NVMUG eNews 01/12/2008

Last updated 01/14/2008

Informative Circle Discussion

A good sized group participated in a lively and informative circle discussion.

The discussion circle

The discussion group. Unfortunately only Bruce's legs are shown.

We added The Macintosh iLife by JIm Heid thanks to Peachpit Press and The Missing Manual by David Pogue thanks to O'Reilly.

In this NVMUG eNews

1. The Discusssion

1. The Discusion

Warren Walker brought in a new 2009 calendar. He shot lots of pictures in 2008, so finished this calendar way ahead of schedule. He told us that April 2008 had 32 days in his 2008 calendar. He has advised known purchaser's not to use it for financial records. Apparently he mistakenly used the wrong year to set the dates, and this error occurred during correcting it.

The discussion circle

Midge Lubot holding WarrenÕs beautiful 2009 Vermont Wildflower Calendar

iPhoto

Ellen Urman joined our group and helped the discussion by asking good questions. She bought an iMac because it had iPhoto '06 which she wanted to use with her photography. So far she has used her iMac mostly for word processing. She has Mac OS X Tiger.

Warren said he does not know much about iPhoto because he was using Photoshop before iPhoto came out. I gave her The Macintosh iLife '08 to look at the iPhoto chapter. Richard went out and brought in the NVMUG library which had the Macintosh iLife '05 book for her to take home to see if it will help.

Ellen is interested in organize photos into albums. She also has her daughters photos in it, and is wondering if she should move them somewhere else.

Either Stephen Farber or Bruce Shields said the iPhoto library file is really a complex database. Albums in iPhoto are references to that database, not actual separate physical files. Stephen said that one way to separate the daughter's photos could be to create another user on Ellen's computer for her daughter. Then iPhoto would create another library in her daughter's space. Another way, he said, could be to create separate libraries with different albums in iPhoto, but she would have to switch between libraries to use them.

Stephen said that iPhoto '08 has a category of hidden photos for images that you do not want to delete, but do not want to look at when working with your files. Stephen said people should be aware, however, that if go to iPhoto '08 you cannot go back to iPhoto '06.

Bruce described the system his town uses to keep records on about 800 parcels with 4,000 pictures for property values. It went something like this. They can move a photo from an image management screen and it is still in the folder, and they can delete it from the folder and the image is still in another place. It sounded complicated, but in iPhoto you can delete a photo from an album, or delete the album, without deleting the photo from the library database.

Midge showed Ellen iPhoto on Midge's laptop.

The discussion circle

Ellen looking at Midge's iPhoto '08 with Neil Raphel on the left and Harold Turner on the right.

One easy useful tool in iPhoto is removing red eye. Warren said he uses the lasso or ovil selection tool in Photoshop to draw around the eye, then uses Images > Adjustment > Desaturate to remove the red eye. Neil said red eye, caused by the reflection of a flash, is worse in dogs and cats because their retina is more reflective than human for them to see better in dark.

Illustrator

Ellen asked why would a person have Adobe Illustrator. Warren explained that Photoshop is pixel based and you can see the individual pixels if you enlarge the image enough. Adobe Illustrator is vector, or line, based. It uses a mathematical description of the line. No matter how much you expand the image, you will still see the mathematical line, not the pixels.

Warren said that today, even Photoshop has some vector drawings within it.

Neat Technology

Neil brought in an iTouch and passed it around so that everyone could see it. It is like a combination of an 8 gig iPod and a personal data assistant with wifi. You can listen to your music and show videos, and download music from iTunes. He has a case that he carries it in to protect it.

Neil said the digital keyboard was hard to use at times. I used it with the calculator function and it was easy enough to use, much easier than my old Palm. Neil said he would prefer to have a dedicated device for his phone than have an iPhone. He thought the iTouch would work to watch a video. The wifi works fine with a fast network, but not with an AT&T connection.

Stephen wondered how the iTouch digital keyboard and graphics would work with a ten inch screen on a smaller portable computer.

Among the neat new features in Leopard are Quick Look to see inside a file by highlighting it and clicking the space-bar. You can even read an entire PDF document, but you have to open it to do anything else with it. Stephen Farber said we should see the Cover Flow view of all images on our hard drive. It makes a great slide show.

Midge brought in a new iPod Nano. She had some credit coming from the Apple Store and bought a refurbished one for less than $100. It is really small and thin, and holds 2 gigs of music.

Neil bought iWork '08 to use Keynote. He loves Keynote video and audio. The nicest thing is to make a movie out of a presentation and put it up on the Internet so other people can see it.

Other Stuff

Midge lead a discussion about where we could meet that would have wifi. She will explore some possibilities in St. Johnsbury.

Neil said he now has a projector if we need to use one. He does not have a screen yet. He also said if we need to use his office for a special meeting we can.

Harold asked if there was a way to use a VGA screen to display DVDs on it. Stephen asked why he would want to do it. Harold answered that he did not want to add to the wear and tear on his Mac to use it just to watch DVDs.

Stephen said he would like to discuss a bit of philosophy since Geof was not here. Morse's Law s still holding true. Technology will change every 18 months. If you want to get your value out of your computer -- use it as much as you can. In 18 months you can get a new computer that is twice as powerful for half the cost.

There followed a discussion of the new 8 core MacPro with power we could not have imagined a short time ago, and Intel chips for laptops that could be announced next week. Then one person talked about his first computer in 1980, an Atari with 128 K of memory which required four floppy drives to run mailing labels and cost $3000. The printer cost $1500.

Ellen said she had some emails with 4 or 5 photographs and wondered how to get them into iPhoto. She should be able to just drag them one at a time to her desktop, and from there into iPhoto.

Another way is to use the paper clip at the bottom of the header near the top left of your email. Control click on this icon and choose from the drop-down menu instructions or drag the icon to the desktop window. Leopard has added options including Quick Look which shows a slide show of the emailÕs images, and Save which includes an option to save to iPhoto. Dragging the paper clip where there were two attachments moved both images to the desktop.

Stephen said that Search For All Images in the Finder sidebar in Leopard will literally find all images anywhere on your computer. Try it using the Cover Flow view to see an awesome slideshow.

Northeast Computer

Stephen said that Northeast Computer in Lyndonville is advertising that they are an Apple Certified Reseller. Russell Carlson said there was no information on their web site about it, but it is in the newspaper. Stephen said not to expect deals because the markup is so small, only about seven percent, but they will get Apple stuff for you. They had a Mac Mini sitting on the table. He said they are great to talk to. You can learn a lot from them. He recommends that we help keep their interest alive, be friendly, and encourage them to continue.

Aging Problems

If you upgrade to Leopard, you will not be able to run Classic anymore. If you have old programs, maybe a genealogy program, that runs in Classic, Stephen recommends that you either set up an external drive in Tiger and put Classic stuff on it or use an older Mac to run your Classic stuff on it.

Bruce said that he has older ClarrisWorks files that have to be upgraded to AppleWorks 4 before they can be upgraded to the latest AppleWorks. Then they could be imported into iWork's Pages. Stephen recommends even better, save them as RTF files which will probably be accessible longer. The moral of this story is to upgrade your files when you upgrade your programs, and to move them to RTF or other standard formats if you want to save them.

Russell's brother gave him a PowerBook, but the battery will not take a charge, and it will not run on the power adaptor with the battery out or in it. Stephen suggested that he try resetting the Power Manager. Russell said he only wants it for Internet access, but there is no wifi in it. It would need an outboard Airport. It was superior technology about 8 years ago. Now the cheapest MacBook far exceeds its power.

Try These

Someone mentioned Open Source programs. Stephen recommended downloading NeoOffice and keeping it up to date. It is free. It does everything you want it to do. It is not a space hog like Word. I believe both Midge and Harold have it on their computers. Just Google for NeoOffice.

Try this. Point to any word then click Command-Control-D to bring up the dictionary definition. You do not have to highlight the word first. This works in any Cocoa program. In Leopard, click on "more" at the bottom of the definition to learn more about the word.

Someone said that all her gmail data went into the ozone - disappeared. Someone recommended that she go to Google mail and look at her account. It all should be there so she can read her mail online.

Neil said they help put up http://www.allenskitchenandbath.com Take a look if you would like to see a very impressive Web site.

Don Webb reports that the Web site for the Macintosh User Group at Stowe is now completely iWeb. It is listed below if you would like to see it.