,

It's Coming! It's Coming!

,

          You can tell John Carter is excited.  See all the exclamation points!  (Thanks, John.)
        "The ReRAM is coming!"   (Yep! The British have announced it.)
        "As early as 2013 you should be seeing a new type of non-volatile (retains data without power) random access memory called ReRAM (Resistance Random Access Memory). Initially developed by HP in 2008 as a Memristor (Memory Resistor), it has now been perfected by the Japanese as the ReRAM (with speeds comparable to DRAM). This device is going to replace every hard drive, flash drive, and solid state drive. The beauty of the ReRAM is that it will serve as both the memory of a computer and the hard drive of the computer — and this means only one device instead of two and no more transferring bits from a hard drive to memory. That boils down to a much faster computer, even faster than having an SSD installed in your computer!"

,

Lion's AirDrop

,

         John Carter asks, "Do you have Lion installed on your Mac? Have you tried to use AirDrop yet? Are you not even sure what’s its good for? Get a real good explanation about AirDrop here.
        "Note: AirDrop is only useful if you are attempting to collaborate with other Mac users in an environment where Internet access is not available.
        "As explained by the article in the above link, not all Apple computers running Lion (10.7) support AirDrop. It appears that a Core 2 Duo machine does not. My iMac is a Core 2 Duo. Bummer!
        John goes on to explain, "I confirmed this on my own iMac. My MacBook Pro clearly showed AirDrop in the Finder, but on the iMac it was not there, and it also did not appear in the Finder->Preferences-Sidebar window. Here’s what you should see:

        "But do not despair, there is a way to enable Airdrop on any Lion machine. The instructions are simple, but you do have to use Terminal and enter a couple of commands, which the instructions make perfectly clear.
        "Even after I enabled AirDrop on my iMac which then showed my MacBook Pro in AirDrop on the iMac, when I went to my MacBook Pro and looked at AirDrop, the iMac wasn’t there. So, I decided to do the same two commands on the MacBook Pro and — voila! — the MacBook Pro showed up. I tested transferring a file between the two machines and it worked as advertised.
        "So despite the fact that my iMac supposedly does not have the right hardware, the 'fix' made it possible to use AirDrop anyway."
        John Carter wants us to know that Prez Art Gorski was co-author on the above.  Thanks to both of you! 
     

,

How Best to Complain?

,

        Just suppose there’s something you don’t like. How best to complain and get something fixed? Here’s two issues we’re aware of now.
        First issue: David Passell comments on an article from NewYorkTimes, (their link does not come up unless you’re a subscriber), but the writer states “in China, human costs are built into an iPad.” David personally has often felt that “made in China” devalues everything, and he avoids those articles if possible.
        From C/Net a writer addresses an “open letter to Apple” admonishing them to force good working conditions across the consumer-electronics industry. She zeroes in on the working conditions at Chinese manufacturers. After detailing some of the concerns she challenges Apple, “We’ll be watching.”
        Second issue: Prez Art Gorski sent along a note from a Mac user in California who is irritated with Pages ’09 autocorrect for spelling, so he’s asking for others to write to Apple, with notation “Pages ’09 Complaint” on the envelope. Interested in more details on this, let us know soon.
        Making things better is always an interesting challenge!

,

Smart Phone Vulnerability

,

        The smart phone is vulnerable to malware, as they're becoming (or already are) more like a computer than a phone.  Helping keep us informed of problems Jim Hamm sends us several links.  He points out there are a couple of apps for the iPhone: AntiVirus Lite and Virus Barrier.  Jim says at this point he hasn't researched either to see if they would be worthwhile to run.
        Here's an article from Gizmodo discussing the VirusBarrier.  An article from the NewYorkTimes (1-25-12) writer Kate Murphy claims that an engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute can hack into your cellphone just by dialing the number.  He can remotely listen to your calls, read your text messages, snap pictures with your phone's camera and track your movements around town -- not to mention, access the password to your online bank account.  The engineer told her it was trivial to hack into a cellphone and that the instructions on how to do it are available online.
        Keep up with this sensitive topic.  We'll be hearing more . . .

,

Another Book on Apple

,

        Here's another book on Apple.  Jim Hamm passes along this info, "The following summary was provided by the Apple Blog Newsletter. This book, Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works,  by Adam Lashinsky apparently focuses more on the inner workings of Apple, whereas the book by Isaacson focused more on Jobs, as was intended. I'm looking forward to reading it."

Fascinating Numbers

       "If you've been sitting and waiting to read about Internet statistics for 2011, well, wait no more," declares Jim Hamm.  He's found a bunch!  He sends this link and goes on to say, "I have no idea as to the veracity of these numbers (how do it know?), but it makes for interesting reading — well, for me anyway. Some observations: 18 million people follow Lady Gaga's 'tweetings' on Twitter; Google Chrome web browser has grown significantly — and fast — and is now right behind Internet Explorer in usage; 71% of email traffic is spam (sheesh!); there are over 2 billion people using the Internet! It's amazing how the servers on the worldwide web are able to keep up with all this traffic.  Lots of other trivia about the Internet that undoubtedly you'll enjoy knowing....(grin)."
          If you're eyes are not glazed over scroll to the end of the site's page to go to statistics of annual summaries for 2008, 2009, and 2010.

,

Your Photos on Display

,

Today’s PMUG speaker, Les Stukenberg, photo editor of the Daily Courier mentioned having photos printed at CostCo. From mugs to mousepads, from cards to framed masterpieces your photo can be uploaded to the site, then picked up at the warehouse or have it mailed to you.  Read about it here. Thanks, Les, for an interesting and inspiring presentation of your outstanding photographs.Les also mentioned there are videos and photo galleries on the Daily Courier website.  Check it out  here. 

Reviewing iBooks 2

        Jim Hamm has more to say about this review of iBooks2.  "With the interactive features in iBooks 2, this will put a world of hurt on traditional textbooks. Here you are reading a textbook in iBooks 2 and there's audio and video available, places to take notes, a dictionary, et al. Since the iBooks upgrade is new, there's been bugs reported, so I won't upgrade for some time, if ever. I'm not much on reading textbooks anymore." And, predictably, Jim closes with a grin.

, ,

iBook Author Controversy

, ,

        Apple is getting some bad publicity over the iBook Author program.  Jim Hamm sends this article from Ed Bott of ZDNet, who details some questionable conditions and calls it "greedy and evil license agreement."  Jim comments, "I usually support Apple in its closed-loop system, but not this time. I think authors will just bypass this program. If I'm missing something in this scenario, let me know if you would."  Stay tuned for more on this hot topic.
        This just in from Allen Laudenslager, "What I've read is that Apple is giving away the software to create iBooks BUT if you use it for commercial purposes (i.e. write a book and the sell copies) you have to pay Apple. If you give away the book then you don't have to pay.  Not a bad marketing tool when their goal is cheaper and better textbooks written by the teachers themselves."
        Entering into the discussion now is John Carter.  Here's his view.  "The new app called iBooks Author is available FREE in the App Store.
        "If Apple wants a piece of the pie for books created and published with this app regardless of where the book is published, I think that’s a good tradeoff for providing such a fabulous app.
        "Apple is making available thousands of free educational material through iTunes U. Most of that material is provided solely by the creator without any regard to providing a consistent experience to readers regardless of the source or topic, and most of it is entirely video in nature.
        "The whole purpose of iBooks Author is allow educators to create interactive textbooks intended to be viewed on an iPad, although it can be used to create an iBook for any purpose for any audience. This is a new educational outreach for Apple. In order to sustain this effort, funding must come from somewhere. If Apple were to depend on corporate, public, or private contributions in order to allow the creator to publish outside the Apple domain without some kind of remuneration then they would also have to make sure that iBooks Author would work on any platform. Keeping it in-house is a way to ensure that conformance with Apple standards are maintained so that the quality and experience that comes out of the iBook is consistent.
        John closes with this observation, "A consistent user experience of all apps across all Apple products is almost a trademark of Apple."

Happy New Year

        The Board at PMUG want to wish all of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.  With the new year comes our membership renewal.  We hope your experience with PMUG has been enjoyable and informative this past year.  We strive to make the meetings interesting and bring useful information to our members.
        Our secretary Bobbie Pastor reminds us that annual membership is still $20 for a single or a family membership.  Go to the PMUG website and click on Join Now for an application or see Bobbie at the PMUG meeting to join. (Thanks to Bobbie for the lovely photo.)