5/12 – Keychain

Posted by Marcia on May 11, 2012

Todd Derek Presents:  Keychain

Keychain Access on your Mac. Learn about password management so that you don’t have to have so many passwords to keep track of.

View Todd’s presentation at his website.

4/12 – iPhone and iCloud

Posted by Marcia on Apr 13, 2012

• 7:00 – 7:20 p.m. Kent Bestle Presents: “A less expensive way to have an iPhone”

• 7:20 – 8:00 p.m. Lenny Neimark Presents: iCloud: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Kent Bestle on the iPhone • Kent’s professional career has been in materials management in manufacturing environment for the last 32 years. He made the switch to Apple products four years ago and has never looked back. He is a practicing technologist in all areas of technology, not just Apple products.

Here’s a short write-up Kent did on his presentation.

3/12 – MacWorld

Posted by Marcia on Mar 27, 2012

Alan Oppenheimer’s Overview of MacWorld 2012 including groundbreaking products and consumer interactivity.

• Alan Oppenheimer, CEO Open Door Networks, creator of the hottest iPhone/iPad App: Art Authority, and leading technology developer in the Rogue Valley will provide an overview of MacWorld 2012 – from the Exhibit Hall down the iWorld Midway.

2/12 – 1Password – Video

Posted by Marcia on Feb 22, 2012

HELP: I can’t remember my password!  - Presented by Peter DeGroot

Peter DeGroot, one of AshMUG’s leading technology experts and long-time user of 1Password, lifts the veil on this super password protection software. If your brain is taxed trying to remember upwards of 50 passwords, you’ll delight over this simple, low-cost solution.

All computer users generate passwords for specific sites on the Internet - whether it’s your bank, a shopping site, or your favorite social networking site. Remembering passwords has become a time-consuming, hair-pulling aggravation. 1Password, the award-winning keychain web browser software, is a creative, user-friendly, time-saving solution for our over-taxed memories. No more writing your password on a slip of paper you can’t find when you need it: 1Password’s high-security software “is” your memory.

1/12 – iCloud

Posted by Marcia on Jan 11, 2012

It’s all in a Cloud – iCloud Replaces MobileMe

Apple’s free iCloud service replaces MobileMe and provides a way for people to instantly synchronize contacts, calendars, photos, documents, music, and other kinds of data among their digital devices—especially Macs and iOS devices. But as many people have discovered, a great deal of complexity lies beneath iCloud’s friendly surface. In this presentation, veteran Mac author Joe Kissell explained what iCloud can do for you, how it differs from MobileMe, and how to deal with some of the most significant iCloud frustrations.

Though we were unable to record Joe’s presentation, we recommend Joe’s Take Control eBook “Taking Control of iCloud” which includes all of the information he presented, with a great deal more detail.

In addition, Joe recommends Apple’s website for iCloud information.

And for more information on the presenter, visit Joe’s website.

12/11 eReaders, eBooks, ePublishing

Posted by Marcia on Dec 13, 2011

Electronic Ink Morphs the “3R’s” into the “3E’s”

Exploration of the eRevolution: eReaders, eBooks, and ePublishing. Presenter: Steve Weyer, PhD, has served as a software developer for Stanford, Xerox, HP and Apple, and is currently an OLLI instructor at SOU.

Steve’s presentation is available at his website:  http://communicrossings.com/ashmug-e-books

11/11 – iTraveling – Video & Handout

Posted by Peter DeGroot on Nov 11, 2011

Peter DeGroot discussed the performance of the iPad2 and iPhone4 and a large entourage of apps and accessories as traveling companions on a recent trip to Germany, Greece and Italy . Photos and videos of the trip are randomly interspersed with the technical stuff. Click on the video icon to the left to see a video of the presentation.

Clicking on this pdf icon will download a list of sources (with URL links) for the accessories and equipment mentioned in the above presentation.

10/11 – Simple Tips for Designing your Own Website – Video

Posted by Marcia on Oct 14, 2011

 Presentation:  Simple Tips for Designing Your Own Website

Marcia Bolsinga, AshMUG webmaster, provided some ideas and tips for creating your own website, and gave a demonstration of the free WordPress software for creating a blog or website. Click on the video icon to the left to see a video of the presentation.

Getting Started – Basic Website Tips/Tools:

• Blogs, Travelogues, Video/Photo Sharing, Marketing
• Template-based sites including WordPress.com, Google Blogger, Tumblr, Xanga
• Web Design and Development
• Domain Name
• Web Host
• Software  (Development/Desktop/Web-based)
• And more …

9/11 – Mac OS X Lion

Posted by Marcia on Oct 3, 2011

  Presentation:  Lion is Out of the Wild and Leaping onto Your Desktop

Hear the next generation Mac OS Lion roar …

Walk into the Lion’s Den with Todd  Derek of Derek Enterprises.  (http://www.toddderek.com/)

Derek introduced some of Lion’s new innovations and how this new OS X will change the way you interact with your Mac, including:

• System Requirements
• How to Upgrade to/Install Lion
• What is the new Recovery Hard Drive
• Why Update Software before Install

• Multi-touch Features
• Full-Screen Apps
• Mission Control
• Launchpad
• Revamps of Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book

6/11 – Printer Protocols – Handout

Posted by Peter DeGroot on Jun 15, 2011

Presentation: “Printer Protocols”

Printer Presets: What they are, making and using them. – Presented by Peter  DeGroot.

Networking Printers: How to add, set up, configure, connect, and share printers – Presented by Riley  Price.

Questions from the Meeting Answered: (Questions that were not answered or incompletely answered at the meeting.)

What about Mac security in the light of the recent MacDefender malware?

An additional comment on the usefulness of DoorStop X firewall when traveling.

5/11 – Personal Productivity in the Cloud

Posted by Marcia on May 17, 2011

Presentation: “Personal Productivity in the Cloud”

The latest computer buzz word: Cloud Computing.

Carol Benson – business strategist/consultant, and partner at Glenbrook www.glenbrook.com – presented “Personal Productivity in the Cloud.”  Benson travels the world teaching technology firms and financial institutions how to improve personal and business productivity and demonstrated to AshMUG members and community guests how to use The Cloud – online software and services accessed through a web browser – to achieve personal and business productivity. She demonstrated how using the Cloud helps you schedule trips and itineraries, share files, and kick your eMail Client, Calendar and To Do Lists to the curb.

4/11 – All About Preview – Video

Posted by Peter DeGroot on Apr 26, 2011

“All About Preview”, presented by Mike Davis.

Mike Davis, a highly-regarded Macintosh consultant, tutor, and “New to Mac” instructor for Connecting Point, who also facilitates the southern Oregon Senior ACES Mac/PC Computer Club, demonstrated the many facets of this built-in power-house Mac application including:

• What is Preview and why you should care
• Multiple ways Preview can be used.
• Image Adjustment, Resizing, Editing.
• Image Conversion, Annotation and Markup.
• Everything else you ever wanted to know about Preview and didn’t know to ask.

Q&A - by Mac gurus from the Ashland Mac Users Group.

Questions from the Meeting Answered: (Questions that were not answered or incompletely answered at the meeting.)

How do you change the date and time of photos in iPhoto?

Changing Photo Date & Time. There are 3 different methods. They are all pretty simple, but the results from each are a little different.

How do you get PDF files from the web to display right in Safari rather than being downloaded?

Displaying pdf Files in Safari. It’s not a simple Preference choice, but here is a step-by-step guide to doing it, and also the reverse, getting Safari to download .pdf files rather than displaying them. Plus a tip for overriding the default behavior in specific instances.

I’m trying to email some music from Sendspace to a friend, and I keep getting links rather than the actual music. How do I send the actual music?

Downloading Files from Sendspace and Emailing Them. Sendspace is a service for pseudo-emailing large files to another person. Here is a step-by-step guide to downloading music (or anything else) from Sendspace and sending it to someone else either via email or Sendspace.

Bento 4.0.2 – by Peter DeGroot

Posted by Peter DeGroot on Mar 27, 2011

March 2011

From the Publisher:

“Bento is a personal database from FileMaker that’s as easy to use as a Mac. Bento organizes all your important information in one place, so you can manage your contacts, coordinate events, track projects, prioritize tasks, and more faster and easier than ever before.”

If you are purchasing Bento for the first time, V 4, in my opinion, may finally be worth the $49 ($99 Family Pack) price.  I would recommend downloading the trial version and see if it fits your needs. Keep in mind if you have an earlier version and are considering upgrading that any changes you make with the trial version will be lost if you decide to stay with the earlier version. Earlier versions can not read a later version’s database format.

You can see Bento 4′s features here. There are some significant issues that are still outstanding in Version 4, as noted below. If you can live with them, I’d say go for it. Some of them will probably be fixed in future upgrades, but Bento’s upgrade history has been checkered. Only about half the bugs seem to be fixed and only a few of the many heavily-requested features have been added with each major update, and each update costs money. For example, if you started with version 1 as I did and upgraded to version 4, you would have $156 invested for the individual version and $356 for the Family Pack (up to 5 users in one household). Bento is now a pretty expensive inexpensive database, and it still has all the shortcomings listed below.

Limitations:

● This database application looks pretty on the screen, but readability has been sacrificed by forcing you to use built-in color schemes, most of which have low contrast between text and background, especially the field labels.

● You can’t set the tab order and field order in the field list, so you have to point and click to move from one field to another, and you can’t reorder the list of fields so the ones most frequently used in searches are together at the top of the list.

● You can’t have separate libraries (databases) in different locations. Everything is in one big database.

● You can’t select and update the field contents in a group of multiple records. You have to do it record-by-record.

● No Edit/Find/Replace function.

● You can share your database over the local network, but Bento has to be running continually on the host machine for others on the LAN to access the shared Libraries, and everyone must be running the same version of Bento (more $). Databases created by newer versions are unreadable by previous versions.

●  Bento has an unusual and cumbersome method of handling relations between records in either the same or different libraries, although it works pretty well once you get used to it.

●  Limited flexibility in the layout of fields and labels on the screen.

● Can’t choose font and size. You can use only 5 fixed sizes, and you get one of two fonts, depending on what size you select.

● No text styles (bold, italic, underline, etc.) or text colors whatever.

● There is no Mail Merge function.

● Still can’t import Appleworks databases directly.

● There is an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch App ($5) which can sync with Bento on your computer, but it has flaws too. The worst is that you lose all formatting in the field contents, e.g. a list of recipe ingredients comes out as one long, ugly, nearly unreadable, run-together line. You can choose which libraries to sync, but if you have more than 1 device, say an iPhone and iPad, you can’t sync different libraries to them. You have to sync exactly the same items to both.

3/11 – Facebook Fundamentals – Video

Posted by Marcia on Mar 11, 2011

Facebook Fundamentals - by Riley Price

A Mac authority since the age of 10, Riley loves to teach and he’s good at it. Currently working with Derek Enterprises in Medford, Oregon, Riley introduced the basics of social networking, including how to:

* Build Your Personal fB Profile
* Upload/Post Photos
* Privacy Safeguards and Features
* Applications: Fun, Functional, or Fatal?
* How to Set up an eCommerce account and Fan Pages.

3/11 – Q&A with Mac gurus – Video

Posted by Marcia on Mar 11, 2011

Q&A - by Mac gurus from the Ashland Mac Users Group

2/11 – MacWorld Extravaganza

Posted by Marcia on Mar 10, 2011

Presentation: “MacWorld Extravaganza – Introducing New Software/Hardware for Macs; plus Gadget, Software & Accessory Reviews for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch”.

Presented by AshMUG members who attended MacWorld 2011.

1/11 – Moving & Backing Up Your iTunes Library – Handout

Posted by Marcia on Mar 2, 2011

iTunes Library – by Peter DeGroot

Based on some questions that came up at the January meeting, Peter prepared the following handout to further explain the intricacies of moving and backing up your iTunes library.

Moving your iTunes library to an external hard drive can free up space on your internal hard drive, but moving iTunes is not as easy as moving iPhoto and other data. Backing up your iTunes library is also covered. 2/11

iPad Apps Reviews by Mike Davis

Posted by Marcia on Feb 1, 2011

December 2010

Mike Davis has created a website for iPad users in which he provides information on iPad apps he has personally used and finds of value. His site provides links to the App store, where you can download the app for your own iPad.

Go to Mike’s iPad Info to see Mike’s site.

iDatabase – by Jeanine Englehart

Posted by Marcia on Jan 20, 2011

September 2010

iDatabase is a shareware database offered by Apimac Intuitive Software.  Versions are available both for your Mac and for your iPhone. The price is normally $29, but if you’re interested you may want to check current pricing on the Internet.

System Requirements of iDatabase for Mac:

Any MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, PowerMac, iBook and PowerBook, running Mac OS X 10.5.8 or newer.

This database offers an easy-to-comprehend organizational structure for your needs that doesn’t involve a great deal of customization or computing power.

When you open the application, you are presented with three buttons across the top left of the window. They are Open, Use, and Define.

Open gives you the opportunity to open a database you have previously created, or to create a new database.

The company has made creating a database an easy experience. There are sixteen database templates available for the user, The following templates are included: Accounts; Classes; Computers; Contacts; Customers; Events; Exercise Log; Expenses; Inventory; Movie Catalog; Membership List; Mobile Phones; Notes; Projects; Recipes; To Do; and Vehicle Maintenance and None (to create your own database).

Accessing these different databases is easy – once you know how to do so. Selecting File>New or Clicking on the Plus sign at the lower left of the Open column gives you access to the customized templates.

Use is just what it says. You may start entering data immediately once you have selected or created your own database. If you want to customize your database, move to the Define button on the right of the Use button. There you may refine your database, moving fields vertically, adding fields, deleting fields, naming fields and customizing your fields to meet your needs. A simple numeric field is also included – Quantity times Cost, for example.

One very nice touch is the addition of an image field. It’s great to have a default image field, but there are some minor problems. First, you cannot simply drag a photo from iPhoto – it must be exported from iPhoto and then imported into iDatabase. Secondly, if you add another image field, it cannot be moved around – say next to a prior image, it can only be placed under or over another field. Images in an image field may be opened (in Preview), changed or deleted just by clicking and holding on that field.

Another minor quibble is that the fields cannot be made smaller horizontally. However, once in use, a field will automatically expand as is needed.

Records you have created are shown alphabetically in a column to the left of the records window. The order of the records can only be changed by renaming them.

If you want delete a record, simply press the Delete key while you are viewing it.

Records may be protected from changes or deletions by requiring a password. A small check box in the lower right provides the opportunity to protect that record. (You simply enter a password – twice – to protect that record). To remove the password, click on the small box again, enter the password and the protection is removed.

iDatabase imports and exports CSV files, that is data files that have the pieces of information separated by commas.

iDatabase can synchronize between your iPhone and your Mac if you are connected to a Wi-Fi network that supports Bonjour.

Exporting a database as a csv file – i.e. as a comma delineated file was only partially successful. The file did open automatically into Excel, but the records only showed the name field and a date field (Dec. 31, 1969) – where did that come from?

iDatabase did crash on me once, but I was able to open it again with no loss of data. I did send a report as was requested.

To analyze the program more fully, I created a database for an embroidery business I am creating. I did find it easy to use, although it is limited by some of items noted above. Attempting to import the iDatabase into another database such as Bento, FileMaker Pro, Excel, or Numbers was not very successful. In particular, the photos did not successfully transfer. However, I do like the way iDatabase works. It is simple, without a lot of the complexity of the more expensive databases.

If you don’t need a complex database, iDatabase may be just what you need.

Jeannine Englehart

1/11 – File Recovery with Time Machine – Video

Posted by Marcia on Jan 11, 2011

Presentation: by Peter DeGroot

File Recovery with Time Machine, including Mail messages, iPhoto photos, and iTunes songs.