GreerMUG January 2007 Meeting Highlights

First, a word from Show Notes

Last month we had a Christmas social for our December meeting. Like many, Show Notes took time off in December, so there are no notes from our December meeting. Show Notes hopes that everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And, now that 2007 is under way, Show Notes is eager to get back to the task at hand: reporting on each month's exciting GreerMUG meeting. Oh look, here's one now!

Pre-Game Show

This month our pre-game show had the usual miscelleaneous announcements, which, Show Notes confesses, it did not actually read. BUT, we did wrap up the pre-game show with a cheesy Happy Birthday instrumental that left everyone wondering whose birthday it was until the very end of the song when we said, "Happy Birthday To US!" That's right, GreerMUG is one year old this month.

Opening Moments

Mike welcomed everybody to the meeting and then took a moment to discuss his apparently exotic taste in candy bars. Fortunately for the rest of us, more sensible tastebuds prevailed and our birthday cake was this delicious moist chocolate cake from Stax's Bakery. Wow, it was really good and really gone by the end of the evening!

MemberDock

Matt updated us on fundraiser stuff and explained to us how, as group members, we can save a little money every now and then by taking advantage of the discounts available to the group. You can read about how it works by going to our website http://www.greermug.com/.


MacWorld Highlights

To get things started we decided to share an excerpt from the MacWorld Keynote Address where the new iPhone was announced. About half of the members present Tuesday night had seen the Steve Jobs' keynote. The group followed it up with a good discussion while Tim set up for his core presentation on dot Mac.

You can see the entire Keynote address by visiting Apple's website at

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/


Core Presentation

Tim Godby delivered our Core Presentation tonight. Our topic was "What can we do with a .Mac account?"

Over half the group present has a .Mac account, but we seem to have only tapped into part of what .Mac can do. Tim's going to give us a basic overview, and then show us a real world example of how he uses .Mac so we can get a good feel for what it can do.

Tim logs in to .Mac.

All of your .Mac email is synchronized so you can access it from any computer anywhere in the world. Even Lima, Peru. Tim knows - he's done it! .Mac Web Mail has a familiar look to it. If you feel at home in Mail, you'll have no problem with WebMail. WebMail includes a Quick Reply button. You can also delete junk mail without opening it or reading it. Ooooh, we like that.

Tim shows us how .Mac does a new mail.

We can also check other POP3 accounts in the WebMail interface. Show Notes didn't know that. It also synchronizes with your address book. Address Book is fully integrated, as are your bookmarks. You have one-click access to address an email.

Tim notes that the old HomePage is a different animal from the newer iWeb application.

iCards are another great feature. iCards will make use of your address book so you can quickly choose who you send an iCard to.

The .Mac Learning Center is like a Help System on steroids. You need to check this out!

A Single-user account will let you have five aliases, but you can also buy a family pack for only about $30 dollars more! A family pack allows you to have five different user accounts.

Tim now brings up iCal to show how his family uses .Mac. Some of his calendar icons represent publishing, some represent calendars that you are subscribed to. Tim publishes his work and personal calendars to .Mac so his assistant at church can see where he is, and what he is doing - I mean, not like a spy-cam, just whatever it says on his calendar - you know what I mean. She can't add to it, but she can see and know when his free time is. Tim also tracks his wife's work schedule with iCal and .Mac because she publishes her calendar, too! These folks are connected! You can sync up to five computers (including a smart phone.)

Tim now demonstrates iCal/.Mac's power by calling his wife - she adds an event to her calendar and publishes it. Tim refreshes. Whoa!!!! There it is!! Very cool. If Tim's wife wanted to really be sure Tim saw the appointment, she could send an email at the same time.

Similar in functionality to the ever popular Yahoo® Groups, .Mac Groups allows the sharing of information like messages, photos, calendars and files among family, friends and any other invited guests. All that is required beyond a current .Mac account to host the Group is a .Mac email address which can be obtained and maintained without charge.

Our last trick tonight, Backup! Who backs up? Not enough of us!! You can set up different Backup plans. Backup works with iDisk. iDisk is your hard drive on the internet. It gives you up one Gigabyte of space. You can set how much of that gigabyte you want set aside for email. The rest can be used to hold the files you have backed up.

( Deal alert! Matt Chandler said check out Amazon - he got .Mac for $69 dollars. Might have been a special.)

The Backup Plan requires you to do a little setup to tell it what you want backed up.

Security wisdom: Tim says create another user account which is a non-administrative account and use that account as an extra layer of protection. That means if hackers ever did figure out how to access your computer, they wouldn't be operating in an admin account that allows them to do stuff. As in stuff that could compromise your Mac. Show Notes hopes Tim shows us in the future how to do this.

Tim covertly initiates a Tim's Power Tips session:

Holding down the shift key while volume changing mutes the popping sound.
You can change the volume in iTunes with the scroll wheel of a Mighty Mouse.
Tim suavely exits the covert Power Tips session before anyone can stop him.

To wrap up, Tim shows us how to access a person's .Mac public folder - which can be password-protected. It's a great way to share files with others.


Questions and Answers

Group members voiced an interest in security on our Macs and encryption software.

Is anyone using QuickSilver? Tim and Mike Senn. Go to 43folders.com for more info.
Quicksilver learns what you do, and then helps you do things faster.

You can also check it out at quicksilver.Blacktree.com

Group members also asked if we could do a demo on iPhoto.

Give-away

Our give-away tonight was a cool Apple hat courtesy of Mike Senn when he traveled to California to the land of Apple. Thanks, Mike!

Our winner was Wayne Jones!! Enjoy, Wayne!


SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT!

Check out Tim's blog at TimothyGodby.com. A cool Mac blog - it coolness begs for your interaction. Tim has done a great job pulling together lots of news and stories of interest to the Mac community. Check out the latest today!


Preview

Next month we will have a core presentation of Keynote.
In March we'll demo iRemember - a cool scrapbooking application.
(Note from Show Notes: iRemember has since been re-scheduled to April.)

Now let's eat some birthday cake!!