Macintosh Computer Club Herb Block, President 598-4814 herbertx@mac.com Calendar August 20, 2009, Thursday 10:30 AM, Club House 2 That is the date and place when your Mac Club will be open -- truly as a “CLUB.” It will be an occasion where members can join others in watching a demonstration of a Mac program or even demonstrate to others a favorite program. Watch a demonstration - or be a demonstrator! We will have two Mac computers readied. Each will have OSX 10.5 -Leopard programed. John Anderson, Donna Besser Stone, and I (Herb Block) will be available for demonstrations and to answer your questions. Here is a sample of the demonstrations: 1) eMAIL how to read, copy, reply, save,add photos, attachments,etc. Word processing, which system is best for you: Apple Works, Micro Word. Pages. Keeping your MAC at its peak: Repairing Permissions, Software up date, clearing excess,dated or duplicated programs. 4) Using iPhoto and iMovie, including how to burn a CD or DVD. 5) Know your printer, problems, cartridges and capabilities. 6) Why you should be using the readily available Address Book and Calendar. Also spread out on a table will be a grand variety of Mac related books and magazines for browsing. Some old but full of information. Some new for your review. Most oldies are free. Important! This is an opportunity to meet fellow Mac Users. The Thursday morning session will be followed with a repeat session at 2:00 PM. Come to either session. The purpose of two meetings is to determine which time is the most attractive to our members. Future meetings will be based on the most attractive period. Our next General meeting will be September 17 at which time our member Ron Masi will demonstrate how to establish, use and maintain your very own WEB site. Clubs are for People, and Mac Club is for YOU! by Herb Block, President In an earlier column I wrote: The mark of a CLUB, which distinguishes it from other organizations, is that it is “people” oriented. A club is a place where members can meet face to face with other members to discuss something new or exciting or even baffling. It is more than simply attending a formal meeting once a month or so. Formal meetings just do not provide the atmosphere for meeting fellow mac users Further, we are in a most fortunate position in that all of our members reside in Leisure World and we can easily attend a friendly open session We will have our first Club Type open meeting on Thursday August 20, at 10:30 AM, Clubhouse 2 John Anderson, Donna Besser Stone, and other experienced Mac users will be there to answer questions or demonstrate procedures. To test whether a latter time is better, Also, on the same day there will a second open club session at 2 PM, also in Club House 2. In the meeting room we will have two computers running where a variety of programs may be sampled and with an opportunity to see and learn their special features. Also on display will be miscellaneous books, magazines, etc.to provide an inkling of the amount and variety of what is available to members interested in learning more of what can be done with a Mac. Much of such material will be available free or borrowed. Of course, you don’t need to have a problem to stop by. Maybe you can be in and be one of the helpers. Or, you may readily demonstrate a favorite technique. The meeting should be a good time! BUT !! Of most importance is the opportunity to meet fellow Mac users. Take the first step, reach out and say “Hello....” Special request! I am open to receive telephone calls from Mac users regarding any acute problem. My concern arises when I am not home and the caller leaves a message. Please: I can not respond if I am unable to understand who called. Give me your name and telephone number carefully - do not rush. Slowly state your name and telephone number. Repeat, slowly if necessary. If I have failed to call you back, I have not ignored your call. I was not able to clearly understand your name and number. Know the Lingo By Herb Block, President SELECT is the term used to make ready a change or to copy a word, phrase or picture. The item must be made ready for an action. To copy, or change, or relocate it must be identified - selected. The action to Select is accomplished by a click/hold while moving your cursor over the item to actually select. When the selection is darkened, It is now ready for change. Here are a few common terms with which you should be knowledgeable: Archive Copy: A copy of a work intended to be preserved permanently. Backup Copy: A copy of digital information made for recovery purposes. Dial-up Access: Access to the internet using a telephone and modem. Display: Information that appears on the screen of a computer Domain: A network of servers and clients that a single database controls. Download: To receive digital information from a network. Internet Protocol (“IP”): A set of standard communications and routing mechanisms that allow network users to upload files, send e-mail, and download Web pages IP Address: The unique identifier of a computer or other networked device that is attached to a network. Remote Access: The ability to access and use digital information from a location off-site from where the information is physically located. Upload: To send a file over a network. CPU: Central Processing Unit. The entire system unit is called the CPU Driver: A program that controls a device. Every device, whether it is a printer, disk drive, or keyboard, must have a driver program. You may need to load a new driver when you connect the device to your computer DVD: Short for digital versatile disc or digital video disc, HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a collection of structuring and formatting tags used to create Web pages. Hub: A common connection point for devices Interface: This is any type of point where two different things come together. Most often, the term is used to describe you and your computer ISP: Internet Service Provider, a company that provides access to the Internet for a monthly fee, JAVA high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. JPEG: Pronounced "J-Peg." Stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It's an image format that allows for compression when stored. JPEG is the ideal way for storing photos. Memory: Internal storage areas in the computer.For example 30 G’s Constantly saving large files or Photos uses much Memory. Phishing: Short for Password Harvesting Fishing. It is the luring of sensitive information, such as passwords and other personal information, from a victim by masquerading as someone trustworthy. Portal: A web site that aims to be an entry point to the World-Wide Web, Terminal: This is what you look at when you're on the Internet. It's your computer screen. URL: Stands for Universal Resource Locator. It's a fancy way of saying an Internet Address. The URL for this web page: http://www.leisureline.org but my EMAIL address is herbertx@mac.com WWW: Short for World Wide Web. WiFi: Wireless Fidelity - Otherwise known as Wireless Networking Question: how do I make the font on email larger? Using Safari. Under the basic menu select: Preferences. Next select Appearances The font and size are then available for change. Using Camino: From the top Menu select View. Select: make bigger. For more tips, keep visiting http://leisureline.org and http://computerctr.org. Donna Besser Stone Demonstrates iWork ’09 at Clubhouse 2 By Herb Block, President Herb Block & Donna Besser Stone set up iMac for a look at iWork ’09, especially the latest version of Pages. Apple is a most unrivaled company among those striving for eminence in the Computer industry. Apple is the only company which not only designs and builds it own unique computers but also its operating system and a variety of pace setting soft ware. Some companies may specialize in the “hardware” cum computers and their peripherals. Other companies, such as Microsoft specialize in software. What is extra significant about Apple is its continuing urgency to be the leader and innovator of special use software, such as iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and numerous other free aplications included in the operating system. Then there are the many extra aides that consumers find to be useful and handy, such as: Address Book. iCal, iChat, Time Machine, Mail, and more. Apple is more than simply responding to a consumer demand. Actually, Apple has initiated consumer interests to matters expected only of professionals, such as remarkable Home movies,featured Photos, publications, etc. About once a year, Apple “Updates” its most popular specialties: in the form of iLife ‘08, iWork ‘09 etc. Among those applicaitons included in iLife ’08 is iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, and iWeb. New specialties and improvements are added in iWork ’09: Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. You may not be ready at this time to try some of the new innovations that Apple has made available. But do yourself a favor - see, learn of those innovations Apple has developed. Donna Besser Stone (she is back) has brought each of our 17” iMac computers at the Computer Center up to date with all the latest software. Each machine has been upgraded with Leopard’s newest operating system OX'S 10.5.6, possibly 10.5.7 by this printing. Each machine has these new programs in iLife ’09 and iWork ’09. We invite you to visit the Computer Center in Clubhouse II. Sit down at one of the 17” white machines, the iMac, for a few minutes and examine all the new programs. Your interest will be favorably aroused. On Thursday morning June 25, 2009, Donna will demonstrate some of the latest and most significant programs in iLife ’09 and iWork ‘09. Mark your calendars. For detailed information on the many and varied “happenings” in Leisure World, do set your browser to: www.leisureline.org. Keyboard shortcuts for Mac How to Put your Mac to Best Use and Keep in Great Shape By Herbert Block, President After a series of monthly meetings with a few great speakers, I decided to take a respite from that type of monthly meeting. Instead, I plan to give attention to what most Mac users want. MAC users are always alert to any program or design that will make for an easy,quick accomplishment of an activity or the need to correct a defect in a favorite program. The “how to...” material. How to deal with such matters as for example: a sluggish drive, that spinning beach ball, ideas on quick copies, when and how to add an extension, do I really need this, etc. Starting off with the above in mind, here are some thoughts. Apple Works: Still Crazy (Wonderful!) After All These Years For all you folks still using Apple Works for word processing, you might remember the “fix’ to cure a typical problem. Does Apple Works seem much slower and with the frequent appearance of the spinning beach ball? If that is a current symptom your Apple Works is choking with an overload of recent items. They must be dumped, trashed in order to return Apple Works to its best level of performance. Even if your Apple Works has not shown any perceptible slow down or excessive beach ball activity, follow this procedure to assure Apple Works best performance: 1. Click open the Hard Drive, Listed on the bottom is USERS 2. Click open Users. Select the heading listing your name 3. Open your name and reach down the list to Documents. 4. Open Documents to Apple Works Users Data: To Starting Points 5. Open Starting Points to Recent Items 6. Open Recent Items and you will see listed hundreds of every letter, note, etc. that you ever typed using Apple Works. These ittems have been piling on causing the choking, beach ball activity. You can read a few out of curiosity. You can trash a few at a time, or to speed up the process, SELECT ALL and drag ALL to trash. Empty Trash. Return to a healthy Apple Works. Spell Checks There area variety of spell check systems based on the program we use. Some programs have a continuos running spell check usually by underlining the misspelled word in red. I do not like that system for the writer is expected to know the correct spelling ‘ if not, the correction process is slow caused by a try this,try that approach. I like the system that permits the writer to check a single word or the entire spelling of the finished work at the end of a period of writing. For example, Apple Works permits either approach. For the correct spelling of a single word, select that word and, click these keys all together.command-shift and-the letter Y. The correct spelling will be shown. If a spell check of the entire document or a section is desired use, press the command and the equal sign in your key board. Apple Works has a valuable aide for writers found under the EDIT menu. Scroll down to Writing Tools. There you will note a variety of writing aides: Hyphenate, spelling, thesaurus, etc. I use the Tools menu quite frequently. I have presented but two of the many little programs that will speed your Mac usage. Periodically, I will provide a few other help saving techniques I know that many of you over the years have located and used a favorite,small program. Tell me about it and we can publish it and others in our periodic news release. Of course your contributions will be recognized and cited. I would like to hear from you about this new way of relating to MAC USERS. Try: herbertx@capaccess.org, or herbertx@mac.com For information on all the very many activities currently available in Leisure World go to http://www.leisureline.org lick onto: http://www.leisureline.org Remember to add http://LeisureLine.org to your Dock....using instructions above! Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post Columnist November 20, Meeting Room Clubhouse II at 10 a.m. By Herbert Block, President There are only a few days until Thursday,November 20,2008. That is the day that our favorite speaker Rob Pegoraro, will be present; Specifically: Clubhouse 2, 10:30 AM. The room will be readied with a MAC computer a projector, large screen, and microphone Rob is the personal technologist for the Washington Post. In his down to basics style, he will speak about a variety of tech devices ranging from computers, external hard drives, digital cameras, movie cameras, printers, iPODS, scanners, etc. Each of his pronouncements are a result of his personal detailed trial and evaluation of the device. I have had a few calls, each about the same problem – my computer is so slow, and the usual remedies have failed to correct the situation. Remedies such as Verifying Permissions and Repairing Permissions. At some point, a computer will be choking for space. Each computers has its own limited built in storage space. Our basic computers come with a built in storage capacity on our hard drive ranging from 20 G's of RAM to 230 G's. If your computer is more than three years old, most likely your computer is in the lowest range. With the increased use of our computers for a variety of activities- photos, movies, iTUNES, and personal correspondence,all stored on the Hard drive many computers are gasping for storage space. For example, five minutes of a movies take one G of space. The answer, shift some of the space off your hard drive to another media. If you're an avid photographer or videographer, you can free up a lot of disk space by burning your photos and movie files to CD or DVD. To add storage space or to shuttle files between multiple computers, an external hard drive or other removable media device comes in handy. And for making those all-important backups, any type of external storage medium is priceless. USB External Drives. They come in various sizes, based on the quantity of available stored G’s. Typically a unit with about 160 G’s can be bought for under $100. These types of devices don't require you to install software to use them. Check the documentation that came with your drive to be sure. Some can also draw power from your computer through the attached FireWire or USB cable, so they don't need a power adapter. If your External drive has a power switch, turn it on. Your drive should mount onto your Mac desktop as a mounted volume icon, and ready to use. It may appear like a companion, but smaller Hard Drive. To copy files to it, just drag and drop any file, folder, or application onto the volume icon. If you double-click the volume to open it, you can add more data.. When you're finished, to eject the drive drag the volume icon to the Trash. You can now safely disconnect the external drive and with its multiples of gigabyte or more of data on them. At this point, one should consider restoring space to your hard drive by trashing duplicate data from the Hardrive but, now stored on your external drive. Also known as USB thumb drives or flash drives these storage devices are handy for shuttling files from computer to computer. And they're incredibly simple to use: Just plug one in to any USB port on your Mac and the device should show up on your Desktop as a mounted volume icon. Flash drives are inexpensive, buy one with two or more G's of RAM. To copy files onto it, just drag and drop files, folders, or applications onto the icon. Or open the volume by double-clicking it. When you're done do not just drag it out of the USB socket. Doing so may wash out all the stored data. Properly, drag the icon to the Trash to unmount the drive, and then unplug it. Files on a Flash drive can remain mounted until you purposely drag a specific file to trash. Thus, a flash drive is a handy way of transporting data to another computer. These flash drives how do they work? Flash drives and the memory chips on digital cameras use the same basic technology. They use a type of transistor which responds to an electric charge, and most important it retains that charge in its memory cells even when not plugged in. Compare this with date stored in a computer’s random access memory (RAM) chips which need a continual flow of electricity to retain the information. A technical explanation complete with exciting engineering diagrams of precisely how flash memory works can be found at: electronics.howstuffworks.com/flash-memory.htm. By Herbert Block, President Personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post will be our speaker for Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 10:30 AM in Club House 2. Rob is the personal technologist for the Washington Post. You can read his column every Thursday morning in the Business section, in addition to a special column each Sunday responding to questions submitted by Post readers, plus his blog about gadgets, software, tech glitches and more. Mac members recall Rob was our featured speaker here in December 2006 and drew an over- flowing audience of enthusiastic electronic device users. His field of knowledge is remarkable ranging from PC and Mac computers, to iPods/MP3 players, digital cameras, cell phones, tv, storage devices, and software, etc. Rob will talk about how he generally reviews and evaluates computers and gadgets, with particular reference to Apple products. Come to this meeting prepared to learn a great deal about consumer electronic equipment. He will take questions after his presentation. Please, let’s avoid a prolonged discussion of your particular problem. Mark your calendar now! TIP TechTool Deluxe from Micromat is a powerful diagnostic utility that allows you to test your computer's critical system components, such as the processor, RAM (random-access memory), VRAM (video random-access memory), the hard disk, and more. TechTool Deluxe can also repair your computer's disk structure and rebuild its directories as necessary. It is a CD that you insert in the CD slot in your Mac and click it on to automatically do its analysis. TechTool Deluxe is lncluded with a three year Apple Care Protection Plan. If your Mac is currently covered under the Apple One-Year Limited warranty and you would like to extend APPLE’S world-class telephone technical support and hardware repair coverage to three years from your computer’s date of purchase and get TechTool Deluxe, then, purchase the extra years at one of the nearby APPLE stores or any authorized retailer of APPLE products such as Micro Center, Best Buy, etc. Click on http://www.LeisureLine.org and you will find much useful information on all the many ongoing activities, specific to Mac and various clubs, etc. in Leisure World. Do go also to the Mac_PC page for an amazing amount of very useful information that will add to your knowledge of useful computer data and routines to improve your computer operating skills. Also, there is the question of how to print a specific piece of mail without including the entire page: the MAST head, advertisements, etc. In both instances, the answer lies in the techniques of “select, copy, and paste”. Steps to Follow 1. Select the message to keep. The term SELECT is a way of identifying exactly the item for action. The action could be cut, copy, paste, change size or font style, etc. SELECT means brush the cursor over the data to darken. It is thus identified as ready for action 2. From the Edit Menu, click COPY. (Command C) 3. Open a new blank page from a word processor i.e. Apple Works, MS WORD, Text Edit, etc. (Command N) 4. From EDIT menu select PASTE - onto the blank page. (Command V). The pasted item is now your letter and can now be edited - add or delete written material. Prepare for printing by deleting unrelated excess. Be aware: Mast Heads and advertisements use a lot of ink-color 5. After editing the saved item mark it SAVE (Command S) and assign it to a place where you can quickly find it as needed. The easiest place to locate an item you have saved is the: DESKTOP. That places the saved item where you can find it and move it anywhere. 6. If a separate Home is desired for all saved e-mail message, from the File Menu select New Folder and give it a name, for example: Saved E-MAIL. From the desktop drag the specific item to the New Folder;. From now on all your saved e-mail will have its own home. What have we accomplished? 1. We have removed and saved desired pieces of mail from the e-mail system. 2. We have established a home for certain pieces of mail. 3. We have avoided printing much unnecessary data. 4. We have kept the internet mail box clear and the computer fast by extracting and saving special items but deleting other already read or bogus e-mails Some people prefer to select and save certain material from Internet e-mail using the picture/copy technique. That technique is valuable for more than just mail, for example to copy an advertisement of an item on sale, or to copy an extract of a long record with graphs, etc. The picture technique is virtually a camera snapshot, including the sound of the cameras shutter. Procedure 1. For a total picture of the entire screen, simultaneously click: these three keys: Command/shift/3. Hear the shutter click? Find a “picture” on the desktop. 2. For a picture of a section of the screen, simultaneously click these three keys: Command/shift/4. That will cause a tracer head to lightly appear. With your cursor drag the tracer head all around the area to be copied and let go. Hear the shutter click? A picture should appear on your desktop. After a few practice shots, you will be an expert. Of course excess shots can be trashed. This procedure is helpful if you want to eliminate excess stuff, for example an advertisement Banner. Finally, how does a person extract a photo that is included in the Internet mail? The quick easy way, is as follows: place your cursor on the photo and drag the picture to your desktop. Let go. There is your digital photo ready to be saved, or printed, etc. Note: the Command key, also known as the Apple key, is the key on the bottom row of your keyboard next to the space bar. If you need tech help, for this month I am unavailable. Please, contact Donna@LeisureLine.org or John.Anderson@wap.org For all current events, calendars, photos, and tech news, visit http://LeisureLine.org

Macintosh Computer Club

Herb Block, President

August 20, 2009, Thursday 10:30 AM, Club House 2

That is the date and place when your Mac Club will be open -- truly as a “CLUB.” It will be an occasion where members can join others in watching a demonstration of a Mac program or even demonstrate to others a favorite program. Watch a demonstration - or be a demonstrator!

We will have two Mac computers readied. Each will have OSX 10.5 -Leopard programed. John Anderson, Donna Besser Stone, and I (Herb Block) will be available for demonstrations and to answer your questions.

Here is a sample of the demonstrations:

1) eMAIL how to read, copy, reply, save,add photos, attachments,etc.

2)Word processing, which system is best for you: Apple Works, Micro Word. Pages.
3)Keeping your MAC at its peak: Repairing Permissions, Software up date, clearing excess,dated or duplicated programs.

4) Using iPhoto and iMovie, including how to burn a CD or DVD.

5) Know your printer, problems, cartridges and capabilities.

6) Why you should be using the readily available Address Book and Calendar.

Also spread out on a table will be a grand variety of Mac related books and magazines for browsing. Some old but full of information. Some new for your review. Most oldies are free.

Important! This is an opportunity to meet fellow Mac Users.

The Thursday morning session will be followed with a repeat session at 2:00 PM. Come to either session. The purpose of two meetings is to determine which time is the most attractive to our members. Future meetings will be based on the most attractive period.

Our next General meeting will be September 17 at which time our member Ron Masi will demonstrate how to establish, use and maintain your very own WEB site.

Clubs are for People, and Mac Club is for YOU!

by Herb Block, President

In an earlier column I wrote:

The mark of a CLUB, which distinguishes it from other organizations, is that it is “people” oriented. A club is a place where members can meet face to face with other members to discuss something new or exciting or even baffling.

It is more than simply attending a formal meeting once a month or so. Formal meetings just do not provide the atmosphere for meeting fellow mac users Further, we are in a most fortunate position in that all of our members reside in Leisure World and we can easily attend a friendly open session

We will have our first Club Type open meeting on Thursday August 20, at 10:30 AM, Clubhouse 2

John Anderson, Donna Besser Stone, and other experienced Mac users will be there to answer questions or demonstrate procedures.

To test whether a latter time is better, Also, on the same day there will a second open club session at 2 PM, also in Club House 2.

In the meeting room we will have two computers running where a variety of programs may be sampled and with an opportunity to see and learn their special features. Also on display will be miscellaneous books, magazines, etc.to provide an inkling of the amount and variety of what is available to members interested in learning more of what can be done with a Mac. Much of such material will be available free or borrowed.

Of course, you don’t need to have a problem to stop by. Maybe you can be in and be one of the helpers. Or, you may readily demonstrate a favorite technique. The meeting should be a good time!

BUT !! Of most importance is the opportunity to meet fellow Mac users. Take the first step, reach out and say “Hello....”

Special request! I am open to receive telephone calls from Mac users regarding any acute problem. My concern arises when I am not home and the caller leaves a message. Please: I can not respond if I am unable to understand who called. Give me your name and telephone number carefully - do not rush. Slowly state your name and telephone number. Repeat, slowly if necessary. If I have failed to call you back, I have not ignored your call. I was not able to clearly understand your name and number.

Know the Lingo

By Herb Block, President

SELECT is the term used to make ready a change or to copy a word, phrase or picture. The item must be made ready for an action. To copy, or change, or relocate it must be identified - selected. The action to Select is accomplished by a click/hold while moving your cursor over the item to actually select. When the selection is darkened, It is now ready for change. Here are a few common terms with which you should be knowledgeable:

Archive Copy: A copy of a work intended to be preserved permanently.

Backup Copy: A copy of digital information made for recovery purposes.

Dial-up Access: Access to the internet using a telephone and modem.

Display: Information that appears on the screen of a computer

Domain: A network of servers and clients that a single database controls.

Download: To receive digital information from a network.

Internet Protocol (“IP”): A set of standard communications and routing mechanisms that allow network users to upload files, send e-mail, and download Web pages

IP Address: The unique identifier of a computer or other networked device that is attached to a network.

Remote Access: The ability to access and use digital information from a location off-site from where the information is physically located.

Upload: To send a file over a network.

CPU: Central Processing Unit. The entire system unit is called the CPU

Driver: A program that controls a device. Every device, whether it is a printer, disk drive, or keyboard, must have a driver program. You may need to load a new driver when you connect the device to your computer

DVD: Short for digital versatile disc or digital video disc,

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a collection of structuring and formatting tags used to create Web pages.

Hub: A common connection point for devices

Interface: This is any type of point where two different things come together. Most often, the term is used to describe you and your computer

ISP: Internet Service Provider, a company that provides access to the Internet for a monthly fee,

JAVA high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems.

JPEG: Pronounced "J-Peg." Stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It's an image format that allows for compression when stored.

JPEG is the ideal way for storing photos.

Memory: Internal storage areas in the computer.For example 30 G’s

Constantly saving large files or Photos uses much Memory.

Phishing: Short for Password Harvesting Fishing. It is the luring of sensitive information, such as passwords and other personal information, from a victim by masquerading as someone trustworthy.

Portal: A web site that aims to be an entry point to the World-Wide Web, Terminal: This is what you look at when you're on the Internet. It's your computer screen.

URL: Stands for Universal Resource Locator. It's a fancy way of saying an Internet Address. The URL for this web page: http://www.leisureline.org but my EMAIL address is herbertx@mac.com

WWW: Short for World Wide Web.

WiFi: Wireless Fidelity - Otherwise known as Wireless Networking

Question: how do I make the font on email larger? Using Safari. Under the basic menu select: Preferences. Next select Appearances The font and size are then available for change.

Using Camino: From the top Menu select View. Select: make bigger.

For more tips, keep visiting http://leisureline.org and http://computerctr.org.

Donna Besser Stone Demonstrates

iWork ’09 at Clubhouse 2

By Herb Block, President

Herb Block & Donna Besser Stone set up iMac for a look at iWork ’09, especially the latest version of Pages.

Apple is a most unrivaled company among those striving for eminence in the Computer industry. Apple is the only company which not only designs and builds it own unique computers but also its operating system and a variety of pace setting soft ware. Some companies may specialize in the “hardware” cum computers and their peripherals. Other companies, such as Microsoft specialize in software.

What is extra significant about Apple is its continuing urgency to be the leader and innovator of special use software, such as iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, and numerous other free aplications included in the operating system. Then there are the many extra aides that consumers find to be useful and handy, such as: Address Book. iCal, iChat, Time Machine, Mail, and more.

Apple is more than simply responding to a consumer demand. Actually, Apple has initiated consumer interests to matters expected only of professionals, such as remarkable Home movies,featured Photos, publications, etc.

About once a year, Apple “Updates” its most popular specialties: in the form of iLife ‘08, iWork ‘09 etc. Among those applicaitons included in iLife ’08 is iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, and iWeb. New specialties and improvements are added in iWork ’09: Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

You may not be ready at this time to try some of the new innovations that Apple has made available. But do yourself a favor - see, learn of those innovations Apple has developed. Donna Besser Stone (she is back) has brought each of our 17” iMac computers at the Computer Center up to date with all the latest software.

Each machine has been upgraded with Leopard’s newest operating system OX'S 10.5.6, possibly 10.5.7 by this printing. Each machine has these new programs in iLife ’09 and iWork ’09. We invite you to visit the Computer Center in Clubhouse II. Sit down at one of the 17” white machines, the iMac, for a few minutes and examine all the new programs. Your interest will be favorably aroused.

On Thursday morning June 25, 2009, Donna will demonstrate some of the latest and most significant programs in iLife ’09 and iWork ‘09. Mark your calendars.

For detailed information on the many and varied “happenings” in Leisure World, do set your browser to: www.leisureline.org.

Keyboard shortcuts for Mac

How to Put your Mac to Best Use and Keep in Great Shape

By Herbert Block, President

After a series of monthly meetings with a few great speakers, I decided to take a respite from that type of monthly meeting. Instead, I plan to give attention to what most Mac users want. MAC users are always alert to any program or design that will make for an easy,quick accomplishment of an activity or the need to correct a defect in a favorite program. The “how to...” material.

How to deal with such matters as for example: a sluggish drive, that spinning beach ball, ideas on quick copies, when and how to add an extension, do I really need this, etc.

Starting off with the above in mind, here are some thoughts.

Apple Works: Still Crazy (Wonderful!) After All These Years

For all you folks still using Apple Works for word processing, you might remember the “fix’ to cure a typical problem. Does Apple Works seem much slower and with the frequent appearance of the spinning beach ball? If that is a current symptom your Apple Works is choking with an overload of recent items. They must be dumped, trashed in order to return Apple Works to its best level of performance. Even if your Apple Works has not shown any perceptible slow down or excessive beach ball activity, follow this procedure to assure Apple Works best performance:

1. Click open the Hard Drive, Listed on the bottom is USERS

2. Click open Users. Select the heading listing your name

3. Open your name and reach down the list to Documents.

4. Open Documents to Apple Works Users Data: To Starting Points

5. Open Starting Points to Recent Items

6. Open Recent Items and you will see listed hundreds of every letter, note, etc. that you ever typed using Apple Works.

These ittems have been piling on causing the choking, beach ball activity. You can read a few out of curiosity. You can trash a few at a time, or to speed up the process, SELECT ALL and drag ALL to trash. Empty Trash. Return to a healthy Apple Works.

Spell Checks

There area variety of spell check systems based on the program we use. Some programs have a continuos running spell check usually by underlining the misspelled word in red. I do not like that system for the writer is expected to know the correct spelling ‘ if not, the correction process is slow caused by a try this,try that approach. I like the system that permits the writer to check a single word or the entire spelling of the finished work at the end of a period of writing.

For example, Apple Works permits either approach. For the correct spelling of a single word, select that word and, click these keys all together.command-shift and-the letter Y. The correct spelling will be shown. If a spell check of the entire document or a section is desired use, press the command and the equal sign in your key board.

Apple Works has a valuable aide for writers found under the EDIT menu. Scroll down to

Writing Tools. There you will note a variety of writing aides: Hyphenate, spelling, thesaurus, etc. I use the Tools menu quite frequently.

I have presented but two of the many little programs that will speed your Mac usage. Periodically, I will provide a few other help saving techniques I know that many of you over the years have located and used a favorite,small program. Tell me about it and we can publish it and others

in our periodic news release. Of course your contributions will be recognized and cited. I would like to hear from you about this new way of relating to MAC USERS.

Try: herbertx@capaccess.org, or herbertx@mac.com

For information on all the very many activities currently available in Leisure World go to

http://www.leisureline.org

lick onto: http://www.leisureline.org

Remember to add http://LeisureLine.org to your Dock....using instructions above!

Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post Columnist

November 20, Meeting Room

Clubhouse II at 10 a.m.

By Herbert Block, President

There are only a few days until Thursday,November 20,2008. That is the day that our favorite speaker Rob Pegoraro, will be present; Specifically: Clubhouse 2, 10:30 AM. The room will be readied with a MAC computer a projector, large screen, and microphone Rob is the personal technologist for the Washington Post. In his down to basics style, he will speak about a variety of tech devices ranging from computers, external hard drives, digital cameras, movie cameras, printers, iPODS, scanners, etc. Each of his pronouncements are a result of his personal detailed trial and evaluation of the device.

I have had a few calls, each about the same problem – my computer is so slow, and the usual remedies have failed to correct the situation. Remedies such as Verifying Permissions and Repairing Permissions. At some point, a computer will be choking for space. Each computers has its own limited built in storage space. Our basic computers come with a built in storage capacity on our hard drive ranging from 20 G's of RAM to 230 G's. If your computer is more than three years old, most likely your computer is in the lowest range.

With the increased use of our computers for a variety of activities- photos, movies, iTUNES, and personal correspondence,all stored on the Hard drive many computers are gasping for storage space. For example, five minutes of a movies take one G of space. The answer, shift some of the space off your hard drive to another media. If you're an avid photographer or videographer, you can free up a lot of disk space by burning your photos and movie files to CD or DVD. To add storage space or to shuttle files between multiple computers, an external hard drive or other removable media device comes in handy. And for making those all-important backups, any type of external storage medium is priceless.

USB External Drives. They come in various sizes, based on the quantity of available stored G’s. Typically a unit with about 160 G’s can be bought for under $100. These types of devices don't require you to install software to use them. Check the documentation that came with your drive to be sure. Some can also draw power from your computer through the attached FireWire or USB cable, so they don't need a power adapter. If your External drive has a power switch, turn it on. Your drive should mount onto your Mac desktop as a mounted volume icon, and ready to use. It may appear like a companion, but smaller Hard Drive.

To copy files to it, just drag and drop any file, folder, or application onto the volume icon. If you double-click the volume to open it, you can add more data.. When you're finished, to eject the drive drag the volume icon to the Trash. You can now safely disconnect the external drive and with its multiples of gigabyte or more of data on them. At this point, one should consider restoring space to your hard drive by trashing duplicate data from the Hardrive but, now stored on your external drive.

Also known as USB thumb drives or flash drives these storage devices are handy for shuttling files from computer to computer. And they're incredibly simple to use: Just plug one in to any USB port on your Mac and the device should show up on your Desktop as a mounted volume icon. Flash drives are inexpensive, buy one with two or more G's of RAM.

To copy files onto it, just drag and drop files, folders, or applications onto the icon. Or open the volume by double-clicking it. When you're done do not just drag it out of the USB socket. Doing so may wash out all the stored data. Properly, drag the icon to the Trash to unmount the drive, and then unplug it. Files on a Flash drive can remain mounted until you purposely drag a specific file to trash. Thus, a flash drive is a handy way of transporting data to another computer.

These flash drives how do they work? Flash drives and the memory chips on digital cameras use the same basic technology. They use a type of transistor which responds to an electric charge, and most important it retains that charge in its memory cells even when not plugged in. Compare this with date stored in a computer’s random access memory (RAM) chips which need a continual flow of electricity to retain the information. A technical explanation complete with exciting engineering diagrams of precisely how flash memory works can be found at: electronics.howstuffworks.com/flash-memory.htm.

By Herbert Block, President

Personal technology columnist Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post will be our speaker for Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 10:30 AM in Club House 2.

Rob is the personal technologist for the Washington Post. You can read his column every Thursday morning in the Business section, in addition to a special column each Sunday responding to questions submitted by Post readers, plus his blog about gadgets, software, tech glitches and more.

Mac members recall Rob was our featured speaker here in December 2006 and drew an over- flowing audience of enthusiastic electronic device users. His field of knowledge is remarkable ranging from PC and Mac computers, to iPods/MP3 players, digital cameras, cell phones, tv, storage devices, and software, etc. Rob will talk about how he generally reviews and evaluates computers and gadgets, with particular reference to Apple products.

Come to this meeting prepared to learn a great deal about consumer electronic equipment. He will take questions after his presentation. Please, let’s avoid a prolonged discussion of your particular problem. Mark your calendar now!

TIP

TechTool Deluxe from Micromat is a powerful diagnostic utility that allows you to test your computer's critical system components, such as the processor, RAM (random-access memory), VRAM (video random-access memory), the hard disk, and more. TechTool Deluxe can also repair your computer's disk structure and rebuild its directories as necessary. It is a CD that you insert in the CD slot in your Mac and click it on to automatically do its analysis. TechTool Deluxe is lncluded with a three year Apple Care Protection Plan.

If your Mac is currently covered under the Apple One-Year Limited warranty and you would like to extend APPLE’S world-class telephone technical support and hardware repair coverage to three years from your computer’s date of purchase and get TechTool Deluxe, then, purchase the extra years at one of the nearby APPLE stores or any authorized retailer of APPLE products such as Micro Center, Best Buy, etc.

Click on http://www.LeisureLine.org and you will find much useful information on all the many ongoing activities, specific to Mac and various clubs, etc. in Leisure World. Do go also to the Mac_PC page for an amazing amount of very useful information that will add to your knowledge of useful computer data and routines to improve your computer operating skills.

Also, there is the question of how to print a specific piece of mail without including the entire page: the MAST head, advertisements, etc.

In both instances, the answer lies in the techniques of “select, copy, and paste”.

Steps to Follow

1. Select the message to keep. The term SELECT is a way of identifying exactly the item for action. The action could be cut, copy, paste, change size or font style, etc. SELECT means brush the cursor over the data to darken. It is thus identified as ready for action

2. From the Edit Menu, click COPY. (Command C)

3. Open a new blank page from a word processor i.e. Apple Works, MS WORD, Text Edit, etc. (Command N)

4. From EDIT menu select PASTE - onto the blank page. (Command V). The pasted item is now your letter and can now be edited - add or delete written material. Prepare for printing by deleting unrelated excess. Be aware: Mast Heads and advertisements use a lot of ink-color

5. After editing the saved item mark it SAVE (Command S) and assign it to a place where you can quickly find it as needed. The easiest place to locate an item you have saved is the: DESKTOP. That places the saved item where you can find it and move it anywhere.

6. If a separate Home is desired for all saved e-mail message, from the File Menu select New Folder and give it a name, for example: Saved E-MAIL. From the desktop drag the specific item to the New Folder;. From now on all your saved e-mail will have its own home.

What have we accomplished?

1. We have removed and saved desired pieces of mail from the e-mail system.

2. We have established a home for certain pieces of mail.

3. We have avoided printing much unnecessary data.

4. We have kept the internet mail box clear and the computer fast by extracting and saving special items but deleting other already read or bogus e-mails

Some people prefer to select and save certain material from Internet e-mail using the picture/copy technique. That technique is valuable for more than just mail, for example to copy an advertisement of an item on sale, or to copy an extract of a long record with graphs, etc. The picture technique is virtually a camera snapshot, including the sound of the cameras shutter.

Procedure

1. For a total picture of the entire screen, simultaneously click: these three keys: Command/shift/3. Hear the shutter click? Find a “picture” on the desktop.

2. For a picture of a section of the screen, simultaneously click these three keys: Command/shift/4. That will cause a tracer head to lightly appear. With your cursor drag the tracer head all around the area to be copied and let go. Hear the shutter click? A picture should appear on your desktop. After a few practice shots, you will be an expert. Of course excess shots can be trashed. This procedure is helpful if you want to eliminate excess stuff, for example an advertisement Banner.

Finally, how does a person extract a photo that is included in the Internet mail? The quick easy way, is as follows: place your cursor on the photo and drag the picture to your desktop. Let go. There is your digital photo ready to be saved, or printed, etc.

Note: the Command key, also known as the Apple key, is the key on the bottom row of your keyboard next to the space bar.

If you need tech help, for this month I am unavailable. Please, contact Donna@LeisureLine.org or John.Anderson@wap.org

For all current events, calendars, photos, and tech news, visit http://LeisureLine.org