The South Bay Mug

The South Bay Mug
A Monthly Cupful For South Bay Apple Mac User Group Members, Nov. 2004
Search Me!
I
‘ve been having fun this month checking out some
new Internet toys. We all know and love Google,
but there are other ways to search.
Clusty, at www.clusty.com, groups
search results into “clusters,” that
appear on the left-hand side of the
search results page. The idea is that,
by grouping similar results, Clusty
helps you get more out of a search
and may allow you to find a search
result that would be buried in a long
list on Google.
I did a search on MUG, admittedly a
very general topic. It found over a
million results and displayed the top
246 in a set of folders in the left
hand column. Expanding the User
Group folder reveals more topics
and folders. Click a topic and the
results appear in the right hand pane.
Entries have a spyglass icon in the
search result that opens a small,
scrollable window, right in the
search page, that shows a page
preview. It’s very cool.
My Yahoo Search: mysearch.yahoo.com from Yahoo
looks a lot like Google, but lets you personalizes your
searches. You can save and sort sites as a collection to
form the basis of future searches, add notes, share
search results and sites with others and block sites you
don’t want to see. You can use My Yahoo to search,
but to use the personal features of My Yahoo Search,
you must have a free Yahoo membership.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
Web sites supporting RSS present headlines and some
of content in a way that can be viewed by an RSS
reader. There are many readers, but one I really like is
the free (donation-ware) NewsMac 3.1.
The beauty of RSS is that you don’t have to open each
page to see the headlines and they can be updated
manually or automatically at specified intervals. You
can quickly browse many web sites and scan the
headlines to see what interests you. Home in on those
of interest without the clutter of others. To see if a web
site supports RSS look for a little tag like
this. It’s a hot link to the RSS address.
In NewsMac the upper pane shows a hierarchical
grouping of RSS sites. NewsMac comes with a load of
RSS sites to which you can add your own. Put your
favorites on top. Select a site and the headlines appear
in the lower left. Select a headline and the content
shows at the right. Some content is very brief and
some can be very wordy. Click on the link above the
content to open the full page in your browser. You can
specify a set of keywords and any headline containing
them is preceded by a red dot. The dot turns grey
when it’s been read.
Welcome to
South Bay Apple Macintosh User Group
You and your friends are invited to attend our next meeting.
Our membership dues are only $35 per year, entitling you
to this newsletter each month and many more benefits.
If you would like to become a member or get more info on
SBAMUG, feel free to check out our web site at:
www.sbamug.com
P. O. Box 432
Redondo Beach, CA
90277-0432
Meetings are held at the
Redondo Beach Community Center
320 Knob Hill, Redondo Beach
(see map & directions on page 11)
310-644-3315
Email: info@sbamug.com
Officers & Volunteers:
Membership Report:
(You may notice your name is in larger letters on your card.
That is so it can be used as a name tag at the meetings.)
President...........................Glen Terry
Vice President...................Bob Brooks
Secretary...........................Wayne Inman
Membership Director.......CW Mitchell
USPS Liaison....................Don Myers
PD Disk Editor.................. Jim Pernal
Program Director...............George Kiefer
Treasurer & Newsletter....John Bernardo
Raffle Prize Director..........George Griffiths
Director at Large................Dave Nathanson
Refreshment Crew..........The Apple Blossoms
Welcome New Members John Gutierrez.
Thank You Member Renewals Robert Brooks, Georger Kawahara, Charles Simon,
John Fahey, Andrew Reynoso, Kazuo Ogawa,
George Griffiths, Ralph Dames, David Moorhead,
Al Tucker, Charles Veals & Righard Zigrang.
Current Membership - 167
CW Mitchell
MONTHLY CALENDAR
1st Wed - SBAMUG Core Group Mtg @ announced locations, 7:30 pm
1st Thur - LB Mug @ Emerson School, Palo Verde & Willow, Long Beach, 7 pm
1st Sat - Orange Apple UG, Orange Coast College, Chem Bldg, Costa Mesa, 8am-1pm
3rd Sat - Adobe Tech Exchange Toyota Bldg on Grammercy near 190th, 9 am; $10
Last Wed - SBAMUG Monthly Meeting
Last Tues - WOCMUG @ Emerson School, Palo Verde & Willow, Long Beach, 7 pm
Last Sat - TRW / Northrup Ham Radio & Computer Swap Meet, 7 am - 11:30 am
The South Bay MUG is published by the South Bay Apple Macintosh User Group. Excerpts may be reprinted by user groups and other
non-profit media. Credit must be given to SBAMUG and the author. In addition, a copy of all reprinted materials must be sent to us at the
address listed above.
The South Bay MUG is an independent publication not affiliated or otherwise associated with or sponsored or sanctioned by Apple®
Computer, Inc. The opinions, statements, positions and views stated herein are those of the author(s) or publisher and are not intended
to be the opinions, statements, positions or views of Apple® Computer, Inc.
Members are invited and encouraged to submit articles and original artwork for publication. Newsletter
deadline is the first Saturday of the month. Articles may be edited to fit in available space. Please send to:
john@sbamug.com
SBAMUG November 2004 PD CD
W
ell Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Five programs and
Your Mac Life this month.
Again the PD CD is a
bimonthly collection of
shareware and freeware.
The CD is available at our
meetings each month.
Budget.dmg
This is a program to help you maintain a
budget. Uses the envelope model where you
would place cash in envelopes to pay the
upcoming bills. The program lets you take
your income and investments and allocate
them for your bills such as rents, utilities
and the like. Plan ahead for less frequent
items such as insurance payments. Keeps a
check balance for you. Statistics for entire
budget. OS 10.1 or better.
iAAPL.zip
Utility to fetch the Apple stock price.
Apple symbol is AAPL if you didn’t know.
The daily price and volume charts can also
be displayed.
MacCAS.sit
This utility is for those who still shoot
with 35mm film. The Camera Auto Sensing
is an optical pattern on the film canister that
tells equipped cameras what type of film is
being used. This program will display the
pattern to let you figure out want you have.
Good for those who need to reload the
canisters.
macpipes-x-121.sitx
An updated version of this game program
that runs on OSX as well as OS9. Arcade
puzzle type game that requires you to build
a pipeline of the proper length within a time
limit.
Wings2003 - AOU.sit
An extensive program for bird watchers.
This OS 10.2 or better program is a
relational database based on a 4D engine.
Lets multiple observers keep track of birds.
Can input data from other sources. Location
information is stored. Has a built in database of bird types (AOU). Keep track of all
sorts of information about each bird entered.
Checklists for quick data entry. You can
chart information and perform statistical
operation on it.
YML
Your Mac Life archives will be in this
folder. Starting with the October 27th show.
CD for this month will be at the December meeting
as the November-December 2004 CD.
Catch you at the next meeting,
Jim Pernal
PD Editor
Apple Unveils New “Mini” Retail
Store Design
BBEdit 8 from Bare Bones
Software
Six Mini Stores to Open
A review by Bob
A
pple® unveiled its new "mini" retail store, a
stunning all-new design featuring stainless steel
walls and seamless white floors and ceilings. The mini
store is half the size of Apple’s smallest store to date,
which will allow it to be placed in a variety of new
locations to introduce Apple’s innovative products to
even more customers. Apple will open its first six mini
stores in Palo Alto, CA; San Jose, CA; Santa Rosa, CA;
Tukwila, WA; Bridgewater, NJ; and Rockaway, NJ.
“Our mini store is a big experience that fits in a small
space,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president
of Retail. “The mini store’s small size will allow us to
place stores in a variety of interesting new locations,
while retaining innovations like the Genius Bar that have
made Apple’s retail stores such a hit.”
During the first three years of Apple’s retail strategy,
Apple has successfully located 84 retail stores in the
United States and today over half of the US population
lives within 15 minutes of an Apple retail store. The mini
store is designed to precisely locate additional stores
closer to customers to make it even more convenient to
purchase products and get help.
The new Apple mini stores feature:
∑ Apple’s full line of portables plus the new
iMac® G5 desktop computers;
∑ Apple’s full line of iPods;
∑ An assortment of the best third party products to
help customers get more out of their iPod® or
Mac®;
∑ The Genius Bar, where anyone can get their
questions answered by an Apple “Genius;” and
∑ On-site repair on all Apple products, including
next day turnaround for customers with a
ProCare service card.
Since the opening of the first Apple retail store in May
2001, Apple retail stores have attracted almost 50 million
visitors, hosted thousands of customer events and free
classes including the popular “Getting Started” class and
brought back the concept of customer service with
innovations like the Genius Bar. Apple retail stores
generated revenues of almost $1.2 billion in the
company’s recently completed fiscal year.
In addition to opening six mini Apple retail stores,
Apple is also opening a retail store in Newark, DE.
A complete list of Apple's 93 retail locations can be
found at www.apple.com/retail.
Word processors are for making
pretty text while text editors are for
manipulating text. BBEdit, from
barebones.com, is king of the text
editors and has long been the
favorite of programmers and HTML
coders.
BBEdit 8.0 has just been released. The program was
totally rewritten and introduces over a hundred new
features and improvements:
• A Documents Drawer and Navigation Bar lets you
open multiple documents as a single window, and switch
between them quickly.
• There’s a full suite of HTML Markup Tools for
creating and editing web pages.
• It has built-in FTP (file transfer) capability to open,
preview, edit and save pages on the server.
• It has HTML syntax checking and an integrated
version of ”HTML Tidy”, for formatting and cleaning up
HTML code.
• It uses Text Factories to execute a series of text
transformations and apply them to multiple files.
• It supports Enhanced Unicode fonts for documents
written in foreign languages.
• It sports multi-file searching capability using grep
(Global Regular Expression Parser) to find and change
one or more files containing a match to a specific pattern.
I use it to make changes to our SBAMUG web site. I
can view all the files in the site, open them, make edits,
and save them back to the server. To insure that no ones
email address could be harvested from our site I did a
multi-file search on the files in our site for the expression
@. It displayed each line containing @; clicking on a line
opened the file for editing.
My TidBITs folder contains 300 text files (40K each).
It took about 5 seconds for BBEdit to search the entire
folder for selected text and display each instance in a
results window. Click on a result and the file opens.
TextWrangler 1.5
If you’d like a text editor with the
power of BBEdit, but don’t need the
HTML editing features, Barebones
sells TextWrangler 1.5. SBAMUG is
registered with Bare Bones so we can buy BBEdit online
for $119, TextWrangler for $39 and Super Get Info for
$15 using the Coupon Code: 01ds70. It’s a steep
discount. Download a demo version and try it.
Bare Bones, is very supportive of the Macintosh and
has donated a copy of TextWrangler and Super Get Info
for our raffle. They also have some freeware programs
on their web site, www.barebones.com.
Review: Microsoft Wireless
IntelliMouse Explorer
By Sven Anderson, MUG ONE
Macintosh User Group of Oneonta, NY
T
he Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer is
an attractive and well built mouse. It is mostly
black with the look and feel of leather. In an age
where hardware designers seem to think that
everything must be designed to fit in on the deck of a
star-cruiser, the IntelliMouse is an elegant exception.
It is a little larger than most mice these days and
considerably heavier, due in large part to the two AA
batteries tucked away in its belly. At first I thought
that the extra weight would be a real problem but I
have come to find it an added feature that I like. The
extra weight gives me more control when making
very tight selections in a program like Photoshop.
The IntelliMouse is designed for right-handed
mouseketeers and I can’t find any reference to a lefthanded version. I must say that the ergonomic form
fit for a right hand is a welcome asset.
The design was well thought out. It includes two
main buttons plus a clickable wheel that functions as
a third button and has two smaller buttons on the left
side. One of the great design elements of this mouse
is the fact that these two buttons are convenient yet
tucked out of the way enough that they do not
interfere with normal mouse functionality at all. I
find most 4 or more button mice to be a real pain to
operate because the extra buttons are constantly
being pressed inadvertently when trying to move or
especially, pick up and move the mouse when you
have run out of mouse-pad real estate. For the
graphic artist who uses a large monitor and is
constantly picking up the mouse while trying to keep
a button depressed this is really big. The left side is
even undercut slightly so it is easy to grip and lift.
As far as wireless functionality is concerned, you
have all the benefits of wireless and very few
drawbacks. The benefits include not having to
untangle that mouse cord that always seems to find a
way of getting tangled or hung up on the corner of
the keyboard. I have been using this mouse
constantly now for several months and have only
found two occasions where it seemed to lose contact
with the computer. These two instances were only for
a second and the mouse found the connection again
on its own. This was far less of a hindrance than a
corded mouse encounters on a daily basis. If there is
a flaw in the design it is that it uses an antennae unit,
about the size of a mouse, to connect to the USB
terminal on your computer. My only wish is that
it would be Bluetooth enabled so I would not need to
either use the USB port or have yet another thing
hanging off of the back of my monitor.
The Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer has excellent
optical tracking technology and therefore has all the
usual optical benefits such as smooth operation over
most any surface and nothing to clean. It is extremely
sensitive and works like a dream for those of us
doing things that need very precise mouse control.
As for cool features, this mouse includes
programmable buttons which can be very handy for
taking care of repetitive tasks such as refreshing a
web page or going back to the previous page or for
undoing the last command. The biggest “New”
feature for me was the tilt wheel for side-to-side
scrolling. You can tilt the wheel to navigate side to
side in documents or in a web browser. The
combination of scroll wheel with a tilt mechanism
means you can practically say good-bye to window
scroll bars. That is a feature making this mouse
worthwhile all on its own.
Even without the added features of 5 buttons and a
tilt-wheel, or even the wireless aspects, I love this
mouse. It works and feels great. Microsoft hit this
one out of the park.
(Sven Anderson is an Apple Distinguished Educator
and professor of Computer Art at State University of
New York, College at Oneonta)
Microsoft Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer System
Requirements: Mac OS X version 10.1 to 10.2.x
(excluding 10.0), 15MB of available hard-disk space,
Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, CD-ROM drive.
Mac 911 Help Desk
By Christopher
Breen
A
s easy as the
Mac is to use,
there are times
when you get so
frustrated by seemingly arbitrary limitations--a cable
modem that won't work with your network, Internet
Explorer cookies that refuse to be deleted, or a
beloved keyboard command changed to satisfy the
perverse fancy of an Apple executive--that you're
ready to return to pencil, paper, and slide rule. But
don't give up on your Mac. Read on and relax.
Cable Capers
My home network uses a router with three Macs, a
PC, and two laser printers. My cable provider allows
multiple connections via networking to the Internet
over broadband. This worked well under OS 9. I
recently moved to OS X, and my connection to the
Web is sporadic when I turn on Internet Sharing. Can
you help?
- Christopher Smith
• Your networking setup is doing double duty. OS
X's Internet Sharing is intended for connections that
don't include a router. In a setup without a router, the
host Mac (the one directly connected to your cable
modem) handles the routing for you, directing traffic
for other Macs on the network.
Because you already have a device for routing
network traffic, you don't need Internet Sharing.
Instead, switch it off, and configure your router to
accept connections to the Web via its WAN (wide
area network) port and to distribute IP addresses
across your network through its LAN (local area
network) port.
By the way, you may find that your cable modem
has glommed on to the unique hardware address
(called the Media Access Control, or MAC, address)
of a device other than your router. If so, pull the
power cable from the modem, to reset it, and then
plug it into the router, to grab the router's MAC
address. If that doesn't work (some modems resist
this technique), clone the MAC address from the
device the modem used to plug into (your Mac, for
example) to the router. You'll find instructions for
doing this in your router's documentation or on the
router maker's Web site.
Out, Damned Cookies
Since upgrading from Jaguar to Panther, I haven't
been able to delete all Internet Explorer (IE) cookies.
When I reopen IE's Preferences, the cookies are still
there. What gives?
- Via the Internet
• It's a bug, and an annoying one at that. The
obvious solution is to move to a browser that doesn't
have this problem. If, however, you prefer IE above
all others, turn to a third-party utility for help. You
can configure M. Atmani's $10 Cookie Dog 2.0 to
flush cookies from five browsers--Internet Explorer,
Safari, Mozilla/Netscape 7, Camino, and OmniWeb-when you log in. Or try Aladdin Systems' $30
Internet Cleanup, which includes Cookie Tosser, a
utility that will put an end to any browser's cookies.
Drive Details
I have a 350MHz iMac and want to replace the hard
drive with a roomier one. What kind of hard drive is
compatible?
- Geoffrey Garrett
• Your iMac, like all desktop Macs, takes a 3.5-inch
ATA/EIDE drive. IMacs with CRTs included 5,400rpm drives, and, because of heat issues, Apple
recommends that you replace the original drive with
another 5,400-rpm drive. But I can tell you that lots
of people have put 7,200-rpm drives into their iMacs
without their computers igniting.
You may find drives that boast Ultra ATA/133
performance. Although your iMac didn't ship with
this kind of drive, Ultra ATA/133 drives work well
in it. Just keep an eye on drive size. The CRT iMacs
will recognize only 128GB of storage, so there's no
reason to pay for a drive with greater capacity.
And while we're on the subject of replacing iMac
drives, those of you with 333MHz or slower iMacs
must partition a new drive so the first partition is no
larger than 8GB. Once you've partitioned the drive,
you must install OS X in that first 8GB-or-smaller
partition.
Macworld contributing editor Chris Breen is the
author of Macworld's tips and troubleshooting
column, "Mac 911," as well as Secrets of the iPod:
Fourth Edition and Mac 911 (Peachpit Press). Find
Chris' books at www.amazon.com and www.peach
pit.com. Get special user group pricing on Macworld
Magazine! Subscribe today at:
http://www.macworld.com/useroffer.
Mix Madness with
PDF files
Charles Wu, NCMUG
P
ortable Document
Format or PDF by
Adobe Systems has been the
standard method for
exchanging data between
different operating systems and is a way to guarantee
that whomever downloads a document sees it the
same way. It means that users don’t have to have the
graphics, word processing or whatever program to
view the content. Much of the success of PDF has
been Adobe’s free distribution of Acrobat Reader,
with the only way to create and manipulate PDFs has
been Adobe’s Acrobat program for around $250
street price.
One of the great values of OS X has been the
ability to create PDFs right out of the box with no
expensive software to buy, making it a great value.
Originally a feature of the Preview application, OS X
now includes the “Save As PDF...” button in the print
dialog box. But what if you want to edit a PDF? This
month I will cover two free or low cost applications
for manipulating PDF’s.
The first application is “Combine PDFs” by
German Monkey Bread Software, that allows users to
combine multiple PDFs, rearrange or delete pages
within a PDF. A very simple list box interface
displays the pages to be edited. The application is
written in RealBasic and comes with source code.
While not flashy, it is free and does the job. Monkey
Bread has a bunch of nifty utilities to save you
money, including an application that lets you watch
QuickTime movies in full screen without buying
Quicktime Pro, called “Full Screen Movie Player.”
Who would have guessed?
If you need more complex PDF manipulation,
SmileOnMyMac has an Application, PDFpen, that
does everything CombinePDFs does, but does so
graphically so you can preview edits. This is much
easier than remembering whether you want to delete
page 7 or page 8. You just look at it. In addition,
PDFpen lets you edit and annotate PDF documents
with text or graphical notes. A “signature” feature is
a convenient way to add your signature to PDF forms
that you download. You can try PDFpen to sample
the features of the program, but it’ll display a big
watermark obscuring the document on anything you
print. You have to register the program to remove the
watermarks.
It also works in conjunction with their companion
product PageSender, a Fax program. At $29.95,
PDFpen is an incredible value if you work a lot with
PDF files created by OS X need to make edits and
annotations.
In testing the programs, PDFpen seems to create
slightly smaller combined PDFs than Combine
PDFs, but as they say your mileage may vary.
PDF is a great way to publish your work, and these
two applications allow you to create some pages in
one application, and others in another and merge
them into one seamless document. Both are cost
effective ways to get flexibility from PDF capabilities
built into Mac OS X.
Combine PDFs:
http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/Com
binePDFs.shtml
Full Screen Movie Player:
http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Freeware/
FullscreenMoviePlayer.shtml
PDFpen:
http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/
Genealogy On A MAC
Anyone interested in forming a Special Interest
Group (SIG) for doing Genealogy on a MAC
computer please contact Erik Nilsson by e-mail at:
enilsson@aol.com
Please put MAC Genealogy in the Subject and in
the message area indicate:
If you would like to meet in the morning,
around noon, in the afternoon, or in the
evening,
If you have any ideas about what you would
like the SIG to be about,
What you would like to learn,
What is your genealogy experience,
Beginner, Advanced, Expert,
What, if any, genealogy program are you
using,
Where we could meet,
How often would you like to meet, once in a
while, quarterly, or a regular monthly
activity, and
How you would be willing to participate
Real People Reviews
Color Management
By Daniel M. East
Product: ProTouch
Manufacturer/Vendor/Developer: iSkin
MSRP: $19.95
By Mary Norbury-Glaser
Macintech MUG, Denver
F
or those who
are longtime
iBook and
Powerbook users,
you know that
popping keys and
worn out labels
are common (not
to mention cat
owners who’s
felines like to
snuggle up to a
nice warm
Power- book). The ProTouch from iSkin adds a
rubberized coating to your keyboard and protecting it
from all that and more.
While using the ProTouch did take a day to soften up
a little, it is now a perfect fit to my Powerbook
keyboard. The colors are subtle which allows for the
backlighting to be visible while giving the hardware a
little personality. Fingers stay where they need to be
and that annoying “thumb spot” on the space bar is not
emerging as on previous Powerbook keyboard.
Cleaning is easy as well since it is mostly a matter of
lifting it up and shaking it off.
A nice side-effect of the ProTouch is that it reduces
the noise level of the keyboard. This allows for easy
typing in quiet spaces and helps reduce overall wear
and tear. It is even washable (using iSkin’s specific
instructions). You can even further personalize your
ProTouch with an iSkin Tattoo so that logos or
information can be added making this a really cool
“swag” item for trade shows, preferred clients, etc..
I’d love to see them offer a ProTouch with flaps that
would cover the sides below the keyboard while
leaving the track pad exposed.
While there are other keyboard covers out there, the
ProTouch is the one with a spot-on perfect fit based on
what I’ve tested thus far. If you are into Apple
portables, iSkin has it covered from iBook to iPod.
OVERALL RATING: 9 out of 10 stars
For more information, visit:
http://www.iskin.com/protouch_PB1.html
©2004 Daniel M. East
The Mid-Atlantic Macintosh User Groups Team
(MaMUGs)
T
his is a must-have book for photographers, graphic
arts professionals and even web designers and
folks at home with digital cameras and photo printers;
in short, anyone who is in the business or is an
enthusiast of digital imaging.
The time and supplies saved alone is worth the price
of this book. For many years, people have cried for a
comprehensive manual for color management. But
there has been precious little on detailing the precise
method of calibrating monitors and how to use the
resulting profile to produce accurate and consistent
color reproductions in print of what the eye sees in life.
This book covers the theory and science of color,
building display profiles, how to evaluate profiles, how
to build printer profiles, workflow, application specific
color management (Adobe, FreeHand, CorelDRAW,
QuarkXPress & PDF), automation and scripting. There
are abundant screenshots to further explain details and
the language is crisp and clear, without unnecessary
information. There is just the right amount of theory
going hand in hand with practical real world examples.
If you take digital photos and print them then make
the investment of computer, camera, printer and
supplies worth every penny by buying this book!
Real World Color Management:
Industrial Strength Production Techniques
Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, Fred Bunting
List price: $49.99
SafariSorter
By Chita Hunter - MacGroup Detroit
W
hat started off inquisitively and innocently
enough as a topic on the MacGroup iBBS,
sorting Safari’s Bookmarks, evolved for me, into a
software download on a sunny Saturday morning,
with a “Let’s see what ya got” attitude.
After reading the SafariSorter Help file and
making the Preferences changes, and of course,
copying that special file. I let the program run. Three
seconds later, it was done and gave me the results. I
was surprised to see that I had “56 pairs of duplicate
bookmarks.”
At first I was going to gloss over this application
after reading about it on VersionTracker.com, but the
developers response to a comment lead me to delve
on to see how or if this little app could be helpful to
me. From the VersionTracker site, I couldn’t really
determine if the program went beyond what I could
do manually and I couldn’t determine if the program
could be specific.
Before I installed, I followed the link that the
developer supplied on VersionTracker.com to read
more about the program, and decided to give it a try.
For the most part, my Bookmarks are already
alphabetized. But it wasn’t always (or pretty much
ever) a delightful job to do. My real reason for
wanting to try this program was a basic no brainer: I
have Bookmarks. I add Bookmarks. I want them
alphabetized all the time. I don’t want to do it
manually. You?
After installation, you don’t even have to quit
Safari for this program to work. It runs separately
from Safari. Upon launch, the program first asks if
you want to read the documentation before setting
your preferences. I had to smile at this one. Most just
want to drive, not know what makes it go. Me, I read.
Up pops the SafariSorter Help file as well as the
Prefs dialogue window.
One key question was answered immediately
reading Quick Start Basic Operation. “SafariSorter
never moves bookmarks from the subfolder where
you have them. SafariSorter simply re-orders the
bookmarks within each folder.” But, if it matters to
you, once a sort is executed, your original unsorted
bookmarks file is replaced and cannot be recovered.
So, we all know what we should do if this matters to
us don’t we? Nod your head yes.
Upon reading the SafariSorter Help file, there’s
even a undocumented tip for how to use the Safari
Find command. “Order of Sorting” is a particularly
good read. It’ll even generate thoughts on how you
may want to redesign how your bookmarks are sorted
now or in the future.
You are given the option to “fix” these. Keep or
Delete. Fixes are immediate. My preferences
alphabetized my Safari Menu Bar, alphabetized the
contents of their folders (folders and URL’s mixed
together) and notified me of all duplicates.
SafariSorter will perform this sorting task as
automated to do so at launch, at a certain time of day
or manually. The “Instructions, How, What, When”
of the Preferences are very straightforward and easy
to follow.
This program is nice, succinct, helpful and works
great. Thanks for bringing it up on the iBBS Switcher
and Chuck Reti. The developer of the program did
insert his political commentary into the Help file and
it has caused some talk, like politics and religion
usually do. My review is only of the merits of the
program.
SBAMUG reminders!
Don’t forget:
∑ MacFair
November 12th –
14th
∑ This month’s
General Meeting
on November 17th
∑ Macworld Conference & Expo January 10th
– 14th
∑ Wi-Fi access is available at our monthly
meetings, all you need is a wireless laptop
Tips & Tricks
By Phyllis Evans – MacGroup Detroit
F
ound a quick way to bring up the OS X System
Preferences without going to the Apple menu.
Just Option-click on one of the volume or brightness
(F14 & F15) keys. And yes, even though they aren’t
marked as such, F14 will lower the brightness setting,
while F15 will increase the brightness.
OS X Startup Shortcuts
As your computer starts up, there are key
combinations you can use to your advantage. Among
them are the following:
∑ Press X: Force OS X to startup instead of
OS 9
∑ Press C: Startup from a CD or DVD
∑ Press Option-Command-Shift-Delete:
∑ Bypass your primary startup volume and
startup from a CD or external drive.
∑ Press T: Startup the computer in FireWire
Target Disk mode
∑ Press Shift: Startup in Safe Boot mode,
which disables non-essential extensions.
∑ Press Option: Calls up the Startup Manager,
allowing you to choose a different startup
disk.
Backup, Backup, Backup
Backups are essential if you want to stay
productive. You never know when disaster will
strike, and a current backup will keep you up and
running. While some with towers like to rely on a
second internal drive, I have always preferred
external drives. First, I’ve seen power supply
problems burn out internal drives. Second, an
external backup can be used on a different computer
if necessary. Whatever your choice, a good place to
start looking for that drive is on http://dealmac.com.
This is one site that I check on a daily basis. You
never know what you will find.
While I have a single backup drive for my iBook,
my iMac has two external drives. One is a bootable
mirror that I update once every week or so. I only
turn it on when I want to do a backup. The second
one is always on, and I have software set to
automatically backup my main identity folder and my
main documents folder on a daily basis. If I’m
working on something critical, I backup my
documents folder more frequently. This is not a
mirrored drive. Files are added, but never deleted. If I
trash a file after a backup and decide a month from
now that I really need that file, it’s still on that
external drive. A second drive should be considered
cheap insurance. You may never need to use it, but if
the day comes that you do, you’ll be happy you have
it.
I recently sold my eMac and moved up to a G5
iMac, but as it turned out, I had only my iBook for a
couple of weeks between the two events. Before the
eMac left, I did a mirror backup of it. I was able to
boot my iBook from that backup and have full access
to the software, files, graphics and fonts I use to
produce a monthly newsletter. I was also able to
access all of my husband’s business files that I don’t
keep on the iBook. When the iMac arrived, I was
able to just connect the drive, and the new Setup
Assistant software transferred my applications,
documents and settings just as if it was transferring
from one computer to another. Very neat! I was back
online and fully functioning in no time. This was the
fastest and easiest computer upgrade I’ve ever
experienced. I’ve only run into two or three apps that
asked for serial numbers.
Photoshop Elements 3
If you can’t wait
to get your hands
on Adobe’s new
Photoshop
Elements 3, you
have to check out
the website for the
new Photoshop
Elements
Techniques
magazine, another
Scott Kelby gem.
The site has
training videos and
other goodies.
Check it out at
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/ and don’t
forget to bookmark it for future reference. This looks
like it’s going to be a great site. Elements 3 looks like
it has some really terrific new features.
To all sbamug members:
Happy Thanksgiving!
THIS MONTH’S MEETING
Wednesday November 17th, 2004 7:30PM
320 Knob Hill, Redondo Beach
(see map at left for directions)
Come early (6:30) for beginners class!
This Month’s Topic:
SBAMUG member & VP Bob Brooks
shows us what’s new in Office
2004!
(see details below)
Next Meeting December 29th:
An Edison rep covers power spikes
& surges
GREAT RAFFLE PRIZES TOO,TICKETS ONLY $1 EACH!
This Month’s Meeting Details:
Attention MUG
Members!
November’s meeting
will be held one week
early due to the
Thanksgiving
Holiday.
The date has been
changed to
Wednesday
November 17th.
Mark your calander
now as not to forget!
Microsoft Office remains the number one
productivity suite for business.
Earlier this year Office 2004 for the
Macintosh was released. It comprises
Entourage (mail), Word, Excel and
PowerPoint. Over the years the number of
features has grown enormously and it's
impossible in one hour to cover even
a small number of them so my talk will focus
on the features that are new to Office 2004.
My presentation will be from the perspective
of "Joe Average User", not a business
professional. I've used Office for many years
but have only taken advantage of a few of it's
many capabilities. I'll do my best to give you
as complete a picture as I can.
Bob Brooks
SBAMUG Membership Application
South Bay Apple Macintosh User Group provides Mac owners and users with a local source
of shared knowledge and experience through monthly meetings, training seminars
and our monthly newsletter.
Individual and family membership is $35 per year payable to SBAMUG.
New Member
Member Renewal
Name: ___________________________________________________________
Address:
________________________________________________________
City: ___________________________ State: _________ Zip: ____________
Home Phone: _____________________ Email Address: ______________________
Special Computer Interest: ____________________________________________
Model of Macintosh You Use Most: _______________________________________
How did you hear about SBAMUG?: _______________________________________
Comments: ________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
Signature: ___________________________
Date: _______________________
Bring Application & Fees to Meetings or Mail to:
SBAMUG
P.O. Box 432
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
PERIODICALS
South Bay Apple Mac User Group
P. O. Box 432
Redondo Beach,
CA 90277-0432