas? E-Mail me at
[email protected] 
Now even with it’s many features, On
the Job ‘is only human.’ It can’t remember to push the start button for you, nor
can it automatically detect that you didn’t remember to select the correct task
when you stopped working on one task
and began working on another. With that
in mind, On the Job does allow you to
modify the data it creates just in case
such scenarios happen. The program
does also notice when the computer is
idle and will stop the tracking process
after a predetermined idle interval is
reached. Coffee breaks do happen, yes?
If you like, you can set the time duration
to show up on the icon in your dock. I’d
prefer to see this in a floating window on
my desktop, as I keep my dock hidden
from view and would probably keep the
program hidden also while I work.
After the creation of several entries,
selecting a single Task or a Job folder
full of Tasks, and choosing the Invoice
icon will automatically generate a predefined invoice template that you can
apply some personal modifications to.
You might like to add your own logo,
show/hide some of the information
shown on the invoice, add tax, modify
headings, etc. You can also select what
format you want to send this invoice as:
PDF, Text Summary, XML, or CSV.
For those who use Mail and Address
Book, On the Job works directly with
these programs from its Invoice interface.
Jobs can be archived once they’re complete or archived and imported back into
the program if a job is delayed and
picked up at a later date. Don’t you just
hate when that happens?
I like this program; it tracks what I need
it to track without any fuss and generates
an invoice fast and accurately. On the
Job, available for a free download and
trial period, is priced at $ 4.95. This very
useful program may be a small amount
to pay to help you keep track of the bigger picture.
h t t p : / / w w w. s t u n t s o f t w a r e . c o m /
OnTheJob/ Reprinted from MacNews
Feb. 2007, newsletter of Mac-Group
Detroit. 
7
ultimate Task 1.91
This is something most people probable should not use. Used wrong you
probably could get rid of something
you wanted to keep. But it is free, so I
tried it today. LOL.
Do it at your own risk. It runs the
monthly things you should do, for
you, like setting the disk permissions.
ultimateTask is a comprehensive utility with a simple, easy to use
interface, to take care of some of the
more important cleanup/maintenance
tasks for your computer. ultimateTask
is especially useful for System
Administrators in charge of many
Workstations. While Apple has many
of its own utilities, there are times
when you need to do certain maintenance tasks of your own choice, at a
time of your own choosing.
ultimateTask can run them all at onceor individually-from the applications
finder menu-and can also be done via
Keyboard shortcuts. There are many
great Mac utilities out there, but
ultimateTask is (and will in the
future) be incorporating some of the
more essential and useful tasks, into
an all-in-one utility.
cache, History, Safari Icons, and
Cookies, for the most common
browsers. (Cookie deletion [y/n]
option soon)
• Allows you to enable/disable
Dashboard and Widgets
• You have the option to restart your
computer after running the utility,
or shutting down.
Planned future additions:
• Add Quit Finder to finder menu
• Disable Journaling (a bug in Tiger
will not let you do this during or
after install)
• Disable Spotlight
ultimateTask offers in a convenient
small compact quick and safe to use
all in one utility!
ultimateTask can be run from
Standard OS X Account also!
It needs 10.4.2 or above. PPC or Intel.
Remember, I warned you.
Download it here:
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/
redir/lid/1015123/ultimateTask.dmg
Kudos to
Apple Support
from Joe Arcuri
CMC Ambassador
I’ve been noticing an issue with my
MacBook Pro’s battery over the
last couple of weeks. If I’m on battery after the meter reads
somewhere below 30%, the laptop
would spontaneously shutdown
without warning and losing anything that was open. Out of
frustration the last time it happened, I did some testing. Sure
enough the battery thinks it has the
juice until the last second when it
just dies. The LEDs on the battery
confirm it.
Thursday night about 6 p.m., I
called Apple Support and got
through fairly quick. Since I’ve had
the MPB more than 90 days
Michelle (the tech) wanted to either
charge me the $49 per incident fee
or sell me AppleCare. I convinced
her to hear my problem first and
she did.
Without a hassle or my even having
to request it, she offered to replace
the battery for me. She took all my
info down and said to expect the
battery the beginning of next week.
The next morning FedEx knocks
on my door and there’s my new
battery. I couldn’t have asked for
better service from them.
In default state ultimateTask will:
• Repair disc permissions
• Execute CRON scripts (Daily,
Weekly, Monthly)
• Delete Log, System, User, Server,
Crash, Temp, Core
ultimateTask os x maintenance application will:
• Repair disc permissions
• Optimize System (update prebinding)
• Execute CRON scripts (Daily,
Weekly, Monthly)
• Delete Log, System, User, Server,
Crash, Temp, Core and .DS files
• Purge all Trash files, Internet
8
Speck Products: Sweet Deals While Supplies Last
Speck has become a dominant market leader in the iPod,
MacBook, smart phone, cell phone and satellite radio
accessory category, selling spirited, fun and unique products. Speck’s special deals for group members include:
- MacBook SeeThru 15”, clear or red (Core Duo
version only) $25.00; regularly $49.95
- iPod Video (60gb/80gb) SeeThru (3-pack of
clear, black, red) $15.00; regularly $29.95
- iPod nano (first generation) Canvas Sport
(pink, black, white) $12.00; regularly $14.95
- iPod nano (first generation) ToughSkin
(clear, black) $12.00; regularly $14.95
controls above where you type. NoteOrganizer is an
advanced table-of-contents with user-defined categories/groups. The most popular benefit is instant desktop
access via QuickNotes to your critical information.
TopXNotes also includes automatic backups, unlimited
Undo, Find and note-encryption to keep sensitive information safe. User group members receive a 25 percent
discount by purchasing TopXNotes for $22.50, regularly
$30.00, or TopXNotes iPod for $26.25, regularly $35.00 at
their web site by using the coupon code: UGSpecial
https://secure.tropic4.com/WebStore/index.php
Offer is valid through May 31, 2007.
The MUG Store: A Resource for Old and New
The MUG Store offers great specials and blowouts your
members should scour through every month. It’s like an
online garage sale on Mac odds and ends with extra special
offers and deals! The MUG Store’s consultants are available to talk about the latest and greatest Apple products,
including all the great products introduced at the Macworld
Expo. With one percent of member purchases credited to
your organization, everyone wins!
User ID: *****
Password: *****
User group members also get an additional 15%off
online items by ordering from speckproducts.com and
using the coupon code: APPLEUSERS during check out.
http://www.speckproducts.com
Not valid at any other online/retail store carrying Speck
products. Offer is valid through May 31, 2007.
Case-mate: Mac Notebook Accessories at 20% Off
Protect your MacBook or MacBook Pro by choosing
from any combination of Case-mate products. Items that
are immediately available include
- innovative Handle that doubles as a passive
heat sink; regularly $50
- sleek leather Sleeve, regularly $89-$99
- luxurious leather Suit, regularly $149-$159
- Glovez thoroughly modern neoprene laptop cases,
regularly $25-$29
That’s Easy: Apple User Group Market
& Apple User Group Offers
Looking for information on a past offer? Tom Piper of
the Apple User Group Advisory Board publishes a single
Also, be sure to subscribe to Tom’s Apple User Group
Market Report podcast, a great source for information
about Apple user groups, vendor discounts, special
events and more.
Current Offers
Password: *****
These Case-mate products make your laptop more convenient to carry and easier to use, all while protecting it
from dirt, dust and scratches. User group members
receive 20% off any Case-mate product by using the
Coupon Code: wizard2
http://www.case-mate.com
Not valid at any other online/retail store offering Casemate products.
Offer is valid through May 31, 2007.
Apple User Group Market Report Podcast
TopXNotes: 25 Percent Off
TopXNotes has evolved from a simple replacement for
Apple’s Notepad into a modern note organizing system.
Its unique features include MultiView, the ability to view
many notes at once and a sliding toolbar that keeps text
9
New Members Wanted!
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Acting Secretary
Jack Bass
[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.
CMC Meetings
FREE Raffle!
Discounted Books
is...free!
CMC March Meeting
FREE Classified Ads
[email protected]
Wednesday, March 28
UConn Health Center
Farmington
Not everyone realizes that there is a
wealth of software available for
Macs. Perhaps that’s because the
great majority of it is not available in
stores – it’s online! Internet-based
distribution of software gives you
immediate access to applications that
can do anything you can think of.
This month we’ll share with you
some of the best software for Mac
that is either inexpensive or free. At
7:00, Joe Arcuri will present a wealth
of applications and utilities for you to
explore and try out. They are all
hand-picked by CMC board members
for their unique abilities and value for
money.
Account Balances
- Balances as of March 3, 2007 Checking Account ........$1656.81
Money Market ..................$4028.51
Getting CMC email?
Display Ad Rates
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
at www.ctmac.org
Business Card ...................$10.00
Half Page .........................$30.00
Full Page .........................$50.00
CMC Passwords/IDs
We know it can be confusing to
download software and find yourself
with files on your desktop that you’re
not sure what to do with. They may
have names ending with things like
“sit”, “zip”, or “dmg” and you find
yourself thinking “Well, now what?”
Our Back To Basics session at 6:00,
with Don Dickey, will answer that
question. You’ll find out exactly what
these files are, how to access their
contents and how to properly install
the software you download.
www.ctmac.org
• Your CMC
Membership
renewal date
(for free shipping
at MacConnection)
Valid:
1/31/07 - 4/30/07
User ID: xxxx Password: xxxx
Valid: 11/16/06 - 5/15/07)
Password: xxxx
11
Monthly Meeting
March 28
6 pm - Back to Basics
7 pm - Main Presentation
Downloading Online Software
The best software for Mac that
is either inexpensive or free.
See page 11 for more info.
12
At our February 28th CMC meeting, Rich Lenoce explored many of the
online applications offered by Google. Did you know that Google
offered an online spreadsheet application, a word processor, a collaborative writing tool, a calendar and 3D modeling software?
Microsoft’s Anger Management...........1
Review: FoxTrot....................................4
Review: QuarkXpress 7.0.....................6
Mac 911: Recharging your iPod ..........7
Peter’s Hometown Computer Corner...8
Microsoft’s Anger
Management?
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
Bill Gates recently went
through a tantrum.
In an interview with
Newsweek, the World’s
Richest Man, when asked
about Microsoft’s OS innovations
being taken from Apple, said, “Let’s
be realistic, who came up with [the]
file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do
you want to go back to the original
Mac and think about where those
interface concepts came from?” As I
recall, Microsoft didn’t have any user
interface in 1984, just a blinking c:>.
In the article, Gates goes on to criticize the new Mac ads seeming
personally insulted by them and
downright angry.
Corporate policy bears out his anger.
It’s been rumored that Gates was so
angry about Apple moving the
Macintosh to Intel that the next version of MS Office for Mac was almost
scrapped while Virtual PC was
scrapped altogether. Last summer,
Microsoft dumped Windows Media
Player for Mac telling Mac users to
use an inferior third party application,
Flip4Mac. Finally, though Mac users
can now run Windows on a Mac,
Microsoft is only allowing the most
expensive versions of Vista to run
under virtualization.
APRIL 2007
Why all the anger, Bill?
Windows has 93% market
share. Vista seems to be a
huge hit. The Xbox had a
phenomenal holiday season. Microsoft’s Windows
Media Center PC puts
Apple TV to shame. And
the Zune, though not an
iPod killer, is a solid product and will make inroads
into iPod market share.
And, trusty Office 2007 is a bold and
innovative product.
When you are #1, there’s always the
fear you’ll be knocked off the perch.
Let’s face it: monopolies lack innovation, usually maintaining their market
share through threats, buy-outs and
consumer familiarity. Yes, this
describes Microsoft.
Licensing vs. Manufacturing
Apple and Microsoft have many similarities. Both sell operating systems
and applications, are involved in consumer electronics and sell media.
There is one critical difference
though. Unlike Apple, Microsoft
doesn’t make the boxes its operating
system and applications reside on.
In fact, the majority of these boxes are
cheap, costing under $500. Microsoft
derives the bulk of its revenue by
requiring PC manufacturers to pay a
licensing fee to install Windows on
these cheap PCs. The overhead is low,
and Microsoft doesn’t have to manufacturer anything, just collect the
licensing fees from these PC manufacturers. Dell pays a licensing fee of
$104 for each version of Windows XP
sold with a Dell computer.
Longevity:
You Get What You Pay For
Cheap PCs have cheap components
that don’t last long and come with just
enough horsepower to run the OS and
current applications. They aren’t built
for the future, which is why most
Windows users have to upgrade or buy
a new PC to run Vista or Adobe CS3.
This low quality and inability to handle future software with higher system
demands means a PC lasts on average, 2-3 years. Microsoft drives part
of that turn-over as new versions of
their software, like Office and
Windows Vista, demand higher system
requirements.
CMC April Monthly Meeting Notice!
Friday, April 20 – 7:00 p.m.
Middlesex Community College in Middletown
Photoshop Tips & Tricks with Lesa Snider King
A special date for our special guest Lesa Snider King, a
well-known Photoshop trainer and graphic designer.
Plus, she’ll be giving away a copy of
Photoshop Elements to a lucky CMC member
SAVE THE
(a $100 value)! See page 11 for more info.
ATE!
D
1
Continued on page 2
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.
PC costs are so low, it simply isn’t
worth the cost to upgrade a PC or to
repair a broken or virus infected
machine. And, so another PC gets
sold and with it another Windows
license and the cycle of Windows and
MS Office sales continues.
Macs are different. Research shows
that Mac users hold on to their computers for at least five years. They
cost more, at least on the bottom-end
of the price scale, but are made from
better components and last longer.
Apple supports this longevity with 3year extended AppleCare service and
new versions of the operating system
are intended to keep old Macs humming, not send them to the junk heap.
Tiger runs fine on machines dating
back to 1999.
More Macs Means Fewer PCs
Schools, businesses and consumers
have been slowly switching to the
Mac. That’s thanks to all those iPods,
PC virus and spyware problems, the
fact that PCs cost five times more to
support than a Mac, fast and familiar
Intel processors, and, to some extent,
the Mac’s Windows compatibility.
The Mac’s market share increase is
small and incremental but is significant to Microsoft because for each
Mac sold at least two versions of
Windows doesn’t get sold, given the
longer life span of the Macintosh.
That’s enough to make a mega-billionaire’s blood boil.
Apple’s market share is now anywhere between 2.3% and 4% and
increases with every quarter, depending on who you listen to. That market
share sounds small but considering
the slow turnover of Macs compared
to PCs, that number isn’t unusual. The
real figure to look at is the installed
base: the percentage of Macs in use
2
today. That number is a little over 8%
for desktops, and well over 10% for
laptops. The interesting phenomenon
is that as market share increases, even
incrementally, the installed base
grows at a faster rate because Mac
owners hang on to their computers
longer. This means that over time
Microsoft sells much fewer licenses
then the market share numbers and
sales figures bear out.
The financials hint at Microsoft’s
pain. In the final quarter of 2006,
Microsoft earned $12 billion, but at
the same time Apple earned $4.4 billion on the Macintosh alone.
Suddenly 2% market share doesn’t
seem so small. Apple as a company
earned a total of $7.1 billion which
means, in terms of revenue, means
Apple earns more than half as much
money as the giant Microsoft. Do you
feel Bill’s anger?
Looking at profits during the same
period. Microsoft earned $3.4 billion
in profit on $12 billion, down significantly due to loses on its consumer
electronics and stagnant PC sales,
while Apple earned $1billlion in profit on $4.4 billion in revenue on the
Mac alone.
Looking ahead, Apple has Apple TV
and the iPhone ready to take on
Windows Media Center and Windows
Mobile and is the hottest consumer
electronics and Internet media company in the world. Microsoft is
attempting to maintain its monopoly
status on Windows by releasing copycat consumer products like the Zune
and its associated music store, the
Zune Marketplace.
It’s easy to see Bill’s anger, as he’d
like to stay in the lifestyle to which
he’s grown accustomed, so expect
retaliation. In the past, versions of
Office for Mac were released ahead of
continued on page 3
announced it’s bringing this
new interface to Office for Mac
as well. It would be smart for
Apple to release a competitive
product sooner rather than later.
the Windows version. Not
this time. Will it be on parity
with the Windows version?
Apple’s hit a point where it
doesn’t
really
need
Microsoft. Tiger and the
soon to be released Leopard
integrates
well
into
Microsoft environments and
no Mac user I know is clamoring for a Zune.
The smartest thing Apple
can do is “Stay the Course.”
Continue to develop innovative products both on the
Mac and consumer electronics side. Develop operating
systems that set new standards and which the
competition wants to copy.
Imitation is the greatest
form of flattery.
My Thoughts
I would recommend that Apple enter
the Office Suite market as it did with
the Safari browser, or at least have a
product in waiting. Let Microsoft
release Office for Mac 2007/2008 and
hit them hard. All Apple has to do is,
like with Safari, take an open source
product like OpenOffice or NeoOffice
and develop it into a rockin’ hot office
product everyone will want, even
Windows people. If you’ve played
with Office 2007 for Windows, you’ll
know past Office users may be frustrated by it’s radical, non-intuitive
interface. Making your customers
relearn a word processor is a waste of
productivity. Worse, MS has
Getting into the Office suite
business didn’t make sense five
or ten years ago, when Apple
needed to have the compatibility with the MS work place, but
it’s shown it can make compatible products and can compete
head-to-head with Microsoft.
This new AppleWorks-onsteroids would have to offer
MS Office compatibility, which
should be easy considering MS
Office 2007 has moved to an
Open XML document file format. It must also have the
stamp of Apple innovation and
ease of use. Bundle in Keynote
and Pages. Make the suite compatible with both the iPhone
and iPod (I’m always irked that I can’t
play a Keynote presentation off my
video iPod!). Marry it to iSync, iCal,
iChat (for real time document conferences), dotMac and iLife . . . and
there’d be no stopping Apple.
After the release of such a product,
it’s clear: Bill would have to attend
anger management classes. 
Easy Envelopes 1.04
I used easy envelopes years ago, in OS 8,
I think. If you just want to print out an
envelope, this freebie from Ambrosia is
for you. It works for more than one envelope also. It is now a dashboard widget
for Tiger, and will work in 10.5 also and
it now prints out the USPS bar code too.
Download it here: http://ambrosia.cachefly.net/freebies/EasyEnvelopes.dmg
3
Foxtrot Dances
Through
Documents
By Bill Davies
Rarely am I impressed
enough by a new product to purchase it on
the first day, but in my
line of work, access to information is a competitive edge, and after
trying four or five products to search
my hard disk, FoxTrot 1.5 trumped
them all on the first day.
Allow me to give an example. In
January 2007, the United States
Supreme Court invalidated California’s
Determinate Sentencing Law because it
allowed a trial judge to impose the
upper term (the Penal Code typically
gives a low, middle, and upper term)
without having a jury decide the facts
underlying the “aggravating factors”
that need to exist if the court is going to
give the upper term. The criminal
defense bar had been raising this argument for the past three to five years, but
the California Supreme Court in 2005
had ruled that California’s sentencing
scheme was just fine and dandy.
In any event, after the United States
Supreme Court overruled the California
Supreme Court in January 2007, every
attorney that ever raised this issue has
needed to go back and find which cases
the issue was raised in, and determine
whether the case was still pending in a
state court or had become final. So I
was asked to go back through my 800plus cases and determine in which ones
this issue had been raised.
The problem with “landmark rulings”
like this is that the rest of a person’s
workload doesn’t diminish. I still had
cases I was working up and deadlines to
meet. I had no time to go pull 800 files
or even to open 800 documents from
my hard disk to read them all to see if I
had raised this issue.
So I figured that since Apple
gives us Spotlight in their Tiger
operating system that I would
just type in a few key terms and
have a short list to work from.
Wrong! First of all, Spotlight
doesn’t include a filter to search
Corel WordPerfect documents.
So initially I was typing in my
core terms and Spotlight was
finding nothing. Then I went to
VersionTracker and found that
someone had actually written a plug-in
to allow Spotlight to include Corel
WordPerfect documents in its indexing. So I installed that plug-in,
rebooted, typed in my search terms
again and came up with 362 documents
(initially I came up with over 1100
documents because WordPerfect made
at least 7 backup copies of any given
document, and all those were showing
up in the list.)
view” window to let me peek into a
document to see what I actually said in
that document.
Needless to say, I knew I had roughly
only 800 clients and I wasn’t going to
look in 1100 documents. It made no
sense. And so my main gripes with
Spotlight are that it finds too many
things, some irrelevant, doesn’t easily
and quickly show you the document’s
creation date, and doesn’t show you the
words in context.
In the 3rd week of March, I read a press
release for FoxTrot 1.5 from CMT
Development (www.foxtrot.ch), the
same people who write the PowerMail
mail program. Instead of relying on the
Spotlight index of your documents,
FoxTrot actually indexes them and uses
the same database algorithm that is
used in the PowerMail mail program.
I then turned to my trusty “alternate”
search program, EasyFind by Devon
Technologies (www.devon-technologies.com)
which
just
searches the actual files on your
hard disk and does not rely on an
index. This is a free program but
it has served me well in the past.
Since it does not index your documents, it is slow, and it does not
really provide a way to search
for word1 + word2 but not
word3, if you know what I mean.
Using the same search terms as I
used in Spotlight, EasyFind
searched 7102 documents in the
folder I was searching and found
462 that it thought might be what
I wanted, including backup files
made by the word processing
software. It does not offer a “pre-
4
I then took a detour with a utility
program called PathFinder
www.cocoatech.com. PathFinder is sort
of like a replacement for Apple’s
Finder, but it claims to be able to read
the Spotlight index, so I thought I
would give it a try. Ultimately I determined that PathFinder really is not a
search tool, it is a Finder-replacement
tool. So while (after asking the vendor
how to do it) I easily was able to delete
all the old CorelWordperfect temporary
files from my hard disk, this product
did not offer me an easy way to find all
my documents matching my search criteria. Not to mention the user interface
is very very busy, and you need to take
some time to figure out how to use the
application.
continued on page 5
So I decided to try the program and ended up buying it within 60 minutes of first launch. Here’s why:
First, Foxtrot is fast (and Universal, so it is ready for
Intel Macs). A search of my desired directory took
about five seconds. The results list offers a rank of
each document (i.e.. likely to be of help or not) and
clearly shows the creation date and parent folder.
Using my search terms as used in the other products, it found 299 items. I then contacted the vendor
and said I wanted to exclude documents that were
backup files of the main file. Since FoxTrot supports logical operators using its own syntax, a
couple of folks from Europe told me to add -".bu"
to my search terms and my list of qualifying documents was winnowed to a mere 271 documents!
But the best part is that there is a preview pane, and
clicking on any document pops up a preview of
what is in the document, and the search terms are
highlighted with colored boxes as shown in my
illustration. So I can quickly blow through each
document and see what I actually said to determine
whether this is a client that needs some post-appeal
legal work done. Technical support is done via their
listserv, but it appears that the developers monitor
the listserv, so I got my needed answer within
twelve hours. And see the sidebar for the ways you
can include or exclude or join search terms! My
only “complaint,” if you can call it a complaint, is
that mastery of the search syntax can take some
study and experimentation. I do not view my search
needs as highly complicated, so I do not plan to
study the search syntax at this time. I was somewhat
puzzled that my simple request (to exclude all documents that end with the suffix “.bu” which are
backup files) could not be addressed via the settings
dialog box, but perhaps refinements like that will
trickle in over the next few updates.
So can you forget Spotlight altogether? That is your
choice. FoxTrot can disable the Spotlight index if
you find that you do not want that anymore (allowing
Spotlight to search by file name but not by file content), lets you choose which folders you want to
search, and can update its index automatically at a
given time. You can also choose whether to index
PDF, mail, music, or video files (among others) via a
dialog box, so you can keep your index small and
lean if it is just word processing stuff you want to
search. And the user interface is so simple that anyone can be functional with this application in five
minutes or less. On the “someone finally wrote
something useful to me” scale of application critique,
I rate this new application five out of five stars! 
FoxTrot Search Patterns
A search pattern is composed of one or more words. Uppercase, lowercase and accents are
ignored. The punctuation is ignored, except in the following cases:
Wildcards
words ending with an asterisk will match all words with this prefix (for example, word* will
match word, words, or wordy.
words starting with an asterisk will match all words with this suffix (for example, *ping will
match ping, jumping, or dumping.
words enclosed by asterisks will match all words containing these characters (for example,
*box* will match box, boxer, shoebox, or shoeboxes.
Excluded words
words starting with a minus sign are exclusion words. For example, michigan -lake will find
all documents containing michigan but not containing lake. Note that a minus sign inside
a composed word is considered as a normal word separator. For example, re-open is considered as two words: re open.
Quoted strings
use quoted strings to search for a sequence of words. For example "lake michigan" will find
lake michigan but will not find a small lake in michigan.
quoted strings prefixed with a minus sign are exclusion phrases. For example michigan "lake michigan" will find all documents containing michigan but not containing the
expression lake michigan (whether they contain the single word lake or not).
you can add excluded words at the beginning or at the end of a quoted string, to find documents that contain this quoted string not contiguously to these excluded words.?For
example, "john -doe" will find documents that have at least one occurrence of john that
is not part of the string john doe; but doe or even john doe can occur somewhere else in
the document (for example, it will find john smith or john smith meets bob doe or even
john smith meets john doe, but it will not find just john doe).? Another example: "-john
-bob doe" will find documents that contain the word doe that is not part of the strings john
doe nor bob doe (for example it will find greg doe or greg doe meets john smith but it
will not find just john doe nor bob doe)
Proximity searches
foxtrot gives a higher rank to documents that contains the searched words near to each other.
However, if you you want to find only the documents that contains the specified words in
a given proximity range, you can use a quoted string, and specify the range (the maximum
number of other words between the searched words) between braces immediately after the
opening quote. For example, "{2} bob greg john" will find documents that have at least
one occurrence of bob that is at most at 2 words of occurrences of greg and john. It will
find bob, john and greg are friends or greg, john and bob are friends, but it will not
find bob and john are friends of greg.
you can also search for documents containing multiple quoted strings in a specified proximity range, by specifying the range (the maximum number of other words between the
searched strings) between braces at the beginning of the search pattern. For example, {4}
"john doe" "bob smith" will find john doe is a friend of bob smith, but it will not find
john doe is one of the best friends of bob smith.
Boolean operator
use the | character (vertical bar) to combine two (or more) words with an OR. For example,
washington | boston will find documents that contain either washington or boston. You
can also combine quoted strings, for example washington | boston | "new york" | "san
francisco".
You can combine several special characters in the same search pattern. Here are a few
examples:
"john doe" "bob smith" will find john doe meets bob smith, but not john smith meets
bob doe
restaurant chinese | vietnamese | korean boston | washington | "new york" will find a chinese restaurant in Washington as well as a vietnamese restaurant near New York.
Note that the | operator have precedence, ie this search pattern is evaluated like restaurant
( chinese | vietnamese | korean ) ( boston | washington | "new york" ).
fox* -fox -foxtrot will find all documents containing a word that starts with fox but without
any occurrence of fox (as a full word) or foxtrot.
*box* -*box will find all documents containing a word that contains box but without any
occurrence of a word ending with box. For example, it could find a document that contains
boxer or shoeboxes but it will not find one that contains shoebox.
"www.ctmdev.com" (or "www ctmdev com") will find www.ctmdev.com (as well as www
ctmdev com or www+ctmdev/com). Note that a dot inside a word is considered as a word
separator, so www.ctmdev.com (without quotes) will also find informations about ctmdev
at www.somewhere-else.com.
"big car*" "new york" -show* will find all documents that contain big car or big cars, that
also contains new york, but that do not contain show or shows.
"-pierre dupont" | "-jean pierre dupont" will find documents that contain dupont (but
ignoring pierre dupont) or that contain pierre dupont (but ignoring jean pierre dupont);
in other words, it will find all occurrences of dupont (but ignoring jean pierre dupont)
5
Review
QuarkXPress 7
By Maria O. Arguello
Fast and powerful
QuarkXPress, the most
popular granddaddy
desktop publishing
(DTP) package of them
all, has included 160 new features in
this upgrade to version 7.1.
If you’re a new user of XPress on the
Mac, you will not be impressed with
the interface. It looks deceptively simple. But seasoned users will feel in
familiar territory, preferring content to
eye candy. But why can’t we have
both? Looks and brains!
QuarkXPress uses a single row of icons
through which all the main functions
are accessed. The content-sensitive
palettes allows for a clean uncluttered
environment. If you want more floating
palettes you can first customize a set by
creating a group to keep at your fingertips to hide or display with a single
keyboard command.
The Drop Shadow Tab on the
Measurements Palette gives you the
options to control the following
aspects of the drop shadow: color,
opacity, angle, skew, size, how it falls
off the edges. Inherit Opacity links the
shadow’s opacity to the opacity of the
object it is attached to, so as to control
whether the drop shadow has its own
opacity or increases and decreases its
opacity along with the object it’s
attached to. Check the box next to
Item Knocks Out Drop Shadow and
you can see the shadow itself decreasing the opacity of the object. You can
control seeing the shadow through the
object or not. Your choice.
The Runaround Drop Shadow allows
the text to run around the shadow. If
unchecked, the text runs around the
object and runs into the drop
shadow.
Synchronize Angle makes all
the shadows on all the
objects in the spread appear
to come from the same light
source. All the angles will be
the same. Multiply Drop Shadow
controls how the shadow blends with
the items behind it.
In this version Typography supports
character sets and Unicode. Myriad is
a Unicode font; therefore in a recipe,
which uses fractions, you can set true
fractions. But if you change the font
to a non-open type font the fractions
are not permanent. They revert to regular numbers because the font isn’t
open type.
Because Open Type supports
Unicode, QuarkXPress can perform
some amazing tricks. Unicode allows
up to 49,194 glyphs in a font, with a
unique numerical identifier for every
Glyph. This makes it possible to
include all the characters in complex
2-byte languages like Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, and Middle Eastern
fonts. XPress can perform Font Fall
Back, which is useful when importing
or pasting text with characters not
included in your current font. If Fall
Back is not enabled the text box will
remain empty.
QuarkXPress 7 has included
a new Glyphs palette to help
you find special characters
and insert them with a simple double click. This
palette
is
found
in
Window>Glyphs. It lets you
choose all the glyphs in a
font or just the symbols, the
numbers, and so on. A
Favorite Glyphs panel lets
you store your favorite
glyphs from multiple fonts
for easy access at any time.
6
I loved the split view horizontally or
vertically and the way one can click
and drag content from one view to
the other.
I created a sign for an upcoming
MUG event in just a few minutes. It
wasn’t a complicated ad but the ease
of use was a pleasant surprise because
it included text, typography with
color, and pictures. I thought I was
going to have to design the lettering in
Photoshop for my ad but I did it all in
XPress using the Freehand text-path
tool, and applied Drop Shadow.
Check it out at:
<http://mlmug.org/DrMDin.html>
In the box you will find the install CD
and the updater CD to v 7.1; a Guide
to QuarkXPress 7 ‹ 434 pages to get
you started; a Lynda.com training
video; and a booklet called “What’s
New in QuarkXPress 7?”
I am looking forward to exploring
more features in this version of
QuarkXPress like alpha masking,
expanded image effects, multi-user
page composition, job control with Job
Jackets, new synchronization options,
better layout management, superior
palette controls, improved locking,
improved color management, expandcontinued on page 7
ed output options and output styles, ligatures on the fly, measurement palette
enhancements, and many more.
The OpenType, transparency, drop
shadow, and layered Photoshop file
support do justify the upgrade for
those
who
work
alone
in
QuarkXPress. But the power of the
upgrade is useful to multiple users
working on a project with a new technology called Job Jackets. It is
designed to make sure that set parameters stick.
I would love to have more powerful
tools for text design ‹ maybe in the
future. Many of the features in this
version had to be bought as plug-ins
before. The lower price is welcome. 
Product: QuarkXPress 7.1
Company: Quark Inc.
Price: Best Current Price: $639.95
<macworld.pricegrabber.com/search_
getprod.php?masterid=20103460>
System Requirement: Mac OS X 10.4
Hardware requirements: CD-ROM
Drive, 128 MB RAM, 850 MB available disk space
Test System: Dual 2.5GHz PowerPC G5,
4 GB DDR SDRAM, Mac OS X 10.4.
Reviewer: Maria O. Arguello
Review Date: May 2007
Overall rating: 4 out of 5 apples
© 2007 Maria O. Arguello. Maria is
the vendor liaison of the Main Line
Macintosh Users Group (MLMUG).
To see more reviews go to
<http://Mlmug.org/Reviews.html>.
Maria is also a member of NCMUG,
PMUG,
CCPMUG,
MUGSNJ,
PPUG, and SJAUG. She is the Apple
User Group Regional Liaison for the
Northeast United States (CT, DE,
MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT).
Macworld Weekly
iPods and Over-Charging
By Christopher Breen
[email protected]
Mac 911 Tip of the Week
When I'm out and about, talking about
iPods, I hear this question a lot: Is
there any danger posed by leaving my
iPod in a dock, where its battery is
also being recharged? The answer is,
generally, no. The iPod is a savvy little piece of gear and it understands
when enough is enough. It won't overcharge when connected to a power
source for days on end.
Some folks (other than Apple) suggest
that it's a good idea to undock the
iPod once a month or so and let it
work off the battery for awhile.
Allegedly this will "exercise" the battery and provide it with a little longer
lifespan. I haven't tested the theory
because, frankly, I don't have the
patience to conduct multi-year battery
trials. Given that the iPod is a portable
music player and even the most devoted homebody is likely to leave the
house on a monthly basis, it certainly
won't hurt to take your iPod for a walk
every so often. This question is usually followed with "So, how often
should I charge my iPod? Should I run
it all the way down? Run it half-way
down? What? For godsake, what!?"
After dashing a cup of ice water into
the anxious questioner's mug I follow
up with this: Don't worry about it.
Enjoy your iPod.
Yes, you can fret about the absolute
perfect method for charging the iPod
so it lasts for as long as physics
allows, but it's eventually going to die
and you'll either replace the battery or
get a new iPod. Running it all the way
down and letting it sit for a week with
no juice won't recondition the battery
— the batteries in iPods don't have a
"memory" that needs to be reset by
7
running them dry as did some older battery-driven devices. Nor will the battery
become overly stressed if you recharge
it at the end of each day even though
you've used only a quarter charge.
In short: charge it when it's convenient for you and makes the most
sense. If you're going on a transAtlantic flight, by all means, find a
spare power outlet at the airport and
top it off. If you charged it the day
before, have listened to it only for a
couple of hours, and don't feel like
taking it out of your backpack, leave it
where it is, enjoy its many gifts the
next day, and charge it the next time
you think of it.
And while you're charging your iPod,
be sure to read my April 2007 Mac
911 weblog for more troubleshooting
hints. Visit http://www.macworld.
com/weblogs/mac911/2007/04/20070
401/index.php 
Advertisement...Advertisement...Advertisement
Peter’s Hometown
Computing Corner #85
© 2007 by Peter P. Gladis
[email protected]
It’s hard to believe, I did my first article on this subject eight years ago! A
LOT has changed on the Internet since
then, so here is an update on some
GREAT AUTOMOBILE BUYING
WEBSITES!
ON-LINE CAR-BUYING:
Below are the major Internet automobile buying services. Each has their
own approach and content. So if you
want to take a shot at Internet car-buying, it’s a good idea to investigate
several of them before deciding which
one to use. All provide services like:
Car Pricing & Quotes on New & Used
Cars, Reviews, Research, Car-Buying
Guides and Tips, Comparison Tools,
and Videos. Some sites also offer the
ability to investigate Financing and
Insurance Options too!
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Motors.eBay.com
AutoNationDirect.com
CarsDirect.com
AutoByTel.com
CarSmart.com
AutoTrader.com
CarPrice.com
AutoWeb.com
Cars.com
Car.com
AutoAdvantage.com
DealerNet.com
➽ CARQ.com is a little different – it’s
a “Buyers Agent” site. For a fee, they’ll
be an advocate who represents only
you in your Internet car-buying efforts.
AUTO BUYING ADVICE:
➽ AutoAdvisor.com helps buyers
answer 2 important questions: What is
the best car for me? How can I have my
car for the absolute lowest price? They
will analyze everything from your
stature to your driving habits, your
needs, and even your aes
thetics. Key areas include:
Invoice/MSRP Prices, Auto Education,
Media Reviews, Automaker Resource
List, and a Buyer's Service.
➽ Kelley Blue Book (KBB.com) is still
a key reference for car-buying. It is more
informative than ever and is the definitive source of information on estimated
used car values. Also, it provides inputs
on new car prices, and has excellent
information and tips on how best to buy
and sell a car.
➽ Edmunds.com is the key competitor
to Kelley Blue Book – and like KBB, it
offer a wide array of information on New
Cars, Used Cars, Tips & Advice,
Research, Car Comparisons, Owner
Forums, and much more.
➽ CarTalk.com is a really hilarious site
– combined with interesting and useful
information on cars. Tom and Ray
Magliozzi are the hosts of National Public
Radio’s weekly show, “Car Talk”. They
are irreverent – and VERY funny. Their
site is a lark, but has lots of very useful
information, like these – and more:
• Test Drive Notebook – See Tom &
Ray's own thoughts about specific
cars.
• Car Talk Auto Advisor – About to go
shopping? Answer a few questions,
and let the Car Talk Advisor help
you pick the right car for you.
• Car Talk Car Survey – Tell us what
you think of your car — and see
what thousands of other car talk visitors are saying.
• Model Reports – Target pricing, specs,
safety info, reviews, and photos
• Roadside Survival Guide. What's in
your trunk? See their suggestions
• Official Car Talk Guide to JumpStarting Your Car – Ever wonder
how to jump start your car — without exploding yourself into the next
zip code?
➽ NADAguides.com “...the most
comprehensive vehicle information
website.” It offers information, products, and services to educate people to
buy, sell, trade or shop for a Vehicle. It
also has a wealth of interesting articles
and related information to help people
maintain and care for the Vehicles they
own. One popular feature is the pricing
information on new and used cars,
trucks, vans and SUVs, as well as
Classic, Collectible, Exotic and Special
Interest Vehicles, Boats, Motorcycles,
RVs, Personal Watercraft, ATVs, and
Snowmobiles.
8
➽ CarBuyingTips.com, whose motto
is: “car dealers hate us – you'll Love
us!” has easy to read, straight-on tips
on buying a used or new car. Popular
Topics:
• How to buy new cars & avoid
scams (7 chapters)
• How to lease new cars & avoid
new car dealer come-ons
• How to buy used cars & how to
sell your used cars
• Checking a used car history, title,
VIN#, and flood-check used cars
• Auto extended warranty tips &
scams
• Tips for getting good car loans for
new cars
• Car insurance tips & scams for
new cars
• Guide to used car auto auctions
• Free Excel spreadsheets for new
cars, car loans & car leases
If for some reason, the above sites
don’t answer all your questions, the
turn to these two AMAZING sites –
what I call: “Mega-Car-Sites”.
They list literally hundreds of sites
in almost any Automotive category
imaginable!
➽ Automotive-Links.com
➽ CarNut.com/mylinks/auto.html
And don’t forget the car companies
themselves – they all have all very useful and informative sites. For example:
Ford.com, GM.com, Honda.com,
Jaguar.com, Chevrolet.com, Volvo.com,
Buick.com, etc. 
Peter’s “WACKY SITE OF THE
MONTH” Give Yourself a Facial – with
Miracle Whip®! Fertilize a Lawn – with
Listerine®! Soothe Tired Feet – with
French’s Mustard®! Relieve Itching
From Poison Ivy – with Cheerios®!
Shine Your Shoes with Cool Whip®!
You’ll discover hundreds of littleknown uses for well-known products at
WackyUses.com/uses.html.
Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-Mail
me at [email protected]
CJRTOOLS ebooks: 20 Percent Off
CJRTOOLS ebooks publishes easy-to-use guides to Mac OS
X 10.4 software, including Safari, Mail, System Preferences
and TextEdit. The ebooks features include screenshots to help
readers understand important concepts, appendices with additional resources, non- encrypted PDF downloads and free
updates. Usually priced between $7 and $8, Apple user group
members qualify for a 20 percent discount on all purchases
placed through CJRTOOLS’ Kagi store using the discount
code: MUGD14A73C
More info: http://homepage.mac.com/cjrtools/ebooks
Order: http://homepage.mac.com/cjrtools/ebooks/
orderebooks.html. Offer is valid through June 30, 2007.
HipIpodGear Accessories: 20 Percent Off
Is your iPod lacking personality? Nano just not impressing
you by size alone? Swank it up with more than just new
music: go ahead and put some hip into it with a new strap,
wrap, bone, doggy, star, iLink, skin, iRoll, iMagnet,
iMemory, miniMac or other accessory. HipIpodGear has
something for every iPod and then some. Better yet,
HipIpodGear ships across the globe. Want a better deal?
With the coupon code below Apple User Group members
can receive an additional 20 percent off.
Coupon code: tire20
Visit. http://www.HipIpodGear.com
Offer is valid through June 30, 2007.
Western Digital Hard Drives: 25 Percent Discount
Need more space for your business files, movies, pictures
and music? A Western Digital (WD) hard drive is the easiest
way to add extra storage. WD features the My Book line of
external hard drives, Passport portable hard drives, and WD
internal SATA II and EIDE hard drive kits. Get a 25 percent
discount on all products by logging on with an email account
and receiving a promo code that can be used for the purchase
of any WD hard drive. Use your email address to get a user
group discount code. http://www.wdc.com/partnerstore
offers and deals! The MUG Store’s consultants are available
to talk about the latest and greatest Apple products, including all the great products introduced at Macworld Expo. Be
sure to give the store a try. With one percent of member purchases credited to your organization, everyone wins!
User ID: ****
Password: ****
Premium Memory Products: 25 Percent Off
PremiumMemory.com is a leading online memory provider
with a commitment to superior memory products and worldclass service and support. All Premium memory is backed by
a lifetime warranty and made from top quality components.
Premium maintains a complete inventory of compatible Mac
memory upgrades and guarantees 100 percent compatibility.
For all your Mac memory upgrades, visit Premium’s web site
and receive a 25 percent discount on all Mac compatible
RAM upgrades purchased at PremiumMemory.com using the
coupon code below. Free shipping on all orders over $75.
Use your Coupon Code: MUG-25OFF to get 25 percent off.
http://www.premiummemory.com
This U.S. only offer is valid through June 30, 2007.
Looking for information on a past offer? Tom Piper and the
Apple User Group Advisory Board publishes a single page
with all current offers, expiration dates and codes. For example, continuing offers on great publications include: Mac|Life
magazine charter subscription - Macworld Magazine special
subscription offer - Take Control ebooks - Peachpit book
club - O’Reilly Publishing discount offers Also, be sure to
subscribe to Tom’s Apple User Group Market Report podcast, a great source for information about Apple user groups,
vendor discounts, special events and more. Current Offers:
Password - ****
Cordgo Accessory: Over 60 Percent Off
Cordgo is a one-hand operated cord adjustment and storage
accessory. Its durable, lightweight design fits in the palm of
your hand. Clip it on your belt or armband, or just slip it in your
pocket. Cordgo’s fast, easy storage saves you from ever having
to deal with tangled cords again. Cordgo was designed to perform as an integral component between cord and digital device.
Regularly priced at $9.95, Apple user group members can now
buy two Cordgos for $7.96; that’s 60 percent off regular price.
Coupon code: augvd2252
End cable clutter. http://www.cordgo.com
Apple User Group Market Report podcast
****Note: CMC User IDs and Passwords above
are located in your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
New Members Wanted!
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Acting Secretary
Jack Bass
[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.
CMC Meetings
FREE Raffle!
Discounted Books
is...free!
CMC April Meeting
FREE Classified Ads
[email protected]
A Special Date…A Special
Place…A Special Guest!
Friday, April 20, 7:00 p.m.
Middlesex Community
College in Middletown
(See special directions on p.12)
Photoshop Tips & Tricks
We’ve arranged this special date for
our special guest Lesa Snider King.
She’s well known as a Photoshop
trainer and graphic designer, as well as
for her work with David Pogue and her
husband Shawn King. With David she
helps produce the series of Missing
Manual books and with Shawn she cohosts the weekly internet ‘radio’ show,
“Your Mac Life.”
Lesa will help you develop your skills
in Adobe Photoshop Elements, and
allow you to bring new life to your
digital photos. She’ll also demonstrate the iStockPhoto service, which
allows anyone to download stock
photos inexpensively (for brochures,
presentations, school science projects).
Before the night is over, she’ll give
away a copy of Photoshop Elements
(with a $100 value)! Please note that in
addition to meeting on a special date,
we have a special location, Middlesex
Community College in Middletown
(directions on page 12 of this newsletter or on our website www.ctmac.org).
To learn more about Lesa, check out
her site at: www.graphicreporter.com
Account Balances
Balances as of April 4, 2007
Checking Account ........$1263.91
Money Market ..................$4031.93
Getting CMC email?
Display Ad Rates
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
Did you know
that CMC also
at www.ctmac.org
Business Card ...................$10.00
Half Page .........................$30.00
Full Page .........................$50.00
CMC Passwords/IDs
www.ctmac.org
• Your CMC
Membership
renewal date
(for free shipping
at MacConnection)
Valid:
1/31/07 - 4/30/07
Valid: 11/16/06 - 5/15/07
Password: ****
11
Monthly Meeting
Friday, April 20, 7:00 p.m.
Middlesex Community
College in Middletown
Photoshop Tips & Tricks
A special date for our special guest Lesa
Snider King, a well known as a Photoshop
trainer and graphic designer. Plus, she’ll be
giving away a copy of Photoshop Elements
to a CMC member (a $100 value)!
Visit our website: www.ctmac.org for more info.
See driving 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 April 20th Meeting at
Directions for CMC Monthly Meetings
Middlesex Community College
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 & turn
left onto Saybrook Road. Go a quarter of a mile & 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 MxCC Campus parking area. The
CMC meeting will be held in Chapman Hall; it's a large
modern building closest to the street. Park in the lower
parking lot by the building, enter Chapman Hall and go
upstairs to the 2nd floor. Our meeting will be held in the
Multi-Purpose Room just past the elevator.
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
At our March 28th CMC meeting, Joe Arcuri explored some of the best software
room
EG-013 on your right. This is the first room on your
for Mac that is either inexpensive or free. The software was all hand-picked
right.
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rooms for
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you
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12
Wishes .................................................1
Desk Doctor .........................................3
SyncTogether .......................................4
Adobe Lightroom .................................6
Looking for Apple...Shamrocks ...........8
MUG Offers ..........................................9
MAY 2007
Wishes
By Rich Lenoce,
CMC President
As my tenure as CMC president winds
down to its end next month, I can look
back over the last two years and see
some incredible Apple innovations. The
big news was the move to Inte,l and not
just the move, but how fast and smooth
the transition was.
As Apple gains market share, selling
33% more Macs year-over-year, what
can we expect in the future? I wish I
had a crystal ball, but since I don’t, I’ll
tell you about the things I wish Apple
would deliver.
A Sub-Notebook Mac
I like my MacBook; it’s small and thin
but it’s heavy. It tends to be overkill for
what I use a laptop for. What are my
options? I like the idea of the iPhone
and its many features, but that’s a lot of
money for a phone, especially since I
don’t have a need for one.
My favorite Apple device was the shortlived eMate. It was somewhere between
a Newton PDA and a Macintosh. It had
an incredible ergonomic design, a
miniature but usable keyboard, and
handwriting recognition. It was
expandable, used Flash memory and
could run for 24 hours on a single
charge. It was perfect for on the go
word processing, spreadsheets, wireless
Internet surfing (with a WiFi card) and
later, MP3 music.
In a similar vein, to me a small flashbased sub-notebook Mac would be the
ideal mini sub-notebook laptop that fits
“I
wish I had a
crystal ball, but since
I don’t, I’ll tell you
about the things I
wish Apple would
deliver”.
between the iPod/iPhone and the
Macbook. Its form factor would be
extremely popular with children and
school systems, especially if the price
was right. I’d buy one just for taking
notes and minutes for all the meetings I
attend.
Dump iTunes and Start Fresh
iTunes has become an overgrown bloated beast. For me it’s everything I hate
about an application. It tries to do
everything yet does nothing well –
except purchasing media from the
iTunes Store.
iTunes started out as a fast and efficient
product to rip and organize music. But
today, with 28,000 songs in my iTunes
library, it takes almost 5 minutes to
launch and then goes into a routine to
adjust volume levels and song gaps.
Organizing songs in large libraries has
become a nightmare. I’m constantly
scrolling through hundreds of playlists
to find the one I’m looking for.
The number of small quirks I find in
iTunes are just too many to mention.
Now that iTunes can organize and play
videos, is it a Media Center application?
No, because it doesn’t organize photos
1
and will only import and play a few very
specific video formats. However, most
of my videos are in DIVX, AVI, WMV,
and Flash formats. QuickTime can play
these videos; why can’t iTunes import,
organize and play them?
Today, iTunes seems to have become a
product intended for the purchase,
playback and organization of media
purchased on the iTunes Store. It does
a lot, but in my opinion it’s lost its
focus and doesn’t do things as well as
it once did.
Media Asset Management
To resolve these issues, Apple should
develop a consumer Media Asset
Management application, essentially a
database that would catalog all the
media and media libraries on a single
computer, or it could work over a network for the sharing of media by
multiple users.
This summer Apple will be releasing
professional Media Asset Management
software called Final Cut Server available for both the Mac and PC. I’m
betting it won’t be very long before we
see a similar consumer application to
help organize your iLife.
AppleWorks/Mac Office
I still think halting the development and
future of AppleWorks was one of the
dumbest things Apple ever did.
AppleWorks is not actually dead, it’s
still for sale on the Apple Store for $79,
but it hasn’t been updated in 7 years.
I’ve heard people argue that Apple
stopped AppleWorks because it comContinued on page 2
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George Maciel
Photographer
John Scott
Publisher
Connection, Inc.
41 Crossroads Plaza
PMB 1984
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Hartford, CT 06106
from our members!
the newsletter.
peted with MS Office. That isn’t really
true, as the two co-existed for many
years both on the Mac and PC with no
ill effects to Microsoft.
If AppleWorks were updated to take
advantage of all of OS X’s features and
applications, it could be a killer application. Imagine a new version of
AppleWorks integrating with Apple’s
iCal, iSync, AddressBook, Mail, .Mac
and iLife. The possibilities of what
Appleworks could do would be endless.
Not only did Appleworks have the usual
Office-like suite of applications, but
also drawing, image editing, web design
and even an easy to use database application. There was a huge community
creating and sharing templates, add-ons,
etc. It was a beautifully integrated product a school kid could understand, but
had enough power for everyday use.
And, it used virtually no system
resources – only 24mb of memory!
Why not update it and bring it back?
As I mentioned last month, my real
wish is a full-blown Mac Office application. It’s something Apple should
have waiting in the wings.
iMovie
I love iMovie. I use Final Cut Express
HD or Studio almost daily, but when I
want to edit a video quickly that looks
great – I use iMovie. It’s almost a perfect application except it needs a
second video track. Two video tracks
are definitely more intuitive than trying
to copy/paste onto a single track on the
time line.
Apple Virtualization
BootCamp and Parallels work great for
running those Windows applications
not made for the Mac. Programs like
CrossOver where a Windows application runs in OSX without Windows
doesn’t run as well, however this is an
interesting concept Apple could
exploit. CrossOver works by translating application calls to the OS. The
menu functions File>Save in any
2
Windows OS and File>Save in OS X
perform the same function but it’s like
the difference between English and
French; translation needs to occur.
I’m over simplifying the technology,
but CrossOver has proven this type of
virtualization does work. What if Apple
threw their development weight behind
such a project? Could they make it
work? I think so. This would eliminate
another excuse potential Windows
switchers have with Apple, that they
have to buy an expensive OS to run
their Windows applications on the Mac.
Apple Enterprise
and the Cheap Mac
Apple needs to make a cheap Mac,
made specifically for, and sold only to,
large corporations and school systems.
This Mac would be the equivalent of
the inexpensive Dell PC. This Mac
would not ship with Firewire, a
Superdrive, WiFi, or Bluetooth and
would contain only one processor.
Such a Macintosh could easily fit into
the Windows Enterprise. This model
would only be available for purchase in
volume to these organizations. A consumer couldn’t just buy one, they’d
have to buy the more expensive consumer models.
The catch is Apple would need a sales
team experienced in these environments who can go in and talk to IT
professionals speaking their language
and sell them on the Mac and Mac systems. Low prices would get them in the
door because for large companies that
replace PCs regularly, that’s what they
look for: volume purchases at low cost.
Why should Apple bother? Another
excuse people have about not using
Macs at home is that they don’t use
them at work. It’s a pain in the neck to
learn two systems. If people had a Mac
at work and liked it. they’d be inclined
to purchase one or two for their home.
Enough about my wishes. How about
yours? 
track of your mouse clicks and movements, plus breaks! Or, in Preferences,
you can set a harp to play when your
health numbers fall below the level of
your choice. This way, you don’t have
to look at your monitor, it’ll give you
audio feedback.
FRESHLY SQUEEZED REVIEWS:
Doctor, Doctor, Please...
by Frank Petrie
[email protected]
Product: Desk Doctor
Company: Einspine
<www.einspine.com/deskdoctor/
features.html>
I’ve been handicapped for near half of
my life now (not including my mental
instability :-) ), so I have tried everything to improve my computing
experience. Ergonomic keyboards and
mice, speech recognition, etc. But
there is nothing that I can recall seeing
like this piece of software.
“Desk Doctor is new software that
identifies Repetitive Strain Injury
(RSI) and targets it accurately with a
personal treatment plan. First the program guides you through on-screen
medical tests. Then Desk Doctor uses
its built-in reasoning to compile the
optimum video- guided exercise program to reverse problems and keep you
healthy.”
McCoy into the hatch. There’s a new
doctor in town. Desk Doctor by
Einspine. But to be safe let’s put it to
the test before I unlock the hatch’s
latch.
THE JUICE
Desk Doctor helps you with preventing
RSI, Repetitive Strain Injury. Who
does this affect?
“Computer workers, video game players, people who text a lot on mobile
phones or use PDAs are succumbing in
alarming proportions to a group of diseases caused by just sitting and
clicking. These conditions are usually
conveniently put under the umbrella
term ‘Repetitive Strain Injury.’ RSI
covers a wide variety of problems both
those with colorful names like Carpal
Tunnel Syndrome, Blackberry Thumb
and Trigger Finger as well as “painbetween-shoulder-blades” or one of
the hundreds of kinds of upper body
tendonitis.
“What these diseases have in common
is that they all can be caused by doing
the same repetitive movements over a
long time period. Doing them while in
a fixed posture, especially bad posture,
just multiplies the problem.”
The way Desk Doctor operates and
develops your exercise plan is by having you take a thirty minute test (it’s
suggested that you do this monthly) to
give you a set of exercises to counter
act the strains. The test is in two parts.
The first part is The Body Map. This is
where you pick specific areas of pain
or stiffness that you experience while
working at your computer.
The second part is a collection of fifteen exercises that helps the software
evaluate where your trouble spots are.
(Don’t worry if you’re not sure of how
to perform each exercise because
they’re all accompanied with a
demonstrative video.) These are
extremely thorough.
After you have completed both tests,
Desk Doctor’s Profile Viewer will
generate a series of exercises (also
accompanied by videos) for rehabilitation, prevention and specific
trouble spots.
The layout of the program is excellent.
Everything is easy to locate. You keep
a window on your desk that lets you
know when it’s time to do your exercises. It figures this out by keeping
3
THE PITS
Support has me on a fence. When I go
under the Help Menu and click on Help
- nothing. But they have an extremely
thorough support page on their FAQs
page that made up for it. Unfortunately
the link to the page is not under the Help
Menu, so you’ll have to bookmark it.
THE RIND
Nada.
THE PULP
Einspine’s Desk Doctor is right out of
science fiction. You can tell that a lot of
thought and late hour went into crafting this virtual doctor. This program is
more thorough with its questioning
than some of its human counterparts.
The price? It’s worth it. This isn’t just
any piece of software.
You’ve started to maintain your computer. Now, it’s time to maintain its
operator.
RATING: 9 out of 10 
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.2.7 or
later QuickTime 7 for OS X 256MB
total memory; 18MB available memory 500MB free disk space.
Price: $129.00US, single user
Binary: N/A
Test Rig: PowerMac G4/DP
1.42Ghz/1.5 GB RAM/OS 10.4.9
Review Date: 26 April 2007
©2007 Frank Petrie
Macsimum News contributing editor,
Freelance writer, Curmudgeon
Email: [email protected]
iChat: phranky
Archive: home.comcast.net/~phranky
Everybody Sync Now:
SyncTogether
Stands in for
.Mac Sync
Michael E. Cohen
<[email protected]>
Reprinted from Tidbits 876
I’m a fan of Mark/Space’s syncing products.
The Missing Sync for Palm OS, for example, has made my wife’s digital life much
more pleasant now that she no longer has to
deal with the not-always-reliable collaboration between Apple’s iSync and Palm’s
HotSync conduit to get her Palm TX and her
PowerBook G4 on the same page. So I was
delighted when Adam asked me to review
SyncTogether, the latest addition to
Mark/Space’s collection of syncing utilities.
Am I still delighted? Read on.
One Sync-ular Sensation – The $50
SyncTogether is based on MySync, an application that Mark/Space acquired last year
from the delightfully named MildMannered
Industries.
Like its predecessor, SyncTogether lets you
sync the same kinds of information that Mac
OS X’s .Mac syncing service does, but it
eliminates the need for you to purchase a
$100-per-year .Mac subscription. For those
of you who haven’t made your way to the
Sync view in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger’s .Mac
System Preference pane, these kinds of
information include such Apple offerings as
iCal tasks and events, Address Book contacts
and groups, Safari bookmarks, and various
Mail settings. Items from other programs,
such as Bare Bones Software’s Yojimbo, can
appear in the list, too.
What makes this all possible is Tiger’s Sync
Services, a set of functions that Mac applications can use to sync information between
devices and between other Mac applications.
SyncTogether taps into the power of Sync
Services to synchronize the same types of
information as .Mac syncing between Macs,
between different user accounts on the same
Mac, or both. This capability to sync
between different people’s Macs and
between
user
accounts
enables
SyncTogether to turn syncing into a form of
data sharing - a significant difference from
basic .Mac syncing. (You can read much
more about Sync Services in my book,
“Take Control of Syncing in Tiger” (shameless plug!), or by consulting a Mark/Space
knowledge base article).
The one notable exception in
SyncTogether’s set of information-syncing
capabilities is the Mac OS X keychain system: although you can sync keychains
between Macs using .Mac, SyncTogether
cannot. The SyncTogether documentation
remains silent on exactly why keychains are
excluded from the syncing party, but
Mark/Space tells me that Apple does not
provide third-party support for keychain
syncing. This is likely a security measure,
and a reasonable one, too - you don’t want
just any Tom, Dick, or Trojan messing with
your keychains, do you?
The license that accompanies SyncTogether
allows up to three Macs to sync their information. That’s three Macs, not three user
accounts: it’s possible to sync information
from as many user accounts as you care to
create on the three Macs that you can
license. SyncTogether can also sync information over a local area network (it’s
Bonjour-savvy), and across the Internet. You
can add more Macs to your SyncTogether
sync-farm in groups of three by purchasing
additional licenses.
Set Up...and Do It Again – SyncTogether
requires you to run an installer to get it on
your Mac, and, even before you do that, you
really, really, really want to read the Read
Me file, the first section of which, labeled in
bright red letters, strongly urges you to back
up your data. Since it’s all too easy with any
syncing software to select the wrong option
and blow away data, follow that advice. The
Read Me provides some hints for backing
up your iCal calendars and your Address
Book contacts, and, once installed,
SyncTogether’s built-in Help offers more
hints for backing up other kinds of data,
such as your Safari bookmarks. I dutifully
followed the Read Me’s advice and was
glad that I did, as you’ll see.
The installation procedure, while not timeconsuming, is not trivial, and odds are that
you’ll have to go through the final part of it the Setup Assistant - at least twice, since you
have to configure SyncTogether on at least
two Macs (or on two user accounts on a single Mac) to get any practical benefit.
For this review, I used my desktop iMac G5,
my MacBook Core Duo, and my almostbut-not-quite-retired 500 MHz iBook G3.
All three machines were running Mac OS X
10.4.9. SyncTogether requires version
10.4.7 or later, and claims to require at least
a G4 processor, although it did install without complaint on the venerable iBook G3.
On each machine, a SyncTogether folder
was created in the Applications folder, con-
4
taining the application, Read Me files, and
an uninstaller.
The first time you launch the SyncTogether
application, a Setup Assistant also launches to help you configure the program. You
can run the Assistant again later by choosing Setup Assistant from SyncTogether’s
Help menu.
When setting up SyncTogether, you first
must specify whether your Mac (called a
“node” in SyncTogether parlance) will act as
a “client” or a “server” and whether it will
join an existing “Sync Group” or create a
new group. These are new concepts for those
who are familiar only with .Mac syncing or
iSync, but they aren’t hard to understand: a
Sync Group is a set of individual nodes that
sync with each other, and a server is the one
node in the sync group that coordinates all
the syncing with the client nodes. (In fact,
iSync and .Mac implicitly organize syncing
this way, too: for iSync, the Mac running
iSync is the server and the devices connecting to that Mac are the clients; for .Mac,
Apple’s .Mac service is the server, and all the
Macs that sync with it using the same .Mac
account are the clients.)
The Assistant enables you to set up
SyncTogether nodes that aren’t on the same
local network. For one of these “remote”
nodes, you must specify an IP address and
a port number for the node. All the nodes in
a Sync Group must be accessible by either
Bonjour or IP address; if a firewall is present, the firewall must be set up to allow
traffic on the specified port number. By
default, SyncTogether chooses an available
port number at random for you, though the
built-in Help does suggest that port 50001
is a reasonable choice if you want to pick
one manually.
The Assistant then asks you to set a password that is used for encrypting the data
among all nodes in the Sync Group.
Next you specify which types of information
you want to sync. SyncTogether uses plugins
to handle the kinds of information it syncs,
and several of its plugins offer more finegrained syncing control than .Mac syncing
offers. For example, you can choose to sync
specific iCal calendars or Address Book contact groups with SyncTogether, instead of
the all-or-nothing iCal and Address Book
syncing choices that .Mac offers. You can
use this enhanced syncing capability to create calendars and contact lists that, through
the magic of SyncTogether syncing, you can
share among family members or co-workers.
continued on page 5
For instance, now my wife and I can share
our holiday card address lists and family
birthday calendars.
Once the Setup Assistant finishes its work
you are ready for your node’s first sync...
that is, if your node belongs to an existing
Sync Group. Otherwise, you have to set up
at least one more node because, obviously, a
node can’t sync if it’s the only member of
the Sync Group.
And Your Bird Can Sync – The SyncTogether
application window resembles the windows
of other Mark/Space products: a metallic
window containing a customizable toolbar
along the top, and a main pane below it that
can display several different views. In the
case of SyncTogether’s window, the three
views available in the main pane are Plugins,
Nodes, and Shop.
In the Plugins view you can change both the
types of data being synced and specific settings for some of the data types. In the Shop
view, you can order other Mark/Space and
third-party products (my copy is currently
offering some twelve products).
The Node view is the one you should have
showing when you run a sync. It shows the
status of the other nodes in your Sync
Group, and provides controls for enabling
and scheduling syncs with each node.
Mark/Space recommends that a node’s first
sync be done manually, and that you have
each node easily accessible during that sync
so you can respond to the dialogs and alerts
that Tiger’s Sync Services generates during a
first sync. With the update to Mac OS X
10.4.9, Sync Services no longer generates as
many first-time-sync-related dialogs as it did
in earlier versions of Tiger (nor does 10.4.9
allow you to delete a node’s data on the first
sync), but giving yourself easy access to the
syncing nodes so that you can watch for, and
respond to, dialogs popping up on one node
or another is still good advice.
Easiest of all is monitoring a first sync
between user accounts on the same Mac:
just use Tiger’s fast user-switching capability. Only slightly more difficult is monitoring
each node on a local network, such as the
small AirPort network I have at home: it’s
just a matter of walking from one room to
another. Monitoring a first sync among
remote nodes, or nodes on more geographically dispersed LANs, however,
means that you may also need to install
remote access software, such as a VNC
client, on the nodes so that you can
respond to the Sync Services dialogs.
After all the set-up work, running an actual
sync is almost anticlimactic. With
SyncTogether running on the nodes you
want to sync, you just click the Sync button
on the SyncTogether toolbar on any of the
nodes, and (if the network gods are smiling)
the nodes sync. As a sync takes place,
prominent progress messages appear in a
new, blue pane that opens in the main
SyncTogether application window on each
node. When the sync ends, the progress
pane vanishes.
Different Syncers, Different Song – Even
though both .Mac and SyncTogether use
Tiger’s underlying Sync Services, the two
have some different features.
I’ve already mentioned that SyncTogether
lets you separately sync iCal events and iCal
tasks. In addition, SyncTogether provides
three sync modes for each plugin: Normal,
Publish Only, and Subscribe Only. You
could create, for example, a master event
calendar by syncing a Publish Only event
calendar on one node: this calendar would
send new events to other nodes but would
not receive any from them. You could use a
Subscribe Only tasks calendar on a home
machine so that you could see tasks from
your synced work machine when at home,
but keep your personal home tasks private.
If you want a detailed view of what is going
on during a sync, the toolbar’s Sync History
button brings up a log of syncing activity.
You can also view this log, by the way, with
Tiger’s Console utility. It’s in
~/Library/Logs/SyncTogether/, and, if
you’re hungry for syncing details, you can
also use Console to check both the
SyncTogether.log file in that directory and
the main console.log, which also receives
some Sync Services-related messages.
One feature .Mac has that SyncTogether
lacks is the advanced Reset Sync Data command. With .Mac you can reset the contents
of your Mac’s data items with those from
.Mac - or vice versa - instead of merging
them. SyncTogether offers only a Reset
Sync History feature, and relies on Sync
Services to offer you the choice of resetting
the data the next time you sync - which it
doesn’t always do, in my experience. While
I can understand the necessity of not allowing one SyncTogether node to reset the data
on another SyncTogether node (for example,
I don’t think my wife would like me to
replace all of her holiday contacts with mine
without her say-so), I would like to be able
to reset the data on my local client node if I
think it needs a complete refresh drawn from
the syncing group’s shared wisdom.
Clicking the SyncTogether toolbar’s Info
button produces a drawer that shows detailed
information about the selected plugin or
node (the button is disabled in Shop view).
In the Node view you can use the Info drawer’s controls to set the sync schedule, IP
address, and port number for a selected
node, and to reset that node’s sync history.
Incidents and Accidents – I did have some
problems with SyncTogether. Although the
first sync between my iMac and my
MacBook went well, attempting to sync my
old and unsupported iBook did not: syncs
failed, processes stalled, and my synced data
got rather confused on the other nodes.
Fortunately, I did have backups of the data
and was able to set things right, and although
this was undoubtedly my fault, I would have
been happier if SyncTogether had been
smart enough to detect the unworthiness of
my old iBook and simply refused to install
or launch.
Other tools on the SyncTogether toolbar
include a Downloads button (used when
you download an update or for purchases
when you buy something in the Shop
view), a Cancel sync button, and a
Preferences button.
SyncTogether’s Preferences window offers
just a few settings and most users can probably ignore them, since the defaults are
sensible. If you need to tweak detailed network or security settings, you can access an
Advanced preferences sheet by holding
down the Option key when choosing
Preferences; most users won’t ever need (or
desire) to see this sheet.
5
As I dealt with the iBook fiasco, I attempted
to uninstall and reinstall SyncTogether and
discovered that the uninstaller does not do a
complete job. Several folders that
SyncTogether creates in ~/Library are not
removed by the uninstaller. This is both
intentional and common practice, according
continued on page 7
Gallery inside Lightroom before
uploading it to your Web server for all
to see.
Adobe Photoshop
Lightroom
By Maria O. Arguello
[email protected]
The Identity Plate allows you to brand
your own copy of Lightroom. This feature can serve to dazzle clients when
using Lightroom to review images.
“And Then There Was Lightroom ‹ a
Prosumer’s Experience”
Once you see the name Adobe, it doesn’t take long to realize that you are
going to have a powerful and elegant
experience using their products. Adobe
Photoshop Lightroom does not disappoint. It is Adobe’s newest program for
the professional photographer, but consumers who want a higher level of
managing and editing photos can also
enjoy its power. It is the toolbox to
manage, adjust, and present large volumes of digital photographs efficiently
and expeditiously so that you can spend
less time behind the computer and
more time behind the lens where you
belong.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom handles
digital RAW files seamlessly, plus just
about any other image format, thus
making it popular with the digital photographer.
There are inherent easy-to-use tools for
correcting images globally but one can
also access Adobe Photoshop for more
advanced editing power. I corrected several photos in Photoshop CS2 and it was
very impressively easy and fast to do.
Lightroom is built around five modules: Library, Develop, Slideshow,
Print, and Web.
In the Library module, you can view
photos in groups or individually. You
can select a group and place them in a
quick collection or assemble them into
lasting collections, and recall them at
any time. Lightroom is great at keeping
track of the imported shoots (sets of
shots) and allowing changes of keywords and metadata at any time.
The Develop module is your virtual
dark room with powerful tools to
enhance your photos. You can quickly
apply changes to a group of photos by
the click of the Synchronize button.
You can save the settings as a preset to
apply them again with just one click.
The History panel allows you to view
all the changes you’ve made. You can
see current changes and previous
changes and can jump back and forth
between the changes at will. The best
part is that any changes made to any
formatted photo are non destructive.
You can always go back to the original
quality of your photo.
Besides the tools for correcting color,
exposure, etc., Lightroom has powerful
cropping and straightening tools as
well as dust busters that can fix artifacts
created when camera sensors gather
dust. The sliders provide ease of use
without any significant learning curve.
The Slideshow module lets you create
stunning slideshows for your clients
and friends. You can quickly resize,
zoom, rotate, and crop photos to fit
your layout and save them to show off
in a Slideshow to wow your viewers.
You can also add music, backdrop controls, margins, and shadows. If you’re a
Mac user, use Apple TV to show off
your slideshow on your High
Definition TV with surround sound.
You can also export it to disc or email it
as a PDF to clients and friends.
The Print module offers superior printing
capabilities. You can quickly create contact sheets, proofs, or gallery prints. There
are a variety of templates to choose from
for contact sheets and single photo printing. You can also adjust and customize
them and save them as Presets.
The Web module lets you make Web
presentations in Flash or HTML. You
can view your Flash or HTML Web
6
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s competition is Apple Aperture. I have worked
extensively with Aperture since the
flawed first version. I am super
impressed with Lightroom for its speed
and ease of use.
Lightroom also has an enormous
advantage over Aperture in its System
Requirements; almost any Mac made in
the last 2 3 years will work well with
the program. By contrast, Apple
Aperture will not even install on anything less than a Mac with 1.5-GHz G4
PPC and most reviewers report that to
achieve maximum performance you
need an Intel-based Mac or a G5 with
high-end graphics cards. Lightroom is
also cross-platform (Win/Mac).
Aperture is only for the Mac platform.
Lightroom is blazingly faster than
Apple Aperture. I was impressed with
the ease of use and elegant interface. It
was FAST on both test systems!
I don’t like the Full screen mode; it’s
not really full screen. I also don’t like
not having keystrokes to switch
between Library and Develop modes.
However, these are minor deterrents
compared to the wonderful positive
experience photographers will enjoy
with this amazing application from
Adobe. It rates a very enthusiastic 5 out
of 5 apples for getting it right in the first
edition. 
Maria Arguello is the vendor liaison of the
Main Line Macintosh Users Group
(MLMUG). To see more reviews go to
<http://Mlmug.org/Reviews.html>. Maria
is also a member of NCMUG, PMUG,
CCPMUG, MUGSNJ, PPUG, and SJAUG.
She is the Apple User Group Regional
Liaison for the Northeast United States (CT,
DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT).
SyncTogether... continued from page 5
to Mark/Space, so the user’s data and preferences are in place in case the application is
reinstalled, but on the downside, if there is
corrupt data in those folders, a fresh install of
SyncTogether will pick them right up. (Note,
by the way, that you must deauthorize your
computer before uninstalling since you need
the software to issue the Deauthorize
Computer command.)
Hints and Allegations – SyncTogether also
has some deficiencies in its Help contents,
and some confusing idiosyncrasies in its
user interface.
Although SyncTogether’s built-in Help provides detailed explanations on how to set up
and run the first sync, it maintains almost
complete silence about subsequent syncs.
For example, I couldn’t find any Help topic
that mentioned that you must have the
SyncTogether application constantly running on the server node for scheduled
syncing to work - that information appears
only, and then by implication, on the last
screen of the Setup Assistant.
Another question on which Help is silent is
whether or not SyncTogether is compatible
with .Mac syncing. For example, I would
like to sync my iMac using both .Mac (so I
can access bookmarks and contents from
any Web browser on any machine) and
SyncTogether (to keep my MacBook current), but the Help doesn’t give a clue as to
whether syncing both ways would be clever
or daft. (In fact, Tiger’s Sync Services are
designed to allow just such multi-way syncing; of course, if a sync messes up through
one sync - say, an iSync sync with a flaky
mobile phone’s contact list - that mess will
Alarm Clock - 2.4.3
Menu bar alarm clock that
integrates with iTunes
It is spring, so I wanted something
small and easy. And I found an old
favorite, sprung again from the
ground. Alarm Clock has been
around for a while. But it is new for
Tiger. Free, and it uses 0% processor
while waiting. What could be simpler
than that? And you can make it sound
pretty, like spring!
happily propagate through other syncs, such
as a subsequent SyncTogether sync between
Macs. So it goes.)
On the user-interface side, SyncTogether
makes it difficult sometimes for you to figure
out which node a command affects. For
example, the Reset Sync History dialog first
says that the feature “will not affect any
other sync clients” but later says that the history “will automatically be reset on the
corresponding Server or Client as well.” In
fact, SyncTogether uses “Servers” and
“Clients” to refer to the nodes in a
SyncTogether group; a “sync client,” on the
other hand, is Sync Services terminology for
an application that makes use of Sync
Services (such as iSync or SyncTogether).
SyncTogether also enhances confusion by
employing a “user-name@machine-name”
convention to label each node, a convention
which, though familiar to programmers and
network administrators, probably looks an
awful lot like an email address to the vast
majority of users. (.Mac, by comparison,
uses a somewhat less confusing convention:
for example, in my syncing setup, the node
labeled
“michael@nimloth”
in
SyncTogether appears as “Nimloth Michael Cohen” in the Advanced view of the
.Mac System Preference pane.) Maybe I’m
picky, but when programming conventions
and terminology needlessly bubble up into
the user interface of a consumer software
product, it puts me off.
Unsynchronized Emotions – So, was I
delighted with SyncTogether? Not completely. Some of my lack of complete
delight, to be sure, is not altogether
SyncTogether’s fault: after all, the program
can only be as good as Tiger’s Sync Services
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 onetime 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
allows it to be, and Sync Services still has a
few rough edges of its own. Plus, some of
the problems I experienced were a result of
coloring outside the lines by running
SyncTogether on an unsupported machine,
although I wouldn’t have encountered those
problems if the installer had been slightly
more strict in its pre-flight analysis.
Bottom line: I can and do recommend
SyncTogether to any reasonably Mac-savvy
person who doesn’t want to pay for .Mac
and who doesn’t find the initial setup complexity daunting. I also recommend it to
small groups of Mac users (families, work
groups) who want to share some common,
Sync Services-friendly information like calendars and contacts with a flexibility that
.Mac currently doesn’t provide. And, despite
the flaws I found, I am confident that
Mark/Space will do a good job of maintaining and improving SyncTogether over time.
It wasn’t quite love at first sight for
SyncTogether and me, but I can honestly say
I did like it a lot. In fact, next week we’re
going out again for lunch, and then maybe
we’ll catch a movie: I hear “Yojimbo” is
playing at a revival theater nearby.
SyncTogether costs $50 and is a 16 MB
download; a 14-day demo is available. 
[Michael E. Cohen has worked as a teacher,
a programmer, a Web designer, a multimedia
producer, and a certified usability analyst.
He’s the author or co-author of several
books, including “The Xcode 2 Book,”
“AirPort and Mac Wireless Networks for
Dummies,” and of course, “Take Control of
Syncing in Tiger.”]
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!
* Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
* Mac OS X 10.4 Intel
Get it: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28932
7
Looking for Apple
among the Shamrocks
by David Gerstein
CMC Treasurer
Five years ago, when my wife and I first
visited Dublin, we were riding on a bus on
our way to the Gate Theater, when looking out the window I saw a sign in a store
window “Apple Computers.” Finding
such a familiar logo, made me curious
about the presence and status of Apple
and the Mac OS in Ireland. However the
constraints of time prevented me from
pursuing this further.
Now, five years later, having another
chance to return to Dublin in March of this
year, I decided to follow up my earlier
curiosity. I first Googled to check out
‘Apple Computers in Dublin.” The results
were meager. “The Apple Centre’ turned
out to be an Apple reseller as part of a
computer and electronics store. More
promising was “The Mac Shop” in Dublin
not far from the hotel we where we were
staying. Even more promising was the discovery of a Mac user group, ClubMac
(www.clubmac.ie) listed in “MacFormat,”
a British magazine.
I emailed successively the two officers listed in “MacFormat,” but I never received a
response. The home page on the web published the subject of the last group meeting
(March) but the content was available only
Apple Reports Strong
Q2 2007 Financials
by Adam C. Engst
<[email protected]>
Reprinted from Tidbits 877
Thanks to the holiday sales that boost Q1 profits, there’s no way Apple’s second quarter
results could have competed with Q1 2007’s
record-setting numbers (see “Apple Posts $1
Billion Profit for Q1 2007,” 2007-01-22), but
they’re still awfully strong. For the fiscal quarter ending 31-Mar-07, Apple posted revenue
of $5.26 billion (up from $4.36 billion in the
year-ago quarter) and a net profit of $770 million (up from $410 million). Gross margin
also increased significantly, at 35.1 percent, up
from 29.8 percent, showing that Apple is making more from each sale.
The strong numbers resulted somewhat more
to members. The home page showed a
membership of over 300 and listed activities supported by the group. Membership
fee is 20 Euros (@$28) a years.
Once in Dublin, I checked the local Yellow
Pages. No Apple store. “The Apple
Centre” at TechType was the only Apple
listing. Microsoft, on the other hand has a
listing in bold type and a presence in an
industrial park.
Walking down Grafton Street, a street
closed to vehicular traffic and consequently awash in a sea of moving humanity, I
discovered that the O2 store on Grafton
Street was an Apple reseller, In fact the
entire second floor was devoted to Apple
products, from iPods to Mac Pros etc. The
clerk there told that all the Apple products
they sold and serviced came from the UK,
that while he was aware of other resellers,
he was unaware of any Mac user groups.
Georgian Dublin and in walking distance
from my hotel. I dropped by and spoke
with the head honcho, Jonathan Kenyon.
The Mac Shop is not a reseller but a technical group that provides services and
advice to media and educational organizations. Our meeting was brief. Jonathan
Kenyon and his crew had just returned
from
the
International
Rugby
Championship in Rome where they provided the computer needs for the Irish
press and TV covering the event, using a
proprietary application, “Sports Code.” He
told me that The Mac Shop had been at
Merrion Square foe seven years, so I surmised they are doing very well. Merion
Square is one of the poshest neighborhoods in Dublin.
I concluded that Apple was a live but a
modest presence in Dublin and in Ireland
in general. No Apple Store. No whimsical
commercials on the local television channels. Some resellers. An elusive user group.
I have one more rock to turn over. I plan to
send an application and a check to Club
mac, Ireland and see what develops. 
I had better luck with The Mac Shop located at 60 Merrion Square in the heart of
from 1,517,000 Macs sold, up 36 percent over
the year-ago quarter, than from the 10,549,000
iPods sold, a 24-percent increase. Macintosh
sales accounted for $2.27 billion in revenues
(up 44 percent from the year-ago quarter),
whereas iPods contributed $1.69 billion (down
1 percent). The iTunes Store, iPod services,
and Apple’s sales of Apple and third-party
iPod accessories accounted for $653 million in
revenues, outstripping the $309 million Apple
brought in from sales of peripherals and the
$345 million from software.
It’s interesting that Apple’s unit sales of iPods
grew by 24 percent over last year’s second
quarter, but revenues dropped by 1 percent.
That would seem to imply that Apple is selling
more of the cheaper iPods. Also worthy of
note is that the shift in popularity from desktops to portables has continued. A year ago,
the ratio of desktop units sold to portables was
55 to 45 percent, where it had been for at least
8
a few quarters. But in Q3 2006, the ratio
switched to 40 percent for desktops and 60
percent for portables, and that ratio has held
steady ever since.
The share of Apple’s sales that came from
international markets remained flat from Q2
2006, at 43 percent, mostly thanks to a strong
showing in Europe that outweighed a drop in
Japan. The international sales percentage
dropped precipitously after Q2 2006 and has
been rising ever since. 
SeeFile Software: 20 percent off
SeeFile 3.0 is a new Mac OS X application that lets creative pros
share their work with clients, using their own Mac as a webserver. SeeFile creates private folders for clients (each with a
private username and password) and creates live thumbnails of
photos, PDFs, and videos. It is ideal for wedding and commercial photographers, design firms, videographers and print
providers. Specially priced at $395, user group members receive
20 percent off the list price, for the five account entry version;
upgrades and eCommerce options are available as well. Order
by phone or email with the coupon code provided.
Coupon code: AGXE
Order by phone. (617) 262-2421
Order by email. [email protected]
Learn more. http://www.seefile.com.
Offer is valid through July 31, 2007.
FastMac:TruePower High Capacity iBook Batteries
Does your iBook lose its battery life extremely fast? Replace it
with a new larger capacity and longer lasting TruePower battery.
Every TruePower battery comes with a one-year warranty and
30-day money back guarantee. Receive 20 percent off MSRP by
using the following coupon codes on the FastMac store, or by
mentioning the User Group when placing an order over the
phone by calling (866) 416-FAST (3278).
12-inch iBook Battery - use coupon code “AUGB01”
14-inch iBook Battery - use coupon code “AUGB02”
http://www.fastmac.com
MacAddict Reborn: 40 Percent Off New Mac|Life
The Mac market has evolved, and so has MacAddict. Starting
with the February 2007 issue, MacAddict has become Mac|Life,
the new Mac magazine that changes all the rules. This publication recognizes Apple’s dynamic role in work, play, and life, and
will appeal to core Apple users. Features include in-depth howtos, stunning design and exclusive information. Mac|Life is the
ultimate magazine about all things Apple. Mac|Life is offering a
one-time Apple User Group member charter subscription rate of
$14.95 for 12 issues - 40 percent off the basic subscription price.
Subscribe today. http://www.maclife.com/mugsub
CrossOver Mac: 20 Percent Off
CrossOver Mac allows you to run many popular Windows software applications on your Intel Mac. Your applications,
documents and email attachments are seamlessly integrated into
the Mac OS X. You work as you would in Windows, but with the
freedom and ease of the Mac. You do it all easily and affordably,
without needing a Windows license. CrossOver Mac offers user
group members a special price of $47.96, a 20 percent discount
off the regular price of $59.95.
Special Code: macuser
Order today. https://www.codeweavers.com/store/
The MUG Store offers great specials and blowouts your members should scour through every month. It’s like an online garage
sale on Mac odds and ends with extra special offers and deals!
Be sure to give the store a try. With one percent of member purchases credited to your organization, everyone wins!
Updated access information is available at:
Ovolab Geophoto: 25 Percent Off
Ovolab Geophoto is a new Mac OS X application for browsing
and collecting digital pictures by location. You can now browse
your photo albums by panning, zooming and flying through your
pictures on a three-dimensional representation of the Earth. Once
geotagged, photos can be shared with other users and will automatically appear in the correct location on the Earth when
opened in Geophoto. User group members can purchase
Geophoto at the special price of $14.95, a 25 percent off the retail
price of $19.95.
Coupon code MUG4E7H
Check it out. http://www.ovolab.com/geophoto/
That’s Easy: Apple UG Market & Apple User Group Offers
Looking for information on a past offer? The Apple User Group
Advisory Board also offers a colorful web page with all current
offers (some of which have been updated), expiration dates and
codes: http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers/vendorcodes.htm
Password - ****
Mushkin Memory: Reseller Prices
Mushkin Perfect Match products for Apple are specifically
designed for Mac users. They have been creating enhanced
memory for more than a decade, and believe in providing the
highest quality products at the best value. Mushkin PerfectMatch
upgrades are the smart choice. They carefully select components
and program each module to match the manufacturer-installed
memory and provide guaranteed compatibility. A user group web
store is now available with the same pricing given to resellers
(discounts of 20-40 percent) insuring the best possible price for
all Mushkin Mac products. Visit Mushkin’s special User Group
Store. http://www.mushkin.com/doc/deals/appleusergroups/.
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group Market
Report podcast, which this month is featuring Jon Parshall of
Codeweavers (makers of CrossOver Mac), and Kevin Anderson
of the Apple MUG Store (specifically designed for user group
members). The AUG Market Report is a great source for information about Apple user groups, vendor discounts, special
events and more:
Apple User Group Market Report podcast
For public information about vendor offers and more visit
9
New Members Wanted!
[email protected]
860-347-1789
[email protected]
860-291-9393
Treasurer
David Gerstein
[email protected]
Acting Secretary
Jack Bass
[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.
CMC Meetings
FREE Raffle!
is...free!
FOR SALE: Power Mac G5 Dual
2.0GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB Hard
Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE with
128MB. Date of purchase June 22, 2006.
AppleCare Protection Plan Expires June
21, 2009. It has not even been turned on.
Long story, bought it for a project but
ended up not needing it. It’s brand new,
box/keyboard/all the stuff inside.
Asking: $1900. Todd M. LeMieux,
413.747.9321 [email protected]
CMC April Meeting
FREE Classified Ads
[email protected]
Wednesday, May 30
UConn Health Center
Farmington
(See driving directions on p.12)
Back To Basics – 6pm
This month’s session covers the essential pieces you need to bring music and
audio recordings into your Macintosh.
With the intent of saving your recordings of old (that aren’t available on
CD), what equipment will you need?
We’ll answer that question and more
in this meeting opener.
iTunes and iPod:
Not Just For Music – 7pm
The ubiquitous portable media player
from Apple is most often associated
with making your music portable.
And there’s no doubt that this is the
iPod’s forté. However, there’s a
wealth of audio out there which isn’t
intended to make you tap your feet.
Books on “tape,” podcasts and lectures are all enlightening forms of
audio content that also benefit from
portability. This month’s main program focuses on how to get these
recordings into iTunes on your computer and onto your iPod. From files
that are ready to go and just an
Internet-click away, to ones you
recorded yourself, we’ll cover it all.
present yourself?
Email us at
[email protected].
Account Balances
Balances as of May 2, 2007
Checking Account ..........$876.65
Money Market ..................$4035.24
2007 CMC Elections
Display Ad Rates
2007-08 nominations:
Chris Hart
President
Business Card ...................$10.00
Quarter Page.....................$20.00
Jerry Esposito
Vice-President
Half Page .........................$30.00
Full Page .........................$50.00
Jack Bass
Secretary
Reginald Dionne
Treasurer
CMC Passwords/IDs
www.ctmac.org
• Your CMC
Membership
renewal date
(for free shipping
at MacConnection)
Valid:
1/31/07 - 4/30/07
Valid: 11/16/06 - 5/15/07
Password: ****
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, May 30, 7:00 p.m.
UConn Health Center
The essential pieces you need to bring music
and audio recordings into your Macintosh
iTunes and iPod:
Not Just For Music – 7pm
Program focuses on how to get Books on
“tape,” podcasts and lectures into iTunes on
your computer and onto your iPod.
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
Was our April meeting as “special” as we billed
it!?! You bet! Not only did Lesa Snider King join
us for our first-ever Friday night meeting, but
she brought along her husband, Shawn King (inset), host of Your Mac
Life. Kindly serving as Lesa’s warm-up act, Shawn spoke on Apple and
the state of the computer industry. Then we got to the down to the focus
of the evening – learning about Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.
Lesa shared enough tips and tricks to fill a small book. I’m sure several of you attending wore out a pen or two taking notes! CMC thanks
Lesa (and Shawn) for coming to see us and contributing a copy of
Photoshop Elements for our raffle! (It was won by artist Bill Dougal.)
You
can
follow
Lesa’s
photo-rich
adventures
at
www.graphicreporter.com
Freehand Discontinued ........................3
An Introduction to AppleScript.............4
iPod & iTunes for Dummies .................6
Review: MacFusion ..............................7
Download of the Month........................7
Peter’s Hometown Computer Corner ...8
MUG Offers ..........................................9
JUNE 2007
Now some thanks are in order
First congratulations and
thanks to the new elected board
members. Chris Hart has been a
source of support to me these
last two years. Chris has presented some outstanding
monthly General Meeting and
Back to Basics presentations,
and will make an excellent
President. Jerry Esposito, our
new VP, steps into the role of
coordinating the presentations.
His background in graphics,
marketing and the many uses
for the Mac means we will have
some interesting and exciting
programs coming in future
months.
Time Flies
By Rich Lenoce,
Past President, CMC
As my presidency draws to a close,
this is my last front-page article. I
have to admit; it’s been pretty nice
being able to spew my often visceral opinions to a large segment
of the Connecticut Macintosh
faithful. You aren’t getting rid of
me that easily; I hope to continue
writing for this newsletter by providing reviews and opinions.
These two years have gone by very
fast and I’d like to think much has
been accomplished. We were able
to stave off a slide in membership by
running a membership drive and doing
mass mailings to MacHome subscribers. Though MacHome went the
way of the Dodo, we picked up a sizable number of people from that
membership drive, which has kept our
membership and budget solvent. Like
the Mac, our numbers are growing!
The bulk of our budget, and your
membership dues, goes towards publication of this newsletter and despite
increased costs in both printing and
postage we’ve been able to maintain
the quality of the newsletter and not
raise membership dues. Through our
annual auction and other fund raising
activities, we’ve been able to keep a
handle on our budget. We have a creative group on the board and they are
always looking out for your best interests and have been able to keep our
dues stable. I’ve been a member over
10 years and have not seen an increase
in dues.
Visit the new website at
http://www.ctmac.org
You’ll notice CMC has a new website.
. . and if you haven’t seen it you should,
at ctmac.org. Our old website was getting cumbersome to manage. Before,
Board members had no way of updating information; all content additions,
however minor, had to go through our
Webmaster. The site is now set up
using WordPress, an application that
allows any member of our board to
update information instantly through
their web browser without knowing
one bit of HTML. This new way of
managing content will get CMC and
Mac news to you quickly. This has
been a two-year project involving our
entire Board and especially Aaron
Czarnecki. Over the next few months,
we’ll be moving the legacy content to
the new site so that all the things you
enjoyed about the old site will be
accessible to you, if they aren’t already.
1
Secretary Jack Bass has been on the
board for many years and brings real
experience to the decision making
processes. Jack is one of the most
knowledgeable individuals I know, a
true renaissance man, who brings his
intellect and effective management
style to the board. When I’m in a
dilemma, I call Jack and he says “Look
at things this way...” and he’s almost
always right. Treasurer Reginald
Dionne, our newest member of the
board, brings his business experience
to the position and I thank him for stepping up to this position and I am sure
he will manage the books well.
Big thanks go to David Gerstein, our
former treasurer. David and I are in
constant touch. David tracked our
membership, took in the money and
paid our bills with real efficiency. He
kept track of every nickel and dime.
Continued on page 2
He’s done a terrific job with one that
can sometimes be difficult.
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.
Deena Quilty and George Maciel produce our newsletter each month.
Thanks to them we have the best Mac
user group newsletter! It not only looks
good, they even make my writing literate. They do their job with
professionalism and grace and couldn’t be nicer to deal with. John Scott
provides us with wonderful photographs to help make our newsletter
pictorially engaging. Thanks to John
for the good work.
Deb Foss has been a source of support
over the last two years. She arranges
for the terrific room at UCHC and
gives us a top notch Download of the
Month. She’s the person I go to when
I’m looking for that special piece of
software for some unusual task.
I could not have done this job without
the support of Joe Arcuri and Don
Dickey, former presidents who know
the ins-and-outs of getting things done
and who temper my Italian impulsiveness; steering me to a more
group-involved management style. I
cannot thank them enough. I value
their advice and friendship.
Finally, there is the Grand Dame of
CMC, Connie Scott. Connie has been a
member since the very beginning and
she knows every rule and by-law.
Whenever I’m about to fall flat on my
face, Connie picks me up. She knows
the club’s history, its processes and
procedures and is always in tune with
what members expect of their board. I
can’t thank her enough for keeping in
me focused on the mission of CMC.
In closing, I’d like to thank all of you,
our members. I’ve really enjoyed serving you. It has been an honor.
Bob Sawyer is the “can do” board
And now I pass the baton on to Chris
member, and whenever I’ve asked Bob
Hart. Good luck. 
for anything, he not only delivers, but
goes the extra mile. He
jumps through hoops for
“You aren’t getting rid of
CMC. There is no one nicer
me that easily; I hope to
to deal with.
continue writing for this
newsletter by providing
Special thank you to Aaron
reviews and opinions.”
Czarnecki for the new website, for making it work and
for training each of us in its use. And,
thanks to Brian Desmond for his
Webmaster wizardry and keeping our
site’s content current.
A Presidential Effort!
CMC meetings take a huge effort on the part
of the board. Here, outgoing president Rich
Lenoce (left) with past presidents Joe Arcuri,
Don Dickey and incoming president Chris
Hart prepare for the May presentation.
2
FreeHand Discontinued
Reprinted from Design Tools Monthly
www.design-tools.com
Adobe has announced that no further development will be devoted to FreeHand, which
Adobe acquired when they acquired
Macromedia in 2005. This competitor to
Illustrator was last updated nearly four
years ago, and named FreeHand MX.
Adobe will no longer update or patch
FreeHand for new operating systems or
hardware (including Intel Macs), but they
will continue to sell and offer support for
FreeHand MX.
In recent issues of Design Tools Monthly, we
have encouraged FreeHand users to migrate
to Illustrator, and have mentioned resources
to smooth the transition. Adobe has made the
process easier by including in Illustrator CS3
the ability to directly open FreeHand 9, 10
and MX documents. In addition, Adobe has
a helpful “FreeHand to Illustrator
Migration Guide” on its website at
www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/switch.
But if you have a lot of files to migrate, we
recommend watching “Migrating from
FreeHand to Illustrator CS3”, by Mordy
Golding. This five-hour self-paced video
training focuses on real-world differences
and how to adjust for them. It’s only available online at www.Lynda.com, starting at
$25/month. Adobe is offering a special
upgrade to Illustrator CS3 for FreeHand
users, at just $199.
We salute Altsys, the original developers of
FreeHand, for many years of providing features superior to Illustrator, with a much more
efficient interface. Throughout the 1990s,
reviewers consistently ranked FreeHand higher than Illustrator. For your amusement and
enlightenment, at the end of this message
we’ve included a timeline of FreeHand features that Illustrator took years to adopt – or in
many cases never adopted at all.
FreeHand, we’ll miss you. You served the
graphic design community well. 
D! FreeHand Firsts: a Timeline
E
U
1988 – FreeHand 2:
IN
T
• Auto-trace • Editable blends • TIFF import
N
O
C
• Custom fills and tiled fills
S
DI
• Multiple pages in any mix of sizes and orientation
• More features (if anyone remembers, let us know!)
• A 54” square area for document pages, which fits 24 letter-sized pages
with extra space for pasteboard items • Auto-fit text to box
• “Wrapping tabs” to wrap paragraphs within columns in tables
• A Knife tool that can automatically close the paths it cuts
• Copy and paste attributes from one object to another
• Objects can snap to Objects as well as to guides
• Perspective tool to make objects appear to be angled toward or away from you
• Documents can be viewed in up to eight different windows
• Individual layers can be set to be viewed as Keyline or Preview
• Zoom up to 1,638,400% (draw bacteria at actual size!)
• Automatic trapping • An Eyedropper tool that picks up colors from imported images
• Graduated and radial fills with up to 64 colors
FreeHand 5.5:
• Accepts Photoshop plug-ins, to control scanners or apply filters to images
• Place drawn objects within text blocks so they flow with the text
• Export pages or selected objects as bitmap images
• Drag and drop in both directions between FreeHand and Photoshop
• Blend between spot colors • Blend between gradients • A Chart tool
• Search and replace object attributes • Export FreeHand to Shockwave (Flash)
• Transparency in vector and bitmap objects • Use Symbols for repeating elements
• A Graphic Hose to spray symbols • A Reshape tool to push and pull paths
• Assign any keyboard shortcut to any command • Drag/drop selections from Photoshop
• A Picture Usage dialog box • A Collect for Output feature
• A Magnify Lens to create a live, “zoomed” copy of any area
• Add hyperlinks to objects and export to PDF, HTML or Flash
• Export to Photoshop format with layers intact • Convert a document to grayscale
• A Lasso tool to select freeform areas • A Magic Wand tool to select objects
• An Envelope tool to distort graphics and text
• Perspective grids that reshape objects as you edit the grid
• Export multiple pages in HTML format. • Export layers and blends as Flash animations
• Master pages • A Symbol library • Print an area of a page
2003 – FreeHand MX:
• An extrude tool for adding 3D effects to objects • Edit gradients directly within an object
• Item styles • Connector Lines that connect objects and move along with them
• An Eraser tool to erase portions of vector objects
2007 – End of life.
Design Tools Monthly™ is published by The Nelson Group, Inc. Its purpose is: 1) to summarize all the news in
graphic design technologies; and 2) to be a designer’s index to trade publications and websites. Information is
collected from graphic design and prepress trade publications, websites, technotes, press releases, and user reports.
3
He’s never used an application
like iTunes to organize his
music before now, choosing to
use cryptic filenames instead.
To make matters worse, most
of the songs are old and don’t
contain lovely ID3 Tag info,
such as artist information.
This makes it a nightmare for
iTunes for the following reason: all his song files are
named something like “015 Gwen
Stefani
Rich
Girl.mp3”. When you import a
song like that into iTunes, the
artist, album and all other
fields are blank and the song’s
name contain “015 - Gwen
Stefani - Rich Girl”. This system was fine on Windows for your friend, but he really
wants to use iTunes and grab artwork and more, all requiring the artist, album, and name fields to contain the right
information. He could go through each song (about 800)
and edit this via copy/paste, but that would take months. He
turns to you for help. Let’s write an AppleScript! (Note: this
story is fairly accurate)
Geek Speak:
Random Mac Stuff
You Need to Know
http://www.macfanatic.net
An Introduction to AppleScript
by Matt Brewer
Copyright © 2007
Reprinted from The
MacCompanion newsletter.
Mac OS X has several scripting
capabilities built right in. Basic
shell scripting, Perl, Python, PHP,
and Ruby are ones that come to
mind most often, especially if you
are coming from the Unix/Linux
realm. However, there are two other
important features to note that are deeply integrated in Mac
OS X: AppleScript and Automator, with its introduction in
Tiger. I’ll be talking about Automator in a future article.
Conceptual Overview
AppleScript has been around for ages and has support in most
of the mature/full-featured applications today. AppleScript
can be used to write applications complete with buttons, sliders and more, by creating a new “AppleScript Application” in
XCode. For more information about AppleScript, visit
http://developer.apple.com/applescript/ for Apple’s
Documentation and The Apple Script Source Book with
tons of examples at http://applescriptsourcebook.com/
First thing we need to do is open the Script Editor. You can
find this in /Applications/AppleScript or just by using
Spotlight for “Script Editor”. This is the program that we’re
going to use to write our scripts. It will check for errors in
our syntax (basic structure/use of the language) and let us
run our scripts right from this window.
Our First AppleScript Application
We are going to be doing all of our magic here by interacting with iTunes. The basic approach to tackling this
problem is to get a list of selected songs from iTunes, and
change the name and artist information for each song. So,
to work with iTunes, the first thing we need to type is tell
application “iTunes”. Anything following this and before
the end tell will be commands given to iTunes. There are
several commands available, such as pause/resume playback, creating a new playlist and more. However, we’re just
interested in what songs the user has selected in iTunes. To
get a list of the selected iTunes tracks, we’ll use set _songs
to selection. This command assigns the variable _songs, to
the currently selected iTunes tracks. This way, if the user
changes the selection while our script is running, we’ll still
have the original songs he wanted changed.
We are now going to get down and dirty with AppleScript.
You can download the completed script here –
http://www.macfanatic.net/software/samplecode/convertitunes-applescript.zip
I firmly believe the best way to learn is to just get started,
so with a few brief notes, we’ll get started AppleScript is an
elegant and simple language. There are several different
ways to accomplish the same simple task because of this.
This will easily become apparent once we get started. If
you’ve ever programmed using another language, this
might take some time to get your head around, but you’ll
live. For anyone wondering if you should take the time to
learn AppleScript, I’d say yes! It was designed for the average computer user to create scripts to make their life easier.
So, without further ado, let’s get scripting.
Now we’re going to make sure that our friend selected at
least one song, because if he didn’t, we don’t have a thing
to do. if _songs is {} then display dialog “Please select
songs and run the script again.” will take care of that. If the
Problem Description
Your friend has just made the switch to Mac and is enjoying himself until he goes to import his music in iTunes.
continued on page 5
4
but we do need the artist name. The artist’s name is everything in between those two hyphens, with a space before
and a space after, that we’ll remove. The code looks for the
first hyphen, and then the second hyphen, and copies the
text out of that to _artist.
selection was empty, our script will show an error window
displaying that message.
Now we are going to count how many songs we have in our
list (the ones our friend selected to be converted). We’ll do
that by set num_songs to (count of _songs). This statement
is a little more complex than our previous ones. We are creating a new variable called num_songs here (and anytime
we use the set something to something). Instead of just setting it to a number, we’re going to ask _songs for the
number of items it contains, by calling (count of _songs).
Then we’ll set num_songs to that.
Now we just need the song’s name. This is just everything
after the second hyphen, and that gets copied to _name. To
actually change the values back in iTunes, the magical code
is set artist of _song to _artist as string and set name of
_song to _name as string. Once all of the songs are done,
we show a window telling the user that everything went
okay and we’re done.
Conclusion
We now know how many songs we have and we’re going to
set up a loop. A loop is a way of writing statements so that
the same thing will be done each time, but to different
pieces of data. In this case, for each song in our list, we’re
going to change the name and artist. AppleScript has a
beautiful loop structure. repeat with i from 1 to num_songs.
This statement declares i (the letter i, like “eye”) and i will
be 1 the first time, 2 the second time, and so on until i is
num_songs. We’ll use i as a way to know when we’ve
messed with every song in the list and to access each song
in the list.
That certainly wasn’t an in-depth look at AppleScript by
any means. There are several more possibilities if you learn
your stuff and explore. Most applications will come with
scripts available to use and there are tons built in to Mac OS
X itself. Just fire up the AppleScript Utility and select the
“Show Script Menu in MenuBar” to have a list of preinstalled scripts at your disposal.
With some tweaking you could make this little script more
powerful by first making sure that the song being converted meets the criteria (this will crash if it gets a song with
more hyphens, spaces, or more) and letting the user set
some settings for the format. The latter suggestion could
would make it easier for someone to use it if “Stephani,
Gwen - Rich Girl” was the format of the names. You get the
picture.
Here is a look at what we’ve done so far. I have placed the
end repeat and end if and end tell at the end of each
respective call. This acts just like curly braces do in most
languages, to let the computer know you are done executing statements that pertained to the loop, or if ( )
statement, etc.
If you have any questions/suggestions about what you’ve
read here today, then be sure to drop me an email at the
one listed below. Thanks for reading! I also encourage
you to visit the MacFanatic Message Boards at
http://macfanatic.net/board/viewforum.php?f=11 and look
for this article as a thread. Let me know if you’d like another article like this one soon! Then look around the message
boards for more great advice and discussion.
We now need to know what’s in the “Name” field for each
song because that’s what contains the information we’ll use
to fill in the artist/name fields later. To get a nice “song”,
we’ll use set _song to (item i of _songs). Every time we go
through the loop, i will increment by 1. Therefore, i will let
us access every item in the list of songs. So, every time we
go through the loop, if we set our _song to the ith item in the
list, we’ll be all set to do whatever we need to with that particular song.
Contact Info
Yo u c a n a l w a y s s e n d m e a n e m a i l a t
[email protected] or visit my website
at http://www.macfanatic.net for more information
about me and my ramblings. I also produce a weekly
audio podcast taking an in-depth review of cool and
new Mac applications, along with tips, developer interviews, tutorials, and the occasional tutorial. 
Now we’re going to grab the actual name of the song we’re
working with. This will be some text, particularly, “015 Gwen Stefani - Rich Girl” in our case. set song_path to
(name of _song) will give us that text we need. We’ll pick
out the parts of that text we need for the name of the song
and its artist in the next block of code.
I’m not going to walk through the code for parsing the text
for your sake. However, I’ll give an overview of what the
code is doing. We have song_path as the name of the song,
once again, “015 - Gwen Stefani - Rich Girl” in our example. We don’t need the numbers at the front for anything,
5
playback (Chapter 6); sharing content on networks (Chapter 7);
managing photos and videos
(Chapter 11); baking your own discs
with printed inserts (Chapter 14) and
decoding audio encoding (Chapter
18). There is also a good index and
an appendix section with additional
information and web resources for
the Internet related to the iPod.
iPod and iTunes for
Dummies (4th edition)
Reviewed by Dr. Eric Flescher
Reprinted from
The MacCompanion newsletter
Strengths: Covers a lot of territory
about iTunes and iPod. Covers topics in breadth and depth. Easy to
read but informative.
Weaknesses: Only black and white,
but easy to read.
The iPod and its software iTunes
have been a hit for millions of computer users and is the MP3 player of
choice. There is no manual for the
iPod or iTunes. While both the hardware and the software are easy to use
and easy to understand, there are
music lovers who want to know
more about their devices right away,
instead of waiting to hear from a
friend how to find or do something.
That is where iPod and iTunes for
Dummies (4th edition) fills the void.
While most of the Dummy books are
adequate, there are some that stand
out to an even greater extent. These
offer good in-depth and comprehensive
advice,
tutorials
and
information, especially for price.
This one is a great one to get you
started, whether you are an iPod
novice or have upgraded your
knowledge to new versions of the
software or device.
Both authors have written more than
a dozen books on computers, desktops publishing and multimedia and
their experience is displayed with
prowess in this book. iPod and
iTunes for Dummies is packed with
information in its 6 parts that include
28 chapters and span 432 pages.
I like thie way this book is organized
and set up. It is easy to read, yet
informative and helpful. While it lacks
color, the readable format including
illustrations, readable screenshots and
photos make it stand out.
There are also special insights that
are noted with special icons throughout the text. Five highlight icons are
entitled “Remember,” Technical
Stuff”, “Tip”, “Warning”, “On the
Web” and serve to target important
information in the chapters.
This 4th edition covers the latest
updates: Set up iTunes and iPod;
buying music and videos; importing
music into iTunes; burning CDs
from iTunes; get wired for sound;
organizing your songs, playlist and
more; getting the most out of your
battery; selecting and encoding format; recording and editing sound;
adding podcasts and
working with sound
shows. The book
also explains in
details how to use
the iPod as a hard
drive storage unit.
Special parts of the
book that some
users might find
useful in particular
are Using Airtunes
for wireless stereo
6
While it might be a Dummies book,
it does not “talk down to you.” It is
not only a good read, but also the
price is a good one for what it offers.
The book is a great resource guide.
The best way to look through the
book is to read the sections that are
most interesting and jump around.
There are many good books out
there, but this one is definitely worth
considering 
Title:
iPod & iTunes for Dummies,
4th Edition
Authors:
Tony Bove and Cheryl Rhodes
http://www.dummies.com/
WileyCDA/DummiesTitle/
productCd-0470048948.html
Released: October 2006
432 pages, $22 USD
ISBN: 0470048948
Figure 1: Copy an album of songs directly from the iTunes library to the iPod.
Review:
MacFusion
by Rich Lenoce
Past President, CMC
One thing that has always bothered me
about having off-computer disk space on
an FTP, WebDav, SSH server is that they
tend to be too much work to casually
use. You have to launch an application or
call up an OS X “Connect...” session, log
in and then use some type of interface.
Why not just mount the space as a Disk
and use it like you do any disk in the
Finder? Thanks to Google, now you can,
using MacFusion.
MacFusion is an application that resides
in the Finder menu that can connect you
to this space at any time, even at start-up.
Your space appears as a drive in The
Finder and on The Desktop and you can
manage it like any OSX folder or disk.
I am constantly connecting to FTP
servers for a variety of purposes especially to manage web sites and
MacFusion has become my file transfer
manager of choice. FTP transfer and file
management is as easy as dragging and
dropping. The website I use the most and
manage every day is set to mount on my
desktop and in the Finder at log-in or
start-up. If I’m working on a website say
in Dreamweaver, rather than using
Dreamweaver’s built-in FTP feature I
can just Save as…from the document. I
can also open documents right from their
location.
This program is also an answer to people
who have iWeb yet don’t have a .Mac
account and find publishing to a folder
and then using a separate FTP application cumbersome. With MacFusion,
setting up an iWeb site on a FTP server
is a snap as you can publish directly to
you FTP server as you’ll just see it as
you would any other disk or folder right
in The Finder.
MacFusion started as an open-source
Linux application, Fuse, and was ported
to the Macintosh. You’ll need to install
MacFUSE, the underlying open source
application before installing Google’s
MacFusion. Both are available from
Google’s website. MacFusion’s plug-in
architecture means Google and other
ImageJ 1.38s
http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/download/
osx/ij137.tar.gz
Can’t afford Photoshop? Well I have had
this on my machine for ages, since it was
called NIH Image. We used it for doing
pictures for publication in journals. Now it
is newer, more modern, and easier to use,
but remember . . . it’s good enough for government work. <LOL> Enjoy!
ImageJ is a public domain Java image processing program inspired by NIH Image
for the Macintosh. It runs either as an
online applet or as a downloadable application on any computer with a Java 1.1 or
later virtual machine. It can display, edit,
analyze, process, save and print 8-bit, 16bit and 32-bit images. It can read many
image formats including TIFF, GIF, JPEG,
BMP, DICOM, FITS and “raw”. It supports “stacks,” a series of images that share
a single window. It is multithreaded, so
time-consuming operations such as image
file reading can be performed in parallel
with other operations. It can calculate area
and pixel value statistics of user-defined
selections. It can measure distances and
angles. It can create density histograms and
line profile plots. It supports standard
7
developers can devise a range of file systems to be adapted for MacFusion such
as using space on G-Mail accounts,
WebDAV, Flicr and almost any other
service where online space is assigned.
I’ve been using MacFusion for several
weeks. I have five FTP accounts and two
PCs networked using MacFusion. Two
of these connections are made at startup/log-in and the others I mount through
a pull-down list in the menu. I find
MacFusion to work flawlessly. It’s simple, easy and makes network technology
totally transparent. The only problem I
have, but it’s not the fault of MacFusion,
is that some of my network connections
are set to time-out from lack of use.
MacFusion informs me of the disconnection and I’m one-click away from
remounting the connection.
What I like best is that now my backup
program (DejaVu) can backup to one of
these connections or visa versa where I
can backup my network drive space to
my Mac!
I find MacFusion not just a great tool but
a tool I use daily. Give it a try. 
image processing functions such as contrast manipulation, sharpening, smoothing,
edge detection and median filtering. It does
geometric transformations such as scaling,
rotation and flips. Image can be zoomed up
to 32:1 and down to 1:32. All analysis and
processing functions are available at any
magnification factor. The program supports any number of windows (images)
simultaneously, limited only by available
memory. Spatial calibration is available to
provide real world dimensional measurements in units such as millimeters. Density
or gray scale calibration is also available.
Will run on the following systems:
• Mac OS X 10.0
• Mac OS X 10.1
• Mac OS X 10.2
• Mac OS X 10.3
• Mac OS X 10.3.9
• Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
• Mac OS X 10.4 Intel
Peter’s Hometown Computing Corner
MedicineNet.com
Medicine Net at MedicineNet.com is a terrific site for info
on a wide variety of medical topics:
• Diseases & Treatments • Drug Information
• Medical Dictionary
• First Aid & Emergencies
[email protected]
© 2007- By Peter P. Gladis
Welcome to Peter’s Hometown Computing Corner, your
“site” for info on making your computer more productive
and entertaining using the Internet. Unless shown otherwise, sites are listed with what comes after http://www.
In “Diseases & Treatments”, there are hundreds of subjects.
“Drug Information” describes a huge group of drugs and
explains usage and potential side effects. In addition, it
offers an “Ask The Experts” area where questions can be
searched by medical specialty or subject. The “Medical
Dictionary” provides common-language explanations of
medical terms. There are also good links to other healthrelated WEB sites.
This month our category is…HEALTH
You may have used the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR)
in the past for info on medications; and your health info
probably came only from doctors (or your next-door
neighbor!) Today, the WEB offers access to many OUTSTANDING health resources. Below are some of the
remarkable sites dedicated to health information:
Healthfinder.gov
The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services has an
excellent site, Healthfinder.gov with “HOT TOPICS” like
Flu, AIDS, Medicare, Tobacco, etc. In its “TOOLS”
Section, there are links to other resources like a Medical
Dictionary, On-line Journals, State Health Departments,
and Support & Self-Help Groups on dozens of conditions.
HealthAtoZ.com
HealthAtoZ.com Lists 126 health-related topics from
Allergies, to Birth Control, Eating Disorders, Irritable
Bowel Syndrome, Sleep Disorders, etc. (but no “Z” topic?)
The site has chat rooms where you can chat on-line with
experts and others with the same problem. There are news
articles, e.g. “Is The Lyme Disease Vaccine Safe?”, “Don’t
Be Fooled By Low Cholesterol Levels”, and it also has an
excellent drug guide, medical condition forums, and
Family Health section
WebMD.com
One of the most comprehensive HEALTH sites is
WebMD.com. It has an array of subject choices, like
“Condition Centers”, “Sports & Fitness”, “Member-ToMember Message Boards”, “Living Better”, a Medical
Library, etc. In addition, it has excellent up-to-date articles
and News stories on relevant Health topics. 
Yahoo.com/Health
Yahoo.com/Health has an amazing set of Health links
(over 19000!) organized in 42 Topics. Click on “Children’s
Health” and view 150 sites from Burn Injuries, to “KIDSHOME” (a site for kids who have Cancer, HIV, and other
illnesses), to the Teenage Health Interactive Network. Or
click on “General health” and get access to 73 great sites.
Peter’s World Wide Web “Wacky Site of the Month”
Remember “Winky Dink”? Or “Kukla Fran & Ollie”, “Deputy Dawg”,
“Wonder Dog” or “Fraggle Rock”? These Saturday Cartoons are
memorialized at RetroLand.com. Here “Heckle & Jeckle”, “Crusader
Rabbit”, “The Jetsons”, “Scooby-Doo”, “Rocky & Bullwinkle”, and
more help rekindle your early childhood Saturday morning memories.
an easy way to help prevent unauthorized people from accessing your
computer through your local network
or through the Internet. If you don’t
already have your Mac’s firewall
turned on, this is a great opportunity to
activate it.
CS3 Installer Shuts Off
Mac OS X Firewall
Reprinted from Design Tools Monthly
www.design-tools.com
The Adobe Creative Suite 3 installer for
Version Cue CS3 Server disables your Mac’s
firewall so that it can configure new outgoing
network ports, but it does not reactivate the
firewall when it is finished – potentially leaving your Mac open to malicious attacks.
Version Cue CS3 Server is included with
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium,
Design Standard, Web Premium and Web
Standard. It is installed by default as part of
the full Creative Suite 3 installation.
To re-enable the Mac OS X built-in
firewall, do this:
1. Choose Apple menu> System
Preferences.
2. Click the Sharing Preference Pane.
3. Click the Firewall tab.
4. Click the Start button to turn your
firewall on. (If the button says Stop,
your firewall is already running.)
Enabling your Mac’s built-in firewall is
8
We don’t know if Adobe is planning to
change the Creative Suite 3 installer,
but they are offering the same advice
that we are: Check your firewall settings yourself.
You can view Adobe’s CS3 installer
security advisory at:
http://www.adobe.com/support/
security/bulletins/apsb07-11.html
iVak 2G nano iPod cases: 20 Percent Off
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The New Nano 2G case is offered specifically to user
group members for $19.95, a 20 percent discount off the
normal price of $24.95.
Coupon code VAK20D2G
Order at this user group only page: http://www2.
vakaadoo.com/nano-2g-softfeel-discount.asp
Offer is valid through August 31, 2007.
DriveSavers is offering user group members an exclusive
one-time 20 percent discount on every successful data recovery. The usual $200 minimum attempt fee has also been
waived; if the data is not recoverable, there is no charge.
Discount Code DS# 80200
Find out how to send in your drive. (800) 440-1904
Learn more about this amazing service.
http://www.drivesavers.com.
MarinerPak: 27 Percent Off
Replace your copy of Microsoft Office with the awardwinning MarinerPak which contains a powerful word
processor and spreadsheet for Mac OS X. These streamlined applications offer the features required by most
users - features you will use, including the ability to read
Word and Excel files. Regularly $89.95, user group
members can get the boxed edition of MarinerPak for
only $65.66, or the downloaded version for $58.36,
either of which is 27 percent below retail.
offers and deals! The MUG Store’s consultants are available to talk about the latest and greatest Apple products,
including all the great products introduced at the
Macworld Expo. Be sure to give the store a try. With one
percent of member purchases credited to your organization, everyone wins!
06/01/07 - 09/31/07
User ID: **** • password: ****
Shop and save. http://www.applemugstore.com
To get this discount, scroll to the bottom of the shopping cart
page listed below, enter the promotional code and click Go.
Promotional code: User
Download a free trial copy:
http://www.marinersoftware.com/download.php
Order using this page. go to:
http://www.marinersoftware.com/shopproduct.php
1Passwd: 25 Percent Off Password Manager
1Passwd has browser extensions that automatically save
and fill in your passwords and other sensitive information without the need for copy-and-paste. Its ability to
fill online forms and provide bulletproof protection from
phishing attacks and keylogging attempts makes it the
best-selling password manager for Mac. Better yet,
1Passwd provides all of this with only one password to
remember.
Looking for information on a past offer? The Apple User
Group Advisory Board (UGAB) also offers a colorful web
page with all current offers, expiration dates and codes:
Current Offers
Password - ****
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group
Market Report podcast – a great source for information
events and more:
For public information about vendor offers and more:
Normally $29.95, user group members can receive a 25
percent, buying 1Passwd for only $22.46; additional savings are also available for a Family License and Palm
versions.
Order today. http://agilewebsolutions.com/promo/mug
9
New Members Wanted!
President
Chris Hart
[email protected]
Vice President
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Secretary
Jack Bass
[email protected]
Treasurer
Reggie Dionne
[email protected]
Past President
Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
Ambassador
Joseph Arcuri
[email protected]
Editor
Deena Quilty
[email protected]
Design
George Maciel
[email protected]
Raffles
Robert Sawyer
[email protected]
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Brian Desmond
[email protected]
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[email protected]
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[email protected]
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and event
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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
At our May meeting, the 2007-2008 CMC officers were elected. They are (left
to right) Jack Bass, secretary, Jerry Esposito, vice president, Chris Hart,
president, and Reggie Dionne, treasurer. Special thanks go out to our outgoing officers Rich Lenoce and David Gerstein for all their valuable support.
VM2Go Manages Parallels ...................4
iPhone: The Missing Manual................4
My First Days with iPhone....................6
Review: FLVR .......................................5
Review: Sketch .....................................5
MUG Offers ..........................................9
Stuff You Should Know
About Adobe CS3
By Chris Hart
President, CMC
Which CS3 Is Right For Me?
Adobe offers a ridiculous number of
variations on Creative Suite 3 and few
of them have names in common with
prior versions. So no one will blame
you for being confused as to which
one is right for you. Your best bet is to
go to www.adobe.com/creativelicense
and click on the Product Selector. This
interactive guide will ask about the
kind of work you do and then suggest
the appropriate version of CS3 for
your needs.
Can You Reach The Bar?
CS3 has system requirements that
some may find quite demanding. The
most prominent of these is the fact
that you must have Mac OS X version
10.4.8 or later installed. I have to say
that I was rather surprised at Adobe
setting the bar this high for entry into
the CS3 club. I realize there are technical software development reasons
(primarily related to engineering
for Intel-based Macs) for this. But
OSX 10.3 is still a good operating system that’s in wide use.
JULY 2007
don’t have at least twice that amount
of space available on the hard drive in
your Mac, then you need to do something to free up space (or get more
space) beforehand. I say this so that
your Mac will continue to have space
to save temp, scratch and virtual memory swap files once you actually start
using CS3.
First Step: Backup
If you aren’t performing backups of
your computer data on a regular basis
(why the heck aren’t you!), the least
you must do is to create a backup
before making any significant changes
to your computer. Installing this large
suite of software from Adobe would
certainly be categorized as a significant change!
Remove CS3 Trials and Betas
If you previously downloaded a trial
or public beta version of any of the
CS3 applications, you should properly
The other notable requirement is
that you must have 1 gigabyte of
system RAM. (Of course, if
you’re doing graphic design on
your Mac, you should have no less
than that to begin with.) CS3 will
also occupy a lot of hard drive
space–roughly 6 gigabytes. If you
remove them before installing your
full, purchased copy. Not doing so
could cause significant issues with
installing CS3 apps. Please visit the
links below for more info.
http://tinyurl.com/ynuwwk
http://tinyurl.com/2oqebv
Not To Be Taken Lightly
The installation of CS3 is a not-soinsignificant undertaking. I would
suggest that you not plan on doing this
when you find yourself with a spare
moment. You should really take the
step of actually scheduling the installation. Put it in your day planner, and
choose a day and time when it doesn’t
conflict with your work deadlines or
personal commitments. If something
goes wrong, or it takes longer than
you expected, you won’t be disrupting
your life or your work.
Enjoy A Good Book
The installation of the full CS3 suite
takes quite a while, so don’t plan on
babysitting it. Once you start the
process, it will run fine unattended.
Come back in, say, a half-hour and the
installation should be complete.
Go curl up with a good book (perhaps the one Adobe includes in
the box. Wow, a real, bound book
inside of a software box. A dying
breed!)
I suggest occupying yourself
elsewhere during this lengthy
process, because you must not use
your Mac while software is
installing. In fact, before you run the
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.
installer, you should
close all running
applications. (Look in
the Dock for icons
with triangles under
them. Apps with triangles are currently
active and should be
quit. The exceptions
being Finder and
Dashboard.)
No Guarantees
The CS3 installation process doesn’t
always go smoothly. I recently
installed it on a client’s older G4 (dual
500mhz processors), which easily met
the system requirements. Despite this,
the installation of CS3 failed on the
first try. Be prepared for the possibility of some hiccups.
Play Fair
Following installation you will need to
enter your CS3 serial number and perform an activation of the software.
This activation utilizes an Internet
connection back to Adobe’s corporate
lair to link your serial number with the
particular computer you have installed
it on. The Adobe software license
allows you to legitimately install CS3
on your desktop and laptop Macs if
they are both “your” computers and
CS3 will not be used on these systems
simultaneously. For all other uses, you
need to buy an additional license for
each computer.
Sayonara FreeHand
The CS3 suite includes some products
that Adobe acquired as part of their
acquisition of Macromedia in 2005.
However, Freehand isn’t one of them.
There is to be no more development
of this venerable illustration application. The last version released was
called “MX” and it will see no
upgrades or updates.
Although Adobe will
continue to support this
application for a while
longer, Freehand users
should definitely start
now on their transition
to Adobe Illustrator,
Deneba Canvas, or other
suitable alternative.
In the case of Illustrator,
Adobe has made the
transition easier by
including in Illustrator CS3 the ability
to directly open FreeHand 9, 10 and
MX documents. They also offer several helper documents on their
website.
• FreeHand to Illustrator Migration
Guide at http://tinyurl.com/256ycg
• Migrating from FreeHand to
Illustrator: A Technical Resource at
http://tinyurl.com/2aun36
• FreeHand to Illustrator Migration
FAQ at http://tinyurl.com/yq84gj
Installing CS2 After CS3
Inevitably, some of us will have a need
to keep Creative Suite 2 on our Mac,
despite upgrading to CS3. If you’re
one of those people and you end up
having to reinstall Adobe Creative
Suite 2 after you’ve already installed
CS3, you might have trouble. In fact,
the CS2 installer may outright refuse
to install Acrobat, Illustrator and
InDesign. So if you’re starting from
scratch, make sure you install CS2
before CS3. But if you are looking to
reinstall CS2, because it’s not behaving correctly, you may also end up
having to start from scratch.
Specifically, you’ll have to trash the
Adobe application folders related to
Creative Suites 2 and 3. Then you will
install CS2 followed by the installation of CS3. Thanks Adobe!
continued on page 3
2
Oh, and after that ordeal don’t forget
to reinstall any third party plug-ins
you may have.
GoLive to Dreamweaver
The Design Premium, Web Standard
and Web Premium versions of CS3
include an extension that migrates
GoLive CS2 Projects to Dreamweaver
CS3. But if you download the CS3
software (instead of purchasing it as a
boxed disc), this extension is missing.
The only solution is to contact Adobe
Technical Support. More info:
www.adobe.com/go/kb401546
CS3 Installer
Disrupts Mac Firewall
Not all of us use (or need) the firewall
that is built into Mac OS X. But if you
do utilize it, you should be aware that
the Adobe CS3 installer disables it
during the installation process. That
wouldn’t be a problem if it properly
re-enabled it when the installation
process is done. The problem is...it
doesn’t! So make sure you do so yourself. We mentioned this in last
month’s CMC newsletter and you can
find detailed steps there. You can
download a pdf copy of the June CMC
newsletter from www.ctmac.org.
Collect for Output, but this script only
collects linked images, not fonts. Here
are two options:
• Worker72a’s Scoop is a $47 plug-in
that collects placed graphics and
fonts and can also extract embedded
raster images. www.worker72a.com
• Code Line’s Art Files is $50 and
works separately from Illustrator. It
can look at an Illustrator document
created with Illustrator version 8 or
later (including CS3) and collect the
appropriate placed graphics and fonts.
It can even do Illustrator documents in
batches, making it easy to send complete projects to other designers or
printers. www.code-line.com
Learning How To Use CS3
The famous online training site,
Lynda.com, has many tutorials on all
of the CS3 applications, including
steps that ease the transition from previous versions.
www.lynda.com/promo/cs3live/
In Conclusion
I hope you find this collection of info
helpful. If you discover any useful
info about CS3, please make a point
of sharing it with your fellow CMC
members. 
Which Adobe Creative Suite 3 Is Right For You?
Go to www.adobe.com/creativelicense to decide.
Application
Design
Premium
Update Your Font Management
The makers of the font management
utility Suitcase, Extensis, have
released updated the auto-activation
plug-ins for Suitcase Fusion to provide support for CS3 apps. Get your
updates at www.extensis.com
Likewise, Insider Software has
released an update to the excellent
FontAgent Pro. They’re at:
www.insidersoftware.com
Collect for Output in Illustrator
Even this latest edition of Illustrator is
missing the integrated function for
“collect for output.” It does have a
script in its Scripting folder named
3
Standard
Web
Premium
Production
Premium
Standard
Master Collection
VM2Go Manages
Parallels Virtual
Machines
By Joe Kissell
<[email protected]>
reprinted from TidBITS#884/18-Jun-07
As I’ve been using, and recommending, Parallels Desktop (http://www.
parallels.com) more frequently as a
way to run Windows on Intel-based
Macs, the question of how to back up,
move, delete, and otherwise manage
Parallels virtual machines has come
up regularly. One utility designed to
address this need is BriteMac’s $15
VM2Go at www.britemac.com/, a 1.5
MB download.
At its most basic level, VM2Go
copies virtual machines - which comprise at minimum a configuration file
and one or more disk images - to
another volume (another hard disk, an
iPod, a USB flash drive, or a DVD).
Obviously, since we’re talking about a
grand total of as few as two files, you
can easily do the same thing in the
Finder or in any backup program.
However, VM2Go does a few other
things that make it more useful than it
might appear at first blush.
For one thing, VM2Go almost instantly finds, and lists, all your Parallels
virtual machines on any mounted volume. If you have many virtual
machines, if you’ve stored them in
nonstandard locations, or if you’ve
lost track of where they are, this is a
handy way to locate them all.
Furthermore, if you manually move a
virtual machine from one location to
another, in some situations it won’t
run from the new location because the
old, no-longer valid path to the disk
image is hard-coded into the configuration file. VM2Go automatically
corrects this, when necessary, so you
don’t need to edit the file yourself to
reflect the new disk image location.
VM2Go also provides an easy way to
delete all the pieces of a Parallels virtual machine (including a Desktop
icon, if any).
The current version of VM2Go, 1.22,
only partially supports the justreleased Parallels Desktop 3.0. That is
to say, it’ll copy the configuration file
and disk images just fine, but it doesn’t yet know how to handle new
features such as Snapshots, and can’t
correctly report the size of disk
images formatted for Parallels
Desktop 3. The developer says that a
new version, which will correct these
and other issues, is under development, with an expected release in the
next several weeks.
At the moment, VM2Go is most useful for people with more than one
Parallels virtual machine - and the
more of them you have, the more useful it becomes. (If you have just one
virtual machine, it seems to me that
copying the appropriate files in the
Finder is simple enough that you
should save your $15.) On the other
hand, the more virtual machines you
have, the more likely you are to be
highly technically proficient, and
therefore outside VM2Go’s target
market. Still, I could foresee being
much more enthusiastic about
VM2Go in the future if it also supported VMware Fusion virtual
machines (something the developer
says he’s looking into), if it could split
backups across more than one DVD,
or if it could create additive incremental archives of virtual machines automatically backing up only the
changed bytes of a virtual machine’s
disk image on each run (rather than
copying the whole file every time).
The combination of all those capabilities would make for a truly
interesting utility. 
4
iPhone:
The Missing Manual
From O’Reilly book
Did you buy Apple’s new iPhone? If
you’re waiting for David Pogue’s
“iPhone: The Missing Manual” to
come out in August, then you can purchase a copy now and get the PDF
version as soon as it’s available.
Order the special pre-release bundle
from O’Reilly, and you’ll get the PDF
of the entire book as we’re shipping it
off to the printer (we’re hoping for
July 17th). Then you’ll get your printed copy of the book as soon as it’s
ready in early August. Just click “Add
Bundle to Cart.” We’ll place a confirmation of your order in your account
and email you with instructions for
downloading the PDF of the book as
soon as it’s available.
Note: Your credit card will be charged
$5.00 when you place your order and
the rest will charge when your book
ships in August. This promotion ends
August 3, 2007.
(Sorry the user group discount is not
valid with this offer.)
You can order your “iPhone: The
Missing Manual” book and PDF bundle here: http://www.oreilly.com/
catalog/9780596513740/?CMP=EM
C-iPh0ne&ATT=ugroup 
Review: Sketch
the Filters menu and scroll down to sketch. A side bar will
appear with 14 choices. Don’t worry about your first choice
as that same menu will appear in the next window with the
effect already rendered on your photograph. Any one of the
effects can then be applied, plus there are six more dropdown menus to choose from. Then play to your heart’s
content. It is truly amazing what this application can do.
By Jack Bass
CMC Secretary
A very good plug-in for Photoshop
or other similar programs is the
plug-in by Akvis called Sketch.
This application changes any photograph into a watercolor, charcoal
or fourteen other configurations almost instantly. Every
rendition can then be altered in a many degrees of stroke
thickness, detail, light/dark balance or other added configurations too numerous to mention. This is accomplished by
moving sliders or clicking on labeled icons.
When you arrive at what you want you click OK, save,
and/or print.
Download the a 10 day trial version at
http://akvis.com/en/sketch/index.php
As always, it is best to work on a copy even though all
effects can be cancelled by clicking in the upper right corner if you don’t like them. The changes are so fast that you
can view many changes in very little time. Some images
may need to be changed to grayscale in Photoshop under
Image>Mode, as it may have a pink tinge when converting
it to charcoal, as an example.
After the plug-in has been dropped into the plug-in folder
in Photoshop it will appear under filters after restarting.
Then, open a photograph, size the photo so that all of it can
be viewed on your monitor to judge the effects, and go to the
Review:
FLVR (saves videos from YouTube)
recently viewed in Safari. Could it be any easier? In preferences you can specify where to save the file and its format,
but it works fine without any tweaks. Now you can transfer
those Youtube videos to your iPod and pretend you have an
iPhone. Fool your friends!
by Dave Greenbaum,
[email protected]
When I read about the beta, I eagerly tried it. They developers were smart and allowed beta testers to buy the
program for only $8.00. Now the program costs $15.00,
still a bargain for what it does. My only complaint besides
the name (which derives from the .flv extension of certain
video files), is that it only works with
Safari. It would be nice if it worked with
Firefox, but that’s like saying you’d turn
down the iPhone because it only comes
in black!
Sometimes a product comes along that is so simple and so
straightforward that there is very little to say about it. What
do you say about a screwdriver–it drives screws and does it
well. No FAQ needed! FLVR does one thing and one thing
only: saving videos from web sites that normally prevent
you from doing so, such as
Myspace and Youtube. However it
does this one thing better than
anyone else currently out there.
After installing FLVR, there is an
icon on your Safari toolbar of a
movie camera. To save a recent
video file, just click the movie
camera and select any video
Overall: Elegantly simple and powerful.
Pros: Works great for saving videos
Cons: Very small: only works in Safari.
Trial: http://flvr.en.softonic.com/mac 
5
My First Days
with the iPhone
Reprinted from
TidBITS#886/02 Jul-07
By Glenn Fleishman
<[email protected]>
While stopped at a traffic light north
of Seattle yesterday, the driver in the
car to the right of us gestures through
the window. Did we leave our gas tank
door open when we left the station a
moment ago? No. “Hey,” he says to my
wife Lynn after she and he have rolled
down their respective windows, “Is that
an iPhone?”
The day before – the day after the
iPhone went on sale – walking through
a festival at a nearby community park
and museum, I pull out my iPhone to
take a picture of my son Ben standing
next to an historic bell. An older
Japanese woman says to me, “4 gigabytes or 8 gigabytes?”
Those two experiences sum up the
intense interest that Apple managed to
generate around the iPhone through a
combination of indifference, secrecy,
and strategic information release.
I bought an iPhone Friday night, and
the experience was both fun and
instructive. After two days of use, I’m
very pleased with the combination
phone, iPod, and Internet device. It has
proven invaluable in a couple of cases,
and it has already failed me, too.
Astute readers may know that last week
I wrote a column for The New York
Post (http://www.nypost.com/seven/
06262007/news/columnists/dont_get_
hung_up_on_buying_an_iphone_
columnists_glenn_fleishman.htm) in
which I presented the reasons why people who didn’t fit into the early adopter
or business traveler categories should
wait to buy the next-generation model.
My suggestions from that article still
stand: there’s good reason to wait until
the next release, but likely less reason to
wait beyond that one. (The article was
labeled by Post editors as a “first review”
and the version that appeared implied
(http://db.tidbits.com/article/8811) that I
had recent experience with an iPhone.
However, I hadn’t touched one since
January; see “iTouched an iPhone,”
2007-01-15. For my account of writing
the Post article, see my blog entry “Glenn
Stabbed in Nude iPhone Review!”)
http://blog.glennf.com/mtarchives/00
7732.html
The Worst Part Was (Not) the
Waiting – Purchasing a new iPhone
wasn’t the ordeal I expected. While the
line was long at the University Village
Apple Store, it moved quickly and there
were plenty - and I mean plenty - of
iPhones left in view by the time I
reached the door.
I had arrived after 5:00 PM to check out
the scene, and take a bunch of photographs. This particular Apple Store, the
first of Apple’s stores to open in the
Northwest, had a line with at least 300
people waiting. Only a few had been
there more than a day, and many just a
few hours. A nearby AT&T Store had a
line of perhaps 60 people. (TidBITS
Contributing Editor Mark Anbinder and
various TidBITS readers also contributed photos to the Flickr pool.) I
waited near the entrance until 6:00 PM
to watch the Apple Store open, and
dozens of people were allowed in initially. I left to get into the shorter AT&T
Store line, figuring that I’d do better
there. After 20 minutes of waiting,
however, only a few people had left
with iPhones.
Another person in line popped up front
and discovered that AT&T was forcing
everyone to buy accessories. This was
confirmed by Brier Dudley, a reporter
for The Seattle Times, who bought his
model at a different AT&T Store, as
well as by reports from across the country. It wasn’t a corporate-directed
mandate, because apparently signs
were hand-lettered, and the deal was
different everywhere. Most stores didn’t
seem to have this requirement.
6
Customers at AT&T Stores that did were
told that they had to buy an accessory
package, comprising a car charger and
some other item, typically running $50 or
more, and that they could return items for
a full refund either the next day or within
14 days.
This was a punk move by AT&T, and I
imagine it will involve CEO-to-CEO
conversations between AT&T head
Randall Stephenson and Steve Jobs.
These were all company-owned stores,
so there’s no one to blame but upper or
middle management. I expect that the
firm just engaged in commonplace upsell
tactics with an exclusive phone. But they
lost a lot of individual good will, and the
stories that spread will keep people out of
AT&T Stores in the future to avoid that
kind of nonsense.
I left the AT&T Store line, and returned
to the Apple Store, where half the line
had already been served by 6:30 PM. I
was in the store within 20 minutes and
out of the store 2 minutes later. Anyone
arriving at 7:00 PM would have waited
no more than five minutes. There was
clearly a large supply on display, and
store employees brought out large bins
of iPhones from the back.
The sleazy tactics at the AT&T Store
near me weren’t universal, thank
goodness. TidBITS friend and Take
Control editor Karen Anderson spent
a chunk of Friday waiting at another
nearby mall at an AT&T Store, and
had a quick and pleasant experience in
purchasing her iPhone. (Karen is a
former Apple employee.)
continued on page 7
While waiting, I and a few people
around me discussed the arbitrage of
the iPhone availability. When we were
far from the store, we all thought we’d
buy two, and immediately sell one for a
higher price on Craigslist. As we got
closer, we realized that initial demand
might not outstrip supply. In the end,
we all bought only one each.
One bit of wisdom acquired in the
Apple Store is that while the iPhone is
covered by Apple’s warranty today AT&T doesn’t offer its usual terrible
cell phone damage/loss insurance Apple will be offering some AppleCare
deal in July. Two store employees
described this separately; I haven’t
been able to find details on either company’s site yet.
iPhone availability apparently is fluctuating, with AT&T Stores reporting
mostly being out of iPhones on
Saturday, but Apple Stores receiving
what sounds like a regular wave of
shipments. Apple created an iPhone
retail store availability page that indicates whether iPhones are available at
area retail stores.
Pleasant, Like a Cool Bath on a
Sultry Day – Activating the iPhone
was as simple for me as Apple and
AT&T claimed it would be. It was a
few steps and a few minutes to upgrade
my existing AT&T cell phone account,
transfer my phone number, and be up
and running.
Two Macworld editors had worse luck:
one had a problem with a business
account that had been converted to a
personal account last week in preparation, while the other got a dud iPhone.
Both had their situations resolved within a day or so. Reports indicate that
many people had hang ups (figurative
and literal) in getting their iPhones activated. It’s hard to know what
percentage of all activations were so
affected, however.
My reaction so far is that the iPhone is
the most remarkable cell phone I’ve
ever used, and that Apple made a lot of
good design decisions. It works more
or less as advertised, and nothing is
actually broken in my testing. Missing
features or a lack of certain controls
doesn’t equate to broken, and it leaves
room for improvement in small ways
that will make a big difference in future
software or hardware versions.
It’s wonderful to pull the iPhone out of
my pocket, hit the unlock button and
slide my finger, and then have access to
a pile of my personal information, the
Web, email, a camera, and a phone.
Within a day, I found myself reflexively pulling it out or grabbing it even
when a laptop was nearby. My wife and
I were at a park, and we couldn’t
remember the name of some actor, and
I said, hey, I could look it up! We both
laughed, but if we were about 10 percent more geeky, I would have done it.
The resolution, brightness, and clarity
are just extraordinary. It’s not just that
rendered and photographic images
snap, but that even the smallest type is
still somewhat legible. When I saw early
shots of the iPhone, I assumed that rendered text had been inserted into screen
displays. In fact, even when I’m looking
at the iPhone screen, I have the sense
that I’m seeing something not quite real,
because of the quality of the anti-aliased
type. That brightness makes it work
well even in bright outdoor light.
I hate to say it, but a 10-inch handheld
version of this thing would be an
incredibly useful item for many homes,
even though I’ve never before thought
7
stripped-down computers without keyboards were useful. Add Apple TV
features for local network streaming
with 802.11n, and I could see a future
for such a device in a way the ultramobile PCs, tablet PCs, and other
similar devices never had.
Some Shortfalls – The most talkedabout feature of the iPhone was the
decision to not include a physical keyboard, offering a “glass” one for greater
flexibility. What was less clear at that
time is that the onscreen keyboard
shows just letters in a typewriter
arrangement; numbers and punctuation
marks are reached by tapping another
button. (This is oddly similar to how
Baudot code, one of the earliest data
encoding schemes, used an average of
five-and-a-half bits to carry text.)
After two days, I’m still finding it awkward and frustrating to use the
keyboard. I’ve been a touch typist for
27 years, since I was 11, and can learn
most keyboard layouts in minutes. I
type well over 100 words per minute on
a QWERTY keyboard. And I may be
too old to convert well to the iPhone.
I’ll report as my brain retrains.
The auto-correction and auto-prediction does work reasonably well; I’m not
sure if it has heuristics to learn what I
normally type or not, but it seems to
know my name already. The keyboard
method comes into play most irritatingly, however, when entering passwords.
Passwords are almost universally casesensitive, meaning “TidBITS” is
different than “tidbits” which is different than “TiDbItS”. When entering a
password on a Web site or in settings
fields throughout the system, the
iPhone keyboard hides characters after
you type each one. But the keyboard
shows only uppercase letters as you
type regardless of whether Shift or
Caps Lock is engaged. This approach
causes cognitive dissonance when you
type an “e”, the keyboard shows an
“E”, and then the letter appears as a bullet in the password field.
continued on page 8
My First Days With iPhone
The Safari browser works quite well,
producing stunningly rendered pages
that can be zoomed in and out with a
finger gesture or set of taps. Double tapping any part of a Web page zooms to
the width of that particular CSS or table
column - a neat trick. But even when
you rotate the iPhone into landscape
orientation, it can still be difficult to
achieve the right combination of magnification to read lengthy text.
I hope Apple considers adding accessibility features that typically abled people
might use, too, such as a tap command
that would extract the text in the current
column to display in larger type or without much formatting, while still allowing
a toggle back to the normal view.
On the communications side, the most
frustrating part of the iPhone is the
reliance on the old and slow EDGE network for data access outside of Wi-Fi
networks; the related part is AT&T’s failure to offer a Wi-Fi hotspot subscription
plan. (I have a rundown on Wi-Fi options
for the iPhone at Macworld.)
AppCleaner 1.03
www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/
index.php
Have you ever made a mistake? Well,
I personally haven’t. LOL. But just in
case you have accidentally put an
application on your Mac, and then
later regretted it, we have a freebie for
you. AppCleaner will take it off completely and safely. And it gets five
stars also.
Every time I switched to the EDGE network when roaming around the last
couple of days, I groaned. The network
was sometimes not available - a tiny E
next to the AT&T network text would
disappear - or speeds were only slightly
faster than a dial-up modem. I did occasionally see something like the average
100 to 200 Kbps that AT&T has said its
subscribers should expect.
An entirely new iPhone model will be
needed when AT&T completes its
third-generation (3G) cell data network.
That network will be done this year, and
the chips Jobs said he needed will certainly be available by year’s end, too.
That could put a 3G iPhone in the
January Macworld Expo announcement time frame.
Changes to all the software, of course,
are much simpler, and can be rolled out
at will by Apple and AT&T as they continue development. I expect there’s a
laundry list of features that didn’t make
the cut for launch, and I predict that
before the end of July, a minor update
will add a lot of bits and pieces. For
instance, when using Google Maps,
you can’t point to a location and make
that a bookmark - a rather insane missThe toolbar has the following useful
features. Drop an application onto the
AppCleaner icon and AppCleaner
searches for the related files and then
by clicking the red cross it deletes
them. If you change your mind, just
click on the green arrow back button.
The “Applications” button shows all
the applications installed on your system. You can select them and then
click on the magnifying glass search
Product Description:
AppCleaner allows you to uninstall
your apps more easily. It searches the
files created by the applications and
you can delete them quickly.
ing feature for a map application.
But it’s also worth noting, as Salon’s
Fahrad Manjoo pointed out, that we’re
completely reliant on Apple and AT&T
here - they must have the same priorities as us to change and enhance the
phone’s software. He wrote that he
knew that his critique of missing software features would result in fanboy
email claiming the software was malleable and updatable. Sure, he said, but
“that I have to depend on Apple - rather
than on a wide world of software developers - to fix what’s wrong doesn’t
entirely comfort me.”
And that’s exactly it. We at TidBITS
are fervent supporters of application
developers; the Mac is what it is
because of the dedication for personal
joy or financial gain or both that programmers and software firms have
brought to the platform. And that has
to come to the iPhone, too. After
Apple’s Worldwide Developers
Conference, Jobs has made more
broadly worded statements that thirdparty development will be possible,
and some kind of certification program will be in place. Let’s hope we
see it sooner rather than later. 
button. AppCleaner will search for
the related files of the selected applications and delete them, too.
The “Widgets” button shows all the
installed widgets and the “Others”
button displays all the installed
Preference Panes, Plugins and Screen
Savers.
Product Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later
This product is designed to run on the
following operating systems:
Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
Mac OS X 10.4 Intel
Download here: http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/redir/lid/113072
1/appcleaner.dmgAppCleaner 
8
JoeSoft: 25% Discount on All Products
Cinema Display cover, regular $39.95, MUG Price $29.96.
Cover your essentials: http://www.ccwear.com Order by
phone: (415) 664-0164, or email: [email protected] and
use Discount Code: MUG2007. Offer is valid through
September 30, 2007.
JoeSoft is software for the average Joe. From iTunes and
iPod entertainment products to stock trading software,
JoeSoft brings great software to the masses at reasonable
prices. Free technical support based in California, low-cost
software replacement policies, and generous free upgrade
periods set JoeSoft apart from others. Get a 25% discount on
all products, including newly-released Klix and Jax. Avoid
waiting for the software to be shipped; download it directly
from JoeSoft so you can start using it now! Buy great software
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Offer is valid through September 30, 2007.
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Regularly priced at $199.00, pay just $159.20 for online
orders, a 20% discount, plus an audio satisfaction guarantee. Get more information or place your order:
http://www.futuresonics.com/usergroups/ Coupon Codes:
Model m5: thanksapple5, or Model m8: thanksapple8.
Offer valid through Sept. 30, 2007; limited to 5 per buyer.
PeaPackDesigns Animal Collection
for iPod Nano: 40% Off
The cutest way to protect your iPod Nano - the
PeaPackDesigns.com Animal Collection is available in 4
different soft and cute animals! The neoprene holder cradles your iPod Nano, the zippered pouch on the back
stores your headphones securely, and the handy clip lets
you attach your PeaPackDesigns animal to your backpack, belt loop or purse! Regularly priced at $19.95 each,
now available to user group members for $11.97, which is
a 40% discount. Order your animal now: http://www.peapackdesigns.com. Coupon code: USERSGROUPS
Only offer valid until September 30, 2007.
members should scour through every month – it’s like an
offers and deals! The MUG Store’s consultants are available to talk about the latest and greatest Apple products, as
well as the country’s best selection of pre-owned Macs.
Tell your people to give them a try – with one percent of
member purchases going to your organization, everyone
wins! Go to: http://www.applemugstore.com. Coupon
codes are: User ID: **** / password: ****
Offer is valid through September 30, 2007.
Elgato Turbo.264:
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Turbo.264 accelerates video exports to iPod, Apple TV,
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combined retail price of $114.90! Speed up your conversions: http://www.elgato.com/usergroup.php
Only offer valid until September 30, 2007.
Group Advisory Board (UGAB) also offers a colorful web
Password - ****
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group
Market Report podcast – a great source for information
events and more:
CC Wear: Custom Dust Covers 25% Off
CC Wear offers high quality, fitted, 100% cotton twill dust
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keep your monitor and printer dust free, they also look great
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Discount pricing of 25% on all covers such as the Apple 30"
For public information about vendor offers and more:
**** Note: CMC User IDs and Passwords above are located in your mailed CMC newsletter.
9
New Members Wanted!
President
Chris Hart
[email protected]
Vice President
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Secretary
Jack Bass
[email protected]
Treasurer
Reggie Dionne
[email protected]
Past President
Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
Ambassador
Joseph Arcuri
[email protected]
Editor
Deena Quilty
[email protected]
Design
George Maciel
[email protected]
Raffles
Robert Sawyer
[email protected]
Webmaster
Brian Desmond
[email protected]
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Debbie Foss
[email protected]
Date ____________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
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10
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CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, July 25
Keller Auditorium at UConn
Health Center, Farmington
Our July meetings are all about Type.
Our Back to Basics session will be all about
getting your typesetting to play nice with your
readers. You’ll learn about legibility: why
some magazine articles are inviting to read
and why we avoid reading others. We’ll touch
on serif vs san serif fonts, line length and
many other rules of good typography you
should be aware of.
A special guest speaker with 33 years experience in typographic design, marketing and
advertising, Joseph Treacy, President &
Director of Typography for Treacyfaces, Inc.
will share with us his research into typography,
catalog design and electronic publishing.
Treacyfaces is of one of just two of the very first
professional independent digital type foundries
still in business today. Some of its original series
such as TFForever®, TFAvian™, and TFHabitat®
and its TFArrow have been among the world’s
most specified fonts over the past 23 years, and
remain strong sellers today.
His work has been featured in The New York
Times, Graphic Design:USA and numerous
articles and books. He has been sought to lecture extensively at premier trade conferences on
typography and electronic publishing. His type
designs are among the most respected of those
designed in the past twenty years, and are in use
world wide.
CMC Meetings
last Wednesday of the month (exceptduring the months of November and
December when the meetings are
held earlier due to the holidays). We
open at 6:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m. for
Back to Basics, and from 7:00 - 9:00
p.m. for the Main Presentation
Board meetings are held on the first
FREE Raffle!
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11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, July 25
UConn Health Center,
“Keller Auditorium”
All About Typography
Visit www.ctmac.org
July 25th meeting...it’s all about Type!
July 25, 2007 CMC Meeting Location
Directions to Keller Auditorium
campus. 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.
12
Our July 25th CMC meeting will be in a special location at
UConn Health Center (Keller Auditorium) and features a special guest. With 33 years experience in typographic design,
marketing and advertising, Joseph Treacy, President &
Director of Typography for Treacyfaces, Inc. will share with us
his research into typography, catalog design and electronic
publishing.
Surprising Yourself...............................1
Review: Adobe Photoshop R&R ..........3
Review: Library Books..........................5
Review: iLife ‘08 ...................................6
Installing Apple Security Updates.........7
MUG Offers ..........................................9
Surprising Yourself
By Chris Hart
President, CMC
This article was intended to run last
month, as my inaugural cover article
as President. However, a glitch prevented that from happening. Here is
the original "hello" message I wanted
you to see.
When I started attending CMC meetings in 2001, I didn’t think I would one
day be the President of the group. The
thought never entered my mind. But
there were lots of other notions that
never entered my mind in 2001: That I
would make such wonderful friends
through the group; that a device called
the iPod would become such a sensation; that Macs would ever utilize Intel
hardware; or, that Apple would market
a mobile phone.
I certainly would have never predicted
Apple’s current level of success. I had
always classified the company as having niche appeal. Now, however,
Apple’s name and their product
names—like iTunes, iPod, and iMac—
are household words. The products
they produce are sought after by people
from all walks of life —from the students at your local community college
to fashionistas on the catwalks of
Europe. ‘Round the world, the Apple
logo, and the very name “Apple” captures people’s attention, thoughts and
sometimes even lust.
Back when I purchased my first Mac,
roughly 15 years ago, there wasn’t much
to lust after. It was a model IIsi and it
was a very boring, beige box of elec-
AUGUST 2007
tronics that had an eye-widening price in
the neighborhood of $3500 (financed by
“The Bank of Mom”). But I certainly
felt that I got my money’s worth,
because once you had a Mac, you could
do some pretty magical things.
That’s certainly what was important to
me at the time, as I was in school for
television and film production.
Everyone at school who looked like
they were really going somewhere had
a Mac of their own.
My career in that realm went “somewhere,” but not over the rainbow, like
all showbiz starters hope for. After a
few years in television production in
Hartford and Springfield, I became
frustrated with the lack of interesting
projects in this state. At the same time,
the merging of computers and
audio/video was on the rise and I was
dying to take advantage of it.
So, I struck out on my own to become a
computer and A/V consultant. At the
age of 26, I had my own business and
every day was a learning experience.
My survival came thanks to both the
wisdom of my grandfathers (may you
rest in peace, Edwin and Cliff) and the
great clients that I have had the pleasure
of working for.
That may sound like a kiss-butt line of
bull someone would half-heartedly
recite during an awards acceptance
speech, but it’s the truth. My clients
have been communicative, easy to work
with, appreciative, and even a source of
wisdom for this sole proprietor.
In my travels, I have heard the horror
stories of clients who make ridiculous
demands, play “Pin The Blame On The
Consultant,” withhold payment and
sometimes even litigate. I have had the
In July, we focused on a core
component of all graphic
communication – typography.
Our special guest, Joe Treacy,
President & Director of
Typography for Treacyfaces,
visited CMC and gave some
insight into the big business world
of fonts.
It’s not everyday that we are visited by
a presenter with such experience.
After hearing his presentation, it’s not
hard to believe that Joe has been
involved with with graphic design,
typography, and electronic publishing
for more than 30 years. Those of us
1
Continued on page 2
who work with fonts every day appreciated his perspective on the business
of typefaces.
Those of us less experienced with
fonts were engaged by Jerry
Esposito’s Back To Basics session on
typography. He covered the history of
fonts all the way up to modern day
implementation. Look for a PDF version of Jerry’s presentation slides on
our web site.
Thanks to Joe Treacy for coming to
see us. Don’t forget to check out his
company’s diverse line of unique
typefaces at: www.treacyfaces.com.
distinct pleasure of rarely dealing with
those types of people.
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.
Since most of my clients are Mac users,
I can’t help but attribute some of this
bliss to the type of person the
Macintosh computer attracts. What do
I have to back that this supposition?
Nothing but gut instinct and the fact
that whenever I’m on a Windows computer, I can’t use it for more than a
half-hour without encountering some
user interface detail that irks me to no
end. Were I to work on a Windows
computer all day long, I would have a
much different temperament.
Not everyone sees the Mac attitude in
such a positive light. In many circles
we’ve gotten a bad rap, because some
folks see us as elitist—believing we’re
only interested in how pretty a computer is and thinking we blithely follow the
lead of Mr. Steve Jobs. Personally, I
take pains to correct these misconceptions at every opportunity.
However, there is no doubt that those of
us who gravitate to the Macintosh tend
to have—among other qualities—an
appreciation for the finer details, an
open-mindedness, and (importantly)
patience. We’ve been patient for
Apple’s success, patient for the software that we want/need to come to the
Mac, patient for the rest of the world to
appreciate the qualities of the Mac OS,
and definitely patient for the world to
become aware of Macintosh User
Groups like CMC.
Our group is filled with so many great
folks, from a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and interests.
And all of that comes packaged with no
pretense and no restrictions on sharing.
Each month we get together and educate each other on the latest news,
equipment and methods for getting
things done.
I hope you feel a welcoming, congenial atmosphere when you walk in the
2
door of every meeting. This group is
for all of us to benefit from. I know
from the wonderful comments that
many of you have shared with me, that
most of the time CMC succeeds in this
mission to help users connect and
share information.
Those of us on the board of directors do
our best to shepherd the process. But, a
“User’s Group” thrives on the participation and interaction of its members.
Whether you’ve been with us since
1991, 2001, or last month, I hope you’ll
think about what you can contribute to
the group.
Like me six years ago, actively participating in CMC may be something
you’ve never contemplated. Most of us
have a tendency to underestimate the
skills and knowledge we have to offer.
The fact is no one has to be an “expert”
in computers to contribute to the group.
You just might surprise yourself at how
much you have to share!
Anything that you can do with your
Mac that makes you happy, feel
empowered, or even impressed with
yourself, is something worth sharing.
Perhaps you created your first DVD
slide show and you’d like to share the
process with the group. Or, maybe
you’ve been using the same piece of
software for many years and you know
it like the back of your hand. From
either end of the spectrum—and anywhere in between—there is no doubt
that you have knowledge that other
members would benefit from.
I hope you’ll be inspired to reach
out. There are no barriers here and I
stand ready to help you get the most
out of CMC. 
continued on page 3
Review: Adobe
Photoshop Restoration &
Retouching, 3rd Edition
Reviewed by Robert Sawyer
CMC Board Member
What do you do with pictures that are
too light or too dark. This chapter goes
over correcting over exposed and under
exposed images. It then introduces you
to camera raw and smart
objects, i.e. what they are
and how to use them.
First off, this is a no nonsense book on getting things
done in Photoshop, no jokes,
witty comments or fluff. The
book itself is divided into four
main parts. Each of these parts
could be a book in and of
themselves. Warning! Each
chapter builds on the previous
chapter. So, unless you are a wiz
at Photoshop then I recommend you
read the book in order.
Part 2, Chapter 2
Improving Tone and Contrast
This chapter is about using levels,
curves, layers, and selections. I know all
that is the scary stuff in Photoshop, but
the author presents the information in a
very sensible and methodical way. You
build up one step at a time using downloadable practice files to see the how
and why you use certain techniques
Part 2, Chapter 3
Exposure Correction
Part 3, Chapter 7
Rebuilding and re-creating images
Oh, that candlestick wasn’t supposed
to grow out of the bride’s head!!
Remove unwanted parts of photos or
recreate missing sections is what this
chapter is all about. You also learn how
to swap out heads in group shots. Great
stuff in this chapter.
Part 3, Chapter 8
Refining and Polishing the Image
This is the chapter that shows the difference between the pretty good
retouchers and the WOW retouchers.
Here we convert black and white to
color, add creative edges and add
painterly touches if needed.
The parts are
1. Photoshop for Retouching
2. Correcting Tone, Exposure,
and Color
3. Essential Restoration, Repairing,
and Rebuilding Techniques
4. Putting the Best Face Forward
Part 1, Chapter 1
Photoshop Essentials
This is a short chapter on setting up
Photoshop for retouching work. This
includes using shortcuts, file navigation, layers, and workflow. As with the
rest of the book this chapter is aimed
for a professional user who needs to
work fast if they are going to make any
money on a job. You may know a lot
about Photoshop, but I wound not skip
this chapter.
quick mask make this a fun chapter.
You get a real feeling of accomplishment at the end of this chapter.
Part 2, Chapter 4
Working with Color
Now we get into color correction. How
to fix faded photos, photos shot under
the wrong lighting i.e. outdoor shots shot
with tungsten light settings, and no the
auto button on the camera does not make
you a professional photographer. How to
select what color to change via global
settings or selective color corrections.
Part 3, Chapter 5
Dust, Mold, and Texture Removal
Ok, after we have the contrast and color
correct it’s time to correct for problems.
In this chapter you learn about the healing tools and clone stamp. You learn
when to use which tool and why one is
better than the other. You also learn
how to reduce moiré patterns and paper
texture from scanning.
Part 3, Chapter 6
Damage Control and Repair
Make stains, cracks, rips and tears vanish. Advanced use of healing and
cloning tools along with layers and
3
Part 4, Chapter 9
Portrait Retouching
This final section of the book goes into
great detail on faces and skin tone.
Removing lines and wrinkles as well
as smoothing skin tones. This chapter
is about making the person look their
best by minimizing the flaws, but not
losing their character.
Part 4, Chapter 10
Glamour Retouching
Get into excruciating detail about faces,
eyes, hair and weight. You learn how to
reshape and rebuild to get the perfect look
for magazine covers and product shots.
In total, this is a great book. It is well
organized so once you learn a few basics
you can quickly find more information
so that your pictures pop of the page. 
Adobe Photoshop Restoration
& Retouching, 3rd Edition
By Katrin Eismann, Wayne Palmer
Published by New Riders
ISBN-10: 0-321-31627-4;
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-31627-1;
Published: Nov 17, 2005;
Copyright 2006; Dimensions 8 X 10;
Pages: 472; Edition: 3rd.
List Price $49.99
Monthly News Recap By Chris Hart, CMC President
Electronics Recycling ‘07
New Apple Store In CT
If you haven’t yet become aware of the fact that electronics
should be recycled, let this article serve as your wakeup call.
Most equipment that runs on electricity or contains a permanent battery contains materials that can be harmful to the
environment when disposed of improperly.
According to Courant.com (the web site of The Hartford
Courant), on July 18th, Connecticut will soon have its
fourth Apple Store.
Currently, we have three official Apple presences in this
state—West Hartford at WestFarms Mall, Danbury Fair
Mall and Stamford at Greyrock Place. Before the end of
this year, we’ll see the most specialized Apple Store yet,
inside of the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard.
This is especially true for computers, which are filled with
complex compounds and materials. But don’t forget that even
the smallest electronics devices have mini computers in
them—cell phones, calculators, PDAs, video game systems,
etc. They all represent a health hazard if their guts are spilled
upon nature.
Initially, this will be in the form of a kiosk in their shopping
concourse, appearing in the fall. This will evolve in May of
2008 into a more traditional store inside of the new MGM
Grand at Foxwoods, which is set to open in May.
Residents of Connecticut have one opportunity each year to
properly and freely recycle their old electronics appliances. I
hope you’ll make a point of holding onto electronics that
break, wear out, or you get tired of, in anticipation of this
annual recycling opportunity.
This choice of location is obviously aimed solely at selling
merchandise and not providing a full Apple customer service experience. I say that because accessing a site inside of
a casino is unquestionably aimed primarily at those who
are already visiting the casino. (Especially since that casino is not in the middle of a retail business area.)
Each region of the state has an electronics recycling day that is
specifically for residents of the towns that are participating.
This service is provided by your town/regional government in
conjunction with Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority.
It makes you wonder what the scene will look like come
October’s release of Mac OS X 10.5. Will Foxwoods tolerate a line of Eastern Connecticut Apple enthusiasts anxious
for their new copy of the Leopard operating system? 
The earliest date this year is September 22nd, with the day for
Central Connecticut being held off until November 10th.
You can find out more, including whether or not your town participates by visiting the dedicated page at CRRA’s web site:
http://tinyurl.com/2cutd4 
everything, then tell
it to restart later
(you’re busy working now, of course),
and let it go.
submitted by Deb Foss, CMC
Maintenance 3.7
This is for those of you who didn’t buy Spring Cleaning to
protect your computer. I admit, I love it. But this is free, and
runs some things you should do once a month, without letting you do anything that would prevent your computer
from ever starting again.
From the makers: A
simple Automator
Action fused with
AppleScript aimed at keeping your Mac running healthy.
I mean really, do you want to go to the Genius Bar, and
admit that you, a member of a Macintosh User Group, killed
your computer yourself?
Features include:
• Repair Permissions • Verify Preferences
• Update Prebindings • Periodic Clean-up
• Update Locate, Whatis, LaunchServices databases
• Clean Cache • Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
Of course not, you would look up in the corner and
whistle instead!
A link to previous versions is on the image file:
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/redir/lid/1145603/
Maintenance%203.7.dmg
With Maintenance, you won’t hurt your computer, and
you just might help it. Hold down the shift key, select
4
Get the Last Word on Mac OS X Terminology with
more about a particular entry? Margin icons link to handpicked external Web sites, TidBITS articles, and other Take
Control titles. Save 10% off the $15 list price right now
with the MUG discount embedded in the link below.
Take Control:
The Mac OS X Lexicon
submitted by Robert Sawyer
CMC board member
<http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/maclexicon.html
?14@@!pt=TRK-0053-TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG>
We Mac users sling technical jargon around every day, but
if you’ve ever felt uncertain about what a term actually
means, help is here in "Take Control: The Mac OS X
Lexicon." The ebook is a mad romp through over 500
Macintosh- and Internet-related terms. You’ll learn how to
figure out if your optical drive can write to a double-layer
DVD, why 404 and 501 are interesting
numbers, how to work with the three main
types of dashes that you can type on a Mac,
and much more. We’re not talking about
some dry old dictionary here - these definitions are loaded with useful tips, practical
advice, humor, and empathy. If you enjoy
the serendipity of discovering useful tips in
unexpected places, you’ll love this ebook.
Book Details: “Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon”
by Andy Baird and Sharon Zardetto
PDF format, 191 pages, free 39-page sample available.
Publication date: July 19, 2007. Ebook Price: $15
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Review:
Library Books
simply keeps tracks of what you have out and what you
have on hold. It will integrate with iCal to give you warnings that books are coming due and simply sits in your
menubar when not using it. As soon as you click on it’s
icon it drops down and shows your loans from all your
cards/libraries along with due dates and any books you may
have on hold.
by Joe Arcuri, CMC Ambassador
My family is comprised of three children and two adults
who are all avid readers. Additionally my kids are very fast
readers and will frequently read a book all the way through
while we roam around the bookstore. A number of years
ago we realized that the best way to stay out of the poorhouse was to really start utilizing our local library. From
there we also expanded to using neighboring libraries and
since we were frequently in Avon that became our library
of choice. On any given day our book count on loan is at
least 20 books and possibly a few videos and audio books.
Keeping track of return dates and what’s on hold across a
couple of different libraries and library cards gets into a
small management job.
You can download Library Books directly from the developer’s site at http://haroldchu.id.au
The only tough part of using the software is configuring it
to access your specific library. Fortunately there are a
number of CT libraries
already configured, if yours
falls into that list you’ll be
all set, if not you’re going to
have to do a little research to
get your library working. 
I just found, installed and implemented the best piece of
free software of the year. It’s called “Library Books” and
5
Review: iLife ‘08
By Rich Lenoce
CMC Past President
It’s been 19 months since the last
update to iLife. After all this time, the
major changes are to iPhoto and
iMovie with incremental changes to
GarageBand, iDVD, and iWeb.
iPhoto ‘08
iPhoto users will love the many
improvements found in iPhoto ‘08.
Organizing large libraries was never
iPhoto’s strong suit until now with a
new organizing feature called Events.
Events are a way of organizing photos
by the events you take pictures of
(holidays, birthdays, trips, etc).
Events are just like Rolls in iPhoto ‘06
but unlike Rolls, Events can be managed, added to and changed. When
you first launch iPhoto ‘08 it will ask
you to convert the old library to work
with iPhoto ‘08, warning you the conversion is not reversible. All Rolls in
your old library will now be turned
into Events when the conversion is
complete and the application opens.
You can still choose to see the entire
library but it is no longer the default
view. I assume this also adds some
speed to the application since you are
seeing and scrolling through fewer
photos and, as expected, iPhoto ‘08 is
very fast.
iPhoto’s edit features are enhanced
with Highlights, Shadow and Noise
Reduction sliders added to the
Adjustment Palette as well as an EyeDropper to select objects that are
supposed to be Grey or White to
remove color casts. These are all very
welcome additions, work very well
and push photo editing in iPhoto to a
new level. Poorly exposed, noisy and
off-color photos can be adjusted to
look perfect with little effort.
You can now Hide Photos without
deleting them and Flag photos
which puts them in a Flagged folder.
iPhoto ‘08 also has some nice web
features, including a more feature
complete .Mac Web Gallery that can
be updated instantly.
My favorite iPhoto ‘06 enhancements
are in the new Print Dialog Box,
which now, like editing, has it’s own
View mode in the main window.
Printing can be customized to include
various mattes and edges. Contact
sheets can also be easily created. This
new Print mode works very much like
placing your photo within a template
and the process is both easy and intuitive. And, of course, new iPhoto book
designs always seem to amaze me
with their aesthetic beauty.
iPhoto ‘08 is certainly the best addition to iLife ‘08 with it’s many
improvements. If you use iPhoto ‘06s
built in library manager (enabled by
holding Option at start-up) or a separate application like iPhoto Library
Manager, use any number of free web
gallery tools like iPhoto Web Galierie
or edit and print photos with Adobe
Photoshop CS or Elements, you won’t
have much need for these enhancements but most people will find these
improvements turn a good application
into a great one.
How basic is the new application’s
editing features? First, Apple has gotten rid of the Time Line View, now
there is only the Thumbnail view,
meaning iMovie ‘08 only supports
simple assemble editing, the placing of
clips in sequential order. There does
not appear to be any way to insert edit,
pasting clips over an assembled
sequence. For anyone who wants to do
basic movie-like storytelling the lack
of insert editing makes iMovie unusable. The new editing interface is
sloppy and editing is non-intuitive,
made worse by no manual.
It is true, as Steve Jobs said, editing
using iMovie ‘08 is faster but the only
reason it’s faster is there are less
options and features. The lack of a
timeline and other editing features
really hinders flexibility and precision
for people who know how to edit or
those who want to learn the basics of
video storytelling without spending
$300 on Final Cut Express HD. Worse
yet is that someone who wants to try
editing using iMovie and move up to
Final Cut will be turned off by iMovie
or will have a rude awakening once
they try Final Cut as, unlike iMovie
‘06, iMovie and Final Cut now have
nothing in common.
iMovie ‘08
The biggest and most radical change,
and disappointment, in iLife ‘08 is
iMovie. Steve Jobs says it’s a “completely new application,” designed by
one of Apple’s engineers to allow for
editing very quickly and organizing
all video footage and projects in one
location using an iPhoto-like Library
where footage is organized as Events.
Going to this new application was not
a move for the better. After years of
development and some level of maturity, the original and much beloved
iMovie has been tossed out in favor of
a ridiculously basic editor and a hobbled asset management program that
stores all imported video clips and
files in only one location, the user’s
Movie folder.
6
The good news is, and it’s quite telling,
is that unlike every other upgrade of
every iLife application since the dawn
of iLife, installing iMovie ‘08 doesn’t
overwrite the older iMovie application.
Previous versions of iMovie remain
untouched in a folder labeled “iMovie
continued on page 7
(Previous Version).” The other telling
thing is a new “Export to Final Cut
XML” feature to export iMovie ‘08
projects to Final Cut Express or Pro. In
other words, Apple is saying if you
really want to edit anything beyond a
quick and dirty video, use your old version of iMovie or use Final Cut
Express or Studio.
I also found several quirks with
iMovie. In older versions of iMovie,
any footage that could be played in
Quicktime could be imported into
iMovie where it would be converted
to DV and then edited. This was a
great feature for editing Flash, AVI,
WMV or DIvX video if the right
Quicktime plug-in was installed, such
as the free Perian plug-in. Though
iMovie now supports more camcorder
formats like AVCHD, MPEG2 and
MPEG 4 the application fails to support those popular video formats
when plug-ins are installed.
If it hasn’t come through already, I
don’t like iMovie ‘08. When features
are removed from an application, customers feel cheated and that’s how I
feel after spending many hours with
iMovie ‘08.
There are some nice additions to
iMovie ‘08 such as the ability to
upload to YouTube and to the .Mac
Web Gallery where high quality video
can be viewed and shared. There’s also
a video adjustment palette similar to
iPhoto ‘08’s that works very well.
How’s the new video library feature?
Footage gets imported as an “Event”
just like in iPhoto and put in the users
Movies folder on the system hard drive.
Projects get listed in a Projects list (like
Albums in iPhoto). This could work
well except there is no option to select
a place to store footage and projects
other than the User>Movie folder on
the System Drive. You cannot put video
files on another drive or partition. If
you have existing footage and projects,
iMovie will either move your footage
from another drive (deleting the
footage and project from that drive) or
will copy the footage and project, but it
won’t keep the files in the original location and point an alias to that location
similar to the way Final Cut works.
There’s no option to select a library
location like in iTunes or iPhoto.
Earlier versions of iMovie stored clips
wherever the projects were saved. I
have two hard drives of video clips and
projects and using iMovie to manage
all of this footage would quickly fill up
my system drive, leaving me no option
to put my footage anywhere else. In
other words, if I fill up that drive I now
can’t edit using iMovie ‘08!
For many of you these points may be
moot since iMovie ‘08 won’t install on
anything less than a 1.9ghz G5. My
wife has an 19-month old iMac G5 and
can’t install iMovie ‘08 on what I consider a relatively new Mac. Such steep
requirements are odd considering
Apple removed most of iMovie’’s
advanced features that went back to
iMovie 1.0 yet increased it’s system
requirements far above those of
iMovie ‘06.
iDVD, Garage Band and iWeb
iDVD always gets better and better and
‘08 is no exception. iDVD now supports better quality encoding with a
Professional Quality option, added to
the Best Performance and Best Quality
preference options, iDVD is noticeably faster and you’ll see less of the
spinning beach ball when adding
assets. iDVD, of course, has more
great looking as usual, but there never
seems to be never enough; like good
chocolate you always want more.
7
Garage Band is pretty much the same
but now supports a multiple-take feature, which works really well. There is
a new Magic GarageBand option similar to iMovie’s Magic Movie where
you select your musical genre and
you’re walked through creating music.
iWeb has added some terrific features
including uploading to domains.
Initially I thought this meant iWeb now
had an FTP program built in, but
instead .Mac can now host domains
and you can publish to the domain on
.Mac using the Publish to .Mac feature.
iWeb now has many new templates
and Widgets to add live web content.
iWeb is maturing nicely with many
design enhancements even though it
still doesn’t directly support non-.Mac
hosting services via built-in FTP—and
it should!
Since iLife is so tied into .Mac it was
announced on the same day as the
release of iLife that .Mac now provides 10gb of storage. Many people
will use this storage space for the new
iLife features. 10gb is now enough to
provide adequate backup space for
most people. Finally, if you’ve been
holding off on registering with .Mac
because you felt storage space was
limited, now I think you’d agree .Mac
is a good value.
Conclusion
Is iLife ‘08 worth the upgrade? It
depends. Since iLife ‘08 keeps
iMovie ‘06 on your Mac and gives
you a much improved iPhoto, I think
you will be very happy with the many
improvements to organizing, editing
and printing your pictures with
iPhoto ‘08. The minor improvements
to the other applications are icing on
an already delicious cake. If instead
you use Photoshop or Photoshop
Elements to organize, edit and print
photos, you won’t find enough of an
improvement in the other applications to have made it worth the $79
and 19-month wait. 
• An Italian website offers some very useful and easy to understand wine
information: http://vinomania.vignaclara.it/eng. In addition to an excellent
“About Wine” section with topics like: matching wine & food, drinking
temperature, wine & health, etc., it has a “Sommelier On-Line” where you
ask a professional wine expert any question you might have – you will get
a personal e-mail back with a response. Also, the “Wines of Italy”, and the
“Wine Games” areas are informative and fun.
#88 – Wine Websites #2
July/August 2007, © 2007 By Peter P. Gladis
Almost everyone enjoys a good glass of wine – refreshing and tasty. And
wine comes in so many varieties, styles, and price ranges; there are wines
available to suit for everyone’s tastes. Sometimes wine choices can be confusing – but in general, if you like it – enjoy it! Like anything else, with a
little education and useful reference information, wine is very enjoyable
and a lot of fun to learn about. Just remember: DON’T DRINK AND
DRIVE – EVER! Here are some GREAT…WINE WEBSITES #2!
• Wines.com has an informative “Ask The Wineboard” section where
you can ask questions, share tasting notes, or search for tips from thousands of fellow wine lovers. Their “All About Wine” area offers easy to
understand guidance on topics like: “Wine Tasting Tips” – An introduction to the basics of wine tasting, how to evaluate a wine, and what to
look for and what to write down and remember; “Wine & Grape Varietal
Reference” – A great place to look up names of wines and wine grapes;
“How to Pronounce Wine Names & Terms” – The wine world is full of
hard-to-pronounce names and wine terms. This guide to pronunciation
will help English speakers get by in any setting; “Wine Lovers’
Searchable Online Encyclopedia” – Ask this virtual wine reference to
look up virtually any word related to wine.
• Wine.com, is a very useful and informative wine website. Although it is
a commercial site where you can order wine, the site also has a significant
amount of helpful wine information. Here you can get the facts you need
to make easy, informed decisions about buying wine for yourself and as a
gift. Here’s how it works: Search the site for wine by price, professional
rating, varietal and country. Or go to one of their “Top rated” or “Most
Popular” lists for a quick pick. You can then learn the complete story
behind your wine – who made it, where, with which grapes, and what the
critics & other customers think. You can even store a record of what wine
you bought, why you bought it, and what you thought of it, using their
“Online Virtual Cellar” and printed cellar notes & bottle tags. This excellent site also offers a free Newsletter, information on wine clubs, and
interesting articles on Wine and Food.
• For serious wine enthusiasts, IntoWine.com is a terrific site. Their goal
is to collect knowledge and experience of the wine community on one
site – geared purely for those people who are into wine. They have contributors from nearly all walks of “wine life” including sommeliers,
chefs, bartenders, waiters, wine industry professionals, wine producers,
as well as a gaggle of super enthusiasts. If you consider yourself someone who is “into wine” – this site is for you!
• I love this site’s description of themselves: “We are dedicated to the
premise that fine wine is a feast for all the senses – including the mind.
And that you don’t have to be a snob – or wealthy – to appreciate wine’s
pleasures.” So true! Robin Garr’s Wine Lover’s Page at
WineLoversPage.com is a GREAT Wine Website! Its comprehensive subject areas are a joy to read and VERY educational:
• LEARN about...READ about...and TALK about wine
• ASK about wine • Wine Questionary • Wine Lexicon
• Tasting Dictionary • Wine Label Decoder • Food & Wine
• Wine Writers Online • Vintage Charts • Wine and Politics
• Wine Info E-Mail • 50,000 Wine Tasting Notes
• Wine Chat Room • The Super Gigantic Winegrape Glossary
• With all the focus on California and Washington State wines, and of
course, European wines – let’s also support the growing popularity of
home-grown CONNECTICUT wines! At CTWine.com you can get an
overview of the “CT Wine Trail”, and here are just some of the great
wineries in our home State:
• GouveiaVineyards.com – Wallingford
• SharpeHill.com – Pomfret
• StoningtonVineyards.com – Stonington
• Digrazia.com – Brookfield
• JonesFamilyFarms.com – Shelton
• Chamard.com – Clinton
• McLaughlinVineyards.com – Sandy Hook
• WhiteSiloWinery.com – Sherman
• HopkinsVineyard.com – New Preston
• JjerramWinery.com – New Hartford
• BishopsOrchardsWinery.com – Guilford
• HeritageTrail.com – Lisbon
• JEdwardsWinery.com - N Stonington
• PriamVineyards.com – Colchester
Check out their “Wine Lovers’ Questionary,” presenting the world of
Wine as a clear, organized online encyclopedia with links to the answers
you seek. The Wine Lovers’ Lexicon doesn’t just describe the most common wine words in clear, simple terms but tells you how to pronounce
them. Other popular features include their “Quick Online Tasting
Course”, covering the Wine-tasting basics; and the Wine and Food
Matching Engine to help you find the perfect Wine for your dinner. They
also have a free weekly E-mail bulletin you can subscribe to.
• WineEducation.org offers a wide variety of useful info on all aspects of
wine. For example: “Wine Basics”, “Talking About Wine”, “Grapes &
Regions”, “Buying Wine”, and “Serving Wine”. The site also has some fun
– yet educational – Wine Games: “SimVin” – the Winery simulation game;
“VinTriv” – the wine trivia game; and “FlashJargon” – the wine vocabulary game. It also has Wine Quizzes, and a Wine Crossword Puzzle.
Every year there is a Festival where you can taste all the Connecticut
wines, and meet the winemakers – here’s info on this year’s event:
ConnecticutWineFestival.org.
PETER’S WORLD WIDE WEB "WACKY SITE OF THE MONTH" • Did-ja ever wonder why people say: “The Whole Nine Yards”? Or…“Three Sheets To
The Wind”? How about…“Straight From The Horse’s Mouth”, or “Pie In The Sky”, or “Make No Bones About It”, or “Going To Hell In A Hand
Basket”??? Well, friends, your wait is over, at IdiomSite.com you’ll amaze your friends with the knowledge you gain about “…why you say – what
you say.” Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-Mail me at [email protected]
8
JukeDock: Save $30
iWOW for iTunes: 20 Percent Discount
With a nice fusion of nostalgia, modern design and advanced
technology JukeDock fills the room with your videos and music
on your big screen TV and home stereo. With intelligent ease it
uses your home stereo remote to control your iPod, while illuminating your life with its captivating, elegant lighting. Regularly
$79, purchase JukeDock for just $49 - a 38 percent savings.
Coupon code JUKEDOCK4MUG
http://www.pressuredropinc.com
Offer is valid through October 31, 2007
The iWOW is the ultimate iTunes audio enhancement plug-in
for Mac users. You can restore fidelity to all your music files,
display a sleek easy-to-use interface design with energized light
pulses and ensure an amazing “In Concert” experience using
SRS Labs’ state-of- the-art audio enhancement technology.
Many cool presets are available with custom settings for desktop speakers or headphones. Regularly $19.99, iWow is
available for only $15.99 for Apple user group members.
Promo Code weloveiwow
Wow your sound. http://www.srslabs.com/iwow
Offer is valid through October 31, 2007.
DEVONthink Professional Office: 25 Percent Off
In today’s world, everything is digital. Enter DEVONthink, the
solution to this digital age conundrum. It is your second brain,
the one database for all your digital files including PDFs,
emails, Word docs or multimedia files. Use it as your document
repository, your filing cabinet, your email archive or your project organizer. Boasting artificial intelligence, DEVONthink
adapts to your needs, and can digitize your files. You can even
copy the content to your iPod. The possibilities are only as limited as your imagination. The regular price is $149.95; using the
discount code gives user group members 25 percent off of
DEVONthink Pro Office (and all other online shop products).
Coupon code promo-mugs-2007
Purchase: http://www.devon-technologies.com/shop/
With Portraits & Prints you can take any photo and print it any
way you want. Select your photos and they are automatically
arranged onto templates and displayed on screen in the exact
same way that they are printed. Standard Edition sells for $30,
but is free to CMC members via this special limited offer. Pro
Edition (with an added ability to edit and create templates) sells
for $50, but CMC members can upgrade to the Pro version for
$20. To participate in this user group offer, email [email protected] with your name and MUG title.
Save time and paper. http://www.econtechnologies.com
ConceptDraw 7 and Project 3: $50 Discount
The MUG Store: Great Prices, Great Incentives
Portraits & Prints:
Standard Edition Free and 60 Percent Off Pro
ConceptDraw 7 is a powerful diagramming and drawing tool to
effectively visualize and communicate information and processes. ConceptDraw Project 3 is a unique program to plan and keep
track of many projects simultaneously. The ConceptDraw
Product line is a family of Mac and Windows applications for
office, educational and home users. This special offer provides
user group members with a $50 discount on ConceptDraw 7
(regularly $299) and ConceptDraw Project 3 (regularly $199).
Discount code 7158758
Learn more. http://www.conceptdraw.com or order at
http://www.conceptdraw.com/products/user_group_buy.php
The MUG Store is offering tremendous discounts on brand
new Macs exclusively for your members, as well as one of
the country’s most complete selections of pre-owned Macs.
Every purchase made by your members through the MUG
Store brings your group a one percent credit toward anything
the store sells.
User ID:* Password:* (located on printed newsletter)
Group Advisory Board (UGAB) offers a colorful web
Password - * (located on printed newsletter)
app4mac Products: 20 Percent off
app4mac is a market-leading Mac software development team
created in 2001 to provide innovative applications for Mac OS X.
Their website allows you to download powerful solutions for
project management (xTime Project), resources scheduling
(xTime Planning), Internet kiosks (wKiosk Browser) and Internet
child safety (CutX Content Filter and KidsBrowser). All products
are designed for very easy use with even more amazing Mac OS
X applications forthcoming. User group members get a 20 percent discount on all online products which retail for $9 to $99.
Coupon code PROMOAUG
Buy any app4mac products. http://www.app4mac.com/
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group Market Report podcast.
The current issue features the new Apple User Group Roundtable with Maria
Arguello, the Regional Liaison for the Northeast USA, and six user group
leaders from her area, plus Ben Grier of SRS Labs talking about their new
iWow discount offer. The AUG Market Report is a great source for information about Apple user groups, vendor discounts, special events and more:
For public information about vendor offers and more visit: http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers.html
9
New Members Wanted! Have your friends and coworkers join us for fun and learning about OS X and the
President
Chris Hart
[email protected]
Vice President
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Secretary
Jack Bass
[email protected]
Treasurer
Reggie Dionne
[email protected]
Past President
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George Maciel
[email protected]
Raffles
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[email protected]
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[email protected]
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[email protected]
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[email protected]
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CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, August 29
Keller Auditorium at UConn
Health Center, Farmington
Back To Basics – 6 p.m.
What’s in Your Wallet?
Using a computer nowadays typically
requires using multiple user names and
passwords. Tracking all these credentials for the myriad of web sites and
online services can be a chore. CMC
Member, Aaron Czarnecki has recently
discovered a software application
called Wallet from Waterfall Software.
He’s found it very useful for storing
private info in an encrypted fashion
(preventing anyone from reading it).
During this session he’ll talk about
Wallet and how it can help you, too.
Main Presentation – 7 p.m.
iPhoto and iMovie ‘08
Apple released the latest iteration of the
iLife creativity suite on August 7th.
And CMC is on the case, with speedy,
original coverage that you won’t find
anywhere else! What’s changed in iLife
‘08 versus ‘06? A whole heck of a lot
with regard to iPhoto and iMovie.
CMC Past President, Rich Lenoce, will
demonstrate the changes and improvements (and sometimes disappointments)
that come with the newly released version of Apple’s iLife software suite.
Come and see for yourself if this is a
software upgrade that is meant for you!
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11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, August 29
“Keller Auditorium”
“What’s in Your Wallet?”
iPhoto & iMovie ‘08
See Page 11 for description
August 29 – CMC Meeting Location
Directions to Keller Auditorium
campus. 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.
12
At our July 25th CMC meeting, Joseph Treacy of Treacyfaces,
Inc. shared some of the product designs on the market today
using various Treacy fonts. (see page 1 for more info).
In-Organic Apples.................................1
Review: Slim Keyboard ........................2
Long Live AppleWorks .........................5
Accessing Bare Hard Drives .................6
Home Safety and Security ...................8
Adventures in Laser Printer Surgery ....9
SEPTEMBER 2007
The biggest offenders are Apple’s iMac
and Cinema Displays. How so? The
complete lack of a height adjustment is
the reason. These monitors have solid
aluminum bases that provide no means
whatsoever for choosing elevation.
Despite the common knowledge that a
computer display is ideally positioned
with the top edge of the screen area at
eye level, Apple offers no means to
achieve that goal.
In-Organic Apples
By Chris Hart
President, CMC
Apple creates many trends with their
products. But there is one trend they
once championed in which they seem
to have lost interest–the ergonomics
of computers.
There was a time when Apple Computer
included a leaflet in the box of every
desktop computer they sold which
addressed the issue of ergonomics. It
immediately called to the new computer
owner’s attention the need for proper
positioning of the computer workstation.
The diagrams showed the recommended
height, distance and angle of the keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc., in order to
provide the least fatiguing computer
experience possible.
right angle for their own wrist comfort. It
also included wrist rests that helped you
to keep your entire hand flat. It was a
pleasant keyboard to use and I enjoyed
one of my own for many years.
While Apple continues to include that
information with their new computers,
it’s relegated to two brief pages at the
back of the small "Introduction to your
Mac" pamphlet they put in the box. It’s
just enough to legally protect themselves
against lawsuits from disgruntled, carpaltunnel afflicted citizens.
To my knowledge, Apple was the first
computer manufacturer to offer such an
ergonomically-correct keyboard to the
public. While many third party companies
have offered such contoured devices over
the years, it’s rare for a computer maker to
do so. But Apple knew it was the right
thing to do and they brought it to market.
The recent introduction of the aluminumclad iMac, with its slim-line, laptop-like
keyboard, prompted me to consider this
matter further. My thoughts immediately
ran to the one and only ergonomic keyboard that Apple has offered in their
history. The Apple Adjustable Keyboard
was introduced in 1992 and offered a wonderful alternative to rectangle keyboards.
Apple likely never expected significant
sales from this keyboard–due to general
public ignorance of ergonomics
issues–and likely created it out of a desire
to give customers the tools they needed
to improve the comfort of their workspace. If only such a mindset were to
prevail today, we might all be better off.
This keyboard’s inclination and
adjustable split allowed one to find the
Photo illustration by Peter Belanger
As someone who has been a Mac user for
a long time, I am very frustrated by Apple’s
growing trend away from user comfort.
1
Look at the competitive offerings from
nearly any computer/monitor manufacturer and you will see that only their
budget models lack this functionality.
This capability is so easy to incorporate
into a monitor’s design and so fundamentally important to user comfort that
these companies know leaving it out
would be silly.
Then why does Apple purposely choose
to ignore this significant detail? The
obvious reason that comes to mind is
appearance. Apple is now so focused on
making their devices slim and “sexy”
that they have come to disregard details
that are critical to the interaction of
computer and user.
Human factors should be at the core of
any device that human beings interact
with for long stretches of time nearly
every day of their lives. After all, what
good is a tool (and that’s what computers are, after all) if using it causes you
discomfort?
I currently have an iMac in my workspace, but it took quite a bit of
experimentation – placing sturdy
objects of different sizes underneath it –
Continued on page 3
Slim Keyboar d
Oozes Elegance
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.
Review By Bill Davies,
MacNexus.org
With the recent refresh of the iMac to an
aluminum enclosure, Apple also revealed
a spectacular redesign of the standard Mac
keyboard. Owners of older iMacs can get
this new keyboard in either wireless
(Bluetooth) or wired configurations. Since
they keyboard that shipped with my
CoreDuo iMac was sticky and hard to
type on (after a year of small, dirty fingers
playing with it) I had been debating
whether to buy a new keyboard for my
iMac. This new design pushed me over
the edge and so I took the plunge for
$49.95. (To use the new keyboard on your
older iMac, you need to download Apple’s
Keyboard Update 1.1 software from
Apple’s support site. No software is
included in the box.) The new keyboard
seems to garner polarized opinions.
People either love it or hate it. The keyboard is basically a MacBook Pro
keyboard in a solid aluminum base. It is
no more than one-eighth of an inch thick.
It has a lot less slope than the previous
keyboard, and there is no height adjustment. So if you don’t like your keyboard
almost flat on the desk, look elsewhere.
My flat desk makes a great wrist rest with
this design. (Sorry, no backlighting as on
the laptop version.) This keyboard
exhibits no flex, despite its thin design,
and is literally stiff as a board.
The keys have very short travel and are
much quieter than the outgoing keyboard.
Rather than the old-style keys that physically travel up and down to hit the
electronics on the membrane, this keyboard has cutouts and the little flat keys
poke up through the cutouts.
There is more space between the keys, so
less chance of hitting the wrong key.
Parents, myself included, are hopeful that
this tighter design will help keep junk and
debris from clogging up this keyboard.
My fingers can fly much faster on this
keyboard, and it is quieter! There certainly are no “valleys” in between the keys
that stuff can fall into.
One of the most frequent comments I have
read is that there is no longer an Apple
icon on the command key. While this
observation is true, it is somewhat irrelevant to me and I don’t care if there is an
Apple or not. Additionally, there are 19
function keys, more than I would ever care
about. What I do find appealing is that
there are now dedicated icons on the function keys for screen darker/brighter, sound
up/down, media forward/backward/play,
Dashboard, and Expose. My previous
CoreDuo iMac keyboard had none of
these icons. So to get to Expose I had to
remember an arcane keyboard command
like option-F9. Now I have handy
reminders right on the keycaps. Some
have lamented these dedicated key functions on F1, F2 F3, F4, etc, because they
just want the function keys for their own
use. Apparently there is some shareware
you can get if you just want to decide for
yourself what the function keys do. I
don’t really use function keys, so I am just
as content to have them dedicated to operating system functionality. And I am
guessing that they don’t work unless you
run the Apple Keyboard Software 1.1
package.
The new keyboard is a stylish addition to
any desk. If your keyboard is full of gunk
and bothering you, definitely take a test
spin on one of these. I’m guessing that if
you are a fast typist, you will fall in love
with it. 
Choose from wired (shown below) or wireless Bluetooth (inset left)
2
in order to get its height correct. If it
weren’t for this corrective action, my
neck would be hurting me considerably at the end of the day. And while
I have improvised a solution for this
problem, the fact is that most iMac
owners will not. And why should
they have to? It’s Apple’s job to produce a product that suits common
work environments and the needs of
their customers.
Of further concern is this trend
towards glossy display coatings. Did
you know that the latest iMac is only
available with a glossy screen? While
video playback certainly looks better
this way, reflective glare is a big
problem for getting real work done.
Your eyes have to find a way to distinguish between the characters on
the screen and the objects being
reflected on the monitor’s surface.
Look at the configuration of most
office spaces and you’ll find that a vast
majority of us spend our days with our
backs to the window. But that means
our computer display is aimed directly
at the window–the brightest and
largest source of light in the entire
workspace. This means that glossyiMac users have been relegated to a
work day filled with window glare.
Tour the offices of any Mac-friendly
corporation and you’ll se a lot of
iMacs. Small and medium companies, yes, but also Fortune 500 corps
like NBC Universal, TimeLife and
Disney. So that means a lot of iMac
users are in for a day of work filled
with eyestrain and neck strain. Why
are customers not even given a
choice in this matter?
Did Apple make these significant
decisions based entirely on the sexy
factor, forgoing any consideration of
human factors? In my estimation,
that’s exactly what they did.
But the problems aren’t limited to
Apple’s desktops. The MacBook line
is locked into that same lack of
choice regarding glossy screens. But
beyond that, have you noticed how
blunt and square the edges of Apple
laptops are? Right where the part of
your palm that is closest to your
wrists will naturally fall is the sharp
edge of the laptop’s case.
This is especially a problem with the
smaller MacBook, which has a very
harsh corner surrounding the perimeter of its plastic shell. But the
MacBook Pro has a similar affliction
and on my own MBP I had to install
slim padding, in order to avoid
uncomfortable divots in my palms.
These design flaws are even harder to
comprehend when you consider that
Apple was the first computer company
to the make the ergonomically-sound
decision to put the keyboard on a laptop
closer to the screen than the user. Doing
so creates a built-in wrist rest and
allows you to extend your arms, instead
of holding them tight to your torso–an
unnatural and uncomfortable position.
Few people recall how controversial
this decision choice was back in the
day. Apple’s earliest PowerBooks initially earned some disapproving stares
for this purposeful reorientation of the
laptop workspace. But the
choice was so much for
the better that other computer makers couldn’t help but
follow suit. Nowadays, this
configuration is the accepted
laptop standard.
Another confounding design
flaw stems from Apple’s
predilection for putting power buttons on the back of two of their
most popular models–the Mac
Mini and the iMac. I can’t tell you
how many times I see children and the elderly
fruitlessly grasping at the
rear of these computers in
an effort to simply turn them on!
3
What good is a sleek, sexy computer
with a flawless façade if you can’t even
use it? Nobody buys a computer to
look at it sitting idle. It’s a tool to be
used. And if a significant percentage of
the audience for that tool has difficulty
just turning the thing on, isn’t that an
inexcusable flaw? I believe it so.
So what’s the point of all this analysis? Do I have solutions or
alternatives for these issues? Well,
yes, but the fact is that most of them
aren’t pretty. The wrist pads on my
MacBook Pro certainly look low
class. The pedestal under my iMac at
work would certainly cause Apple
master designer Jonathan Ive to retch
uncontrollably. And the Microsoft
Natural Keyboard sitting in front of it
would almost certainly cause Steve
Jobs to have a fit.
But, hey Johnny and Steve, you have
pushed me and other users of your
products to these extremes. Because
you don’t design a product that is
comfortable to use, we have been
forced to modify what you consider to
be flawless products, and look elsewhere for solutions. You have the
power to change that, and you should.
Here’s hoping that voices like mine
will be heard and future Apples will
be considerably more organic (and
comfortable). 
Thank You, MacHighway
by Chris Hart, CMC President
You may have noticed that CMC’s web
site has been undergoing some changes.
We’ll be focusing on the update of the
site more in future newsletter articles
and group meetings. But while that
work is in progress, the thought struck
me how we sometimes take web hosts
for granted.
If you don’t know, a web host is an
internet company that makes it possible
for a web site to be accessible to everyone on the ‘net. When you enter a
particular URL (a “www” web address)
into a web browser on your computer,
that information tells your computer
where to look for the web site.
Specifically, the address tells your computer what web host to connect with, in
order to fulfill your request.
The server computers at the web host
then send then necessary files to your
computer, so that the content and struc-
http://www.machighway.com
ture of the web site can be assembled by
your web browser. Those server computers have unforgiving jobs and have
to handle hundreds (or thousands) of
requests per minute.
Not surprisingly, this world of Internet
servers is dominated by operating systems other than the Mac OS. Windows
and Unix provide the underpinnings for
the vast majority of the Internet. While
Mac OS X is based on Unix, web hosting companies generally don’t have a
need for the GUI layer that the Mac puts
on top of Unix.
Then there are the web hosting companies who think differently–the ones who
love the Mac as much as we do. They’re
the folks that build their internet business
on Apple hardware and software, in order
to make a statement. MacHighway is one
of those companies.
Originally known as “It’s A Mac,” they’ve
been in business for about 10 years now.
Being a good Mac community citizen,
they have reached out to Macintosh User
Groups and offered to help get them
online.
CMC has benefited from
MacHighway’s generosity for several
years now, and we love knowing that our
web site intended for Mac users is actually
being provided by Macintosh computers.
You can say the same about your web
site, by having it hosted by MacHighway.
If you’re not locked into a contract with
another service, you can have your web
site hosted by whomever you choose.
MacHighway is giving CMC members a
reason to choose them by offering 25%
off their regular prices. Whether you’re
creating your first web site, or looking to
transfer an existing one, MacHighway
would love to hear from you.
CMC discount code (which you enter
at time of checkout): CTMUG070720
Thank you, MacHighway, for your
support of CMC! 
What’s new in this version:
submitted by Deb Foss, CMC board member
iPhoto Buddy 1.2.7
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/redir/lid/1163969/iPhoto
_Buddy_127.dmg.zip
iPhoto Buddy is a small Universal Mac OS X application that
allows you to use more than one photo Library with Apple’s
iPhoto as well as with its companion programs, iMovie and
iDVD. The advantages of splitting your one huge photo library
into multiple, smaller ones include improved iPhoto performance, increased flexibility in organizing your digital photo
collection, and a consistency with most other Mac applications
that allow their respective data to be store in as many files (documents) as you like.
iPhoto Buddy uses a simple,
streamlined interface that
was inspired by iPhoto
itself. Anyone that has used
iPhoto will immediately
feel right at home using
iPhoto Buddy. It truly is a
companion application—
a real buddy!
• Added support for iLife ‘08
• iPhoto Buddy is now a Universal Application
• Added preferences for selecting the specific version/copy of each
iLife Application Buddy will launch
• Buddy now automatically adds the Default Library to the Library
List upon first launch
• The Default Library is now highlighted in the Library List
• Libraries can be added to the Library List by dropping them on
Buddy’s icon in the Finder/Dock
• Thumbnails can be added to the selected Library by
dropping them on Buddy’s icon in the Finder/Dock
• Random thumbnails can now be assigned from Libraries
that do not contain the original photo files
• PDF files are now supported for thumbnails
• Improved Library searching
• Corrected a bug that prevented the modifier keys from being
properly recognized when attempting to register a Library
without launching one of the iApps
• Corrected a bug where Buddy didn’t always properly honor the
“Attempt to mount network and Disk Image volumes at startup”
preference setting
• Minor performance and stability improvements.
Operating System Requirements:
This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:
• Mac OS X 10.4 Intel • Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
• Mac OS X 10.3.9
• Mac OS X 10.3
• Mac OS X 10.2
Additional Requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.2.4 or higher
• iPhoto 2.0 or higher
• iMovie 3.0 or higher (optional) • iDVD 3.0 or higher (optional)
• iWeb 1.0 or higher (optional)
4
Long Live AppleWorks
iWork ‘08 Translates Appleworks Docs
by Rich Lenoce, CMC Past President
I know many CMC members still rely
on AppleWorks for word processing,
spreadsheet calculations, painting and
drawing. Let’s face it, AppleWorks is
still a terrific product even if it hasn’t
been upgraded since 2004. Many CMC
members have told me how well it runs
on the latest Intel Macs. Though everyone has seen the writing on the wall,
many people have found it difficult to
give up this terrific product.
On August 15th, Apple (UK) announced
AppleWorks is “end of life,” Apple
Works is no longer listed on the Apple
Store and the AppleWorks website
directs you to the iWork ‘08 website.
This isn’t exactly news since Apple hasn’t updated AppleWorks for three years
and it has appeared all along that iWork
would be its replacement. AppleWorks
appeared to be all but dead.
One feature in iWork ‘08 that will make
AppleWorks owners happy is its ability
to open AppleWorks created document
files! AppleWorks word processing files
open in Pages and spreadsheet files open
in the new Numbers application. Oddly,
the AppleWorks presentation files do not
open in Keynote but open in Pages.
AppleWorks compatibility is a first for
iWork and will mean the hundreds of
AppleWorks files you created can be
opened and edited for many more years.
AppleWorks/ClarisWorks 2.0 was a
huge success even surpassing Lotus 12-3 in sales with $100 million in
revenue and was the #2 selling software
upon its release, outselling MS Office
in unit sales. In 1989, ClarisWorks was
upgraded to 3.0. Despite its success,
Claris was busy producing other products and turned over development to
Quality Computers. ClarisWorks 4 was
released in 1993 and 5.0 in 1994.
During this period there were several
versions of AppleWorks released
including AppleWorks Classic and
AppleWorks GS for the Apple II GS.
AppleWorks History
The original AppleWorks was one of the
first integrated office suites for personal
computers, featuring a word processor,
spreadsheet, drawing, terminal communications and database merged into a
single program. It was written by Robert
Lissner and released in 1984 by Apple
for the Apple II family of computers.
In 1986 Apple released version 2.0
and in 1987 moved AppleWorks over
to its new software division, Claris,
changing the name to ClarisWorks.
A full IIe-to-IIGS upgrade system. It was, however, still running ProDOS 8 applications (in this
case, AppleWorks), since GS/OS was not completed when the first IIGS computers were released.
Photo courtesy of Vintage Computing and Gaming
<vintagecomputing.com>
5
AppleWorks didn’t make it to the
Macintosh until 1991 when Claris
released ClarisWorks 1.0 for Macintosh,
written by Bob Hearn and Scott
Holdaway, and two years later Claris
brought ClarisWorks to the PC. Several
years later, Claris was reabsorbed by
Apple and the software was renamed
from ClarisWorks 5 to AppleWorks 5.
Appleworks 6 was released in 2000, featuring a presentation application and
Internet integration and was carbonized
to run in OS X. However, the features
and services of OSX were never fully
incorporated into version 6.0 indicating
the product was nearing an end.
AppleWorks 6 is a mature product filled
with many mini programs such as an
address books, stationary and integration
with the late great Claris eMailer, etc.
The last update of AppleWorks to version 6.2.9 was in 2004 and though the
product was still being sold by Apple up
until this summerright along side iWork,
it has not been updated since then.
The strength of AppleWorks wasn’t just
fantastic, integrated software design that
is lacking today, but an ability for users
to be involved writing modules or sharing templates and content through
various websites. Such openness and
user support creates community, and
that seems to be the one thing Apple
can’t kill. For example, the AppleWorks
User Group, AWUG, claims it has thousands of members and is still very
active. http://www.awug.org/
Future
So what is a person with thousands of
AppleWorks documents to do?
Certainly, you can continue to use
AppleWorks 6 well into the future. It’s
doubtful a change to OS X will break
AppleWorks at least in the immediate
term. AppleWorks users can move over
to iWork which is a very impressive
product, though not as comprehensive
as AppleWorks with its drawing, painting, database and mini-applications.
There are certainly many applications to
fill that void.
continued on page 7
WiebeTech sells a pair of products that
address this lack of FireWire compatibility, but they come at a price and with
limitations.
Accessing Bare
Hard Drives
By Adam C. Engst
<[email protected]>
Reprinted from
TidBITS #890/30 Jul-07
Most Macintosh hardware products
do a good job of hiding the actual
electronic parts inside sleekly
designed cases, and for most people,
that’s probably best. But if you want
to go beyond the basics, to soup up a
Mac past the stock configuration, or
troubleshoot certain problems,
sometimes you need to get down to
bare metal.
Take hard drives. Cases provide physical protection, a certain level of useful
industrial design, and conversion from
the hard drive mechanism’s native
power and interface connectors to standard power jacks and ports such as
FireWire and USB 2.0. But making it
possible to power a hard drive mechanism and connect it to a computer
doesn’t require a case, just the connector conversions. Several new products
now enable you to do just that - use a
hard drive mechanism directly on a
Mac or PC without a case.
Why would you want to? Perhaps a
friend or client is switching from a
dying PC to a Mac and needs to transfer content from the PC’s hard disk to
a VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop
installation on a new iMac. Maybe,
working as a consultant or help desk
support technician, you regularly
encounter situations where you need
to make backups of or recover data on
disks installed in computers that are
otherwise non-functional. Or perhaps,
like me, you’ve had trouble with a
FireWire drive case or drive bay used
for regular backups. The problem isn’t
with the drive mechanisms, but you’re
still dead in the water unless you can
get those drives to mount.
NewerTech
Universal Drive Adapter
I haven’t needed to use these products
extensively, but I and a friend have
successfully used the NewerTech
USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter
available at: <http://www.newertech.
com/products/usb2_adapt.php>,
which costs $29.95, and the slightly
more expensive USB 2.0 High-Speed
Bridge Adapter from Granite Digital
<http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg64_usbtosataidebridge.htm>,
which runs $39.95. The two devices
seem essentially identical, in that they
provide flexible power and connectivity
cables for
all 2.5",
3.5", and
5.25" drive
mechanisms,
whether
they’re IDE
Granite Digital Bridge Adapter
or the newer
SATA (I or II). You’re unlikely to find
many 5.25" hard drive mechanisms
these days, but the products work
with bare CD and DVD mechanisms
as well.
To my mind, the main downside of
these devices is that they’re USB-only,
which makes them significantly less
useful with older Macs that rely on
FireWire for high-speed connections
and have only slow USB 1.1 ports.
USB 1.1 runs at 12 Mbps, USB 2.0 at
480 Mbps, and FireWire 400 at 400
Mbps. Even though USB 2.0 isn’t as
fast as FireWire 400 in real world
usage, it’s plenty sprightly for drive use,
whereas USB 1.1 is painfully slow.
WiebeTech’s FireWire DriveDock
h t t p : / / w w. w i e b e t e c h . c o m /
products/firewiredrivedock.php>
and ComboDock products
<www.wiebetech.com/products/
ComboDock.php> are boxes that
WiebeTech
Firewire
DriveDock
Combo
Dock
attach to the back of 3.5" IDE bare
drives, providing power and connectivity, and then connect to a host Mac via
F i r e Wi r e
400
(for
the
F i r e Wi r e D r i v e D o c k )
or
8 0 0 ( f o r t h e ComboDock).
They also include power switches
and feedback LEDs. Unfortunately,
WiebeTech’s docks cost noticeably
more at $99.95 for the FireWire
DriveDock and $169.95 for the
ComboDock. And if you want to use
the ComboDock with drives other than
3.5" IDE mechanisms, you need additional adapters that cost between
$49.95 and $99.95 (the full kit with all
six adapters costs $499.95). Visit
Weibetech
Adapters
available
continued on page 7
6
<http://www.weibetech.com/products/v4_adapters.php>
Although I’ve not used the WiebeTech
docks personally, my impression is
that they’re aimed more at the technician working with four or five
different drives every day, rather than
someone who needs to access a bare
drive only occasionally.
But what about the other function of a
hard drive case: physical protection?
It’s certainly true that you could install
a bare drive in an inexpensive hard
drive case, but most cases lack the
interface flexibility of these bare drive
adapters, and it’s often fussy to insert
and remove drives from cases. The
WiebeTech docks come with a bottom
plate to protect the drive electronics
(and you can purchase additional
plates if desired).
But Granite Digital has a better
answer to this problem: Drive Shields
<http://www.granitedigital.com/cata-
Granite Digital’s
Silicone (l) and Aluminum (r) Drive Shields
log/pg67_driveshields.htm>, available
either in stretchy silicone ($9.95) for
quick insertion and removal or aluminum ($19.95) that offers more
protection and cooling for longer term
use. A package of the silicone Drive
Shields includes shields for both 2.5"
and 3.5" drives; the aluminum Drive
Shield works only with 3.5" drives.
The bottom line is that if you ever find
yourself needing to work with bare
hard drive mechanisms, one of these
inexpensive adapters will prove an
essential addition to your toolkit. 
Long Live Appleworks...
One of AppleWork’s strengths was its
ability to open and save to a variety of
different formats including Microsoft
Office. The bad news is that Microsoft
Office and the free NeoOffice and
Open Office products can’t open
AppleWorks files.
The stock thing to do if you want to
upgrade to any of the MS Office compatible products is to either manually
convert AppleWorks files within
AppleWorks to Microsoft Office .doc
(Word) and .xls (Excel spreadsheet) file
formats or use a batch converter application for those with many AppleWorks
documents.
Luckily, there is a simple and free solution to the batch conversion issue.
AppleWorks Converters
A simple and free batch conversion
script, Magic Word Converter, is the
most likely candidate to meet your
needs. Magic Word Converter is an
AppleScript created for the purpose
of converting an entire folder of
Apple Works documents (word processing and spreadsheet) to Microsoft
Word and Excel compatible documents. The program does not require
that you have iWorks or Microsoft
Office installed, only AppleWorks 6.
Simply create a folder and move
copies (for safety’s sake, don’t use the
originals) of your AppleWorks documents into this single folder. Within
that folder create a new folder – it
must be named “Converted Files” for
this to work. Then run the script and
in a flash your documents will be
converted. Magic Word Converter
version 1.3 has been tested on Mac
OS 10.3 and OS X 10.4.
h t t p : / / w w w. n i c k t e c h . o rg / M a g i c
WordConverter.html
In my tests, Magic Word Converter did
the job, but had problems maintaining
styles and attributes found in the original word processing documents.
Since most of my AppleWorks files
were being archived, I didn’t find this
to be an issue. I will make these minor
style adjustments in the future as I
open those files.
For those who want a more polished conversion, a commercial product, IC Word
and IC Excel, (http://www.panergy-software.com/)
will
convert
your
AppleWorks word processing and
spreadsheet files and will maintain all
attributes and styles. The cost is $29,95
for both or $19.95 each if you only need
one converter. IC Word and OC Excel
are not a batch converters but using a
commercial product makes converting
many documents, fast, easy and accurate.
Other AppleWorks Conversion Tools
Finally, what to do with all those
drawing and painting files created with
AppleWorks? Lemke Software’s
Graphics Converter (shareware) is the
answer. It will open any AppleWorks or
Macintosh graphics file format and allow
you to edit, save and convert to any number of popular graphics formats.
If you are looking to upgrade from
AppleWorks, I think you will be very
happy with iWork ‘08, and given 08’s
updated interface, it should be a smooth
transition for AppleWorks users.
Gone with AppleWorks is the benefit of a
single Swiss Army Knife application,
since iWorks and other modern Office
applications are missing the database,
paint, drawing and the many mini-applications we’ve grown to love in
AppleWorks. Also missing is the huge
community and following, but, of course,
you have CMC and all of our resources
to continue that type of support. 
Magic Word Converter
“Luckily, there is a simple and free solution to the batch conversion issue”
7
I have mentioned the HowStuffWorks.com website in many of
my previous articles – it is truly a great site for info on how
almost anything works. Its section on Home Security at
http://home.HowStuffWorks.com/Home-Security-Tips.htm is
really informative. It starts out with a discussion of “Home
Security Basics”, and has info on “Securing Doors”, “Securing
Windows”, and “Garage Security”. The next section is on “Home
Security When You Are Away” – including tips on how to protect your
Valuables. If you want to get into the technology and mechanics of
Home Protection, their “Home Security Library” Section is at
http://home.HowStuffWorks.com/Home-Security-Channel.htm. Here
you can read comprehensive articles on things like:
How Burglar Alarms Work How to Install a Lockset
How a Master Key Works How Locks Work
How Lock Picking Works How Stun Guns Work
How Safecracking Works How Combination Locks Work
How Emergency Power Systems Work
How to Install a Home Security System
#89 – Home Safety & Security Websites
September, 2007
© 2007 By Peter P. Gladis
[email protected]
The tragedies we’ve seen recently in Cheshire and elsewhere are
reminders to us all to make sure we are doing everything we can
to protect our family and our home. The Internet offers terrific
resources for information on this important topic. This month’s
article should be used in conjunction with the article I published in
May of 2006 on “FAMILY SAFETY” – if you’d like a copy, just
e-mail me and I’ll get it right out to you. Here are some excellent
HOME SAFETY & SECURITY WEBSITES.
A sobering but important article on Home Safety and preventative
measures is at: HowToAdvice.com/HomeSecurity. A few key sections of the article include: put yourself in a burglar’s shoes;
In researching this topic, I came across a great website out of
effective burglar deterrents; securing doors & windows; and a home
Manchester, England: CrimeReduction.Homeoffice.gov.uk. Crime
security & safety checklist.
Prevention and Personal & Home Safety are universal topics, and
The CrimeDoctor.com website is an outstanding resource for informa- this site does an excellent job addressing these issues – personal
tion on all aspects of Personal Safety. In particular, it has very informative safety: CrimeReduction.gov.uk/PersonalSafety.htm, and A Guide
and useful sections on home safety: CrimeDoctor.com/Home.htm; to Home Security: CrimeReduction.gov.uk/cpghs.htm.
family safety: CrimeDoctor.com/Family.htm; apartment security:
The City of Phoenix, AZ also has an excellent amount of information
CrimeDoctor.com/Apartment-Security.htm; and two specific and useful
on burglary prevention: http://phoenix.gov/POLICE/burgti1.html;
topics on Home Invasion: CrimeDoctor.com/HomeInvasion.htm and
and robbery prevention: http://phoenix.gov/POLICE/robbti1.html.
CrimeDoctor.com/Home2.htm
It also has a very useful section for babysitters: http://
A v e r y c o m p l e t e h o m e a n d p e r s o n a l s a f e t y s i t e i s phoenix.gov/POLICE/babysi1.html. Sexual assault is another danNoNonsenseSelfDefense.com. It focuses on many aspects of person- gerous and worrisome crime; this website offers some very valuable
al safety, including martial arts, and even tips on how to win a street information on it: http://phoenix.gov/POLICE/selfpr1.html
fight! the most practical, and easily implemented sections are on
Security Products Magazine is a publication for security profeshome security: NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com/HomeSecurity.html,
sionals – but it has many excellent “tips” for consumers on its
robbery: NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com/Robbery.html, and property
website. Examples include, Tips: Home Security & Fire Safety
crime: NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com/PropertyCrime.html. Each of
SecProdOnline.com/Articles/49152; and Tip: Protect Your House
these sections has many practical, real-world tips on how to protect
During Summer Vacation: SecProdOnline.com/Articles/49046.
your home and family.
Also, there’s a good section on personal safety tips:
SecProdOnline.com/Articles/48400; and window safety tips:
The Insurance Information Institute at III.org has an excellent secSecProdOnline.com/Articles/46619.
tion on home security at III.org/Individuals/HomeI/Tips/Security.
Key topics include:
State Farm Insurance Co. has very helpful tips on how to prevent
• Check Your Home for Weaknesses and Correct Them
burglary at: StateFarm.com/learning/be_safe/home/burglary/burglary.asp – in addition, it also has links to useful articles about
• Simple Security Devices • Simple Security Steps
Home Security and Alarm Systems: StateFarm.com/learn• Doors • Locks • Windows • Home Security Habits
ing/be_safe/home/burglary/learning_besafe_athm_homealrms.asp
“McGruff – The Crime Dog” is wonderful way to teach crime pre- , as well as practical descriptions of effective Door Locks:
vention to children. Its site at McGruff-Safe-Kids.com is StateFarm.com/learning/be_safe/home/burglary/learning_besafe_
outstanding! Use it to help your kids understand how to deal with athome_doorlocks.asp; and even detailed descriptions of the best
bad situations and to take a bite out of crime! Closely associated Security Door Hinges: StateFarm.com/learning/be_safe/home/burglawith the McGruff Campaign is the National Crime Prevention ry/learning_besafe_athm_burg_hing.asp. They recommend strongly that
Council. Its website is NCPC.org. The website clearly states its you maintain an up-to-date Home Inventory, and they offer free home
important mission: “Be a leader in helping people keep them- inventory software and a checklist: StateFarm.com/learning/loss_preselves, their families, and their communities safe from Crime”. We vent/learning_loss_homeinventory1.asp.
produce tools to learn Crime Prevention strategies, engage the
Community, and coordinate with local Agencies. We offer NOTE: Given the seriousness of this month’s topic, and the need
Publications, teaching materials and Programs that can be imple- for as much space for it as possible, there will be no Wacky Website
mented in communities and schools. And we offer training classes, this month.
and Public Service Announcement broadcasts nationwide starring
Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-Mail me at [email protected]
“McGruff the Crime Dog”.
8
I am not interested in keeping printer company owners in fancy
cars, so I try to print as economically as possible.
It’s very glitchy, too and I’m not sure it will run under Leopard
when I upgrade. Also, the cartridges at Circuit City and elsewhere are around $85. But I keep it because I have found a way
to continue printing cheaply. After buying a discounted cartridge, I bought a laser refill kit and am now able to refill the
toner cartridge myself.
About three years ago I bought a low-priced Samsung laser
printer from OfficeMax. If memory serves me, it retailed for
$130 before rebate. After rebate it was $80. I felt that was a very
good price for a laser printer. I had been using a Lexmark ink jet
printer that was unreliable and costly, as far as ink cartridges
were concerned.
Any number of websites offer ink and toner at discount prices.
I searched and found a site that sells toner refills for many
brands. Go to www.refillkitz.com and search for your brand
printer. You can also buy discounted cartridges from sources
such as www.TonerInStock.com. You may find others by using
Google, as I did.
Since I enjoy printing out lots of Internet and newspaper articles, a laser printer was the correct choice for me. Alas, what I
didn’t know was that some laser printers don’t come with a full
cartridge when new. That included my new Samsung. So check
on that when buying.
But make sure your cartridge has a removable plug so you can
pour the toner into the cartridge. Or follow the instructions for your
printer toner cartridge. Check the website for more information.
Adventures in Laser Printing Surgery
by Jerry Esposito,
CMC Vice President
I don’t know what the refills might do to my lungs, so I’m very
careful when refilling. I refill outdoors and keep away from
windy areas. The refill kit has enough toner to refill my cartridge for four refills at a price of $29.99. That comes out at
$7.50 a refill. Not a bad
price. It appears,
though, that the black
toner isn’t quite as
dark as the original.
Also check that the printer has drivers for the Mac OS. I thought
I was safe since the Samsung came with both OS 9.1 and OS X
drivers. But when Tiger
was released, I had to
look far and wide for a
driver when I upgraded.
Samsung didn’t offer a
driver for OS X 10.4,
and I see that you can’t
find very many printers
that support the Mac.
That should change
soon as the Mac market
is booming.
www.refillkitz.com
Nevertheless, a laser
printer is the way to go
if printing large
amounts of black and
white text. 
www.TonerInStock.com
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 CMC today to take advantage of these special offers.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Looking for information on a past offer? The Apple User Group
Advisory Board offers a colorful web page with all current offers,
expiration dates and codes: Password - easy
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
JoeSoft: 25% Discount on All Products
PeaPackDesigns Animal Collection for iPod Nano: 40% Off
Elgato Turbo.264: Turbocharged exports at 25% Off
CC Wear: Custom Dust Covers 25% Off
FUTURE SONICS: Believe Your Ears™ at 20% Off
JukeDock: Save $30 (US)
DEVONthink Professional Office: 25% Off
ConceptDraw 7 and Project 3: $50 Discount
app4mac Products: 20% off
iWOW for iTunes: 20% Discount
Portraits & Prints: Standard Edition Free and 60% Off Pro
Ultralingua: 20% Discount
LapWorks: 20% Off Laptop Products
Listz: 25% Off
Wacom Tablets: 20% Savings
The MUG Store: Great Prices, Great Incentives
Mushkin Memory: Reseller Prices
MacAddict Reborn: 40% Off New Mac|Life
O’Reilly: New Discounts for User Group Members
Actoris Software: 25% Off
AppleWorks User Group: Batteries to Power Your Macintosh
Peachpit Club: Save 25% on all Peachpit books
MacWorld Magazine: $15.00 for 12 issues
Take Control ebooks UG Price: 10% Discount
Spamfire: more than 20% off regular price
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group Market Report podcast
...a great source for information about Apple user groups, vendor discounts,
special events and more: http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/resources.html
9
President
Chris Hart
[email protected]
Vice President
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Secretary
Jack Bass
[email protected]
Treasurer
Reggie Dionne
[email protected]
Past President
Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
Ambassador
Joseph Arcuri
[email protected]
Editor
Deena Quilty
[email protected]
Design
George Maciel
[email protected]
Raffles
Robert Sawyer
[email protected]
Webmaster
Brian Desmond
[email protected]
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Debbie Foss
[email protected]
Date ____________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
ILLUSTRATIONS
Custom art for:
• Print
• Web
CARICATURES
For a unique GIFT.
Persoanlized
art from photo.
Or LIVE at any
business or
private event.
10
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, September 26
UConn Health Center
Farmington
Back To Basics 6 p.m.
Intro to .Mac (“Dot Mac”)
Our Back to Basics program is an
introduction to Apple’s .Mac (“Dot
Mac”) service, presented by Jason
Crain and Jerry Esposito. While .Mac
is many things, it’s primarily an online
service that integrates fluidly with
iLife and Mac OS X. It’s the easiest
way possible to share your digital life
on the Internet. Create your own web
site, post your photos in galleries, easily backup your files, sync contacts
and calendars, plus more. Come find
out what other Mac users are doing
with this flexible service and learn
how to get started yourself.
Main Presentation 7 p.m.
Roundtable on Data Storage
Our main program is a roundtable
discussion on data storage and the different choices available to you: internal
hard drive upgrade, external hard
drives, flash drives, network attached
storage, etc. We’re discussing which is
suitable for your type of Macintosh and
your needs. We’re also explaining the
nuts and bolts of how to start using this
gear – installation, setup, and formatting. We’re making the complicated
stuff easy for you to comprehend. All
members are encouraged to participate
in this roundtable that is guided by
Chris Hart and Joe Arcuri.
Meeting Topics. Do you have an idea for a topic
we should explore? Perhaps there’s a topic that
you would like to present yourself?We always welcome your input and participation. Email us at
[email protected].
Monthly CMC meetings are held on last
Wednesday of the month (except during the months
of November and December when the meetings
are held earlier due to the holidays). We open at
6:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m. for Back to Basics, and from
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. for the Main Presentation
Board meetings are held on the first Thursday of
the month. If you wish to attend a Board meeting,
contact an officer for time and location.
FREE Raffle!
FREE Classified Ads
And don’t forget the “free table” at the
is...free!
[email protected]
Display Ad Rates
Account Balances
Business Card (3.5"w. x 2") ...............$10.00
Balances as of September 01, 2007
Quarter Page (3.625"w. x 4.75").........$20.00
Money Market ................$4,048.86
Half Page (7.5"w. x 4.75"h. ..................$30.00
CMC Passwords/IDs
Full Page (7.5"w. x 9.5").......................$50.00
or 3.625"w. x 9.5"h.)
Submit all ad copy to the Editor on a
disk (with nothing else on it) or e-mail
it to [email protected] for insertion
in the following issue. Display ads
must be submitted camera-ready in
eps or pdf format with all fonts and
graphics embedded. Please specify how
many issues you would like your ad to
run and make check payable to “CMC”.
Getting CMC email?
Need CMC Support?
That’s right!. You don’t have to wait
for a monthly meeting to get
answers your Mac related questions.
CMC hosts a Mac Support mailing
list for members? CMC members
can join at www.ctmac.org
Valid: 06/01/07 - 09/31/07
User ID: harmony
Password: elephant
Valid from: 05/16/07
Password: easy
11
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, September 26
Intro to .Mac (“Dot Mac”)
Roundtable on Data Storage
Please go to out website for further information:
www.ctmac.org
CMC Monthly Meeting Location
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
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
At our August CMC monthly meeting, Rich
Lenoce demonstrated the changes and improvements (and sometimes disappointments) that
came with the newly released version of
Apple’s iLife software suite.
Keeping Your Mac Happy.....................1
Home Brew File Management: iTunes ....6
Google Notebook .................................7
Deneba Canvas Update ........................8
Mac Tips...............................................8
MUG Special Offers ..............................9
OCTOBER 2007
your hard drive’s space as unoccupied. On a 120 gigabyte hard drive,
that would be 12 gigabytes. If you
value the speed of your computer
(such as for tasks like video editing) I
would urge you to keep at least 15
percent free.
Keeping Your Mac Happy
By Chris Hart
CMC President
If you’ve been a member of CMC for
a while now, I hope you’ve been able
to absorb the advice that has been
imparted in our newsletter and at our
meetings. We cover a lot of ground
over the course of a year and I know
the information can sometimes be
daunting.
However, there are some core essentials that you should definitely be
aware of. CMC has touched on most
of them at one time or another. But I
recently realized that these “Mac
Health Tips” have never been presented in one tidy package.
After witnessing some recent “close
calls” for Mac owners who are either
acquaintances or clients – they came
close to losing valuable documents – I
realized it is high time I compile this
information.
I believe you’ll find it valuable,
because regardless of whether your
Mac is the type that sits on your lap,
or on your desk, or one that is based
on an Intel chip, or a PowerPC processor, there are certain healthy practices
that are universal. Not taking care to
be mindful of these practices can
result in problems that range from
nuisance to debilitating.
So, whether you’re new to CMC and
you’ve never read an issue of our
newsletter before, or you’ve been taking notes at meetings for years, I hope
to make your life easier. Think of this
article as a primer; a quick reference
for positive practices that will keep
your Macintosh computer happier.
Leave Room To Breathe
The hard drive in your Mac
doesn’t just store your personal documents. There are hundreds
of thousands of files on the drive of a
modern Macintosh and many of them
are essential to its operation. Plus,
with each passing minute there are
dozens of system files being saved to
(and sometimes removed from) your
hard drive. This is all a normal part of
your Mac’s operation. Such processes
provide the foundation for the Mac’s
stability and rich features.
1
But all that file activity means that
there must be commensurate real estate
availa b l e o n y o u r h ard d ri v e.
Otherwise, you’ll see all sorts of quirky
behavior from your Mac as it grapples
with the lack of space it needs to perform the tasks you’re asking of it.
Computer technicians frequently suggest retaining a minimum of 10% of
1
If you ever get below 5 gigabytes of
free space, you’re starting to ask for
trouble. Less than 1 gigabyte is a
recipe for disaster. And if it ever gets
so bad that your Mac tells you “The
Startup Disk Is Almost Full,” do not
ignore the warning! You must take
immediate action and either transfer
some files to another location, or
delete documents you no longer need.
At any time, you can determine how
much space is remaining on your hard
drive by clicking on its icon once,
then go to the File menu and select the
“Get Info” option. In that window
look for the entry that says
“Available:”
You Can Never Have
Too Much RAM
RAM is the type of memory that allows your computer to hold
the information relative to the applications and documents you’re currently
working with. The larger those apps
and documents are, the more RAM
they will consume. Unfortunately,
with every generation of software,
applications demand more and more
RAM. And as part of the natural evolution of using a computer, our
documents become more detailed and
enriched with multimedia. All this
means that the RAM which was
2
Continued on page 2
NEWSLETTER OF
included when you purchased your
computer may no longer be enough.
(Unless you bought extra from the
get-go.)
Do the same thing for your Mac laptop.
People don’t realize all the stuff that
accumulates in their computer keyboards. It’s good to get it out of there,
before it hinders the operation of the
keyboard or the computer as a whole.
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.
I’m sure many of you have a Mac with
512 megabytes of RAM, as that has
always been a very popular number.
And if your needs are modest, you can
actually get by on that. You just need
to be diligent about not running too
many applications simultaneously.
However, if you like to work extensively with any of the iLife suite apps,
1 gigabyte is considered the practical
minimum. While 2 gigabytes is advisable for those who either work with
graphics professionally, or wish to run
Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously on their Intel-based Mac.
If you’re a power user who is considering even more RAM, by all means
do it. There’s no such thing as too
much RAM, although there is a point
of diminishing returns. For example,
few users need more than 4 gigabytes
of RAM. So, while the latest MacPros
can handle 16 gigabytes of RAM, the
fact is that the price for it is outrageous. So find the sweet spot for your
personal needs and budget.
Keep Your Baby Clean
Every other month, make a
point of giving your Mac a
quick cleaning. Use a can of compressed air and a vacuum to keep dust
from accumulating. Start the process
by shutting down your Mac.
3
Disconnect the keyboard, turn it
upside down (or least position it vertically) and spray the compressed air
between the keys. Perhaps even shake
the keyboard as you do it. Don’t use a
vacuum on a keyboard, as the key
covers have been known to break
loose and get sucked up. Retrieving
them from the vacuum bag is not a fun
way to spend your afternoon.
Pre-moistened anti-bacterial wipes
work great on keyboards and mice. I
have also found that they’re very
effective on grimy LCD screens
(those with a matte finish; I don’t
think they would work well on the
glossy ones). Just make sure you have
a soft, clean rag handy to immediately
wipe off the residual moisture – leaving it there will cause streaking.
Because desktop computers have fans
in them, as well as a static charge,
they attract dust like magnets. Use the
vacuum to clean up around your desktop computer. With the brush
attachment in place, run the hose over
all the openings on the computer. This
will help dislodge the dust that has
accumulated in these vents.
Install SMARTReporter
This is a clever little utility
that takes advantage of an
inherent ability in all recent Mac
models: self-diagnosis of pending hard
drive failure. SMARTReporter does
this by checking your hard drive on regular intervals for reports of trouble.
4
All hard drives fail eventually, and this
clever little utility offers the possibility that you’ll have advance notice of
when it’s happening to the one inside
your Mac. (This only works for drives
that are inside of your Mac – not those
that are external.)
http://tinyurl.com/2cxkry
Automate Your Backups
As the previous paragraph
says, all hard drives fail
eventually. You should never, ever
rely on your Mac as the sole location
of your important files. No matter
how much of a faithful friend your
smiling Mac has been, there will
5
continued on page 3
2
come a day when the drive inside will
fail. This is because hard drives are
complex devices with microscopic
tolerances between parts that interact
at high speeds.
Because there is nothing you can do
to prevent this eventuality, you need
to be prepared. If you have a complete and up-to-date backup, your
worries will be many fewer when that
day comes.
The best way to automate your backups is to equip yourself with an
external hard drive featuring a
FireWire or USB port (the former is
preferable). Combine that with some
good backup software and the task of
regular backups becomes automatic
and nearly transparent for those using
the computer.
There are many good backup utilities
for the Mac, but DejaVu and
SuperDuper! are my favorites. The
latter is perhaps the more straightforward of the two – you can have full
backups scheduled with less than a
dozen clicks.
www.shirt-pocket.com
DejaVu is slightly more complex,
but that also means you have more
options. The most notable one is the
ability to save multiple iterations of
files that have recently been
revised. This could really save your
skin if you need a file that you accidentally deleted or saved changes
that you didn’t want to. (Note that
may need to have a very big backup
hard drive to accommodate these
multiple iterations of files).
www.propagandaprod.com
Apple’s own “Backup” utility also has
this ability and is a very good option
for those who have a .Mac subscription (the software requires that you be
subscribed). You can download this
tool at www.mac.com.
Backups should be scheduled to occur
at least once a week. (If your business
is based around your Macintosh, the
interval should be daily.)
Secure That Drive, Ensign!
Continuing on the topic of
hard drive health comes
the issue of motion. Because a drive
has moving speed parts inside, which
operate in close proximity, the possibility of collision is very real. While
every generation of hard drives is better at dealing with motion and shock,
the fact is that a significant jolt can
still cause irreparable damage.
6
Your best practice in this regard is
to avoid moving a computer or hard
drive that is in operation. Desktop
computers should be shut down
completely before moving them.
And while it’s obviously impractical to shut down a laptop every
time you want to move it, it would
be best to put it to sleep if you’re
moving it further than from the
couch to the coffee table.
When going on the road, it’s advisable
to make sure that you are completely
done preparing your laptop for departure before you stuff it in your bag or
case. If you have told it to shut down,
keep the lid open until it has completed
that task. If you want it to sleep, close
the lid and wait for the sleep light to start
pulsing. Then you can stow it and go.
These steps assure that your Mac has
ample chance to save the data it needs
to and that your hard drive’s file records
are properly updated (sans any jostling
that might interrupt the process).
Throw Out Norton!
I know a lot of you have
Symantec’s Norton Disk
Doctor (part of Norton Utilities for
Mac) in your software libraries. For
years, most Mac owners considered it
an essential tool. But the fact is, it’s
now a dead product – no updates and
no support. Plus, it never worked great
with Mac OS X to begin with – more
7
3
often that not, I have seen it actually
cause problems.
Yes, I hear you protesting that Norton
was always the king of utilities for Mac
and that it’s what you’re used to. I suggest you end that chapter of your life
and literally chuck your Norton discs in
the trash.
Apple’s Disk Utility (right in your
Utilities folder) is more capable than
ever and is a good poor man’s alternative. And if you have AppleCare, you
already have a disc straight from Apple
that includes Micromat’s TechTool
Deluxe, which is even more capable
than Mr. Norton.
Use A Good Quality
Surge Protector
I’m not giving you a Best
Buy sales pitch here and I don’t want
to sell you an $80 monster. But a $10
power strip from WalMart just isn’t
going to cut it when lightning
strikes. And if the strip you have
now is 10 years old, it’s time to
replace it – they lose their ability to
protect as they age.
8
Buy a quality protector from a quality
brand like APC, TrippLite, or Belkin.
Look for one that has a high joule rating.
If it can’t absorb at least 2000 joules, I
wouldn’t bother with it. (The higher the
joule rating, the better). Tip: Look on
eBay for low prices on new units.
If you live in an area with frequent
power outages, you should be looking
at a UPS (Uninterruptible Power
Supply). This is a device with a builtin battery, which powers your
computer during power sags and
blackouts (protecting it from the shock
of power fluctuations and giving you a
chance to shut it down properly).
A UPS’ ability to power a computer is
indicated by the VA rating. The more
powerful your computer is, the more
you should get – 500VA is the minimum to consider, 700VA or more is
continued on page 4
better. Stick with the same brands
mentioned above.
Keep Your Doors Locked
If you have a high-speed
Internet connection, your
computer is potentially exposed to the
vagrants of the Internet. Just by nature
of being a Mac user, you’re safer than
the average bloke. But it’s definitely
wise to keep things locked down and
to not tempt the curious hackers of the
world. If you already own a broadband router, then you’re all set. That
provides an excellent level of protection via its integrated NAT firewall.
9
If you don’t have such a router, you
could buy one for anywhere from $40
on up to $200. They’re ideal for settings with more than one computer, as
they allow sharing of a single broadband Internet connection.
Alternatively, if you like the sound of
free, you can avail yourself of the
Mac’s built-in firewall. You do this by
going to the Apple menu, selecting
System Preferences, clicking on the
Sharing icon and then selecting the
Firewall button. Then simply click on
the Start button.
Keep Your Receipt
No, I’m not talking about
the receipt for your computer. These are receipts stored in the
system software of your Mac. Every
time you install an update or some
new piece of software, a receipt for
the process is left behind.
10
If this is news to you, then that’s actually good – it means you likely won’t
be tempted to go and mess with them.
But, many fastidious Mac owners
have felt the compulsion to clean out
these receipts.
However, since these files contain
information that is vital beyond just
the initial installation. Removing them
could cause things to stop working
properly. So, remember, keep your
receipts.
Don’t Worry About
Defragmenting
In the days of yore, running a defragmenting utility was a
common past time for Mac owners.
Nowadays, with the speed of modern
Macs and the ability of Mac OS X to
compensate for fragmentation, there is
nothing to be gained from the process.
11
That is, unless you have an extreme
case of file fragmentation. And if your
situation is that bad, what you definitely should be doing instead is make
a complete backup with SuperDuper!,
reformat your internal hard drive, and
restore everything from the backup.
This is much better for your computer,
while taking only a little more time.
Be Cautious With Updates
When Software Update
bounces up and down in
your Dock and presents you with a list
of tasty new updates, resist temptation.
Just because it’s offering you the
opportunity to update, that doesn’t
mean that this is the right time to do so.
12
While installing updates is usually
without drama, there’s no guarantee
that things will always go smoothly.
There have been a number of
instances over the years of updates
that resulted in Apple owners experiencing troubles they never had before.
For example, recently Apple released
Mac OS X update 10.4.10 and the version for Intel-based Macs had a
significant issue. They had to fix the
update and re-release it as 10.4.10
v1.1. So, think twice before installing
updates. Ask yourself: “Do I need this
update?” “Do I need to do this update
right now?”
If you’re a professional, working on a
schedule, there’s the chance that one
badly-timed update could entirely
upset your business. If you have a
deadline on Friday and your Mac gets
4
cranky because it doesn’t like the
newest addition, your ability to fulfill
your business commitments could be
seriously affected.
The same goes for incremental
updates and version upgrades from
software vendors other than Apple.
Just because you get an email from the
company that makes the graphics software you use, announcing an update,
that doesn’t mean you should install it
right there and then. Think about the
potential impact it might have. Will
your documents need to be updated?
Does the upgrade require a newer version of the operating system? Do
some reading and thinking before
moving forward.
Take advantage of the resources that
your Mac User Group offers and ask
at the next meeting “Is the update for
‘X’ worth doing? Any problems?”
This is a prime opportunity to find out
if anyone has had issues themselves,
or heard about any. Also, don’t forget
CMC’s troubleshooting mailing list,
which is also a perfect venue to ask
these questions.
Mac OS X Updates
Aren’t A “Cure All”
On a number of occasions
I’ve been called in to fix an ailing Mac
that has all sorts of issues, and the user
says to me “Since the Mac was misbehaving and Apple just released this
new update, I thought it would fix my
problem.”
13
In fact, in such a situation, all you’re
doing is making the problem worse.
There’s no doubt that Apple’s updates
incorporate bug fixes that can resolve
long-standing issues you’ve been
experiencing. But if you’re having a
computer issue that only recently
manifested itself, it’s likely due a
deeper problem. Either research the
problem on your own, or higher a pro
to come in a sort it out.
continued on page 5
Pretend To Be
Someone Else
Mac OS X is built from
the ground up to be a multi-user computing environment. Use this to your
advantage when you are experiencing
problems with your Mac. You can do
this by seeing if the problem affects
all user accounts on the computer. It’s
not uncommon for a problem to be
limited to one user account.
14
To login as a different user, go to the
Apple menu and select Log Out.
Following the logout process, the
login window appears and you can
pretend to be another user for the sake
of troubleshooting, by logging into
their account.
If there is no other user account available, login to your account again. Go
to the Apple menu and select System
Preferences. Now click on the
Accounts icon. In the left column of
this window is a list of users that are
setup on that Mac. Click on the + sign
at the base of this column to create a
new user account. You can name the
account whatever you want to. Now
go to the Apple menu and select Log
Out and then Login as the new user.
Try repeating the exact same steps
that have been causing problems. Do
you see the same results? If yes, then
the cause is more serious and systemic. If the problem is gone, then the
cause is limited to your user account
and can be more easily sorted out.
Bring this information to your Mac
User Group meeting and ask for
advice or provide it to the computer
technician who comes to visit.
Welcoming A New Cat
Any day now, Apple will
be releasing “Leopard” or
what is properly called Mac OS X
10.5. Some of us will be installing it
on Day 1 and others will take the
“wait and see” approach. Whichever
15
camp you’re in, installing a system
software upgrade is a substantial
change for your Mac.
Here are some precautions to take, in
order to help the process go more
smoothly:
A) Make sure your Mac meets the
demands of the upgrade. Although I
don’t yet know the official system
requirements, I would say that you’d
better have at least 15 gigabytes free
on your hard drive. (It’s not going to
use all that space, but you need to
have breathing room for it to run).
You should also have at least 1 gigabyte of RAM. If your Mac is slower
than 733 megahertz, you probably
won’t have the necessary horsepower
for Leopard to run smoothly.
B) Check with the makers of the software and hardware you use for any
potential issues or necessary updates.
Pretty much every piece of software on
your computer is likely to need updating.
For example, let’s say you have an
Epson scanner. You should be checking Epson’s web site for support
documents that address potential
incompatibilities. Also check their
download library for necessary
updates.
Likewise, you should check with the
makers of your important pieces of
software for any issues they have
identified and downloadable fixes
they’re offering.
Unfortunately, these companies sometimes drag their heels with sharing the
necessary information and creating the
appropriate updates. But be diligent
and keep checking. Send them a polite
support request or email, so they know
that there are people out there who
want Leopard compatibility.
C ) Make an up-to-date backup!
Obviously, if you’re following best practices, you will have your most recent
backup in place. But it’s always good to
bring it completely up to date. Go one
step further and verify the integrity of
your files contained in that backup.
D) Run Disk Utility’s “Verify Disk”
and “Repair Permissions” functions
(and the tools on the aforementioned
AppleCare disc, if you have it). If the
Verify Disk process does not complete
successfully, do not continue the
update process. You must fix this first.
Check Apple’s support documentation
on possible solutions. (Note: The
Verify Disk process will only run on
your internal hard disk if you are running OSX 10.4.6 or later).
E) Disconnect all unnecessary USB
and FireWire peripherals – external
hard drives (especially your backup
drive!), scanners, flash drives, cameras, etc. Wait to reconnect them until
you have rebooted and performed
Leopard’s initial setup steps.
I hope you’ve found these tips useful
and they’ll make your Mac life that
much happier. 
What Was That?
In our September newsletter, this illustration
was used in Chris Hart’s article “In-Organic
Apples.” After numerous emails asking what
the product was and where it could be
found, here is the info:
Company Name: Office OrganixTM,
Advanced Ergonomics @ Internet Prices.
http://www.officeorganix.com
(Chris Hart look-alike sold separately)
5
Home Brew File
Management: iTunes
loss of playlists may
be just too traumatic
to continue!
By Don Dickey
Do you use iTunes? Have you ever
lost any of your music? I know several friends and clients who have
gone through the trauma of loosing
their entire music collection (or at
least thought they had). There are a
couple of things you can do to
help reduce the likelihood of
this happening to you!
It seems that while iTunes (and
iPhoto) try to make complicated tasks
easy, they also can put your digital
media at risk. Sure, you can use
iTunes to make a backup of your
library by burning MP3 CDs or Data
CDs, but this article is about preventing data loss in the first place. The
main fault with iTunes lies in the ease
of accidentally deleting music files.
The solution is to simply take control
of the files yourself! This article will
describe in detail just how to do so in
such a way that you should be able to
prevent losing music from a simple
mistake.
I will assume that you’ve got a bunch
of music already in iTunes. This can
be a collection of music you’ve
“ripped” from your CDs and/or music
you’ve bought from the iTunes music
store. The first step is to find it. The
normal hiding place is as follows:
Macintosh HD> Users> yourname>
Music> iTunes> iTunes Music. Here
you should find your music neatly
organized into folders, first by artist,
and then by album.
Now, before you continue, let me discuss a couple caveats of the next step.
You are about to move your music to
a different location. When you do so,
it’s easy for iTunes to reacquire the
list of artists and songs. You may,
however, need to rebuild your
playlists and you may loose your play
counts. For some people, these are
non-issues. For others, however, the
OK, you’re ready to
make the move.
Before you do so,
you should first quit
iTunes if it is running. If you want to
share your music
library with
other OS X
users on this
computer, drag your iTunes Music folder to the “root” of your hard drive. For
most peo p l e, t h i s wo u l d b e t o
Macintosh HD. This is so all users can
“see” the music and add it to their
iTunes listings. For OS X computers
with only one user, you can simply drag
your iTunes Music folder up one level
into your Music folder (the one in your
“home” folder (the folder that looks
like a house with your name on it).
Now, you should rename the folder
from “iTunes Music” to something
else, like “Music from iTunes” or
“Music Collection 1” or whatever
makes sense to you. The next time
you launch iTunes, it should find your
songs. Note that newer versions of
iTunes are better at doing this than the
older ones!
If iTunes can’t find your songs, don’t
worry; they’re easy to add back. To
avoid having duplicates of every song
(one that plays and one that doesn’t),
select all the songs in iTunes (use
Command A) and press the delete key
(or select Delete from the Edit menu
in iTunes). Now, you must tell iTunes
not to copy songs when adding them
to the library. From the iTunes menu,
choose Preferences, click Advanced
and under the General tab, make sure
“Copy files to iTunes Music folder
when adding to library is not checked.
Click OK to close the Preferences.
Now, to add back your songs, locate
your music folder (the one you just
renamed to “Music from iTunes” or
“Music Collection 1” or whatever.
6
Just drag this folder onto the iTunes
main window and wait a few seconds
(or minutes) for iTunes to add your
old songs to its library. It’s not copying the songs to your iTunes Music
folder, just making a reference or
internal alias to them.
It’s a good idea to backup your music.
I like to backup mine to DVDs. If you
can get by with a couple CD-Rs, then
that’s a fine way to do it. My library is
large enough that it takes a half dozen
DVDs to back it up. When each Music
Collection folder gets to 4.3 gb, I
create a new one and increment the
number. That way it’s easy to backup
or restore the entire collection.
Oh, by the way, iTunes automatically
created a new iTunes Music folder for
you while you weren’t looking! It’s
inside the iTunes folder in your home
folder... exactly where it was before.
This folder will remain empty until
you rip more CDs or buy new songs.
This makes it easy to backup new
songs incrementally. You can move
these new artists/albums to a new (or
existing) music collection folder
periodically as necessary.
So, what’s the difference between
keeping your songs in the iTunes
Music folder vs. the homegrown folder I’m advocating here? The answer is
simple. If you have a song (or multiple songs) highlighted in iTunes and
press the delete key, they’re simply
removed from the listing in your
library. The original files are not
deleted as they would have been if
they were where Apple intended them
to be! It also should help prevent your
songs from being deleted if the software has a glitch or issue caused by a
power interruption.
Since iPhoto has similar issues, my
next article will be about how to take
control of your digital photo collection. Look for this in an upcoming
CMC newsletter! 
under Panther, the “Note this” link didn’t appear in Safari
and while it did appear in Camino, the resulting link that
appeared in my Google notebook was wrong.)
If you have navigated to a page yourself using Firefox
(i.e., you are not on a Google search result page),
right/control-clicking on the page will bring up a contextual menu that includes “Note this.” In that case “Note
this” puts a note with the title and URL of the page into
your notebook.
Check it Out:
Google Notebook
By Caryn Lum,
Diablo Valley Apple Macintosh User Group Member
To use this product you need a Google account. To learn
more about Google Notebook, navigate to the Notebook
home page from the top left of the Google home page by
selecting more>Labs>Graduates of Labs. The FAQ for
Notebook can be found here:<http://www.google.com/
googlenotebook/faq.html>.
The Firefox extension gives you a “mini-notebook” that
lives in your browser either as a small popin or popup window. insert mininotebook.jpg Its most powerful feature is
the “clip” button, which allows you to select text and
images and, with one click, add them to your notebook,
complete with the title and URL of the page the selected
material resides on. The mini-notebook allows you to see
and make some modifications to your notebook, but you
need to be on your notebook home page to take advantage
of all of Notebook’s features, such as drag-and-drop.
While you can paste text into your notebook or mini-notebook, images can only be added in Firefox.
Right/control-click on an image and select “Note this”
from the contextual menu or select the image—along with
text if you want—and use the clip button in the mini-notebook. The image itself (as opposed to the image’s location)
will appear in your notebook.
Until I discovered Google Notebook, I’d been using
Backflip.com to save bookmarks for access from any computer via the Internet. Backflip is great for storing
bookmarks, but Google Notebook is better for storing large
amounts of information, particularly information you
locate on the Internet.
While you are logged into your Google account, you can
clip, collect and annotate text, images and links from the
Web and store them in one or more searchable Google notebooks. You can organize the information into different
sections using drag-and-drop.
Notebook is recently out of beta, but I have still been finding the interface sometimes clunky and a bit slow,
especially when I try to use features that require the application of HTML, to color text for example; however, it is
great for aggregating large amounts of information, especially if you need to store an image found on the net.
The image needs to be active somewhere on the Web (i.e.,
if you wanted to add a family photo to your notebook,
you’d have to upload it to a site that hosts photos first). If
you use Firefox, Google Notebook might be a good way to
start a large bookmark collection that’s accessible from any
browser. And unlike Backflip.com, I’m pretty sure Google
won’t go out of business anytime soon!
If you have Firefox, I strongly recommend downloading
the Google Notebook Firefox extension <http://www.
google.com/notebook/download/> (which does work on
Macs, even though the FAQ page doesn’t tell you that; all
my Notebook tests in Firefox were done in Panther with the
extension added). Google Notebook is at its easiest when
you are saving pages
from a Google search
result page using Firefox.
Backflip is a great service that allows you to bookmark
hundreds of pages, categorize your bookmarks into folders
and add short descriptions of the pages. However, the
whole project seems to be
a labor of love on the part
of the site administrators,
so I periodically save my
Backflip pages as .html
files just in case the
Backflip volunteers give
up on the site.
If you are logged into
your Google account, a
new link appears at the
end of every result called
“Note this.” Click the
“Note this” link and a
link to the site appears in
your notebook, complete
with title and the short
description that appeared
on the Google search
result page. (I found that
Reprinted from
ApplePRESS, a newsletter
of the Diablo Valley Apple
Macintosh User Group
7
So…one contender departs the ring…another enters…Who
now steps up to the plate to offer the Mac community an alternative to Illustrator?
Another Mac Developer
Rides Into The Sunset
By Chris Hart
Why, it’s Lineform from Freeverse Software. Haven’t heard
of them? Well, to date, most of their Mac software releases
have been games. But if you have a recent Mac, you’ve probably played with one of their creations – Comic Life.
The once-popular illustration application,
Canvas, is no more. At least as far as the
Mac platform is concerned. Introduced exclusively on the
Mac back in 1987 by Deneba, Canvas was very popular up
until the mid-90’s. But a lack of strong marketing and
Adobe’s dominant position meant that increasingly little
attention was being paid to this competitor.
Lineform is a
simpler and leaner
illustration tool
t h a n A d o b e ’s
behemoth. It’s
also cheaper at
$80! You get a
lot of functionality for your money
and the reviews
of this app have been glowing. Plus, you can try it for free.
http://tinyurl.com/2sahbq
Sales figures talk and the number of buyers for Canvas for
Mac just weren’t enough to keep things going. So the current
owner of the product, ACD Systems, has said that there will
be no further Macintosh development (Canvas will continue
to exist on the Windows platform, where it enjoys a strong
technical illustration following).
Sadly, this means we say goodbye to another long-time
Macintosh software developer.
Mac Tips
Moving An Open File
Did you know you can move an open file to a new folder,
without figuring out where it’s currently located? All you
need to do is grab the file’s icon in the title bar (just to the left
of the document’s name) and drop it where you want it to be
(whether that’s a folder or the desktop).
By Chris Hart
Where Did I Save This?
Have you ever had a document open on your screen and simply can’t recall where it’s saved? The solution: hold down
the Apple key on your keyboard (also known as the
Command or Butterfly key) and then click your mouse pointer on the name of the file (in the title bar – at the top of the
document window). You’ll be presented with a menu that
shows you the hierarchy of the file’s location. Move your
mouse pointer over the name of the folder you want to be
revealed (usually the one directly below
the file name) and click on it. You’ll be
taken there in the Finder, and the file’s
location will be highlighted for you.
Attaching An Open File
Another thing you can do with an open file is easily attach it
to a new email message in your favorite email application.
You can do this by dragging the document’s icon (again, in
the title bar, to the right of the file’s name) down to your Dock
and onto the icon of your email app (whether that’s Apple
Mail or MS Entourage). This tip also works with a file that
isn’t currently open– go ahead and drag any file in the Finder
onto the email app’s icon and a new email message will be
created with the file attached.
Mac
Tips
Mac-Zone Junk Stopper Light v1.0
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Security/Mac-Zone-JunkStopper-Light.shtml
This little application is for those of you who have noticed
that windows are popping up in browsers, even on the Mac.
Oh no! What to do? Well, that is the problem I had this
morning. And I found this free app to fix it. I don’t know if
it works yet, but it hasn’t crashed my machine at least!
8
Mac-Zone Junk Stopper Light is
a free utility that stops ads from
showing in any browser. This
product is designed to run on the
following operating systems:
• Mac OS X 10.3.9
• Mac OS X 10.3
• Mac OS X 10.2
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start? Build your own site with the award-winning
Sandvox, an intuitive application that produces beautiful
results. Sandvox is the website creation tool for people
who want to spend time developing their lives, not just
their websites. User Group members get the special price
of $36, a 25 percent discount off the regular price of $49,
and similar discounts on both Pro Edition and Household
licenses. Want to know more? A free trial of Sandvox is
available. Coupon code: muggle
Build a supersite. http://www.sandvox.com/mug
Every purchase made by your members through the
MUG Store brings you a one percent credit toward anything they sell. Be sure to mention the MUG Store to
your group as their very own place to buy Macs!
06/01 - 10/31/07
User ID: harmony / Password: elephant
11/01 - 02/28/08
User ID: leopard / Password: classic
Offer is valid through February 28, 2008.
HandStands: 35 Percent Off Everything
HandStands is a leading provider of computer, iPod and
laptop accessories. Take advantage of the exciting iSnug
iPod accessory line, unique products like the Sticky Pad
and the recently introduced Laptop Desk. Many other
novelty items like photo frames, laptop lifts, automotive
accessories, stress relief, mouse pads and even air fresheners are part of the Handstand product line and all can
be yours at unbelievable savings! Apple User Group
members can save 35 percent off any order and receive
free shipping on any order over $50.
Coupon Code: AUGM_35
Browse and purchase: http://www.HandStands.com
That’s Easy: Get the Apple User Group Market
& Apple User Group Offers From One Site
Looking for information on a past offer? Tom Piper of
the Apple User Group Advisory Board publishes a single
Password until November 15, 2007: easy
Also, be sure to subscribe to the Apple User Group Market Report podcast. The current issue features the new Apple User Group Roundtable
with Maria Arguello, the Regional Liaison for the Northeast USA, and six user group leaders from her area, plus Ben Grier of SRS Labs talking about their new iWow discount offer. The AUG Market Report is a great source for information about Apple user groups, vendor
discounts, special events and more: http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/resources.html. For public information about vendor offers and more
visit: http://homepage.mac.com/ugab/offers.html
9
President
Chris Hart
[email protected]
Vice President
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Secretary
Jack Bass
[email protected]
Treasurer
Reggie Dionne
[email protected]
Past President
Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
Ambassador
Joseph Arcuri
[email protected]
Editor
Deena Quilty
[email protected]
Design
George Maciel
[email protected]
Raffles
Robert Sawyer
[email protected]
Webmaster
Brian Desmond
[email protected]
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Debbie Foss
[email protected]
Date ____________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
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ILLUSTRATIONS
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CARICATURES
For a unique GIFT.
Persoanlized
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Or LIVE at any
business or
private event.
10
Caricatures by
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(860) 456-9041.
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
CMC Monthly Meetings
Wednesday, October 24
UConn Health Center
Conference Room EG-013
Back To Basics 6 p.m.
Using Yojimbo from
Bare Bones Software
Yojimbo helps you master the information
onslaught in your life. Use it to manage all of stuff
you come across in your travels (and need for those
travels). Whether it may be a web page link, or an
entire web page, news articles or famous quotations, emails or passwords, Yojimbo can capture it
all. Best of all, it syncs with your .Mac account,
so you can access the same information from all of
your computers. Come see Jerry Esposito demonstrate this unique application.
Main Presentation 7 p.m.
Discovering Pages ‘08
In August, Apple released the new version of
the iWork suite, featuring a complete overhaul of their elegant desktop publishing
application, Pages. Now, Pages bridges the
gap between word processors and desktop
publishing applications. It’s also a worthy
successor to AppleWorks and a solid alternative to Microsoft Office.
What makes Pages different? Quite simply, it
offers the best from Apple. A simple and intuitive interface and documents that are, frankly,
beautiful. Whether you enjoy working in
Apple designed templates or creates original
documents, newsletters and brochures, you’ll
love the many features in Pages ‘08. Come
learn all about it with CMC Past President,
Rich Lenoce.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Wednesday, November 28, 7 p.m.
Auction Night
Yes it’s our annual auction! As always, we’ll
have a variety of goodies up for bid from
some of the biggest names in the computer
industry. Bring a fork lift with you!
Wednesday, December 19
Special Time, 6:30 PM
CMC’s Annual Holiday Party
with special guest Andy Ihnatko
We’re bringing back Andy Ihnatko! Call
him a Mac guru, an author, and a funny guy.
But don’t call him late to dinner. Come
enjoy a night of insight and amusement!
FREE Raffle!
FREE Classified Ads
monthly meetings gets a raffle ticket that
will give you a chance for one of our free
prizes every month! Win toys, t-shirts,
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!
[email protected]
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Getting CMC email?
We would like to add a regular feature to your CMC newsletter: Letters to
the Editor. Send your comments, dissenting opinions, questions, rants,
raves, etc. to: [email protected]. We’d be happy to hear from you!
Valid: 06/01/07 - 10/31/07
User ID: harmony Password: elephant
Valid: 11/01/07 - 2/29/08
User ID: leopard Password: classic
11
Valid til: 11/15/07
Password: easy
te:
Please No !
te
Special Da
CMC Monthly Meeting
Wednesday, October 24
Using Yojimbo
Discovering Pages ‘08
See page 11 for further information:
www.ctmac.org
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
At our September CMC Back to Basics meeting, Jason Crain and Jerry Esposito gave us an
introduction to Apple’s .Mac (Dot Mac) service.
Happy Fall! ...........................................1
Review: Mind Manager 7.......................2
Broadband in CT ..................................4
Copying Slides and Negatives ............6
Amazon MP3 Takes on iTunes Store....7
Review: Logitech Speakers ..................9
NOV/DEC 2007
Newsletter Feedback
H i s t o r i c a l l y t h i s n e w s l e t t e r,
Connecticut Macintosh Chronicle, has
been a one-way street. Information
comes to the members, but little information goes the other way. We
haven’t run a letter to the editor in a
long time. Because…well, we just
don’t get them much.
Happy Fall!
By Chris Hart
CMC President
Welcome to our November/December
hybrid issue. Because of the holidays
and the schedules of our meetings in
these months, it makes the most sense
for us to do a combined issue.
By no means does this mean that
group activities will be curtailed. In
fact, it’s quite the opposite. November
brings our huge annual auction, featuring products from some of the
finest names in the Macintosh computer world. This night is not only fun,
but a great chance to get some deals!
December brings about another annual event – our holiday party meeting.
Plus, we’re throwing in a well-known
guest to make it even more of a special event. We’re happy to bring Andy
Ihnatko to Connecticut for an exclusive appearance with CMC.
On top of being the technology
columnist for The Chicago Sun
Times, Andy is well-known in the
Macintosh computer industry for his
engaging books, straight-shooter personality, and tremendous wit. It’s no
wonder the CBS television morning
show sought him out for monthly
technology segments with irreverence.
We’re very glad that Andy has made
time to visit us in the midst of his full
book-writing schedule. In 2006 he
issued “iPod Fully Loaded” and followed it up this year with “iPhone
Fully Loaded” which will hit book-
stores any day now. Plus, we can
expect his tome on Mac OS X
Leopard in early 2008.
Throw out your expectations for the
typical guest, as Andy is quite different. He’s a truly engaging speaker and
his visits to CMC are always memorable. Combine that with free food
and you’ve got one heck of a meeting
worth getting to!
I look forward to seeing you there.
Auction Goodies
November’s auction will feature the
following products from our gracious
sponsors:
Apple iLife 08
Apple iWork 08
OReilly’s Missing Manual books
MYOB business software
ProSoft Klix Picture Recovery
Total Training discounts
Microsoft Office 2004
Microsoft wireless keyboard
and mouse
NewerTech hard drive
Ambrosia SnapzPro software
RamJet RAM and hard drive
...Plus, more items are arriving
every day!
1
There is no reason that this should be
the case. These pages can only be
enriched by feedback from members.
We want to hear what you have to say.
Please don’t hesitate to share your
comments on stories, your reactions to
my column, and even thoughts on
what’s going on in the world of
Macintosh.
Send it to [email protected] and
I’ll make sure the right party receives
it. And if appropriate, it will get published in our next issue!
Computer Lifespan
I often hear CMC members lament the
shortening lifespan of computers.
There is no question that this is fact,
and not just perception. Purchasing a
computer from Apple in the 90’s was
a long-term proposition. You could
count on having that computer for six,
or even seven, years before it was due
for replacement.
In fact, that was one of the value points
of a Macintosh that made it worth its
premium price. You knew that you’d
get more mileage out of it than your
garden variety PC running Windows.
Continued on page 3
Software Review:
Mind Manager 7
Mindjet, $129
By Richard Lenoce, CMC
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.
Mind Maps have been used for
centuries for education, visualization,
brainstorming, organization, problem
solving and project management.
Although it would seem that mind maps
would be used primarily in technical fields
like engineering, they are used in almost
every area and not only have education
and business applications, but also can be
used in everyday life.
Mind Manager by Mindjet is a simple to
use, yet sophisticated mind mapping software. Frankly, though I’ve seen mind
maps, I’ve never created or used one so I
believe that in this case my ignorance may
make me an impartial reviewer. I decided
to use Mind Manager as a project management tool to aid me in the many steps
and schedules needed to build a two-bay
garage that I’m putting in my yard.
Mind Manager, though designed originally for the PC, is a very Mac-like
application giving the user a wide variety
of map templates or, like any good Mac
application, the user can design their own
map. In the center of my Mind Map I
placed the completed garage and around
the center are the various steps needed to
complete the garage. Unlike laying out the
project and its many steps in a spreadsheet, this unique visual aspect of Mind
Manager supports the fact that there are
steps that are sequential while other steps
need to be done concurrently. I found this
extremely powerful, allowing me to act as
my own contractor, saving me that cost
and giving me the ability to better manage
the project. Branches on the map representing steps included the financing,
permits and inspection; digging for and
pouring the cement slab; extending the
driveway; material ordering and delivery;
garage construction; and roofing and siding. Each of these processes has many
steps within them. When I completed the
map, I printed it. The design was easy to
understand and really laid out for each
contractor, and my wife and me the steps
necessary to complete the project, visually
2
describing how each step in the project
was related and how some steps were
dependent on other steps. It was also clear
who was responsible for each step and the
time frame and deadline. To further simplify some complex steps, a simple mouse
click turned the map into an outline.
The more I used Mind Manager over
the last few weeks, the more uses I am
seeing for it. At work, my department
can use Mind Manager and its many
tools for developing programming and
events while at home I can map out the
kid’s chores in a fashion even my threeyear old can follow.
If I were in a technical area or owned a
business, I believe I would find this tool
indispensable as it would aid an individual
or group in problem resolution, brainstorming and management. In fact, I can
think of very few business or educational
processes Mind Manager could not assist
with. What will impress anyone is how
beautiful the maps and their associated
templates are. In organizations with both
PCs and Macs, Mind Manager is cross
platform so files can be easily shared.
Though this is only the second version for
the Mac (Version 6 was the first), it seems
highly developed, but even so it could use
some enhancements. Integration with
Microsoft Office for Mac would be helpful, especially in costing out projects. A
“presentation” mode where maps can be
animated and built as part of a presentation
would be beneficial for presenting maps.
Anyone, especially people who need to
organize information and processes,
will find Mind Manager a joy to use. It
should save anyone who uses it time
and money. 
But things have changed and we
demand more capabilities out of our
Macs than ever before. We don’t think
twice about watching (or even producing) full-screen video. We manage
music libraries with hundreds of
tracks. We keep our entire photo
archive, featuring thousands of valuable snapshots, accessible for perusal
at any time. These are all things that
would have brought old Mac computers down to their knees.
The software that makes these wonderful things possible puts greater
demands on a computer. Which means
that with each new capability we add
to our computers, we add the necessity
for more horsepower under the hood.
You could deny yourself these dandy
new features and functions, but do
you really want to? The fact is that
computers have become a defacto part
of our lives. We use them daily, count
on them for providing communication
with the outside world, and rely on
them as the core of our businesses.
On average nowadays, I see the typical Mac owner upgrade about every 4
years. (With the technology lovers
being closer to every three years.) And
this is in keeping with the average
Windows PC user as well.
But, in my opinion, this doesn’t mean
that the Mac is any less of a value than
it was years ago. While some longevity has been sacrificed, you get more
inside of a new Mac than ever before.
Simply scrolling through the
Applications folder will demonstrate
the wealth of software that is included
right out of the box.
I dare you to compare this to the
Applications folder of a Mac of 10
years ago. In case you’ve forgotten, it
was a pretty empty place back then!
But the wealth of software isn’t limited to that which Apple includes inside
the box. There’s a tremendous amount
of Mac software available from third
parties. One of the reasons is that the
transition to Mac OS X brought about
a whole new generation of software.
In fact, I don’t think there has ever
been as many “open source” freeware
and shareware software products for
Mac as exist today.
The Unix underpinnings of OS X have
attracted a whole new breed of programmers, who are anxious to show
off their creativity and bring new
capabilities to the Mac. The result is
that my own Applications folder is
fuller than it has ever been in my personal computer history. And it’s all
stuff that I use regularly!
So, don’t let anyone sell you on that
old saw about PCs having more software. Because while they may have a
greater quantity of software titles, the
Mac has no shortage of great apps,
and I doubt you’ll ever find yourself
wanting for a tool to accomplish the
task you’ve set out to accomplish.
Now this isn’t to say that I’m crazy
about plunking down a thousand dollars or more on a Mac whenever it
comes time to buy a new system. It
hurts me as much as it does the next
guy. But I never question the value
that I’m getting, as I know how much
is inside that box.
With the release of OS X Leopard, it’s
going to be time for many of us to
consider a computer upgrade. The fact
is that newer operating system versions usually don’t run all that great
on the oldest “supported” computers.
So while Leopard’s system requirements say it’s good on a G4 system
running at 867 megahertz, I wouldn’t
bet on getting good results from such a
Mac. I suspect that anything less than
1 gigahertz processor speed is going to
be a real hindrance to your enjoyment
of this new operating system.
If you’re set on keeping your older
3
Mac, you can definitely get more
mileage out of it by boosting the
amount of RAM inside. Nowadays, 1
gigabyte of RAM is the practical minimum to get true usefulness out of
your computer.
But if you don’t have an intel-based
Mac, you’re due for an upgrade (if not
right now, certainly in the next 6
months). The reason is that the vast
majority of products being sold now
are optimized for this architecture. And
trust me, the performance boost that
you’ll see is a real kick in the pants!
The Latest Is Not Always
The Greatest
A good friend of mine made the
plunge this month by upgrading the
four-year-old eMacs in his home
office to recent iMacs. I say “recent”
because he didn’t get the very latest
thin, aluminum-clad model. Instead,
he saved a few bucks by purchasing
the recently-discontinued white iMac.
He scored two 20" Core2Duo models
for $1100 each (plus s/h) from L.A.
Computer Company (brand new, left
over inventory). This matched the
same price that Apple asks for this
model in a refurbished state.
Besides the money savings, the big
reason for choosing this model is the
matte finish on the LCD screen.
Reflection from windows and sunlight
is not a problem with a matte finish,
unlike the glossy finish that Apple is
now forcing upon its customers in the
aluminum iMac.
If you’re shopping for an iMac, give
the leftover white models some consideration. They’re plenty fast,
available refurbished (or through
deals like this) and they won’t drive
you crazy with screen reflections. 
Broadband in CT:
It’s not “Pro-Choice”
By Kevin Boudreau, CMC Member
Though I’m a few years shy of the legal
age to run for President of the U.S.A.,
I’ve seen the Internet age unfold before
my eyes. I can remember my first computer back in the Fall of ‘93. It came in
a funny black and white, cow colored
box and was a real joy to power on for
the first time. I’m sure some of you
know what company I am referring to.
At that time, the Internet hadn’t arrived
from a consumer’s perspective. There
was a smorgasbord of online services
that we could choose from. A family
friend had been a CompuServe user for
several years, so we tried them first. It
seemed kind of boring and we switched
to Prodigy within one month.
Prodigy was cool, but they also had a
lot of premium content which was
VERY expensive. Mom wasn’t too
happy when Dad’s virtual camp-outs on
the Business and Finance bulletin
boards drove our bill up past $300 on a
few occasions. We stuck with them for
about a year and a half.
As the WWW became a consumer
staple in ‘94-‘95, Prodigy did their
best to integrate the Internet with
their online service. At first you could
pay $4.95 extra a month to e-mail
other domains. I remember Prodigy
advertising that you could even email people like Vice President, Al
Gore. As a 14 year old, I was really
excited by that. Then it became free,
along with a simple web browser.
This effort paled in comparison to true
ISPs, like Pipeline, that gave you a
direct connection to your web browser
without any proprietary software. I
remember the installation file of
Netscape 1.0 and possibly 2.0 being
able to fit on one 3.5 in. floppy.
So here we are, about 12 years later,
and I don’t think that our choices are as
diverse as they were or should be in
Connecticut. In the center of Tax
Connecticut or the State of Entitlement
(take your pick), broadband Internet
surfers are limited to a DSL choice
from their phone company a high speed
Internet option from their cable company, and a few uncompetitive choices
from Independent DSL providers. Boohoo! Faster, Faster. Where is that
speed? Where are the flying cars that
the gentleman in the IBM commercials
spoke of? Relatively speaking, we are
puttering around the Hartford information superhighway in an old 2000 Ford
Taurus, while some neighbors in other
states are zipping through the digital
freeway in that sleek, 252-hp NEW
2008 Taurus.
For $42.99 or $52.99, Comcast will
give you cable Internet service at either
6.0 mbps (megabits per second)/384
kbps or 8.0 mbps/768 kbps (kilobits per
second) respectively. This does not
include the modem purchase or rental.
Similar to what other cable Internet
providers offer, a feature called
PowerBoost is included with your service. This can give you up to double your
download speed for the first 10mb of a
file, but I think 10 megabytes isn’t
much these days. “Power Spurt” would
be a better name.
AT&T, formerly SBC and SNET before
that, offers DSL service at varying
speeds from $10 (if you are willing to
pull teeth to get it) to $34.99 for a speed
comparable to cable Internet offerings,
6.0 mbps for downloads.
Both technologies have their drawbacks and upsides, and stated pricing
can only be obtained with minimum
levels of service. For instance to get
Comcast’s 42.95/mo price for Internet,
you need to have basic cable or their
phone service. FYI, their phone service
comes in a one-size-fits all package at a
base price of 39.99/mo. To receive any
of the advertised offers for AT&T’s
DSL, you need to have home phone
service with them and (unless you get a
rep willing to break the policy) AT&T
declared as your regional and
national long distance provider.
At the time of writing this article, both
Internet services can be had without a
contract. However, AT&T will offer
you a $50 credit on your bill after 3
months, if you do sign a contract.
Comcast, and most cable companies
have never used contracts as a standard
practice, but in some markets they are
being offered to lock rates for 2 years
on their their “Triple Play” bundles.
Something I find absolutely frustrating
is that our neighbors in Massachusetts
and New York who have Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic) as their telephone
co., can order fiber optic Internet service, called FiOS (and FiOS TV service
I might add). It’s selling very well, and
is offered at 39.99/mo for 5 mbps/2
mbps. and 49.99 for 15 mbps/2 mbps.
There is also a “white glove, champagne truffle” option that gives you 30
mbps/5 mbps for $179.99. That might
seem like a ridiculous price point for
most of us, including me, but some
folks who are downloading fiends or
have several networked computers
would find this tier appealing. If you
shop around, the lowest you can get a
single T-1 line for is $300 to $400 per
month. (A T-1 data line is a reliable,
business-class connection to the internet.) Just think...if we could even get
the basic tier of FiOS here. 2 mbps
upload speeds?? Wow, think of how
much faster you could upload photos to
continued on page 5
4
your online albums or e-mail them to
your relatives. Comcast’s 384 kbps
upload speed for their standard HSI
service is pretty weak.
AT&T was offering upload speeds of
768 kbps on their 6.0 mbps offering,
and I’ve heard whispers that its been
increased to 1.0 mbps. AT&T says that
their next generation V-DSL has a
capacity of 25 mbps. But when??
Frankly, I would assume a lot of that
bandwidth is being reserved for the roll
out of their U-Verse TV service. Most
of you probably don’t even know what
that is because its not available to you.
You’re not missing anything...yet!
I don’t want to leave out the members
of CTMAC who live in rural areas. It
seems like there are several among us
who didn’t even have the options of
cable or DSL Internet – dialup internet
service is the only choice. Sorry to say,
but in 2007 there are not a lot of alternatives. If there is a high speed-capable
cellular tower nearby, you could subscribe to a wireless internet service
from Sprint, AT&T (formerly
Cingular), or Verizon Wireless at a cost
of $60 per month.
At best your download speeds will hit
1.0 mbps if you are lucky and your
provider may have cryptic rules about
sharing the connection with a router.
My cousin Rich, a fellow MUG member from Denver, CO reports that a
local ISP offers wireless Internet directly to your house to 3 or 4 surrounding
communities. An antenna is installed on
your roof, similar to a satellite dish, and
you can surf at speeds up to 1.5 mbps
for about $40 per month. It may seem
like a rip off, but Independent DSL ISP
prices are even worse out there and the
terrain can be a challenge.
Surely we’ve had some failures here in
Connecticut with independent ISP’s,
most notably Gemini Networks, the
cable ISP started by Arnold Chase. Last
year, all existing network equipment
and fiber optic lines were generously
donated to the town of West Hartford
when the company folded. So many
people choose price over good customer service and that troubles me. The
best companies offer a decent mix of
both. We need bold innovators to create
alternatives and realize that there is
profit in it for them too. I have strong
words for the ISP titans of CT.
Message to AT&T: you are a darling
of Wall Street and flushed with cash –
it’s not too late to take those fiber
wires all the way into our homes. Take
some risks for once and follow
through on that promise of reducing
customer calls routed overseas.
Message to Comcast: implement
switched digital video (SDV) here like
you did in Chicago and are beginning to
do in other markets. All cable should be
digital and everyone will need a box.
Tough love! This will free up a lot of
the bottlenecks your Internet customers
are facing. Also don’t stick us with
lower speed tiers in the Nutmeg State.
We want the same speeds you offer in
your other regions. Dear readers, we are
Connecticut and we spend as much or
more money on our telecommunications services as residents in other
states, demand more!! We shouldn’t be
the last to see new innovations. Second
fiddle is not acceptable.
Word to the wise: maybe we shouldn’t
complain too much though. Our legislature in Hartford would love to offer
“socialized Internet” if they got their
claws on the ISP market. I can just hear
it now “Vote for us, were the party of 50
mbps connections for all. Free for those
under $50,000 K of annual income and
for the rest of you – a 2% hike in your
state income taxes to subsidize it. There
are no other options. We’ve driven all
other ISP’s out of state because we can
do it better. We love regulating everything to death. And oh yes, we approve
this message.” 
Netscape X 9.0.0.1
http://tc.versiontracker.com/product/redir/lid/1201224/
netscape-navigator-9.0.0.1.dmgNetscape%20X
these features. You can have the best of both worlds by
keeping Netscape 7.x installed for mail and news and
installing Navigator 9 for browsing the Web.
For those of you who loved Netscape, and were sorry
when they stopped supporting the Mac OS, here is
Navigator 9. It is fast, and stable so far.
Operating System Requirements:
This product is designed to run on the following
operating systems:
• Mac OS X 10.4
• Intel Mac OS X 10.4
• PPC Mac OS X 10.3.9
• Mac OS X 10.3
• Mac OS X 10.2
Product Description:
Netscape Navigator 9.0 is a browser-only release. It does
not contain an e-mail client, newsgroup reader, or HTML
composer. Users of the Netscape 7.x suite may choose
not to install Netscape Navigator 9 to avoid the loss of
5
slide become one unit and if the copier is like mine, the
process is very fast. My slide carrier holds two slides and can
move in both directions. It takes a little practice to get it to line
up the slide in front of the lens as you push in either direction,
but after a few slides you get to know exactly how far the slide
needs to be pushed. After set up and air blowing or soft brushing the slides I can copy 100 slides or more per hour. If I am
going to copy several hundred slides, I leave the camera, light
and copier set up, but with a dust covering.
Copying Slides and Negatives
By Jack Bass, CMC
Many of you have slides hidden away in trays or shoeboxes.
Here’s a way to digitize those slides and negatives and make
interesting slide shows of trips or family. It’s not that difficult
or expensive, but may be boring if you haven’t got some
music playing in the background!
The simplest equipment is a digital camera and some device
to hold the slide. It can be as simple as a piece of cardboard
with a square cut out in the middle that holds the slide at its
edges by a friction fit; this is to keep out extraneous light.
Most digital cameras allow you to take close ups. So turn the
dial to “flower,” aim at the slide held up to or taped to a window on a bright day, focus and snap away. You may need to
move your camera physically forward or back and/or zoom
slightly. This may be O.K. for one or two slides, but for multiple slides it’s not the way to go. Holding the camera is not
only tedious but adds to camera shake. So, a tripod becomes
necessary. Also, every day is not sunny, so a lamp with a daylight bulb comes in handy or a daylight desk lamp like the one
I purchased at Home Depot for $20. It’s one of those four-tube
fluorescents that originally sold for about $100. Clean every
slide or negative, as this will save much time later “spotting”
or removing all those little dots.
My ‘old’ camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5000 has many individual
programs – thus I have one program set for slides and another set for inverse copying or negatives.
In the photo, I happen to have an alligator clip on a wire
imbedded in a cube of plastic. I clipped a slide, in this case a
2 1⁄4" x 2 1⁄4", and placed my pocket digital on a handy cardboard
box with a light shining down on the white paper and snapped
away. Of course, cropping and color correction will need to be
done. In this illustration, I didn’t bother to frame carefully or
use my white bulb. Photos can be copied this way, also.
Many camera manufacturers make slide and film copiers for
their digital cameras as Nikon does, for less than $100. The
camera to copier attachment must be designated so that it will
thread into your camera lens. The attachments can also be
purchased from other vendors, as well as the copiers. In my
opinion, they don’t advertise them too much, because it
would cut into their dedicated film copier sales. Copiers with
built in magnifier lenses are usually not necessary, as your
digital camera can take close-ups as well as zoom. 
The negative carrier accepts a strip of six negatives and takes
longer to load and unload whereas the slide carrier holds two,
and it is easy to load one slide in place, snap the shutter put a
slide in the other side and slide it back, snap the shutter and
remove the one already copied and put in another slide and
thus work back and forth as fast as I can, making sure each
time that the slide is properly aligned in the viewfinder
I find that for my purposes, the copied slides are more than
adequate except for where I was a little hasty and got a little
bit of the slide holder copied. For prints or off color or exposure slides and those that need cropping, etc., I tweak them
either in Photoshop or in iPhoto.
Dedicated slide and film copiers may be slightly superior in
quality, but it takes much longer to scan each slide and the
hardware is quite expensive. Plus, there is a decided learning
curve. I don’t believe you’ll see much difference from your 5
+/- mega pixel camera unless you’re going to make a 24 x 36
inch print.
Flat bed scanners are very good and relatively fast, but laying
down the slides and removing them is both tedious and time
consuming. The advantage of flat bed scanners is that you can
copy larger format slides. They do negatives as well as prints.
Your camera can do larger formats, also, but you need to
make a holder. An old paper holder from your old enlarger
days makes a good, flat print holder for copying.
I found the best of all methods for me is an attachment for my
camera exactly like they had in the old days: 35 mm slide
copier. It attaches to the front of the camera if your camera
lens is threaded. It eliminates camera shake as the camera and
6
Amazon MP3
Takes on the iTunes Store
by Adam C. Engst
<[email protected]>
Reprinted from Tidbits #898
Amazon.com has launched a public beta of Amazon MP3, a
digital music store that provides DRM-free downloads of over
2 million songs from 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels. In comparison, Apple says the iTunes Store now contains over 6
million songs.
Not Too Shabby – Amazon MP3 is the first online music store
besides the iTunes Store that hasn’t left me cold. Its advantages are very real:
No DRM. No consumer likes DRM, and although Apple wouldn’t comment when I asked them for statistics on how the
DRM-free tracks from EMI have sold in comparison with the
DRM-encumbered versions of the same tracks, Amazon has
done the right thing by eliminating it across the board. Hopefully
Amazon’s move will give Apple some leverage with the music
labels to make more DRM-free tracks available. On the other
side of the equation, the labels may be trying to use Amazon
MP3 to pressure Apple into allowing variable pricing, but considering how much lower Amazon’s variable pricing is, I can’t
see Apple changing.
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse//163856011>
According to Amazon’s press release, most of Amazon MP3’s
songs are priced between $0.89 and $0.99, with more than 1 million songs in the current catalog available at $0.89, a full $0.40 less
than Apple’s iTunes Plus songs. Most albums in Amazon MP3 are
priced between $5.99 and $9.99, again a bit cheaper than albums
in the iTunes Store, which generally check in at $9.99.
<http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=
176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=105505 3>
All songs in Amazon MP3 are encoded at 256 Kbps, which is
comparable to iTunes Plus songs, although in theory, the iTunes
Plus AAC format could provide better quality than the MP3 format used by Amazon. Because Amazon is using MP3 and
avoiding DRM entirely, songs purchased from Amazon MP3 are
playable on any device, including the iPhone and iPods, along
with Macs, PCs, and music players from other manufacturers.
iPod compatibility. Thanks to the lack of DRM, and in particular, Windows-specific DRM, songs purchased from Amazon
MP3 will play on an iPod, something that has never been true for
a mainstream online music retailer (other than Apple) before.
(And by “mainstream,” I mean a retailer who is licensing music
from major labels.)
Low prices. I don’t have a sense for how price-conscious the
online music market really is, but with many tracks priced below
even the cost of Apple’s DRM-encumbered tracks, and albums
priced even lower, I could see budget-driven consumers or those
who buy a lot of music preferring to purchase from Amazon
MP3 over the iTunes Store.
Individual tracks can be purchased directly from a Web page, but
to buy an album, you must first download and install the Amazon
MP3 Downloader, available for both Mac OS X and Windows (a
615K download for the Mac version). Reportedly, a Linux version is in the works.
In my testing, the Amazon MP3 Downloader worked acceptably,
but it was a distinctly clumsier experience than purchasing from
iTunes. Clicking a Buy button on the Amazon Web site downloaded a document to my Desktop. I believe the Amazon MP3
Downloader was supposed to open it and download the actual
song, but I had to double-click the file manually, likely because
Amazon wasn’t expecting that I’d be using a browser other than
Safari (I generally rely on OmniWeb). Once opened in Amazon
MP3 Downloader, the song was downloaded to an Amazon MP3
folder in the Music folder and then sent over to iTunes, which, at
least for my setup, means that it was duplicated, since I keep my
iTunes Music folder on a server for shared usage and copy music
to that folder when adding it to my iTunes Library.
1-Click shopping. People do not like creating new accounts for
shopping, but there’s no question that some people shop from
Amazon over other venues purely because it’s such a known
quantity after years of easy ordering. Ordering via Amazon MP3
isn’t as easy as from the iTunes Store, but it’s not far off.
I don’t think Amazon MP3 will be putting the iTunes Store out
of business by any stretch of the imagination. It’s competitive,
thanks to the lack of DRM, low prices, and ease of shopping, but
it’s clumsier than using iTunes, and everyone who has an iPod
will be using iTunes anyway to sync music, so it’s not as though
Amazon can ever get as close to the iPod as Apple can. The good
news is that by releasing an online music store that doesn’t suck,
Amazon has given Apple some real competition, and where
there’s competition, there’s innovation.
<www.tidbits.com/resources/2007-09/
Amazon-MP3-Downloader.png>
Songs I purchased were encoded at between 208 Kbps and 256
Kbps using variable bit-rate (VBR) encoding, and the free sample song was encoded at 280 Kbps VBR. Sound quality was
certainly fine to my ears, though I’m no audio connoisseur. The
metadata was complete and album artwork was either included
or picked up automatically by iTunes.
Of course, the next question is if Amazon will translate these
advantages in Amazon MP3 (no DRM, Mac-compatible, integrated with iTunes) to their Amazon Unbox video download
service. Were that to happen, the iTunes Store would have significantly more competition. 
7
Review:
Logitech Speakers
By Chris Hart, CMC president
I have always found Logitech’s speakers
to be very good. So when Buy.com
recently offered some specials on two of
their models, I skimmed online user
reviews and then ordered a few. Here are
the results…
Logitech MM28
The MM28 is a portable speaker system,
intended for the traveler or those with
very limited space. Earlier this year I had
purchased one for around $30 and was
very impressed. So when Buy.com
recently dropped the price to $15, I
ordered another one!
To put it simply, I don’t think there is any
portable speaker system out there that
matches the MM28’s sound at this small
a size! In fact, I cannot ever recall hearing
such good sound out of such a small
package (and I have 20+ years experience
with sound reproduction).
The most impressive part of the MM28’s
sound is that it’s both smooth and has a
pleasing bass presence. I’ve never heard a
speaker system this small with this much
“warmth” to it. That said, the high frequencies are a little more laid back than
what is accurate. But I’d prefer that to
exaggerated treble which would sound
brash and cheap. iPods and laptops work
equally nicely with the MM28.
It goes without saying that the stereo separation isn’t very good (since left and
right speakers are in one box and less
than eight inches apart). But there is virtually no way for a speaker to be tiny and
provide wide stereo separation (at least
not for this kind of price), so I do forgive
that flaw.
Note that this speaker system has a fixed
volume and no built-in control for playback level. The intention is that you
adjust the volume using the source that
you have connected to it. Normally
devices with a fixed volume setting
have a very high noise floor and are
nearly unlistenable. Not so with the
MM28. It’s completely silent in its
operation.
The result is that I enjoyed many
nights of being lulled to sleep by soft
songs via Internet radio (via laptop) in
hotel rooms on recent business trips. And
in the mornings, I was able to jam my
Stevie Ray Vaughn loud enough to potentially make for unhappy hotel neighbors.
I’m telling you straight… this is unbelievable sound for $15! (Note: this
Buy.com price may be a limited promotion and availability could be limited.)
Be warned that the audio connector cord
that is built into the MM28 is on the
short side (which has the benefit of
enabling a quick getaway when it’s time
to pack). You can either live with this limitation, or bring a headphone extension
cord with you.
Did I already mention the tremendous
portability of this little guy? At 1.25 inches thick, the MM28 easily fits in your
laptop bag or luggage. You just unplug
the power supply, fold the integrated
pedestal closed and pack it away.
Couldn’t be simpler or easier.
I will admit that I cannot comment on the
sound quality or runtime when operating
from batteries, as I have only used it connected to AC power. Logitech claims a
45-hour runtime on AA batteries and
online user reviews appear to back that
up. The unit powers itself off after a certain amount of time of silence (much
appreciated!).
In summation, if it’s not already obvious,
I consider the Logitech MM28 to be the
most amazing portable sound companion
imaginable at this size and price. I
unequivocally recommend it.
Logitech X-230
I bought the X-230 from Buy.com on a $30
special with free shipping. I can’t imagine
getting better fidelity for 30 bucks.
The X-230 is comprised of two satellite
speakers (with two tiny, full-range drivers
in each), plus a subwoofer cabinet, which
8
also conceals the amplifier that drives it
all. This is one of the smallest 3-piece
computer speaker systems you’re likely
to find. I had no problem finding space
for the subwoofer cabinet or the satellites.
One of the clever surprises with the X230 is that the satellite speakers have
pedestals that are highly flexible. They
can hold the satellites upright on a desk,
keep them secured to a wall, or be
removed altogether for horizontal satellite placement. Logitech didn’t have to
include this versatility and I doubt that
their competitors do. This is smart industrial design and very clever on Logitech’s
part and deserves recognition.
The X-230’s adjustability means that
it’s easy to get good sound from this
speaker system. This is essential,
because you will definitely want to do
some tweaking to get the best sound
balance for your space.
The first thing I wanted to address is the
grossly exaggerated output of the bass
frequencies. People who only care about
thumpity thump will love it. True music
aficionados will not.
The first step I took to correct this was to
turn the subwoofer level control to the
minimum value. Second, I took a piece
of soft, open-cell foam (about the size of
my open hand), rolled it up and jammed
it into the subwoofer’s port. This damps
the woofer and makes the bass response
much “flatter” (more consistent and true
to the original sound source). You can
adjust the bass by how much you push
the foam down the port (be careful not to
shove it all the way or it will fall inside
the subwoofer).
After this tweaking, the X-230 presents a
very musical balance, when I was seated
with the satellites about 2 feet away from
my head. The sound from the satellites is
continued on page 9
very smooth and offers no irritation to
the ears at reasonable listening volumes. When cranking up the speakers
to fill the room with sound, the X-230
does an excellent job. These suckers
can play loud.
Obviously if you don’t care a lot about
bass, you could certainly look at one
of the several desktop speaker systems
that doesn’t have a subwoofer. But
such models usually have no bass
whatsoever. I wanted something in
between – accurate bass, but a subwoofer enclosure that doesn’t take
up a ton of space, while not spending
a ton of money. This system does
exactly that.
In summation, the X230 is a tremendous value and I would highly
recommend it to anyone who wants
good sound for a low price. 
“Take Control of Customizing Leopard” provides a tour of
new and revamped features in Leopard by the ever-opinionated Matt Neuburg. Matt demystifies Time Machine, shows you
how to use Spaces effectively, and explains why Spotlight in
Leopard is so much improved over Tiger. 138 pages
Five Take Control Ebooks Launch
You into Leopard: Save 30%!
Submitted by Robert Sawyer, CMC
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-customizing.
html?14@@!pt=TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG>
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is finally here, and we can now share
with you the fruits of an incredible amount of work over the
last few months: five of our most popular ebooks completely
updated for Leopard, and they’re all available right now, led by
Joe Kissell’s essential “Take Control of Upgrading to
Leopard.” Once you’ve installed, our other ebooks will help
you customize all of Leopard’s new features, share files much
more elegantly than in the past, and manage your fonts with
Leopard’s new font activation capabilities.
“Take Control of Users & Accounts in Leopard” describes
different types of accounts in Leopard, which ones are right for
the different people who use your Mac, how to share files
between accounts, and what you can limit with new features in
Leopard’s parental controls. Kirk McElhearn also explains
how to create and use a troubleshooting account should problems crop up. 88 pages
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/?14@@!
pt=TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG>
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-users.
To the thousands of you who pre-ordered our Leopard ebooks,
thanks! You can now click the Check for Updates link (or red
starburst) on your pre-order PDFs to download the full versions. If you haven’t yet ordered, we have three options for you:
“Take Control of Sharing Files in Leopard” explains many
new aspects of file sharing in Leopard and makes file sharing
easy between two Macs, among a mixed-platform office
workgroup, or between far-flung computers on the Internet.
Wi-Fi guru Glenn Fleishman explains each of Leopard’s file
sharing technologies and helps you connect to file servers
from a variety of major operating systems. 89 pages
1. Buy just the ebooks you want individually. They’re all $10,
except for the 217-page “Take Control of Fonts in Leopard,”
which is $15. If you’ve bought the Tiger or Panther versions of
any of these ebooks, click the Check for Updates button in your
copy to save 20%. MUG members can - as always - save 10%
with the links in this message, but the bundles are a better deal.
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-sharing.
“Take Control of Fonts in Leopard” explains everything you
need to know about how fonts work in Mac OS X and what
has changed with Leopard. In particular, veteran Mac author
Sharon Zardetto looks at Leopard’s new and updated fonts,
along with Leopard’s new font activation capabilities, font previewing via Cover Flow, and font sample printing. 217 pages
2. Buy our core “Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard” and
“Take Control of Customizing Leopard” titles for $15, saving
25%. This bundle is linked on the left side of these books’
pages on our Web site.
3. Buy our “I Love Leopard” bundle of all five ebooks - over
650 pages in all! - for only $38.50, saving 30% off the cover
price. Again, the bundle is accessible from the left side of each
book’s Web page.
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopard-fonts.
html?14@@!pt=TCMUG&cp=CPN31208MUG
You can read more about each of the ebooks on our Web site,
but in short:
your next Take Control order!
TAKE 10% OFF
Shop for Take Control ebooks at:
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/
“Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard” is the latest edition of the title that launched Take Control back in 2003 with
Panther. In it, Joe Kissell shares his hard-won advice about the
best ways to install, test your installation, troubleshoot problems, and more. 125 pages
Coupon code: CPN31208MUG
Problem ordering? Go to“Ordering Tips” at:
www.takecontrolbooks.com/faq.html#ordering0
or email Robert Sawyer at [email protected]
<www.takecontrolbooks.com/leopardupgrading.
9
President
Chris Hart
[email protected]
Vice President
Jerry Esposito
[email protected]
Secretary
Jack Bass
[email protected]
Treasurer
Reggie Dionne
[email protected]
Past President
Rich Lenoce
[email protected]
Ambassador
Joseph Arcuri
[email protected]
Editor
Deena Quilty
[email protected]
Design
George Maciel
[email protected]
Raffles
Robert Sawyer
[email protected]
Webmaster
Brian Desmond
[email protected]
Connie Scott
[email protected]
Debbie Foss
[email protected]
Date ____________________________
Name _______________________________________
Address _____________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip ___________
Phone (Home) ________________________________
Phone (Office) ________________________________
Phone (Fax) __________________________________
Business_____________________________________
Occupation __________________________________
Email: ______________________________________
Referred by:__________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Annual CMC Family
Membership
$25.00
...or
ILLUSTRATIONS
Custom art for:
• Print
• Web
CARICATURES
For a unique GIFT.
Persoanlized
art from photo.
Or LIVE at any
business or
private event.
10
Caricatures by
Bill Dougal
of Lebanon
(860) 456-9041.
Available for
illustration
assignments
and event
caricatures.
CMC Monthly Meetings
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Wednesday, November 28
UConn Health Center
7:00 pm
Auction Night
Yes, it’s our annual auction! As
always, we’ll have a variety of goodies up for bid from some of the biggest
names in the computer industry...
Apple
Microsoft
O’Reilly Books
ProSoft Engineering
Total Training
Other World
Computing
RamJet
Crucial Memory
Micromat
iSkin
and more.
Bring a checkbook and a forklift with
you to cart away your bargains!
FREE Raffle!
monthly meetings gets a raffle ticket that
will give you a chance for one of our free
prizes every month! Win toys, t-shirts,
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!
Apple Monitor, OS 9.2.2, 266 Mhz,
416 RAM, Extended Keyboard and
Mouse. Also included: external 4x
CD Burner, external Iomega Zip
Drive and an external hard drive (6
Gig). Runs great. Great for the net or
emails. Has a few programs on it:
Office 98. Best Offer. Call Mark
Maglio at 860.839.0501
FREE Classified Ads
[email protected]
Account Balances
Balances as of October 31, 2007
Money Market ................$3,555.40
CMC Passwords/IDs
We’re bringing back Andy Ihnatko!
Is he a tech
columnist? Is
he a tech industry pundit? Is
he a Mac Guru?
Yes, he’s all
these things,
plus an engaging speaker who will keep you
entertained all night. Plus, we’ll
have free food and drink!
Business Card (3.5”w. x 2”) ..............$10.00
Need CMC Support?
Quarter Page (3.625”w. x 4.75”) .......$20.00
Half Page (7.5”w. x 4.75”h. .................$30.00
or 3.625”w. x 9.5”h.)
Full Page (7.5”w. x 9.5”)......................$50.00
We would like to add a regular feature to your CMC newsletter: Letters to
the Editor. Send your comments, dissenting opinions, questions, rants,
raves, etc. to: [email protected]. We’d be happy to hear from you!
Note: We’re giving the Back To
Basics session a holiday vacation. It
will return in 2008.
Display Ad Rates
UConn Health Center
Special Time 6:30 pm
FOR SALE: Mac Power PC G3, 17"
Valid: 11/01/07 - 2/29/08
User ID: ****
Password: ****
Valid til: 11/15/07
Password: ****
****Note: CMC User IDs and Passwords are located in your mailed CMC newsletter.
11
ote:
Please N
Dates!
Special
Wednesday, November 28
UConn Health Center, 7:00 pm
CMC Annual Auction
UConn Health Center, 6:30 pm
See page 11 for further information:
www.ctmac.org
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
At October's meeting, Jerry
Esposito (inset) demonstrated
Yojimbo and Rich Lenoce explored the Pages
component of Apple's iWork 08. CMC thanks
Jerry and Rich for their detailed and interesting presentations!

January Thaw - Connecticut Mac Connection

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