Archive for the ‘Up and Coming’ Category

We will be having a guest speaker at our October meeting. Andrew Welch, president of Ambrosia software, will be highlighting his company’s products on October 7 at the Homer library from 6-8PM. Ambrosia has been making quality Mac software for years. WireTap, which made the honorable mention on my top Mac apps last year, is one of their flagship products.

Please plan on attending this event. It will be great to attend a demo from one of the pros! I am so grateful that Mr. Welch made Homer a stop on his itinerary.

The following is the text of an e-mail I received from Claire of CJRTOOLS:

Hi,

In September, I’m offering a free online course for user group members on “Getting the Most from MobileMe.” The course will begin on September 1st and registration will be limited to the first 20 people who email me with their name, email address and name of their Mac user group. Please pass on the information to your group’s members with the following description of the course. Thank you.

“Getting the Most from MobileMe”
This course is designed for people who want to learn how to use many of the features of MobileMe, including syncing, web hosting and data storage. The course will begin on September 1st and there will be three weeks of lessons. The course will be restricted to the first 20 people who email me at cjrebooks@mac.com with their name, email address and name of Mac user group. Please use the subject heading of “Free MobileMe course.”

Claire

Claire Rottenberg
CJRTOOLS ebooks
www.cjrtools.com

Next week the June Kachemacs meeting will feature a seminar on backups. We will be at the Homer library on Tuesday, June 3rd. Please bring an external hard drive (firewire preferred, and necessary for a PowerPC) with a capacity of at least twice your Mac’s hard drive if you would like assistance from the Kachemacs in setting up a backup program for your home. If you don’t have a laptop or a hard drive, there will still be plenty of information available in creating a backup strategy for your desktop.

I’ll be back in Homer by Saturday, and I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a casual study session about Macs?  I have a couple of projects I’m working on, and I’m going to sign out one of the cubicles at the library.  People would be able to drop in (up to 6 in the room) and we could go over a few things one on one, since I never have time in the meetings to do so.

I’ll also pass a hat for donations.  I’d like to get our domain for our website officially registered to our group and there is a fee for that.  If there’s any money left I’ll spring for some refreshments at our next meeting.  I have a nice prize for a drawing I’ll have for people who want to put their name in, I’ll do that at 4:30 Saturday.

So I’m looking at noon to 4:30 on Saturday the 12th.  Bring your laptop if you have one.  Any advanced users who want to help out also come on down!

Diane

I have a bit of work to do pulling this coming week’s meeting together.  I thought it would be fun to work together on some Mac projects!  I’m going to get a study room at the Library (not a meeting room, just one of the little 6 seat cubicles along the side) so I can get some things together.  This will be tomorrow, Saturday, March 29.  Anyone who would like to stop by and pick up some posters to put up around town concerning our next meeting please do so, I’ll have some printed up.  Also, if you’d like to come by for an open work session for a couple hours I can answer some questions.  I’ll be there about 10:30 AM and stay for 2-3 hours, depending on how nice it is outside.  If you can’t see me, ask at the desk for Diane and they’ll point you in the right direction.

Our April meeting falls on April Fools’ Day.  I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to honor the fools in our lives.  Those people who are running Windows would be just the fools I am talking about.  Bring your favorite foolish Windows story to share!

I also thought we could use this theme as an opportunity to talk about one of the less savory uses of a Macintosh.  Virtualization, otherwise known as “running Windows on a Mac” is what I’m referring to.  It’s a necessary evil in my case, and I’d like to share some things that might make it less painful if you have Windows software to run as well.  I’ll cover 4 methods of performing this desecration of your hardware, and the pros and cons of each.  I’ll also discuss a bit of basic Windows safety and security.

If anyone who has done any virtualization would like to help me out with this presentation, speak up.  I’d love some input.  If you are running Parallels successfully, I’d love to borrow your machine for the demo so I don’t have to reinstall it on mine.

Make sure you get to the next meeting on March 4th.  We will have DOOR PRIZES donated by our sponsors.  Make sure to visit the sponsorship page on the website and take advantage of the special deals the sponsors offer us.   Other offers of sponsorship from local businesses  are also very welcome!  Contact the Webmaster if you would like to sponsor the Kachemacs or know someone who would like to do so.

Kachemacs, check your new Community Schools catalog. Our own Kachemac, Stephen Scarpitta, is running a 5 part series of Mac tutorials at the high school. I would highly encourage the beginning Mac users in the group to attend. As much as we try to cater to all levels of users, including beginners, we still may not give individuals all the attention they need. This class will be a perfect adjunct to the sharing experiences the Kachemacs offer.

The class is a reasonable $50 for the series. Sign up early because there is a class size minimum.

I’d like to address the beginners in the next meeting because I’m thinking they’ve been a bit neglected.  I’d like to present “Out of the box to configuring Docks:  A quick start guide to personalizing your Mac.”  We can address user preferences, such as wallpaper, screensavers, and dock organization.  Also we can touch on setting up mail and browsers.  Maybe a little data importing if we have time.

I’d like to break the group in two after our initial business and have the advanced users have their own topic.  Perhaps a software review or technical topics would be in order.  I’d love volunteers to lead that group.  Anyone?

Don’t forget about the meeting tonight at the Caribou, 6-8PM.  I know it interferes with the caucuses, but members may come in a bit late to catch the end.  It would be very useful if anyone with a laptop would preinstall Chicken of the VNC to their applications folder.  This is the free software that will enable remote viewing of my desktop where the presentation will take place.  If you wish to order a dinner, come by about 5:15-5:30 and we will be there for a meal and casual talk.  See you all there!