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July 12, 2008 NVMUG No Meeting Northern Vermont Macintosh Users Group As usual we did not meet in July because there are so many other things going on, but we do have:
Some Interesting Items from AUG The July 14 InforManager User Group News from the Apple User Group contained some articles that might interest you. ---------------- You can find the App Store in iTunes 7.7 STORE. In the familiar iTunes format, the App Store shows hundreds of applications for the iPhone and Pod Touch. The iPhone is too expensive for my blood. They have reduced the initial price, but increased the cost to operate, increasing the total cost. But, all these new applications make the iPod Touch more tempting. Some of the new applications listed in the UGN include a Tuner and Metronome for those who play musical instruments, and a Uranus Astronomy with data on over 100,000 stars, planets, and galaxies plotted in real time. The articles listed many more of course, but these two examples may show the wide range of the offerings. They mostly seem to be free or inexpensive. ---------------- Here is a Web site that may interest many of you; Thrift Mac has an article about ten top free Mac applications at http://www.thriftmac.com/top-10-free-mac-apps-2008 I downloaded a free program that may interest you if you have more than one viewing screen. It displays a Mac menu bar beneath your mouse so that you do not have to move your mouse to the other screen to use the menu. I will try it after I catch up on some other things. If you are interested you can get it here http://cybernetnews.com/2008/07/12/helpful-tip-display-mac-menubar-underneath-your-mouse/ Fat Cat Software, makers of iPhoto Library Manager, has released PowerTunes 1.0. a new program that allows iTunes users to create multiple libraries, organize their music among multiple folders, and share music and libraries among multiple users on a machine. It also allows users t fix dead traacks whose files are missing and finds orphaned files in their music folders. It requires "a PPC or Intel Mac running OS X 10.9 or later with iTunes 7.0 or later." It is a $19.95 shareware program. You can download a free 30 day trial copy at http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powertunes/ If you would like to see more information like this from AUG in the NVMUG eNewsletters, please let me know. Only One Lost File
The immediate result was the spinning beach ball. I did everything I could think of to quit the program, but none of them worked. (I did not think of using the Activity Manager.) I did everything I could think of to Shut Down my Mac. None of them worked. So I held down the power button until it shut down. I have always gotten by with this one in the past, but this time when I started back up Safari would not work. In desperation I decided to reinstall my operating system to reinstall Safari. I should have thought to call Geof or Stephen. I started the Archive and Install and went to lunch while it was running. When I got back I learned that the power had gone out. The reinstall had failed. I tried again, but now there was not enough room left on my hard drive. By this time I had been at it for to many hours over more than a day. I did an Erase and Install expecting many more hours of work. Then I learned that TimeMachine could bring the new system up to date. I did not dare to use the most recent TimeMachine files because that might reinstall the problem. So I did a Restore using a time that I was rather sure was before I created the problem. It worked! What would have taken many more hours was done in minutes. There were two files that I had excluded from TimeMachine, my downloads file and my email file, because they have too many changes to be worth saving. But I did have SuperDuper backups that contained those files. After I restored them from SuperDuper, as far as I can tell I only lost one recent email that I had planned to keep. Since then, I have revised my system to make more frequent SuperDuper backups of my User files, and I have started to improve my documentation to be better prepared for the next time something like this happens. If I had not made so many mistakes, this whole process would have taken no more than half a day. But I thankful that I had both TimeMachine and SuperDuper backups. - New NVMUG Web Site NVMUG now has a new Web site. Our old Web site with historical information since 2000 is still up, with a reference to the new site. If anyone is interested I can put a copy of this old side in our new iDisk so that you can download it and then access the files using your browser. The new site is at Please bookmark this site. It was created using a really good program, Freeway Express, that lets you create Web sites with more design options that iWeb and requiring no HTML coding. You can read a little about it under Reviews on the new site. This new site contains a neat photo page. If you would like your own photos on a page like this, all I need will be 9 reasonably large size photos. Freeway will adjust their sizes for Web use. We have an iWeb page at So far it contains only a link to our above Freeway site. We may want to link back to this site later if I learn a way that you can add items such a photos or blogs to this site yourself. We have an email address We can use that when telling people how to email to our group. It will come to my computer. I will continue to use my email address for responses to me such as concerning this eNewsletter. We had a great suggestion that we include Tutorials on our Web page. I do not know how we can do that, but I would like to use one of our pages for links to tutorials that we can recommend to our members. Please check out this Web site and send comments to me and let me know if you have URLs for tutorials that you recommend. New Books for Next Month's Meeting The book that we agreed to request for July from Peachpit Press, Mac OS X Leopard Killer Tips, is scheduled to be published on July 31. We may not have it in time for our August meeting. I have requested another book for August as well. ----------------- At our June meeting we asked members present if anyone wanted "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition," from Addison Wesley. We gave one copy to Stephen Farber because he was interested though he may never have time to use it. When you buy a Macintosh operating system, or a new Mac, you get the software you need to program it. "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" teaches you how to use that software to write programs yourself. Writing programs is not easy, and unlike the early days of Apple computers, there are so many great programs that few people cannot find better programs than they would ever learn to write. We have another copy of this book by Aaron Hillegass. if anyone is seriously interested in learning to program for Mac OS X, please let me know. I think it is fair, however, that if you want this book, you should come to the meeting to get it. These books were provided to us by InformIT, Pearson Education. --------------- I received an announcement of InformIT a few months ago. InformIT is a Pearson Education User Group Program which represents Pearson technology brands including Addison-Wesley, Professional, Cisco Press, Exam Cram, IBM Press, Prentice Hall Professional, Que Publishing, and Sams Publishing. I registered with them, and last month we received two unsolicited copies of "Cocoa Program for Mac OS X," so it appears that they send user groups copies of new editions that are appropriate. We have two copies of Mac OS X Leopard On Demand, a 554 page $39.99 book published by Que from InformIt, Pearson Education, that we receivedin time for the July meeting if we had held one.t We will have them for the August meeting. A review of this book is available on under Reviews at In part this review says, "I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to use the tools available in Mac OS X Leopard, and wants to learn how to do a task when it is time to use it. The title “Mac OS X Leopard on Demand” is a magnificent description of the book." --------------- InformIT also holds a Monthly User Group Contest with a drawing to win 3 books. We entered and won three books. I selected two copies of "Photo - pedia" a 596 page $39.99 book by Michael Miller published by Que. These are good books with the comprehensive coverage of the topic that you expect in an encyclopedia. I selected one copy of "Using Mac OS X Leopard, Special Edition," a 1008 page $49.99 book by Brad Miser published by Que. This is an excellent book on using Mac OS X Leopard.
Descriptions of these three books are posted on in the Reviews section of our Web site.
You can decide at the meeting how you want the raffle to be run. My suggestion would be to include them all in one raffle. Each winner choosing any one book. The question is whether a winner should be included in the next drawing or should only win one book. Your decision rules. ----------------- InformIT also offers discounts to user groups. According to InformIt: Official User Groups will receive up to 35% off every purchase on informIT.com and our partner imprint sites (ciscopress.com and ibmpressbooks.com)! Just follow these easy steps for added savings: • Go to www.informit.com/join to sign in • Enter the following member code: USERGROUP * You are only required to register and apply the member code once, but you must be logged in to automatically receive the special pricing. You are encouraged to write reviews of Pearson books and we will post them or in your NVMUG eNewsletter and on this web site.We will submit the reviews to usergroups@informit.com and include our user group name and topic in the subject line, followed by Book Review, for example: Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group – Networking – Book Review Posting |
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I am not sure whether it was late Friday night or early Saturday morning when I was deleting files on our old .mac account. I noticed too late that one of he files I had just clicked to delete was in front of some kind of system file that I should not mess with.