NVMUG eNews 5/13/2006
Last updated 5/14/2006
Macworld Meeting In A Box San Francisco
We enjoyed the Macworld Meeting in a Box from Peachpit Press. We watched authors presenting information at the Peachpit booth during Macworld San Francisco. There was a drawing for prizes.
Geog Gonter gave us information we can use.
Five books were added to the NVMUG library. three from O'Reilly..
1. Macworld Meeting in a Box
We decided to watch the DVD from Peachpit Press Macworld San Francisco from the Intro, and decide which authors to watch during the program.
After the introduction about Macworld, author Jim Heid, talked about iPhoto and iWeb. IPhoto 06 is much faster and can manage many more images. The new iWeb makes it pretty easy to set up a web page using the formats provided, and to present your pictures in more interesting ways than were available in iPhoto. iWeb and iPhoto are so well integrated that working with both of them is like working in one continuous program. Creating a blog is almost as easy as creating an e-mail with iWeb. Jim Heid is author of The Macintosh Digital Hub.
We forgot to distribute copies of his First Look: iLife '06,
so we will bring them to the next meeting.
Watching the DVD
The picture shows some of the NVMUG members watching Jim Heid present information about iPhoto on the screen. Richard Smith provided the projector. Richard Lubot found the comfortable viewing area and screen. And you can see iPhoto on Midge Lubot's PowerBook.
Next we watched Chris Breen talking about ways to preserve battery power. Use the hold switch to keep from accidentally turning on your iPod which uses your battery even when you are not listening. And, later, if your iPod is not working, turn on the hold switch. He also talked about moving your iTunes file. When you move it, make sure the new file works before you delete the old one. If you do delete your iTunes file, Apple will understand and let you buy them again. If your iPod has problems, restoring it is your best option. If you cannot restore it, try draining the battery - let it sit for a few days, then try recharging it. Chris Breen is the author of
The iPod & iTunes Pocket Guide.
People said they wanted to see the next one, so we watched Jiff Carlson, talking about iMovie and iDVD. He actually sumarized the whole process. He imported clips into iMovie. added sound, created chapter marks and imported the iMovie into iDVD. Jiff wrote the iMovie HP & iDVD 5: Visual Quickstart Guide
Next we watched Ryanna Hodson & Michael Verdi, authors of Secrets of Vidoblogging
create a videoblog.
Maria Langer's talk included the Actions menu and some of her favorite widgets. Some Actions menu magic - select some images, control click to get the actions menu, and select the slide show command to see the images in an instant slide show. The pictures she chose to illustrate this included her bird and her helicopter. She is an interesting person as well as the author of many books including Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Visual Quickstart Guide
We skipped the last two talks because none of us is using Final Cut Pro, or Adobe InDesign CS, and we were running short on time, but we enjoyed the ending credits.
A copy of each of the two books provided by Peachpit in the box was added to our NVMUG library along with this DVD. The Meeting in a Box DVD from Macworld San Francisco, and the books Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Quick Project,
and The iPod Playlist Book
are now available for loan.
Geof Gonter will give the other copies of these books to elementary school teachers. Midge prepared drawings for the popcorn and other goodies, and someone pulled her name to win the red cap from Peachpit.
President MIdge in her new red cap.
2. Information from Geof Gonter
Why were there were two questions marks in the dock on Midge's PowerBook? Geof said the question mark usually means either that the item is no longer on the computer or that the connection with the item is not there and you will have to find it.
The following paragraph includes clarifications between quote marks sent in by Geof Gonter after he read the eNewsletter:
Items on the right of the divider bar in the dock are documents or folder aliases),
not programs, and are often put there by someone clicking on the yellow button. Never delete the original item after you drag it to the dock because the icon in the dock is not the real thing, it is an alias. There is no easy way to rescue an item that has been deleted in Mac OS 10.4, even with DiskWarrior Norton Utilities, because it does not work with OSX 10.4. It has to be used with an OS x 10.3.x unit and then you can not search...
because you cannot search for it by title. It took two hours to rescue a student's work because Geof had to examine all of the AppleWorks files on the hard drive to find it.
Geof also sent a clarification to the following paragraph:
Geof is used to a one button mouse, and finds a two button mouse frustrating. Every time you click the right button by mistake, you get the little Action menu the same as if you had used control-click.
Here is Geof's clarification:
Just so you know, I mentioned that I carry a USB two button scrolling mouse to use for setup on PC laptops, because I have difficulty using the two button laptop mouse. Also, Disk Warrior is a program that will only rebuild and correct the volume directory. It can not be used to data recovery.
I apologise for my inaccurate notes.
Geof recommends Onyx for optimizing your hard drive, and Youpi for deleting languages you will never use to save space. The Library includes languages with dictionaries and all that, so if you want to keep a language like French, do not delete it there. Applications also contain languages you may never use so you could delete them from there. The System contains languages it uses. You can delete languages from the system unless you want the system to talk to you in those languages. Do notĘdelete English. or any other language you might use.
3. Additions to the Library and Whatever
This month we added iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual
by David Pogue and Derrick Story, iPod & iTunes; The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition
by J. D. Biersdorfer Edited by David Pogue, and Web Design In A Nutshell
by Jennifer Niederst Robbins from O'Reilly to our library. Reviews are posted on our NVMUG web site.
We also added Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Quick Project
by Tom Negrino, and The iPod Playlist Book
edited by Clifford Colby from Peachpit Press to our library. These have not been reviewed, but I plan to list these with some comments in the web site Reviews because they are in our library.
The NVMUG web page formats are being updated with CSS. The older eNews have to be looked at individually to take out old HTML code and it is interesting because they contain some history and a lot of memories. I have edited them back through 2001, and it is almost unbelievable how much change has taken place since then. Fortunately, many of the people who were NVMUG members then are still active today.
