Using Safari Beta

A short review of Safari Beta comes from David Passell. He says he's been using it a lot, and he finds it very smooth and fast. He cautions, "Some of their preselected sites leave tracking cookies.  Primarily it seems to be CNN.com and Monster.com" adding, "Other than that, I like it." He refers us to http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/03/1235842416419.html  David mentions that he has MacScan that locates, isolates and lets him remove cookies.  

Where On Earth Are Your Friends?

Member Art Gorski sends us a nifty site with a mind-boggling feature: see where your friends are. From this site: http://earthlingsoft.net/Earth Addresser/  when you download the donationware program Earth Addresser it takes addresses from your Mac Address Book, looks up their coordinates on the map and writes that info to a "KLM" file.  Google Earth can open that file to display your friends' places.  And, if you've added photos of your friends to their cards in your Address Book, these photos will appear right on the planet instead of the usual drawing pin.

Do your friends' names appear on everyone else's Google Earth? Art clarifies for us, "It sends only the addresses to Google Earth, just to get latitude and longitude data. You can save the preferences so it stays in Google Earth."
Besides this program the authors Steffen Kamp and Sven-S. Porst list 13 other imaginative software programs on their home page.
No sooner had I emailed Sven that I'd posted about his site than he replied, correcting me that it's "KML" — not "KLM."  He adds, "For some reason that's a common error for that name. Perhaps because of the airline  . . .   Regards, Sven."
Thanks for your eagle eyes!

Really Simple (Nearly)

Perhaps you’re puzzled with RSS, but you’d like to simplify getting news, weather, sports, and the latest stuff.

RSS means Really Simple Syndication, and now a free app, NetNewsWire, aggregates news from sources you choose. And you can link the RSS content on your computer with your iPhone or other mobile reader.

De Prez Jim Hamm alerts us to this very useful app he’s started up with. To get a quick overview of NetNewsWire view a short video at http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/default.aspx   Click on “Video” near the top on the right hand side of the “Welcome” page.

Look at the RSS Learning Center, http://www.newsgator.com/rsslearningcenter/default.aspx and you’ll see why this might be helpful to both individuals and businesses. The link you’ll go to to download this free app is http://www.newsgator.com/INDIVIDUALS/NETNEWSWIRE/

You can subscribe to our PMUG newsletter while our page here is open and then opening NetNewsWire and choosing New Subscription from their menu.  Our URL comes up, and there you are!

Soon you'll find RSS is really simple.

Let's Learn

Like to learn with short video tutorials?  A new Mac website, http://www.themacu.com/index.html  offers some great features. Watch a video introduction of the training they provide. They also offer Mac related news, reviews, best deals on hardware, software, and peripherals. With Q and A you can ask questions or view already posted answers. Coming soon is training for iPhoto ’09, iMovie ’09, iWork ’09, Image Editing with Pixelmator and more. They offer a free 15 day trial, then membership for a fee of $6 per month. Downloaded training files are yours to keep. Thanks to Dan Simpson for passing along this info.

Lakner's Love Story Published

Our own Roger and Mary Beth Lakner were featured in the Valentine's Love Stories featured in Prescott's Daily Courier, Friday, February 13.  Here's the article:

"Five years ago this February, Roger moved from the Bay area of California to Prescott. He had recently become a widower and was determined to begin a new life in a totally new place. 



"He had chosen Prescott as his new home through the internet. His new house was in the Cottages at Prescott Lakes. 


"Being an early riser, he was often out working in his garage, especially assembling a workbench and cabinets.


"Mary Beth, who lived in the house directly across the street, often would notice Roger working in his garage. She was glad to have another new neighbor. 


"Before moving to Prescott in September 2003, Mary Beth had been divorced after a long marriage. She decided to retire early and begin a new life in a place completely different from Wisconsin, where she had lived for many years. She chose Prescott partly because her daughter and son-in law lived in Prescott at the time. She had visited them and liked the area.


"One Wednesday in March, Roger and Mary Beth met while walking back and forth to the shared mailboxes nearby. They talked and talked, standing outside in the hot sun. Mary Beth had gone to a few functions for singles by then, and she invited him to join her at a singles dinner that Friday. Roger thought that sounded fine, but he also suggested, "Why not tonight?!" So they decided to go out for their first dinner that night. From that day on, they dated often and soon fell in love. Both feel blessed to have moved directly across the street from one another! Last year, they moved once again to a larger house that they chose together.


"Roger and Mary Beth celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in January 2009 and are planning many more!"

Do You Like Cookies?

Not the kind Ginger Carlson brings to PMUG, we’re talking about Internet cookies. When on Google do a Command + , (comma) and see the list of cookies you’ve accumulated. 

I mentioned to my writers’ group about taking cookies off after you’ve been to a website. Several questioned my opinion, so I decided to take a more professional look at the subject. I note that going to any site with the word “about” in their URL brings up a lot of cookies. I got 11 cookies just from typing in “about.com.” Their expiration dates range from today until 2199. Imagine that! Each has a name and secret code, unknown to an ordinary person.

What’s your experience with Cookies? Do you have security concerns?

Under Safari Preferences, Security you have some choices to make. I’ve clicked “only from sites you navigate to.” Or, you could look up 24,200,000 sites to see what others have to say about “cookies computers privacy.”

What's New at the Library

Prescott Public Library began the month of February with an all-new web page. The new page is the brainchild of Systems Librarian Rob Lowe, who worked with public services library staff to develop the user-friendly look and feel. Give it a whirl at
http://www.prescottlibrary.info.  See today's events on the home page, along with a catalog keyword search and volunteer Lesley Schuler's event "slide show." Find your favorite databases under the "Research" tab and "Reserve a Room" under "Services."

Dealing with Software Update "Blues"

Apparently, some Mac users have had a problem right after Software Update has run on Leopard.  It's called the "blue screen of death" for the frozen field of bright blue when restarting the computer. De Prez Jim Hamm found the following tip from "Make Mac Work."  http://www.makemacwork.com/startup-fails-with-blue-screen.htm    This is most often caused by a corrupt dynamic loader cache, a feature which replaced "application prebinding" in OS X 10.5 and tells the system where to find available shared libraries.  Without a roadmap to these libraries the computer can't boot properly.  

"If the affected system is running 10.5.6, you can remedy this problem by booting with the 'Shift' key held, triggering a Safe Boot sequence and deleting the damaged cache files.  If you're running an earlier version of Leopard, Safe Boot won't remove the caches, so you'll have to boot the machine from a DVD or external drive and remove the files manually from /var/db/dyld/ instead.  Once the cache files have been removed the machine should restart normally."
Here, Art Gorski comes to the rescue. He adds the following info to clarify, "Booting with Shift key held down in 10.5.6 automatically deletes these cache files. Restarting the Mac should work fine then."   Art continues: See  http://applejack.sourceforge.net/ which says, "Using AppleJack you can repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files.  The important thing is that you don't need another startup disk with you.  
"You can boot your Mac with the Command and S keys held down and enter Single User Mode, which dumps you to a command prompt.  There you can type AppleJack to launch the utility.  One of the options in this program is to delete cache files.  Once done with AppleJack, just type 'reboot.' This method will work with older versions of Mac OS X."
Hopefully, this won't ever happen to you, but it might be good to print up these directions and file them where you can find them.  

Puzzles & Prizes

You could earn free Mac software by solving "secret agent fantasy" puzzles, according to a site sent to us by Dan Simpson.  Take a look at http://www.macheist.com/about/s/about/  Looks like a lot of people have joined this MacHeist site.  When I looked at it there were 608 members on line in their forum, with 288,492 members total. Dan says, "It is really quite fun."  Be sure to let us know if —when — you win! 

The First to Respond


After reading the earlier posting, challenging PMUG members to relate how they use their Mac we hear from Art Gorski today. He writes, "My everyday routine starts on my MacBook, checking hundreds of RSS feeds with NetNewsWire, a fabulously powerful newsreader, vastly better than Mail or Safari for this purpose. While doing this, I'm listening to audio podcasts that I subscribe to with iTunes.

"Later in the day, I'll use my Mac mini connected to a 37" HD LCD monitor to watch video podcasts that I subscribe to with Miro, a free cross-platform app for this purpose. Many of these are in HD, and look fabulous.

"Currently, I'm using Keynote to work on my presentation for the next PMUG meeting and using OmniGraffle Pro to do scale drawings of a couple of walls in my house where I'm planning to install a tool storage system.

"Occasionally, I use iPhoto to organize my digital camera pics, iMovie (old and new versions) to edit videos I take with my Canon camcorder, and iDVD to burn DVDs to send to friends and family and to archive videos. If I need to edit pictures for other purposes, I use GraphicConverter, since I think Photoshop and even Elements is overkill.

"For financial stuff, I use Quicken, spreadsheets in Numbers, and some on-line tools.

"For word processing, I use TextEdit and Pages. I'm proud to say I have nothing Microsoft installed.

"For troubleshooting, I use AppleJack, Terminal, and DiskWarrior.

"I use Chronosync running daily automatic schedules to backup all three Macs in our home to my ReadyNAS network attached storage box in my structured wiring closet over gigabit ethernet that I had installed when I built our home. We also have an HP Color LaserJet multifunction device that all Macs can print to and scan from that is attached to the same network."
Thanks, Art, for being our first member to respond.

Safe and Secure

Our February 21 meeting will feature a Keynote presentation by Art Gorski. He will give us features, tricks and tips, some unique to Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5) that will make your computing safer and more secure, especially if you use a laptop in public locations.  He will also discuss safe computing practices, do's and don'ts, that will protect you on the Internet.  He promises to be gentle and not too technical, and everyone should learn something new.  See you there.