Mark your calendars! Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006, Quark will be coming to The Rest of Us! This promises to be an exciting event for everyone in the publishing industry. The event is free and open to the public, you are encouraged to invite friends, colleagues and co-workers to the presentation. The meeting will begin at 6:00 p.m., with the Quark presentation beginning around 6:30 p.m. We meet at the world famous Apple Store at 679 North Michigan Avenue, in Chicago. We look forward to seeing you there! Feel free to send any questions about this event to Russ Conte or John Brandt.
How many languages do you use on your Mac? It is very unlikely that you use all of them, but they are available for you. However, the language resources are also taking up disk space on your hard drive. There is a free program that will delete specific languages that you don't use, the program is called Monolingual, and will eliminate languages that you don't use. Russ Conte of The Rest of Us used this program and it saved over 2.2 GB of space on his hard drive. Warning: Do not delete English, nor US English, if those are the languages you use.
A free painting program! Art Rage is a painting program for Mac OS X that comes in two versions. A full version costs $19.99, and there is a second version that is absolutely free. A comparison of the two versions can be found at http://www.artrage.com/artragecompare.html A fun review of ArtRage by a fellow Mac user is at http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/artrage_outrageously_good/
Apple's latest offer is free attendance to all of its Studio Series for those subscribing to a year of ProCare. The $99 subscription also includes a weekly hour of one-on-one training on a subject of your choice; annual tune-up; complete file transfer when purchasing a new computer; advance reservations for the Genius Bar; and priority service on repairs. The Studio Series usually run from $99 to $249 and are from two to four hours. For a listing of classes click here: http://www.apple.com/retail/northmichiganavenue/studioseries.html
A free 3-D program! Art of Illusion is a free, open-source program that runs on Mac OS X. If you've always wanted to play with 3-D, but did not have the money to purchase the software, here is your opportunity to get started! The image of apples in a bowl was made using Art of Illusion.
Latest Mactropolis is on the website for download. Click Download -> TRoU Files -> Mactropolis Spring 06.PDF
Presenters at the April meeting of TRoU were Jayson Adams of Circus Ponies who discussed Notebook and Dean Shavit, of MOST, who presented his new software package MAC HelpMate. Computer professionals spotted in the audience at the April meeting were John Brandt, JSB Design; Mike Schienle, Custom Visuals; Adam Lavelle, MOST; Gabriel Caskey, MOST, via remote; and Cheryl Schneider, The Mac Works, LLC, Bloomington, NY.
A complete article on NoteBook is in the April issue of Mactropolis, the TRoU newsletter. For an electronic copy of Mactropolis send an email to JimBuckner@earthlink.net For a trial copy of NoteBook go to: http://www.circusponies.com/store/index.php?main_page=demo_register&zenid=a52a4e3012ca4aa92cedd55c2bf4cd88 Amazon.com is featuring NoteBook v2.0 from Circus Ponies for $44.43. Using your form distributed at the April meeting will get you a check from Circus Ponies for $20. Amazon does not charge shipping or taxes on this product.
Mac HelpMate is designed to:
* Clean up trash files, clean out caches, and remove unwanted log files, and can schedule these tasks to run automatically
* "Peek under the hood" of Mac OS X to troubleshoot a myriad of problems
* Accomplish in seconds what takes minutes of typing in the Terminal
* Allow for scheduled maintenance tasks and notifications via the Finder or via Growl when completed
* Provide access to low-level reporting (S.M.A.R.T) data from your hard drive
* Provide quick solutions to problems that could otherwise be very difficult to solve with an easy-to-understand GUI for over 200 individual command-line functions
* Act as a multicast ASR server for mass deployments (10.4.3 required)
Mac HelpMate comes in a free version, however, donations for its continued development are accepted (at http://www.machelpmate.com/donate.html ) and is downloadable from http://versiontracker.com. Advanced features are found in its Professional and Engraved editions that are for consultants and company help desks and are available by subscription only. For subscription information go to: http://www.machelpmate.com
Free public domain photos, such as this waterfall, are available for you at http://www.pdphoto.org. This is a website run by a person who loves photography, and has thousands of images available. The image of the waterfall is from http://pdphoto.org/PictureDetail.php?mat=pdef&pg=6058. Photo courtesy http://www.PDPhoto.org.
MacMinute is a daily news feed of the latest Macintosh developments. Featured on the site are new products, price reductions, Hot Deals from Apple affiliates and the latest press releases. Its URL is: http://www.MacMinute.com
For more complete articles and reviews on Apple topics pay a visit to Mac360 here: http://www.Mac360.com
Version Tracker is an URL site listing the latest updates and releases of computer software. You can download the programs directly and there is usually a description of each program and its size along with information regarding whether its is a demo, trial copy, update, freeware, shareware, or cost. Try it at: http://www.versiontracker.com.
FileMaker Pro 8 is giving away a different book on FileMaker each week for the next 8 weeks. To enter the sweepstakes go to: http://www.filemaker.com/promos/sweepstakes.html TRoU will feature FileMaker Pro 8 at its August 2 meeting.
For an extensive list of the TRoU library of training disks visit http://www.trou.org. The rentals are only $10 per month with a $40 deposit.
Apple released a new version of Aperture and reduced the price from the opening cost of $499 to $299. The new version includes speedier performances on dual and Intel Macs and better handling of Raw files. Earlier purchasers of Aperture 1.0 will receive a $200 coupon good for use at the Apple Store. Aperture is a post production photo editing program.
Bowdoin College, the oldest college in Maine, is offering its music collection free. The tracks will be available as a podcast feed on iTunes and via RSS. It includes some of their commercial tracks and the 2006 Mozart Birthday Faculty Concert.
Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP, is available as a download from Apple. It allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August. (Story from MacMinute.)
Some spell checkers include a component that offers basic grammar correction as well. For a more extensive grammar correction program, try Grammarian PRO X 1.7. The newest release is now a Universal Macintosh application and input method component for use on an Intel-based Mac. The program incorporates spell checking, correct-all functionality, new grammar and punctuation syntax error checking and is priced at US$39.95. Read more at: http://linguisoft.com/index.html
Entourage lovers who like their email program better than Apple’s Mail have been handicapped by a lack of features for synchronizing with Tiger’s iSync. e2Sync has remedied this problem and is offering ENL readers a 30% discount by going to: http://www.e2sync.com/ and using coupon code TASIB05 upon checkout. Purchasers are entitled to free upgrades.
You can fill out PDF forms and edit PDFs easily with PDFpen. In fact, you can even split, combine, reorder, sign and augment PDFs with text, image overlays & watermarks. To create your own forms, consider using PDFpen Pro. Smile on My Mac has provided TRoU with a copy for its use. Download your own trial copy here: http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/download.html
This week's Apple Hot Deals are from Ramjet and ClubMac. Click http://macminute.com/2006/04/14/apple-hot-deals/ to view them.
If you desire more photo printing formats than those provided by iPhoto, you may wish to explore the hundreds provided in Portraits and Prints. The Pro version allows you to create or modify the templates found in the basic version and costs $50 and $30 dollars respectively. A demo copy with both versions can be downloaded by clicking on: http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/Portraits_Prints/pnp_overview.html A recent Mac360 article advises that Portraits and Prints is a better value than PhotoBooth. To read the comparison go to: http://www.mac360.com/index.php/mac360/comments/mac_photo_printing_a_lesson_in_value/
The next time someone tells you that large organizations don't use Macs, you might want to point them to http://news.netcraft.com/ This site allows you to see what operating system a server is using. For example, if you look at the web site of the US Army, you'll see that they use Macs, as in the screen shot above. It's amazing how many organizations use Macs, and netcraft is a way to see for yourself!
FireFox 1.5.0.2, the Mozilla Foundation’s popular Web browser, has had several security issues fixed and now supports the Universal Binary for Intel-based Macs. A list of other improvements and copies for download are at: http://www.mozilla.com/
Copyright 2006 The Rest of Us. Written by Jim Buckner and Russ Conte, and distributed on the 15th day of every month.
