NVMUG eNews 5/17/2003

Last updated 5/17/2003

Vermont User Groups Get Connected

Gail Murphy, President of Wired Women in Shelburne, Shaun Chu, President of MacChamp in Burlington, and our Geof Gonter gave a presentations. Don Webb, President of the Macintosh User Group of Stowe said a few words as did Ark Lemal of the Apple Consultant's Network, and Stephen Morgan from the Association of Personal Computer User Groups. Other members of NVMUG, MacChamp, and Wired Women were introduced in an interesting meeting that started a little after 10 a.m. and was just beginning to break up three hours later.

In this NVMUG eNews

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1. The Calidonian-Record Meeting Report

Computer User Group Leaders meet in St. Johnsbury. From the left are Midge Lubot, President Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group; Don Webb, President of Macintosh User Group of Stowe: Stephen Morgan representing the Association of Computer User Groups; Gail Murphy, President of Wired Women, Burlington; Shaun Chu, President of MacChamp, Burlington; and Ark Lemal of the Apple Consultants Network.

Computer Enthusiasts Meet To Exchange Information

Enthusiasts from six computer groups met in St. Johnsbury Saturday in an effort to get know each other and exchange information.

Attending the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group meeting were people from MacChamp in Burlington, Wired Women in Shelburne, the Macintosh User Group of Stowe, the Apple Consultants Network, and the Association of Personal Computer User Groups

Gail Murphy, president of the Wired Women proposed the meeting to get to know each other, exchange information, and see if there was interest in creating Vermont or New England event.

Geof Gonter, a NVMUG member and a Macaholic described the Macintosh Jamboree, MacJam, held in Montpelier in 1997, 1998, and 1999. Geof was the president of MacChamp in Burlington at the time. MacJam drew 125 people the first year, and over 200 the next two years. Each MacJam featured a keynote speaker who was well known in the Mac world.

Six sessions were held throughout the day with six programs to choose from in each session. There were local and national vendors booths. Adobe was there along with people representing Apple. The day ended with a drawing for prizes donated by local and national sponsors

Gonter described how it was put together and the work involved. It was a great success, but was discontinued when Gonter was unable to continue to lead the effort.

Steve Morgan, a member of the Plateau PC Users Group, represented the Association of Personal Computer User Groups. ACPUG promotes meetings that are not platform specific for user group leaders. Morgan works with PCs and uses a Dell for games, but he now also uses an iBook and has had great luck with iPhoto.

Gail Murphy gave presentation using Keynote about resources available to user groups. Keynote is an Apple program that is compatible with Microsoft's Power Point and adds some improvements. The graphics and transitions drew applause. Murphy originally prepared the presentation for for a large multi-user-group meeting in Philadelphia. She wanted this meeting because there has been nothing like MacJam for four years, and she would like to see some evolution of that event for all computer users.

Shaun Chu is the MacChamp president and a SoverNet service support technician. He demonstrated settings for iBook connections using an internal modem, an Ethernet cable, or a wireless Airport. Once set, an iBook will sense which kind of connection is available and make the connection. He then discussed file sharing. The network at SoverNet is all PC, but all Shaun has to do is select Connect to Server and the iBook shows all of the PC servers so that he can select one to connect to. It just works.

Someone mentioned Rendezvous in iChat which senses if there are wireless Airport connections which it can see. In minutes three iBooks and one Powerbook had found each other and were talking together in iChat. One of them sent an iTunes file to the computer connected to the projector and it began playing the music and displaying the accompanying graphics. Look mom, no wires!

Then people began to discuss a future multi-user-group event. News about the future event will be posted on our web site as it develops. A more complete report of this meeting will also be posted within a week at http://www.sover.net/~nvmug.

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2. What Happened As I Remember It

OK, Here is what happened as I remember it:

Barry Waldner loaned us the projector (Richard asked him). It worked perfectly and everyone enjoyed the cordless feature.

Geof Gonter Recalls MacJam

Geof talks about MacJam Photo by Gordon Alexander

Geof Gonter lead the effort when the Mac groups put on the MacJams. He said he put in about a month's work on each of the MacJams. Then there was a shortage of volunteers once the event started because no one wanted miss out on any of the sessions. Geof started at least six months in advance. It took a lot of time finding the right person to contact for booths, presentations and door prizes. It took two years to find the right person from Microsoft. Once he found the right person, they were all very cooperative.

Scheduling was a problem. Speakers did not want to come to Vermont in the winter, and travel to get here was sometimes difficult. The Microsoft representative came from California. Alps barely made it and had to leave immediately after their session.

The meetings were held at the Montpelier High School which worked well and Montpelier Junior High School which was a bit crowded. We no longer have the connection that arranged the space for free. The space should be large enough, centrally located, with good highway access and parking, and handicap accessible.

The keynote speakers were Andy Ihnatko, a Macworld author who brought a digital camera; David Pogue, the Macintosh author who spoke and performed some of his songs; and Arnold Reinhold, author of Internet for Dummies

Apple was present in 1997, and was represented through Unicom the next two years. Adobe was there and presented a number of sessions each year. Local experts provided sessions on FileMaker Pro (Paul Hassett) and AppleWorks. Local vendors included Ormsby's, Small Dog, soverNet, and TogetherNet. Vendors paid for booths. Local sponsors sometimes could not find people to man their booths on a Saturday.

There was a charge of $5.00 to get in which included a raffle ticket. Additional raffle tickets were sold. There were a number of great prizes, all donated. People bought T-shirts. Geof now knows a better source for T-shirts.

It is difficult getting the information out, specially to bring in people from outside the area.

Geof said it is too much for one person, but he still has his notes and contacts and would be willing to help if someone else would spearhead the effort.

Gail Murphy's User Group Resources In Keynote

Gail making her Keynote presentation. Photo by Gordon Alexander

Gail went to a state APCUG in Florida meeting. APCUG used to be only PC groups. Now it is 25 to 30% Mac groups. Gail says you can tell the difference. PC groups are quiet. Mac groups are noisy. PC groups sit in the back. Mac groups sit in the front. PC groups are reserved. Mac groups are enthused. And, Mac groups tend to do all the work. Mac people upgraded their web page.

The real reason Gail organized this meeting is that for past four years we have not had a gathering like MacJam, and Gail would like to see something like MacJam but and for all computer users.

Gail's made her presentation using Keynote and a FireWire T connection to her 17" Powerbook from an iBook that was connected to the projector.

Keynote is Apple's answer to Microsoft's Power Point. At heart they are both enhanced slide show programs with tools to create the slides. Power Point and AppleWorks presentations can be imported into Keynote if you want to dress them up. Themes are a prime feature of Keynote that add class and a consistency throughout a presentation. Several themes come with Keynote, and you can buy more or create your own. Keynote also excels in transitions between slides, in what can be included in slides such as Quicktime iMovie clips,in the quality of the graphics, and in integration with iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. For more information see:
http://www.Keynoteuser.com

The presentation was about resources available for computer user groups, and particularly to meet the needs of user group leaders which are different from the needs as users. The resources included:

The Apple User Group digest:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo.aug

The MUG Center a great source for Macintosh user groups
http://www.mugcenter.com

The Apple Consultants Network:
http://www.consultants.apple.com

A web site for information about Unix, Networking, Wireless and OS X:
http://www.BigBlueRoom.net

A source of information for nonprofit organizations:
http://www.nolo.org

Other sources for free and shareware stuff for user group leaders:

• http://www.VistaPrint.com a source of free and low cost business cards
• http//www.Postcardpress.com
• http://www.macreporter.com
• http://www.YML.com a source of server side software
• http://www.mamugs.org
• The Apple Consultants Network:
  http://www.consultants.apple.com

Ark Lemal said you can become a general member of the Apple Consultant's Network for a fee (about $500 a year). But Ark had to take a test to become a certified premier consultant. He has about 300 clients in Vermont. There are four other members in Vermont including Gail and they are considering forming a ACN group in Vermont. The network has three list-serves for members, technology, business, and off-topic software. These are e-mail based, or ACN members can subscribe to an index or digest mode. They are starting to make it searchable. One of the major advantages is to be able to ask a question and know that you will soon get more answers than you want. Ark said that in price / performance, Apple servers are way ahead, but they are having a lot of problems moving their list-servs to Apple's servers. For more information see

A world wide listing of wireless connecting networks:
http://www.nodedb.com

None are listed in Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine yet, but there are 109 in Boston. The web page shows wireless sits on a map of Boston, and a listing including many Starbucks locations, and several locations on Newbury street.

Gail advocating. Photo by Gordon Alexander

Gail is a big advocate of wireless networks. Things are really happening with wireless networks in airports, restaurants, and other places. The Fort Lauderdale Airport has a T3 wireless open network which is the fastest thing you have ever seen. There are also wireless networks in some parks in New York city. Connectivity is definitely in vogue.

Shaun Chu On Making Computer Connections

Shaun Chu used his iBook and the projector to demonstrated networking a lot faster than I could take notes. But, this is what I think I got.

Shaun navigated to System Preferences to display the Network window. He set Location to Automatic so his Mac would chose whether to use the internal modem port, the Ethernet port, or his Airport card depending upon which one is available. Most users use only one port. You set each one that you want to use, but only once.

Shaun showed how to set up using the internal modem port starting with the PPP connection. In Modem you would select the modem type v.92 which also works with v.34 to v.90 modems. V.92 is like v.90 except it allows you to stay connected if you get an incoming phone call if your Internet provider supports this feature. Shaun said SoverNet does not support this yet. SoverNet's mind set is, if it works, don't fix it.

He said, if you have questions about connecting with your built in Ethernet port, talk to your IP or network administrator. Then Shaun turned on his Airport card, and Gail sent a message to him.

New Macs have a Bluetooth chip which provides a connection with Bluetooth enabled devices. For example, if a cell phone with Bluetooth is on and within range, your Mac automatically communicates with it. Shaun called it "self discovery." The cell phone could then be used as a remote control for playing iTunes.

Macintosh OS X 10.2.5 manages all the ports so when you are within range, your Macintosh knows it is there and connects. It just works.

Shaun displayed the Sharing preference window. Unix enables all sorts of network sharing protocols. Turn on FTP to give friends sharing ability over FTP. Turn on printer sharing to let other computers use a printer connected to you Mac. Personal file sharing allows sharing from Mac to Mac as long as they can "see" each other. Windows file sharing allows a PC to transfer files that you make available. It gives seamless networking between two very different platforms.

The well known Unix Apache web server software is available with Mac OS X 10.2. Just check the box to run it. It is not so easy when running under other Unix operating systems.

Discussions and Brief Introductions

Gail Murphy, President of Wired Women in Shelburne, used an Apple in college and was able to connect to Bulletin Board (BS) before the Internet. That is how she met Geof, who helped her and introduced her to the user group (Burlington 1994). She recently retired from the Apple User Group Advisory Board and joined the Apple Consultant's Network. She had a 12" Powerbook, but it's desktop space was too small and it did not have a digital-out port, so now she carries a 17 inch Powerbook. She says you have to need digital-out a lot to carry it. The 12 inch was fantastic, but would not run bigger monitors

Gail told her story about meeting Stephen Morgan at a meeting of computer user group leaders. The hotel had a wireless network. Stephen had a Dell wireless card. A lot of Macintosh people were happily talking to each other with their Airport cards. Steve never was able to get on.

Don Webb is President of the Stowe Macintosh User Group. He said their group mostly consists of users helping users. They meet in a school in Stowe which has iBooks and Airport so they can connect to the Internet from anywhere in the school. In an effort to reach out to the public, Mort Butler then in charge of the Stowe school sytem's technology program arranged for the formation of a Mac Users Group and a PC Users Group The Mac group was founded in 1996, and a PC group was also founded. The PC group asked if they could merge with the Mac group because they couldn't find anyone to do the work. The Mac group said no and the PC group vanished.

There is a Unix group in Vermont, and Shaun may invite them to a MacChamp meeting. Geof knows some non-platform-specific user groups such as Perl. Otherwise he believes there are only three PC user groups in New Hampshire, the rest are all Macintosh.

Erin Kimball and Steve Overland were here from MacChamp. Steve works with 20 realtors who all have PCs. When he goes home he has to turn on his Mac before he can go to sleep.

Speaking about Apples in Katmandu. Photo by Gordon Alexander

Preb Stritter used to belong to MacChamp and is now also with Wired Women. She was with the Peace Corps in Nepal in 1980, and belonged to the highest user group in the world - that is the highest elevation. There were two Apple dealers in Katmandu. They have a 54 character alphabet which was difficult to implement on a typewriter. When one of the dealers brought back a font for the language after a trip to Apple, Preb got together with linguistic people at the university and tech people to try to implement the new alphabet, but it never happened. Preb used an Apple IIc and impressed people when she implemented spread sheets within AppleWorks word processing. American mountain climbers had a solar panel powered Apple IIc to report their climb, and Preb bought it when they left. By the time Preb left in 1984, one of the dealers in Katmandu had a Macintosh.

NVMUG members present included:

Joshua Sophrin a student at St. Johnsbury Academy.

Richard Smith, a special education director in the Newport area who has created a FileMaker Pro database for special education that is being adopted by many school systems in Vermont. The Caledonia North Supervisory Union will be adopting this system this summer.

Warren Walker who is primarily interested in digital photography, specially of wild flowers, and knows how to use Photoshop for his purposes.

Ted Birmingham who uses a Mac just for iMovie in his video and cable business in Stowe and DVDs. Ted said While most of you swear by the Mac, I swear at it. Because of problems he has had with iMovie in OS X, he still works in OS 9. He joins iMovie discussion groups. Ted is getting into iPhoto a little bit.

Tom Cuddihy teaches at Profile High School, and his own Mac is the only one in the school. He also has an eMac at home.

Gordon Alexander was a photo journalist in Westerly Rhode Island. He is now retired and living in Quebec. He took all but one of the photos posted with this news.

Someone pointed out that people can create presentations in AppleWorks, actually using two different sets of AppleWorks tools. AppleWorks is not be as powerful as Keynote, but it can meet the needs of many if not most users. I think it was Freda who said that AppleWorks is under promoted, and most users do not need Microsoft Office. AppleWorks can read most Microsoft Word documents, and AppleWorks documents can be saved as Microsoft Word documents.

Someone argued for the power of Microsoft Office components with macros that do not exist in AppleWorks. Someone else said that most users don't need those macros. Someone said that a version of IC Word can read Microsoft Word documents, and a $20 shareware version can write Microsoft Word documents. Geof said that at least Keynote can read AppleWorks presentations. Microsoft Word can't read Microsoft Works documents. And, while this debate was going on, Shaun created a complex Microsoft document containing text in multiple fonts, a spreadsheet table, and a graphic on one page, and saved it. Then he opened it in AppleWorks, and displayed the identical page. Hey, that's a Macintosh user group - not quiet.

It was a long meeting, and as I left at after three hours people were just beginning to talk about whether they wanted to take on the organization of some larger computer user event, who would be willing to do what, and what kind of event it might be.

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5. A New NVMUG Library

We are going try a computer library. You may borrow books from the library and keep them until you are through with them or until someone else wants to see them. It is hoped that, if you decide that you would like to keep one of the books, you would buy it at our user group discount or through your favorite bookstore.

O'Reilly Publishing has been sending us books for at least a couple of years, and we have distributed them at NVMUG meetings. First we gave them to the NVMUG member who expressed the most interest at the meeting. But, this might not be fair. At the last meeting we held a drawing, but there is the chance that the winner might not really want that book. Hopefully putting the books in the NVMUG library will give those who are most interested a chance to read them before the decide whether or not to buy them. Hopefully this will also result in a few additional sales for the vendors who supply the books.

Our library has books from

O'Reilly & Associates
http://www.oreilly.com

Peachpit Press
http://www.peachpit.com

New Riders
http://www.newriders.com

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6. Meeting Photos By Gordon Alexander"

Gordon Alexander e-mailed me some excellent photos he took at our meeting. I will post them on our web page when I update it for those of you are interested (to not add to the download time of this already long newsletter). I asked him how he obtained such good pictures, and I am sure many of you will be interested in his answer.

The pix were using natural lighting. I raised the film sensitivity up to 800 which is actually a relative comparison to film sensitivity for the conventional film camera. This setting was contrived to make the setting adjustments an easier transition for conventional film users wanting to shoot digital. The white balance was set on automatic and the internal flash turned off.

The best option would be to use bounce flash rather than the built in flash, my camera has a hot shoe so I can mount an external flash and turn of the internal flash. The external flash has a bounce head that can swivel to point to the ceiling, or if i like I can attach a white bounce card and bounce the light off that instead of a white wall or ceiling. I call it my portable ceiling. This lighting gives a nice lighting texture to the picture rather that the harsh on-camera light than tends to over -expose anything in the foreground. The bounce lighting gives a nice even blanket of light all over the shooting area.

There are a few digital cameras out there that offer an auxiliary hot shoe or a plug that will accommodate an external off-camera flash use. High-end Canon, Nikon and Minoltas will. Mine is a Nikon 4500 that accommodates a screw-in connection that leads to a accessory hot-shoe

Shooting at 800 sensitivity has its downside as it can produce unsightly noise ( film users call it grainy ). You can minimize that as I did in Photoshop under filter-noise-despeckle. You can sharpen a blurry picture under filter-sharpen-unsharp mask.

I am by no means a photoshop pro.. these are tools I used as a photojournalist ... way back when.

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