The meeting opened up with introductions and recent Apple news. This was followed by the above presentation which included practical advice on the methods to archive and store these important files.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included the Otterbox Commuter TL iPhone Case from Otterbox.com and the Hard Candy iPhone 4 Case courtesy of Hard Candy.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

Just in time for the start of school, learn how to use your Mac and screen recording software to make your Mac into an indispensable teaching tool. Beginner and advanced users are welcome.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

The meeting opened up with introductions and recent Apple news. This was followed by the above presentation which included an onsite iPhone repair, tips for what’s involved in the repair as well as iPhone disaster horror stories.

Thanks again to Mission: Repair for furnishing our monthy door prize, an iPod classic, and for presenting such an entertaining and information meeting.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

Mission: Repair, located right here in Kansas, will show us the innards of an iPad and iPhone as well as basic repair techniques.

We’ll be meeting at our NEW location at the Douglas County Senior Services at 745 Vermont.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news. This was followed by the above presentation which involved information about how to best utilize Adobe Acrobat and Apple Preview.app for viewing and editing PDFs.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included the Otterbox Commuter TL iPhone Case from Otterbox.com and the iMovie 09 and iDVD for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide courtesy of Peachpit.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

We’ll give a whole new meaning to the term chips and bytes. Chat with your fellow Mac enthusiasts as well as buy sell trade equipment

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

PDFs are everywhere, but what are they and how can you best use them. In this meeting, you’ll learn the basics and advanced tips about PDF usage.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news. This was followed by the above presentation which involved information on iTunes Sharing, DVD conversion to iTunes and tips on how to best utilize the iTunes Store.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included the Otterbox Commuter TL iPhone Case from Otterbox.com and the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Peachpit Learning Series, courtesy of Peachpit.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

Is this an April Fools joke or are we really going to show you how to install the MacOS on your PC or how to free your iPhone from Apple’s stronghold. This meeting will not be podcasted, so the only way to know is to attend this meeting.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

Robin Williams has done it again! Another outstanding book for a new user of Snow Leopard and the Mac.

Robin’s style is to expertly use page layout and screenshots to explain the features of an operating system in small bites everyone can digest. I enjoy the fact she doesn’t talk down to her readers. She expects a basic understanding of how to use a mouse and keyboard. This book is designed for a Mac or even a PC user making the transition to Snow Leopard, either via upgrade or by the fact it came with the Mac. She walks the reader through all the features of Snow Leopard. Williams apologizes for not covering the iLife or iWork suites, but clearly points out this is a book on Snow Leopard. I’m sure she realizes that if the book were too big, readers would be intimidated. While it’s over 450 pages, she uses a great table of contents and index to allow the reader to hone in on the info they are interested in. Want to know how to do screen sharing…no problem? Just like Snow Leopard, I noticed a few “tweaks” in this book that made it even better than her Leopard edition. The screen shots seem to be better annotated as compared to last time and the book seems even easier to read.

The table of contents is organized into three main sections: “Mac OS X Basics for new Mac users”, “Mac OS X Applications in Snow Leopard”, “Make it your Mac” and “Tech Stuff”. This allows the reader to focus on just what matters to them. She clearly spent lots of time making sure her book was extremely user friendly, just like the operating systems she covers. Not only does she cover practically all the features of Snow Leopard, but Williams includes great troubleshooting advice for when things go wrong. The advice she gives is as good or better than what you’ll get on the phone calling tech support or stopping by the “bar.” If her troubleshooting section doesn’t cover it, you’ll need a technician to come out!

My one complaint is that the author should have marked those features new or different in Snow Leopard. Doing so would allow an upgrader to focus on just those new items in Snow Leopard. This book is not intended for intermediate or advanced users. You won’t find out which port to open for screen sharing or its inner workings–just how to initiate it. I compare her books to more “manual-like” books that cover every feature in depth. This book is designed to hold the readers hand through the process of learning.

Pros: Outstanding layout and organization. Excellent descriptions for novice Mac users. Enthusiastically recommend it to all new Snow Leopard Mac Users. Use this book as a starting point in your learning!
Cons: Not for intermediate users, no clear distinction of new Snow Leopard features

Five of Five dogcows.

Notebook sleeves seem to be one of the hottest accessories today and with good reason. Protecting your laptop investment is a good idea.

Altego’s clear laptop sleeve is probably one of the best sleeves I’ve seen for protection out there today, and one of the ugliest. Literally, the Altego sleeve wraps your Macbook in bubble wrap. No, you can’t pop this bubble wrap, but nonetheless this sleeve is made up of air chambers that cushion the contents and protect it from mishap. While Altego dresses up this bubble wrap with fashionable colored accents, it still looks like bubble wrap!

Like many of the laptop sleeves today, under current TSA rules, you are allowed to travel with the laptop inside one of these sleeves and are not required to remove your laptop from its protection when passing through security. Given how rough travel is today, I’ll probably use this during travel to get that extra ounce of protection.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While I think the exterior is ugly, the protection this sleeve provides is beautiful.

PROS: World class protection with a cushion of air
CONS: Looks like bubble wrap, demands to be popped

Four out of Five Dog Cows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDaveâ„¢ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here.
RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news. This was followed by the above presentation which consisted of many member questions.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included the Altego 13″ Clear Laptop Sleeve from Samsill.com and the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide, courtesy of Peachpit.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

This meeting will teach you some of the basics of iTunes such as putting songs and videos into iTunes, organizing your files, and using iTunes U. Learn tips and tricks for our board of experts.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

Did you get a new Mac, iPod or other goodie for the holidays. This meeting is all Questions and Answers. Get all your questions answered for free by local experts. This meeting is ideal for PC “switchers” and beginniners

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

Note our inclement weather policy: if USD 497 is closed, our meeting will be cancelled. Check our website if there is a question about whether the meeting is cancelled due to weather.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and member questions. This was followed by the above presentation on everything from Google Maps to Gmail to Google Docs to Google Sync all on your Mac.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included the Apple Training Series: iWork 09 and the Microsoft Office 2008 Visual Quickstart Guide, both courtesy of Peachpit.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

The Lawrence Apple Users’ Group 2.0 will be having a meeting entitled “Welcome to Macintosh ” Wednesday, January 6th, 7pm at Van Go Mobile Arts 715 New Jersey Street in Lawrence.

Did you get a new Mac, iPod or other goodie for the holidays. This meeting is all Questions and Answers. Get all your questions answered for free by local experts. This meeting is ideal for PC “switchers” and beginniners

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

Note our inclement weather policy: if USD 497 is closed, our meeting will be cancelled. Check our website if there is a question about whether the meeting is cancelled due to weather.

This book relies heavily on brilliant full color examples of the concepts being taught. The reader is easily able to compare what is in the book to what is on their Mac’s screen. “Teacher, did I do it right?” is easily answered by looking inside this book. Additionally, a review quiz is included at the end of each chapter to make sure you understand the current lesson before moving on.

While instructor-lead programs allow the student to ask questions and interact, the Apple Training Series is about the closest thing you can come to an instructor-lead program without having to leave your home, office, or coffee shop. I always love how the Apple Training Series includes a suggested time frame it takes to do the particular chapter so you can plan your schedule accordingly.

Pros: Excellent real world examples and clear instructions and output specifications
Cons: Absolutely none

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here.
RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Microsoft Office 2008 is overloaded with tons of useless features which make the program slow, complex, and bloated. “Microsoft Office 2008 Quick Start Guide” matches Office’s complexity. This 500-plus page tome is a comprehensive guide to many of Microsoft Office 2008′s major features.

Unfortunately, this is not a typical “Visual Quickstart Guide.” One would not get a Quickstart, because probably it’s hard to quickly start the digital equivalent of an oil tanker. Beginners to Microsoft Office will find this guide completely overwhelming and would be overwhelmed by all that Microsoft Office 2008 can do.

The author breaks up Office into its core components: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Entourage, and the integration of those applications. Unfortunately he covers almost all the major features which is completely unnecessary for a Quickstart guide. For example, how often do people use the Notebook view in Word or the Newsgroups function in Entourage? Similar to Office itself, adding in all these extras makes it harder for the user, or in this case reader, to find the basic functions of the program they need. This book could have easily been half the size and the reader would have understood most of what they need to know about Office.

The text was easy to understand for those functions the author was describing but there was a distinct lack of the common Visual Quickstart Guide screenshots and visual enhancements. The book was extremely text heavy and dense because of this. For a intermediate user trying to look up how to create a stock chart or brushing up on mail merging, this is a good manual. Beginning users will be overwhelmed with the comprehensiveness of it all.

Pros: Covers a vast majority of functions in the Microsoft Office 2008 Suite.
Cons: A vast majority of functions in the Microsoft Office 2008 Suite are unnecessary and overwhelming, just like this book

3 out of 5 Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here.
RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and member questions. This was followed by the above presentation.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included an Apple Magic Mouse courtesy of our presenters iCafe.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

Google is more than just searching. It can do everything your Office Suite can do as well as create website and even make phone calls for you. Google is one of the best programs for any computer: Mac or PC.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and member questions. This was followed by the above presentation.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included The Macintosh iLife ’09 courtesy of Peachpit Press and a Laptop Sleeve from Crumpler.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

The folks at iCafe will tell us all about the Macintosh product line and what will be the hot gifts for the holidays.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

Confused about your options? Not sure how to setup wireless networks and share resources. We’ll learn the ins and outs of wireless networking.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and member questions. This was followed by a presentation on how to make pro-quality music with your Mac in the box at home. GarageBand and Logic’s impressive capabilities with a mic, your instrument and a little creativity.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included a copy of Apple Training Series: GarageBand 09 and the Apple Training Series: iLife 09 both courtesy of Peachpit.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

This book is an excellent resource for someone wanting a hands-on learning tutorial about every aspect of the iLife Suite:  iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD.  This is not a “how-to” reference manual — you won’t find feature listings or troubleshooting tips.  Its exclusive goal is training sessions with pre-developed material to be done a classroom or self-teaching format.  For someone who has never been exposed to these programs, it’s a great resource with which to start from scratch. 

Each module has lesson files that are installed on your computer and gives you a time estimate of how long the project will take.  According to the book’s estimates, it will take you about 13 hours to complete; however for me the modules went much quicker.  Fortunately, since the materials are already created for you on the included DVD, you don’t have to actually shoot video or load pictures to understand the lessons.  You’ll be able to follow exactly line-by-line along with the book and compare actual results.  The book is well laid out with real screen shots for every outcome, so don’t be intimidated by its size.  At the end of each module is a quiz to test your knowledge of the subject.  Obviously this makes an excellent text book for instructor or group study.

Personally, I was new to iLife ’09 but have used previous versions.  The book skipped over computing basics and focused primarily on new iLife features such as Face Recognition in iPhoto. The modules were extremely well paced and I had an excellent grasp of the subject material at the end. My only major complaint is that between iLife programs, the authors did not stay consistent and the lessons at times were confusing, as not all the authors had the same skill level or approach to teaching.  Nonetheless, the book was outstanding as is typical of the Apple Training Series.

Pros:  Training modules for the key features of the iLife Series along with pre-developed material
Cons:  Inconsistent style of lessons between modules.

Five out of Five Dog Cows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Brian Best of BestMacs (Best for your Mac Powered businesses) will talk about the overall attitude of IT departments towards the Mac, some of the challenges in network services (file sharing, backup, email), how Exchange 2007 and Snow Leopard will make things interesting.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218 9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

With well over 56,000 apps of this writing, the iTunes app store can be intimidating.  There are just so many apps out there one doesn’t really know where to begin.  Staring with the top 10 or top 25 is a great place to look, but too often the gems are buried in the middle and nearly impossible to find in that stack of 56,000 apps.  Even if you just stick to the top apps, you don’t get manuals or easy instructions with them, making purchasing apps that much more of a frustrating experience. 

“Best iPhone Apps” fixes both problems.  Author Clark has a good mix of popular apps such as Yelp and Facebook, but also includes some off-the-wall ones such as What The Font which helps you identify a particular font using your camera.  Each app receives one dedicated page of explanation and a screen shot – which is a heck of a lot more than iTunes or many developers provide.  Additionally, there have been some more expensive popular apps I’ve been afraid to purchase because there are no demos in the App store (a fatal flaw in my opinion).  An example of this is Jaadu VNC.  This $24.99 app sounds great, but does it work?  I bought it and couldn’t quite figure it out until I read this book.

Unfortunately, while the book is iPhone 3.0 aware, it was published before iPhone 3.0 software and the iPhone 3GS came out, so some of the information is slightly dated.  Nonetheless, the apps that are great now will continue to be great.  This book is perfect for a non-technical new iPhone or iPod Touch user who isn’t quite sure where to begin.  A vast majority of the apps listed in the book are free or low-cost so there is little risk in trying and exploring these apps.

Overall this book is perfect for a new iPhone user or a more experienced user who wants to take the time to learn about some new apps

Pros:  Covers a wide variety of apps in depth
Cons:  Quickly will become outdated

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and member questions. This was followed by the aforementioned presentation.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included a copy of The Mac OS X Leopard Pocket Guide from O’Reilly Media and the Roxio Toast 10 courtesy of Roxio.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

Terrence Moore discusses how to make pro-quality music with your “Mac in the box” at home. GarageBand and Logic’s impressive capabilities with a mic, your instrument and a little creativity.

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee. Go to http://www.laugks.org for more info or Contact Dave Greenbaum, 785-218-9676, dsg@mac.com to be notified of upcoming meetings.

Whether you are logging on to Facebook for the first time, or are a pro, “Facebook Me!” will teach you some valuable tips and tricks on how to maximize your usage. The author takes the novice user through ever aspect of Facebook including a heavy emphasis on privacy and security. In particular, Awl’s book will survive most Facebook interface changes because he focuses on the core values of why you are on Facebook and what you hope to accomplish. He handles such tricky issues as friending your boss and coworkers as well as to how to deal with friends who send you invites to every application known to man.

Awl gives great advice to new users on how to follow proper social mores on Facebook as well as how to prevent getting viruses on it. Experienced users will benefit from Awl’s suggestions on topics such as how often and what to say in status updates and most important, how to check Facebook from work. Business owners in particular will benefit from this book’s excellent explanation of pages, groups, and advertising on Facebook.

The book is extremely well organized so more experienced users can focus on the subject that interest them the most. A detailed table of contents helps readers hone in on their particular topics of interest and excellent use of color screen shots helps everyone visualize his descriptions. Although Facebook will surely redesign it’s interface and the pictures will then look different, the concepts of keeping up with friends and acquaintances are at the core of Facebook. Awl’s book is about how to use Facebook effectively, not merely a “how to” guide.

Pros: Well organized, detailed, perfect for novices and experienced users
Cons: Still doesn’t tell me whether I should friend my Mom or not

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The members spoke “We want more Question and Answer meetings”, so here we go again. This meeting is going to be all about getting your Mac questions answered

Meetings are always free and questions are always welcome, even if it isn’t about the topic being discussed. A door prize will also be given out to an attendee.

Primarly, Toperoek takes you through key functions of the UI such as the Finder, Dock, System Preferences, and the Leopard apps that had signficant changes. He briefly describes each function in Leopard and all the options related to it. This book helps you answer the question of “How do I” and “What does this function do?” Short, sweet and to the point. It’s includes the 20% of the Leopard functions you’ll use 80% of the time If you ever wanted to know the keyboard shortcut to any command in Leopard, it’s in this book. The index is almost as powerful as Apple’s Spotlight function and quickly allows you to hone on the questions you need answered.

A short review for a short 200 page half-sized book, but like the magna carta it is short yet very valuable!

Pros: Excellent overview of key Leopard functions geared towards intermediate and advanced users
Cons: No tutorials or pictures, but the technical Illuminati don’t need such things.

5 out of 5 dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

As many iPhone users know, the earbuds Apple includes with the iPhone are functional, but they don’t exactly have the greatest sound fidelity. Hundreds of different earphones are on the market, some costing more than the iPhone itself. Even these high end units do not have the ability to act as a hands free mic for the iPhone. Few things are more annoying then having to unplug your headphones when receiving an incoming call while jamming away on your iPhone. The Radius Atomic Bass Black Aluminum Earphones for iPhone aren’t just a great headphones, but a great handsfree mic as well.

Personally, I tend to use bluetooth and don’t listen to music that much on my iPhone. However, after discovering Pandora and Skype for the iPhone, I’m using these headphones a whole lot more. During use, I was simply blown away by the music quality. Not an atomic explosion blown away, but something that would definitely shift the balance of power. I’m not an audiophile, but I have headphones that cost three times this amount and the sound just doesn’t seem as rich. I tend to listen to more dance style music and these headphones picked up the bass much better than other headphones, so it’s well deserving of its name. The Radius Atomic Bass fits well into my ear and doesn’t slip out like the standard earbuds. The plastic covers come in three different sizes to help insure a custom fit and the earbuds are angled to fit deeper in the ear canal. Obviously these aren’t the type of headphones or handsfree you should use in the car as they block out external noise. These are not noise-cancelling headphones, so I’ll still use my other headphones in a plane or other noisy environment.

As a handsfree mic, callers on the other end who hear me talking though my Radius Atomic say the calls are much clearer than my bluetooth and can’t tell I’m using a hands free at all. I’m using the Radius Atomic with my laptop and then switch them into my iPhone when I get a call. The mic is located a few inches down from the earbud and, similar to the standard Apple issue earbuds, acts as a remote to pick up and end calls. The mic was extremely sensitive and allowed me to carry on a normal conversation with a caller while I was at a coffee house, though sometimes in noisy environments it was hard for others to hear me. In fact, the Radius Atomic Bass worked extremely well with Skype on my iPhone while my bluetooth handsfree did not.

Aesthetically, the Radius Atomic looks very industrial. They come in black, red, pink and white so you not only can accessorize, but avoid picking up your spouse’s headphones when leaving in the morning. Whatever color you choose, the earbuds will have silver accents at both end of the earbuds, matching the metal/plastic look of the current Apple product line. All the units have a white cord except for the black, which is black in both headphone and cord. Personally, I dig the black instead of the white so people don’t always know I have an Apple-branded MP3 player. The cord length is a few inches longer than the Apple standard earbuds, though the length of the individual cords after the yoke was the same as the standard units.

Overall, I highly recommend these headphones as a wired hands-free mic and a economical headphone for listeners craving deep bass in their grooves. The sound and voice reproduction is significantly better than the included headphone and rivals products that cost significantly more.

Pros: Excellent bass reproduction and voice quality, profoundly economical and fashionable as well
Cons: No noise cancelling or echo cancelling

Five out of Five Dogcows

Article was republished by the Lawrence Apple User’s Group 2.0 here as well as other groups listed on the right

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

We’ll give a whole new meaning to the term chips and bytes. Chat with your fellow Mac enthusiasts as well as buy sell trade equipment. The event starts at 7pm and dishes go as follows:
Leopard Users: Main dish
Tiger users: Side disk
Panther: Dessert
Running more than one: your choice
Not running one of these: save your money and bring a drink (and then upgrade)

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and opening questions. This was followed by a presentation by Dave Greenbaum on how to backup your Macintosh.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included a copy of Klix Photo Recovery courtesy of JoeSoft and the iPhoto 08 Visual QuickStart Guide courtesy of PeachPit.

Also, included here are Dave’s slides from the meeting, click here to download them: Presentation PDF and Keynote Presentation

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://laugks.org/.

When the iPhone’s touch sensitivity works, it works great! However the first week I owned my iPhone I realized how vulnerable my phone was. I got a flat tire and began to change the tire when I ran into some trouble removing one of the lug nuts and decided to call roadside assistance. Oops. My hands were greasy and grimy and I simply couldn’t control my iPhone. Without paper towels or anything I was in major trouble. From then on I carried a disposable phone in the car with me! Similarly, in the winter, my iPhone also wasn’t terribly useful with gloves hands. Again, my expensive smart phone was dumbed down by a thin piece of leather. While this hasn’t happened to me, I’ve seen women with long sculpted fingernails look about as stumped as Edward Scissorhands with an iPhone. Why deny them the ability to use an iPhone?

Unlike other smart phones, you cannot use a regular stylus since the iPhone relies on the electrical impulses of your fingertips or other body parts. The Pogo is a stylus designed specifically for touch screens. The bottom of the stylus has spongy material designed to activate touch screens. The Pogo stylus was not as responsive as my stylus was on my old Palm Pilot, but the Pogo was still extremely useful. The material at the bottom was soft and won’t scratch the iPhone, and in fact, helped clean mine a bit. I was even able to use it with my GPS, keeping my hands warm on the cold days.

The Pogo package comes with a clip to help keep the Pogo Stylus connected to your iPhone without creating bulk. Unfortunately the clip did not work with my external iPhone case, but people who keep their iPhone naked will have no problem using the Pogo Stylus. At $14.95 the purchase of a Pogo Stylus is about the best investment in protecting the usability of your iPhone. You may not need it today, but at some point you’ll need your iPhone and your hands will be dirty, wet, or otherwise inaccessible. That Pogo stylus will allow you to make the call! I keep one in the glove compartment and another in my laptop bag.

Pros: Allows iPhone use in situations you can’t directly touch the screen

Cons: Clip doesn’t work if the iPhone has a case

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

As an avid reader of Entrepreneur magazine, I had very high hopes for this book.  More and more businesses are switching from Mac to PC and need a guide focused on how to get typical business functions done on the Mac.  The book completely skips the iLife suite and takes the reader from the decision to buy a Mac over to the key tools a business owner needs in order to run a business on their Mac.  Unfortunately, the book is incomplete, inconsistent and needs to check its facts.

The first few chapters of the book helps the reader decide which Mac to buy and how to set it up, then takes the reader through the built-in contact management functions and then onto the Microsoft Office suite and,finally, backups.  This is not a how-to guide but rather an overview of the considerations to make when switching to the Mac and whether your business will be able to make that switch.  By the time you have actually made the switch, the book will be of little value to you.  Business owners on the fence about switching to the Mac will find comfort that it can be done and there are tools out there to help them do the job.

The author focuses too much on his personal preferences and has a recommended suite of hardware and software to buy, giving the reader few options if they wish to deviate from the path.  For example, he devotes 60 pages to Microsoft Office but barely mentions iWork or Open Office which are both extremely viable alternatives for the average company switching to the Mac.  Similarly, the penultimate chapter of the book mentions that every business should own the full $299 version of Adobe Acrobat when much of its functionality is already built into Leopard. The other programs he mentions are extremely expensive and often unnecessary for even advanced business owners.  Why does he recommend Photoshop CS3 to a business user?  This chapter could convince a business that it is too expensive to switch to the Mac.

The final chapter of the book is all about backups and Rich does an excellent job of explaining the various backup options the average business owner should consider.  He goes through not only the Apple options, but third party hardware and software as well.   Alongside with backups, Rich then covers (in the Appendix) something every Mac user should have: a full record keeping worksheet of all the important information about your Mac and the hardware and software that goes along with it. 

Unfortunately, Rich is just plain wrong on some of his facts.  Each chapter had a few minor facts wrong that would not impact the average business owner, but still reduces Rich’s credibility as an expert and an author.  The explanation of how to install software assumes that the software will begin installing as soon as you put in the CD, when in reality most programs that come on optical media require you to double click something to begin the install process.  Rich also explains grey-market hacked Apple clones, which should never be used in a business.  Rich even admits they haven’t been tested nor are they probably legal, so I’m not sure why a business book would mention them.    Entrepreneur Press is not used to editing technical books and it shows. 

Pros:  Cuts right to the chase regarding those aspects of the Mac most interesting to business owners
Cons:  Extremely biased and doesn’t empower the reader to make their own choices

2 out of 5 dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

I fondly remember the Seinfeld episode in which Kramer was developing a coffee table book…about coffee tables, so when I read about an iPhone book on the iPhone, I simply had to review it. Not that there is anything wrong with that, no of course not!

As an application, “iPhone the Missing Manual” was difficult to navigate at first. Instead of scrolling up and down to move from page to page, you swipe from left to right in order to move to the next page, much like turning a page of a book. Once I understood this design element, navigating was fine. Ideally, the program should have had a initial welcome screen explaining how to move around within the program. The text of the book was extremely clear to read and quickly rendered when turning pages. Other text programs I’ve used in the past had annoying delays going from page to page. However, the initial opening of the app the very first time I launched it had an abnormal delay of up to a minute, and I thought the app was hung.

While reading the book, I was able to quickly leave the program, check a function, and reenter without crashing. In addition, the URLs listed in the book were live and could be double clicked and opened in Safari. The table of contents was live and clicking on an entry took you to that portion in the book. The only major function lacking from a true print book was an index. The book also didn’t tell you when it was at the end, which was annoying. The applications come with limited preferences to allow you to modify the colors and fonts of the book. The biggest problem with the book as an iPhone app was that it was inexplicably missing a search function.

David Pogue’s writings in the entire Missing Manual series are always easy to understand and comprehensive in analysis. I reviewed the earlier edition of iPhone Missing Manual and Pogue did an excellent job of covering the new functions of the 3G iPhone as well as Mobile Me and the App store. Peppered throughout the book are handy tips that even advanced iPhone users may not know. Pogue adds quite a bit of information on how to use your iPhone in a corporate environment and connect to corporate resources as well as help you to convince your IT department to let you get an iPhone. Also expanded was the syncing and general troubleshooting section, though trying to troubleshoot your iPhone via an iPhone app might prove difficult.

Pros: Unique product for learning how to use your iPhone anytime anywhere
Cons: Slow and confusing upon first use, no search function

Four out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Similar to the original version, each iPhone concept is devoted one entire page, no matter how complex or simple the subject. Turning on vibrate mode on your iPhone is given the same space as iTunes library syncing as setting up email accounts. If the superfluous white space and screen shots were taken out, the book would probably be about 1/4 it’s current size. The target user for this book is someone who probably wouldn’t normally buy a computer book. With the pictures and white space it’s a quick and easy read and allows the reader to pick up the book without having to remember where they left off. The reader will have a basic understanding of the critical aspects of the iPhone in a very short period of time.

Overall, the book is easy to read, but would only be helpful to the absolute beginner new iPhone or iTouch users. Again, this review is short because the book is so short!

Pros: Quick to read and easy to understand
Cons: Not enough helpful information and explanations

Meetings will always be free. To cover some expenses we are offering optional $10 memberships. Membership forms are available at meetings and will soon be on the website Don’t worry, you can still attend meetings for free without a paid membership. We’ll offer some of the group discounts and a online support forum for paid members.

The book assumes you have iLife ’08 and Leopard installed, and while focusing on iLife, it still covers such Leopard applications as iCal, Mail, Address Book, Safari, iChat and Time Machine. I would have suggested calling this an iLife book, but with the addition of some of the more practical applications that don’t fit into the iLife series, that wouldn’t make much sense either.

Overall the book is a competent overview of iLife and other Leopard applications. The book was lacking in some of Robin Williams’ trademark design. In fact, this book read like most other books on computers. The writing was a bit dense and lacking in full color photos and white space that increases readability. Dare I saw the book was a bit boring? The writing in individual chapters consisted mostly of features, menu commands and preferences and was lacking in practical applications or exercises.

After reading this book, don’t expect to become an expert in any of these subjects, but if you feel you want to “dabble” a bit more and don’t want to buy a whole book on iPhoto or iDVD, this may be a good book for you. This might be a good “in-between” book to help a reader determine if they want to explore iLife further. I would recommend this book to a Mac beginner who understands the basics of their new Mac, but wonders what all those programs that came with the computer can do.

Pros: Broad coverage of programs that come with new Macs
Cons: Lacks readability and practical application

2 out of 5 dogcows
This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Stellar is a primarily a PC based software manufacturer and it shows. Their user interface doesn’t look like a Mac program. It follows few, if any MacOS design conventions. In particular, their help system uses Windows icons and the Windows help interface. Their marketing material also shows a fundamental lack of Macintosh background. They refer to repair situations that only occur on older systems running OS 9. In addition, they refer to “Lacie” [sic] drives, when they apparently means external hard drives. Why they are using the generic term “LaCie” to refer to external hard drives is unclear, but I’m sure Maxtor, Seagate, and Other World Computing are annoyed by it.

As stated earlier, the interface of the program doesn’t follow Mac conventions and is quite confusing. You are faced with three choices for recovery: “Hard Drive”, “iPod”, or “Recover Photos, Music & Video Files.” However, the options are basically the same whichever one you choose, which is confusing. Once you choose one of the recovery types you have to decide between “Formatted media/Lost File Recovery” and “Search Lost/Deleted Volumes.” The documentation doesn’t make clear the difference. The choices also don’t warn you it doesn’t recover from FAT32 or NTFS volumes, which many external hard drive and flash drives use. Other programs warn you of this fact, Stellar simply says no data found, which can be misleading at times.

Unfortunately, because development is done outside the US, the program documentation and interface suffers from the typical grammatical confusion that occurs after something is translated from its native language to English. Similarly, technical support is not US based and when I had problems I was unable to effectively communicate with them and have my questions adequately addressed. Do not count on being able to contact technical support if you purchase this product.

In spite of the language barriers and the interface, if you are able to figure things out on your own, the product seems to perform well. Obviously testing data recovery properly is difficult because most recovery attempts change the reliability of future recovery attempts. Nonetheless, I recently had an opportunity to try it both as the first program for recovery and the second program, and Stellar Phoenix effectively recovered data consistent with other programs in the same price range. However, unlike other applications in its price range, Stellar Phoenix does not have a bootable DVD version. You must install Stellar on a computer before you can use it. This greatly limits Stellar’s ability to recover in emergency situations. Most other programs cost less and offer more options than Stellar.

Overall, the program does work, although the documentation and interface is quite confusing. This would not be the first nor the primary tool I would recommend to use in a crisis to recover files off a hard drive. If other options fail you, Stellar is worth at least a try with their free evaluation and 30 day money back guarantee.

Pros: Works decently and is another tool to try for data recovery
Cons: Poor interface, documentation and support.

3 out of 5 dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Executive Sync promises to sync files “to servers running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and more” as well as “keep your work or personal files up-to-date between home, office, and on the road.” It does…but not really. I had inaccurately assumed the product was similar to Sugar Sync or Drop Box: I specify the computers I want synced and this happens in the background. I was wrong.

Executive Sync runs only on a Mac and the way it syncs is by mounting volumes from Windows, Linux and other operating systems. If you want to sync with a Windows machine, you must network your Mac to the PC and Executive Sync treats the Windows machine just like another disk. SMB file sharing is not a simple task for the average user. More importantly, in order to sync files you must be currently networked to the system you want to sync files with. Unlike other programs that sync through the Internet, Executive Sync requires you to remember to sync the files before you leave the office. Not sure how handy that is “on the road.” In theory, you could set up a complex VPN so you could connect to your home or office computer from the road, but that is technology that costs significant money and I doubt the average person has any type of setup like that. If they did, they would have probably write their own software to sync files.

Inaccurate marketing aside, Executive Sync does synchronize files between two folders mounted on your Mac. The program was able to find subtle differences between two folders and keep them in check. It does not do this automatically. You must manually start the program and run the sync. While there is a scheduling option, the scheduling only allows you to make sure the files are in sync at the time of scheduling. If the files are out of sync, you won’t be notified until the program runs again. Not only does this make it less convenient, but the program is quite slow. I synchronized two folders on my MacPro with about 40 GB of files and it took almost four hours. While running, the program was a processor hog and I couldn’t do much else.

The final nail in the coffin of Executive Sync is the fact there is virtually no tech support for the product. It is distributed by Smith Micro, which has no technical support information for the product. When you click the link for tech support, it simply takes you back to the product information page. The product is not listed in their tech support forums or contact pages. The help section of Executive Sync is acceptable, but can never replace technical support if you have an issue that goes beyond what is covered in the help.

Ultimately, the product does the basics of what it says: synchronizes files between two folders. The user interface was straightforward and easy to understand and the installer was the standard drop into the application folder. The program lets you pick which folders you want synchronized and allows you to save the settings. However, the marketing is misleading as to the scope of what the product does and the inability to get technical support on the product makes it a program that is best to avoid when so many other higher quality options exist with more features.

Pros: Does accurately synchronize folders
Cons: Misleading marketing, extremely slow, no tech support

1 out of 5 dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

With OS X, killer tips simply aren’t as necessary.  I’ve read most of this series in relation to the operating system.  Each iteration of the MacOS makes usage easier and more straightforward and thus tips aren’t as important.  The tips in this version are less killer than they were in Tiger and much less than Panther.  Even though all the cats of OS X are dangerous in the wild, they are becoming easier to understand and domesticate in each successive version. My review of Leopard Tips is harsher than Tiger Tips because there is simply less to cover and there is much more filler in this book that is inappropriate.  The “sexy side” of Leopard weren’t really tips, but more observations and the “cheap trick” section was fifteen pages of practical jokes you can play on people running Leopard  Excuse me?  Tips on how to create fake dialogs to scare users and how to corrupt their video so they buy a new monitor is more like a little knowledge being dangerous.  Such “tips” ensures no IT department will want their users to keep this book at their desk.

Save for the “cheap tricks”, a vast majority of the tips covered are so obvious even to the non-technical end user, that I’m surprised they authors weren’t too embarrassed to include them.  Do most users really need to be told that you can hide the dock?  Also, this is either a pro or a con, but the last few chapters cover each iLife component.   Personally, I don’t use iDVD, iMovie, or GarageBand so maybe those tips are worth the price of admission.  When you do the math, the actual Leopard tips are about 80% of the book; much less than previous versions.

As they state in the intro , this book is not really for beginners.  If it isn’t for beginners, why do they include such basic tips as having iChat’s status be your current song?  Yawn.  However, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and there were a few cool tips in the book, in particular located in the Spotlight section.  I learned a few cool shortcuts to writing searches, which might save me some time.  I also found out how to make printers auto-quit after launching a print job.  You click on their icon in the dock and choose auto quit.  Oh no, now you may have no reason to buy the book.  Of course, if it really annoyed me, I would have Googled and quickly found the tip.

While the book is accurate, it is generally too advanced for a beginner and too basic for an intermediate user.   The book might be good for a new Leopard user, and possibly for a seasoned Mac user that simply wants to know some cool things in Leopard and doesn’t want to try to self explore.  However, that’s a stretch.  I really can’t find too many people who would get value from the book and the “cheap tricks” chapter, well that cheapens the book’s value to negative numbers.

Pros:  Has a few good tips
Cons:  Not enough tips for most people to justify the purchase.  “Cheap tricks” are inappropriate.

1 out of 5 DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Two different type of chargers recently came on the market with clear benefits and drawbacks to each. The odds are that one of these will greatly help you extend the usefulness of your iPhone 3G.

First, is the Richard Solo 1800 battery backup for the iPhone ($69.95 at www.richardsolo.com). Richard Solo was started by Richard Thalheimer, the founder of Sharper Image. I tried their previous version without much success and thus declined to review it. The 1800 is a complete redesign of their previous model. The 1800 has a much longer battery life than earlier models, and some very serious thought went into the overall 1800 package. The unit includes a car charger as well as a wall charger. Either charger can charge both the 1800 and the iPhone at the same time. If that wasn’t enough (but wait, there’s more), the 1800 has a built-in flashlight and laser pointer. Yes, freakin’ lasers (hat tip to Dr. Evil).

All these great accessories wouldn’t do much good if it failed in it’s primary mission of charging the iPhone 3G. Fortunately, it does a great job of quickly and effectively charging the battery. However, it has one major drawback in that it is very difficult to both charge and use the phone at the same time. The 1800 is about the size and thickness of the current iPod Nanos and sticks out from the bottom of the iPhone. This means it’s nearly impossible to charge the phone while in your pocket. Richard Solo includes a connector to keep the battery firmly connected to the iPhone while in use, but it wasn’t firm enough to keep the battery securely connected to the iPhone on a regular basis. I use it in my office sometimes while keeping the iPhone on the desk in speakerphone mode.

Even with the 1800′s awkward design, it is still a great product and I use it frequently. It fits effective along with my iPhone car mount so I use the Richard Solo charger to charge both the 1800 and my iPhone. While talking on the phone with the 1800 connected is difficult, it’s perfectly usable while using the iPhone for watching videos or simply surfing. In particular, I was easily able to leave both connected in the seat pocket of the airplane and let it pick up a charge while I had to turn off my electronic devices. It will charge most iPhones and iPods. However, one key disappointment with the 1800 is that it has no battery level indicator meaning I didn’t know how much charge was left in the 1800 as it charged my phone.

Using a completely different design concept is the Mophie Juice Pack ($99.95 at www.mophie.com). The juice pack combines a basic external case along with a battery extender. When attached, the juice pack adds about an inch of thickness to the bottom of the iPhone and makes the overall unit slightly thicker. Nothing too bulky. Unfortunately, you can’t use the iPhone with any other external case while using the Mophie no hard case and no silcone cases. The only type of protector that works with the Juice Pack are the plastic screen or case overlays. The Juice Pack is designed to be the exclusive external case for the iPhone.

When I tested the Juice Pack, I refused to take my iPhone out of my home. I was simply too afraid to carry around a partially naked iPhone. Who carries around an iPhone without some kind of protection? Apparently so, because after I used the Juice Pack for a day in my home and ventured out with my Otterbox securely protecting my iPhone, I found a vast majority of people I saw have no protection whatsoever. Naked, exposed and vulnerable iPhones out in the wild. If your iPhone is traveling naked, then the Mophie is absolutely perfect for you. Not only do you get extended battery life, but you get protection for your iPhone. While Mophie claims you can charge the iPhone and juice pack at the same time, I could not replicate these results; when my iPhone was plugged into the Mophie and the Mophie was plugged into the wall, only the Mophie charged, not the phone. Similar to the Richard Solo, the Mophie comes with it’s own USB charger and power adapter. Because the Juice Pack is designed to act as a external case, it is device specific and thus you can’t use an iPhone 3G juice pack for your iTouch.

Trying to compare the capacity in the real world between the Mophie and Richard Solo was impossible for me. I couldn’t use the Richard Solo all day because it didn’t fit into my lifestyle and I was too afraid to keep my iPhone only partially protected all day with the Mophie. After a few hours of use on a nearly drained iPhone, my Mophie was down about 30 and I couldn’t tell with the Richard Solo, but both devices fully charged my Phone.

Which do I recommend? For those that don’t use protection because it’s too bulky (I could make some analogies here, but that will be major TMI), the Juice Pack is a decent external iPhone protector that extends your battery life, and probably the life of your phone. If you don’t have an external case, the Mophie pack is clearly the better choice. If you are looking for the Red Bull quick-pick me up recharge, than the Richard Solo 1800 is great for you. Not only do you get the power boost, but the accessories are pretty cool as well. The Richard Solo is $30 cheaper to boot. However, you can’t use those worthless Sharper Image Gift cards to purchase the Richard Solo!

Richard Solo 1800
Pros: Multiple chargers, other useful functions of battery pack
Cons: For ergonomic reasons, generally can’t use the charger while using the phone

3 out of 5 dogcows

Mophie Juice Pack for the 3G
Pros: External case, slim design, battery indicators
Cons: Requires removal of any other external case

3 out of 5 dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Previously, my phone would be in my pocket, or my briefcase, or various other places. I tried the cupholder, but got nervous about my coffee spilling. I tried the glove compartment, but then it got knocked around. Most car accessories weren’t designed for the iPhone 3G or required rather hideous stick-on devices for the windshield or dashboard. Even with those, the stability was marginal at best. Their key fault was that all cars are not designed the same, so something that works well in one car, won’t work well in another vehicle.

ProClip is truly unique,and solves this problem. The clip consists of two parts. The first part is custom designed for your car; the “vehicle mount“. I had to specify the exact make and model for the car: 2003 Toyota Corolla Matrix. The vehicle mount differs from car to car. Some go near the radio, some near a vent, some in the middle console. The experts at ProClip determine the most stable place to mount your device. Often times it requires a little bit of prying. I was wary about that at first, but it was very easy. It wasn’t any harder than putting my iPhone in a hard case. Just place the tool at the predetermined spots in car and slip in the ProClip. I’ve had more trouble assembling a hard shell iPhone case then I did a ProClip.

The second part is the actual container for the iPhone; the “device holder“. Unlike other iPhone holders, the ProClip has an adjustable model that allows you to keep your silicone or hard shell around your iPhone while the device was held in the ProClip. Again, I was skeptical about the ProClip. There was nothing to hold the iPhone in place except for groves in the plastic. However, after going over some serious bumps and even purposefully knocking the clip around, the iPhone remained stable and secure. Wow. There are other models that aren’t adjustable forcing you to use your iPhone 3G naked as well as models that include chargers and pass-through connectors.

Unfortunately, with my car, the mount couldn’t be in a worse place. It is extremely close to the radio and is in front of the volume button so I have to reach around the unit to change the volume. The closeness to the radio increases exponentially my problems with GSM buzz. Also, since I have a GPS on the dash, the placement of the phone partially obscures my view of the GPS and gets in the way when I want to program destinations. If I didn’t have the GPS, the iPhone is in the perfect position for turn by turn direction viewing. If the placement in front of the radio wasn’t bad enough, the ProClip also sits right in front of the heating vent, which means that on cold winter days I can’t use that vent unless I want a blast of hot air to turn my iPhone into a toasty brick of plastic goo.

These mount problems are very vehicle specific. My spouse’s 2008 Camry allows for a mount much further away from the radio and air vents. The website shows pictures exactly where the clip would mount on your vehicle. An associate of mine has the same car I do and has a ProClip mount. He never listens to the radio, has no GPS, and doesn’t mind loosing one of the vents. In other words, my situation is unique.

ProClip is not a inexpensive solution. Vehicle mounts average $35 and the device holders are $30-$50. Also there is a 15% restocking fee should you need to return the item. That policy is a bit disappointing consider how personal and specific these vehicle mounts are.

In spite of these faults, I still use my ProClip unless I have a particularly bad GPS buzz problem or it’s a really cold day. I enjoy knowing exactly where my iPhone is and I can easily see callers while I’m driving. When my GPS doesn’t have my client’s address, my iPhone is always able to find it.

Pros: Custom designed holder for your iPhone and your vehicle. Keep your iPhone in reach without messy suction cups or mounting tape
Cons: Very vehicle specific and often requires you to compromise other vehicle functions. Unfair restocking fee.

3 out of 5 Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

I remember my first CompuServe experience back in the early 80s. We were living in Ohio and my uncle worked in Columbus for some computer company. He had his own computer, which was absolutely amazing to me. I was in middle school at the time and remember being allowed to use the TRS-80 in the administrative offices. The computers were cool and I was hooked. I could chat with girls who didn’t take one look at me and walk away.

“On the Way to the Web” brought back a lot of memories about the early days of the Internet and on-line services. I’m not sure people who weren’t involved in on-line computing during the 80s and 90s would have that same nostalgic smile. If hearing the words eWorld or AppleLink doesn’t ring any bells then you probably wouldn’t enjoy this book. Banks assumes you know these services and their place in online history, and more importantly, how their development was parallel to the development of the greater Internet. Having lived through this dramatic time in history I still found myself confused on the relationship between these services and the Internet.

The first few chapters are amazing, and effectively captured the headiness of those early days during the 1970s when TCP/IP was not preordained to be the preferred way of computers talking to each other. After commercial online services entered the scene, Banks focuses primarily on those services and their lineage. While online services were clearly important to get us where we are today, he tells the history in a dry and matter-of-fact manner without explaining what else was going on at the time. The level of detail he went into about how these services was over the top. The book is hard to follow because the author tells too many stories at once. I constantly had to refer to the appendix to review the timeline. I expected more about the people involved, rather than the competing companies and their online strategies.

Overall the book was an enjoyable trip down memory lane, but fails to explain how we got from the origins of the Internet to where we are today.

Pros: Nice historical overview of the Internet
Cons: Hard to follow

Two out of Five dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

When I had a bit of an accident with my last iPhone a month after purchase, I was determined to find the ultimate case. I wanted a case that was comfortable and functional yet protected my iPhone as much as possible. A quest! A quest not with trusty steed and map, but with my trusty Macbook and search engine. I wrote a list of exactly what I wanted: protect every single exposed port, silicone on the outside to prevent slippage, hard shell protection in case of impact, protect the screen without reducing the ability to tap, and finally still fit in my pocket and iPhone accessories. That case is the Otterbox Defender.

What is an Otterbox Defender? I remember seeing something about them at the MacWorld press room, but if you’ve seen one iPhone case you’e seen them all. Boy was I wrong! My quest came to an end once I installed the Otterbox Defender. This is clearly the 800 pound gorilla of iPhone protection and function. The Otterbox Defender consists of two main parts. First is the silicone overshell that protects ALL the ports, and I mean all: the volume, the headphone jack, the docking port, the ring silencer; everything. When the silicone shell is on, not a single port of your iPhone is exposed, though it’s very easy to operate the buttons through the silicone (or to flip open the protector.).

The other part of the Otterbox Defender is a hard shell case underneath the easily removable silicone. The hard shell includes a screen protector built in, so you don’t have to worry about those annoying bubbles underneath those stick-on screen protectors. The shell even covers the speakers at the bottom and the front with a slight bit of cloth (remember none of the iPhone case is exposed). Honestly, I noticed maybe a 5% reduction in sound quality when it is in the hard case. However, the slight sacrifice in sound quality is far outweighed by knowing my $300 investment is protected. The camera shutter also has a plastic overlay to protect it while still allowing you to take pictures. The pictures are every so slightly less clear with the plastic overlay, however cleanup in iPhoto restored them to near perfect quality and people couldn’t tell the difference between photos were taken with the case on and with the case off.

I used the case for over a month now, trying to weigh the pros and cons of the case. Besides a slight reduction in voice and picture quality, the case is just about perfect and I’m hard pressed to find any cons. Sure maybe maybe a transparent aluminum or the ability of the iPhone to accept a Shields Up voice command would clearly be the ideal solution, but in the 21st century the Otterbox is the best balance of protection and function on the market.

Finally, the Otterbox staff was an absolutely a pleasure to deal with. When I had a delivery problem, I didn’t have the run around typically found with large companies. Otterbox is based in Fort Collins, Colorado and is neighbors with one of the world’s greatest microbreweries, Coopersmiths, and gosh darn it, I think that just makes them happier people! I’m biased though.

The Otterbox Defender is available for $49.95 retail at www.otterbox.com and is hands down the ultimate iPhone case.

Pros: Protects every single nook and cranny of your iPhone and provides the best of hard shell and silicone protection, while leaving all functions of your iPhone intact
Cons: Slightly noticeable reduction in voice and picture quality

Five out of Five dogcows.

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

With the economy slowing down, more and more people are looking to sell their stuff on eBay. Putting items on eBay one at a time is a pain. Serious sellers use software to prepare and optimize their auctions. iSale is one of the best apps for creating and maintaining eBay auctions and is a clear leader in taking advantages of all the nooks and crannies of the Macintosh Operating System. They are a two-time Apple Design Award winner and their credentials shine through in iSale 5.0.

Some of the new features in 5.0 aren’t terribly compelling. For example, iSale 5.0 allows you to post your auctions on social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. However, if you are posting on eBay, you probably already tried to sell your items via your social network, thus I don’t see much usefulness in this feature. Expanded in 5.0 for users running Leopard is the integration with iCal. You can be notified when your auctions are going to end so you can start bugging buyers to pay you.Of course, like with any new release, there are more templates and backgrounds for your auction, which is nice, but not really worth the price of admission. People don’t buy items based on how cool the template is.

The killer feature that makes 5.0 a must-have upgrade is the Research Assistant. If you sell on eBay, you probably already check for other auctions similar to yours as well as Google your item for facts to include in your auction. iSale 5.0 automates this function. Search for an item and it will scan a preset list of websites including currently running auctions on eBay. When you see an auction similar to yours, click “create auction” and iSale copies the pictures and text from the listing…even the category. Of course you’ll have to worry about copyright issues, but you can easily tweak things to comply. If you only want to use part of the text from a website, the Research Assistant allows you to easily copy and past the text from within the program or save it into a clipping file for later. I easily modified the Research Assistant to include eBay completed auctions and Google groups so I can see what the going price was for something and possibly copy info as necessary.

My one complaint about iSale is it is a processor and memory hog. Even on my MacPro 2 Ghz CPU with 4 Gig of RAM, iSale seems sluggish. It would often take 70-120% of processor cycles and over a gig of RAM usage for just a few auction items. All these features come at a price and if I sell enough on eBay, maybe I can even upgrade the computer!

Equinux has a great trial version. They’ll let you download the program and try three auctions for free. No reason not to try it and see if you like it.

Overall iSale remains a great program to sell items on eBay and the 5.0 upgrade’s research Assistant is well worth the upgrade price of $25.00 New iSale users will have to pay $39.95 for a single pack of $49.95 for a five user pack.

Pros: Existing selling features combined with the Research Assistant make selling quick and easy
Cons: Memory and processor hog.

Four out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Fast forward to 2008 and utility programs are easy to find. A few Google searches and you’ll find a utility to do anything you can imagine on your Mac. Actually, you might be overwhelmed with the number of programs out there. You can read reviews, of course, which are always helpful, or you can buy something like Spring Cleaning which combines a bunch of utilities into one neat package.

Spring Cleaning combines over 30 little programs into one mega-utility. Spring Cleaning won’t repair your computer if it has a problem, but it will help you maintain your computer. This program isn’t designed for newbies. There isn’t a one-touch cleanup setting, but rather numerous subtle ways of tweaking your system such as slimming down universal apps or cleaning out certain caches. If you aren’t sure what those things are, then this program won’t be of much use. The documentation tells you what each program does, but doesn’t explain why you’d want to use it. Nonetheless, I recommend this Spring Cleaning for anyone running low on hard disk space. A majority of the utilities allow you to find errant files on your hard drive to reclaim space.

As an advanced Mac user, I have utilities that duplicate most of these functions, but then of course I have to remember which program I use for what function. Spring Cleaning is elegant in the way all these programs can be accessed easily. I also like the fact that the Spring Cleaning functions have scheduling and “undo” for many of the features. The handiest utility in my book is the “Quick Compare”. I’ve found few shareware utilities that match its ease of use and simplicity. It does one thing very well: compare the contents of two folders and merge them together, which is perfect when you are trying to sync a laptop and desktop.

Overall, Spring Cleaning gets its value in its ease of use and one stop shopping for intermediate Mac users. Even advanced technicians will enjoy having all major utilities in one application.

Pros: Over 30 different utilities put together in one package, scheduling and undo function
Cons: Skimpy documentation. Functions can be found in other programs in the shareware or freeware realm

8 out of 10 rating

When using the phone, I had difficulty operating the volume and the sleep/awake button. The case added so much bulk, you could no longer easily operate those buttons with your thumb because you had to press so deep that merely pressing your thumb on the buttons didn’t give it enough force. Granted, this isn’t the end of the world, but in the competitive arena of iPhone cases, every annoyance is magnified. I’d have to fumble just a little bit more when I forget to turn on vibrate during a business meeting. Also annoying was the inability to remove the SIM card while the case was on. If you often swap SIM cards then this is clearly not the case for you.

Aesthetics are an important consideration in cases. I ordered the black case, but the black case didn’t match the black of the iPhone. The Eco-Shield was a lighter black and light enough for you to notice the case didn’t match. Also, the plastic showed scratches very quickly and significantly more than an iPhone without a case. This is probably due to the type of plastic used.

As far as protection, testing is always difficult as I don’t have a bunch of extra iPhones to bang around, but the case did have some small shock absorbers protecting the back of the phone. Drop tests without the iPhone inside didn’t show shattering or cracks. The design is two pieces that snap together and the case wasn’t too difficult to remove, but didn’t come apart during my tests.

PROS: Eco-friendly recycling plastic reduces your carbon footprint
CONS: Difficult to grasp, showed scratches easily, and reduced accessibly of key functions

2 out of 5 Dog Cows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

MercuryMover is a program designed for fast typists who hate using the mouse. For these people, clicking the mouse to access a menu or function is as obscene a gesture as showing one’s middle digit in public! I too avoid removing my fingers from the keyboard and use either my Macbook trackpad or my Contour Rollermouse. MercuryMover allows you to move or re-size windows without having to move your hands off the keyboard, and implements the idea well.

MercuryMover runs as a System Preference, making it easy to install and remove. I run a fairly complex suite of applications and ran into no compatibility problems. The special modifier keys to move or re-size windows are fully customizable, so if there is a conflict with an existing program, the MercuryMover keys can be rerouted. By default, the program is set to use the control, option ,and arrow keys to initiate a re-size or move. After pressing the hotkeys, use the arrows or “jump” modifiers to move the windows one pixel or one screen at a time.

On a practical level, this program isn’t going to change your life. The program shines when you want to have tiled or cascading windows open and need to move or re-size the windows. For example, I had iCal and Excel open as I was transcribing billing statements for client sessions I stored in iCal. In addition, I was remote controlling my desktop computer and MercuryMover allowed me to accurately re-size windows, which is a problem in a remote session due to “lag time” between mouse clicks.

Unfortunately, you can configure every key but the key to dismiss MercuryMover from the screen (it is set to escape and can’t be changed). As a keystroke economist, I’d want the key to close MercuryMover closer to the modifier keys such as control and option. Fortunately, you can simply click somewhere and MercuryMover gracefully flashes off the screen.

My major concern about the program is price. I firmly believe in the shareware pricing model and know that developers should earn a decent wage. However $19.00 seems like a large sum of money for a simple shortcut application. I wouldn’t be able to justify the purchase of this program based on the price, it simply isn’t worth $19.00 to save mouse-clicks to move and re-size windows and the price is out of step with other keyboard shortcut programs of this type.

Pros: Quickly re-sizes and moves windows without using the mouse
Cons: Limited configurability, price

Three out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Ever need a file and realize that you aren’t on the right computer or device to access it? The file is on the desktop, but alas, you are on the laptop. What if you are at a public place and need the file? Do you want to open up your whole computer to the Internet, or just want to share a small portion of your files?

What SugarSync does is very similar to some of the functions of MobileMe. You specify folders on multiple computers you want synced and whenever something changes in those folders, the software pushes down the changes. Obviously this function only works for people who have MobileMe subscriptions and who have Macs configured with their MobileMe account. SugarSync opens this ability to both Macs and PCs that don’t have MobileMe subscriptions.

SugarSync is file syncing “for the rest of us” as Steve would say. Installation is a breeze. Install the program and it expertly figures out how to get to the web without reconfiguring routers or firewalls (some Windows third party firewalls might need to give SugarSync permission to work). For $2.49 a month or $25 a year, you get 10 gigabytes of storage space in their “cloud”. You can install the software on as many machines as you would like to sync with because pricing is based on file size. Upgrades to add additional space are allowed. Once installed, file updates are nearly instant. Within a few seconds of putting your files in a folder configured for sync, the file is on a secure website and it automatically synced to all the machines you specify.

The program is officially still in “beta development and testing” for the Mac, but I’ve had no problems using it. I heavily rely on the program to sync service orders which are scanned on my PC and then read on my Mac. In particular, I like the fact it allows other to access these files (with a password) without giving them any file sharing privileges on my Mac. Unlike file sharing or MobileMe, SugarSync keeps the last five versions of files, so if a collaborator makes a mistake, you can access the previous version. I have been using the program for six months without a hint of trouble. Even if you don’t sync between two devices, simply using SugarSync to back up 10 gig of information from your computer to their website for off site backup is well worth the $25 a year.

There are a few minor bugs, such as the inability to delete a machine you are currently syncing with, but I found the support quick and responsive when I had programs. You get to specify icons for the computers you are syncing with, but are given a limited selection of icons for that. Custom icons would be great, but that is a feature request, not a bug.

Other programs do this type of syncing but not quite the way SugarSync does. SugarSync’s closest competition is DropBox, which currently works under the same website synchronization concept, but is in development and only allows 2 gig of backup space on their website. DropBox is “by invitation only” so can’t easily be reviewed at this point. FolderShare by Microsoft does syncing between computers, but doesn’t have the robust version tracking and website backup that SugarSync has.

However, for me, the greatest features is the iPhone interface, which all its competitors lack. The SugarSync website is optimized for the iPhone browser, making it a breeze to read documents synced with them. In addition, they recently developed a full iPhone app for SugarSync, though I currently find the SugarSync website easier to use on the iPhone than their app (the app was release the last week in August).

Pros: Quick reliable backup and synchronization of files on Macs and/or PCs without paying for a MobileMe subscription
Cons: Minor customizations quirks that don’t effect usability, could be knocked out of position once DropBox gets out of beta

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

BusySync was one of the top rated products from MacWorld 2008. I immediately got a review copy and have been happily using it ever since. Though I had some initial setup problems, the product has worked so well that I simply forgot to review it. A program that works in the background and does what it says it will do is quite a refreshing surprise!

BusySync has two major functions. First, it allows you to sync with Google calendars. Google has functions that allow users to share calendars with the optional ability to edit someone else’s calender. However, getting Google to sync with your iCal is key. That’s where BusySync comes in. Purchase and install BusySync with a one time charge of $25, and you’ll be able to sync your Google calenders with iCal on your Mac. On initial view, this sounds very ho-hum. You may not even use Google calendar, so why care? Ah, becuase Google is Google and everyone syncs with Google. For example, if you have a Mac at home and a PC using Outlook at work, Google can act as an intermediary to sync your iCal with Outlook. If you don’t have an iPhone with Mobile Me, send a text message to Google and it will put an appointment on your Google calendar, and then BusySync will transfer it to your Mac.

But wait? Doesn’t Mobile Me allow you to share calendars? Why even mess with Google? Ah, Mobile Me allows what they call “calendar sharing”, but like at most museums, you may look, but not touch. If you share a calender with someone via iCal, they can’t change the information. Sometimes that is good. The Lawrence Apple Users’ Group 2.0 has a shared iCal. We want members to know about events, but not change them. However between myself and my spouse we need the ability to change events and have it appear on each other’s calendar. Friends call and move the dinner party from Monday to Wednesday, I want the ability to change both of our calendars (and if you don’t trust your spouse on your calendar, well can’t help with that). In addition, I use BusySync and Google to control an associate’s service call calender. I can put service calls on his calendar, and if he changes the time because a customer is running late, the changes show up on my iCal. I allow him to subscribe to my iCal via Mobile Me, because I don’t want him to change my calendar, only view it.

The other function of BusySync is the ability to sync between iCal without paying the yearly Mobile Me fee. If you are sticking with Mobile Me because of the ability to sync calendars between multiple computers or multiple people, save that $99 a year (Shh, don’t let Steve hear that). Some people work with sensitive data and don’t like the fact that Apple can see their schedule. BusySync running under Leopard allows SSH syncing between computers, so the data travelling across the Internet is secure.

When I setup BusySync, I had some initial problems. Google did not like the amount of appointments I had. I was trying to sync five years worth of data and it was too much data to send to my Google calendar at once and Google thought I might be spamming myself. After some very helpful suggestions from the developer, I archived my old appointments and let Google pick up just the new ones. That’s one great thing about artisan software: you speak directly with the developer. I didn’t have to wait on hold with off-shore tech support only to have them tell me to reformat my Mac. Sometimes I notice that if I change the time of a recurring appointment, the next time BusySync works it’s magic, it shows both the changed time and the recurring appointment. This somewhat makes sense, and it’s easy to see and fix. BusySync logs all of the changes it makes, so tracking down problems is easy.

BusySync realizes that it’s working with important data–all the appointments in your life. It makes up to five backup copies of your calendar, so if it or you make a mistake, there is a easy way to restore. I wish Apple’s SyncServices did that. More than once I’ve had a weird sync and all my data get corrupt. If I didn’t have TimeMachine, I’d be in a world of hurt! Thanks BusySync.

Also thank you to BusySync for not just responsive tech support, but an extensive, detailed, and updated online help system. Syncing is complex and BusySync has numerous diagrams to illustrate this difficult concept. I had some trouble figuring out my overall sync strategy and BusySync’s website made it crystal clear. Can we say that about MobileMe?

My only major complaint is the fact that you can’t have more than one Google account configured within BusySync. I have work and personal Google accounts and I’d like both to sync to my iCal. The workaround is to have my personal and work Google calendars talk with each other, and then I sync both to my iCal. Also on my wishlist is the ability to specify how many days of syncing I want on a calendar. I would like to BusySync to allow me to only sync the past 30 days (or any number I choose), similar to how you sync your computer with your iPhone. BusySync’s syncing is all or none. Either you sync all items or you sync no items. This lack of flexibility prevents me from giving the program a perfect five dogcow rating–and a gentle nudge for features to include in the next version.

PROS: Does a great job of syncing calenders between computers, and between google without yearly fees. Software is stable and reliable with great tech support.
CONS: Locks you into one google account and “all or none” syncing

Four out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, and opening questions. This was followed by a presentation from Brian Best of Best Macs on the ins and outs of Apple’s .Mac service, recently renamed MobileMe.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included free training on .Mac with Best Macs as well as Stox courtesy of Prosoft Engineering.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

My review of Leopard: The Missing Manual won’t be nearly as complete as David Pogue’s typical brilliance. How can someone write about the Mona Lisa? You must actually experience it to fully understand it. (Ohh…now I just made my trip to France tax-deductible). As always, Pogue’s Missing Manuals contain the nitty-gritty of every available function and possible combination. I compared the excellent Tiger edition with the Leopard edition side by side to see what changed.

The 300 extra functions in Leopard only added about 50 pages to the book, which is larger than a phone book and more complete! The Leopard edition had less handholding for Windows users, which is ironic because Boot Camp attracts more Windows users. Cut from the Tiger version of this book were among other things .Mac and iSync integration as well as some terminal tips and tricks.

Missing Manuals are well known for covering each and every function of the subject they cover and of course this version does not disappoint. Do you want to know the in-and-outs of Bluetooth on your Mac? No Problem. Screen Sharing? It’s got it. Every single function of Leopard is covered. The book is designed as a reference guide, not a tutorial

This is not the book for basic user who just wants to send emails and surf. There will be too much information and the almost 900 pages will be intimidating. This is for the person that wants to eek every last ounce of performance and function from the computer. They squeeze the toothpaste to the very bottom and use double coupons for items on sale. Novices may also be turned off by no coverage of iLife.

Pros: It’s all there. Every function, every System Preference. You name it, it’s got it along with Pogue’s style of easy to understand explanations

Cons: Consult a doctor before lifting this book, it’s heavy. Might scare off novices.

Five out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news, opening questions followed by a presentation from Dave Greenbuam on how to utilize your Mac to keep track of your personal finances. The slides from the meeting are available in either PDF or Keynote formats.

The meeting concluded with our monthly door prize, which included Leopard: This Missing Manual from O’Reily Media as well as Stox courtesy of Prosoft Engineering.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

The fact that O’Reilly and Pogue Press wrote a whole book on Facebook should be a testament to Facebook’s phenomenal growth. Way back in the dark ages of this social networking era, 2004, only college students were allowed to join. Then at the end of 2006 Facebook was made available to everyone. Now Mom and Dad could see where their college money was going and then students have to explain what “hooking up” was. In May of 2007, Facebook expanded again and allowed “applications” that included everything from vampire attacks on your friends, to playing Scrabble, and finding out how much your friends are alike.

In the Web 2.0 (are we up to 3.0 yet?), a website can have the complexity and functions of a off-the-shelf shrink-wrapped software application. Facebook is a clear example of this phenomenon. There are help screens in Facebook, but there is no manual. In fact, one false move on facebook and all of a sudden people get the wrong impression about you that can last a lifetime. Vander Veer takes the gentle reader through all aspects of signing up on Facebook, connecting with users and “installing” applications. Personally when I signed up with Facebook I made a few of these embarrassing mistakes. I added a few professional clients that might not have synced up properly with my personal life. Oops.

This isn’t a typical missing manual book. Missing Manuals tend to cover each and every function of a program. This book follows more of a tutorial format walking the reader through the setup of a Facebook account and it’s functions. Because Facebook is a website, it can change daily (and does) so full coverage is near impossible. Since this book was published, significant changes were made to the privacy and advertising functions of Facebook. The book is about half the size of the average Missing Manual.<

This book is ideal for the newcomer to Facebook who wants to find out what it’s all about and play a few games of Scrabulous with their colleagues (or grandkids). The book assumes no prior knowledge of Facebook–only that you have an interest in joining. If you are already are on Facebook, you won’t find many tips or tricks. The author did hint at some of the social complexities of Facebook: whom to friend, which groups to join, who should have access to your profile. I thought about those issues after reading the book, but once you are on Facebook, you figure out those things the hard way.

Pros: Perfect book for someone about to join Facebook. Excellent tutorial

Cons: Doesn’t cover many of the Facebook functions, a bit dated.

Three out of Five Dogcows

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

My laptop tends to be my best friend ..tagging along with me places I wouldn’t ask my worst enemy to follow. Unfortunately, using a laptop in these conditions take their toll. Balancing a latte and a $2,000 laptop is a recipe for destruction. That is, if you don’t have a Futura Laptop Desk. The Futura combines elegant design and world-class ergonomics to provide a ‘body-friendly” workspace at almost any location.

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

You know that one episode of Family Guy where Peter makes some seemingly random reference to something that connects him to Generation X’ers and then the sketch goes on for too long. You don’t quite get the reference, it’s bearing to the story, or why Fox didn’t let sleeping dogs lie. Oh yeah, that’s pretty much every episode.

However, this reference to pop culture does actually have some bearing on my review of “The iPhone Book”. This was a series of disjointed short “tips” about the iPhone that included way too many pop culture references that made you scratch your head and want to put on Futurama instead. The book was cowritten by Scott Kelby and Terry White and their styles mixed like oil and doorknobs. In the intro the authors warn the book is “quirky.”, and if you want “quirky” buy this book. If you want a great book on how to use your iPhone, put this book back on the shelf.

Writing a cohesive and comprehensive review of a book that is neither is actually quite difficult! Every topic is was exactly half a page. On the top is a picture of the iPhone or other item and the bottom has a paragraph or two of verbage. Flipping the “silent mode” switch is given about the same attention as troubleshooting the connection to a wireless network? Huh? The saving grace of their book is the admission that they stole some tips from David Pogue in spite of the fact that he writes for a competitor to Peachpit. Why accept a substitute when the Pogue’s book is a few clicks or steps away. You could drive a semi through the gaps in coverage. Complex topics are left to the reader to figure out for themselves and Windows users are completely left in the dust: there are no screen shots or tips for Windows users. Discrimination!

The book had both a poor table of contents, but at least a decent index. While I was able to find the topics a majority of people care about, the coverage was so weak in some areas that I would classify it as one step above useless. Does an entire page need to be devoted to clicking the Safari button to open the browser and only a page to setting up your email?

Unless this is the only book on the shelf regarding iPhones and your helping a freind on a gameshow, skip this book and go to the source they acknowledge as the true master: David Pogue

Pros: They are probably pros at technology, just not writing books together
Cons: The reader is conned out of the $25 they spent for the book. Book is difficult to follow and sorely lacking on explanations

1 out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The “Missing Manual”, in case you didn’t already know, is the gold standard of technical publications. Heck, it’s the platinum standard at this point. Any book that has the “Missing Manual” in the title is sure to be a must have. I’ve never been disappointed and “iPhone: The Missing Manual” carries the torch for the series yet again. Some books are only edited by David Pogue, but this one was written exclusively by hi, most likely because the iPhone was a hard find for anyone.

While Pogue expertly covered all the features of the iPhone, he also helped readers work around some of the limitations such as the lack of a word processor or a instant messaging program. I learned quite a few tips even for my mere mortal Treo 650. He helps you save money on text messaging, much to the chagrin of AT&T’s accountants. I had very high hopes for the book, and Pogue exceeded every one.

Ideally, the iPhone should be straightforward and obvious for most people, but occasionally you aren’t quite sure about a feature or how to combine features together to do what you want. For example, how does one avoid SPAM on the iPhone…yuck. This is more than the typical Missing Manual in my opinion. This includes those handy tips and tricks most companies write a separate book on. The list of websites that will simulate desktop apps is worth the price of admission alone.

As always, the Mac and PC platforms are covered equally and with respect. He explains how to sync contacts on a PC and a Mac. Most important, Pogue covers all the troubleshooting steps you need to know when your iPhone stops doing what it wants. Because the iPhone is so new, there aren’t many guides to fixing problems and I’ve had to google way too much in order to fix problems. Now I’ve got all I need in one guide.

No features of the iPhone is left undiscussed! Even experts with the iPhone (can you say you are an expert when it’s been out less than a year?), will find something in this Missing Manual. I think that anyone who has a smart phone will get ideas from this guide. If you can’t have an iPhone, get the next best thing.

Of course, if the manual were hard to understand or disorganized it wouldn’t do anyone much assistance. Fortunately, Pogue’s easy to understand writing style explains things in such a way novices can understand without talking down to them or boring expert users. The index and table of contents are very easy to use to hone in the particular features you are interested in. Extensive use of full color photos helps make sure you can follow along with the book.

Pros: Amazing guide to the iPhone. I suspect Steve Jobs secretly keeps a copy on his desk.
Cons: Besides the fact it doesn’t come with an iPhone, absolutely no cons.

Five out of Five Dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

I have a traditional love/hate relationship with Dummies books. When I am truly a dummy in the subject, I like their broad overviews. “Switching to the Mac for Dummies” is a new title for the Dummies series and is the first Dummies book by author XXXXX Renhold. Generally Dummies books are designed to give you the information you need in a lighthearted way so that the reader doesn’t feel intimidated or overwhelmed.

I’m not sure what mark Reinhold was shooting for but he clearly missed it. The book is overwhelming yet inadequate and in some places just wrong! As an example, Reinhold said you can’t run Appleworks on newer Macs. That is simply untrue. But why would someone switching to the Mac ever care about older version of Appleworks? Based on the contents of the book, it was more akin to “New Macs for Dummies”. Reinhold covered PC to Mac issues as well as Mac to Mac issues. While that’s nice, why would a PC user need that info? It creates an information overflow that makes the book harder to read and confusing for new Mac users.

While I realized Reinhold did not intend the book to be funny, I had to laugh at some of the topics he covered. Few users switching to the Mac need to know that back in the 1980s some PCs used MicroChannel Architectures (MCA) and Macs used NuBus. This minutae reminds me of the sketch on Airplane when the air traffic controller is asked how we got into this crisis, and he starts talking about dinosaurs creating oil and people buying expensive cars. Funny on a big screen, but not for a dummies book. That’s just an example of the massive overkill of useless information. Is the author prepping people for an appearance on a trivia show?

Too much information isn’t that bad so long as critical information is included and Reinhold simply failed to deliver on critical information. In particular I am comparing his book to the Missing Manual series of the same title and the Dummies version seems like a really poor rough draft of the Missing Manual. When people switch computers from either Mac to PC or PC to Mac they are most concerned about their data (including pictures and music), their emails and address book, and their favorites. Reinhold comes up with rather elaborate Rube Goldbergesque style ways of moving the information, but way beyond the skills (or budgets) of the average switcher. He also fails to cover how to convert email from PC to Mac, which is a top question for switchers.

Those topics Reinhold covers well are horribly disorganized and hard to follow with few, if any, illustrations or screen shots. You simply have to take his word for what he’s saying and use your imagination. I asked typical “How do I?” question on the Mac and none were covered. A new PC user might be calling Microsoft after reading this book asking for reconciliation.

Sorry for such a harsh review. I’m sure Reinhold knows his stuff and was simply trying to be helpful. Switching is a relatively new topic. Apple had to make a Newton before it could make the iPhone and I’m sure version 2.0 of this book will be much better. Skip this one though.

Pros: Interesting for trivia buffs, might increase Windows sales and Apple returns.
Cons: Disorganized, inconsistent coverage. Hard to read and follow.

Two DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Color Decoder 1.0 by Stray Cat Technology

“Colors” are not just the theme of a mediocre 1980s gang movie starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. We mammals perceive the world in color, including our computer screens. However, a significant portion of the population experience color vision deficiency (popularly and somewhat inaccurately known as “color blindness”) where certain shades of color are unable to be properly perceived. Given that this is a fairly common phenomenon, and given how important color is in the Apple user interface, it seems rather surprising that Apple has neglected to handle color vision deficiency in their otherwise thorough Universal Access preferences. Luckily, Stray Cat Technologies has stepped up to fill this gap with their initial software release of Color Decoder.

Color Decoder is a simple application that does one thing – it tells you what color the screen is displaying underneath the mouse pointer. Color Decoder does this one of three ways; via a pop-up bubble the displays the color name, by speaking the color name out loud using Apple’s voice technology, or by flashing all pixels on the screen that share that specific color. Any of these three methods of color notification can be used by themselves or combined, so for example you could have the computer speak the color’s name and display it’s name in a bubble, but skip the flashing, or vice-versa. These preferences are controlled from a small palette on the screen which is the application’s entire user interface. Color Decoder’s recognition system can be turned off or on entirely via a hot key in case you only need it on occasions. The only other user interface option is the ability to turn on a magnifying glass to see exactly where the mouse pointer is pointing, which can be very useful when trying to find a single colored pixel in a huge image.

In actual use, Color Decoder works exactly as advertised. After launching, the palette opens where you can select your settings (you can hide this window once you have things set up as you wish). I tried out all three of the methods for communicating color in turn. The color name display only is a very minimalist method of showing the color, and is very useful when you have images on the screen where color is important, especially things like charts, graphs and other documents which use color to communicate data. The “flash colors” feature works well on images that are more complex with many colors mixed together such as gradients, weather radar displays and similar items. For most daily use, naming colors, supplemented by flashing colors works well. Magnification is usually not needed, although it is nice when you are looking at very complex images where there may only be a few pixels you need to track down or see (in these cases, the flashing feature is excellent as well).

I wasn’t as excited with the speak color name feature, where Color Decoder uses Apple’s speech synthesis to actually say the color names out loud. I can see this be very useful to someone with severe vision deficiency, but in actual use, having this feature on resulted in a continuous stuttering stream of half-spoken color names as I moved the mouse around the screen. I think this feature would be much more useful if there was a longer delay between mouse movements and the color being spoken, or even better if you could assign a separate hot key to speak color names on demand without having to leave the feature on all the time.

This minor quibble aside, I found Color Decoder to be a very functional and useful piece of software. Those with color vision deficiency will absolutely want to check this program out, but I would also recommend that anyone who works with color on a regular basis give Color Decoder a test drive. It fills an important hole in Apple’s OS and makes using a Mac easier for a large segment of the population, in a clean and elegant way.

Plusses: A great way for those with color vision deficiency to recognize and differentiate colors on the Mac; useful for designers and other users to find all examples of a particular color on a busy screen

Minuses: The spoken color feature could use some polishing

Summary: Color Decoder fills a gaping hole in Apple’s otherwise fairly complete Universal Access accessibility preferences and is definitely worth a download for those with color vision deficiency or who work with colors.

Color Decoder by Stray Cat Technology.
Price: $21.95; fully-functional demo version works for 1 week
Requires MacOS 10.5 or higher

Palm’s treatment of the Mac reminds me of that girl in high school who suddenly showed interest in me the time choosing lab partners came around…and then dumped me at the end of science class. Palm’s market share grew because of loyal Mac users. We were dedicated to the Palm and shunned it’s pale imitation: Windows CE and then Windows Mobile. However, Palm later joined the dark side, began making Windows Mobile devices and left us in the dust. Development of Palm software for the Mac stalled out and Palm left it to Apple to pick up the slack. Just like I was left stood up the week after science class was over. Whatever.

Fortunately, iSync works OK to do basic syncing of Palms with the Mac, so Palm can choose it’s own lab partner—the Mac is fine on its own. It fact, we created a better Palm: the iPhone. Of course that girl in grade school we dated..the Newton. I hope she doesn’t show up at the 20 year class reunion. She never did understand what I said anyways, so she’ll probably get the date wrong. iSync gets the job done, but some of us want more.

While iSync will move contacts and dates, MissingSync does so much more. iSync is your best friend’s sister that will be your date to the prom so you don’t go alone, while MissingSync is the supermodel of Palm synchronization. While it does move contacts and dates, it retains more of that information from address book and iCal such as work addresses and calendar groups. Not only that, but for Treo users it will backup your call log and SMS messages, and then synchronize the information with your address book. In my line of work, it’s great because I can easily determine every call and message to a particular client. The killer feature for me is it’s ability to synchronize with Yojimbo by Barebones.

Just like that supermodel, MissingSync is high maintenance, flaky and unreliable. Maybe I was stood up because my lab partner was using Missing Sync and didn’t realize the date? MissingSync randomly won’t sync some of my contacts and randomly changes the notes synchronization. I was given excuse after excuse by tech support. Eventually I bought a new Mac and got a new phone–and it still didn’t work reliably. Best (or worst) of all, if you want to speak to a human it will cost you $60. Oh, it gets better. That $60 gives you the right to a “call-back”–you specify a time window and they call you. Funny, that supermodel also required me to buy her something before she would give me the time of day. I’m sorry, but spending for $60 for support of a $40 program just seems wrong. If the program were reliable, that would be one thing, but it isn’t!

In general, MissingSync’s ability to synchronize so much more data than iSync or Palm’s hotsync manager make it a compromise that still leaves you ahead in the end–even when you combine the support costs. Yeah, all being said and done, it’s better dating a supermodel than your best friends’s sister, but not by as much as you think. Markspace will need to improve the quality of its product and tech support policies to persuade casual Palm users to use their product rather than iSync.

Pros: Transfers much more data to your Palm than iSync or Palm’s software
Cons: Flaky, temperamental, and poor tech support policies.

Two out of Five DogCows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Robin Williams seems to have a uncanny clairvoyance that not only helps her figure out that William Shakespeare’s works were possibly written by Mary Sidney, but also helped her get a Leopard guide in
the Apple stores the same day Leopard came out. Ok, she had some help from Apple by getting an advance copy. Maybe she used the Time Machine feature to go back to the days of Romeo and Juliet. It’s a pretty powerful feature of Leopard.

Obviously Apple trusted her enough to provide her with a pre-release copy of Leopard as well as make her the featured Leopard book in the store. In the Mac publishing world, she’s about as well known and well respected as ol’ Bill Shakespeare himself–and written almost as many works. Unlike Bill, reading her books are easy and straightforward arming non-technical users with the skills and understanding to attack Leopard head on.

In particular, Robin’s style is to expertly use page layout and screenshots to explain the features of an operating system in small bites everyone can digest. I enjoy the fact she doesn’t talk down to her readers. She expects a basic understanding of how to use a mouse and keyboard. This book is designed for a Mac or even a PC user making the transition to Leopard, either via upgrade or by the fact it came with the Mac. She walks the reader through all the features of the Leopard operating system. She apologizes for not covering the iLife or iWork suites, but clearly points out this is a book on Leopard. I’m sure she realizes that if the book were too big, readers would be intimidated. While it’s over 450 pages, she uses a great table of contents and index to allow the reader to hone in on just the info they are interested in. Want to know how to do screen sharing..no problem? First, she marks it in a “Tech Stuff” section so novice or intimidated users can avoid it. Then she puts it in a logical chapter of “Get connected and share files.” Then a nice screen sharing section appears. Can’t find it there? Check the index either under iChat or Screen Sharing. She clearly spent lots of time making sure her book was extremely user friendly, just like the operating systems she covers.

Not only does she cover practically all the “300″ new features of Leopard, but includes great troubleshooting advice for when things go wrong. The advice she gives is as good or better than what you’ll get on the phone calling tech support or stopping by the “bar“. If her troubleshooting section doesn’t cover it, you’ll need a technician to come out!

My one complaint is she should have marked those features new or different in Leopard. That would allow a upgrader to focus on just those new items of difference in Leopard. Knowing her though, she did a careful analysis and determined there wouldn’t be enough white space on the page and left it out.

This book is not intended for intermediate or advanced users. You won’t find out which port to open for screen sharing or it’s inner workings–just how to initiate it. I contrast her books to more “manual” like books that cover every feature in depth. This book is designed to hold the readers hand through the steps or learning.

I avoided Shakespeare in high school, relying solely on those ubiquitous yellow and black “notes.” Hey, her book is kinda the same thing. Avoids all the fluff and gets down to the nitty gritty of what you need to know. Will future generations attribute her expert writings to a man? I don’t know, but I’m sure glad our generation has such an expert artist of words and pictures to teach us how to use our Macs.

Pros: Outstanding layout and organization. Excellent descriptions for novice Mac users. Enthusiastically recommend it to all new Leopard and Mac Users. Use this book as a starting point in your learning!
Cons: Not for intermediate users, no clear distinction of Leopard features

Five of Five dogcows.

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Granted, Dockstar’s paltry price of $9.95 is well worth it and then some. Don’t you hate it when software developers charge too much for the product! This product is definitely right-priced.

So what does Dockstar do? It changes to the Mail icon scheme to allow for specialty badges to let you know which email accounts have new messages. So instead of the red seal indicating how many new messages Mail has retrieved, you can have a purple star for one account, and pink heart for another. Instantly you can see which account has a new message. I think if they added green clovers, then they’d have to name the product Lucky Charms –and that pot of gold will be suppled by the Nigerian prince who died and needs to transfer money to your account. Oh, then they’d get sued for copyright violation, so Dockstar might be a good name after all.

Short review for a simple product that does one thing and does it very well

Pros: Use the Mail app icon to instantly determine which accounts have new messages
Cons: No Blue Moons or Purple Horseshoes.

Five out of Five dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news followed by a discussion on how to convert Analog audio and video into digital files for archival or playback purposes.

The meeting concluded with questions from group members and our monthly door prize, which included Stunt Software’s Overflow, MacBackup by Macxware and MarinerPack from Mariner Software.

Special thanks to the crew from BadHairCut Productions for their expertise throughout the meeting and Wolfes Camera, Camcorders and Computers for lending us the USB turntable to demo.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

Review: Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Server Essentials

Peachpit’s “Apple Training Series” is generally an outstanding product line. However, there are two distinct branches to the line: knowledge and certification. This book isn’t designed as much to teach you about OS X Server (Tiger edition) as it is to prepare you for a certification exam. Nothing wrong with that, it just not terribly practical for real world operations. While I haven’t taken the certifcation exam, I suspect this book prepares you well for the exam since it’s the “offical” curriculum of the Apple Training and Cetification program.

Similiar to other test prep books, there are goals and reviews. In particular, the book breaks down the learning into chapters with time estimates, which is helpful in preparing your learning process. The included CD has sample files to go along with the detailed and expanded exercises. The book takes you through the basics of setting up a server start to finish along with giving an overview of the rich feature set found in OS X Server.

Unfortunately, simliar to other test prep books, the book doesn’t arm you with the skills necessary to properly maintain and configure a Tiger server in the real world. There is no troubleshooting guide nor much practical advice on do’s and don’ts of server setup. After reading this book, I’m relatively confident I could pass the exam, but I do not feel confident I could configure or maintain a Tiger server. Nonetheless, this book is a good first step in learning OS X server. You need no prior knowledge to start using this book and to at least get a test server set up.

Overall this is a good book for beginners and/or persons trying to get certified on OS X server. The book level from Peachpit says “Intermediate/Advanced”. I disagree; this is strictly for new users. If you will be maintaining a OS X server, look elsewhere for a support guide. Anyone who’s setup a OS X server will be annoyed by this book.

Pros: Clear examples and easy to follow guide for beginners
Cons: No troubleshooting nor practical guidance after initial setup

Two out of five dogcows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

One of the latest gee whiz inventions in the past few years are the flurry of USB to IDE/SATA adapters. While technicians like me find them indispensable, other “mere mortals” can find some real handy uses for these gems. Storage leader Newertech has constructed one of the best USB bridges out there: the Newertech Universal Drive Adapter. While Newertech’s name is familiar to Mac enthusiasts and historians (including going bankrupt and leaving some rather upset customers), it’s only connection with that past company is the name and hopefully tradition of quality. So far the newer Newertech is carrying the torch well. Newertech and Otherworld Computing are sister companies, so OWC is the main place to buy the “new” newertech stuff.

The Universal Drive Adapter allows practically any hard drive (or optical drive) to be attachable to your current Mac via USB. Because the hard drive isn’t protected in a case, this is not a long term solution. If you want to use a internal hard drive via usb (or firewire) over a extended period of time, purchase a quality external case.

I’ve gone through quite a few of these usb bridges. Beware and be aware of awfully cheap USB bridges. They too often break due to inferior plastic and one I owned actually started smoking (didn’t exactly give the customer a great sense of confidence): in other words, awful. Cheap and trusting data often don’t go along well in the same sentence. I’m impressed with the quality of this Newertech device. It’s well constructed and has withstood months of heavy use by me. Other World Computing is great about standing behind their products, so I wouldn’t trust my hard drive to anyone else.

USB bridges are primarily used by technicians to temporarily attach a hard drive or dvd drive to another computer for backup or data transfer. So you aren’t a tech? No problem. I suspect there isn’t a reader out there that doesn’t have at least one old computer or hard drive lying around. You probably left it in the closet because you know that you have personal data on it and didn’t want to just throw it in the trash or you are simply afraid you might need the data “at some point”. Now you can simply pull the hard drive out (OWC has great videos on their website on hard drive removal) and use it on your current Mac. A backup of your old computer is easily accessible should the need arise. By the way, you can easily use hard drives from Windows machines on your Mac…or even use this on a Windows machine. Perfect for switchers….pull the hard drive out of your PC and attach it to a Mac.

What I think is the best use of those old hard drives, however, is backups. Take an old ten or twenty gig hard drive and hook it up to your Mac and backup your current Mac. Often that hard drive will hold more data than a USB flash drive and DVD combined. . If you have a Intel based Mac, you can even boot off a USB drive. If you rely on your Mac, you owe it to yourself to have some way to boot your Mac in an emergency. Since you only need it in emergency, you can save yourself a few bucks by buying a cheap IDE drive and keep this close at hand.

Every IT department should have one of these (I do!). Actually, they probably do, but not made by Newertech. When your existing one breaks for the fourth time this year, spend a bit more and get a quality one. However, small office/home office users with older computers lying around can save space and put that valuable storage space to good use.

Pros: Sturdy, reliable way of adding practically any hard drive to your Mac
Cons: A bit pricey, but you get what you pay for often. This device, like all USB bridges, are for temporary use only. It would be nice if it had firewire

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

In the Matrix, the character Neo represented a slick confidence that somehow made him master of everything in the quasi-reality construct the movie series is named after. Of course, it’s also named after the substance the case is made of: neoprene. Yes, I’m obsessed with keeping my Macbook is tip top shape. It’s the first new laptop I’ve ever bought. I’ve tried hard shells and fabric sleeves. Each have their advantages. Hard shells work well to protect the computer, but aren’t always that pretty. They also can get scratched up over time. Mine after about 9 months began to look like one of those Nanos everyone sued Apple about. I then used a fabric sleeve. I liked them, and I continue use them on occasion. The problem with a fabric sleeve is you forget to put them back in. The NeoCase, just like the character, seems to be the missing element that combines them both. The fashion sense and durability of a fabric sleeve, combined with the protection of hard shell. It is the one that will bring balance to the force. Oops, wrong movie!

The case has straps that hold the NeoCase in place while you are using it. While Radtech claims it’s water repellent, I’m certainly not going to risk it. They also claim it has shock absorbing ability. Not going to test that either, but it is nicely padded. I like the fact it doesn’t get in the way of any of the ports–though you obviously can’t get to the battery unless you remove the case. It also has a handle and a pocket. The handle makes it very easy to pull the case out of my laptop bag and the sleeve holds other products.

I did notice after extended use my fans kicked in for the first time. Radtech support indicates that the unit has been extensively tested. I noticed about a 5 degree Fahrenheit increase in my CPU temperature and experts indicate it’s hardly cause for alarm. Laptop sleeves like the NeoCase should be secondary protection for users. Never carry a laptop just in a laptop sleeve, it needs to be protected in a laptop bag. Don’t just throw this in a backpack (though many people do). A bonus feature of the NeoCase was that it protected not just the laptop but the surface it was on. I noticed my hard shell and my laptop would sometimes scratch delicate tabletops.

With the back to school folks taking incredibly poor care of their new laptops, I highly recommend this product to the lazy crowd. If your cell phone looks great, you probably don’t need this. However, if you are rough on your stuff, the NeoCase is the best solution for you since you never have to take it out of the case. Ask the Oracle (and not Larry Ellison), that college students throw laptops in their backpacks, forget about them, and they get damaged.

The NeoCase won’t protect you against agents and sentinels, but it provides a great compromise of laptop protection and ease of use. Morpheus would be proud.

Pros: Laptop protection that is stylish and you’ll remember to use.
Cons: Slight raise in internal CPU temp.

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

So, when I saw the Sidewinder iPod case by Marware, I decided that I had to give it a try. Almost all of its features can be found in other cases, but it’s the combination of the features in ONE case that makes it stand out from the others.

The case itself is made of plastic (available in black or white) with a light non-slip texture that makes it easy to hold onto. If you have a 30 Gig iPod video, the case comes with a thin plastic insert that slides into the case to fill up the extra space—the larger iPods fit into the same case with no need for the spacer. The iPod screen is completely covered by the clear plastic window. The only exposed section of the iPod is the click-wheel. I did leave a small piece of the thin plastic overlay on the click wheel to keep dust and dirt off of it, but I had to remove the rest of the overlay because the sides kept getting caught when I tried to slide the iPod into the case.

The top of the case has a removable slide off cover so that you can get the iPod in and out. The slide-off cover has holes cut to size for the hold switch and the headphone port. I haven’t had any problems fitting any of my headphone jacks into the jack through the cut-out.

The bottom of the iPod is fully protected by a small, hinged door that opens to access the dock. The door is not the full width of the bottom—only slightly larger than the dock itself. I do wish that the door were a little wider. The docking cable that came with the iPod fits in fine, but the 3rd party docking cable that I use most often is too wide to fit. The surrounding plastic of the docking cable is too bulky to fit into the door, so the iPod must be removed from the case for it to work. To remove the iPod from its case, you must push through the bottom door to push it out of the top of the case. This does make me a little nervous as I’m afraid of damaging the dock pins with my fingernails. I’ve recently taken to using the removable top piece to push the iPod out. If you hold it at a slant on the narrow edge (so that it doesn’t slip in and damage the dock) works well.

The Sidewinder also includes two “hidden” features that are only there when you want them. On the back is a low profile stand that pops out to place the iPod at a comfortable angle for viewing videos and photo slideshows.

The best feature, and the one that gives the case its name, is the pop-out side that can be used to wind up and store your earbuds’ cord. I love being able to store my earbuds right on the case itself without having to have a separate storage solution.

I find the sidewinder to work well when I’m storing the earbuds by winding up the entire cord. The thinner cords near the earbuds themselves fit well into the small slots in the winder that hold the cord in place. The one aspect that I would change on the Sidewinder is the size of these slots. They either need to be a little larger so that they can fit thicker cords or there needs to be a couple more slots of various sizes. The way they’re designed now, I can’t store just the excess cord because the middle section (before it splits into the earbuds) is too thick to fit. My current earbuds have a fairly thin cord and only the very ends will fit into the slots, so I would imagine that many headphone cords wouldn’t fit at all.

The Sidewinder case also comes with a removable belt clip. The first time that I tried to put the clip on, it didn’t seem to come even close to sliding on as it should. Due to the slight curve in the clip, I couldn’t get it to sit flat enough against the case body for it to slide into the tracks on the case. However, once I figured out a simple trick, it went on very easily. If you flip up the video stand, the bottom curve of the clip can lie in the space where the stand normally is when “closed”. This allows just enough give and flexibility that the middle portion of the clip finally lies flush enough to slide into the tracks on the case. To remove the clip again, one must simply push a pen into a small hole in the clip to release and separate the two sections.

On the whole, I am really enjoying this case. If I could just tweak those few things mentioned above, it would be nearly perfect. Now, if I can just find a method of managing the cords to my Apple iPod Radio Remote at the same time, I’d be a very happy accessory owner!

Pros: Lots of great features—removable clip, flip-out stand, slide-out sidewinder for the headphone cord management, complete protection for the top and bottom of the iPod. Easy access to all ports and buttons. Relatively low profile when all “pop-outs” are popped in.

Cons: Adds a little too much bulk when used with a 30 Gig iPod—this could be fixed by offering separate versions for the different sizes. The hinged door for the dock is too narrow for my favorite docking cable—needs to be just slightly larger. The cord slots on the sidewinder for are too small for thicker headphone cords. Either make the existing ones larger or add a couple of different sized slits.

4 out of 5 dog cows

So you didn’t get an iPhone? Sorry. Maybe it was the cost. Maybe it was your cell phone contract. Maybe it’s AT&T’s coverage where you live. Or maybe you just don’t like buying a 1.0 version of anything. For me, it’s all the above.

However, with all those smug people walking around with their $600 Newton 3.0′s you can one-up them. What you have right now can be better than an iPhone. Yes I said it–you’re better than they are. At least my therapist is telling me to deal with my jealously by saying this.

Let’s start with the iPod. How can you extend the capabilities of your iPod to compete with the iPhone? Yeah, you’ll need to carry your phone and iPod around, but if you drop your iPod or your phone you’re still out much less money. Unlike your cell phone, the iPhone doesn’t come with accidental damage insurance like other cell phones. For a few bucks a month and a fifty dollar deductible, I’m back in business after a date with the pavement.

Don’t forget that the iPhone holds much less music than your standard iPod. A four gig iPhone isn’t going to carry much stuff, but a well configured iPod has music, podcasts, videos, and more. Size is an issue! What’s the point of a iPhone if it neuters your digital lifestyle?

With all that extra space on your full iPod what can you put on it? Want to watch YouTube videos on your iPod? No problem, Jax by Joesoft (a division of Prosoft Engineering) does that! It installs into iTunes and allows you to easily transfer videos to your iPod. Not only will it do that, but it will synchronize your Apple Mail, Word Documents, and PDFs. Heck, it will even download weather forecasts, driving directions, gas prices, movie showtimes, and stock quotes. Apparently the 3.0 version will tell you the next president, but Joesoft is working out the bugs on that (just kidding…maybe). Oh, and Jax works with an iPhone too, but that’s kind of redundant. While Jax’s content can’t be updated live, that’s fine….you’ve got your mobile phone for that. Be sure to check out Andy Inkahto’s “iPod Fully Loaded” which will help you get even more out of your iPod.

Flipping over to the phone side, most modern mobile phones have the ability to surf the web and that ability will close the gap for live content for when you haven’t synced with Jax. Google is the leader in mobile content. Point your cell phone browser to http://m.google.com to access most of Google’s content in a format easy to read on most devices. This means that you not only can you do searches, but you can access your email, calender, driving directions, movie times and even live YouTube videos. Be sure to use Spanning Sync to sync your iCal with your Google calendar so you have your iCal on both the phone and the iPod. This all sounds very iPhonish to me–without buying anything new. More advanced phones that support J2ME can download Google apps to give a complete Google experience on the phone. Who needs Safari if you can access all of Google? Things don’t look pretty on your average mobile phone…but considering the iPhone is using previous generation data speeds, using your Razr on a 3G network phone means you can’t read the New York Times as pretty as on an iPhone, but you’ll be done reading in half the time!

What about some of the cool features like visual voice mail that lets you pick out individual voicemails to listen to? Not a problem. Sign up with GotVoice at http://www.gotvoice.com. This service in both free and paid versions will retrieve your cell phone voice mails and put them in MP3 format to download. After signing up go to http://m.gotvoice.com and pick and choose which mp3 to listen to. Can’t listen to mp3s on your cell phone? No problem, just use http://www.simulscribe.com and Simulscribe will transcribe your voicemails and send them to you in SMS format. With the iPhone you can only read who sent you the message, with Simulscribe you can actually read the message. iPhone…do you need a hanky…are you actually crying?

Ah, but what about when Steve Jobs showed off finding Calamari in San Francisco (yuck, calamari). He searched for “seafood”. No problem. Send an SMS message to 46645 with the parameters “seafood restaurant, San Fransisco” and get a Google listing back with local places. Ironically, when I did this the top result was Farallon, which any Mac historian can tell you happens to be the name of a very famous Mac company that invented the PhoneNet connectors and Timbuktu Pro - which became part of Netopia and now Motorola, which is a cell phone company!

With a few key websites and pieces of software, you can simulate much of the iPhone experience without having to trade in either your phone or iPod. Want both at the same time? Superglue and Velcro are possible options, but do that at your own risk. That hybrid , though, still probably weighs less than the iPhone. Be proud you aren’t burdened with the limitations of an iPhone…until your cell phone contract runs out at least. Then feel free to look down upon the rest of us with your new iPhone!

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

MacBackup is one of the backup programs sold at most Apple stores in spite of the fact it competes with Apple’s own Backup software. Even though Retrospect was the industry leader, it’s showing it’s age since it was bought by EMC and never made the transition to the Intel Platform. Ironically, though, neither did MacBackup. It still runs in Rosetta, which concerns me regarding its long term viability on the Mac platform. A backup is only as good as your ability to restore it. If you can’t read your backups, then they are no good. That happened to me with my old FastBack backups!

Unfortunately, MacBackup uses a proprietary backup format. In my book, that automatically marks it down one peg. If my computer dies, I don’t want to have to use any particular software program to do the restore. I want it to be software independent! However, most backup programs do that, so let’s not single out MacBackup.

MacBackup is extremely easy for non-technical people. The Easy Backup function lets you choose from Photos or Music and Movies. That’s a bit too easy. Advanced includes the Address Book, Mail and Settings, Documents, Folders and Files, System Settings, and Other Items. For it to recognize your mail, it must be either Entourage or Apple Mail. It didn’t pick up the fact I used Eudora, but hey who uses Eudora today? The searching for Photos, Music and Movies was very slow, as it had to search my entire hard drive. An option just to backup iPhoto would have made more sense, but some users don’t always store things in the proper places, so that’s both a bug and a feature in my book. One of the unique features of MacBackup is it’s ability to backup to an FTP server. This is great for someone who might have a server at another location, or even use space on their ISP’s server. FTP allows easy offsite backups which is always a good thing. Like all good backup programs, you can schedule backups on a repeating schedule.

Restoring files was just as easy as backing them up. Straightfoward, easy and generally worked. The Advanced function allowed you to choose which files to restore and where. That’s important, because as stated earlier, if you can’t restore, you are out of luck. If you do use MacBackup, be sure to make a copy of the program anywhere you store the backups, because you won’t be able to restore without it.

The interface of the program was rough as it was clearly a Windows program rewritten for the Mac. Not a fatal flaw but a chip in the armor. That may also explain general buginess of the program. Buttons didn’t always draw properly, forcing you to resize windows or quit the programs. Sometimes a function would take a few times before it would work – annoying at the very least. The latest update, version 1.2, was a bug fix that came out in April of 2006. No updates have been provided since then and it’s still not Universal, which could cause issues on Intel based Macs.

Generally the program is better than not backing up at all, and considering it’s sold at the Apple store, it’s an easy purchase for people who don’t use .mac. For the $30 price tag, it’s easy on the pocketbook as well. Cheaper and easier to use than most of it’s competitors but serious users might want to spend the extra money and get a program that is a bit more reliable and supported by its developer.

Pros: Generally easy to use, support for FTP backups
Cons: Unreliable interface, not updated for Intel Macs, backup format can’t be read by other programs.

2 out of 5 dogcows
5 out of 5 dog cows

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Marware’s Protection Pack Plus really fills the bill. Like Microsoft Office, the pack has three useful and unique products in the box. First is the cloth sleeve that protects and helps clean the outside of your Macbook. This should not be a primary form of protection like the typical padded notebook sleeves. It is designed only to protect the cosmetics of the computer. That’s fine with me because it easily coordinates with almost any other protection strategy. Oddly and not surprising, the more I used it, the cleaner the exterior of my Macbook got. When I’d pull it out, it would gently polish the exterior of my Macbook. Also, don’t forget Macs are about style. I did feel like some kind of celebrity pulling out my Macbook from it’s secondary protective sleeve, as if it were the Hope Diamond or the prized knife of a Food Network star (I have one of those knives, but that’s a whole other story).

In addition to the sleeve is a cloth screen protector. While I was never particularly concerned about the transfer of oils from the keyboard to the screen, the Macbook’s glossy screen is impossible to clean, even with Meridrew’s iKlean. However, like the notebook sleeve, my Macbook actually got cleaner the more I opened and closed the case. When a spot would show on my screen, the screen protector acted as a buffing cloth to quickly remove the scratches. Neat! (pun intended)

Finally are the wrist protectors. That part of my Mac would get the dirtiest. I’ll use my Mac for hours and the oils from my wrists would look gross on my Macbook and also get transferred to the screen. Yuck. Here’s the funny thing, though. I was accidentally sent the kit for the white macbook instead of the black. I was going to contact the company, but didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Ironically, it looks really cool. The Black and the White living in harmony. My only complaint is the lack of instructions. I had real trouble placing the wrist protector correctly, but that’s my own lack of manual dexterity and the fact mom never let me play video games when I was a kid.

The kit does not include a trackpad protector, but other companies make trackpad protectors. Or maybe Marware thought that if they included that, they’d be too much like your grandmother’s plastic slipcovers that covered everything.

Pros: Protects and enhances the cosmetics of your Mac

Cons: A bit tricky to place and lack of trackpad support.

Five out of Five Dogcows
5 out of 5 dog cows

Overflow was in the bottom of my stack of things to review from Macworld, which only proves why I’m an ideal candidate for it. I loved Dragstrip and, though developed separately, does exactly what Dragstrip did. (You might remember that Dragstrip provided a dock like structure in OS 9).

Instead of having one dock at the bottom of the screen, Overflow creates a palette of icons that allows you to subdivide your aliases into categories. For example. I have a category of Disk Utilities that includes Apple’s Disk Utility, CD burning software, etc. Instead of having to navigate three of four folders deep in my hard drive to find an application, I simply can press the hot key for Overflow (F1 by default) and then click the category and then icon (or press command and the arrows to quickly shift between categories). Also, like the dock, you can drag and drop items onto a particular alias. The drag and drop feature is great when you want to open a document in a different app for a change (opening a pdf in Acrobat instead of preview). Similar to the dock, you can add individual documents that you use often.

While the program allows you to configure the size and color of the icons, it doesn’t allow keyboard combos as a hotkey–only one individual key. For example, on my Macbook, I have to press the function key before I can use F1. I’d rather map it to option and command (which was my dragstrip quickey), but I can’t. Not a major complaint, more of an annoyance. Weird because Apple allows keyboard combinations in Expose and with all my other programs, I’m slowly running out of hotkeys

I highly recommend the program, and with a $14.95 price tag it’s hard not to resist. Much less expensive than those Dock Addict’s Anonymous meetings. Overflow has quickly proven itself an indispensable productivity tool.
Pros: Efficiently manages all your dock items in easy to use categories
Cons: Limited options for hotkeys

Five out of Five dogcows

While I’m sure Andy has an iPhone, this excellent book was written when the iPhone was only an apple in Steve’s eye, Andy does a great job of helping the average user tweak some extra features from their iPod. Those suffering from iPhone envy will find some solace in Andy’s tips. This book is best for techheads who want to impress their friends, families and associates with all the incredibly cool things they can do with their iPod. iPods have evolved into mini PDAs that can do practically anything (it’s the inputing that’s the challenge!)

The first few chapters of the book were obvious tips that even beginner iPod’ers know and would annoy the intermediate to advanced audience the book is designed to reach. We all know we can copy songs from our CDs to our iPod. Yawn. Another distraction of the book is the annoying quips and too much personal info about Andy. Sorry, Andy, I’ll read your blog to find out your opinion about Battlestar Galactica or the Simpsons, but I don’t want it in a book about how to use an iPod. No offense, just not interested. Also, Andy played a bit fast and loose with disclosure on the risks of copyrights. It may be his opinion that some things should be legal, but in the murky legal environment today, more warnings of the risks of copying copyrighted materials should have been discussed.

Just like diamond surrounded by unimpressive coal, there are true gems in the book that I was able to immediately put to use. For example. Andy discussed programs for the Mac and PC that allow you to digitize to voice your emails and sync them with your iPod. I definitely downloaded some of his great tools and now I can laugh at those iPhone people because my iPod is almost as impressive. Almost. Also Andy does a great job of explaining how to use Automator in Tiger to get some really amazing features of your iPod working for you such as “listening” to a website. Take that iPhone! The most impressive iPod tricks Andy teaches is converting any text file to audio for listening, or simply easily breaking up the file for transport to the iPod. Many of the tricks don’t require software, but use some neat ideas Andy has for existing tools such as taking a screen shot of a subway map and then putting it on your iPod.

As stated earlier, I quickly got annoyed by Andy’s personal tips and societal opinions. Not tips on how to use your iPod, but tips on various SciFi TV shows. Again, Yawn. The tips interfered with the flow of the book because they were visual annoyance on the page. I expect those sidebars to give me exceptionally useful information. It’s Andy’s style as the “42nd most beloved industry personality” I’ll give him leeway because he is an industry veteran and promoted the “Macquarium,” just like I give my grandfather when he tells me story about the war (which one?)

Pros: Great tips to use your iPod to it’s absolute potential. Great cure for iPhone envy.
Cons: Andy’s style, which gets in the way of the information and artificially increases the length of the book.

Four out of Five Dogcows

The meeting opened up with introductions, recent Apple news followed by a discussion of Home Automation on the Mac.

Check us out on the web and subscribe to the podcast at http://www.laugks.org/news/.

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 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!

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!

Overall elegantly simple and powerful.

Pros: Works great for saving videos
Cons: Very small: only works in Safari.

Five out of Five dogcows
5 out of 5 dog cows

The title of the book was accurate. She right, nobody cares what you had for lunch, but for some reason the author wants you to care what she had for lunch! It’s all about things she’d like to see in the blogs she reads and while I don’t spend hours each day reading blogs, I know I’d quickly get bored of a blog that had such ideas as posting your high school yearbook pics or the contents of your purse.

The meal on the cover was clearly more appetizing than the content of the book!

Pros: Great for insomniacs!
Cons: Yawn…I’m sorry…still groggy from the book. Oh yeah cons…very personal ideas about what a blog should be and lacks universal appeal in the blogosphere. Unless you are interested in learning about the author…pass on this book. Few if any of her 100 ideas would get people to return to your blog.

Apple came out with the iPod and for the first time successfully extended its brand of computers. The Newton was a failure because it was too complex to understand and too difficult to use. At the time, I thought the iPod was a joke. I had a Nomad Jukebox which easily worked with Mac and PC, had replaceable rechargeable batteries, and easily fit into existing CD cases. The iPod was overpriced, less powerful, and less compatible. I was wrong because it wasn’t about how functional it was, but how people felt about it. It was the same concept of the disposable camera: more expensive than buying film but easy to use.

With the iPhone, I still believe it is an inferior product. I said at MacWorld, and I’ll say it again, the first virus in the “wild” that self-replicates and installs without requiring the user’s password will be via the iPhone. The iPhone will be popular, highly configurable…and to be easy to use, bypassing much of the Mac’s security. In addition, I don’t want my phone to crash, because my cell phone company already makes my phone frustrating by dropping calls all the time. You thought the screen of the Nano was susceptible to scratches…just wait to people start abusing their phones. Of course, with the iPhone, the scratches won’t just be aesthetically displeasing, but the phone will cease to work.

That being said, I think the iPhone will be successful. The iPod and iMac are now brother and sister, made from the same genetic stock with common traits. iTunes is the glue that holds these two products together and extends the reach of Apple. At WWDC, Apple made it clear that even the Leopard operating system will be more like an iPod and iPhone, using the visual and stylistic elements common to all three. It will be a short matter of time, before the touch screen features of the iPhone extend to an iPod and then to an iMac. The ability to shift from portrait to landscape mode on the monitor will also be a common element.

In the near future, the difference between an iPhone, iMac, and a iPod will simply be the software it runs. Learning one product will instantly make you an expert on all the others. This is a common user experience in other walks of life. Even if you’ve never been to someone’s home, you generally know that hot water is on the left and cold water is on the right. If you drive a Toyota Corolla you have a pretty good idea where the key features on a Toyota Camry are.

To further extend this common experience, Apple is creating more software for Windows to train the next generation of Mac users. Already, a user of iTunes instantly understands how to use iTunes for the Mac. They then extend that experience to iPhoto and iDVD. The minute they actually use a Mac, they have a better experience because the iTunes philosophy and experience is becoming more and more a part of the operating system. The first time a majority of Mac users heard the term library to refer to a collection of information on their Mac was via iTunes.

Boot Camp for the first time was Apple saying, “If you can’t beat them join them.” If people insist on running Windows, we are going to do a better job of it than Microsoft does. We are going to create a Windows experience better than Microsoft can deliver: the ability to run Windows software on your Mac. Now the best machine to run Windows is Mac.

Safari is a further extension of this philosophy and a risky one at that. Their plan could fail if Safari doesn’t create the cult following of Firefox. Internet Explorer is lousy, we know that. Netscape is the Woolworth’s of browsers—simply couldn’t compete though people use it for nostalgia value. Safari will have to be significantly better than Firefox to win Windows users over. I personally don’t think it’s going to happen. Safari on Windows is still Windows, and whether it’s Apple’s fault or Microsoft fault Safari crashed, people will blame Safari and it will hurt Apple’s brand image. People will still buy iPods, but won’t look at the Mac with reverence and awe and will view it as another computer susceptible to the same problems Windows users have. If Safari is lousy on the PC, then it’s lousy on the Mac…and therefore because the Mac relies on Safari, their Mac will suffer crashes just as often as a PC. It won’t, but the perception will still be there from Windows Safari users.

However, if Safari is successful on the PC, I firmly believe Apple will extend their reach to the ultimate on the PC: Finder for the PC. Then Apple will truly have it’s cake and eat it too. Unsuccessful, and they’ll be caught with pie on their face.

“Reach out, reach out and touch someone. Reach out, call up and just say hi. Reach out, reach out and touch someone. Wherever you are, you’re never too far.” Sure, I’m dating myself, but that jingle has always been stuck in my head. This was the slogan of the old AT&T of 1979. Of course, since that time, AT&T was broken up, and then merged together yet again. Instant Messaging and Texting have replaced picking up the phone. However the desire to reach across the miles still remains, and anyone who has tried to provide or receive technical support over the phone knows how inadequate voice can be to communicate technical problems.

Remote control software has existed for years and programs such as Timbuktu Pro and VNC are almost as old as the AT&T jingle. The problem with those applications, though, is that you need to install a program to run them, configure it for access, and possibly configure your router and firewall to allow the program to pass through. These programs are not designed for the casual remote user because they require the person you are “reaching out to” to install and configure the software in advance. That’s great for consultants or helpdesks, but what if you just want to help a friend configure their email or help them do a mail merge?

MacHelpMate allows an easy download to provide remote assistance to your friends, among a laundry list of other great features to remotely fix a computer. It works great, but it’s designed for consultants and costs about $600 a year. For that price, have your friend fly you out to help. CoPilot, by Fog Creek Software, is unique because it requires a simple download in order to help a friend out and it costs $5.00 for a 24 hour “day pass”. Best of all, CoPilot allows your friend to pay for it. Your friend is already getting free advice, so make them pay the cost of a venti mocha in order to help you out. With gas prices the way they are today, it’s cheaper to help remotely than drive half way across town.

The software is a bit slow and depends on the speed of the Internet connection, but it really does work. I’ve tried it numerous times, both from Mac to Mac and Mac to PC. PC to PC allows the fastest connection and more features, though really don’t PC users need lots of help? All your friend needs to do is click on a link in an email. That will download the “host” application and you’ll need to download a “helper” application for your end. Double click the applications on both ends and you are magically in control of their computer. When done, you and your friend can trash the applications knowing that nobody can secretly get into your computer later. I particularly like this option, since almost any other remote control option requires you to leave software on your computr–which can expose your computer to threats by hackers.

For computer professionals, Copilot offers a monthly subscription option that starts at 200 minutes for $20.00 a month. They don’t lock you into a subscription either, you can change your mind later and either upgrade or downgrade your plan as your needs change. I wonder if they offer a cell phone plan? Darn, still have that jingle on my brain! Seriously though, this company sets the bar incredibly high for customer service. Check out the owner’s blog on customer service and Fog Creek’s hassle free return policy: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/customerservice.html

CoPilot is the perfect software to instantly help your friends and family remotely at little or no cost to you. Support professionals will love the fact you can save money with a subscription that doesn’t lock you into a yearly fee. Best of all, if it doesn’t work, they’ll refund your money.

Pros: Works instantly without a subscription or configuration at the remote end
Cons: Could be faster

Four out of Five Dog Cows

This Review also appears as a Click Here Technology Column, written by Dave Greenbaum

Have you ever bought something that says “one size fits all” and it fits? Yeah, me too. Something that attempts to appear to everyone in reality appeals to no one. This book was designated by Peachpit as “beginner/intermediate” but I found most of it too difficult for me as a budding photographer and those things I did learn from the book probably would have frustrated an intermediate user. When I think “beginner”, I want to be walked through the very basics. Schloss started the book expecting that you had a small arsenal of photography equipment. This book isn’t for someone who has a $300 digital camera, but someone who has a much more advanced digital camera, light meters, multiple lenses and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t understand.

This book is geared towards someone who already has a photography kit and wants to learn tips and tricks on how to travel with their equipment. For example, Schloss mentions you should ship your clothes to your destination and then carry your camera equipment on the plane. Clothes can easily be replaced, camera equipment can’t. This advice is not for someone that is bringing the family digital camera on a trip to Grand Canyon.

My major concern with the book is that if someone owns several thousand dollars of camera equipment, they probably wouldn’t be considered a beginning user. Maybe it’s just me, but I would not spend $2000 in equipment and then pick up a beginner’s book. I’d first learn how to use professional equipment and then buy an advanced book.

In spite of my complaints about the book, I found parts of it helpful. There were a few pages about composing a photo using a “grid” which I had read in “iPhoto: The Missing Manual.” Other tips regarding photographing individuals or sports events required you to have a quiver of lenses to choose from to get the right shot.

A nice feature of the book is that it was visually stunning. Every few pages had amazing pictures taken from around the world. These photographers clearly are masters of their craft and a advanced digital photographer will probably be reminded of how to set an f-stop or how much light to let in for a particular photograph. We beginners just like looking at pretty pictures!

This is not a beginner book and intermediate users will only benefit if they have a set of professional or at least “prosumer” camera equipment and lenses. That person isn’t me, so I found the book of very little help.

Pros: Pretty pictures
Cons: The pretty pictures require several thousand dollars worth of equipment.

Everytime stamp prices go up, people are on lookout for not just less expensive, but easier options for mailing. Businesses that make large mailings are particularly susceptible to mailing cost increases as those pennies really add up. Tack on charges of postage meter and your bottom line takes a big hit. Worse yet, postage meters still require you to create mailing labels and type addresses on envelopes. There is a better solution for small business and home users–printing real life postage at home.

Windows computers have a variety of options to print postage. Macintoshes have very few. The Postal Service lets you print some mailing labels via their website, but the website often is incompatible with the Mac and won’t print the things people use the most of: envelopes and stamps.

Endicia is the only software for the Mac currently that allows you to print labels, envelopes and stamps on your Mac. The USPS website allows labels, the Dymo label printer will print stamps and nothing but Endicia allows you to print labels, stamps and envelopes.

Endicia could rest on it’s laurels, realizing that you basically have no choice but to use their product However, Endicia is a great product in and of itself. Personally, before I used Endicia, I used Stamps.com on Windows. While the Windows Stamps.com was great it was…well, a Windows program and that says it in a nutshell.

Being your own post office requires a bit of paperwork. This isn’t like setting up a word processing program. You need to sign up with an Endicia account, fill out some online paperwork, give them a credit card to print postage, and then you actually download and install the software. It takes about 15 minutes to set up the paperwork and you have to have a Internet connection anytime you want to print stamps. The cost of the service is $15.95 per month or $174.95 a year, not including the one month free trial. You are not locked into a long term commitment when you pay the $15.95 a month. To print postage, you must keep money in your Endicia account. The money doesn’t expire so long as you are a subscriber, but you must contribute a minimum of $10 at any one time.

The software will print on standard envelopes at no additional charge, but to print stamps you need to purchase the paper from them. A pack of 125 stamps is $3.95 plus shipping. You can print one stamp at a time, a whole sheet of of 25 or anything in between. What the software does not allow you to do is print stamps for a particular amount. For example, I have some old 23-cent stamps I sued for a postcard mailing. I can’t print 16 cent stamps so that I can combine the two stamps to print a letter. The software generally only allows you to print postage in denominations commonly used for mailing. It’s an annoyance, but I suspect it has something to do with postal regulations.

Setting up printing addresses and postage on envelopes was a bit tricky. It was hard to get my printer (HP Laserjet 5m) to align right, but I had the same problem when I try to print envelopes in Word. Fortunately, you can run test prints and not be charged. If you do make an error, you sometimes have to ship the actual envelope back to the post office for credit. Again, that’s postal rules not Endicia. When printing labels for packages going Priority Mail or Parcel Post you get a discount on the tracking number…a savings of about a dollar.

The universal binary software was easy to use and conformed to key Mac user interface guidelines.. It integrates 100% with the OS X Address Book allowing you to print a envelope or label to anyone in the book. Users of Entourage or Palm will have to import their contacts into the OS X Address Book in order to find them within Endicia, though you could always cut and paste individual contacts from your alternative personal information manager. In addition, a search function is integrates into most functions of the program allowing you to easily find an address or determine when you mailed something.

In addition, the software can be programed to integrate with Filemaker Pro and is scriptable via Applescript or XML. Not being a programmer, I have no idea what that means, but it sure sounds good.

Due to the monthly cost, the program is not for an occasional home user. The target market is obviously an Ebay user or small businesses that do shipping every week. Because I run a computer consulting firm from my home being able to quickly send invoices, pay bills and send in rebate forms saves me money because it saves me time. I don’t understand why anyone would pay for a postage meter when this is so easy to use.

Endicia makes printing labels, envelopes and stamps as easy as printing your emails while taking advantage of the Mac user interface and features

Pros: Easy to use and works great, just like your Mac
Cons: Have to purchase blank stamps from Endicia, can’t print custom postage amounts

Four out of Five dogcows

5 out of 5 dog cows

Although I will be demonstrating Timbuktu, I will also be discussing what remote control software is in general and how it can be useful for you. Basically, if you have more then one Mac in your house, have friends or family members with Macs, or have a computer at work and at home, you probably could save time, stress and money with remote control software (and don’t almost all of use fall into at least one of those categories?)

In addition to Timbuktu Pro, there are numerous other remote control products that work with Macs. Below you can find links to all the various products. I’ll talk about many of these on Wednesday. After the meeting you can come back here rather then try to remember all those URLs.

Mac-Compatible Remote Control products

Timbuktu Pro
Desktop Transporter
SpyMe
AstroShare
CoPilot
MacHelpMate
Apple Remote Desktop
Chicken of the VNC (client)
Vine VNC Server

Some say lightening can never strike the same place twice. The Missing Manual series proves that wrong. David Pogue and the O’Reilly gang constantly hit the mark and spark creativity and knowledge in a variety of programs.

IPhoto 6 covers absolutely every aspect of digital photography on your Mac, leaving few stones unturned. In order to make sure you get the great photos you need and minimized the editing needed in iPhoto, Derrick Story and David Pogue make sure you buy the right digital camera for your needs and tells you the basics of lighting and composition. After reading that chapter, I looked at my own iPhoto library and understand why I liked certain shots and why others ended up on the digital darkroom floor.

After explaining how to buy a camera and create great photos, the authors take you through the steps of using iPhoto in logical order: importing, managing, outputting and of course backing up. More technical manuals need to do this. Instead of taking you through the features, they take you through the workflow.

The writing was typical of the series: clear, understandable with plenty of screen shots to explain the concepts. While I consider myself an expert on iPhoto, the book was full of subtle tips and tricks to shave hours off my digital photo management.

The strength of the book was definitely the extensive chapters on what to with your photos after they are in iPhoto. Photos are meant to be shared, not locked up in your hard drive. He went over not just the specifics of all the printing options such as photo books and calendars, but also using iMovie, iWeb, and iDVD to share the photos with the world.

The final chapters covered some more advanced options such as AppleScript and Automator. Unlike other Missing Manual books that simply point you to the website to download utilities, Pogue and Story explained some of these programs and how they can help you expand your iPhoto capabilities. The Appendix was definitely the icing on the cake handling practically every iPhoto error and it’s solution, as well as walking you through the basics of every iPhoto menu command and its implications.

My only complaint was somewhat weak coverage on desktop printing of photos. I always get confused about the way to feed the photo paper and how to configure settings to get the proper output. iPhoto, the printer’s software, the printer, and Mac OS X must all be in alignment to print properly. These days, I simply upload it to the drugstore website and print it there. Printing to services other than Apple’s wasn’t really covered either.

While iPhoto basics are simple and quick to learn, “iPhoto 6 the Missing Manual” helps you become the hands down master of digital photos on your Mac. Others will tremble in fear of your massive knowledge after reading this book cover to cover.

Pros: Covers every aspect of digital photography and makes everyone an iPhoto wiz.
Cons: Needed more coverage of desktop and third party printing of photos.

Five out of Five DogCows
5 out of 5 dog cows

First off, there was an extremely funny error that hopefully will be corrected later on. On page 11 in the book, under “Mouse and Keyboard Essentials” you find the opening statement of “This book gives you three kinds of instructions that require you to use the Mac’s Mouse.” Unfortunately, this was an early warning sign about the quality of the book (though “Windows Vista the Missing Manua”l has another funny Mac reference).

The most annoying problem with the book is the spacing of screen shots and their explanations. Most of the time, I found the screen shot a page before an explanation which made it extremely difficult to read the explanation and see what is being talked about because I had to flip pages back and forth. While it was a welcome breeze to have that page flipping, it was a waste of time and a example of poor editing.

In addition, while the Missing Manual clearly states which version of Vista has which features, this book gave no such indication as to whether the feature being explained would work in a particular version of Vista. While the book appears to assume you have Vista Premium, it mentions features that only the business versions include such as faxing. A novice user would be quite frustrated reading this book and wondering why they can’t find a feature. I can’t fathom why O’Reilly would include the version designations in the Missing Manual, but pull them from this version.

Another confusing aspect of the book were the “sidebar” type tips. While these tips were sometimes interesting, the placement often had no clear connection to the text being discussed. For example, while discussing the “Start Menu and Recent items” in Chapter 2 there is a “side bar” about the User Folder file structure. The side bars uses specifications and references explanations found in chapters 15-17. I think a novice user would quickly put the book down after being introduced to a concept that won’t be further explained for another 300 pages.

If one ignores the layout and flow of the book, the actual text of the book is helpful. The explanations that don’t reference screen shots are easy to understand and straightforward. Someone new to using Vista would have a firm grasp of the concepts and new features after reading the book (and figuring out on their own which version of Vista has those features). However, having read the Missing Manual version of the book, For Starters usually copies the explanation from the Missing Manual version.

O’Reilly really missed the mark in creating Windows Vista For Starters. My Business 101 class skills tell me they were trying to create a smaller and less expensive Windows Vista book to compete with the “Dummy” series. Unfortunately, they “dummied” the book to much and Windows Vista for Starters needs to repeat a grade or two before it deserves space on your bookshelf. Spend the extra $15 and get the Missing Manual version of the book.

Pros: Gives the reader a base level understanding of Vista

Cons: Extremely confusing for novice readers. Poor layout adds to the confusion. Could this be a subtle attempt to increase Mac sales by frustrating new Vista users?

2 out of five dog cows
5 out of 5 dog cows

The Book:
Final Cut Pro (FCP) is a complex swiss army knife of an edit program and can be very intimidating to a beginner. There seems to be way too many layers, windows and other sharp objects on which to cut yourself. But once you appreciate its potential, you will put imovie in your old cigar box of treasures and only bring it out to share with the grandkids.

This book guides you through the maze with agility and style. The author, Larry Jordan, is an Apple Certified Trainer who specializes in FCP and DVD Studio Pro. He is a veteran producer, director, and editor of corporate and network programs. He prides himself as a teacher and it shows in the more than 70 step-by-step Final Cut tutorials and fourteen quicktime movies. He has refined his teaching in his workshops and takes pride in presenting the information in a friendly, organized manner. Larry seems to be one of those tireless types. I’ll leave it at that. Just check out his site and see for yourself.

http://www.larryjordan.biz/

The book is part of a H.O.T. (Hands On Training) series presented by publisher lynda.com/books. The founder, Lynda Weinman, a web graphics and design veteran, wrote the very first industry book on web design, Designing Web Graphics, way back in 1995.

“The best tip in the book is that FCP gives you lots of different ways to accomplish the same task… just learn the ones that make you productive so you can forget about how the tool works and concentrate on telling your stories.”
Larry Jordan

The book’s chapters walk you through the entire process, from organizing and editing to outputting your project. The title page of each chapter shows a table of exercises and a summary of what you’ll learn. You follow along with each exercise with the FCP project files and media located on the companion DVD-ROM. Each chapter closes with a list of helpful keyboard shortcuts and a summary of what was covered.

Throughout the book are shaded boxes and pointers identifying features that are new to FCP 5, power tips, warnings, etc. The graphic design, layout, paper texture, etc., are all very pleasing and evoke the attention to detail found in every aspect of the book.

Also on the companion DVD are the fourteen movies of Larry talking us through various aspects FCP, including capturing media, filters and multi-clip editing. Each one is about fifteen minutes and all are helpful in grasping some of the more complex features of FCP. One of the movies I especially liked was Larry’s demonstration of slip/slide and ripple/roll edit features. His description helps differentiate the tools and describes when to use each.

Even though there are brief exercises on bringing files into Soundtrack Pro and LiveType, the 478 page book deals only with FCP not the other applications found in Final Cut Suite.

This book is for beginner and intermediate users of FCP. It provides a solid foundation and fills in a lot of holes if you’re self-taught. It is written as if you are attending one of Larry’s classes, very conversational and punctuated with his opinions and personal preferences. If you like his style, you’ll like the book.

I highly recommend Final Cut Pro 5 Hands-On Training to anyone wanting to learn Final Cut Pro.

PRO: Best book I’ve seen for beginning FCP training. A treasure.

CON: Who has time to go through it all, plus the movies. Just have to pace yourself.

Dog Cow rating: 5
5 out of 5 dog cows

By far, this is the most hands on and effective book on wireless networking I have read! The book was very logically organized by first training the reader on all the lingo such as the difference between an Airport Extreme and Airport Express and all the 802.11 alphabet soup. Once establishing that baseline with the reader, Miser then gives the reader all the potential options of how to setup a wireless Mac network and then explains each step with plenty of simple diagrams and pictures. Other books I read on this subject quickly lose the reader with complex and unnecessary options. For example, Miser doesn’t go into detail about “port mapping” which allows you to use create a web server “behind” an airport. If someone needs to set up a webserver, they probably don’t need help setting up a wireless network. This book covers the practical aspects of wireless networking the typical Mac user would face. If someone wanted complex, they’d probably be using a PC!

I was particularly impressed with his hints on how to have certain parts of your network secure, while realizing that it may not be worth the hassle of securing other parts. Heck the guy even asks you to email him if you have any questions about setting up your network (though to be fair, he didn’t say the advice would be free, but I suspect it is!). Having setup thousands of wireless networks for clients, I really think he’s covered everything an average user would face. His wireless network troubleshooting section should be licensed by every ISP! Too often, when a user calls tech support and tells them they have a Airport Base Station–tech support blows them off and tells them to get a Linksys or other brand they know. Miser covers it all in his troubleshooting section. In fact, after reading his section you can avoid calling tech support all together….just pick up his book.

To add the proverbial icing on the cake, Misner covers another technology that would fall under the terms of wireless: Bluetooth. Bluetooth almost always works, but every once in a blue moon (pardon the pun) things don’t always click. He covers almost every major bluetooth peripheral you’d connect to your Mac. He even covers how to sync your phone. Cell phone companies are notoriously bad about assisting customers syncing with Macs. They say to call Apple. Apple says to call the cell phone provider, and you’re left stuck having to manually put in phone numbers to your phone. Finally, you can get those pictures off your cell phone and into iPhoto with Miser’s help.

Realizing that people that use wireless technology probably travel, Miser includes a brief section on how to find wireless networks and how to safely connect to them over the road.

Overall, an outstanding book for any Mac user wanting to setup and enhance their wireless experience.

Pros: Covers every aspect of using Apple’s Airport products to set up a wireless network and most of his advice is applicable to 3rd party products

Cons: Would have like to seen coverage of Linksys and other popular wireless products

Link to book on Amazon

Five out of Five dog cows
5 out of 5 dog cows

Best Apple Hardware.

Not the iPhone. Here’s my rant about the iPhone. It’s Apple’s next Newton. What was the Newton. It was Apple’s Palm Pilot…before Palm Pilots were cool. It was way ahead of it’s time. The concept was great…the implementation was lousy. My first concern with the iPhone is price. $499 AND a two year contract. That’s outrageous price. For that price…I’ll carry around a cell phone AND iPod. Really, how hard is it to carry both around? Ok, there are times it’s nice to have both..but in those situations how practical is this.

Take working out, a very common place I see both. So now instead of an iPod on your arm and a nice little cell phone, you carry both. If you want to change songs…you have to take the iPhone out of the case, since it’s all finger recognition. Oh and if you want to make a phone call, you better be darn sure your fingers aren’t wet or you are wearing gloves, because it won’t work without a clear signal from your fingers. Can you imagine dialing in the bitter cold requiring you to use your fingers.

Best of all, think of this scenario. You are at the movies, kid’s recital, etc and you realize the phone is ringing. Instead of reaching into your pocket or purse and pressing that magic button to mute, you pull out the phone, prepare your fingers, and do the “two finger” thing to mute the phone. By the time you do, people are cursing your name and giving you that “tsk, tsk” look.

Speaking of that screen. Arrrgh. You thought the nano’s scratch? We all put our cell phones in the pocket. No big deal. Same with iPods. However, given the iPhone is ALL screen and REQUIRES the screen to use it…that is a disaster waiting to happen. Sure there will be 3rd party screen protectors, but those will obviously interfere with ease of use.

Worst of all is that it’s an Apple cell phone. We expect Apple products to be straightforward and easy to use. ANY cell phone service is lousy. When you can’t make a call Apple will blame Cingular and Cingular will blame Apple. Talk about 1 Infinite Loop

The iPhone, like the Newton, is solving a problem that doesn’t exist. I like the idea of a iPod phone, it’s the interface that scares me. Anyone you know complain, “my phone is difficult to dial.” Usually the complaint is: I can’t get service, I have a lousy contract, and I can’t figure out half the features on my phone. If Steve Jobs asked me (he didn’t), I would have made the following changes

1) Make the iPhone interface like an iPod. Use the “click wheel” idea. We are all familiar with that and can use it to get to contacts, calendars, etc. Nobody says the iPod is hard to use. The iPod interface is what makes it better than the Zune.

2) Use a “flip” feature so we can protect the screen. It would add a *tiny* amount of thickness. On that flip function, give us a keyboard and a keypad. Sure the “touch” feature is cool, but I need a better way of accessing it.

3) Reduce the price. $499 is too much for a phone with a contract. Work out a deal with us. Give us money off if we buy so much at the iTunes music store, or give us a rebate if we buy a Mac.

*My* winner for Apple hardware is the new Airport Extreme. The previous Airports cost way too much in comparison. It offered practically no features that a $50 Linksys router offered. First, it’s 802.11n–more reliable than 802.11g. Most 802.11n routers are betwen $75 and $100, so the gap in the price difference is less. The new extreme allows you to hookup multiple wired computers, something built into most routers. The BEST feature however is the USB port can be use to hook up a network hard drive. Want to easily share files between computers for backup purposes, hook your USB to the Extreme and “bon jour” takes care of all the configuration…even on a PC. Finally, the Extreme has parental controls built in that block the computer from being on the internet for certain times. Or a business to block wireless leechers after hours.

Practical always trumps cool in my book. That’s why it took me 8 years to replace my laptop.

Best Non-Apple Hardware:

Speck cases. Gives a whole new meaning to hardware. Why do I like these? A laptop case isn’t always practical or enough protection. New Macs have finishes that easily collect dust and scratches. Reviewing the many options at Macworld from such companies as Rhinoskin and Radtech. Speck cases are sold at Apple stores, so that gives me confidence. I use my laptop at coffee shops often and the tables are sometimes rather gross. I do NOT want the remains of someone’s biscotti clogging my Macbook. These cases are so logical, I’m not sure why nobody thought of this sooner. This was the first year I’ve actually seen something like this for a laptop and saw about 8 companies offering variations on Specks’s theme.

Best iPod Accessory:

Cordgo: A simple five dollar item that solves a real problem with cords getting tangled and caught. I’ve seen lots of cord winders, but all eventually get lost. This is the first one I see that doesn’t detach itself from the headphones. My previous device of choice, earpod will still protect my higher end headphones, but for working out, Cordgo is the bomb!

Remember, always practical over cool!

Best Apple software:

What software? Nothing was announced. No iWork ’07, no iLife ’07. Not even some silly software update just for the heck of it. Leopard is cool…but wasn’t announced at Macworld. We expected a new Finder interface at Macworld but it was lacking. For shame Apple, for shame. I had my bit torrent…I mean CREDIT CARD, ready for buying something. Guess Steve was too busy with the iPhone

Best Non-Apple software

Tie:
Jax: by Prosoft engineering. For those of us who don’t have a iPod phone, we want a way to expand our iPods usefulness. Jax is “widgets” for your iPod. It lets you sychronize movie schedules, RSS feeds, emails, youtube videos, etc. Essentially anything your browser can display can be put on your iPod. Wow. Talk about functional. Sign me up for the NFR! I’d put everything from my newsreader on it, all the local movies.

Another feature of Jax was the music maps. As a busy professional I don’t have time to discover new music. Similar to Amazon, Jax will tell me what artists bands share in common in hope I discover new music. It plays “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” with your music. Forget the NFR…let me buy it. I want it the day it comes out.

This program is cool and practical, so that’s two thumbs up in my book.

with

Protogo: Really this was the best for me, but it’s so specialized it can’t be best of show in this category. This program allows you to create “universal” style boot disks. This is the best tool I’ve ever seen for support people. In fact, its designed to make old iPods into easily bootable hard drives. Anyone that supports Mac needs this product!

No doubt Parallels is cool and revolutionary, however nothing major was introduced. It was simply their first Macworld. It’s probably the most innovative and exciting non-Apple program, but people already knew that.

Best Ad Campaign.

Depends on what you mean by ad campaign. Which vendor had something that “drew me in” to their booth. Which booth had the “buzz”. That prize goes to Speck. They had a balloon artist at their booth. Definitely drew me in!

For printed materials, techrestore announced they were giving away “free” Macbooks. The Macbooks were actually printed business cards that looked like a Macbook from the outside. Reminded me of this free Macbook scam

Best Chotzkie:

MacBak

Not only was there a nice T-shirt, but it was presented in a static bag. I also didn’t notice until I got home, their business card had keyboard shortcuts for various programs on the back.

Ok, Brian picked something practical and I picked something cool. I’m allowed to Think Different on occasion!

Best Seminar:

No answer. I didn’t go to any. However, I’ll ordering them on DVD and will report back

Conclusion:

In general, I liked it better than last year. There was about 20% less iPod cases, which is always a good thing. Really, how many different ways can you make a case? I liked the more practical stuff: instead of one or two backup companies, I recorded 10 different vendors selling Mac backup software and serviced. Nice. Macs need to be backed up! I liked seeing all the cases to protect your laptop instead of just the iPod. I didn’t like the noise level. Too much yelling and screaming this year. Felt too much like a circus with the “step right up” people at the booths. Bring me to your booth with a cool product, not your annoying voice. I didn’t like them splitting it up these year in two convention halls. It created more space, but I think attendance was way down at the smaller convention hall. And of course, I didn’t like the draconian and medieval requirements for press passes this year. I’d give the show a solid B+, but Apple in general got a C- for the show.

Until next year.

Hope you enjoyed it

However, you were probably also expecting iLife and iWork ’07 at Macworld, and Apple obviously missed the ship date on that. Rumor was iWork ’07 would have a spreadsheet component. Again, my analysis is that Steve Jobs pulled everyone off of their projects in order to have the iPhone done in time for the show.

Back to the reporting. Day 2 started out like every day when I’m in San Fransisco: Peet’s coffee. Peet’s is like Starbucks was 20 years ago A modest size regional chain that really treats people right. The coffee generally has a deeper roast than the Starbucks coffeee. I’ve limited myself to one cup of coffee a day: I just don’t say how big that cup is!

Also, like every day in SF, you take the Muni to Powell station. They have an announcement system in a woman’s voice that eventually gets permanently etched in your brain: “1 Car Inbound Embaracdero in 2 minutes.” However, it’s nice that there are both audio and visual indicators of when the next train will be and where it is going.

I got there 1/2 an hour early and finished version 4.1 post in the press room. In the press room, you hear all these different accents from all over the world. The guy next to me talking way too loud on his cell phone was saying you could see his head at one point during the keynote presentation . Geez. You can see my head in the Sandra Bullock movie The Net. That movie was filmed at the 1995 Macworld Expo.

I hit the ground running on the show floor when it opened at 11am. Speaking of hitting the ground, I and others noticed this year that the floor had lots of static. People were shocking themselves all the time. Kinda scary with all the computer equipment! I first took pictures of the stuff from yesterday I missed. I’m including that is the 4.1a version of my postings.

I then stopped right where I left off on Thursday…at the Intego booth. Their booth is the same every year: a castle. I’m sure it’s a little bit of the fact they are from the UK and the fact that a castle is a symbol of protection and power. They introduced a protection product that protects both your Mac and your boot camp/parallels Windows side at the same time. Ok, technically they are licensing a PC product and including it in the box, but still an innovative concept.

In fact, most agree that the most popular booth for it’s size was the Parallels area. They were absolutely overwhelmed by the response they got, especially since this was their first year at Macworld. Parallels for those that do not know, is the product that allows you to easily run PC software on your Mac. There was another product at Macworld that did something similiar to Parallels called VMware. They currently don’t have a shipping product for the Mac, but just a test .
version.

What is ironic is that this is also the first time VMware was there. They were bought by EMC two years ago. EMC owns Dantz, the maker of Retrospect. Remember yesterday when I said whom was missing from Macworld? I completely overlooked Retrospect. They have been there so many years, I just assumed they’d be there. Wow, talk about a gap in the Mac market. Mike noticed that means no network enabled backup software. Ouch.

I figured something was up with EMC/Dantz/Retrospect, when this press release came across my desk that stated Other World Computing was dropping Retrospect, and choosing Prosoft Engineering’s Data Backup to include with their drives. This was a big deal. OWC is one of the biggest resellers of external hard drives in the Mac market and for them to drop their relationship with Retrospect is big. It’s probably been at least 5-10 years Retrospect has been included with OWC drives.

Prosoft has always been great to the user group. They had no new shipping products at the show, but will have a new version of Data Backup designed for Intel based Macs as well as a program that acts like widgets for your iPod called Jax. I’ll honestly say that Jennifer Bell, their PR person, is about the nicest rep I’ve dealt with. They’ve got their act together, which is good for a company that protects and recover data.

However, the company that impressed me the most was Drivesavers. First their booth is cool. Each year they’ll show off computers which they’ve recovered data from as well as plaster their booth with thank you’s from famous customers that don’t bat an eye at data recovery that cost thousands of dollars. The reseller rep saw my name tag and immediately said, “How’s your little dog. Isn’t she a beagle.”. WOW, Tova is actually a Jack Russell beagle mix, but of the thousands of websites she views as a reseller rep, she remembers a detail like that! They have an amazing reseller program that gives both the reseller and the client a deal. If you go through a reseller, Drive Savers waives their $200 estimate fee. If you ever need data recovery services, contact me and I’ll give you my reseller code so you can save some money. Any commission I get, I’ll donate to the LAUG.

While Drivesavers had the coolest Mac that had been repaired, the coolest modified Mac was a toss up. Other World Computing had modified a Mac to actually make a Macbook into a tablet based Mac with a touchscreen called the ModBook. It won best of show. I can see some very practical uses of this product. Tablet computing allows you to use your screen to “write” on, was going to be the hot thing in computers a few years ago on the PC side. It never really caught on because people got use to their keyboards, at least on the PC side. It’s a risky move by OWC, but has a greater chance of success because so many Mac people are artists and appreciate using a stylus to modify something rather than a mouse.

Other “macmods” were the TechRestore booth. They repair Macs and iPods and are a competitor to our local friends at Macresq, so I don’t want to give these TechRestore people too much space! They did have a cool business card that looked just like a little Macbook Pro.

For people “serious” about making their Mac look cool, MacMod had a booth there of people showing off how they modified their Mac. Wow. Their “unofficial” slogan is “Pimp my Mac.” They have to be the next generation of the human race because as far as I know you either have technology skills or practical skills not both. Since when does a computer geek know how to use ….. geez I can’t even think of the names of the tools they use. Moving on to areas I feel more comfortable in.

Backups. Protecting your Mac was definitely the theme of this show. Maxtor had their little kiosk things around they show, but it was more than just backup hard drives provided by places like Maxtor and LaCie. Prosoft had their Data Backup software and Apple’s new Airport extreme will integrate with Leopard to provide backup via USB external hard drives. Many companies at the show wanted to make your backups easy and effortless. The best “swag” presentation award has to go to MacBak They provided a shirt, business card and stickers in a nice static bag. They claim to be the backup service for graphic artists. They work with extremely large files sizes and claim to actively monitor their “logs” and will contact you if something didn’t backup right. That’s amazing customer service. I don’t think the average Mac user needs that level of protection, but graphic professionals that work with large files and have constant deadlines could sure use something like that. They’ll definitely be included in an upcoming LAUG meeting.

Another program at the show for backups was Crashplan. Their program allows you to backup your computer to any other computer. The salesperson gave the scenario of backing up your home computer to work, or you and a buddy backing up each others computers. He told me that his program is the “perfect balance”. He said that this program provides offsite backups without monthly fees. Also, with this program, you don’t have to wait for the disks to be shipped to you during a disaster. If you backed up to work, you go to work and then do a restore. VERY intriguing idea. I was given a test copy of their program, so I’ll report back to you how well it worked. I have high hopes for it.

Of course, like every year, there were the ubiquitous iPod cases and accessories. Talking with vendors this year, they were more focused on style than function of these cases. I won’t mention names, but one vendor actually said to me “our protection products don’t cause cancer” Whatever! I didn’t spend much time at the accessory booths. You’ve seen one iPod case, you’ve seen them all. I did see some unique ones though, such as these earbud holders and of course the iToilet. One company made a portable boombox like device for the iPod that seemed to work pretty well, however I’m not an audiophile.

Quite a few companies were making bluetooth wireless headphones such as etynomic and Logitech. All sounded good to me, but what do I know! Let’s also not forget competing products that let you look like Geordi Leforge while watching your iPod. Neither the one from Ezgear or Myvo worked very well for me. If I wore my glasses, they didn’t fit correctly and if I took the glasses off, I couldn’t see the screen. Cool theory that missed it ALL in implementation, at least for me.

Besides protecting your iPod, companies were interested in protecting your laptop as well. protector causes your Mac to heat up a bit more. Speck is the only one that sells their products at the Apple store and thus has their blessing. The rep claims it causes the Mac to run “slightly hotter”. They promise to send me a demo. Their cases were made from plastic, but there were ones made of vinyl, leather, and about every product under the sun. The theory is not everyone wants a bulky bag to protect their Mac and want to sacrifice a bit of protection for convenience and ease of use.

Don’t worry though, there were plenty of traditional style bags from such companies as Targus. Everyone claimed however to have the “best” case. Since I’m in the market for a new case I listened closely. The laptop case market generally divides between the messenger bag style and the backpack style, though there are some that do both. STM sells their bags at the Apple store, so they have Apple’s unofficial endorsement. Crumpler wants my business because they are cool and hip. They had the most comfortable booth, with comfortable bean bag chairs and some of the most innovative marketing materials such as a “catalogue” that doubled as postcards. The most promising contender however is the BPB Bags. Not only is it a good bag,but their slogan is “what’s on yo bumm” Gotta love a company like that. How will I eventually decide between these great bags. The one that sends me a free sample of course. :-) Hey, some companies recognize the value of “buzz” and want to see cool people like me using their products. I’m just kidding about the free bag…maybe.

Other products that sparked my interest were two companies: Flying Chao and Pzizz that write software that generate MP3s you can listen to to help you sleep. Could work..or could be a total waste. We shall see I’ll definitely write an article on these programs for the Topeka Cap Journal (did you catch my article yesterday?) and let a therapist help me evaluate it. Remember yesterday I mentioned a word processor optimized for foreign language? Well there was another one there this year called Mellel. They gave me an eval copy and a T-shirt and claims there program “never crashes.” We shall see. I definitely see an upcoming LAUG meeting to include alternative word processors and have a showdown between such programs as Mellel, Nisus writer, BBedit, etc.

Smile on my Mac made me smile because they are very interested in working with User Groups. They showed me their product “Browseback” and my first reaction was “too bad you can’t password protect the history.” A engineer overheard and said “That’s an amazing idea..give this guy a free copy.” So in the next version, look for me in the credits!

Final category of things are programs that I have no immediate interest in, but would like to evaluate for the future. Most of these were smaller booths in the Apple Developers area. The person working the booth was not just the programmer, but the marketing director and the CEO–in other words a small business. Finally there were as PDF conversion programs by Recosoft that will convert a PDF to editable format for Office, Appleworks, and even Adobe Indesign. Good theory, but how well it works will really be the question.

Oh and speaking of Adobe products I asked when the funeral for Freehand was and was given the official response of “No Comment”. Next version of Freehand “No Comment.” Will Freehand be designed for Intel Macs “No Comment.” Of course, as I was chatting some guy saw my media badge and started complaining about Freehand. I was polite and then eventually picked up my phone and pretended. to take a call. Arrrgh.

Notice no mention of the Apple booth. I did stop by and see the iPhone. Notice the rather large man protecting it. Large booths like Apple, Quark, and Filemaker don’t really have much to show unique to Macworld. They basically hire people to walk you through slide presentations that can easily be downloaded via the website. What’s the point of going to their booth? They don’t have programmers or product developers there, opting for talking heads that put an attractive face and voice to a press release. Incidentally, that’s why you’ll NEVER see me at the Keynote Presentation. Why wait inline for 4-6 hours to hear something live that you can download a few hours later? Sure, there is the excitement factor, and Brian tells me it’s just like a Chiefs game. I almost never attend live sporting events, opting for the comfort of home or a bar. I’ll pretty much always choose practical over coolness which is why I’m not the least bit excited about the iPhone.

At 3:59 PST, I returned to the Netopia booth to eat dinner with the crew. The show closes at 4:00pm with a round off applause to the exhibitors. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. I finished the show with exactly 1 minute to spare. Perfect timing. Of course, I had to skip lunch on Friday in order to do it. Totally exhausting, but I learned so much and I’m happy I was able to share it with you all.

Interesting day for sure. It started out with a L O N G line at the Midwest desk to check in. I thought that was strange. Then I noticed they all seemed to be wearing KU stuff. Ok, granted they won last night and there are lots of fans. But so many…all at once. Well, it was all the KU Basketball people. If I were a fan, I would have not only recognized that fact, but they were going to Orlando.

My flight was delayed on the ground for 1/2 an hour because apparently they hit a bunch of birds on decent into KC and the plane needed to be checked and the “roadkill” removed. Do they call it road kill when it hits a plane. Other reason, while the flight was not oversold..it was overweight! They eventually had to give away 4 round trip tickets before they’d leave the flight. I did get my cookies though.
Got in a few episodes of People’s Court I pulled off the Tivo.

Arrived at Moscone about 20 minutes later in the cab. $38, plus a tip. Took him five minute to process my credit card. Isn’t the credit card supposed to make it quicker. He had to write it out by hand using a 1980′s Bartizan thingee that makes the imprint of the card.

I go up to the “Media Pre-Registration” and the pivotal moment, like in a TV show when the music starts and they break for commercial. I give them my name and I get my media badge. No problems. Yeah. Wow, things are going great!

I meet Mike at the Netopia booth to drop off my stuff, and get into the “zone.” Get my shopping bag out, arm myself with a pack of business cards and away I go walking the show.

This year it was split across two exhibit halls. That fit more people, but I suspect many did not go into the second exhibit hall. However, because of that, rent was lower in that hall which allowed for more exhibitors.

My initial impression was the word “functional.” Nothing stood out as gee-whiz (besides the iPhone–more on that later). However, everything was very practical this year. More backup hardware and software. In fact, Maxtor had a series of kiosks showing what people loose on their hard drives. Why no pictures? Remember that list from yesterday? Did you notice there wasn’t a compact flash reader. Yup. Pictures tomorrow. Not as much “cute” stuff, sure there were cute iPod holders (see picture tomorrow), but I was impressed with the amount of functional cases for your laptop and other items to protect your computer. I think the market realizes that a Mac is *not* an iPod accessory, but a legitimate tool in it’s own right. Most of the time I was saying “That’s a good idea.” Not wow, not oh my gosh, but “good.” Last year I’d say about 50% of the booths were iPod related. This time…maybe 25-30%.

Booths were generally smaller. The standard players all had huge booths: Apple, Filemaker, Adobe, Quark. Microsoft had a smaller booth this year. They were showing off Office 2008. The one big player I noticed that was missing this year was Kodak. Nikon had a bigger booth this year and HP was MUCH bigger than years past. Word on the street is Kodak has annoyed the Mac world. They simply don’t want to devote the resources.

I started in the smaller side, as I call the “low rent district”. They aren’t really booths on those sides, but one person kiosks. It’s annoying because you’ve got to wait a while before you can talk to the one person. That side has some very specialized applications. For example they had “NI M Series – Isolated Multifunction DAQ
16-Bit, 250 kS/s, ±20 mA Analog Inputs, 24 V DIO, Isolation“. Not sure what it does,but sound impressive, doesn’t it. Ever year I visit Nisus Writer, which is still the best multi-lingual word processor. Its’ a great product for people that might need to use foreign alphabets, especially ones that go from right to left. The “company” is essentially a Rabbi that couldn’t find a good program to write Hebrew so he had one written.

Software developers come from all over the world. I spoke with a company from Ukraine, quite a few from Germany, the UK, and Australia. Lots of accents.

I made it about 1/3 of the way through the main hall. Each booth that I’d have remote interest in I say “Hi do you have a press pack or a PR rep.” It’s interesting. Sometimes I get people saying “Ummm, what’s a press pack.” That usually means the person working for the booth doesn’t work from the company. There are people in the world that make a living of working trade shows for products and companies they know nothing about. Hired guns. In the 90′s we’d call them “booth babes”. Usually if the people working the booth were rather…um….let’s just say “stereotypically attractive”, you know they don’t know anything about the product and are just there to get lonely computer geeks to go to the booth.

Other times, they hand you an impressive kit, free samples and a demo. You’ll be seeing lots of newsletter postings! What was generally lacking is free giveaways. A distinctive lack of pens, coozies, and mousepads. T-shirts, the Geek currency, were profoundly in short supply.

One thing you’ll hate if you ever go to the show are the annoying people sticking out their arm in front of you to hand out literature. How rude! More than just rude, it interrupts the flow of traffic.

Most impressive thing I’ve seen so far is the Cordgo: an easy way to manage headphone and other cords. Ok, it’s not the iPhone, but I’m Mr. Practical. I look for things that make things easier for me. They are only $5.00 and I’m seriously thinking of giving them away to clients. So far most of the other things I’ve seen are simply new versions of the same programs with slightly new features and Universal code.

Obviously the most unimpressive thing is Apple’s booth. First year I can remember not a SINGLE new thing you can buy at the show. iPhone will be out in June, the Apple TV in February, and the Airport in February as well. My 2-bit analysis: Steve pushed getting the iPhone out so hard that the other products took a backseat. I think he’ll wait until either Vista comes out or if there is bad Apple stock news. They want to keep their names in a positive light for the next few months…so why announce everything all at once? In addition, would anyone listen to anything but an iPhone press release. Apple could have announced they cured cancer, created peace in the Middle East, and bought Microsoft…and all people would be interested in would be the iPhone. Probably a smart move by Apple to wait for announcements of other products.

For Friday, I’ll really try and get some great pictures of the interesting products, and then I’ll give you an overview of the show. I’m very methodical about this: start at one end and work your way to the other. I timed it the past few years and I can generally do the show in about 10-11 hours. I arrived at 1pm on Thursday, which left me five hours for Thursday. Show hours on Friday are 10am to 4pm, so I should be ok timewise. However, I will miss at least one important booth. Always happens. I’ll chat with people who went to the show and they’ll say “Did you see…” and I’ll say “Oh now, how could I have missed that”.

Robin Williams is truly the queen of user instruction. She takes the hard concepts and makes them accessible to novices. She’s no relation to the actor Robin Williams of course, who has played a queen in the past!

“Podcasting and Blogging with GarageBand and iWeb” is a perfect guide for someone curious about blogging and podcasting. The book requires the reader to have a .Mac account and own iLife 06. Without these two essential components, the book is of almost no use. If you are able to type an email, then you’ll be able to blog and podcast after reading this short book.

Unlike a lot of technical books that explain a dizzying array of options, Robin makes the tasks easy and straightforward using the tools most every Mac comes with. This is not a reference guide that gives you tips and tricks. You’ll find nothing in this book about using Blogger or WordPress nor will there be advice on which type of mic to use for a podcast. She uses strictly iLife ’06 and .Mac. This is a step by step how to guide for someone who has never used a Mac or blogged before can be up and going within less than an hour.

Typical of Robin William’s books, she assumes no prior knowledge of anything but Macintosh basics such as moving the cursor and opening applications. Each step contains a screen shot of exactly what to expect with outstanding layout and flow. Some readers will complain that she doesn’t give the reader enough options as to how to create their podcast or blog. However, the goal of the book is to get the reader to create a blog or podcast as quickly and easily as possible. Once the reader feels they want more, then at that point they should buy an intermediate book. If someone has already created a podcast or blog before, then they probably don’t need this book.

Overall, a great book for people curious about trying to create their own podcast and/or blog using software that comes with most newer Macs

Pros: Extremely easy to understand, requires no prior knowledge
Cons: Tied to iLife ’06 and .Mac, offers few tips if you aren’t using those told

4 out of 5 dog cows

You know how there are some actors whom you can trust re part of a great movie. If they are in it, you know it’s good. Take Tom Hanks: practically anything he is involved in tends to be a great movie (expect of course for “Joe and the Volcano”). David Pogue and the Missing Manual series are the Tom Hanks of the technical publishing world. Even their mediocre stuff rises head and shoulders among the competition. “iPod & iTunes” is no exception to the long string of quality and informative manuals.

In particular, I was impressed with the flow of the book. Too often new iPod users feel they have to buy music from the iTunes Music Store to use their iPod and directly bypass their legal CD collection. Biersdorefer doesn’t introduce the iTunes music store until chapter 7. He logically starts with the iPod itself and the proper care and maintenance thereof, making sure new users can properly use and understand their iPod before they even hook it up to the computer. The book then moves from the iPod hardware to installing the software, adding songs, photos, and videos. After the user understand all that he then introduced the music store along with advanced concepts like using the iPod as an external hard drive. Finally, he introduces basic and advanced troubleshooting. Other books I’ve read on iPods organize their concepts based on themes such as hardware and software, rather than the actual flow of how a user might use their iPod. While you can easily pick up any chapter and learn something, beginner iPod users would be best serviced starting at, well, the beginning (how’s that for straightforward logic?).

Throughout the book, Biersdorefer uses extensive pictures and screen shots to illustrate the concepts described. I’m always impressed when an author does this, because not everyone likes to sit in front of a computer learning something. Good visuals help a reader learn a concept while not sitting at the computer. In addition, his explanations are clear and easily understandable without requiring knowledge of technical jargon.

Biersdorefer also included just about every iPod tip and trick I know such as all the idiosyncrasies of photo formats the iPod can display and how to put DVDs on iPods. I honestly can’t think of a single iPod concept the beginner or intermediate iPod user needs to know that isn’t covered in this book. While I consider myself an iPod expert, I still learned a thing or two and would recommend this to basic users as a book to read cover to cover to understand how to use an iPod. Intermediate users can use this manual as a reference for tools or procedures they don’t often do and don’t want to rely on the whim of internet searches. For example, I know I can use my iPod to do iPod presentations but I probably won’t remember how to do it until my new presentation. Biersdorefer covers the topic extensively so all I have to do is pick up his book. The only iPod concepts this book doesn’t cover is advanced tinkering such as installing Linux or how to boot your Mac off of it.

In general, this is a impressive book for the beginner that wants to know everything their iPod can do and a great reference manual for advanced users.

Pros: Covers it all in straightforward easy to understand language accessible to beginners without talking down to experts.

Cons: iPod not included. Waaah.

5 out of 5 dog cows

With blinding speed, companies upgrade their technology products and this holiday season will find lots of consumers with new computers, MP3 players, and printers. The hidden side effect of all this progress is tons of electronic waste. E-Waste consists of working monitors, computers, and printers that get stuck in the closet, basement, or garage until you move or decide to do spring cleaning and drag the item to the curb.

Fortunately in Lawrence, when e-waste is taken to the curb, it tends to disappear before the garbage trucks come to dump it in a landfill. A landfill is about the worst place computing technologies can go. E-waste contains lead, mercury, cadmium and other hazardous materials that affect the water we drink and the land we farm.

Before putting your e-waste to the curb, try to find a place to donate it. Lawrence is both cursed and blessed with a glut of good working computers. In Lawrence, most organizations usually won’t accept computers older than three to five years nor will they accept Macintoshes, though such computers can surf the internet and word process. To be fair, many organizations get many computers and don’t always have the IT resources to utilize donations. If you get “no” the first time, try calling a few weeks later as needs may have changed. Obviously ,reuse is not only a worthy goal but often leads to a tax deduction

If you can’t donate your e-waste, you might contact local, regional ,or national recycling companies. These places range from above board, noble and ethical to the downright sleazy. The sleazy operations charge you a small sum of money, they take what can be used to resell it for a profit and then take the left over and put it in a landfill. Ironically, the landfill might be the safest for the items as the alternative can actually be worse. Some “recyclers” take e-waste and use third-world labor to remove the valuable metals with techniques that are both dangerous to humans and the environment. These operations make sneaker sweatshops look like a walk in the park, pardon the pun. In fact, the Basel Action Network, www.ban.org, found computers from the Kansas Department of Aging in Lagos, Nigeria as well as various confidential data on donated hard drives .

To make sure your recycled computers end up in the right place, Bob Akers, Marketing Director of Surplus Exchange, www.surplusexchange.org, recommends asking five questions: 1)What happens to the items turned in to recycle?, 2)Are any retired electronics sent overseas?, 3)Can the recycling center offer a certificate of destruction?, 4) Do you have a reuse program? If so, how is it structured? 5) Are you approved by the EPA or KDHE? – Do you have letters of support on file? Non-profit recycling organizations like The Surplus Exchange are able to give you a potential tax deduction if they are able to use the equipment you donate. Given their civic mentality, they realize the value of older equipment and use older equipment to help non-profit organizations.

Even though manufacturers push consumers to buy new computers, they often ignore the impact to the environment. States such as California, Arkansas, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota have e-waste laws on the books and Washington currently has pending legislation. Seeing the trend of moving to reduce e waste, companies like Dell and Apple will take your old computer back at no charge (HP charges a fee), hopefully to be recycled. On the manufacturing side, organizations like Greenpeace are campaigning to reduce the hazardous materials used in electronics. In fact, Greenpeace has created an Apple parody site at www.greenpeace.org/apple to encourage Apple to be more “green”.

If you have trouble ecologically disposing of your computing technology don’t rule out simply giving it away on online forums such as Larryville’s swapmeet (www.larryville.com), free classified ads online (craigslist.org) and in print (ljworld.com), and Freecycle (www.lifeinlawrence.com). Free computers go quickly on these forums, working or not. Computer hobbyists love to take a crack at fixing computers.

However you choose to get rid of your e-waste, be careful of any data that is contained on the system. Items such as hard drives, PDAs, and cell phones need to be completely erased of data. If you can’t securely erase the item, work with a recycler that will. If your computer won’t boot and thus you can’t erase the hard drive, remove the hard drive and save it as a backup or have a friend completely destroy it.

Whether you decide to donate your compute, recycle, or simply give it away, you can help prevent e-waste from piling up and damaging the environment.

So the next time you look at that stack of computers in the basement or in the office closet, think about the environmental impact of those units and what you can do to make sure the e-waste doesn’t end up back in our drinking water.

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I had really high hopes for this book. I consider myself a pretty smart Mac tech, but Unix was the one thing that really scared me about OS X. To fix some esoteric problem, I’d have to follow some Unix recipe and it always annoyed me I didn’t understand what I was typing. O’Relly books are well known not just for the animals on the cover, but excellent explanations of very technical concepts.

After reading Taylor’s book, I felt better, but not by much. Most readers can easily understand the basic Unix file structure commands, but towards the middle of the book he inaccurately assumed that his readers could also quickly understand some of the advanced concepts. Towards the end of the book I was left scratching my head. We went from move a file here and there to commands that were taking up multiple lines. Arrrgh!

The critical flaw in the book was a lack of exercises and real world examples. When I want to learn something, I don’t just want to be told. Involve me and test my knowledge. Some of the more difficult concepts covered in the book would have been enhanced with numerous real world examples, each building on the other. Things moved way too fast and made it easy to get lost.

The book was an excellent overview of Unix for the Macintosh and perfect for someone to decide whether to pursue further learning. “Introduction to Unix” instead of “Learning Unix” would have been a better title. After reading the book, I was reminded of speed dating where you meet 20 people for five minutes each and decide whether you want to go out with them or not. After reading the book I have enough familiarity with Unix that I can understand basic commands and how they relate to each other. I clearly want to go out on another date but any type of wedding bells are way in the distance.

PROS: Excellent overview of Unix for the Macintosh
CONS: Doesn’t leave you with enough practical understanding

3 out of 5 dog cows

Andrew Shalat deserves quite a bit of credit for tweaking lots of performance out of the basic applications that come with most Macs. Who would of thought you could do basic design in TextEdit? He earns the title of MacGyver of the Mac Design world. While I found his writing rather cheesy (he pretends the reader is stranded on a desert island and then starts a fruit import/export business), he teaches the reader how to make basic flyers, business cards, web pages, movies , soundtracks and DVDs. The target audience for this book is the Grandma or little league coach who wants to make some basic yet professional publicity materials for their organization.

This is not a tutorial about iLIie or iWork, this book is strictly project focused. MacDesign out of the box requires no previous knowledge of any of these programs. Statler walks you through the principles step by step with great screen pictures of any confusing steps. He also explains the design principles of what you are doing, so you can apply them to your individual projects. After reading the book, I feel much more comfortable using the basic Mac software to create a nice identity for any organization–however all my designer friends will still have a job for sure.

Pros: Excellent explanation on how to use the iLife and iWork suite to create flyers, business cards, web pages, and movies. Great book for someone delegated publicity duties for any organizations.
Cons: A bit cutesy. I’d prefer a straightforward explanation than an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek approach. Not everyone has iWork preinstalled on their Mac

To purchase this book on Amazon and earn some money for the LAUG, click here

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