 |  | June 2010 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson We had a lot of news to cover this month. First we talked about the
state of the treasury. Duane reported that we had raised enough funds
that he had ordered a projector for the group. He had found a good deal
on a ViewSonic. Unfortunately it had not arrived by the time of this
months meeting. However we look forward to seeing it at the next
meeting.Read the complete article.  |
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| | May 2010 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson We started out the meeting with a quick topic: Mac Maintenance. Monte
shared a couple of programs; Monolingual & Grand Perspective. The goal
with using both of these programs is to gain back space on your hard
drive. The two programs are geared for different tasks. Monolingual
strips out all of the extra language files hidden deep in each program
and system file on your Mac. Monte cautioned you need to make sure you
do NOT remove American English or you'll have to reinstall MacOS X so
you can boot up your system. We even made it into a game to see who
could save the most space by running the program, which is free, over
their system. The winner managed to save 3GB of hard drive space! Monte
said the average is between 1.2 -2.0GB. Grand Perspective takes a
different approach. It helps you answer the question: What is using up
all of my hard drive? Grand Perspective uses a visual metaphor of
different colored blocks. The bigger the block the more data it
contains. If you hover over a block, at the bottom of the screen it will
tell you: What the block represents (like your iPhoto library) , How big
it is, and Where you can find it. You can right click on the block and a
handy to command to Display in Finder will appear. You click on it and a
window will open showing you the file. At a glance you can see what is
taking up space on your hard drive. Monte said he used it to free up
10GB of files from programs he was no longer using. Best of all it is
free. Read the complete article. |
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| | April 2010 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson April's meeting was meant to feature Filemaker Pro 11. But the meeting
got derailed and it's all Katie’s and Duane’s fault;) They brought in a
new toy and everyone just had to check it out. They brought in their
brand new iPad. Suddenly the whole tone of the meeting changed. Read the complete article. |
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| | March 2010 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson Our March meeting focused on software that you might not have heard of.
Software that is not produced by a big name company with a big
advertising budget. The topic was inspired by the MacWorld Magazine Mac
Gems column. Read the complete article. |
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| | February 2010 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson February,s meeting revolved around two main topics: MacWorld and Avery. This was the first MacWorld without Apple being present. Most of the big tech names did not attend this year. Bucking the trend was Microsoft. The MS Macintosh Business Unit had a booth where they were showing off the upcoming Mac Office 2011. Read the complete article. |
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| | January 2010 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson This is the first year that we did not have a MacWorld to discuss at our
January meeting. Instead we had to content ourselves with commenting on
the spectacle which is CES (Consumer Electronics Show). CES has a
different feel to it than a MacWorld. For one thing it’s hosted in Las
Vegas. There tends to be more of a focus on cools booths than actual
content. Read the complete article. |
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| | December 2009 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson December's focus was on audio. The topic was deliberately vague. We
wanted to give our presenter, our own Duane Weller, as much latitude as
possible. The reason being that this meeting was in response to
questions raised at an earlier meeting. We usually find the answering
one question brings on more questions. Which is fine by us. Read the complete article. |
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| | November 2009 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson November's meeting featured a really fun topic: Great Gifts and Gadgets.
It's my favorite meeting of the year. The items discussed range from the
useful, say an iPhone case, to the oddball, like the R2D2 DVD player and
projector. Read the complete article. |
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| | October 2009 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson Our October meeting focused on Bento 3. Bento is a consumer focused database program. It is put out by the same firm, FileMaker, that produces FileMaker Pro. Bento is NOT a watered down version of FileMaker Pro. That can be both good and badRead the complete article. |
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| | September 2009 Meeting Hilights
By Monte Ferguson In September we had the opportunity to play with a new “toy”. Apple
surprised everyone when they released Snow Leopard, aka 10.6. Our
featured presenter was to be our own Kris Phillips. Thanks to his
student developers account, Kris had a chance to use Snow Leopard a full
month before it went on sale. That was the plan anyhow. At the last
minute Kris had something come up. Read the complete article. |
