> Today we were all over the place with great Q&A. I was supposed to show the group a screencast showing Time Machine in action ... it will have to be next week!

> A reminder to check out the Take Control e-books (PDFs) at www.TakeControlBooks.com. A new title just came out: “Take Control of Your 802.11n Airport Network.” What a wonderful book to read at your leisure!

> We discussed and demoed the Mail Stationery that is available with OSX Leopard. Your Apple Mail application now comes with a number of colorful templates that allow you to create graphics-rich emails (eg; for cards, invitations, photos, etc.). I’ve tried it, and it turns out that it is not too compatible with Windows clients or older Mac software. The emails will also be larger due to the added graphics and HTML components. For myself, I am not interested in using it. But if you want to try it out, here’s Apple’s take on it.

> Folks, in just three more weeks, we’ll be on winter hiatus until the Spring semester. Where will you get help if you run into one of the rare problems you might have on your Mac. Well, don’t forget Google!! Just type in the problem in your Google search filed in Safari. If you get an error message of some kind, just type the text of the error message into the Google search field.

> Today we talked about using iTunes to obtain and listen to Podcasts. These podcasts give you a great vehicle for learning and hearing about thousands of subjects. Listen to them on your Mac, on your iPod or iPhone, or in the car.

> One of our members is interested in producing podcasts. Well, everyone who owns a modern Mac has GarageBand. Starting with version ’06 (but best with ’08), you have the ability to record and produce podcasts! Apple has a great tutorial on this subject. Check here and here. By the way, you can also use QuickTime PRO to produce audio and video podcasts.

> Remember that there are some great e-books (PDF format) on everything Mac at www.TakeControlBooks.com. They just released “Take Control of MobileMe” A must-read for all MobileMe users, or those who want to make an informed decision about it before subscribing to MobileMe. These books are fantastic resources. How do you think I learned everything I know about Macs? Now I’m in trouble; I just gave away my secret!!

> Kind of related to podcasts, we talked about what RSS means (Real Simple Syndication). Want to learn more? Check the Wikipedia Entry. A great FREE application that will aggregate your favorite RSS feeds into one convenient place is NetNewsWire. Oh, and by the way, you can also get NetNewsWire for iPhone.

> Finally, we talked about the wonderful world of Apple REFURBS - or, Refurbished Apple products such as iPhones, Macs, Airport devices and more. You get great products at great prices. Refurbished products can be overstock or items that were returned and repaired if needed. They may have some minor cosmetic defects, but are completely checked out by Apple and you get the same one-year limited warranty as any new purchase, AND you can get the standard AppleCare. Go to the online Apple Store at store.Apple.com, scroll all the way down to the bottom, and you will see a link “Special Deals” and refurbished products.

Today we began to explore Time Machine. This is Apple’s backup program that seamlessly and automatically makes backups of your Mac’s hard disk in the background while you work. In particular, we discussed the two ways to exclude data. One of these is where you can actually tell Time Machine which drives or folders you wish to exclude from the backups. For example, you may not wish to use up precious space on your Time Machine disk drive with podcasts or internet video. The other way of excluding data is to go into the Time Machine application and tell it to delete existing backups of specific folders that you really don’t need backed up. This procedure will be made available here shortly. An actual demonstration of HOW Time Machine works needs to be run at the ALLMUG meeting. Rather than bring the whole kit in, I am preparing a video ScreenCast of my Time Machine system at home and plan to bring it in to show at a meeting in November. In the meantime, if you want to know more, visit Apple’s Time Machine page.

For those wishing to read up on all things Mac - the Take Control eBooks are excellent resources. You purchase the books in PDF format for around $10 dollars and you are entitled to updates. The information is accurate, easy to read, and up-to-date.

I also mentioned that I like printing large PDFs directly to Fedex/Kinko’s over their website. I can then drive over and pick up the printout (or have it delivered for a fee). I am told that Staples offers the same service.

Today we spent the first half of our meeting reviewing the new Apple notebook announcements made a few hours earlier. For all information on the new products, visit www.Apple.com

Additionally, you can view a QuickTime movie of Steve Job’s announcements and demos. This is always a fun and interesting thing to watch. Plan on setting aside about an hour. You can either stream the video to your Mac, or download it. Go to the Apple Special Events Page.

Finally, we discussed MobileMe and, in particular, synchronizing data between your computers and the “Cloud.” For more information visit www.apple.com/mobileme/

There were some questions about updating your Mac to reflect changes to references from dotMac to MobileMe. Here is a link to an Apple Knowledge Base article that discusses this issue.

Here are highlights from some of today’s ALLMUG discussions and demos:

> Where do you find your Mac’s serial number? Go to menu:APPLE>ABOUT THIS MAC and then click on the MORE INFO button. This launches into a program called “System Profiler” (it lives in your Utilities folder). In the first window you see you will find your serial number. If you COPY the number into your clipboard, you can then go to this page on the Apple Support website. Simply paste in your serial number to see how much time you have left on your AppleCare.

> Sandy’s Sure Shots: I showed the three mice (mouse modules?) that I use and recommend. First of all, for my desktop machine, I use the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. This is THE mouse to use for the comfortable and natural placement of your forearm, wrist and hand. See the website for more medical and technical information. There is also a new wireless model, however I have no experience with this. They don’t have Mac drivers for this mouse yet. You don’t need a specific driver for the Evoluent. OSX will recognize it as a standard mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel, however you cannot program the other buttons on this mouse without a driver. There are third-party drivers available that allow for support of the Evoluent and many other devices such as game pads. Ron Yabroff recommends Steermouse. I use USB Overdrive. The other mice I showed was a small Bluetooth mouse great for travel. This is the BT-500 by RadTech. The third mouse is my newest acquisition. It’s a standard size (colors available) wireless, but not Bluetooth. It is an instant-response radio wireless mouse. It does require a tiny “dongle” that you attach to a USB port, and has great range. This is the Logitech V450 Nano Cordless Mouse for Notebooks.

> There was a question about whether to “de-frag” the Mac hard disk. This is a routine that has been around for ages, and is used to optimize a drive when the thousands of files present are broken up into several “fragments.” When there is too much fragmentation of files, it takes longer for the drive to read and write data, and overall computer performance decreases. Do I de-frag? No! When needed, OSX does some de-fragging of vital system files in the background. I also completely rebuild and reinstall from scratch my entire drive at least once a year, and this takes care of any file fragmentation which might otherwise be of concern. However, if you who work with many very large, multi-gigabyte files such as video files, and your disk is over 50% capacity, then you may want to consider looking into a file defragmentation and optimization utility. There is a program called iDefrag which has been around for some time and seems to be pretty solid from what I hear. Want to know more? See this article in Apple’s knowledge base.

> Ron and I mentioned a couple of disk and file troubleshooting and repair program. These are Disk Warrior and Drive Genius. The latter one is what Apple uses in their stores, for what it’s worth.

> Tip: To zoom in while viewing anything on screen, using MacBook and MacBook Pros, hold down the CONTROL key while scrolling up/down with TWO FINGERS on your trackpad. For other systems and earlier versions of OSX, you need to first turn on the ZOOM feature in the Universal Access system preference. Check out the keyboard shortcuts listed there. If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse you can also use it to zoom in and out.

Even though there is a lot to be said for having open-format meetings, I think that a little bit of structure will serve everyone best. Therefore, I am going to use this new format to our meetings:
1. Any Industry & Apple news important to our little group here at the Academy
2. “Sandy’s Sure Shots” -- We will do one or two short software demos. This is a revived program from back in the days of the original Macintosh Users of Delaware, where I demonstrated the month’s top “Pubic Domain” software. (I used to be called ‘Sandy’ back then!)
3. Main Topic of the Week
4. Q&A

Let’s see how it goes!

Here are highlights from some of today’s ALLMUG discussions and demos:

> For those of you (particularly Switchers) trying to run .AVI files on your Mac (these are video files typically used by Windows users), be sure to try the free VLC program (Video LAN Client). This has been recently upgraded and improved.

> Today’s “Sandy’s Sure Shots” was on screen capture utilities. I use these a lot for generating screen captures for my various tutorials, presentations and technical documentation. My two favorite ones are Skitch (free) and SnapZ Pro X ($$). SnapZ Pro will capture video and sound as well and save it as a QuickTime movie. There is a cheaper version which does not capture the video.

> One member asked if there was a program out there that allows you to capture a picture of an entire web page that is longer than the screen. The typical screen capture utilities only capture what is currently displayed on the screen. Try the free program Paparazzi.

> Don’t forget that built into the Macintosh OSX is some simple screen capture functionality. First of all, in the Utilities folder (from Finder, go to menu:GO>UTILITIES) is a little application call Grab. Launch it and then look at your options under the CAPTURE menu. You can do a standard selection capture, a window capture, a screen capture, and a timed capture. Additionally, you can issue a couple of keyboard commands at any time without needing to be in Grab. To do a capture of the whole screen, press SHIFT-COMMAND-3, for a selection crosshair press SHIFT-COMMAND-4 and when the crosshairs appear on screen, simply draw out the area you want to capture. These last two will save your capture as .PNG files on the desktop (.PNG is simply another picture graphic format like .JPEG).

> Remember that these and many other free and shareware programs can also be obtained from the software clearinghouse that I use regularly the Versiontracker website ... www.versiontracker.com

> Today we talked about the REPAIR PERMISSIONS function that is found in the Disk Utility program. “Permissions” are a function of the UNIX-based operating system of OS X, and has to do with who is permitted to open files, and run programs and other routines on your Mac. Sometimes these can get confused or corrupted. There is a weekly maintenance routine that your Mac runs automatically which, among other things, will repair permissions, so this is not something you need to worry about running. However, if you ever run into a situation where a program or a file does not seem to open, or you are getting some sort of “access” errors, then just run the repair permissions in Disk Utility. Typically this should not take longer than 5 to 10 minutes. Want to know more? See this article from Apple’s knowledge base.

Here are highlights from some of today’s ALLMUG discussions and demos:

> We looked at a two new technologies called Cover Flow and Quick Look introduced in last year’s OS X Leopard. These offer new ways to “preview” your files without actually opening them. Cover Flow borrows its design from the Cover Flow view now found in iTunes where you can flip through a flowing visual selection of album cover art to select your tunes. Now, you use the same interface to peruse your files, movies and photos.

Cover Flow is a new VIEW format in finder -- along with ICON VIEW, LIST VIEW and COLUMN VIEW. When you are in the FInder and looking at a window of files and folders, you can either go to the VIEW menu to select which view, including Cover Flow, or there is a set of 4 little icons on the left half of the window’s tool bar which lets you choose from the four views.

Quick Look lets you actually quasi-open a file so you can see its contents without actually launching the file into it’s supporting application. This works with pictures, text files, movie files, song files, Pages, Keynote and Numbers files, and more. You simply select any file in the Finder and press the space bar to activate Quick Look for that file. Alternatively, use menu:FILE>Quick Look.’’

> There was some discussion about setting up Apple Mail to access the UDEL email system. I have not had a chance to review this as I simply have my UDEL email forwarded to one of my GMail accounts, however I did notice that there is a big help file up on the UDEL IT section taht explains how to set things up on the Mac .... here is the link: www.udel.edu/topics/e-mail/macosxmail/index.html

> We talked about how to force a file to open with a particular application. For example, this can be done with PDF files which might launch Adobe Reader on your system, but you would rather have the Preview application open instead. How do you change this behavior on your Mac? And, how do you set things so that from now on all PDF files will just open in Preview. The secret is in the GET INFO dialog box. Simply select the PDF file and go to menu:FILE>GET INFO to bring up a panel chock full of information and statistics about the file. There is a little section towards the bottom called “Open With.” You may need to expand this section to view your options. There will be a popup menu which will allow you to select an appropriate application for that file, or you may have to use the “Other...” selection to directly choose an application. Once that is done, that particular file you selected will now open in the desired application. If you want to affect all files with the same extension (eg, PDF files), then you would click on the CHANGE ALL button.

Want to learn about this in more detail? Go to the DOWNLOADS section on this site and download the PDF file called “Setting Your Default Application.”

> A question came up about how to monitor system parameters real-time, like memory conditions, CPU usage and more. This is done via an application already present on your Mac, called Activity Monitor. You can get to it from the Finder by going to the menu:GO>UTILITIES and then selecting Activity Monitor. There’s tons of information there, so peruse it at your leisure. The top section shows the actual processes running and the resources that they are taking up. A typical thing to do here is to click on the header row where it says CPU, and make sure that it will sort DESCENDING. This is indicated by a small arrow pointing DOWN next to the words “CPU.’ This will let you see the larger CUP “hogs” starting at the top of the list. It’s a troubleshooting device to see what is going on when your machine is mysteriously slowing down due to the fact that one or more applications may be taking up all the computational power of your Mac. There is also handy information at the bottom of the Activity monitor, and you can flip through the stats for memory consumption, CPU usage, and so forth. Hopefully in some future meeting we can spend some more time with this.

> There was one little piece of “Eye Candy” that I showed ... you know about the Genie Effect? That is , when you minimize a window by clicking on the YELLOW dot at the top-left, there is an animation effect where the window gets sucked down to the Dock. Well, if you hold the SHIFT key down while activating the minimize effect, you will see the Genie Effect in slow motion! Nothing useful, but it always generates “ooohs” and “aaahs!”

ALLMUG meetings continue with fantastic attendance, lots of interest and plenty of enthusiasm!

We spent a good deal of time discussing printer issues - particularly with inkjet printers. A couple of people in the discussion recommend Epson, Hewlett Packard and Canon printers. All three have been in the business for a long time and are all excellent printers. Epson's support for Macintosh has been excellent over the years, and the more recent HP and Canon printers provide good support for Mac as well.

Some tips regarding ink-jet printers were brought up:

- Keep the printer powered on 24/7 to help avoid inkjet clogging issues. Power consumption is negligible.
- Always shut off the printer with the ON/OFF switch as opposed to simply cutting power to the printer. When you switch off, a little routine runs to shut down and properly position the print head, and therefore, to avoid clogging issues.
- If you don't print often, and even if you leave the power on, print a test pattern or something small once weekly. This is yet another way to avoid clogging issues.
- Always use the manufacturer's branded ink as opposed to third-party inks. This helps avoid clogging issues, but also ensures the best color reproduction for photo printing. You should also consider using the printer manufacturer's own papers when printing photos.
- Printer “driver” software is updated periodically by the manufacturer. You should verify that you have the latest version by visiting the manufacturer’s software downloads page (usually in the “Support” section).

> The Mac OS X system update 10.5.5 was released just yesterday. Advice to all is to hold off a bit before downloading and installing the updates. This is just in case there is some serious issue with the update that crops up. It's rare, but it has happened in the past. I monitor the technical newsfeeds to see what's going on with the updates. One such place is www.macfixit.com . I usually wait about a week before I install it on my production machines.

> You can change the behavior of those windows that rudely pop up while you are working ... you know, the ones that tell you there are system updates and do you wish to download and install? If you go to System Preferences>Software Update, you can set or disable the regular checks. Most importantly, I would suggest you DO NOT enable the checkbox "Download important updates automatically.”

> We demonstrated the new and exciting screen saver found in 10.5 Leopard only ... called Mosaic. To get this to work, you must first have iPhoto populated with photos. You can view this by going to System Preferences>Deskop & Screensaver. Click on the "Screen Saver" tab at the top. Then in the list of screen savers on the left, select "Photos." Then, under the preview window, you will see three little icons called "Display Style." Try all three to see how you can use your photos as screen savers. The third one is the really neat one called "Mosaic," which will slowly render a random photo in your collection as a mosaic consisting of your other photos. Don't forget to click on the OPTIONS button to change some of the parameters of the sceensaver. The more photos, the better the effect. Quite spectacular!

We started out our new Fall semester of ALLMUG meetings, and we welcomed several new members. We had about 25 people in attendance; a record! Let's make this an interesting semester at ALLMUG!

I have enough content to discuss to last us about 9 years at this point. It's a great source in case there is no Q&A or if other folks don't have a demo or presentation of their own to make.

This week we discussed the happenings during the summer - in particular: the iPhone 3G rollout, the iTunes App Store (for iPhone), and the new MobileMe service - which replaces .Mac (dotMac). MobileMe will be detailed in a future meeting as will iPhone for those interested.

TODAY IS OUR LAST ALLMUG MEETING FOR THIS SEMESTER .... SEE YOU BACK HERE FOR FALL 2008!

Here are the major topics we discussed in today's meeting:

> Today we demonstrated the plug-in for iTunes called SRS iWOW ... this plug-in allows you to considerably enhance the sound quality and levels that are output by iTunes. You can control the quality based on types of speakers or headphones/earbuds you are employing, and the results are quite dramatic. Sandro uses this on his MacBook because the speakers on it are so small, he can hardly hear the output. But, they also significantly enhance the sound coming out of his "SoundSticks" speakers attached to his desktop G5. 14-day trial period available!

> Finally, Sandro demonstrated MacSpeech Dictate -- a dictation and voice recognition package for the Mac that takes advantage of the latest processing technology available only to Intel-based Macs. For a version 1 application, this works quite well in it's own word-processing environment, but still problematic when using the system with other applications like Microsoft Office or Pages.

SEE YOU IN THE FALL!

Here are the major topics we discussed in today's meeting:

> We looked at the wonderful world of Widgets on the Mac ... widgets are small, generally useful applications that are loaded by your Dashboard (look in the Dock or in the Applications folder). Several handy widgets come with every Mac, but many more can be downloaded from Apple's Widget site .. In particular, we demoed Package Tracker to track your UPS and FEDEX packages, Earthquake will alert you when an earthquake is registered anywhere in the world, Doppler for your live weather doppler radar view and iStat to provide you with valuable system resource information on your Mac.

> We demonstrated Exposé -- new to Tiger and Leopard

> We looked at how to set "Hot Spots" on the corners of your monitor so that you can activate various system features by just moving your mouse into these corner "hot spots.." This functionality is available to you by going to SYSTEM PREFERENCES, then selecting Exposé ... and refer to the section called "Active Screen Corners."

> General discussion of issues related to running Windows on an Intel Mac

> Demonstrated the use of GOOGLE searching to look up any Mac problems. For example, if you see a cryptic error message, just type in that error message text in Google to find out what it all means!

> Today we demonstrated the Icy Dock external drive enclosure. This includes a tray to which you attach a SATA drive (an internal hard disk drive -- like the one in your Mac). With the IcyDock, you can "swap" drives in and out for any number of reasons. Sandro uses his IcyDock this way: he makes a SuperDuper clone copy of his desktop G5 Mac onto a SATA drive that is inserted in the IcyDock, then he takes that clone-copy drive and stores it off-site in his bank safety deposit box. This is done on a quarterly basis. Sandro purchased both his IcyDock (model MB559UEA-1S) and the Western Digital SATA 500GB internal drives from NewEgg.com

> Sandro demonstrated iPhoto "round-tripping." This is where you can set up iPhoto to send your photos to PhotoShop Elements directly for advanced editing. You can set your editor of choice in iPhoto's Preferences.

> We discussed the importance of having your system connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) - particularly in the summer months when you are most likely to suffer a power outage or brown-out. A UPS will keep your system going for a few more minutes on a backup battery so that you can safely close all your files and applications and shut down your Mac. UPSs are very affordable these days. The best one is from APC (American Power Conversion). There are many models to choose from depending on the number and types of devices you want to plug in to the UPS. You can get "consumer" versions at stores such as Staples and BestBuy.

> Using Safari and a .Mac account you can create an iCard with any of your own pictures. It's particularly easy to do if you use iPhoto (and if you aren't using iPhoto, why not?!!)

> The ColorSync utility is included with all Macs. It's a tool that helps you calibrate your monitor to get the best color rendition and output you can get. This is called Monitor Calibration and is not to be confused with the third-party hardware devices - such as the Huey or the Spyder - that do a more complete job of calibrating and profiling your monitor for optimal color output so that your prints come out matching what you see on the monitor. At the very least, you should periodically use the ColorSync utility -- located in SYSTEM PREFERENCES in the MONITORS preferences. Then click on the COLOR tab at the top. Depending on the version of OSX you are running you need to get into the COLORSYNC area or (as it's now called) the CALIBRATE area. Once you're in ColorSync ... just follow the simple instructions.

> Discussions always return to .Mac (the "dot Mac" service from Apple) .... many people do not realize how many services .Mac gives you - it's not just about email!! Check it out .. www.Apple.com/dotmac

After our Spring Break, we reconvened and talked more about video on the Mac. Question came up about how to capture video from the screen. We demonstrated an excellent application which has been around for quite some time -- SnapZ Pro by Ambrosia Software. By the way, this is what I use to generate all my specialized screen shots for documentation and presentations. While the new Grab program that comes with every Mac does a great job for screen captures, it is not as flexible AND it does not catch video. Also, SanpZ Pro will actually record any actions you make on screen, with sound. This is especially valuable for recording for the purpose of creating video tutorials.

We also demonstrated how to globally set file associations on the Mac. For example, say that your PDF files open into Adobe Reader when you double-click them, but you want them to open into Apple's Preview (much faster, and now with powerful annotation tools in the Leopard version). Here's what you do so that from now on anytime you open any PDF file, it will launch Preview: Go to any one PDF file and click on it ONCE to select it. Then, from the FILE menu, select GET INFO. In the Get Info dialog, where it says "Open With" (you may have to expand this option), click on the pop-up menu there to show a list of apps on your machine that can open a PDF file, and select Preview. But you're not finished! See just below where it says CHANGE ALL ... click that, and after some confirmations you will have set Preview to open your PDF files.

Today we focused on Font issues and we talked a bit about Apple's Disk Utility as well as the System Info dialog box -- located under the Apple menu, select About This Mac

Discussions this week:

> Resolution issues in QuickTime - how to set, when to change, etc

> There is an excellent series of e-books in PDF format, called Take Control Books at www.takecontrolbooks.com They publish many e-books on Macintosh topics: from Panther to Leopard, Apple and third party applications, and other things such as troubleshooting, email, spam, security, Airport, and much more .... all Mac-centric. These cost from $5 to $10 and some are available in print form.

> We touched on the creation of DVDs using iMovie and iDVD ... a topic to explore further!

> Conversion of Keynote presentations to QuickTime was demonstrated

For this week's meeting I brought in my own favorite mouse ... the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. A completely different design for a mouse, the Evoluent makes you use your mouse in a more comfortable and ergonomic fashion.

We also talked about establishing resolution settings for overhead projectors.

We demonstrated how to create and modify your own desktop images. The standard desktops are stored in ~/Library/Desktops. You can open these in Photoshop and edit them as needed.

This week we continued last week's discussions about Memory. We talked about why there are system slowdowns due to memory issues, how to clear them up, and how to manage memory. We covered the different classifications of memory - Wired, Active, Inactive and Free.

This week we looked at a number of things pertaining to Mac.:

1. "Zapping" the Parameter RAM is a maintenance technique that has been used since the very first model back in the 80's. This technique clears a number of hardware anomalies that may crop up from time to time. This is done by holding down the OPTION-COMMAND-P-R keys while restarting. Continue to hold down the keys. The Mac will cycle through restarts ... let up when the you hear the fourth start-up chime.

2. We demoed Exposé, and how to set it up.

3. We discussed Spaces -- the new "Virtual Desktop" feature found in OSX 10.5 Leopard.

4. We talked about how to program extra mouse buttons found on the Apple Mighty Mouse and other third-party mice. This is done via the Keyboard & Mouse System Preference.

5. We discussed memory issues that can crop up, and how to monitor memory usage via Activity Monitor - a system utility located in the Utilities folder .... accessible via the Finder's GO menu.

This week we covered a panoply of topics during our meeting.

1. How to set up your file window views in the Finder. Once you open any directory window, you then go to the VIEW menu (in Finder) and then select SHOW VIEW OPTIONS. This is available in both Tiger and Leopard.

2. We talked about creating and organizing MAILBOXES (folders) in Apple's Mail.app.

3. Smart Mailboxes in Mail.app , Smart Folders in the Finder, and Smart Albums in iPhoto are all powerful time-saving techniques available to Tiger and Leopard users.

4. The funny Apple Photo Booth program was demonstrated. This is a great program for having some fun with kids (small AND big)! It comes on all Macs that have a built-in iSight camera. We also showed how to use Photo Booth to capture your picture and setting it as your logon icon.

5. We discussed issues pertaining to the Linksys 802.11 (WiFi) home routers and Apple Airport (Express/Extreme). We looked at matters regarding channel selection and interference from wireless phones, microwave ovens, and neighboring wireless networks.

6. VersionTracker.com was demonstrated. This is a great place to obtain Mac software and to learn more about it. Free!

7. The AppZapper application was demonstrated ("The Uninstaller Apple Forgot"). This little utility aids in the removal of software, but the true power of it is that it also removes all resources and files related to the programs you want to remove from your Mac.

This week we began a new segment called "My Favorite Apps" where I invite others to participate at any meeting. Go to the Downloads Page for my first list of applications "I can't live without" to get things started.

Also ... we talked about the rich, new features found in Apple's Preview program which has been substantially updated in OSX 10.5 Leopard. What I like the most is that we can now annotate PDF files with callout boxes, circles, sticky-note comments and we can cross-out, and my favorite -- highlight text. Additionally, we can now reorder pages, delete pages and combine PDF files.

This week we discussed the actual Time Machine application and what happens in a situation where files need to be restored. This is something that users generally don't test -- while the MAY have a backup plan, they never really test to see how a RESTORE works. With Time Machine, it couldn't be any easier, AND it couldn't be any more intuitive, in Apple's inimitable fashion! For those new to Mac, Time Machine is included on every new Mac, and is part of the new Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard operating system.

Rather than bring in my external drive and cables, I created a SCREENCAST of my own Time Machine setup at my home Mac. If you haven't seen this, please download the QuickTime movie from the Downloads page and take a look. The movie is about 7 minutes.

Next week, we'll take a close look at Leopard's new Preview application which now supports annotations of PDF files and a whole lot more! Also, we'll start a new segment -- "My Favorite Apps."

WELCOME BACK TO A NEW SEMESTER OF A.L.L.M.U.G. Meetings!

This week we welcomed several new members to our Mac User Group meeting! Welcome, and please extend an invitation to other Mac (and Windows) users!

This week we talked about the MUG, and immediately fell into a conversation on the ever-important topic of making backups. We discussed the new Time Machine backup application found in Leopard OS X 10.5.

Next week, we'll look at a demo of Time Machine in action, and I'd like to start a new segment called "My Favorite Apps." I will start off by telling you about some of the apps and utilities I Can't Live Without! I invite others to participate in future meetings and tell us (and perhaps demo) what their favorite apps are.

Today we took a close look at the new Spaces feature in OSX 10.5 Leopard.

At next week session we will discuss offsite data storage, and in particular, the online services available for data storage. Additionally, we want to discuss and demo how Disk Utility is used to prepare an external hard disk drive.

NO MORE MEETINGS UNTIL AFTER OUR WINTER BREAK ... SEE YOU AGAIN in FEBRUARY '08!

At today's meeting we looked into the actual Leopard installation. We discussed the choices you have to make regarding the type of installation -- "Upgrade Mac OS X," "Archive and Install," or "Erase and Install."

Next week, we will look at Spaces in Leopard.

No meeting today! See you next week, when we will actually go through a Leopard installation process and discuss any issues ...

During today's meeting, we concentrated on some of the great, new features in Leopard. We brought in an external Western Digital "MyBook Studio Edition" 500GB Quadruple Interface Hard Disk Drive, and along with our Leopard-equipped G4 PowerBook, we looked at the new Time Machine feature which silently automates our backup of the PowerBook drive.

The MyBook drive was purchased at MacMall.com

Next time, we expect to go over an actual installation process, and discuss the issues there...

Today we spent the hour looking at a new Leopard installation on a PowerBook G4. We spent a good deal of the time looking at some of the Finder features -- in particular, the new file views called Coverflow and Quick Look. Next week, we'll have an external drive connected to the PowerBook so that we can explore the new Time Machine - Apple's new integrated backup technology. We also plan to run through a Leopard installation procedure from an installation disc.

So, today we took an initial look at the new OSX 10.5 Leopard on the new class iMac. There are plenty of new and exciting features to explore and to talk about in future ALLMUG sessions.

Meanwhile, we continued on our discussions about backup strategies and external hard drive recommendations. Clearly, there is much interest in this topic, particularly since Apple is including a revolutionary new backup technology called Time Machine in the new Leopard operating system.

We also talked more about setting up Apple Mail to fetch emails that you would typically go to a website to get. Let Apple Mail handle all your email tasks. It's just a matter of configuring your accounts correctly in Mail's preferences. We also looked at Address Book integration with Apple Mail, and we took a look at GMAIL (Google Mail) - an excellent free email service.

Next week's topic will be: "Your Options When Upgrading to Leopard (revisited)" plus a closer look at Leopard.

FYI -- we have renewed our space in room 219 for the CONTINUATION of our ALLMUG meetings through the Spring Semester! Same bat-time, same bat-channel!

This week we continued a discussion on backup strategies -- an obviously important topic. I am happy to see that there is so much interest and that our members recognize the importance of doing backups. The concept of CLONING (via SuperDuper) versus traditional backups were discussed. Whether or not to clone your drive is really dependent on how you work on your Mac, the importance of getting a crashed Mac up and running in no time (eg; running a business on your Mac), and other considerations. The backup software I use and recommend is called "Data Backup" by Prosoft Engineering. There is a free trial and is intuitive to set up and schedule for unattended backups. Also, if you have a .Mac Services subscription, you should really take a look at Apple's "Backup" application which is free with the subscription. It is very easy to use, comes with a lot of presets, and you can use it to backup your files both to your online .Mac account on the internet or to a local drive (or both!).

Today's topic was "What You Need To Do To Prepare For Leopard." --- Apple has announced that Leopard ships on October 26 and many of us Mac Geeks are looking forward to being "early adopters." You may want to hold off a bit and see how things go. Also, you need to consider the following before upgrading:

1. Backup, Backup, and backup again!
2. Have a good and capacious external drive for use with the new "Time Machine" software that will be included with Leopard. This program will automate backups and versions of your documents.
3. Check your hardware compatibility for Leopard. The minimum specifications are: a 867 MHz G4 Power Macintosh, 512 MB RAM, and 9 GB free disk space.
4. Check that your software is UP-TO-DATE and Leopard-compatible. The best place to check is at the software developer's website.

Next week's topic will be: "Your Options When Upgrading to Leopard."

Today's discussions started with questions regarding backup strategies and different media. A trend is towards external drives -- good drives are capacious and inexpensive. Always stick to well established brands, and look for ones with multiple interfaces (ie; Firewire 400, Firewire 800 and USB 2.0).

Today's topic was .Mac (dotmac) Services from Apple.

For our next meeting, we will talk about what to do to prepare your Mac for the new OSX 10.5 Leopard release coming up.

Today we followed up on last week's question: "Can I retain Safari history beyond one week?" The answer lies in entering UNIX commands in Terminal which write to Safari's preference file. You can specify how many days you want Safari to remember the link history. A couple of caveats - 1. Be VERY careful when using Terminal; you could do some damage if not attentive, 2. The longer time period you set for Safari's history will slow down Safari.

Our discussions and demos today delved into the world of BACKUPS!! We talked about SuperDuper! - a great utility for cloning your startup drive. This is just one of several ways to backup your data. There was much interest in this subject, I was happy to see .... clearly, we will be talking more about this in future meetings.

For our next meeting, we will cover and explain .Mac services and why you should seriously consider subscribing to it.

Today we discussed a number of issues, and answered lots of questions!

Topics included Apple Mail once again, and Safari ... best ways to use these applications.

Question of the week > "Can I retain Safari history beyond one week?" The answer next week!

Unless there are other pressing matters to present and discuss, we will cover backup strategies during our meeting next week.

In today's meeting we spent a lot of time discussing email issues -- especially Apple's Mail application. We decided to defer our discussion and demonstration of subscribing to and downloading podcasts through iTunes, as the members who were most interested in this topic were not present today.

Apple Mail is an excellent program that can manage multiple email accounts. In typical Apple fashion, it has a simple interface, yet is a powerful and feature-rich program. Many have found Microsoft Entourage for the Mac to be a bit overkill - it is really more appropriate in a corporate setting.

We also discussed the use of GMAIL -- a free web-based email service with no storage limits. For more information, go to www.gmail.com . We looked at how to set up Apple Mail to automatically retrieve emails from GMail. We took a brief look at setting up RULES in Apple Mail, and we will spend more time on this in a future session. We also talked about spam and phishing scams - these are email maladies that do, indeed, affect Macintosh users as well as Windows users.

A couple of our ALLMUG members brought up an interesting question: When entering a name in the TO: field in Apple Mail, how do we stop the application from automatically filling in an email address that is obsolete or incorrect? We spent some time going over this. The answer - access the "Previous Recipients" list under the WINDOW menu. The resulting dialog box allows you to delete previous recipient email addresses, or correct them. A full PDF tutorial called "Tip: Clearing Out the 'Previous Recipients List' in Apple Mail" can be found on the DOWNLOADS page on this site.

Our first meeting of the ALLMUG was a big success. We are starting out with about 10 people, and there is a lot of passion and interest in that room. Several people were not aware of the existence of this Academy extracurricular activity ... we will send out a notice to other IT classes and groups.

Here's what we covered:

> We talked about the importance of a computer users group -- ANY computer user group! Mac users are part of a community of computer users who are always ready and willing to help each other and people new to the platform.

> Our "meetings" are very informal get-togethers where we discuss anything Macintosh. Lots of questions come up on how to do this and that, and we all share techniques, tips and trips.

> Software updates for all third-party software can be monitored and obtained via two on-line services: www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com

> We talked a bit about the upcoming OSX release (October 30). Some people want to know if they should wait to get a new Mac until it comes with Leopard. Basically, the standard answer to this question is that if you need a computer now, go ahead and get it now. If you want to upgrade later on, Leopard is relatively inexpensive ($129) and fairly trivial to install. If you have invested in third-party software, you should begin to monitor the developer websites for upgrades and information on Leopard compatibility.

> We demonstrated how to bring in streaming radio through iTunes.

NEXT WEEK:
- Among other topics, we will talk about Podcasts and demonstrate how they can be subscribed to and downloaded via iTunes.