PMUG's New Officers

Congratulations to these esteemed PMUG members who've agreed to serve as our new officers. Here is a very brief introduction. Obviously, each has more of a story to tell, but we've limited them to only 100 words! Introduce yourself, ask questions, and you'll be pleased with their backgrounds, Mac experience, hobbies, travels, and all-around personalities.

PRESIDENT ALLEN LAUDENSLAGER: Allen is a semi-retired technical writer who switched to a Mac from PCs just about 2 years ago. His background with computers began in 1963 with a room sized Univac III. The first computer he owned was built from a kit in 1979 his experience spans operating systems including CPM, DOS, and Unix. In addition to starting his year as the PMUG president, Allen is the outgoing president of the Ponderosa Park Association (a neighborhood lead here in the Prescott area) and is on the Prescott Sailing Club safety committee. Allen is currently building a 16-foot wooden sailboat.

VICE PRESIDENT BILL WILLIAMSON: Bill has used an impressive variety of computers throughout his career: a CDC mainframe in 1957, followed by 10 different IBM models, on to Cray supercomputers, then in the late 70’s to PC’s and finally Macs. With a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, he taught graduate courses, wrote for 100 - 200 professional publications and gave presentations, and also directed research, garnering Fulbright, Outstanding Research, etc. awards. He was consultant to Sandia Labs for about 10 years. Retired in 1997, Bill moved to Prescott where he’s been president of Archaeology Society, Prescott Outings Club, and active in Monday Night Bluegrass.

SECRETARY BOBBIE PASTOR: After earning her Secretarial major in college Bobbie started at UniRoyal Rubber Company in Santa Ana, California where she did clerical work. From there she worked for Laura Scudders, then Kimberly Clark, retiring thirty-three years later. In 2003, Bobbie retired at 58 ½, sold her house in Placentia and headed to Prescott, AZ. Here she found the Mac User Group, and was “roped into being Secretary” in 2006. She keeps the books, sends out notices, takes minutes, keeps attendance and has possession of the PMUG computer, projector and files for the club. Now she also holds SIGs for beginners.

TREASURER DAVID PASSELL: David’s degree is from USC in Telecommunications (TV and Radio production) W56 as broadcast engineer/DJ for KUTE in Glendale, CA, then Chief Engineer for FM station WNCN in NYC. In 1961 he was Telecommunications Engineer at JPL (analyzing spacecraft data, writing reports, and writing FORTRAN programs). He did Technical Writing (IBM, Litton, Associated Writers, Conrac) retiring in 1996 from Ameritec, Duarte, CA.
Betty and David came to Prescott in 1996. His Mac history: Apple II - 1978, MAC portable - 1991, Mac TV - 1995. Currently he has MINI, iMAC, and a G3. In PMUG since 1997, he’s been President twice and continues as Treasurer.

See what I mean? You'll need to get acquainted with each of these nice people.

Discovering Cable Modem Speeds

What's the speed of your Internet connection? Art Gorski sends us an interesting tidbit this morning.

"I discovered this weekend that Cableone has increased their cable modem speeds. This is a stealth upgrade. They will not increase your speed unless you call them (928-445-4511). My 3Mbps cable modem is now 5Mbps at the same cost. Don't look at what folks in the Big City get or you will be depressed, but it's a positive move for those of us in the Sticks."

You can run a test, "How Fat is Your Pipe?" at http://www.digitallanding.com/high-speed-internet/section_display.cfm/section_id/20?gclid=CKjCisCJq5sCFRYiagodCil3DA to arrive at your Internet download and upload speeds, bandwidth, VoIP test, and a comparison chart of broadband services.

Then you might want to see if there are any upgrades in your area. If you're an "old" subscriber there may be improvements now available.

Clearing Up Some Confusion

Have you seen the recent article comparing the up-coming Snow Leopard with some PC system? Spare yourself some confusion - - and time - - by reading Apple’s page that outlines which computers will be able to run it. http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

Note: It is only for Intel Macs. Earlier Macs don’t need it and won’t run it. When you buy a new Mac now it will be Intel, and if you purchase after June 8 you can upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard for $9.95. The rest of us will pay $29.00.

Thanks to David Passell for alerting us to the confusion of the PC article. Want to read it for yourself? http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1114

Happy Listeners

Bobbie Pastor captured these images of the happy listeners at our June meeting in the Library. I've added her additional photo to our sidebar. Thanks, Bobbie.

Were you there? See yourself?

If you missed this time, be sure and catch the next PMUG meeting. Catch up with what others are doing to enhance their computer experience. Share what you've discovered.
How about volunteering to do a demo or give a full presentation to PMUG sometime? We appreciate the help we get from each other, as well as help we gain from hearing outside speakers.

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More on Monsoon-Ready

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Thanks to Art Gorski for the following info:
At my home Mary Ann and I have separate offices, a home theater setup in the living room, and a central wiring closet.

Both offices and the closet use CyberPower 895 3600 Joule surge suppressors. I picked this brand for the very high protection rating. Besides protecting computers and peripherals in the offices, it also protects my cablemodem (the incoming cable goes through the CyberPower), Apple base station router, and a ReadyNAS server that I use centrally for all backups. If I used a Qwest phone line (I use ViaTalk internet phone instead), it would also be protected.
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberpower-895-8-Outlet-Surge-Suppressor/dp/B000098XO0

For the home theater, I selected a CyberPower 1030HT 6000 Joule surge suppressor optimized for this application.
http://www.amazon.com/Cyberpower-1030HT-10-Outlet-Surge-Suppressor/dp/B0009WDLPK

I'm not particularly worried about a power failure actually hurting anything, so I wasn't interested in a UPS solution, but we have had serious issues with lightning damage in our neighborhood. Hence, the heavy duty surge suppressors.

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Re: Are You Monsoon-Ready?

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I have all my electronic equipment (computers, stereos, TVs) on Tripp-Lite Omni1000LCD UPS systems (this model may not be available anymore). I bought them all from Costco (around $99 each). They have served me well through three Monsoon seasons without a problem and I never bother turning anything off unless the power is out for more than a few minutes. Each unit has four uninterrupted outlets and four surge-conditioned outlets. I noticed that the Tripp-Lite UPS is what Smith Audio installs for all entertainment systems.

Consider this: if you really want to upgrade your computer, leave it powered on and plugged in to a UPS. Most UPS systems have some kind of insurance policy against loss of equipment during a lightning strike. If the UPS fails to protect your computer, you get a new computer - for free! ;-)

John C.

Security Update Posted

If you haven’t been automatically notified from your Mac’s Software Update, you might want to look at this. It’s a security update, “Java for Mac OS X v.10.5, update 4.” Several news sources on Google reported it. I looked at http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/06/15/apple_plugs_critical_java_security_hole_affecting_tiger_leopard.html

Sure enough, it came up when I looked at Software Update on my Mac. It said, "Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 delivers improved reliability, security, and compatibility for Java SE 6, J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later. This release updates Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_13, J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_19, and J2SE 1.4.2 to 1.4.2_21.
Please quit all web browsers before installing this update.
For more details on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3581

Check it out for yourself. "Secure" is such a nice concept.

Jim Jumps In

"Here's a brief summary of Safari 4 from the Apple Blog. I've installed it, and like it fine," writes Jim Hamm, De Prez.
Apple Releases Safari 4, Posted: 08 Jun 2009 04:40 PM PDT

Apple today stripped the beta tag from, and released, Safari 4 into the wild. Safari 4, which has been in beta since February, offers a host of features and enhancements to what Apple claims is the “World’s Fastest Browser.”

Safari 4 features an updated user interface, and numerous under-the-hood enhancements, all of which contribute to a great new browser, built with the user in mind. If you’ve been using Safari 3, this is a fantastic update you’ll definitely want to install immediately. If you’ve been using the Safari 4 beta for the last few months, some changes have been made, and stability has improved. No matter what browser you currently use, Safari 4 is a gorgeous app that puts the content up front and gets out of your way while you surf.

Safari 4 Top Site Search

Searching in Safari has seen a few feature updates. You can use the new Search bar, which auto-completes terms, offers suggestions, and displays a list of recent searches for you. Pretty standard stuff. But here’s the cool part: Let’s say you want to search for a site you’ve been to in the past, but can’t remember where it was. Simply visit your Top Sites page and use the Search box at the bottom. Safari will search through your history and display thumbnail previews of the search results via Cover Flow in the browser window — making it much easier to find what you’re looking for. The Cover Flow feature also works with your Bookmarks.

Shortcuts

Apple has added a few options to the Customize Toolbar preferences. You can now add buttons for Top Sites, Bookmarks Bar, Site Information, Email Page and more. To make room for these buttons, Apple has removed the Stop/Reload button and made it part of the URL bar.

Safari 4 buttons

For those who were using Safari 4 beta and didn’t care for the Tabs-On-Top feature, you’ll feel all warm and fuzzy when you find the Tab bar has been moved back to its Safari 3 location below the toolbar.

While browsers have had the ability to reduce or enlarge text for a long time, Safari 4 goes one step further by allowing you to zoom an entire page in and out, keeping the content and overall look of the site the way it was intended. Of course, you can also zoom the text only, and support for external style sheets is available, so you can choose your fonts, sizes and colors for all web sites.

A few other nifty features of Safari 4 include inline viewing of PDFs without cumbersome plugins, the ability to “clip” a web page to create a Dashboard Widget of the page, the ability to save images directly into your iPhoto library, and mail the contents of a page (in its full HTML glory) with the click of a button.

Safari 4 Under the Hood

The new JavaScript engine (Nitro) in Safari 4, which boasts speeds four times faster than Firefox 3, four-and-a-half times faster than Safari 3, and eight times faster than Internet Explorer 8, was noticeably improved over previous Safari versions — especially when loading JavaScript-heavy pages such as my iGoogle page.

Page rendering speeds have also been improved by up to three times, according to Apple’s statements. Not having any scientific data to back up my claim, I’ll say that it is fast. Very fast. Considering Safari 4 will run as a 64-bit app under Snow Leopard when it’s released in September, Safari with its Nitro JavaScript engine will be speeding along at a pace that will leave other browsers envious.

Safari 4 also boasts support for HTML 5, for the use of offline technologies, and some pretty cool CSS 3 effects such as animations, fonts and media effects. It’s also the only browser I know of that supports ICC color profiles out of the box, so images appear in the browser as they were intended to.

Of particular interest to web site designers and developers is the ability to invoke Safari 4’s Web Inspector to get a closer look at the underpinnings of a web site. You can view the CSS and HTML code, script and database information, as well as beautiful graphs displaying site statistics, such as image size.

Safari 4 Web Inspector

Firefox, with its plethora of extensions available, has been my browser of choice for a long time. But Safari does offer one thing that Firefox just can’t seem to catch hold-of in Mac OS X — speed! Safari 4 just blows the doors off even Firefox 3.5 beta. And it does offer some customization capability via InputManagers (not supported by Apple, by the way). Overall, if you can live without dozens of extensions for Firefox, Safari is by far the best browser for the Mac.

Safari 4 is available now as a free download for Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later and requires that you install Security Update 2009-002. You can download Safari 4 from Apple’s web site. # # #

Apple is Hiring "At Home Experts"

Would you like to work independently in your your own office at home? Apple is advertising for phone-based support team openings. Ads recently appearing on monster.com state that applicants can help provide a "rewarding" customer experience.

Art Gorski sends us this link: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/05/apple-beefing-up-phone-support-with-about-450-telecommuters.ars The article goes on to say that according to Cult of Mac, Apple aims to hire 150 remote technicians a month in July, August, and September. They declare that this is "likely evidence that Apple plans to launch something big in October, when the company generally announces new laptop computers."

Gmail is tops!

At the last PMUG SIG we talked a little about Gmail. Jim Hamm noticed that he hasn't seen any spam come in through his Gmail account while he does get a lot of spam through other mail account. I, too, have noticed the same thing. So I experimented a little today and set up my Gmail account to pull in all my email from my other accounts - except Yahoo - and now when I get mail in Mac Mail, all that mail comes in to one place because I pull it all from the Gmail account.

I have four separate accounts set up in Mac Mail, Gmail being one of them. The only account that is active is the Gmail account. The others are now just place holders. When mail comes in, I have rules set up to sort my inbox. Each mail item is moved to a folder based on the information in the To: and Subject: lines. Really nice! One place to read all my mail, even when I'm away from home - because I can now login to my Gmail account online and read everything.

Another plus! I set up Mac Mail to send through my Gmail account as the default sender, but I have the other accounts waiting in the wings in case there's a delay in sending through Gmail, and I am prompted to try another server - or I can just wait it out and it will get sent eventually.

Of course, I do have to log in to the Gmail account occasionally to clean up the junk folder. Even if I don't, it will clean itself up in time. No worries, mate!

Basic Mac SIG Begins May 8

Mark your calendar: May 8, 15, 22, 29. Bobbie Pastor will teach Basic Mac SIG (Special Interest Group). It's scheduled for 9:30 to 12 noon, Prescott Public Library in Founders Room B. Subscribe to iCal so these meetings will automatically be shown on your computer: webcal://ical.me.com/bopastor/PMUG%20Club.ics Bobbie will be using "Teach Yourself Visually Mac OS X Leopard" by Lynette Kent. Barnes and Noble has it, and Amazon has it for $19.79. Need more info? pmugbobbie@cableone.net

Jim's Teaching and Bobbie Will, Too

Along with the new SIG photo posted on the sidebar De Prez Jim Hamm explains, "I've been teaching Beginning Mac SIGs (Special Interest Group) classes at the Prescott Public Library, and here is a picture from the class yesterday. I try to hold a class each week, and the session lasts two hours. We usually have around 20 people in the class, and focus on the basics of using a Mac and OS X. It's free to members of PMUG (Prescott Mac User Group), and the attendees are appreciative of learning how to use their Mac. For some, this is the first time they've used a computer of any kind.

"That's my MacBook Air in the lower right corner, which I use to display whatever is on my computer screen onto a screen on the wall. The past two sessions we've been having fun 'surfing Safari,' the web browser for the Mac."

In May Bobbie Pastor will teach the Beginners' SIG, using the book, "Teach Yourself Visually" as outline for the sessions. She promises to "go at a slow pace" and hopes to hear from those who'd like to attend so she can schedule the meeting room. Email her soon:

pmugbobbie@cableone.net

No Need for Antivirus Software

Here's Art Gorski's take on the issue. "Regarding the PMUG news item, [in the earlier posting on this site] this is basically a spam email. There is currently no need for antivirus software for the Mac. The 'botnet' quoted does exist, although it is tiny, and those Macs got infected by downloading illegal software, so they got what they deserved. :-)"

Allen Laudenslager adds, "This is not a huge attack on Macs. So far it is only attacking Macs that use a pirated version of iWork. One more reason to buy from Apple." See this article,

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/22/first.mac.botnet/index.html

Is anti-virus needed for the Mac?

I wonder how much credibility there is is stuff like this, or are they just trying to create more fear-factor and sell stuff. This was forwarded to me by a friend:

From: PC Tools
Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:57:29 PM
Subject: Important Notice - Mac Threat Alert

Mac Threat Alert
Know anyone that's a Mac User?

Then let them know that malware researchers have discovered what appears to be the first Mac OSX botnet, aka MacBot or iBotnet and its receiving a substantial amount of industry and media interest.

Early estimates suggest that thousands of people have unknowingly downloaded the infected files. Don't let yourself be one of them...

In a nutshell the botnet is launching a number of malware variants inside pirated copies of popular Mac based software in order to take control of the infected Mac machine.

First and foremost make sure that you and your fellow Mac users, exercise caution, have Mac specific security software installed and that your existing version of iAntiVirus is up to date - there's a free version or you can purchase a version with full functionality and support for only $29.95. It's also vital that you enable and install the latest Mac security updates.

Regards
PC Tools Team

PC Tools Limited
Units A & B, Block 4, Shannon Business Park, Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland.
Copyright © 2009 PC Tools. All rights reserved.

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Importing Your Photos

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Thanks to Allen Laudenslager for writing about a recent experience organizing his photos:

"I moved some files into the iPhoto library using Finder, and when I opened iPhoto I couldn't see just those photos. After a lot of trial and error, I moved the files to a temporary folder under Documents, opened iPhoto and used the File/Import option to collect the photos. Now I can open them in iPhoto and use all the capabilities of iPhoto to edit them."

Note: when you install the '09 version you find the Welcome tutorial, but also take a look at the additional short video tutorials at http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/?sr=app#iphoto

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PMUG website

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The RSS feed in the PMUG website is now working.

You should unsubscribe from the current PMUG website in your newsreader (if you have done it) and subscribe once again.
Subscribing in NetNewsWire is easy. Just enter the URL as http://www.pmug.us.
Webmaster: John Carter
P.S. from Elaine: In the event that you missed the earlier post of February 24, De Prez Jim Hamm told about NetNewsWire and gave us this link, http://www.newsgator.com/INDIVIDUALS/NETNEWSWIRE/
More from John:
A little more detail is in order.
I can only talk about NetNewsWire because that's the RSS news reader that I use.
If you see a lot of duplicate entries in your PMUG website feed, then you need to unsubscribe (delete) that feed and subscribe again to the PMUG website feed.
In NetNewsWire, you right click on the feed entry and click on Unsubscribe...
When you subscribe to the PMUG feed, be sure you check the box next to "Sync this feed".
After subscribing to the PMUG feed, the new entry should just say "PMUG". When you click on PMUG, you should see twelve news items in the list. If you double-click on PMUG, you should be taken to the PMUG home page. Clicking again on PMUG shows the list again.
When pages are updated, a description of the update should show in the news panel.
The only advantage to subscribing to the PMUG website in your newsreader is to know when a change occurs to any of the pages.
It is interesting, and confusing, that the Mac Mail RSS newsreader always shows "Read more" on every news feed. What you see when you click on that is of course the page that has been identified as "new" or the content has been changed. And sometimes the only thing that changes with the PMUG website is maybe a few lines of code that don't even show up as a change in what you can see. That makes those update notices more annoying than informative. So it behooves one to pay attention to the message before visiting the website. For example, you might read, "This update affects only the format," or, "This update affects only the underlying code, there are no content changes." That update can be ignored unless you want to critic the change. But, "Updated Meeting minutes for the month of ...," is a significant change - not to be ignored.
Right now, all the messages simply summarize the content of the page.
Hope this helps.