, ,

Apple Stops Development of Aperture, Dropping iPhoto

, ,

        "Apple introduced a new Photos app during its Worldwide Developer Conference . . . " is how the article dated 6-27-14 from the Loop begins.  Ward Stanke sends this article that goes on with some details mentioning iPhoto, and is followed with 256 posted comments. Take a look.   
        Here John Carter jumps in with his observations.  "I am very happy to see this coming. The iPhoto app has not been as powerful as I would like it to be. Aperture also misses the mark. I fully expect that the new Photos app will be at least as good as Elements (layers, etc). A much better search feature also has to be included for iOS. Slideshow need to be available across all devices with a view only capability for sharing. Same for photo Books. We shall see." 

,

MacWorld Has Podcasts

,

        "You may already be aware of this," begins Jim Hamm,  "but, if not, MacWorld publishes a weekly podcast covering various aspects of the Apple and Mac world. Here is one example, and you also can link to other podcasts from this website. Normally Chris Breen and Serenity Caldwell host the podcasts, but on this particular episode Chris has two other guests.
        "Just something for you to possibly listen to as you work away on your Mac," comments Jim. 

, ,

How to Designate Someone as VIP in Mail

, ,

        Lately, Jim Hamm's emails have come with a star beside his name.  Jim has been designated as a VIP.  Wonder how he does it. . . 
         With emails from my six siblings it would be nice to have the mail list show them with the star and VIP to find them from all the other email.  Turns out it's easy to do. 
        Click to open a message from a sender you want to designate as VIP. Put your cursor beside the sender’s name and click. Up comes a little box with choices:  Copy Address,  Add to VIPs, New Email, Show Contact Card.  Click on Add to VIP and a little star comes to the left of that person’s name on that email.  In the list of emails you’ve just received there’s a star also by their name.  You can designate someone -- or yourself! -- as VIP by clicking same place in an outgoing mail.  
        A long article about Mail is  here. 

,

Add Comments to an Email and Send It Back

,

        David Passell had ideas to send to me after reading my email to him the other day.  I got his email with his comments added in red so they were easy to find.

       I hadn’t noticed this feature before, but it’s so easy I will be using it myself.  
  1. Open Mac's Mail program.  
  2. Highlight the Subject of one of the emails you've received.  
  3. On the top menu bar click on Message.  
  4. On that drop down menu go to Move to Drafts, but if you want to preserve the inbox message intact choose Copy to Drafts.   
  5. Double click on the Message in Drafts and it will come up as a draft to be edited, addressed, etc.  
Here’s where you can click on the little black box by the name of the font and the font size and choose another color so your writing stands out from the color that the email came to you. (Click on this screen shot to enlarge it, then click again to come back to this article.)
6. Make any desired changes, address it, and then Send.
       David put his comments in red, but you can choose the color.  This makes it easy to critique, suggest, or improve what the other person has written.  
        Practice by sending yourself an email message and trying out the steps above.  
, , ,

Amazing Photos From Your iPhone

, , ,

        "If you haven’t heard about it yet, this is totally awesome — and I don’t say this about anything unless it really is!"  Now John Carter goes on to explain.

        "Fyuse is a FREE app for the iPhone that takes astounding 3D images (actually, a GIF image that you can manipulate to make it look like a short movie which gives you a 3D look and feel). Really! But I’m not going to spend any time here talking about how to use it or what it's like, because you can see the short demo yourself here in iTunes."  

Meet Our New Officers

       Election for our new officers was held last week at the June 21 PMUG meeting.  First, thanks to those four hard-working individuals who led us for the last 2 years:  Art Gorski, the out-going Prez, Dave Rothgery, out-going Veep, then the two who agreed to be continue and were re-elected:  Bobbie Pastor, secretary, and David Passell, treasurer.  Give each one a pat on the back!  
        Meet our new PMUG Officers: 

Robert Raess, alias “Rob”  is Prez.  Here’s a brief introduction to a busy man.  He’s been a Prescott resident since 1971.  Back in the 80’s he had an Atari for computer games and he remembers “trying to wrap my head around DOS, going to bed with a 2” thick manual on DOS.  Fast forward to the mid 90’s we got a PC and never did anything except play solitaire.  I remember it giving us fits and became a money pit.”
Anyone else identify with those frustrating early computers?  
Rob goes on, “My daughter is a grapic designer and used Macs and helped us get our first iMac running Jaguar, gave us tech support, and we were off.”  He exclaims, “Now, I’m swimming in the deep end, time for the big boy pants!”  
You can picture his smile as he recites this well-known verse, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” 
Is there more?  Rob adds this, “Wood artist, wood turner, and Chinese brush painting, hiking, birding, and Bonsai.”
He’s looking forward to a good year at PMUG, working with the team of officers and all the volunteers that make our group such a helpful and friendly bunch of people. 

Stepping up to serve as Vice-Prez is Pam Wickstrom. You’ve seen her helping at the

monthly meetings, but let’s get better acquainted with this smiling gal.  
She’s a 17 year resident of Prescott, and has been in PMUG since 2007 when she “invested heavily” in a Mac Pro desktop and 32 inch monitor for her photography and music interests.  Acquiring multiple Mac devices and software perpetuate her claim of “being master of none.”
  Pam’s education and work experiences have been interestingly varied.  After graduating in 1964 with a BS degree from Columbia University she went to Madison WI where she practiced clinical nursing in the university’s neurosurgical intensive care unit.  Moves to Rochester NY, Redlake, MN, Salt Lake City UT, and Denver CO were career builders, including her MBA.  
Her business years included developing and administering managed care programs for Blue Cross, Blue Shield organizations, then building and directing operations for 10 years as a co-owner of a radiology facility in Prescott.  Most recently, she’s been doing intermittent medical consulting. 
Pam describes herself as “always challenged by adventures and learning.”  This involves completing 10 marathons, including Boston.  Then, there’s camping — from tent, to car-top tent, to a truck with camper and finally to her current RV. 
Spare time?  hiking, antiquing, knitting, playing bridge, grandmothering twins, volunteering at museums at the city of Prescott, and taking OLLI classes.  Oh, ask her about her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Maggie Mae, who Pam says rescued her!  

Continuing as Secretary is Bobbie Pastor. 

     She's there at the table with a friendly greeting and your name tag.  Her working years followed two years of junior college with a secretarial major.  She worked for Uniroyal Corp, then for  Laura Scudders, picking and packing potatoes chips. This production experience qualified her to apply to Kimberly Clark in Fullerton, Ca where she worked for 33 years and retired with a pension!
         Bobbie says she fell in love with the town square in 1991 when she went through Prescott on the way to Sedona. She moved to Prescott in 2004.
A few years ago she started teaching Beginning Mac SIGs.  (Special Interest Groups)  She is interested in creating photos and takes John Carter’s Digital SIG every month.  
        Bobbie is Vice-mum for her Red Hats chapter.  She is creating a free website just for the Diamond Chics. 
In her spare time she loves to garden and has a very high maintenance landscape.  She shares her life with a "special needs" Jack/Rat terrier named Archie.  Archie is totally blind and socially challenged, but in spite of his peccadilloes, he has volunteered to man the projector  during SIGs at Bobbie’s house.  

Continuing as Treasurer is David Passell. 
       He’s been in PMUG since 1997 and served as President twice, and he’s continuing now as Treasurer. 
Before retiring with his wife Betty in Prescott in 1996 he had some interesting positions.   
        He has a degree from USC in Telecommunications (TV and Radio production) and worked W56 as broadcast engineer/DJ for KUTE in Glendale, CA, then Chief Engineer for FM station WNCN in NYC.
      In 1961 he was telecommunications engineer at JPL (analyzing spacecraft data, writing reports, and writing FORTRAN programs). He did technical writing (IBM, Litton, Associated Writers, Conrac) retiring in 1996 from Ameritec, Duarte, CA.
      David’s Mac history goes back to Apple II in 1978, MAC portable in 1991, Mac TV  in 1995. Currently he has a MINI, an iMAC, and a G3. Latest is 1 TB Time Capsule, scrapped the G3. Has Apple IIc, PB 190CS, SE30, Mac M0001, inoperative (trans) Portable.  Old SW books/magazines (hoarder.)  "I should dust them off for show at a future meeting :)." 
       David is also a member of the PCS (Prescott Computer Society), Yavapai Amateur Radio Club (YARC), and does video recording for his church, and is a PWC volunteer.  Keeping busy is just normal for him. 
, ,

What's Happening

, ,

         Get the idea that your hour-long TV news program has not covered all the world news that’s happening?  They’ve put in some cutesy pieces to lighten up the otherwise bad news from here and there?  The Internet to the rescue!
        Go to www.onlinenewspapers.com  and you’ll see this.  (Click to enlarge, click again to return to this view.) 

It’s interesting to see their take on news happening in other nations of the world. It’s even interesting to see the ads on their websites!   
        See the latest Apple news?  http://www.apple.com/hotnews/    And at the bottom of that page see Recent Press Releases.  There’s a link to the side to click for iTunes Movie Trailers.  When you click on the little RSS button it takes you to NetNewsWire so you can keep informed, along with the other sites you want to keep current.  
        How are the 400+ Apple stores doing?  https://www.apple.com/retail/storelist/  Scroll through the list of the states for the city you want to check out.  On the right side near the top choose a country or region:  16 nations have Apple stores.  The largest store in the world is in Amsterdam, according to Wikipedia. The first glass staircase got design patent in 2002 in the U.S. 

        What’s the government up to now?  http://www.usa.gov The US Government’s official web portal.  Click to contact Federal Government Agencies;  State. Local, & Tribal Governments; or Contact Elected Officials -- from President to local elected officials. You can subscribe to e-mail updates.  

        Look here for lots of news. http://www.thebigproject.co.uk/news/  This site has worldwide news in English, along with 15 in “Europe - Original Language.”  There’s Miscellaneous News with listings of News Aggregators and Blogs, News Podcasts:  BBC, CNN, Guardian, Financial Times, NPR, and Voice of America.  Under Minorities: 4 links, even Children’s News with 4 links, Good News with 3 links.

        Foreign nations’ links: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.  At the bottom is a list of 7 Newspaper Archives’ links.
       Here at  http://www.refdesk.com/paper.html   lists the US newspapers by states.  Then scroll down to their listings of world newspapers by area, then 63 national news sites (The Arizona Republic link is on this list),  and 24 Worldwide News Sites.
         In closing:  what about the weather?  You can scroll clear around the globe, and way up and way down.    http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?brand=wxmap&query=34.664902,-112.293999&zoom=5  Choose Weather Stations view, Radar, or Satellite views.  Fascinating!  
        Keep learning:  it’s fun, it’s productive, it’s Mac! See you at the next PMUG meeting.  Bring a friend! 
        This was today's handout at the June PMUG meeting,  by Elaine Hardt.
,

What's File Sync -- and Why Should I Care About It?

,

       David Passell sends some links to info about file sync.        https://www.dropboxatwork.com/2014/05/what-is-file-sync/#.U6OElyVai9Y.email  
        Then there's this additional . . . "this was sent via http://addthis.com. Please note that AddThis does not verify email addresses."  And then,  "make sharing easier with the AddThis Toolbar:http://www.addthis.com/go/toolbar-em And finally,  "To stop receiving any emails from AddThis, please visit: http://www.addthis.com/privacy/email-opt-out?e=ROQqiz.dD4wggiKcP4oqi2GBKps

,

A Must-Have iOS App

,

        "How many times have you wanted to access a file that is on your computer (Mac or PC) from your iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone? Even if it was only once, you know how frustrated you got because it just didn’t seem like it would be possible," begins John Carter.  
        Now, John offers some helpful info. "Enter FileBrowser from Stratospherix.

        "FileBrowser is the original and best file manager and viewer for iOS 7. FileBrowser can view, copy, move, upload, download, stream, and manage files between computers, servers, NAS drives and cloud storage in any direction. You don’t need to install any other software - FireBrowser will scan and locate computers on your network and connect in seconds, and will connect to cloud storage quickly, too. You can even use FileBrowser to quickly access all your photos and music on your iOS 7 device. Everything - all in one place!
        And John concludes with, "Get a full review of FileBrowser in the App Store. This is something you won’t want to pass by. Don’t let the $5.99 price tag let you miss out on this must-have app."
, , ,

Some Specific Malware Emails

, , ,

        "Of course you already know not to click suspicious emails so you don't end up with a virus or some other malware. Following are some examples that Greg, a blogger I follow, wrote and shows some of the suspicious emails he and his wife have been recently receiving. As he says, just be careful."  And thanks to Jim Hamm for this new alert. 

        Just a warning . . .I’ve been getting a lot of dangerous emails and I wanted to be sure that everyone was on the lookout for them.  They masquerade as Wal-Mart Gift Cards, Chili’s Coupons, or Red Lobster, etc. or even Free iPhones.  Because the fact that there’s usually something funny about the wording or phrasing of the message, the biggest giveaway is the email address shown at the upper left.   In this case, it’s ‘info@pigduke.com’.     Do you really think that Wal-Mart is going to have an email address with ‘pigduke’ in it?  (Click to enlarge these screen shots, then click the PMUG newsletter tab to revert back.) 
Walmart Trojan
Here’s the exact same email, but from ‘info@nesssos.com.'
Walmart Trojan2
And here’s what looks like a Delivery Notice from the US Post Office. Do you really thing the US Postal Service would be using a United Kingdom email address?
USPS Trojan
What do you think is going to happen if you try to print that shipping label? And why would you need to print a shipping label to PICK UP a package, anyway?   And note that apparently you can go to ANY Post Office to pick up your package.   So check those email addresses, and Let’s Be Careful Out There.
, , ,

Security Precautions for Protection

, , ,

        "If you should decide to use two-step verification as a further protection from ransomware and other malware, here is an article with details on how to go about setting this up," writes Jim Hamm.  
        And John Carter sends this advice:  "If you get a notice from USPS to click on a button to open a shipping label to print, don’t.  Any email is safe to open. Just don’t click on anything unless you have verified what you are clicking on." 

, ,

Half of American Adults Have Been Hacked

, ,

       Yes, there's more about hacking!  Jim Hamm alerts us, "I just read the following article wherein it is estimated half of all American adults were hacked this year! Hacking for ransomware or credit card or other personal information has become big business, it seems. Why is this so? The article succinctly puts it as follows: '...we're increasingly moving our lives online'...

     "I think this will be a fact of life for everyone who shops on or uses the internet."  See the short article and a 2 minute video here. 
, , , ,

Ransomware Attack: What To Do

, , , ,

      " Here is another article discussing what to do if your iPhone or iPad is hacked for ransomware."  And, of course, Jim Hamm immediately gets our attention.   "Unfortunately, hacks such as this are becoming more frequent as the following quote from the article mentions:
        'Database breaches are becoming far too common, with eBay, Adobe, Yahoo, and Target all falling victim in recent months.'
          Jim's advice is, "It seems the best thing to do to prevent this is to switch to a two-step verification process on your device.....