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.
"Here's an important posting for anybody who uses AIM and iChat," states David Passell. He forwards this URL. See how ZDNet explains: "End of the line coming for Apple iChat log-ins to AIM on older Macs."
The email he received in his daily list had the catchy title of "No sign-up needed: Manage your money online." But David Passell did the sensible, careful thing. Instead of clicking to open the possible phish he went on-line directly to the Credit Union website. Better to be suspicious than to automatically open all the email you receive.
“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.
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.
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
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.
The breaking news on Monday, April 7 was a huge wakeup call. Jim Hamm's gives some help here about places affected by Heartbleed vulnerability.
Apple was not affected, and you do not need to change your password.
Last Pass lets you enter the name of the site you want to check.
Mashable published this list and gives comments on each of these entities:
Password Managers: 1Password, Dashlane, LastPass
Thanks to David Passell for the following link. A 5-page article on net neutrality explains what's been happening and asks if the Internet become so vital to national welfare that it should be run for the public good, or is it a business that can be run primarily for profit.
"Here is another article on Heartbleed," says David Passell. "It says Apple devices are not affected by Heartbleed? It emphasizes the severity to other manufacturers.See here.
"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.
Following up on the post just below, Jim Hamm sends this article with further info on the new security bug called "Heartbleed" bug. See it here.
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.
John Carter's found a nifty site to help us learn more about iCloud. Mary Ann Clark has posted it in the PMUG site: www.pmug.us Go to Benefits and click on the word "Benefits."
"Get 'em while they're hot!" smiles John Carter. Here's his find: "CNET News is showing another sale for Mac apps that some of our members might want to jump on.
Here's that cheery exclamation: "For Sale." Mary Ann Clark announces that there's another item now listed on the pmug website: http://pmug.us/benefits/for-sale/ This information comes via John Carter, and that reminds us all to check this For Sale feature when you can. You not buying anything just now? Well, pass the word along to your friends.
(Today you'll find that new listing for an iMac, plus another iMac and an iPad.)
Are you distracted? Unsure of the next step with your Mac, or iPod, iPad, etc.? What do "experts" tell us about making decisions, learning and doing? John Carter forwards this link. that could encourage and challenge you.
"Guess who I thought of when I saw this….(grin)…." is how Jim Hamm put it.
Our helpful Jim Hamm is at it again. "Microsoft's Office for the iPad was recently released. Here is a very good review of this app by Engadget, which will be helpful to read if you might be considering using it."