Always on the lookout for info, David Passell has signed up for the Beta release from O'Reilly Answers. Their slogan is "Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions." David has already submitted a posting under the Linux heading at Beta Forum which proclaims, "Share. Ask. Answer." Other PMUG members might find this a useful site, and some might have tips to submit there.

Postings in the new Forum cover a myriad of geeky subjects. David was describing how handy the ScreenShot feature of QuickTime 10 can be for recalling what he did. He wrote about his experience, sent it to O'Reilly Answers and was encouraged by Tim O'Reilly to set up an account and post it. He says he suspects John Carter uses something like it in his dock description.

This latest version of QuickTime 10 (SnowLeopard, only) has a Screen Recording feature which allows him to easily review. He can go back through the recording with speed up to 8X to see what he's done.

I asked David how he got involved with this Beta Forum. Initially he wrote to tell how handy ScreenShot is for Floss Manuals. "Being a Mac user, the subject of 'Paths' was foreign to me. When I was introduced to Linux I quickly got lost. Having an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) computer with a VNC (Virtual Networking Computing) server program I found I could go through the various paths and view them on a Mac. There I could make screen shots and comments in MS Word, (Pages probably would have been better, but I'm cheap!)

"Unless I had a WebPage I would find it difficult to upload one to anybody. I can stop, though, and get ScreenShots of something significant."

Perhaps you saw David's little green and white XO computer from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) at an earlier meeting. He works through a VNC server program.

On his Mac David starts with a program called Chicken of the VNC. "When I enter the proper IP address for the server computer I see its screen on my Mac. From there anything I do on the server computer shows on my Mac Mini. I can do similar things between my Mac Mini and my other computers that are networked on my router."

His philosophy is "When I write manuals I always had the feeling that if I could understand it later, anybody could. Engineers and Programmers are probably the worst to write user manuals. They are too close to the subject and fall victim to 'I know it, so everyone else should.'"

(All of this to say: you will want to check out that O'Reilly Answers Beta Forum.)