April 2009 AUSOM Supports Users of Apple Products April 2009 Volume 30, No 3 Recommended retail price $9.00 Print Post Publication No. 339944/00003 ISSN 1329-2641 AUSOM News is a publication of AUSOM Incorporated Reg. No. A0005646X This issue is dedicated to the Victorian bushfire victims, heros, fire fighters, survivors and animals.
The new, more powerful Mac range now at Next Byte. The latest iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro and iPod touch have now arrived. Come into store and try out our new range of Mac computers and Mac software. The Next Byte team will be on hand to demonstrate the new iLife and iWork 09, showcasing new features and providing expert advice. 2 v AUSOM News April 2009 AUSOM & AUSOM News on the Internet * All graphics are for illustration purposes only.
Dick Johnson From Your Committee Melbourne PC Office – Our New Venue Saturday 2nd May was our first Meetings Day in our new venue – the Melbourne PC User Group Office at the Chadstone Place office block in the Chadstone Shopping Centre and what a great day it turned out to be. Our members loved the facilities and with the help of Melbourne PC’s Bob Trayner and his assistants all technical problems were quickly overcome.
you with someone who will show you the ropes in the field you wish to study. Let us emphasise, raw beginners are still most welcome and will always be so on our 1:1 programme. Forthcoming Meetings AUSOM’s 30th Birthday SubCommittee The Multimedia SIG is held Tuesday evening, 7th April at the Balwyn Baptist Church Hall at 7.30pm. Ross Taylor will speak about Adobe (Photoshop) Lightroom 2.
Pam Doughty, editor@ausom.net.au Editorial Cover Design Many thanks to Gary Biram who supplied the cover design and provided inspiration for this Month’s AUSOM News. Our thoughts are constantly with those who have lost everything in recent fires and floods within Australia. Offering all the assistance and support to others makes us more aware of importance of all ‘back-up plans’.
Group Coordinators/Reporters Special Interest Groups Special Interest Groups Largely unedited reports from meetings and plans for this month. Times and presentations are correct at time of publication. For more up-to-date information check AUSOM's web site or contact the coordinator whose name is beneath the SIG title. Contact details can be found in the yellow centre section. MANY reports remain unavailable — your co-ordinators need YOUR help, please offer assistance.
both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, was demonstrated. Gradient Map command: This maps any preset or custom colour gradient to an RGB image according to the tonal value of the image pixels making possible effects from the surreal to a very controlled tinting of an image. Thank you to everyone for your support and your contributions. Detailed notes for this SIG can be obtained from ptas8885@bigpond. net.au iPhone The Challenge photo for the month can be downloaded from www.ausom.net.
Mat demonstrated his Arduino programmable usb interface board. The kit he purchased at a conference demo session included the board, programming editor and sample programs. He uploaded a sample script from the computer to the on-board memory where it ran. The tri-colour LED connected to the board output cycled through the three colours. Very nice. We had three new members at the meeting and I did collect names and email addresses but mislaid the record. I hope these three turn up next meeting.
10am Wednesday Retirees and Others Pat Tasker (ptas8885@bigpond.net.au) April 8th Presentations: Steve Cooper will present: ‘A Voyage around a Digital Camera’. and ‘What To Consider For Taking The Perfect Photo (and ways of correcting it if it isn’t quite ...). March Presentations: 1. Geoff Wallace continued ‘Setting Up Apple Mail.’ Setting up a specific Mail Box was demonstrated and then setting up Rules, handling Spam and putting the program through the filtering training course were also discussed.
Mac Donate Project Plan Donations Proposal Objective Next will be the promoters of the project who will help spread the word in making more people aware of what I am organising as well as helping those wishing to donate to contact me.
Susan Jensen We are growing our Beginners 1:1 When speaking to our members we have heard it said that AUSOM isn’t relevant to the needs of that person. with a particular piece of software or a system preference for instance. The reason may be that a SIG presenter goes too quickly or has moved on beyond the basics that this member needs. The member is then lost in a sea of incomprehensible information and loses interest.
v AUSOM News April 2009 AUSOM & AUSOM News on the Internet Susan Jensen Secretary ELECTION OF COMMITTEE Nominations of candidates for election as Officers of the Association or as Ordinary Members of the Committee: I. Shall be made in writing, signed by two members of the Association and accompanied by the written consent of the candidate and endorsed on the form of nomination [available from the Secretary, and also in this issue of AUSOM News]; and II.
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BEGINNERS 1:1 SESSIONS Bookings – Pat Tasker on 9486-2975 �������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������� Raffle Drawn Saturday April 7th The iPod Nano 3rd generation donated by New Wave.
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Pat Tasker (ptas8885@bigpond.net.au) and Barbara Gibson (barbarag@tadaust.org.
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Greg Davies My Favourite Freebies Report and summary of March Main Presentation When the Apple Store Chadstone advised it would be unable to present the keynote address at the March meeting, AUSOM’s Stephen Withers, at short notice, kindly agreed to step into the breach. Stephen is the Mac OSX Advanced SIG Coordinator. There are many good free web-based services, podcasts and software around these days.
Pam Doughty Spranq’s Ink-Saving Font Looking for ways to reduce the amount of paper and ink that you use? Doing so can save you money with the added benefit of using less natural resources. Spranq, a Dutch company, has come up with a font that does just that. Spranq’s font uses the idea that a typeface could contain a certain percentage of holes or small circles in it without major alteration to the printed image.
Susan Jensen FirstClass AUSOM FirstClass is perhaps the easiest to use, most convenient on-line Apple Mac, iPhone and iPod resource in Australia. It’s certainly one of the most comprehensive. Its discussion and file exchange forums allow you to share the resources of its subscribers who number over 300 members, providing you with the most up-to-date Apple information, files and support.
www.ausom.net.
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Steve Cooper Disconnected Jottings Sweepings from the workshop floor, with an emphasis on the basics Mac OS News Recent updates from Apple have included iTunes 8.1, Front Row 2.1.7, Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station Firmware Update 7.4.1, AirPort Utility 5.4.1, iLife Support 9.0.1, AirPort Client Update 2009-001, iPhoto 8.0.1 Update, Battery Update 1.4, and Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.5.
As someone who has never owned a true video camera, I find being able to take the occasional short movie with my familiar still camera to be great fun, and the results surprisingly good. Making a photo Web Gallery If you have a large number of photos that you want to send to friends, it's often hard to figure out how to do it in a way that's manageable by both sender and recipient, and which is platform-independent; that is, it works whether the recipient has a Mac or a Windows PC.
you to change some characteristics of all items in the group with one action. In this way you can change the label colour, 'Open With:' application, sharing and permissions, and locked status for a number of items at once. Both Get Info and Show Inspector functions have their uses, and knowing that both exist will enable you to choose the better one for any situation.
disk. Many (though not all) Mac models make it easy to do these things, and where they're suitably straightforward the procedures are explained and fully illustrated in the manual. Other models may allow you also to fit such things as optical drives and BlueTooth and Airport cards, in which case the manual shows you how. Not all Mac models are so accessible, unfortunately; older laptops can be particularly tricky. When Apple doesn't provide the necessary information, other sources may well do so.
Bruce Craven Bruce’s Blurb #219 Wireless I had a problem, when my internet access speed dropped to almost zero, with many interruptions. Only after suffering this for a while did I notice that my “Unwired” wireless modem had fallen off its cardboard box, leaving the modem’s antenna misaligned, and (critically) about a foot lower in altitude. Putting the modem back restored the access. The wireless modem has to be placed high enough to get enough signal strength.
However, Sysquake LE can also be used in a simpler way for simpler things. As a small example, I can copy/paste the following into Sysquake LE: m=[1 1/2 1/3: 1/2 1/3 1/4; 1/3 1/4 1/5] n=inv(m) Then I press Return, and get the following in the Sysquake window: >m=[1 1/2 1/3: 1/2 1/3 1/4; 1/3 1/4 1/5] n=inv(m) m= 1 .5 0.3333 0.5 0.3333 0.25 0.3333 0.25 0.2 n= 9 -3 30 -36 192 -180 30 -180 180 Thus the inverse n of the matrix m is displayed. Another small example of graph plotting is the following.
Fred Jago fjago@cyberspace.net.au Installing an External Hard Drive on an iMac Last Friday the 6/3/09 I went to Spectrade and told Mike that I wanted to purchase an external hard drive to back up everything on my iMac. He informed me that he had run out of cases but would have one for me tomorrow. I said that it would have to wait until Tuesday as the AUSOM meeting was on all day Saturday and I would not be able to pick it up until Tuesday as Monday was a holiday, he said O.K.
Peter Hunter (peter.hunter@optusnet.com.au) Karma O n Black Saturday, AUSOM lost a member in the fires at Kinglake. Her name was Karma Hastwell and she deserves to be remembered by the wider community in the same way as she was amongst her small group of friends, some of whom died with her. It is unlikely you would have heard of Karma; I was lucky enough to make her acquaintance because she had a problem with her Mac and saw my name in the yellow pages of the Magazine, and called me.
Dick Johnson The iPhone Chronicles – 3 Making a Phone Call Let’s reprise from last month’s article. You’ve now put all your telephone contacts into Address Book and created a group within Address Book where they can all be stored. The point of this was that many of those listed in Address Book may be people who are email contacts only. My contact group in Address Book is called ‘iPhone Contacts’.
Fig.3 - My contact list flicked by finger to the H-J part of the list. I’m selecting myself Fig.5 - Making the call having pressed the number. Just press the red button to end. Fig.6 - This number now appears in my Recents list Fig.4 - My three phone numbers and two email addresses are now displayed When your call is completed, the phone number will appear in your Recents list. This list can be accessed by pressing the second icon from the right at the bottom of your display.
To make a call from any of these lists, Favorites, Recents and Contacts, the procedure is always the same. Flick through the list to find the entry you want, press it and the number will ring. If there are several numbers for the entry, the screen will slide sideways and you then select the specific number you are after. Fig.7 - To add a number to favorites, select it from contacts list and click on Add to Favorites Fig.9 - To remove a number from Favorites, click on the edit button top left corner.
appear. Click on this and then click Done Other Ways of Phoning The iPhone has its own special genius. Being a computer you can write applications for it and the number of these is now spiraling seemingly without limit. My own preferred third party app for making phone calls is Favorater. This you must buy from the App shop. My copy cost me $1.19. Once set up, you click on the app revealing pictures of each of your contacts.
Robin Helmond and Terry O’Riley In the Library “The Little Digital Video Book” Author: Michael Rubin Publisher: Peachpit Press Price: $US 24.99 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-57262-2 ISBN-10: 0-321-57262-9 I found this book was just what I needed; in fact I am tempted to buy my own copy, as there is so much detail in this little book one borrowing does not do it justice. I look forward to putting his guidance into practice.
Aavailable all day Chocolates: at a very reasonable price. Water is free of charge. A soft drink machine supplies well priced drinks.
One-on-One computer training Hand over the chocolate and no one gets hurt Making a sale ��������������������������������������������������� You can do this at home Take me to your leader Help is at hand every step of the way She saw you first The lottery Welcome all Kiwanis offer us some really good grub SIG TimeTable Too early for lunch?
Apple Inc. Apple Previews Developer Beta of iPhone OS 3.0 Beta Release Provides New SDK, Over 1,000 APIs & 100 New Features Apple, on March 18, 2009 previewed its iPhone OS 3.0 software and announced the immediate availability of a beta software release to registered developers. The iPhone OS 3.
infrastructure costs associated with offering applications on the App Store. Pricing & Availability The iPhone OS 3.0 beta software and SDK will be available for registered developers to download starting today from developer.apple.com. iPhone customers will be able to download the new iPhone OS 3.0 software for free this winter and iPod touch customers will be able to purchase a software update.** Tonya Engst (tonya@tidbits.
Adam C. Engst (ace@tidbits.com) Mac mini Receives Multiple Performance Boosts A pple updated the Mac mini last week, keeping the form factor of the diminutive desktop Mac the same, but expanding most of the specs in what appears to be a successful effort to keep the Mac mini a compelling lowend desktop Machine. http://www.apple.com/macmini Although it will never compete with Apple’s beefier desktop Macs, the new Mac mini now offers the choice of a 2.0 GHz or a new 2.
Doug McLean (doug_mclean@tidbits.com) Apple Refreshes iMac Line A pple has released updates to its popular consumer iMac line. Both the 20- and 24-inch models have been updated with improved processor speeds, graphics cards, memory capacities, and hard drives. http://www.apple.com/imac In its new base configuration, the 20-inch iMac sports a 2.66 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, and the same Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor that has been appearing elsewhere in the Mac line of late.
Apple Ink Press Release H ave you seen a URL in a magazine, or shown on a screen during a presentation and wished you could immediately view the information on the web? Problem solved! AUSOMscan... During testing at AUSOMEd HQ, the app performed well with every URL we threw at it — from the computer screen, the copy of AUSOM News you are holding and even TV advertising and Keynote presentations.
www.ausom.net.
Saturday April 4th AUSOM Meeting Room/Time 9:30-10:25 Meeting Room 1 10:30-11:45 Digital Video 12:00-12:30 1:00-1:55 AUSOM Main Meeting Main Presentation Computers Now Malvern 2:00-2:55 3:00-3:55 Mac OSX Basics Digital Photography iPhone Newcomers & Greenhorns Meeting Room 2 Beginners one-to-one iWork Meeting Room 3 Beginners one-to-one Filemaker Forum Photoshop Genealogy Microsoft Office Borrett Room Beginners one-to-one Beginners one-to-one iTunes/iPod MacForum Graphics Networ
