Meeting Dates
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Past Meetings:
Highlights of our Monday night meetings over the past year:
May 2012 | April 2012 | March 2012 | February 2012 | December 2011 |
November 2011 | October 2011 | September 2011 | August 2011 | July 2011 | June 2011 |
Resident techxpert Ron Lombardo demonstrated the amazing Livescribe™ Pulse Smart Pen, priced at just $89, which was also the main raffle prize (won by Brian Cooper). Robin Workman, a professional musician and member of the National Executive of the Music Arrangers' Guild of Australia (MAGA Inc), presented "All things musical on the iPad". Also, Robin showed us what QR codes are all about.
Colin gave the new 3rd generation iPad a thorough workout and gave us a demo of several useful apps. The main raffle prize of a 2TB Western Digital USB3/USB2 external hard drive was won by Gordon Maxwell.
Greg Sclanders spoke about the Spring 2012 Mac software bundle from MacLegion.com. Colin showed us a beta preview of Messages in the yet to be released Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Also, hidden features of Safari 5.1, including customise Toolbar (as in Finder), Safari Extensions, Article Reader and RSS, Open in Dashboard, Privacy Settings, Adblock, and Search Engines. Plus a quick look at DropBox, free online storage and syncing for Mac, iOS and Windows.
Our first meeting for 2012. Colin gave us a demo of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, with a compilation e-book created on the MacBook Pro, then transferred to iPad for viewing in iBooks.
Our last meeting for 2011. We enjoyed a good spread for supper, thanks to Rob Workman and the other committee members. The main raffle prize was an iPod touch 8GB. Colin put his iPad 2 through its paces and showed us a number of useful Apps.
Colin demoed new Siri on the iPhone 4S (although it didn't cope with "Beam me up, Scotty"). Also AirPort Utility app and starQuiz. Resident techxpert Ron gave us a small hint in Excell, and member Tony Healy did a show-and-tell on Blurb BookSmart® – you can preview Tony and Joan's beautiful Blurb-produced book online, depicting their amazing journey along Europe's Scenic Rivers.
Main prizes this month were copies of the official Steve Jobs Biography by Walter Isaacson.
We reflected on the sad news of the death of Steve Jobs and the immense response it generated worldwide. Ron Lombardo spoke of Steve's influence over all users of Macs and other Apple products; he also shared with us his personal experience of meeting Steve Wozniak and Andy Hershfeld.
Colin demonstrated pop-up notifications with Growl 1.3, which alerts you when events occur in the background while working on your Mac; three ways to take screen shots in Mac OS X; and Skitch, the popular image capture, annotation & sharing software recently acquired by Evernote. Main prize was one of two Logitech Speaker Lapdesks.
Colin demonstrated MacTubes for searching, downloading and playing YouTube videos; Safari Extensions, including AdBlock and Awesome Screenshot; and the AirDrop file transfer feature in Mac OS X Lion. Prior to that, Warwick shared the pain of having his MacBook Pro stolen and told us about Undercover for Mac, a very powerful tracking app for stolen Macs that makes life misery for the thief. Main prize was an Epson Perfection V33 scanner.
The August meeting was also our Annual General Meeting, where the committee for 2011/2012 was elected – see Contact page. Thanks to retiring committee member Serge Tauber, and welcome to new committee member, John Boyle.
Main raffle prizes were an Apple Magic Trackpad and Apple Magic Mouse, valued at $75 each.
We enjoyed a great supper in the break, and Colin gave us a first look at the new Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in action.
The main raffle prize was an Apple AirPort Express, which was used to create a demo wireless 'AMUG Network' within the room via the UNSW network. This set-up will be recreated so that members can bring their Airport-enabled MacBooks to use during the monthly presentations. Ron, in his tech talk, spoke about the benefits of conserving paper, ink cartridges etc with printing. He provided some tips about duplex printing, 3rd party consumables, and reuse. Colin's presentation was a demo of the Adobe 'SendNow' service at Acrobat.com for uploading large files and emailing a link to people to download the file/s. Colin also demoed the free online file conversion service zamzar.com, and finally what's required to prepare your computer for Lion 10.7.
Colin demonstrated the Yometa.com multiple search engine web site which allows simultaneous searches of Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines to produce a Venn diagram interface to identify possible answers to a question. Also demoed Micrsosft Photosynth, an application for iPhone (mainly) and iPad to take 360 degree panoramic photographs without the need for subsequent editing or processing. The group discussed the malware 'MacDefender' and Apple's response to it – see Knowledge Base HT4650. And finally, a quick look at Roxio's new Toast 11.
