how to

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More to Say, More to Write

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          Ah, technology!  Ah, new developments!  Ug, new acronyms and new terminology! 
         Off hand, do you remember what JPEG stands for?  What about DSLR?  What about …..?
        Mac to the rescue.  When you click on the Dictionary icon in the Dock here’s what comes up.  
        I expected Apple to provide answers to my growing list of acronyms, but did find some help by clicking on Wikipedia.  The Dictionary didn’t know, neither did the Thesaurus. 
        Click on Dictionary, look at the top menu. Click on Services and see some unexpected categories you can view.  (Remember to click on the little screen shots here to enlarge the size.  Then click on it again to shrink it back and come back to this page.)

        Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track.  Make New Sticky Note.  Summarize. 

        Check out Preferences.  Drag reference sources into the order you prefer.  You can even choose the type of pronunciation you wish to see. 

        I did find www.acronymslist.com  and a list of medical acronyms http://www.medindia.net/acronym/index.asp 
        Heard of Slovoed Dictionaries?  It offers a FREE dictionary of the month.  and can be viewed in Mac App Store.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slovoed-dictionaries/id524941905?mt=12  

More to Say, More to Write!
       So, you wrote something nice TO your mom for Mother’s Day, or you wrote something nice ABOUT your mom for your kids and grandkids. It’s so nice to write with Mac.  And you can print out the size of type that makes it easy to read.  But now, here comes Father’s Day.  Time to turn on your remembrances and your creativity again.
       Looking at an old photograph might stir up some memories.  Nifty to have so many pictures on your computer. Jot down your first ideas for your first draft.  (It’s not done yet!) 
        Writing about a hunting trip sounded promising.  But the first draft on the computer had too many “said” and “asked” words.  Go to Dictionary, and Thesaurus. Look at all the words to choose.  
      Go back to that draft of your writing and click somewhere on it. 

       Then do Command + F  to bring up Find and Replace.  I entered “said” and my happy computer put a nice yellow box around each instance of this word, one at a time.  I could choose which to delete and replace with a suitable synonym.  
        Another time, I wanted to write a fictional piece for some young cousins.  Going to Google, I typed in puzzle and then images.  I scrolled through a lot of clip art and photos until I found one to use.

  I’ve mentioned before, I use bluesquirrel’s program ClickBook for Mac to make booklets.  It shrinks down the type size and picture size to fit the page.  You have over 100 layouts to choose from.  www.bluesquirrel.com  
       You’ll have fun writing with Pages.
       Check our newsblog regularly to see all the info that’s being added.
       Keep up the good work.  See you next time.  Bring a friend!  
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                          This is today's handout, 5-17-14 at PMUG meeting, by Elaine Hardt 
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Another Search Engine for Privacy

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         Ginger Carlson passes along this information:  "Here's another search engine that is supposed to protect one's privacy that a friend told me about.  I have downloaded it and used it a few times.
        "If you go to www.startpage.com it has a search block and beneath it "Add to Firefox" (which is her browser).  It works for Safari, too.  When I downloaded it I thought the download hadn't worked until I noticed the tiny little "SP" icon on the left side of the address bar."  

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Info on Aviator

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        Jim Hamm shares some new info:  "Are you concerned about security while browsing the web?  Here is an article discussing a new browser: Aviator. And here is another article wherein the author discusses his use of Aviator.
        "If you're all enthused now, here is the website where you can download this browser for either OS X or Windows.

        "I've not tried this browser yet, as we're traveling and it isn't convenient to do so. However, one of these days I'll give it a try -- more out of curiosity than any real concern about browsing the web." 

Learning . . . and Doing

        Have you checked out the PMUG website lately?  www.pmug.us
        Look at Benefits:  24 articles posted on a good variety of topics,  Member for Sale items, Member Business Cards.

        Look at Reviews:  13 book reviews,  1 Hardware Review,  24 Software Reviews. 
        And, of course,  come to the Prescott Mac User Group meetings. Check out the calendar.   The friendly men and women at PMUG have lots of information to show and tell.   You are welcome! 
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Unclutter -- Get Organized -- Backup

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        “I’m going to get organized!”  Have you said this lately?  Well, Mac will help you.  It takes just a few simple steps to save and place things where you want them on your computer.  It might be handy to have several titles for that one same writing.  Do Command + D for duplicate and put it both places. 
Have you noticed that when you go to Finder (Smiley man face on the dock)  that under the heading of File in that top menu bar you can choose New Finder Window.  Click there to bring up an identical Finder Window.  Now you can have both copies open and go from one item or one column to another without losing view of the one you’re going to rearrange. 
I’ve been writing stories, short articles, and poems for a long time.  And Mac has made it easier to compose, print, and save these writings.  Now I had the bright idea to copy the writings to a thumb drive as a backup copy for our son Robert to keep at his house.  
The price was right for a Kingston USB 2.0, so we bought both a 16 GB and a 32 GB.  These are the plain, metal things that are narrow enough to fit into the slot on the side of the MacBook Pro, not those cutsey things at the office supply store that appeal to kids. 
But how much space do we need?  Go to the Finder and click to bring up what you’ve filed there.  Click on the folder in question, but don’t open it.  (Click on the screen shot to enlarge, then click to go back to this page.) 

Now, go to Command + i and up comes an information box with space for Spotlight Comments — those will be key words or phrases that you choose to help you find this later.  
        Under General you see the size of all that’s inside the folder in question.  Here it’s 202,586 bytes which is 209 KB on disk.  You see when you created that folder of stuff and when it was last modified.  At the bottom you see where to click to bring up the info on Sharing & Permissions that you’ve allowed for it. 
       Of course you remember how to convert bytes to useful measurement of some kind?  Me, neither.  I did find an interesting article on how to compare this to that, but where did I file it? 
To unclutter the desk top I started a file called Today News.  Unfortunately for me, it has odds and ends from the last week.  Now, what did I name the article I’d saved?  Relax.  I open Today News and click on the second View where I can make it show the items in the order of Date Modified.  
        Here it is: http://www.convertunits.com/from/MB/to/GB   It can convert other units, gives definitions, metric conversions and more.  On the left side at the top are 6 light green boxes with impossible-to-read lettering.  I expanded the page view to finally bring up the words Computer Data Storage, Metric System, Date Calculator, Salary Calculator, Molecular Weight, and Discussion Forum.  You do remember you can enlarge the page view by doing Command and +  (plus) a few times on the page.  To shrink it back do Command and -  (minus) until you like the looks of the page.  

Seagate Surprises

It seemed like a logical choice for an external backup.  Seagate Backup Plus with 1 T. memory was at CostCo for a good price.  Bought it, and planned to get at it much sooner than I did.  Little did I know that some Seagate Surprises were waiting for me.
Time Machine seems to be happy with the FreeAgent Drive with 500 GB doing its automatic backups.  And those little Thumb Drives are so easy to use for copying documents and folders from my computer to the iMac.  But, what about saving a lot of stuff for our boys, so they’d have access to it on their PCs? 
The Seagate Backup Plus came with a tiny 8-page folder giving minimum instructions.  How difficult could that be?
Now, the challenge was to convert a series of writings I’d started out in Word for Mac 2011, then I’d changed into Pages ’09 for my own convenience.
Doing Command + I  (i) brought up a little column that showed kind, size, where it was, keywords. I could click on Open With and make changes. So, at that time I did Open With Pages and clicked Change All where it says, “Use this application to open all documents like this one.” 
  However, our sons still are each using a PC computer!  
Now, with the new, skinny Seagate Plus here on my desk I could easily — I thought — save both the Word and the Pages versions of the articles, stories, and poems I’d written.
Several hours later after dragging folders to the little Seagate icon I realized I should try this out with someone with a PC.  That would be a friendly neighbor gal. I watched.  My folders did come up on her screen. Only problem was her PC did not want to let her eject the Seagate.  She phoned a PC tech she knew who advised her to just turn off her computer and then unplug Seagate.  Seemed like that was the solution. 
But, here came the biggest surprise.

          I clicked to see what it was, and saw info from a company named Paragon Software Group that now had set up territory on my computer.

  There was NO mention in the Seagate tiny pictorial Quick Start Guide that I would want or need a program or connection with Paragon Software Group.  Clicking on Manual brought up a 24-page illustrated manual.  
         Later, looking for something else on System Preferences it brought up an unexpected icon in the list under the category Other.  Their website is www.paragon-software.com  Email is sales@paragon-software.com 

Not knowing what I had done or what needed doing, I emailed our PMUG officers for suggestions. John Carter was the only person who had time to make some comments. We may work further on this later.  This IS a busy week. 
       Let’s take a quick look back at settings that allow others to use your computer camera, microphone, storage, cookies, etc.  Look at Adobe’s page settings, starting at the column Flash Player Help on the right side of this page http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help02.html  and clicking to look at each category.  Privacy, storage, security, notifications, website privacy, website storage, protected content playback, peer-assisted networking panel.  Then go to Table of Contents to get other pertinent information, including how to update Adobe Flash Player.  

        So, it’s an on-going process . . . Doing . . . Learning . . . Doing . . . Learning.  Just when you know it all they upgrade this program or that device!  More Doing. . . Learning. . . Doing!
      This was today's handout at the April 19 PMUG meeting at the Prescott Public Library,   by Elaine Hardt.  


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Apple's Fix for "Heartbleed"

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         "I was curious about 'Heartbleed' hearing a lot about it," David Passell acknowledged.  He found some important info. "It apparently can infect Mavericks users and IOS 6.users. Since I am still in the "stone age" with Snow Leopard I am apparently not subject to it."  Read zdnet
        Sure enough, the article emphasizes that the fix is in Apple's 10.9.2 update for Mavericks. Vulnerability is not present in versions of OS X prior to OS X 10.9 Mavericks or iOS prior to iOS6.  

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Vulnerable! Keep Informed

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        Keep informed!  Jim Hamm passes this along, "This alert of a vulnerability in OpenSSl was published earlier. If you missed reading about it, here is another alert. Undoubtedly there will be more of these types of alerts as the hackers get more creative."
        And if you use a smartphone you'll want to scroll down to Arstechnica's March 29 entry, warning about selling or buying a used phone to turn off Find My Phone, and also telling about avoiding trouble with "good IMEI/ESN" or "bad IMEI/ESN."  Others comment about these problems in later postings. 
        See Macintouch.  See Arstechnica. 

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Warning: Gmail Scam

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        This warning comes from John Carter.  Read carefully, and consider this: "There is another message going around regarding Gmail accounts that could be a scam.  Below are the details. DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINK IN THE MESSAGE. If you are really concerned that your email is being attacked, go directly to your Gmail account online and change your password there.
        "The curious thing about the attached message is that it was sent on March 28 at 9:53 PM and the incident is reported as happening at 1:53 AM the following morning. Even if the message was sent from California, there is only a three hour difference between New Jersey and California."
          Click to enlarge.  Here's what the suspicious email says:  
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Office for iPad

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        "Microsoft is bringing Office to the iPad. Take a read here. (Allow cookies on your computer to access this site.) It is free in a read-only mode, but costs $100/year if one wants to write to the app. A smart move by Microsoft, but perhaps a bit late," comments Jim Hamm.  He goes on to suggest, "If you plan to use Office for the iPad, here are 5 tips you might take a look at."
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/tech/2014/03/28/7018217/