GreerMUG Meeting Highlights -- February 2006


Pre-Game Show
This month we featured the member work of Graphic Design Artist Janice Antley. Her company is Mighty Mouse Productions.

The winner from Saturday's Apple Event drawing was Jim Schield.
Jim won a copy of iWork '06. Congratulations, Jim!

Opening Moments
Wow, this was the second meeting for our new group and we had a great turn-out! The meeting room was full of people - we hope you were one of them. After welcoming everybody, Mike took a moment to share with us his deep understanding of possums. Thanks, Mike, for that, er, glimpse into your world.

Our expanding MemberDock
Matt gave us the run-down on some ways we can be really swell group members including:

Taking advantage of our website, www.greermug.com

Share some of your Macintosh creations by sending them in to our Made On A Mac page

Let other group members know about the professional solutions and services you offer through our Networking page

Have some hardware or software to sell? Looking to buy? Check out the Classifieds page

Members can also submit their work so it can be included in the pre-game show (like Janice!) Each month we'll try to feature one member's work.

Hey, that big display over to one side of the room? That's the memberdock! Matt says make use of it. Here's how:

Each month the memberdock features a different resource book for you to peruse before and after the show. Matt says we're still looking for a librarian to manage our resource books as our collection grows. We'd like to be able to loan them out. As always, we've got suggestion cards and question and answer cards available
Previews of a new iLife book were made available to everyone at the meeting. Cool! Unexpected surprises are another great reason to attend the meetings!

Matt says that crazy Memberdock will always be changing, and here's something new this month! It's two great ways to participate by helping us with a little fundraising. We're ccommitted to operating without any required member dues. Nevertheless, there are always small expenses involved in operating something like an user group, so here's a couple of ways to help.

First, recycle your old printer cartridges and cell phones by dropping them off in our recycle box. Yep, we can recycle them and get a little cash (or a store coupon in some cases) and that helps.

Second, Matt is offering to make GreerMUG T-shirts! They come with your picture on the front and the GreerMUG logo on the back. They cost $10. A portion of that goes to the group and you become a walking advertisement! (That just did wonders for your self-esteem, didn't it?) To order a T-shirt, Matt just needs your picture, your money, your size and t-shirt color. Thank you, Matt, for making these available to us.

Tim's Tips
Tim gave us two great tips this month and the first was how to create and print an iTunes CD Cover

Fun fact: when everyone filled out their new member cards last month, we found out that iTunes was our member's number one interest area

Power Tip #1
A lot of us use iTunes and we burn cd's from time to time, but not many of us have ever printed a cd cover from iTunes. We know that because Tim made us raise our hands. So Tim showed us how to print a CD cover. Right from iTunes. Of course, it looks so easy when Tim does it, oh, wait a minute, that's because it IS so easy! Check this out!
Crank up iTunes and under the Source panel click on Library (you've got to be in your Library)
First we have to build the CD we're about to create. Move to the Search Bar so you can find songs for your new compilation album
Tim likes Chris Tomlin's music for example - so in the Search Bar you just type the name of the artist you're looking for, Chris Tomlin in this case, and boom! iTunes has pulled up all of your Chris Tomlin songs.
Watch out for empty checkboxes next to the song titles. An empty checkbox means that song isn't going to be included.
TIP-WITHIN-A-TIP!! Command-Click selects/unselects everything! No carpel tunnel syndrome here.
What you check is what you get on the cd your making
Now we're getting to the cd cover part. Did you know that songs you download from iTunes usually have artwork associated with them? It's true. Click on one of your songs. That son's Album Artwork should be displayed in the lower left hand corner of your iTunes window. If that panel is hidden, you can make it visible by pulling down the Edit menu and selecting Show Artwork. Or you can just press Command-G on your keyboard. Viola! The artwork panel appears.
"What if I have a song without art work? like one that didn't come from iTunes?" That's a great question because that is the case sometimes.
Fortunately, other sites like Amazon have art work as part of their product listings
Find your artwork there and then.... just click and drag!! This gets a bonafide "OOOOOOHHHHH!!" from the crowd as Tim drags some art to the iTunes artwork panel. Truly a great geek moment.
So now you've rounded up your artwork, we're almost there.
Since you can't print a cd directly from the Library, you have to make a playlist. That's easy because you already have all the songs you want selected.
Choose File - New Playlist from Selection
Name it
Click on Burn Disc in the upper right hand corner of the iTunes window
In the Burn Disc dialog window, iTunes has a print option making cd covers a snap!
The default layout theme "Text only" is kinda boring, maybe even ugly
Look at Theme drop down box
Check out a few of them. Tim chooses mosaic during the show.
Print
iTunes will even give you crop marks so you can cut your printed page for an exact fit in your cd case
Don't forget, you can use a heavier paper stock if you wish
That's it!! And it's all in the box!

iLife and .Mac
This event wil be Saturday March 18th from 12noon to 3pm. It will be the first time Apple gets to do some In store bag stuffers and flyers for an event. And, we're hoping there'll be some special prices for the event.

Mac Creative Business Event
This is the next event. It's March 9th from 11am to 3pm. This is a Pro event with a look at MacBook Pro and the Power Mac G5. Also featured will be Aperature and Final Cut Studio.

Our MacWorld event in Greenville was the largest of all the CompUSA's. We had about 50 people in attendence. Those 3 hours generated around $10,000 in sales. Thanks to all the GreerMUG members who were able to attend and support this event.

Looking ahead: every third Saturday will be some kind of event for the rest of this year.

MacBook Pro update
The pre-order's are shipping!! CompUSA received its first shipment today - 5 MacBook Pro's in, 5 MacBook Pro's out! Gone already. (In-store fighting over the units was kept to a minimum.)
Bobby's trying to put together a GreerMUG event!
right now they're selling as fast as they come in
Bobby wants to give us a chance to get our hands on 'em, and get a good look before they're on public display
This will be a very short notice event, read more about it right here.
The box is as cool as the MacBook Pro

Booty, Spoils and Plunder
You could do a whole user group meeting just covering the cool stuff Bobby Morrison has on his notebook. A quick mention of just a few of them:

Shapeshifter - skins your GUI's so they can look different

APE (Application Enhancer)

Icon Factory - lets you change your icons to something you prefer

TinkerTool - lets you move your dock around



FEBRUARY 28th!!
New Cool Thing Announcements coming from Town Hall at Cupertino.
We now know (on Wednesday, March 1st) that two product announcements were made yesterday. First, the new iPod Hi-Fi. The iPod Hi-Fi is actually a portable speaker/dock system for all docking iPods. It's price is $349 and should be available in the store within the next week.

Second, a new Mac Mini model featuring the Intel Core Duo processor. The Intel Mac minis should start arriving this week, shipments are starting to arrive as early as Friday 3/3.

Check 'em both out at Apple's website.

Bobby says, "I will have all of our new products on display as soon as they arrive."

That's great, we can't wait to see them.



Core Presentation
Shameless plug: TimothyGodby.com has a blog for GreerMUG and other cool Mac stuff. This month Charles and Tim star in "It's a Wonderful iLife" and give us a dramatic look at iWeb.

iWeb - it's new in iLife '06
Only a few of us have tried it.
Only a few of us have it (Tim's making us raise our hands again.)
iWeb is Apple's answer to web-design for the masses. What do we mean by that? Well, most of us aren't html or css experts, but that doesn't mean we don't want to share stuff on the web! If we knew we could build a website in about an hour, wouldn't that be cool? By the way, iWeb plays really well with .Mac, though you can work with another web space provider.

First, start iWeb.
Choose New Site.
Here you get to choose from a ton of built-in themes.
Charles started his website by choosing "Baby".
Ths is a template that gives us everything we need to build our website.
Our website is Georgia & Us.
First the home page.
Charles and Tim filled in the information in all the places provided by iWeb. That took, like, 2 minutes - wow, that was fast!
Replace the iWeb links with your links.
You can make links inactive so you edit them (instead of navigating to them!)
Want to add a page? Maybe a photo page?
Click the + button in the lower left corner.
We're adding a photo, so we choose a photo page. iWeb adds a navigation link to your menu.
From the Media browser, it's another great click and drag moment.
Of course, it's a Mac - it just works.

February GreerMUG Monthly Winner
The winner of the $15 iTunes gift card is Alan Schmitz

Preview and Closing Remarks

Craig Myers set up a vintage Mac display featuring several older Macintosh's for folks to look at after the show. A trip down memory lane for some of us. Thank you, Craig.

Next month our meeting will be Monday, March 27th, right here at the Greer Public Library.

Matt will bring us our Core Presentation with a look at Swift Publisher. Desktop publishing for under $40.