important notice

November 2006
IMPORTANT NOTICE
ON LAST PAGE !!!
New MaUsE Meeting Hours Posted
Vice President & Resident Mac Genius
Aaron Vegh: Email aaron@vegh.ca
Apple Ambassador Hm: (905) 983-9205 Orono
Bruce Cameron Email: rbcameron@rogers.com
Treasurer and Grammarian: Hm: 905-404-0405
John Kettle Email : hjke@pteron.org
Publicity Director and Jolly Good Fellow
Jim Danabie
Logistics and Moral Officer: Chris Greaves
Email: cgreaves@i-zoom.net
Secretary Email: Stan Wild
Halston.Wild@gmail.com
MaUsE DoubleClick Newsletter Editor (and author of
everything not directly attributed to an accomplice):
Michael Shaw: wazooster@gmail.com
Submissions from MaUsE Club members are always welcome. Send them to me at <wazooster@gmail.com> if there
are files or pictures attached. I have never refused a submission yet. There is always room for another piece on ANY
Mac-related topic and Iʼll make room if there isnʼt. I would
like your submissions. But I wonʼt beg. Apple, Macintosh,
and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.,
registered in the U.S. and other countries.
The next meeting
will be held at the
new Whitby Public
Library in Whitby,
Ontario, at 7:30 on
Nov. 22nd, 2006
!!!!!!!!
Henry Street
New Whitby
Public
Library
The MaUsE (Macintosh Users East) is an independent user
group and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise
approved by Apple Computer, Inc.
King Street
Free Parking
Nebulous New Executives at Large:
Marcel Dufresne
Guy Lafontaine
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
208 Winona Avenue, Oshawa, Ontario, L1G 3H5
MaUsE Message Line: 905-433-0777
See DoubleClick on the web at:
www.mause.ca
Notice
The MaUsE Meeting in November will be held
on the 22nd at 7:30 P.M. in Whitby, Ontario, at
the New Whitby Public Library on the corner of
Henry Street and Dundas Street (Highway #2).
Henry Street is four streets west of the four
corners in Whitby and FREE parking is available
after 6:00 P.M. just south of the nearby Scotia
Bank. Be there or be square.
(Highway #2)
Please feel free to contact any of the following individuals if you have comments or questions relating to Macintosh Users East or Macintosh computing in general.
What you are looking at is the November 2006 edition of
the DoubleClick monthly newsletter from the Macintosh Users East, (MaUsE), a motley collection of old and new Mac
users who reside in Southern Ontario with a motley collection of old and new Macintosh computers. Until recently this
newsletter was created by me, Michael Shaw, DoubleClick
Editor, on my Sonnet-powered personal antique PCI Macs.
I used mostly a stock Daystar Genesis MP 800+ Macintosh
clone, and a Sonnet-powered G4 Daystar Genesis MP 800+
Macintosh clone. This issue, however, was created on a Mercury Extreme powered 1.4 GHz G4 Power Macintosh AGP
Graphics tower, (with our thanks to OWC), and a 1 GHz G4
iBook. A Kodak DX7590 is used for all pictures. Everything
not specifically attributed to someone else can be blamed on
me. Back issues can be downloaded from the <www.mause.
ca> website for a laugh.
Scotia
Bank
Center Street
Dundas Street West
Executive Contact List
Alsoft DiskWarrior
In last month’s software review of ProSoft’s Data
Rescue II I mentioned DiskWarrior in passing. I
said, “What Alsoft DiskWarrior is to directory-repair, Data Rescue II is to salvaging missing files
off a failing hard drive.” High praise, indeed. Comparing any program favourably to DiskWarrior is
to say that it is the absolutely best utility in its field.
DiskWarrior has proven itself as a recognised necessity and award-winning emergency disk repair
utility. In fact DiskWarrior is the winner of more
top awards than any disk utility ever, and now that
Nortons Utilities has stopped supporting any Mac
OS after OS 9.1, DiskWarrior should be part of every Mac owners utility pack.
I still have a copy of DiskWarrior v2.1 in my utilities binder for pre-OSX systems and can’t tell you
how many times I have blessed Alsoft for making
it the best utility of its type. I have included here a
picture of the version 2.1 CD window and if you
look closely you’ll see that there is a copy of the
DiskWarrior application, an installer, and no less
than THREE functional System Folders. The utility came on a bootable CD that had Mac OS9.1,
Mac OS8.1 and Mac OS7.6.1, and instructions
for use with Mac OSX Public Beta. That covers a
lot of Macintosh models. DiskWarrior 2.1 worked
with everything from my old 68040 Quadra right
up to Caro’s DV SE G3 iMac.
There are other utilities capable of repairing directory damage but Alsoft DiskWarrior is the poundfor-pound champion. It draws a graph of your disk
directory to let you know if it needs to be rebuilt. If
you rebuild the directory, a task that takes a bit of
time on a system disk, all potential damage disappears because DiskWarrior discards the old directory and replaces it with a new one. And its very
easy to use: If you have DiskWarrior handy, just
start up your Mac from the DiskWarrior CD. Click
on the Directory button, then click on Graph to see
the graphic and click on Rebuild to go ahead with
directory rebuilding. Doing this once a month or
every other month should be enough.
DiskWarrior is not a disk repair program in the
conventional sense. It does not attempt to solve
all of the possible problems that can occur with a
disk. It specializes in eliminating directory errors.
Directory errors are the most common problems
Mac OS users have with their disks. Disk-Warrior
rebuilds your disk directories using data recovered
from the original directory, thus making them error-free, eliminating any problems the errors would
have caused, and recovering lost files. It fixes any
problem with master directory blocks and alternate
master directory blocks (HFS), volume headers
and alternate volume headers (HFS Plus), volume
bit maps, catalog trees, and extents trees. The first
thing DiskWarrior checks is your directory data,
and that’s what it uses to create a replacement directory. The directory is the critical
file on each hard drive that keeps track of
how many files and folders you have on
the drive and exactly where they are. If this
data becomes corrupted and the directory
is no longer an accurate record of contents,
you have trouble. The disk may not mount
or data may become inaccessible. When
this happens, DiskWarrior gathers all the
available information about files and folders on the volume; it then uses that information to create a replacement directory
based on the brand-new set of corrected
directory data. DiskWarrior compares the
original volume to the freshly created directory and tells you if there are differences and what they are.
DiskWarrior 2.1.1, version 3.0’s immediate predecessor, was compatible with OS X–formatted
drives, but it didn’t run natively in OS X. Even
worse, because OS X volumes typically have
many more folders and files -- most of them
invisible to the casual user -- DiskWarrior 2.1.1
could be excruciatingly slow. But version 3.0
eliminates both of these hurdles. DiskWarrior
3.0 is significantly faster than its ancestor, and
it supports HFS, HFS+, and journaled HFS+
volumes. It operates just like the previous version, but with significant improvements. As
you can see from the DiskWarrior 3 window
below, the DiskWarrior 3 includes a folder with
the previous Mac OS9 - compatible version as
well, so owners of older unsupported pre-OSX
Macs can still use this new version of the DiskWarrior if they want to.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
ON LAST PAGE !!!
New January ‘07 MaUsE
Meeting Hours Posted !
Meets on the 2nd Thursday of each month
at Faith United Church
1778 Nash Road, Courtice
www.durhampc-usersclub.on.ca
DiskWarrior 3.0 can now query a hard drive as to whether its hardware is
hale and hearty. Most mainstream -- not just server-grade -- IDE drives sold
over the last few years support SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and
Reporting Technology). SMART-savvy software can ask the drive whether
everything is OK. A lot of errors can be an early warning of the impending
demise of a drive’s hardware. Since DiskWarrior can’t fix hardware-related
errors, SMART support is a welcome and useful addition. You can schedule
DiskWarrior’s SMART query to run hourly, daily, or weekly; it will run
even when DiskWarrior isn’t running. If anything is amiss, DiskWarrior
will notify the user via an on-screen or e-mail alert, or it will launch an
AppleScript to take a more-complex action such as logging an event in a
database.
DiskWarrior 3.0 comes on a bootable OS X Panther 10.3.5 CD but installation is as easy as dragging the DiskWarrior application off the CD into your
Applications Folder. When you launch the program the window is surprisingly simple for such a powerful application. The instructions in the win-
dow suffice to get the program working and after that everything is automatic.
The process of digging out all of the data required and creating the replacement
takes ten steps and the first half-dozen happen so fast that it only takes a couple
of seconds to get up to Step 6. Some of the later steps are more slowly paced.
I ran the DiskWarrior on a full 100 Meg Zip disk and a half-full 30 gigabyte
hard drive and found that the time the program takes for some operations varies
directly with the size of the drive and other operations vary depending on how
badly scrambled the directory data is. In both cases DiskWarrior managed to
Before I forget, I’d like to offer thanks to Amy Smith at Alsoft who provided a copy of DiskWarrior 3 for me to review. Unfortunately, when I asked
for Alsoft to send us TWO copies of this absolutely terrific utility ($99.00
US retail), one to review and one for raffle purposes, they replied that their
policy was to send only one copy per year to Mac User Groups.
So... there is a review of this program in this MaUsE DoubleClick but I get
to keep the copy of DiskWarrior 3. I’ve wanted a new copy of DiskWarrior
for a long time and now I have it. Instead of a raffle copy Alsoft has provided a special discount code for our MaUsE members. I’ll reveal it when
I do a slide-show presentation of this software at our November MaUsE
Meeting.
If you have an idea for an article or review of a different software program
for the DoubleClick, contact me and we’ll see if we can get a review copy
sent to you for you to write about and keep. I can only ask.
record all file and folder discrepancies between the old directory and
the actual contents of the drives and then create a new more accurate
directory. After comparing the two directories DiskWarrior opens a report window to show all of the differences between them and asks if
you want to install the new directory. Step 10 is the actual replacement
of directories and DiskWarrior requires that you type your system administrators password before it proceeds to do this action.
DiskWarrior 3.0 is a tool that every serious Mac user should have. Its
performance for OSX users is significantly better than its predecessor’s, and its predecessor was no slouch. The new SMART-based harddrive monitoring can prevent data loss through early warning. Unlike
tools that focus solely on disaster recovery or prevention, DiskWarrior
is also a useful maintenance tool that can head off trouble and provide
you with peace of mind.
Go to the Alsoft website to learn more about DiskWarrior and see me
at the November 22nd MaUsE meeting to get the special discount code
that Alsoft has offered to MaUsE members exclusively.
Welcome Two New
MaUsE Executives
IT’S YOUR CLUB
We on the MaUsE Executive would like
to announce that our recent pleas for help
running the MaUsE Club have not fallen
upon entirely deaf ears. Two of our members have stepped forward to join us and
help you by volunteering their time and
energy. At this time we would like to announce that Marcel Dufresne and Guy
Lafontaine, (the French Connection),
have stepped forward to fill nebulous
positions as yet undefined. Their first
appearances in their new capacities was
at the November 1st MaUsE Executive
Meeting.
SEE THE
IMPORTANT
NOTICE
ON THE LAST
PAGE OF THIS
ISSUE.
It’s the fourth Wednesday evening of the month, MaUsE
meeting night at the Whitby Library, and, you come to
the meeting to enjoy the company of other Mac users, to
learn what is new, some new ways of doing things, and,
quite possibly to get some free technical help solving a
computer problem that is concerning you.
As usual Chris greets you at the door–Bruce, Aaron,
Michael, John and I are all there; the equipment is set up
and ready to begin another evening at ‘the club.’ When
you look at the club like that it sounds simple, everything in place, presenters eager to show you their topic,
and good people to share the evening with. BUT, you really should know that a small group of dedicated people
spent time planning in advance for the evening in order
that you can enjoy it. So please allow me to give you a
little background information:
Each month the executive committee spends a couple
of hours at Michael’s home planning the club’s meetings; the meetings are informal, high spirited and enthusiastic about our club.
Outside of the meetings Aaron keeps the club’s website up-to-date with the latest news...
Mike spends many hours putting together DoubleClick,
surely the best Mac newsletter in Canada...
John keeps the club’s finances in order and looks after
the membership renewals...
If you are one of the members who gets your copy of
‘DoubleClick’ on paper, you received that due to the kindness of Bruce Watts who prints them in Scarborough and
delivers them to John Kettle who packages them and brings
them to the meetings so that they are available for you.
Bruce, our acting President is also the club’s ‘Apple
Ambassador’ and keeps a weather eye on what is happening in the rest of the Mac world...
Chris attends most Exec meetings vis a video hookup
and spreads the gospel to Mac users north of Durham...
Me? The club’s secretary? I prepare the agendas in
consultation with the other directors, write the meetings’
minutes, liaise with the library to make sure that meeting
space is available and ready for our meetings...
And yes, you probably see the club’s meeting notices
in your local paper or at your local library: they get their
due to the ongoing dedication of member Jim Danabie.
That, in brief, is an overview of how you come to have
a fine Mac club to belong to and a good meeting each
month.
On the next DoubleClick page you will find the club’s
official call for nominations for directors–November is
the month for the annual elections to the board, and we
are saying to you:
“If you really care about Macintosh Users
East and having a strong, viable club to
belong to, volunteer to become a member
of the executive committee that works year
round to make the club meetings work for
you.”
It really is up to you. Do your part. Volunteer!Stan Wild, MaUsE Secretary
halston.wild@gmail.com
MaUsE Notice of Elections Call for Nominations
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
sure to obtain that member’s consent to their being nominated before you
forward their name to me or to one of the other MaUsE directors.
MaUsE will hold elections for three (3) directors at the club’s annual
meeting to be held in meeting room one of the Whitby Public Library at
7.30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006.
3. Election as a director involves attending one meeting of the executive meeting each month in addition to attendance at the regular monthly
members’ meeting. The executive meetings, at which the business of the
club is discussed, planned and managed, are normally held on the first
The club has seven (7) elected directors each of whom is normally elected
Wednesday evening of each month, starting at 7:30 p.m. and concluding
to serve for two (2) years. The club’s bylaws require that, in order to proby 9:30 p.m.
vide continuity in the executive committee, we hold elections for three directors in even numbered years and four directors in odd numbered years:
As you are aware, the club’s long time president, Jim Foster, passed away
thus, this year, we shall be electing three directors, each to serve for two
at the end of August. past-president Bruce Cameron gracefully stepped
years. We are calling upon the membership for at least three members to
forward and is serving as ‘President pro tem’ until the elections are held
volunteer to have their names placed into nomination prior to the Novemin November. A number of the club’s present Directors have stated that
ber elections. O.K. That’s the formal notice, now let’s talk about what is
they are willing and able to continue to serve the club in the coming year:
involved.
their combined continued support and leadership is important to the long
term health and growth of MaUsE. But, as stated above, we need adAt this time we are asking that all members give serious consideration to
ditional members to volunteer to become directors and to serve the club
serving the club as a director. The future strength of the club lies in it havin that capacity. At this time we will not be asking nominees to assume
ing a strong executive willing to work in the best interests of the club and
a specific responsibility, but rather, when the new directors are in place,
of Macintosh users in this area of Durham. In other words, WE NEED
the executive committee will consult with each of them to ascertain what
YOU to volunteer your services!
their particular interests are and how best those interests may be used to
the club’s benefit. If you have questions about becoming a director, please
1. Being a director does not require that you are a ‘techie’, it requires only
feel welcome to speak with any current director, all of us will happily disthat you are a ‘Mac’ user and that you are willing to give a few hours each
cuss what is involved with you. See Page 2 for contact information.
month to further the interests and welfare of MaUsE.
Stanley G. Wild, MaUsE Secretary
2. Members may either self-nominate (volunteer) themselves or they may
halston.wild@gmail.com
nominate another member whom they believe would be willing to serve
our club as a director. If you are nominating another member, please make
AKVIS Chameleon
For this month we have another in a series of
magical Photoshop plugins from AKVIS. AKVIS
Chameleon is an efficient tool for photo collage
creation. It automatically adjusts the pasted object
to the target image color range and smoothes the
object’s borders. Like the other AKVIS software
we have demonstrated at other MaUsE meetings,
AKVIS Chameleon is a plugin, not a “stand-alone”
application. It works under image processing programs that support plugins. It is compatible with
Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Jasc Paint
Shop Pro, Ulead PhotoImpact, and others.
the detailed instructions in the Tutorial sections to
see how the filter is applied before trying your own
experiments.
In the following example we will show you how
to paste an apple into a wooden surface so that it
looks like if the apple was drawn on this rough
wooden plate. We will use the photo of a wooden
plate below as a background, and the photo of a
juicy apple under it as the object to transfer.
The tool is very easy to handle as it does not require precise selection of objects. You copy an object, insert it into another picture, press the button
and the object adjusts to the new background as
chameleons do - adapting to the new color range
and blending with the environment.
Special thanks to Kat Kharina at AKVIS who has
provided us with a copy of AKVIS Chameleon
for our November Raffle.
Step 2. Switch to the Quick Mask mode by pressing the button (Edit in Quick Mask Mode) in the
Toolbar or the Q key.
Step 3. Select the Pencil tool from the Toolbar by
pressing the button or the B key.
Step 4. Paint the apple in Quick Mask mode using
a hard edge pencil (Hardness 100%).
Step 5. Switch back to the Standard Mode by
pressing the button (Edit in Standard Mode) in
the Toolbar or the Q key.
Step 6. Invert the selection by calling the command
Select - Inverse or by using the key combination
Ctrl+Shift+I.
Designers would especially appreciate this tool as
it allows them to combine images with entirely different color ranges, to create the effect of drawing
on a texture surface (crumpled paper, wood, etc),
and all that with only a mouse-click.
Follow the instruction to create the effect of painting on a rough surface:
AKVIS Chameleon allows pasting an object into a
background so that the background texture is seen
through. Go to the AKVIS website and click on
Chameleon under the Products tab to see many examples of how this plugin can be used and follow
Step 1. Open these images in Adobe Photoshop.
You can also use any other photo editor compatible
with AKVIS Chameleon. In this case you should
select the apple with the selection tools available
in your photo editor.
Step 7. Copy the selected apple by calling the command Edit – Copy or by using the key combination
Ctrl+C.
Step 8. Switch back to the photo with a wooden
surface. Take a snapshot of the image by calling
the command Filter - AKVIS - Chameleon (Take
Snapshot).
Step 9. Paste the copied image of the apple into
the wooden background with the command Edit Paste or with the key combination Ctrl+V.
Step 10. Adjust the size and position of the apple.
Make sure it is where you want it and the right size
for your expectations.
As a result our photo collage shows an apple drawn
on wooden surface. In the same way you can create paintings on crumpled paper, unbleached linen,
etc.
AKVIS Chameleon is extremely easy to use as it
does not require precise selection of objects. Copy
an object, insert it into another picture, press a button and the object adjusts to the new background
as chameleons do - adapting to the new color range
and blending with the environment.
AKVIS Chameleon is used to insert new objects
in a picture, but with much more flexibility and
ease than with conventional tools. It can also used
to conceal undesirable artifacts by replacing them
with the nearby parts of the image (similar to the
clone tool).
AKVIS Chameleon creates photo collages in two
modes, Standard and Snapshot. In Standard mode,
one click automatically drops a selected item into
a photo, adjusts it to the target color range and
smooths the borders. The Snapshot mode layers
the blended components so that the texture and relief of the primary image can be seen through.
Step 11. Apply AKVIS Chameleon by selecting
the command Filter - AKVIS - Chameleon (Use
Snapshot)
The official web-site (http://akvis.com) offers numerous examples and ideas on using the Chameleon Plugin application. There are Tutorials on the
AKVIS website and lots of pictures and movies
showing the results of importing various types of
images into an assortment of backgrounds to create new images with a natural appearance.
FREE* Software for
MaUsE Members
Have you noticed that the software reviewed in the DoubleClick invariably
shows up as raffle prizes at our monthly
MaUsE meetings? You know software
programs are expensive. Where do they
come from? Some of them come from
my replies to press releases and others
come from requests that I make to software companies on behalf of the MaUsE
DoubleClick that they send me two free
copies of whatever catches my fancy, one
copy for me to review and one for the
MaUsE raffle. If you would like to have
me ask for something for you to review
in the DoubleClick, let me know. The
catch is that you MUST review the program in order to get to keep a free copy
for yourself. See the software reviews
in this and other issues. If you think you
could produce a software review composed of a page or two of text and pictures in exchange for a copy of the program then you are ready to contribute to
the DoubleClick.
*Some conditions apply.
Photoshop SIG Report
The Photoshop Special Interest Group met on the
evening of Wednesday October 11 at 7 p.m. at the
Whitby Public Library. Aaron Vegh was on-hand
to provide a talk on using the Healing tools in
Photoshop to provide expert touch-ups to photographs. The seven attendees were dazzled by the
display of photographical legerdemain. One SIG
member provided a personal photo, requesting
that it be improved. The photo in question was a
scanned piece originally printed sometime before
the presenter’s birth, and was extremely over-exposed with severe red casts. Using a series of adjustments, Aaron turned the overly red and blownout picture into something much more reasonable.
The before and after shots are included (below at
left and center) with this message, and provide
ample demonstration of what a Photoshop enthusiast might be capable of after attending these
seminars!
Prosoft
Drive Genius
In my binder of beloved Macintosh utility CDs, right there between Conflict
Catcher v8 and FWB CD-ROM ToolKit
v4, I still have my old v3.5, v4.0 and v6.0
copies of NUM, also known as Norton Utilities for
Macintosh. With all of the Quadras, Performas and
early PowerPC Macs that have come and gone
through my door over the past decade you can bet
they’ve proven their worth under OS7, OS8 and
OS9. Norton withdrew from supporting Macintosh
computers shortly after the coming of OSX and
many Mac users have relied on the much improved
OSX Disk Utility (that replaced Disk First Aid) to
manage, maintain, and repair their hard drives, and
Micromat’s Tech Tool and Alsoft’s DiskWarrior
when stronger medicine was needed.
If you’ve been reading recent issues of the
DoubleClick you will be aware that I am reviewing a bunch of disk and data repair utilities in every
issue, thanks to Alsoft and Prosoft Engineering.
For this issue I will be concentrating on at least
one of the programs that have filled the hole left by
Nortons Utilities for Macintosh.
Like Norton Utilities, Prosoft Drive Genius is
a program that has access to a bunch of smaller
functions built into it. In all there are ten disk-management tools. The application window gives you
access to icons for all of your drives and removable disks and icons for the Drive Genius tools.
Some tools are diagnostic and others pertain to
performance. Their functions include: disk repair,
defragmentation, duplication, repartitioning, sector editing, integrity checking, secure erasing, and
benchtests.
Using the Drive Genius is a very simple process.
The instructions are pretty much the same for every action: Select the action you wish to perform
from the list of tools and click on the Start button
to begin.
The CD is bootable with Mac OSX 10.3 on it and
for the suite of utilities to work best the computer
should be started from the CD. This dismounts
your drives and gives Drive Genius full access to
run diagnostics on all hard drives. The tools you
will want to use most often are probably the
Repair and Defragment tools. They work
just like you would expect, each Drive Genius tool having its own unique graphical
interface window and progress bars and results reports. After the operations you have
chosen are complete you simply click on the
Close button to close the window and select
another tool or quit the program.
Before I forget, I must offer thanks again on behalf of the entire MaUsE membership to
Jennifer Bell at Prosoft Engineering for providing us with a copy of the latest version of
Drive Genius for our November MaUsE raffle. Jennifer also provided us with a special
discount code that entitles MaUsE members to a 25% discount on all their products. I will
not post it here for public viewing. Email me or ask me about it at the November MaUsE
meeting. Before then, visit the Prosoft Engineering website at: < www.prosofteng.com/ > to
download demo copies and to check out their other excellent Macintosh utilities.
Drive Genius is packed with powerful
tools such as a drive optimizer, a comprehensive repair facility
for analyzing, repairing and rebuilding volumes, plus excellent
testing capabilities with media surface scanning, performance
benchmarking and data integrity checking. It can be used to
initialize drives, create and delete partitions, and securely erase
the data from volumes/drives per US Department of Defense
standards. Drive Genius can also hide partitions and duplicate
volumes or drives swiftly. Last but not least, Drive Genius features advanced tools for resizing and moving of volumes without reformatting, and sports a sector-editing tool to modify the
data on any sector of the drive -- powerful features that will
satisfy even the seasoned Mac experts.
Don’t miss your chance to win your own copy of Prosoft Drive Genius at
the November 22nd MaUsE Meeting.
October Raffle a HUGE Success
I was talking with Marcel a few weeks ago and he suggested to me that
in his opinion one of the main attractions of our monthly meetings is
the MaUsE Raffle. Since I had assumed that MaUsE members came
out purely for my presentations this came as quite a shock. The October 2006 MaUsE raffle was another in a long line of successful events.
The prizes were:
DEVONtechnologies DEVONthink Pro
DEVONtechnologies DEVONagent
Prosoft Data Rescue II (on two CDs)
Take Control: iWeb CD
Take Control: Running Windows on a Mac CD
MacSoft Scrabble for OSX CD
Pizza Panic CD
PopCopy 2.3 CD
iClock 3.0.5 CD
In all there was about $400.00 worth of software up for grabs in this
raffle. These were not “door prizes.” MaUsE policy is that free MaUsE
Raffle tickets are only handed out to the paid-up members who attend
the meeting. Our meetings are open to the public but the Raffle is a
“Members Only” event and one of the many privileges of belonging
to the most excellent Macintosh Users Group. Possibly the best of all
possible Mac User Groups.
Also, we went back to the way we used to do MaUsE raffles. I briefly
described the items being raffled and then each ticket drawn won the
ticket holder his choice from among all prizes in order of drawing. The
first ticket drawn has first pick and all subsequent tickets have a shot
at the remaining prizes until all prizes have been taken. I hope that this
method increases the chances that people will win software they will
actually use. I work too hard getting these items to have them wasted.
We will have more product from Micromat, AKVIS, Jiiva, Lemke
Software, Prosoft, DEVONtechnologies and others for the November
2006 MaUsE Raffle so there will be another chance to win for MaUsE
Members who did not win a prize in October.
October MaUsE
Meeting Report
As usual there was a good turnout. Better than
usual and I saw some new faces and others I
haven’t seen for a while. Several members
brought stuff to swap or sell and put it on the
tables at the back of the room. John Kettle
gave the Treasurers Report and noted that we
had four new members since last month! Stan
Wild, MaUsE Secretary, did not attend and
was conspicuously absent. In Stan’s absence,
Aaron made an eloquent plea for help from the
membership for filling the open Executive positions. Chris Greaves attended and gave one of
the presentations. As usual, it was something
about iMovie and video creation and touched
on YouTube as well. I gave another scathingly
brilliant presentation slide show using GraphicConverter, this time about Prosoft Data Rescue
II, one of the feature programs in our October
raffle. I used the program to show how it was
possible to recover hundreds of different and
potentially embarrassing files from a garage
sale Zip disk that was theoretically emptied by
the previous owner. Aaron presented various
ways of Running Windows on your Mac and
discussed WINE, Parallel Workstations and
Boot Camp. He had a new 2 Gigahertz duo core
Intel Mac and he opened a windows Desktop
right on his Macintosh. Ugliest thing imaginable. Windows, right on his Mac. I couldn’t
bear to put a picture of it in the DoubleClick.
And somehow this is supposed to be progress.
What is the world coming to? The evening ended at 9:30 P.M. with our MaUsE Raffle and it
was gratifying to see some of the new members
winning some nice prizes.
DEVONthink Pro
Submitted By Aaron Vegh
About a year ago, I purchased a funky little device called the Fujitsu ScanSnap
S5500. It’s a lean-profile machine with one purpose: to scan any paper document with unconscious ease, and convert the result to PDF. The manufacturer
claimed rigorous support for Mac OS X (a fine software package for controlling
the scanner also included a copy of Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0), so I was
sold. You see, I hate paper.
So into the scanner went my utility bills, mortgage papers, credit card statements, magazine articles, hand-written notes for new business ideas… you
name it, I’ve scanned it. And I have
always kept these PDFs meticulously
sorted in a single folder on my Desktop: within it lies a score of sub-folders, each with any number of layers
beneath them. As my system is in fact
based on the Finder, it is rather crude.
However, the purpose of this system is
to archive, not use day-to-day. For that
I feel that what I have should more
than suffice.
Enter DEVONThink. Here is a product made by people trying to address
my very problem: given a boatload
of digital detritus, how to make sense
and organize it? My first attempt with
the application suggested that I had to
completely change my way of working with those files: I directly imported over 600 PDF documents into
DEVONThink’s own database. But
that turned out to be awkward: not
only had I just now created two sets
of the same data, but updating my collection in the Finder would not reflect
in the application. My second attempt,
then, was to create an Index of that
data, which means I can keep track of it in DEVONThink, but still manage
it in the Finder. That pleased me.
What can you do with this application? The options seem limitless. You
can create and edit a wide variety of digital formats, from text, to PDF, to
Web links, notes, images…. The list goes on. Most importantly, you can
organize this information in any way that suits you. The program provides
a variety of ways to look at your data. I prefer the familiar “Mail”- type
interface, with categories on the left and contents on the right. This threepane view allows you to dig into your data, and even view its contents.
DEVONThink’s built-in rendering engine outputs Web pages, PDFs, images and text with lightning speed.
Finding your data is a key
part of this program, and
DEVONThink
doesn’t
disappoint. I searched for
“Corolla” (my car) using
Spotlight, and got a nasty
mixed bag of results that included stuff I can’t imagine
being related to the word.
DEVONThink spat out
(much faster than Spotlight,
by the way) a succinct list
of results, and let me view
the documents in question
instantly. Very slick.
For research, analysis or archival purposes, DEVONThink presents a very compelling package. It’s not
without its faults, of course.
The app’s need to keep everything in its own proprietary database format is a
concern to me: If I’m going
to invest so much time and
effort into building a database of my life, then I’m tied
into this program for good!
Fortunately, they provide an
Export function which will
spit your digital detritus out
into a Mac-friendly pile of
folders… or a Word document… or a Web page…
Overall, a very slick, very
useful application.
Special thanks to Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann at DEVONtechnologies who has generously provided the MaUsE with two
copies of DEVONthink Pro and two copies of DEVONagent so we will have a copy of each for our October and November
MaUsE raffles. Aaron Vegh’s review of DEVONagent will appear in next month’s DoubleClick.
iClock - A Swiss Army Knife
Submitted by Marcel Dufresne
Last issue I wrote about adding
system sounds to the startup and
shutdown of your computer. My
search for better control of sounds
for my MAC also led me to iClock.
System 10 limits us to about 12 builtin sounds, none of which can be used
to chime the hour. The Date and
Time program found in the System
Preferences allows the computer to
announce the time and we can choose the voice. I wanted more
control than that and iClock gives me that freedom.
iClock can be downloaded either from versiontracker.com or
scriptsoftware.com which is the creator of this software. There are
versions that will run on System 10.2 and up. Once downloaded,
open up the file and run the iClock installer. It will place iClock in
your application folder (it is not placed in the System Preference
section) and request that you restart your computer. When you
restart, iClock should be running. Click the date/time that is
present in the menu bar and a drop down menu will allow you
to open up iClock to access its preference window. Doing this
will automatically turn off the Apple Menubar Clock which is no
longer needed. You now have a menu clock which is much more
powerful and also customizable. The preference window has
check boxes for “date/time”, “running applications”, “to do list”
and a “calculator menu”. When these are checked your menu
bar will have all four of these available with a simple click at
the top of your screen. At the top of the preference window for
iClock is a list of 7 customizable items and the register button.
Clicking on the menu bar option allows you to show the time in
the menu bar with whatever colour, font and size you want. The
time is also customizable with about 20 options. The date has the
same flexibility.
As I first stated, my main purpose was to access the chime for
my computer clock. So I clicked on the chime button found in
the preference window and was presented with a myriad of
choices. I could have the computer speak the hour (the same
as I had without iClock). I could also have the computer play
a sound for the hour as well as 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 time. What
blew me away was the choices I had for the sounds. Somehow
iClock had delved into my computer and pulled out not only
the built-in sounds but any sound that any program on my
computer had installed. I had over 40 choices, including any
I had installed from last month’s system sounds program.
Not only that, but I could choose what volume the sound
would play at and I could designate a quiet time whereupon
the chime would not play. I chose 11:30 PM to 6:30 AM as
my quiet time so that even if my MAC was running all night,
I would not be woken up by it.
I now had exactly what I was looking for, complete
control of the clock and chimes. But the story does not end
here. I have called iClock a Swiss army knife. I had access
to much more than simply the clock. iClock has a calculator
built in with access through the menu bar. It is transparent
to the programs and windows on the screen. There is an
alarm clock and a stop watch that would allow me to time
my game playing. There is a stock portfolio window. There
is a “to do list” which my wife has access to. I have not yet
really explored all that this application can do, but all that I
have mentioned is available from the menu bar.
I downloaded the following list of functions from
scriptsoftware to give you an idea of what is available.
iClock does all this:
• Gives you a bird’s eye view of different time zones.
• Customize the Time and Date display in the menubar in
hundreds of ways.
• Change the colours separately of the Time and Date display
in the menubar.
• Choose the font to display the Time and Date in the
menubar.
• Gives you a time zone calculator that finds the best time
to connect with the people in as many time zones as you
want.
• Gives an easily accessible, at a glance, system menu view of times/dates
in as many parts of the world as you want.
• Add the people/companies you work with directly from the address
book.
• Gives the dial codes for countries around the world.
• 12 or 24 hour time.
• Custom alarms that are so easily accessible you will use them.
• Use the calendar to show birthdays from Apple’s Address Book and
links to iCalendar.
• The calendar can float on top or below other windows and its transparency
can be set.
• Run a Screen Saver on your desktop using iClock’s Screen Effects. Try
Cosmos.
• CopyPaste users can conveniently add the CopyPaste menus to iClock.
• Application menu that allows switching to any running program.
• iClock is evolving rapidly so this list does not contain all the latest
features. More coming soon...
• IClock can help you track your Stock Portfolio, Option-Click on iClock
menu bar to set and view your stocks.
* Calculator with history and auto hide.
* To do list
iClock will replace the antiquated/limited Mac menubar clock. iClock
is a centrally located time hub that controls many time related functions.
You can see the time and date simultaneously in any format or colour.
Click to see a drop down menu of the current time/date in any city in
the world or option click to see your updated portfolio of stocks. Use the
lightning quick calendar, stop watch, calculator and timers (that can be set
with one click). Never miss another appointment. Jot down notes in the
new iClock To Do list.
You can download a trial version and try it out. The shareware fee is
$20 for full access. Go to scriptsoftware.com and see what they have to
write about their fabulous program. Even if you don’t want to tweak your
clock, iClock will have something that you will use.
YouTube YouTube YouTube
TubeSock TubeSock TubeSock
You have all heard too much lately about Google buying YouTube for a fabulous amount of money, unless you’ve been living in a cave without any amenities. So I won’t mention that.
And you may not know exactly what YouTube is. I won’t explain that either,
beyond saying that its a free forum where everybody on the planet can upload their home movies for other people to see and share.
What I will write about is TubeSock, a little utility that came on my latest
MacAddict and was rated their Shareware Pick of the Month. Basically it
allows you to grab anything you see on YouTube and download it to your
hard drive, iPod, or Playstation Portable so you can watch them anytime you
want to. If you don’t already have the TubeSock program, you can download
it from here: http://stinkbot.com/Tubesock/download.html. Do it !
When you view movies on YouTube
they appear on your screen in the
YouTube website window. Look for
the About This Video box and copy
the URL. Then launch TubeSock and
paste the URL into the blank field.
Choose a format and a destination for
your movie. You have five choices for
how you want the movie saved depending on what device
you want to play it on.
I selected to download the Pingu movie
to my Movies Folder
on my hard drive and
save it as Video for
Mac but I could save
it as Video for iPod if
I want to view it on a
new iPod.
Now click on Preview
to watch the video or
Save to copy it to the
selected destination.
If you select Save
the movie will very
quickly download to
the destination. Once
TubeSock has the file
downloaded it will
perform the arduous
task of converting it
to the proper format
as specified. Compared to the downloading of the video
file the converting is
much more time-consuming.
It all happens eventually, transparently and
magically. When TubeSock is finished the
program informs you that your movie is
ready.
I checked the default Movies destination
folder I had selected and there I found that the
video had been saved as a MPEG4 file that
QuickTime could open with ease. I turned
up the volume on my speakers and doubleclicked on the file to open it. Fantastic!
The file was 10 Megs (too big for most email
servers to handle) so I opened my Gmail and
sent a message with this movie attached to
it to all of the Pingu fans I know who have
Gmail accounts.
TubeSock is shareware. Look it up on the internet, download a copy and try it out. The
unregistered version will only save and convert the first 30 seconds of videos but it only
costs $15.00 US to register it and make it
fully functional.
Special thanks to Rob Terrell at TubeSock
for providing the MaUsE a complimentary copy of TubeSock 1.0.1 for this article.
For only $15.00 TubeSock rocks !
Apple in the News
What can I say ? See the October 19th Toronto Star
Business Section, as pictured above.
Apple’s fourth-quarter sales of the Intel Macs (up
37%) and new iPods (up 35%) have driven Apple
profits into the stratosphere. The new Intel portables accounted for over 60% of computer orders.
Its nice to see the company that we have believed in
when so many others didn’t performing so well.
With the best hardware on the planet and the only
really viable, robust and truly pretty operating system for home computers, we can expect more of
the same type of performance in the future. We
have backed a winner. Apple computers just get
better and better while staying the best.
Coriolis iDefrag and iPartition
A lot of the programs I have been presenting at the recent MaUsE meetings and writing about in the DoubleClick are huge utility suites with many
functions and parameters. For a toolbox full of utilities you need Drive
Genius or TechTool Pro. But there is still a market for small utilities that
one thing well. Coriolis iDefrag and iPartition are two of these small utilities and well worth looking at. Both of these utilities from Coriolis will be
raffled off as a “Coriolis utilities bundle” at our November MaUsE raffle.
Lets have a look at iDefrag now.
Defragging a hard drive is an amazingly technical operation that involves
mapping out your files to see which of your documents and applications
have been broken into pieces during use, and then rearranging them on your
hard drive in such a way that all of the pieces are rejoined and your empty
space is recovered. I suppose we all remember using Norton Utilities to
defrag the SCSI drives on our first Macs. With Nortons you basically had
one choice to make and that was defrag or don’t.
With iDefrag you have a lot more control over
how the software actually does what it does. The
interface is clean and simple but the true power
of the program shows through when you start to
check out the Preferences and other features behind the scenes. By clicking on the various tabs
and buttons presented in each of the iFrag application windows you can set your priorities to see
your drive and files in many different ways. This
program gives you more accidental information
about your files and drive than anyone really needs
to have.
Our thanks to Heather Houghton at Coriolis
Software who has provided us with copies of
iDefrag and iPartition to be used as a MaUsE
November Raffle prize.
As the program progresses the animated slider at the bottom of the application window
moves from left to right showing the defragging progress in real time through the drive.
Active indicators in the form of little green and
red arrows show the activity as pieces if fragmented files are swapped from their original
locations to the empty parts at the end of the
drive, reassembled, and returned to their new
locations. This is a terrific utility for cleaning
up and optimising your hard drive.
Notice to
DoubleClick Readers
Who Are NOT
MaUsE Members
Advertise in the
Double Click
WANTED: Articles written by MaUsE
Members about any Macintosh-related
hardware or software product. Reviews
of programs or personal upgrade
experiences appreciated. Rants and
opinions welcome. Send them to the
DoubleClick at
<wazooster@gmail.com>
If you are living in or near the Durham
Region of Southern Ontario and using
a Macintosh computer and are not yet
a member of MaUsE you can use the
information found on the second page of
this newsletter to get meeting info and to
get in touch with a member of our executive to find out how to join.
If you just want to attend a few of our
monthly meetings please feel free to
join us on the fourth Wednesday of the
month. Meetings are open to the public
and admission is free but eligibility for
winning swell raffle prizes and receiving
technical assistance are available only to
club members.
Other privileges of membership include
the right to borrow from the MaUsE
Club Library and to submit articles for
publication in the MaUsE DoubleClick,
the best of all possible newsletters.
Do you see what is going on in this picture ?
What we have here are MaUsE people frantically reading the best of all possible MUG Newsletters, the MaUsE DoubleClick. The DoubleClick
is available as a .PDF from the MaUsE website
(www.mause.ca), accessible from all over the
world and you can download any current issue
in full colour after the tenth of the month. Backissues are also available from the DoubleClick
archive.
You may have noticed that this issue is particularly hefty, almost like its gotten out of control.
I want to thank all of the MaUsE members who
contributed to this month’s issue by submitting
their articles, reports and pictures. This is your
Newsletter, for all MaUsE members everywhere.
If you are a MaUsE member and don’t
have a Gmail account and would like
one send me an email message from
your current email address and I’ll fix
you up. You get 2.8 GIGS of storage on
the Gmail server and a 10-Meg limit on
message size !!
November MaUsE Executive
Meeting Report
The November MaUsE Executive Meeting took place at the
home of Michael Shaw on Nov. 1st at 7:00 P.M. Jim Danabie,
Bruce Cameron, Michael Shaw, Guy Lafontaine, and Marcel
Dufresne attended in the flesh, so to speak, and Aaron Vegh &
Chris Greaves attended via iChat. Other guests and other Exec
members had we none.
We accepted the Treasurers Report pre-submitted by John Kettle and discussed other issues and talked about the programs for
the November 22nd MaUsE meeting. It looks like we will have
another full slate on November 22nd with every minute used
up. The MaUsE Elections will be held this month (see Stan
Wild’s passionate pleas elsewhere in this issue) and it is expected that most positions will be filled by acclamation. You do
not need to be afraid to attend this month’s meeting.Tentatively
it looks like I will be favouring the membership with another of
my scathingly brilliant slide show presentations, this one about
Jiiva SuperScrubber security software. I will also say a few
words about the many other raffle items. Marcel will discuss
iClock, reviewed in this issue, and Aaron will talk about open
source alternatives to some of the programs you may already
be using. Other presenters will possibly include Hugh Amos
and Stan Wild.
IMPORTANT
NOTICE
The Agenda of the January 2007 MaUsE
Meeting at the Whitby Library will
commence one half hour earlier than
usual, at 7:00 instead of 7:30 P.M.
We will have a full agenda, including
scathingly brilliant presentations,
another huge MaUsE raffle,
and lots more !
We will be starting the January 2007 MaUsE Meeting a halfhour earlier than usual and if the increased time is found to be
beneficial to the membership we will continue with the 7:00
P.M. start time throughout 2007
Produced by
Michael Shaw
Editor, MaUsE
DoubleClick